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Faith Ventures is about telling stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. The virtue of market-driven work that serves other people is part of God’s design, and thus we should care about the principles of individual liberty that make that possible.
This podcast inspires listeners to realize how their faith in Jesus affects everything around us, including our work in the marketplace.
Norman:
[0:00] This is the Faith Ventures Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, telling stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. If you appreciate this program, support the non-profit work of LCI by donating at LibertarianChristians.com/donate, and if you'd like to share your story, contact us at podcast@LibertarianChristians.com.
Norman:
[0:24] Welcome back to the Faith Ventures Podcast. I'm Dr. Norman Horn, where we are telling inspiring stories of Christians doing business for the glory of God. And I am very pleased today to welcome my new friend, Matt Morizio, to the stage.
Norman:
[0:36] This man is a paragon of productivity. You're going to be really impressed by this dude. I can't believe some of the things I've already heard about him. Beyond just being a professional baseball player for a while with the Kansas City royals minor league teams and beyond i he has a kid you not eight children eight children guys and he homeschools them, so at some point we may need to bring his wife on here just to figure out if all of the things he's saying are true because i'm not like it's hard to believe uh no this is this guy is fantastic and i'm really pleased to have him on here he's also the founder and owner of the recon reconstructing wealth uh wealth management firm or actually i guess it's the The website's called reconstructingwealth.com. So you need to check that out. And he's gonna correct me on the exact name of the firm here in a moment, I'm sure. No, that's right, exactly. Okay, so that is right. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff we got to talk about here. So Matt, welcome to the show. This is exciting. I'm really happy to talk to you.
Matt:
[1:33] Yeah, thank you so much. This is so cool. I'm excited to have this conversation based off of the stuff we've talked about in any pre-interview conversations we've had and pre-recording, I should say. This is going to be a fun conversation. So thanks for having me on this seat. I'm honored.
Norman:
[1:48] Well, I'm really glad to have you here. Kind of lifelong baseball fan myself. And so I want to talk a little bit about that. I grew up playing baseball and I've kind of fallen off of watching much, but living in St. Louis area and having the Cardinals around, that's always been fun. But I am curious because we haven't had anybody on the show who's been involved in kind of the sports field before. So I am somewhat wanting to start here beyond eventually getting to the all the understanding about wealth management, your philosophy of money and things that of kind of economic nature. There is something kind of different and weird and probably unusual about just professional sports. I think it's somewhat inscrutable, despite the fact it's so high profile at times for us. So tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of your story in, you know, developing into a sports, like a professional athlete, eventually, you know, getting into the professional leagues and whatnot. And like, yeah, just to kind of tell us like, what was this journey like for you and how did your faith play into that?
Matt:
[2:50] Yeah, well, when I graduated my nursery school, my preschool, I don't know how I was five or six years old then, we had a graduation book, believe it or not. And there was, of course, a section of like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I wrote Baseball Player then. And it was a bit of a declaration for me. I mean, I wasn't alone. There was a lot of like baseball, basketball, veterinarians, astronauts, you know, like we all wrote similar things.
Norman:
[3:13] The classic 80s kids. Yeah, you got it.
Matt:
[3:16] For me, I was like, I want to do this, you know. I loved the game. I wasn't great at it early on, but I did enjoy it.
Matt:
[3:23] And I started just committing to it. You know, at some point early on in my baseball life, probably nine-ish years old, so a few years in, my parents divorced. And when you're a kid, your parents' relationship is like, you know, the anchor of your life. That's the thing that you think to be the thing you can depend on. And then when that didn't happen, I think unknowingly and probably unintentionally, I clung to baseball as my outlet. And it really served that for a long time in a healthy way, I think. Like I actually really loved the game. I loved practicing. I loved critiquing. I liked even the stuff that wasn't on field that made me a better baseball player. I remember ninth grade, 10th grade, like.
Matt:
[4:13] One summer job in high school I worked for the street department for the city I lived in in Massachusetts at the time and I would also get up early 5 a.m. I would meet an older guy at the gym 530 he's a trainer and he's the strongest man I had ever met at that point, and he he took me under his wing so like that's my first real mentor of my life and like I credit a lot of my success to him, Because he actually, this is a side note, but he was the only person really when I, when I said, man, I want to be a baseball player when I grew up. Now fast forward, like ninth, 10th grade, this is more realistic than sixth, seventh grade, but still in the world of reality, like it's still very unrealistic. You talk statistics, but he said to me, everybody else kind of laughed at me and not laugh, but like, yeah, that's cool, man. But like, you know, what, what else, you know, what's, what's your reasonable, logical dream? And I didn't have one. That was it. Like there was no plan B. And he said, when I told him that, he was like, well, what are you going to do to get there? Like, that was his response. And it was so different from anybody else. I was like, I don't know. And it was then around that time of my life where I realized, oh shoot, if I want to live a life that very, very, very few get to live, then I need to be willing to do what very, very, very few are willing to do. And I just...
Matt:
[5:38] I bucked the trend from the beginning just because I wanted a life that I knew my teammates and the people that like were my peers probably weren't going to get to. So if I wanted to get there, I couldn't do the same things that they did and assume that I would have a different result. So I would get up at 5 a.m. and I meet him at 5.30 and I get to the city work by 7.30 and then I work till 3. Then I get home and change into my uniform. I have a game at night at 5.30 or 7. And I get home at 10 or 10.30. I do it again. and I loved it. You know, those are long days in hindsight, but like, I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed everything about the game and I chased it. And in baseball, you can get drafted as a senior in high school. And then again, after your junior year or you hit a certain age, I was actually drafted in my senior year of high school, which is like, I was one of a handful of people in the history of my town that ever did that, you know? Couple, one, maybe other. And it was way late in the draft. So I said, no. Because I thought, shoot, this is the first time that this actually, this dream of mine actually became right in my face. Like dreams feel like they're far away forever until they're not.
Matt:
[6:50] When I got drafted, this dream suddenly was like right here in my face. And so now I said, well, if I was drafted in the 48th round by the Padres as a high school senior, shoot, there was 50, only 50 rounds. I'm like, I sure can do better than that if I keep working at this thing. And so there was a lot of the whole twist I was a pitcher then I converted a catcher in my freshman year that's a whole separate story but, short in that story I was drafted again by the Padres I mean by the Royals after my fourth year my senior year of Northeastern where I went to college this time in the 17th round so then I got to play five seasons in the minor leagues and.
Matt:
[7:29] It was an incredible journey. Like I learned so much about who I am as a man, that I didn't know I was learning then, but I can attribute today to those, especially those five years professional ball because you get plopped in the middle of nowhere America. That by design, like the minor league clubs are on purpose, not right next to the big league club. Because if they were, the big league club would steal all the tickets. So they put them in these places where there are no real major league affiliates all that close. You could drive to it, but it is its own little thing. And so the town rallies around it and you can sell 5,000, 10,000 tickets sometimes, usually around the 5,000 range. But you're in Idaho Falls. Idaho is your hometown. And then again, Iowa is your hometown. And these are places that I lived in. And I traveled all around surrounding towns and states and they are equally unknown.
Matt:
[8:26] Equally I don't want to say desolate because people do live there but right but there's not a whole lot going on besides the baseball team there, and so that so especially I think I'll kind of close the loop here is my faith grew a lot in that season and I think it's really relevant for this podcast to share that, prior to that I grew up when my parents divorced my father I was grew up in New England so if you grew up in New England you're either Catholic or Jewish and nobody talks about it so you don't know anyway that's kind of how that works, and then I grew up in the Catholic church mostly but then my father started going to eventually a Lutheran church so it was like one weekend Catholic church one weekend Lutheran church which are similar but different obviously Martin Luther made that different.
Norman:
[9:11] Something something 95 theses yeah you.
Matt:
[9:12] Know right five six five seven hundred years ago however many that was but I think it was probably five hundred years ago five hundred yeah anyway, So I would go back and forth, you know, and this is the honest truth. I'm just being real, is that everybody I met that was like, that loves Jesus, that was a quote unquote Christian was also kind of quirky and weird. Like, it's a small subset of people. Like, I have this small sample size. So it's unfair for me to just say that. But I'm going to tell you my truth. And like, I didn't necessarily relate to them. I didn't identify with the things that they identified with aside from Jesus. It was like, man, we don't really get along on anything else until baseball, until pro ball. And now suddenly I'm in this clubhouse, this sort of growth bubble of people who all believe they can reach this impossible dream. Like all 25 of us together feel the same thing. And some of them also love Jesus and are willing to talk about him openly like they're talking about the game last night. And I remember early on in the clubhouse, which is my vibe, this is my scene, like we like working out, we like baseball, we like weight training, we like fitness and health and eating right and all the things.
Matt:
[10:34] And then they would talk about Jesus. And I remember like growing up, again, in New England, you're either in a church and you hear the word Jesus, or you are hearing somebody angry and they're swearing in public saying the word name Jesus. Like those are the two times that name is verbally pronounced. Except now I'm in a clubhouse and guys are talking about him and I'm like blocking my, like not blocking my ears, but kind of like, hey, keep it down guys. Like other people hear that. you know, I was uncomfortable with it at first, but then they're like the relatability to them made it really comfortable to learn, to dig into faith a little bit more.
Matt:
[11:15] So that seed that had been planted way early in my life remained just a little seedling until then, I would say then, then some water got to put on that seed. And also on Sundays you play, you play 105 or whatever it is every day. So you can't go to church on Sundays because you got to be at the ballpark by 8 30 yeah um so they have by design it's called baseball chapel, they have a local pastor come to the field literally after your pre-work early work you you're sweating dirty sometimes spitting seeds chewing gum, sometimes other things are in people's mouth you know like tobacco yeah, but like we're in the dugout and in comes a pastor and gives us It's basically like a 15, 20 minute sermon on a passage. And that happens every Sunday around the whole country.
Matt:
[12:05] And I remember, I mean, talk about Jesus meeting you where you're at. I remember that being like, man, this is so cool. And this is not like anything I'm used to or I grew up with.
Matt:
[12:15] And that season, really, I can attribute to probably the beginning of really growing in my faith. It wasn't necessarily the beginning of my faith, but it sure was the beginning of like my intentional growth in it.
Norman:
[12:26] Well, that's fascinating. Like, I think there's things you don't really hear about. We tend to hear about the more negative things that happen in sports in this respect, ranging from just the misbehavior to kind of protestations of various kinds, of course. And that's kind of interesting. And I'm curious, that's unusual,
Norman:
[12:51] it seems. And so I think that's kind of neat. So as you, you know, you, you're growing in faith, you're growing in, you know, your, your, your status and whatnot in this respect, eventually though, you make a change and you like, like you go from, I'm achieving the impossible ideal of the professional ball player to like, I mean, did you, did you get married in the middle of this? And then did you start having children? And I'm curious about this because it's got to be like the shift that you made of going from I'm going to be a professional athlete to, I'm going to go into helping people reconstruct their ideas around their finances. That's a bit inscrutable, buddy. So like what possessed you to make that change?
Matt:
[13:45] Yeah, I would say the thing that I did wrong in the baseball part of my journey from a faith perspective is I, and I didn't intentionally do this. I wasn't manipulating God's plan. I just was immature in my faith at that time to even know to ask. But the big question I never asked him was, God, what's your plan for me? What's your dream for me? Baseball was my dream for me. And I assumed we were in alignment because nothing had happened to say otherwise. So I never asked him. And when you're that far, just being real, like when you're that far and that close to it.
Matt:
[14:24] I don't know that anything could have taken me from it, let alone set aside them telling me I'm done, which is what happened. They ended up releasing me so spring training 2011 the the stories you may hear or the things you may see on tv about like hey someone taps you on the shoulder and and you go upstairs and get a plane ticket home that's very real that's exactly what happened, because i had been in the league in the league excuse me with the team for five years at that point five seasons, they i was kind of a dinosaur like i hadn't made it up to the upper levels of minors of the big leagues yet and, i was still around usually by that point people are released or traded or something so released by the way is just a baseball term of being fired that's like yeah technology, But they called me the evening before. I remember I got, so I got married October 10, October 2010.
Matt:
[15:16] And a few months later, February 2011, we're driving from Massachusetts to Arizona for spring training. My wife quit her teaching job to join me. She was like, we don't have much time doing this. Like this baseball has a small window so that we can always be a teacher. I can always teach. So like, I'll quit. I'll join you. We'll do this baseball thing. This is our, so we had never been married for a season. As a matter of fact, the only season we even knew each other was that previous one.
Matt:
[15:46] From meeting her to getting married, it was a 10 month total time frame. And nine of the month, nine of those months, I was in a different state. So the only month we were ever like close to each other was the one leading up to our wedding. Anyway, separate story, probably don't need to go down that path. But she joins me in Arizona, having quit her teaching job, knowing like we're going to try this thing out. And now it's March or April of 2011, just a couple months later. We'd just been married a handful of months. And the Royals called me the evening before, again, because like I was a dinosaur. They gave me the respect of not having to be embarrassed at seven in the morning when you get to the ballpark for spring training, of just getting released in front of all my buddies. They called me to say, hey, man, we're going to let you go. and you can come by 9 30 or so 10 o'clock to get your stuff one that's when all the guys are already on the field stretching doing their thing, so I didn't have to and they knew it they were like you don't have to you don't have to do that in front of the guys, so I did but I remember crying man like when I hung up that phone I went in the other room and I just remember my wife hugged me and I was crying because, And wrongly, my identity was tied up in being a baseball player. And it was hard to shake that. I did it to myself, but also everywhere I went, the people who knew of me knew of me because of baseball. So like, oh, you're the baseball player. Like that just follows you.
Norman:
[17:14] Yeah.
Matt:
[17:15] So people assign that identity to you. and kind of like, you know, looking at my parents' marriage as a anchor at that season when I was a kid, I looked at baseball now as my new anchor and now that failed me. Right. So like, thankfully I had grown in my faith in that time too, to realize like, what am I doing? I'm attaching myself to things of the world that are going to fail me. So I really like leaned into my, my faith as my identity and all these other things are, are part of me. They're who I am. They're, they're what I do they're not who I am you know.
Matt:
[17:48] But eventually like real life happens. So they gave me my travel allowance home and I drove back. I started driving. I had nowhere. I didn't know I had anywhere to live. We just got married. We only had like a two month apartment because we were leaving. So now I'm jobless. She's jobless. We're homeless. We're making calls from Arizona to Massachusetts trying to figure out where do we live. So we're couch surfing or like really like spare bedroom surfing. My my parents my dad's house her parents house, and trying to land on our feet i had to re-enroll at northeastern to get a job i mean to finish my degree so i could get a job, she found a a teaching job but it was a substitute teaching job because here we are like this is april i guess we're driving back like i i got we got pregnant that summer while couch surfing having nowhere to live, were like, you can't get a full-time job. You're pregnant. So she ended up finding a temporary teaching job covering somebody else's maternity leave. I finished my degree. And now fast forward, January of 12, technically was my degree date. It was like a 10-year degree. It would have been a four-year, it was a 10-year.
Matt:
[19:04] I am now the sole provider with basically a brand new grad resume and no job. So that was the start of my relationship. real life. So I actually didn't get into wealth management right away. I got into finance staffing because I went to a staffing firm to get, get a job because I'm like, I've got no job. I need to provide. I have a child. I have no resume that's getting me in and indoors. I have no relationships getting me in front of anybody. Like you are a staffing firm. This is your entire business model. So I'm a person that needs a job. You should have people who need to hire people, You play matchmaker, please. And they liked me enough during that interview process to say, hey, what, why don't you try what we do instead of us put you out with a client? Why don't you do what we do? And I was so naive to the business world. Cause you know, I, a few months ago I was picking dandelions in the outfield. Like, you know, that's my, that's my, that was, that was what I was, well, truthfully, there's no dandelions in those outfields, those back grass and meticulous. But aside from that, I was like, is that how you do this? Like, do I have to join you before you give me a new job? And they're like, no, dummy. Like we're saying we're hiring you for a job. It's just what we do. So I did that first for four and a half years, finance, staffing. It was pure sales, temporary finance and accounting, staffing. My job was to call 100 hiring managers a day, cold call them, meet 10 of them in person a week. And I did that for four and a half years.
Matt:
[20:34] I got paid. You know, I, my, my, my salary grew or my income grew because I just hustled. I just took all of my athletic mindset into more work and I did all the things I didn't want to do, but needed to do and, and hit my KPIs, you know, the key performance indicators and just, I did well. I didn't like it, but like, I guess as an athlete, again, I told you like a lot of what I, who I am today is a, is a testament to those seasons of my life.
Norman:
[21:01] Yeah.
Matt:
[21:02] You learn to separate the things you want to do and the things you need to do, and you recognize like the overwhelming majority of life is the things you need to do and then you get to do some of the things you want to do you know like.
Norman:
[21:15] That's for sure.
Matt:
[21:16] Where I learned in athletics that's what I did so that's how I started I didn't start in wealth management.
Norman:
[21:20] Well and and this like I want to kind of hit on something here that thought was kind of interesting in the way you've kind of told this story and and it's important because I think this is often a way in which no matter where you are like there's a there's a trap and that is how much of your identity is tied up in these aspects of your life.
Norman:
[21:41] Specifically like in the way that you were describing you know so much of who you were was locked in to the baseball thing, and that's and maybe that's a little easier to see like how that can be a problem for someone because it because it's just it's so much it's so out there and like it's it's more obvious but the less obvious thing, is perhaps how we often will get really tied up in putting identity into things like other elements of career and money in particular. And then what's kind of cool is that on the back end of that, I know that this has got to be part of the motivation for why you're even describing what you're doing as reconstructing wealth and changing your relationship with money. So I'm guessing that this is where at some point you went, Hey, I got, I have some, you know, I've been doing the work, you know, internally here now as I can do something different for, for potent for, for folks in a, in, you know, in, in an entrepreneurial sense, and help people to, you know, reconstruct their, their identities and they're a little better as well. So like to tell me, am I, am I on target or are we like, or is there something else there that's going on that helps you get on that entrepreneurial journey?
Matt:
[22:58] You're close to it the change I would say which is really you're intuitive to even really like parse that out of my life you're right the change or the difference I would say is, I didn't know that I had a blind spot necessarily. And I always tell people, awareness is really your ignition key to your engine of change in your life. Although, you know, most cars, I maybe have to change that saying because most cars are push button now and they don't have a key for the ignition. But awareness, like if you have an awareness of a problem, then you can change the problem. If it's a total blind spot for you, you don't even know that you have an issue. I think like Alcoholics Anonymous makes sure it makes you identify first like to name you have the problem before you can change the problem yeah so like I didn't know I had a money issue because, I grew up how I grew up which was with him who was the, she wasn't a single income because she got child support but like I always heard about the lack of money and the need for need to conserve and save you know I remember, I got screamed at multiple times more times for this than I did for school any school grade bad school grades was I wouldn't when I would leave if I was the last one to leave the house in high school is say, if I didn't especially in the winter you know it's cold in Massachusetts it was a bigger house.
Matt:
[24:23] Oil heat's expensive yeah I didn't turn the heat down to the mid-50s and my mom got home from work before I got home I heard about it and I heard about it a major way Like I got in serious trouble because I wasted, right? Like I didn't conserve, which all of that I didn't recognize as anything. That's just my upbringing around money. And then you go play minor league baseball. And my first paycheck playing minor league baseball was $550 or $600, I think, for two weeks worth of pay. And you get paid so twice a month 1200 bucks a month for like five months of the season you don't get paid in the off season so like you only get paid in the months you play games that was a half season at that point.
Matt:
[25:11] That was actually, that was, so that was even less. That was June, July, August, and a week in September. So that was my income. That's for anybody doing that math. That's a four figure salary. If anybody's, anybody's counting, that's sub $10,000. If anybody's, you know what four figures is. So obviously I didn't have money, though. I didn't care about it. I just figured out how to do everything I'd always done is like squeeze a quarter out of a nickel. That's, that's really what I boiled down to. And I think that serves you to an extent. I think when it controls you, you don't control it. Then that mindset consumes you. It had consumed me. I didn't even know it because I didn't know anything else. I didn't know otherwise. I didn't have wealthy people in my life. And as a parent of eight, I can tell you firsthand that so much more is caught than taught with children.
Norman:
[26:04] Right.
Matt:
[26:05] And now I have the advantage. So fast forwarding to why did I want, why did I feel like this is my calling of life is I got into wealth management, right? Like this was one of my 10 in-person meetings a week was, was with a founding partner of the old firm I worked for. And he kind of like staffing was like, Hey, I think you'd be great in wealth management. Do you want to do it? Really didn't want to do it. I prayed hard that it wouldn't work. I tried to close the door and I felt like God just kept blowing it wide open to the point where I remember I remember telling my wife like, Addy, I think God wants us to do this and I don't know why, because I don't think I want to do it. But I jumped into it and you fast forward a few years and I have thousands of conversations at this point with people about their money and now, I also, so I learned how people use their money effectively, but I also learned that, holy smokes, on the emotional spectrum, we all have varying degrees of an unhealthy relationship with money.
Norman:
[27:02] Yeah.
Matt:
[27:02] And it permeates into all areas of life. It's not about the money. It's about like, how do you show up for your spouse, for your kids, at your office? How do you, what do you do to decompress? A lot of that stuff is unhealthy because it's a stress around money first, right? And I realized like, dang, if, if we can, if I can change that in somebody's life, then because I'm case study number one, I started to change it in my own. Now that I was aware I had a problem, I was like, well, how do I solve the problem? Because I don't have to worry all the time about money. I don't have to have a scarcity mindset around money. Biblically, it's not taught to.
Matt:
[27:42] And I started to go on this journey of learning how to reconstruct my own relationship with money and as I've done that, I see how I show up to my wife. I see how I communicate to my children about things they want. You know, kids want everything and I'm able to have healthy conversations around like not, oh, we can't afford that or no, we're not doing that. It's more like, well, what's the value in that? Like, how can we make that happen? And because of homeschool I can teach them, I call them money Mondays but like I teach them lessons on all the things I wish I knew, my point is generationally speaking if you look at the Marizio family tree, like, I took the ownership of, hey, for future generations, we are not going to be fearful of money. We are going to use it and we're going to be good stewards of it. We're going to use it as a tool and we're going to do a lot of good with money. The money is not a problem. The love of money is the problem. And the other side of that love of money is the fear of money. It's sort of like the other side of the same coin.
Matt:
[28:46] We're not going to fear it. We are not going to love it. We are going to use it the same way a carpenter uses a hammer for a nail. Like we are going to appropriately use the dollars. And now I can tell you that like my kids are not going to grow up with the same fear around money. They're going to think of it healthy. Like I need more of it if I need to accomplish that thing I'm trying to accomplish. If I want to serve those people, it might take funds. So let me think about, how can I add some value in somebody else's life and get paid for it. Then I can use those funds I just earned to go do the thing I was trying to do. Like that's very healthy. That's not emotional. And so I want to do that in other people's lives and so if I can reconstruct relationships with people's money, then I can't even quantify the ripple effect that that will have on two, three, four generations down the line, let alone generation zero.
Norman:
[29:37] Oh, that's an interesting point too. Yeah, that when you begin to build these healthy relationships, they have like, I mean, it's very scriptural to suggest that, you know, when parents act wisely, the ramifications are generational in scope. Right. And that's even, you know, relevant when it comes to thinking about money and not just in the sense of the fact that we pass on inheritances and things like that, but also the attitudes themselves. That's something I don't think I've really heard very particularly often, if at all. So that's very interesting. I appreciate that.
Matt:
[30:15] So we have financial advisors, and I apologize to interrupt, but I can't hold my brain on this one. The issue that I have with the industry is that most of the industry, the overwhelming majority, teaches you how to grow wealth and store it for yourself. And I like to say that the industry teaches you how to build the wealth. I like to teach you who it's for, not what it's for, because I go back to the saying that your why is almost always a who. So if your why is a who, then your purpose for money will be a who, not a what. So I like, If the rest of the industry is teaching you how to build wealth, I'm gonna teach you who it's for.
Norman:
[30:58] Okay, that's interesting too, yeah. So there's, as it pertains to the way in which you're trying to teach people how to reconstruct or re-envision the way you relate to financials, you're trying to get, okay, we need to make sure we don't have an inappropriate love. We need to know we don't have an inappropriate fear.
Norman:
[31:22] We need to know who it's for, not just what it's for. What other kind of things are your principles that you try to build out in the way that you're, you know, just teaching your clients in this respect?
Matt:
[31:35] I like to teach them a couple other points that I think help practically change your relationship with money because I recognize like, hey, Matt, this all sounds nice. Like, I would like to do that, too, but I can't afford my life right now. And that's stressful. So, like, you're not helping me, Matt. What I did personally to help reconstruct my own relationship with money was first I got educated because once I was aware of the problem, I was like, well, I got a blind spot. Now I got to I got to figure out how to solve that blind spot. And I didn't jump right into like go mode, which is which was my sort of modus operandi up until now.
Matt:
[32:16] But I learned as a baseball player, when I was doing that, that was my vision, my mission, my dream that I was chasing full throttle. And 20 years later, that bus crashed and burned. And so today I don't make any decision, major decision, without sitting in quiet time. So after I got aware that I had a problem, I sat in quiet time, which for me is prayer, obviously. And really listened to the Lord, like, where do you want me? How do you want me to think about this? How do you want to use this? And really it's not like I have this lightning bolt moment of like oh my gosh the heavens opened up I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do the rest of my life with money, but I did really feel like like I needed to learn how the game of money worked yeah because especially professionally like God kind of used me professionally to to say you have to learn this because it is quite literally your career to teach people how to do this, and another way to describe it is like the way people learn the language of italian let's say to learn italian by immersion you get dropped in rome for 90 days you're going to figure out italian a whole lot easier than 90 days of like once a week lessons in school you know yep so, i did that with the language of money like i got plopped in the world of money to say hey learn learn how this works so you can teach people so my my learning curve was really dramatically accelerated but as i got educated on it.
Matt:
[33:33] The, the fear around it started to dissipate because the fear of money is not money itself. It's actually fear of the unknown. Most of us kind of like have the ostrich approach where it's like, we bury our head in the sand and we hope it all works out.
Norman:
[33:48] Yeah.
Matt:
[33:49] You can do that for 30 years, 50 years. Like, and then we hand it over to somebody else, like a financial advisor and say, Hey, don't screw this up. I trust you. And then boom, back in the sand, you know, like Like that's, yet that same person probably reads Amazon reviews to make sure they don't get screwed in a $30 purchase, you know, like the backward way of thinking.
Norman:
[34:09] Yes.
Matt:
[34:10] But that's just, that speaks to the unhealth around it. So I got aware, I got quiet, I learned how that worked and now I got educated. Like that, that's the thing that started to really dissipate a lot of, hey, I don't, I don't have to be like a Harvard alum or have a pedigree of economic family to say, I understand money now, actually. In the world of AI today, it's like information is a commodity. You can figure out anything you want to figure out. And if you don't know where to start, you can ask AI where to start.
Norman:
[34:41] Yeah.
Matt:
[34:41] You don't have a better starting point than anybody else will tell you. But i'll tell you the the unintentional shortcut too to changing my relationship with money and when i say that, i don't want people thinking like i'm some robot that walks around that doesn't feel anything like i am human no no that's me that's me no like.
Matt:
[35:02] Like i'm preaching to myself as much as anybody else like i recognize that when i am emotional about the financial decisions it's unhealthy. I don't, I can't totally disconnect, but I do believe that true financial freedom, comes from emotionally detaching from your money. It doesn't come from having enough in your storehouse to provide. Although that's today's definition of financial freedom is like have enough invested that it'll fund your life. But work becomes optional. You're financially free. You can do whatever you want. Well, here's the thing. Like I know enough people in my life now being in the role I'm in, have accomplished that. They have enough money and they are anything but free because they are worried every day about their money. I'm like, that's not freedom to me. So anyway, I started recognizing that I had not consistently tithed for fear of never having enough because it came from that place of lack. So I made a commitment. I'm like, if I'm going to have a healthy relationship with money, I need to be in control of it. It can't control me, which means I am going to decide every month that I'm for myself I had to set up a separate bank account, it couldn't be my own bank because I'm human and I knew I would have all the reasons why I couldn't tie that you know give 10 percent that month because I couldn't pay the bills or whatever but if it's separate then I know that.
Matt:
[36:24] Mentally it's for somebody else I've told myself that I can't go dip into a separate account because I have my checking account and then we have it we call it a blessing account separate bank separate color, debit card, everything. And 10% goes into that. And I will tell you.
Matt:
[36:41] Having that account has been the most impactful thing I've done in terms of changing my relationship with money. And it was completely unintentional. I didn't do it because I was like, I want to be better with money. Let me do it. I did it because I was like, everything I'm learning is money's controlling me and I want to control it. And I've wanted to tithe. And I've had all the reasons and excuses why God doesn't mind if I don't tithe because he wants me to be able to provide and all that. And I was like, that is definitely fear talking. And so I want to be, I want to trust him kind of like the Chick-fil-A model. I want to know that he can do more in six days than I can do in seven. You know, I want to know, I want to believe he can do more with 90% than I can do with a hundred. So I'm going to give it away. And on so many different levels that had changed my relationship with money. Not the least of which is subconsciously, I started to just feel better daily around money. I didn't have more money. I want to be very clear. Like, I actually had less because I was giving much more away. And my business like went way south before it went north. So I'm giving away money. I'm making less money. I'm like, actually in the worst financial situation I'd ever been in, but feeling better than I ever had. So I hadn't talked to like a couple of friends of mine that had PhDs in psychology, and explain that and be like, guys, what is happening? Like, why is this happening?
Matt:
[38:03] And they described it to me in a way that made sense. They said, you know, psychologically, you lived in this fear-based emotion around money your whole life. And we talk in psychology, sometimes there's two root emotions, fear and love. And you lived in that fear one your whole life, but obviously giving is a love-based emotion and they can't coexist at the same time. And so your act of deciding to generously give actually overrode, it overrides the fear-based one. And they're like, subconsciously, your brain is rewiring itself to say, hey, guys, we used to think that this thing we couldn't give away and we had to worry about. Well, it turns out we're okay giving it away now, so you don't have to be so fearful of it anymore. And subconsciously, I was quite literally rewiring my brain around money, not knowing that at all. I had no, that was not my intention because I think if it was my intention, then that's probably selfishness disguised as generosity.
Matt:
[39:03] But it did quite literally rewire my brain around like the appropriate role money should play in your life. So I feel like I went in a lot of different tangents there, but hopefully that explained like the practical of, hey, start getting educated and start giving some away. I'm not saying it has to be 10%. The act of putting $5 away in a month towards somebody else can totally change how you think about money. Because it's really fun to be able to be like, I'll get this coffee and pastry and also just pick up whoever behind me too. I can put that one on my tab because you know you've got $15 set aside for somebody, like that action changes your life and then it impacts that person and they're like yeah I'm gonna pay it forward and do it for somebody else you know like there's a there's a healthy ripple effect to that too sure that's not the reason to do it but it is a really cool side effect.
Norman:
[39:50] Yeah it's really it is really curious and and I I'm listening you know to you once again I think we may have mentioned this and we talked when we were talking previously like I can't wait until you start reading some like Rene Girard and mimetic theory and looking at the way in which, you know, like, I think that you're going to, you're going to just like explode when you, when some of that stuff clicks for you, because it's very, very copacetic, with like the, the way in which, you know, you're kind of your, your, your philosophy and how it's developing here is that it's it just, it changes, it changes the way you think about these things. And when you start kind of analyzing your own desires in this respect, I'm, I'm, yeah, Yeah, that's my side note for a sec, but I think that you're going to get that needs to go on your reading list. So we're going to figure that out later. But that's that's really good. So what, what sorts of, you've, you've talked about the effects that it's had on you to make these types of mental shifts and whatnot, but you also, obviously you're teaching this to your clients.
Norman:
[40:51] Um, you give some examples of perhaps, you know, cause we're, we're going to draw to a close here eventually, but like, let's talk about some of the examples of perhaps how you could, you know, without naming names, ways in which these sorts of things have affected other people and then their relationship with money.
Matt:
[41:06] Yes. Yes, for sure. One example that just comes to mind as you ask that question is a guy I used to work with years and years and years ago. And we had talked then. Now, I was not in the world of money then. We were in staffing. But he had just shared with me at one point, just in like casual conversation, that he had something like $50,000 or something that's just sitting in a savings account that he had, he's mid-20s at the time probably, that he had earned as like a caddy in high school, like a high school job. And he sort of like off and on had that job for a lot of his life and I was like dang at the time I'm like that's a ton of money for you to earn and just sort of like squirrel away and never touch and then I got into the world of money, and I understood the value of investing the money as opposed to like you know stuffing it under your mattress metaphorically like it was in the same as account doing nothing for him for decades at that point a decade and a half yeah.
Matt:
[42:03] I encouraged him to like, hey, you should probably have that money working for you. Look, this is the stuff I'm learning and you could have a whole lot more, which could actually really dramatically change your future. You could do a lot more good things with more dollars in the bank. And he was so fearful of it. Like, because he didn't want to lose. It was the fear of loss overrides the joy of the gain 10 over one. But he did trust me enough that he borrowed my faith, my trust in it to say, okay, I'll do a little bit. And he ended up investing it and he didn't die you know like.
Matt:
[42:40] Money wasn't in his savings account it was just in a different account it didn't vanish he was like okay i, i guess i can get behind this for a little bit and then he saw it grow and over time he really saw it grow and he was like what this is this is the real thing like this can happen and it went down and stuff too it It didn't just, it wasn't a straight line up. So he knew that going in, he was really like logical in his thinking. I can appreciate his brain because our brains are very similar. But he trusted the process enough. Really, he just trusted me enough, which I'm super grateful for. Anyway, you fast forward, not very long. From that point of that first conversation, well, let's say when he first invested, it was probably six or seven years. And here he is like calling me, talking about different styles trading, different companies. He's doing some side stuff. He also goes and buys his first home. His first home, by the way, was like a $900,000 home in South Boston.
Norman:
[43:38] Jeepers, yeah.
Matt:
[43:40] He's a brilliant guy and he was doing great in his work, but it wasn't just F50K that went away. He, he was fully sold. He understood the value of like, I work hard for my money. I want my money to work hard for me. I'm not going to live my life in fear of it going away and disappearing. Like I understand that there's volatility, but like, this is, this is how this, the game of money works and I'm okay with it. So okay with it that he very clearly did pretty well for himself because he was investing everything he could. Like for a guy that can squirrel away 50 grand and caddying in a summer and never lose it and keep it away. Like that's a special kind of discipline.
Norman:
[44:16] Yeah.
Matt:
[44:17] Super disciplined, but then you recognize like you can use that same squirreling away approach, but put it into growing investments as opposed to like a stale savings account. And now he's a different human and he's healthier and more. The best way I would describe it is when I talk to him about his bank account and his money and his purchases of like the home and career moves and all the things that we talk about now. He's so strategic with the with the conversations like he speaks about, the money as if he is well as if he's talking about his like tools in his toolbox and like the different maybe the different chess pieces on a chessboard he's going to try to move because he sees something going in a certain way so he just tries to, and you know like it's a totally different way of thinking it's a healthy way of thinking because it's emotionally detached than it was 10 years ago where or seven years eight years ago where it was like, no, way am I doing anything but the savings account because the savings account is not going to disappear on me.
Norman:
[45:21] Yeah. Fascinating. Okay.
Matt:
[45:23] Yeah.
Norman:
[45:24] So how about, how about.
Matt:
[45:25] Well, you know, that can I, you know, we don't have that much time to be able to keep sharing.
Norman:
[45:30] Yeah. Well, I suppose so. I was going to say maybe, maybe one more example before
Norman:
[45:34] we kind of close out here then.
Matt:
[45:35] Let me give you an example of the opposite. Cause I think that, cause I think that's really also valuable. So there's.
Norman:
[45:41] I like it. Yeah.
Matt:
[45:42] There's one person out of the thousands I've talked to that I can really say from day one, I was blown away with his, his mindset, his relationship toward money. And he's a, no surprise here. He is a solid Christian. He believes that his job is to steward the money. Well, it is not, it is not his end all be all. He is not attached to it. He happens to also be a brilliant businessman and do quite well for himself and might be able to sell his business in maybe eight years or so for a billion dollars, potentially. Like he's really, really talented. But there's this one story I remember we were going on a walk and we were talking, and he told me about his entrepreneurial journey where he put everything on the line, bought it, bought a business for millions of dollars, to leave his current successful career, W-2 career, because all he was doing was upending his family every 18 months, turning around a new market within his business. Like, I don't want to do this with my kids. I don't want to do this with my family. This is not a life I want. So he left what was a super promising, super lucrative career to go all in, put his home on the line, borrow some money from small business association.
Matt:
[46:58] Seller finance, some of the deal, like all in to go and buy this thing and take a chance on himself and has grown it into something phenomenal. And anyway, fast forward a handful of years, not many. He sold business units like a small sliver of one of what he was doing, and it netted him meaning like he ended up getting about a million dollars in the bank and this is like after putting everything he owned as collateral for years and years and years and years, and his wife he talked to his wife and she was she was like do we ever not have to put everything we own on the line do we have can we ever just like have any type of security how does this work, And he's like, I promised her that would, that would just be our black powder. That would be our like emergency, emergency fund. And we're going to keep it. And man, within, within four months, 750,000 of that million was gone. He had given it all away to different people that needed it. He had donated, he had bought, he had paid cancer bills. He had bought people cars. He supported single moms with their housing while they're getting on their feet. And I was like, how did you do that? Why did you do that? He's like, look, it's not my money.
Matt:
[48:09] And when I got that million, there were people that just came into my life that very clearly needed the money more than I did. So I gave it to them. They needed it more than I did and I trust that God's, gonna provide all my needs. So, I just knew they needed it. So I gave it to them and it was that simple. And I'm like, that's three quarters of a million dollars you gave, that's a lot of money to give away. You know that's the other that's where it can go to that's like he's who I want to be when I grow up you know like that's what and you fast you know forward a handful more years because we had this conversation a few years ago, and he's in the process of like growing something that could be sold for a billion dollars, He has said it himself. He's like, I believe that part of the reason I probably, keep getting this money is God recognizes I'm a good steward of it. You know, he can trust me with it. And so with what's given him more is entrusted. I'm messing that up, but you know what I'm saying?
Norman:
[49:04] To whom much has been given, much is required, and he's figured it out.
Matt:
[49:07] Yeah, that's what the other end, that's what a very healthy, emotionally detached relationship with money can look like. Also, when you hear it, you're like, Like that sounds wild and scary too, but like both are, both have potential to be fearful and scary. One is like, I am afraid of losing this. The other is I trust that if I'm going to live by faith, then I need to live in complete surrender, not just partial surrender. And that includes the things I don't want to surrender, which can be for money, for people, money.
Norman:
[49:41] Yeah. So there's a lot of lessons to be learned here in, you know, ranging from like how to, how to appropriately love your financial situation and all that, not be appropriately fearful. And as well as like, just once you're, once you're there, like, are you being responsive to the Lord's call in how to be the best steward that you can? Like, I mean, if you can just kind of figure those three things out, I think you got a pretty good handle on things.
Matt:
[50:12] So got it. That's a fact. Amen to that.
Norman:
[50:16] All right, Matt. Well, let's let's kind of begin our close off here. I just want everybody to know, like, where can they go to, you know, learn more about you? We've mentioned reconstructingwealth.com. And I think you have even a little course on the way that people can access. And tell us a little bit about that real quick and what that all entails.
Matt:
[50:37] Yeah, I think it's a three or four part video course that is all about some of the stuff we talked about. It's how to manage your money, like blocking and tackling the actual practical stuff, but also kind of dive deeper into the science behind some of the things I talked about around like giving. And really ultimately the goal is to get you feeling educated and feeling good about getting on the journey to change your relationship with money. And it's totally free, I had a group put it together, and I'm gonna offer it, just an email address is probably all it'll cost you, but a good place to find me and follow me too is Instagram, that's a spot that you can get to know me, not just dollars and cents, but me as a person. And then if you want to send me a DM on Instagram, follow me, send me a DM. It's just my name, at Matt Morizio. And mention this podcast. I will for sure send you that link for free. And that's a good place to start. If you feel like you want to get going on your relationship with money and change it, like that's the purpose of that video course.
Norman:
[51:38] Yeah, that's awesome. And so that's instagram.com slash Matt Morizio. And then we have reconstructingwealth.com where you can learn more about Matt and his wealth management firm, all the things that are going on there any other any other kind of things you'd like to you know kind of promote here before we close out.
Matt:
[51:56] No i mean i'm i'm available if someone and i mean it if someone wants to send an email via the website or a dm on social or something, send it i'm here and i will see it and i will respond and i mean that sincerely because i'm not in this career to just, fulfill, how do I say it? Support my lifestyle. Like that's not the point of where I feel like God has led me. I really feel like it's a calling more than a career. So I'm in it to change people's lives and change generations. And if I can do that for you, or at least kickstart that for you, then call me. It's not a sales pitch. I don't, I'm not trying to say like, you need to become a client in order for me to help you. Like I will do what I can on an email, a phone call, whatever it is. If you have a burning question, I'm, I am sincerely here. I'm a real human that recognizes this journey because I've been on it myself.
Norman:
[52:46] Well, thank you, Matt, for all of what you're doing and helping people and for these generous offers of just continuing to help people. We appreciate that. And so guys, take a look at, you know, what Matt's doing. And if this is of interest to you, then make sure you seize that opportunity and learn a little more.
Matt:
[53:05] Yeah, thank you for having me, man. This has been so cool. I think having ministry in the workplace is probably one of my most important callings, I think, because church is one day a week. Work happens a lot of other days. So we have to not just look at Sundays as church days. Like, you know, Monday through Saturday also count.
Norman:
[53:26] Awesome. Well, thanks, Matt. Really do appreciate it. So for everybody, if you've made it all the way through, congratulations. We've had a great conversation here, and this has been fun. We hope that you will continue listening to the Faith Ventures Podcast. Thanks for being here, and we will see you next time.