#387: Are You Willing to Give It All Up? Why Mathew Blades Left a 28-Year Career to Heal Himself & His Family

Kevin Lowe: Today is a deep conversation, a meaningful conversation.

Kevin Lowe: It's his story, but more importantly, it's a reflection maybe on you and your story.

Kevin Lowe: There are so many meaningful takeaways, so many life lessons that you're going to be able to gain from today's episode, that my friend, you might want to grab a notepad.

Kevin Lowe: Because today is the day that I introduce you to Matthew Blades.

Kevin Lowe: But more specifically, it's the day that, well, I hope everything changes for you.

Kevin Lowe: My friend, this is episode 387 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: I'm, of course, your host, Kevin Lowe. And man, oh man, am I excited to have you here today.

Kevin Lowe: Because this is an interview I've been excited to bring you.

Kevin Lowe: And whew, the day has finally arrived.

<Podcast Theme Music> <Podcast Theme Music>

Kevin Lowe: Welcome back to Grit, Grace, & Inspiration. Today is another one of those awesome days when I get to be in the studio doing what I love, talking with people around the world who I find absolutely fascinating here to share their goodness with you.

Kevin Lowe: Today, it just so happens to be by the name of a guy named Matthew Blades.

Kevin Lowe: Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

Mathew Blades: We're doing this, aren't we, Kevin? We are finally doing this.

Kevin Lowe: We are doing this. You know what I said? I'm like, if this is a bottle of wine.

Kevin Lowe: It is a fine, well-aged bottle of wine indeed.

Mathew Blades: Yeah, it's all good, man. I'm so happy to be on the podcast and thank you for, you know, thinking I'm somebody who can add some value to what you're doing.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent. Well, well, my goal today is for us to unpack this journey you've been on.

Kevin Lowe: And and I honestly would love for us to start back kind of getting a grasp of kind of who you are, where you come from in terms of those, you know, kind of formative childhood, teenage years.

Kevin Lowe: Would you mind just starting us off there with kind of a snapshot?

Mathew Blades: Sure, man. I grew up in a really blue collar family and a really blue collar town in a small city in just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, called Coon Rapids.

Mathew Blades: And my father was in the army. My mom was a part-time cashier slash she had several kind of jobs, but working mostly at a grocery store.

Mathew Blades: I'm the oldest of three kids. I have a younger brother and a younger sister.

Mathew Blades: And life for us, man, I think was like a lot of kids in the 70s, 80s and, you know, early 90s.

Mathew Blades: We like I said, man, we were pretty blue collar family.

Mathew Blades: We had enough to, you know, have clothes and food and all the things.

Mathew Blades: But it wasn't a big extras kind of a family.

Mathew Blades: And at about 12 years old, my dad got relocated for the military. And we moved to St.

Mathew Blades: Louis, where I spent a few years in a town called Florissant, Missouri, and went to Hazelwood School District.

Mathew Blades: And then he got transferred again in my sophomore year. And so we went back to Coon Rapids where I finished up my high school career.

Mathew Blades: And at the ripe old age of 19, I made the decision to follow my childhood dream and became a radio personality.

Mathew Blades: And so that then started a 28-year journey in the radio and television business.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, wow, fascinating. Well, moving, I mean, I'm going to see the obvious that that can't be easy.

Kevin Lowe: But how was that on you as a teenager, sophomore year, changing schools, friends, all of that?

Mathew Blades: I was pissed, Kevin. I mean, I had all my childhood friends.

Mathew Blades: And the first time it happened when we were 12 years old, you know, I only really have a couple of memories of being super, super mad at my mom and dad a couple of different times.

Mathew Blades: One of them was not their fault. We had to put a we had to put a dog down who wasn't well.

Mathew Blades: And I just hated that we had to do that. And then the other one was when they came home and they said, you know, we're going to be moving because it meant that I was going to start, you know, what everybody calls middle school now.

Mathew Blades: But back then, junior high had a brand new school in a brand new city where I didn't know anybody.

Mathew Blades: And I will tell you that hindsight's 2020. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I look back on my move to St.

Mathew Blades: Louis now with incredible fondness and just for what it did for me personally, how it developed me as a young man and really kind of set me up for what I would go on to do with my career.

Mathew Blades: Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of it, man. And then we had to we ended up moving back to Minnesota when I was in 10th grade.

Mathew Blades: And so that meant that I would be jumping into the middle of the school year again with a bunch of kids.

Mathew Blades: I mean, I had a few friends from, you know, back when I was it was a kid.

Mathew Blades: But, you know, a lot of those guys had had moved on with their lives because, you know, we didn't have social media or we weren't gamers.

Mathew Blades: And there was no way for us to stay connected back then unless we wrote letters.

Mathew Blades: And I don't know if you've met a 13 or 14 year old boy, but they're probably not going to sit down and write a lot of letters.

Kevin Lowe: No, I don't think so.

Mathew Blades: All right. Right. Yeah. I'm not going to be your pen pal, buddy. Sorry.

Mathew Blades: It was tough, Kevin. But like I said, I look back at it now and it was, you know, I mean, this is this is life and you know this and you and I have talked about this when I had you on my podcast.

Mathew Blades: It's like eventually we all have to get to a place where we go, all right, it happened for me.

Mathew Blades: Like every single thing happened for me.

Mathew Blades: And I'm there now. So I'm much more relaxed about it. But it is kind of fun to talk about how pissed I was as a 12 and a 15 year old boy.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, no, I mean, I can can totally understand. And now you mentioned that 19 is when you got into the radio broadcasting realm, correct?

Mathew Blades: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Kevin Lowe: Now, what prompted that? What led to that direction?

Mathew Blades: So this is a funny story, man. I grew really into music when I was about 12 years old.

Mathew Blades: One of the things that I did when we moved to St. Louis was I picked up the string bass and I started playing in an orchestra.

Mathew Blades: And I was pretty good at it. I could it was an instrument that made a lot of sense to me.

Mathew Blades: I was good at reading music. I had some, you know, I had tonality about me so I could I could hear the instrument well.

Mathew Blades: And I really thought that I was going to be a classical musician for my whole life.

Mathew Blades: And so even in high school, while other kids were into other things, I was really working hard on crafting my string bass as an instrument that I would use in my adult career.

Mathew Blades: And I was starting to study under the principal bass player for the St.

Mathew Blades: Paul Chamber Orchestra and trying out for different orchestras in Minnesota.

Mathew Blades: And I really thought that that's what I was going to do until one night where I walked into a radio studio to shadow a guy named Tony Fly.

Mathew Blades: And in five minutes, I knew that was what I was going to be doing with the rest of my life.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, why? What was it about it that just totally captivated you from the get go?

Mathew Blades: Yeah, it was just the way that he, man, you walked into that studio.

Mathew Blades: And number one, you just felt like everybody in the city of Minneapolis and St.

Mathew Blades: Paul and all the suburbs, you just felt like this was the only show anybody was listening to.

Mathew Blades: His phones were ringing off the hook. He was taking phone calls while he was playing songs.

Mathew Blades: Because, you know, a lot of people don't know the behind the scenes of the radio business.

Mathew Blades: It's like, while the audience is listening to the music, the DJ's in the studio getting ready, getting that thing ready that the audience is going to hear next.

Mathew Blades: And so, and it moves that quick, right? Like you put on a three minute song and a DJ will answer 10 or 15 phone calls.

Mathew Blades: He'll get a phone call that he really likes from somebody.

Mathew Blades: He'll take two or three minutes max to edit that phone call.

Mathew Blades: And then when the song is done, you know, we're on the air doing our big call letters and playing the phone call, airing the bit, doing the thing that we hope will entertain you throughout the record or between the records rather.

Mathew Blades: And it was just the way that he handled himself, man. For four hours, it was absolutely nonstop fun.

Mathew Blades: He laughed. He joked with people. He hyped people up.

Mathew Blades: You know, he was a hit music station. So he was playing the coolest music that was out there.

Mathew Blades: It was just like it was a collective of all of those things that made me go like, this is amazing.

Kevin Lowe: That is awesome. That is awesome. Now, I'm curious, though, like, how did that actually pan out?

Kevin Lowe: Because, I mean, it's one thing to like walk in and be like, oh, my gosh, this is what I want to do.

Kevin Lowe: There's a whole nother point of actually getting to that point in a career.

Mathew Blades: Right. At that time, I was I had graduated high school and I was enrolled in a community college and I was just doing my basic, you know, classes.

Mathew Blades: Because I had no idea outside of the music thing what I wanted to do with my life.

Mathew Blades: And after that night of walking into his studio, this is no joke, man.

Mathew Blades: I went home and the next day I told my mom and dad, I was like, I'm dropping out of community college.

Mathew Blades: I found a radio and television school in the Twin Cities that trains people to be radio professionals.

Mathew Blades: And I'm going to go there tomorrow and I'm going to try to enroll because this was such a prestigious radio and television school.

Mathew Blades: It's sadly not around anymore in Minneapolis, but Brown Institute is what it was called. And you had to audition just to get into the school like they just didn't take everybody.

Mathew Blades: And I went in and did my audition and we, you know, was the best, worst version of whatever I was going to be. But it was enough to get me in.

Mathew Blades: And I stayed at Brown for the next year and some change and got my my associates in radio and television broadcasting and then got my first job, I think, right when I turned 20 years old, doing overnights in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, dude, that is, I mean, that's pretty darn cool.

Mathew Blades: It was unbelievable, man. I look back at my career, and even though I don't do it anymore, I just absolutely had the time of my life, dude.

Mathew Blades: I did things that, you know, we won't talk about on this podcast, but it was so much fun.

Mathew Blades: I mean, you know, think about it, dude. Like you're you're a 20 year old kid and your your job, your literal job is to throw a party every single day of your life.

Mathew Blades: Like, how do you how do you put a value on that?

Mathew Blades: It was so much fun, man. I mean, just being on the air, introducing records, talking to all the people, going into bars, you know, doing all the gigs that come along with it, being a local celebrity in your area and where people knew you and listen to you.

Mathew Blades: And I mean, then on top of that, Kevin, it was like once once I really started to get, you know, into my career after you cut your teeth a little bit.

Mathew Blades: You know, I was working in Washington, D.C., and every night, every night, bro, we had people on, like, in the studio, like Jay-Z, like NSYNC, like Britney Spears.

Mathew Blades: Like, these people were in my studio hanging out with me for a couple of hours while we were on the air. It was absolutely ridiculously cool.

Kevin Lowe: That is absolutely ridiculously cool. That is pretty darn epic. Wow.

Mathew Blades: It was epic. It was epic.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. And so in that realm of radio, is that what you pretty much did for the 28 years? Because that seems like a lot of partying.

Mathew Blades: It's a lot of partying, right? Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Mathew Blades: At some point I had to get sober, Kevin.

Mathew Blades: Yeah, exactly. But I spent, so I don't know how much you know about the radio and television business, but I'll give you like the quick landscape version.

Mathew Blades: So every city is a market and markets have size, right? And so where do you live in Florida?

Kevin Lowe: Daytona Beach area.

Mathew Blades: Daytona Beach. Okay, so Daytona Beach is a little bit of a smaller market, but it's still like market 40 or 50 or something like that.

Mathew Blades: And when you're in the radio and television business, your goal, if you're really trying to like get to the cream of the crop and rise to the top is you wanna get in the biggest market you can doing a morning or an afternoon show, okay?

Mathew Blades: Those are the two, because they're drive times, they're the two positions that pay the best.

Mathew Blades: So I spent the first 10 years of my radio career as a night guy.

Mathew Blades: And what that means is I was on every single night from seven to midnight, most of the first 10 years of my life.

Mathew Blades: And then after the show was done, it was very, very common that I would go to a nightclub after that.

Mathew Blades: And I would, you know, do a two hour appearance. That's what they call them.

Mathew Blades: And then I would get home at around, you know, 3 a.m., sleep till noon and do it again the next day.

Mathew Blades: And so that was most of the like the 10, the first 10 years of my life.

Mathew Blades: And then in about the late, I guess it would have been right around 2002, 2001, something like that.

Mathew Blades: The dream job that I had fizzled out, the format of radio station changed.

Mathew Blades: I was fired and we had an opportunity to move to Kansas City after that.

Mathew Blades: And when I moved to Kansas City, I switched up and became a midday host.

Mathew Blades: And then that only lasted like two years.

Mathew Blades: And then about 2004, I had my first opportunity to host a morning show.

Mathew Blades: And that's when I, that's when I segued into morning radio. And I did morning radio from 2004 until I walked away in like basically 2021.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. What, what was your favorite? If you have one man.

Mathew Blades: For different reasons, right? The, the, the, my, my twenties are a blur and were fricking fun.

Mathew Blades: Just, I just had so many unbelievable life experiences, right? Like, you know, I'll share a quick story. I, I, one time this was at the height of the boy band era.

Mathew Blades: And so, you know, I don't know what team you're on Backstreet Boys or NSYNC, but I was, I was team NSYNC and, you know, Carson Daly was doing TRL.

Mathew Blades: And I mean, it was, I mean, I don't know if you remember that time, but being down in Florida, you, you know, it was a big deal, but man, the boy bands were everything.

Kevin Lowe: Yes.

Mathew Blades: They were everything. Okay. And so it was very, very common for me to have some member of the Backstreet Boys or some member of NSYNC or Christina Aguilar or Britney Spears or LFO or insert boy band there, O-Town, whoever you want.

Mathew Blades: It was very, very common for me to have those people in the studio or to be going to concerts and working backstage with some of these people.

Mathew Blades: But Britney Spears had this fragrance.

Mathew Blades: It was her first fragrance that she released and she was doing a mall tour across the country, And her first stop was in what's called Hex.

Mathew Blades: I don't even think they make them anymore, but it's a huge department store in a mall in Tyson's Corner, which is outside of Washington, D.C.

Mathew Blades: And her and I are scheduled to arrive at Hex at 930. They're going to open up the store at 10 o'clock.

Mathew Blades: And the goal is that Brittany is going to be there.

Mathew Blades: I'm going to emcee the thing and we'll sign a few autographs.

Mathew Blades: We'll take a few pictures and it'll be a really fun event.

Mathew Blades: Right. So we get there at 930 and there's cops everywhere and we are thinking like, oh, my God, what what happened?

Mathew Blades: And what we came to find out was there was already 5000 people at the mall waiting for us to get there. There was no parking.

Mathew Blades: So they the cops took me and they took Britney Spears and her crew around this little bend. And we end up going into this underground parking space and they elevator us up.

Mathew Blades: And when we get into Hex, you can't move. It's like literally people are like sardines.

Mathew Blades: And after 10 o'clock, there's probably another 2000 people that show up and they actually have to shut that part of the mall down because there was too many people there to see Britney Spears.

Mathew Blades: And so we had moments like that, bro, that were just so fun, right? Like so cool and exciting.

Mathew Blades: But I will tell you that when you're a morning show guy, not only does your paycheck typically get another zero on the end of it, but you're really just talking to people all morning long.

Mathew Blades: You're bringing up your life. You're talking about things.

Mathew Blades: And so there's a greater sense of connection because you're really spending time with folks, getting to know them.

Mathew Blades: You know, you've you've got your regulars that call you, you know, every day or every morning and you just you just sort of birth this little family.

Mathew Blades: And so I love them both for very different reasons.

Mathew Blades: But I will tell you that there is nothing cooler in the world than having a morning show on the radio.

Mathew Blades: It's just it's the best job in the whole world, man, because you you just come in every day and you talk about your life. You give away tickets to concerts, you give away, you know, T-shirts, you give away music. It's so fun.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's amazing. And I can relate in this little teeny tiny way, because I mean, way back in like 2012, I actually did like a three month internship at a morning radio show.

Kevin Lowe: Did you? I did. It was a different style because it was AM. So they did like local political news. But it was, you know, it was WNDB AM 1150.

Kevin Lowe: And I was there from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Kevin Lowe: And I loved it. That's so awesome. Yes, man.

Mathew Blades: So that is very cool. It's a lot of fun.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. So now.

Mathew Blades: But I don't do that anymore, Kevin. So that's okay.

Kevin Lowe: Exactly. So now during this time, though, I mean, we're talking about this thriving career, having fun, time of your life.

Kevin Lowe: But I would love to kind of before we move past this time in your life, these 20s, speak to some of the personal stuff going on, because I would love to ask of two kind of aspects that I've read about preparing for is one kind of your religious like kind of faith journey and also the loss of your father at a very young age.

Mathew Blades: Yeah, they're two really pretty big pillars in my life.

Mathew Blades: And so, again, it going. So let's start with my dad's story, then we can move into the religious part of this thing.

Mathew Blades: But I had my my first night on KDWB in Minneapolis, Minnesota was going to be Sunday.

Mathew Blades: I think it was August 26th. And I was getting ready to go on at eight o'clock that night.

Mathew Blades: And during that or before that, I guess I should say we were hosting a barbecue at my house because the woman that I was then engaged to, our families had never met each other.

Mathew Blades: And so we were going to have a barbecue and, you know, have the dads meet, have the moms meet.

Mathew Blades: And at 4.30, everybody was scheduled to arrive.

Mathew Blades: And at 4.20, my then fiance came screaming around the corner that there was something wrong with my dad.

Mathew Blades: And when I ran around to see what was going on, what I walked up on was my dad in cardiac arrest.

Mathew Blades: And Kevin tried everything I knew how to do to save his life, but he died right there in my arms.

Mathew Blades: And as you can imagine, that has a pretty significant impact on a kid, right? On a 23-year-old kid.

Mathew Blades: And so all of the things that I just told you about all of the fun that I was having and all of the amazing things that I was doing were right on the heels of that very significant event.

Mathew Blades: And because I just put my head down and plowed into my career, I didn't really give credit to how that was gonna impact me later in life, right? Like it's one of those things where Eventually it catches up to you. It did.

Mathew Blades: It did later in life and eventually it caught up to me and I had to face off with it. And maybe that's some of the stuff that we'll get into a little bit later on in the interview.

Mathew Blades: But the other piece of this is that aspect that you mentioned about religion.

Mathew Blades: I grew up in a very, very religious house where we had to go to church every single Sunday.

Mathew Blades: We were there most Saturdays and we weren't even Catholic, But we were so involved in the church.

Mathew Blades: And when I got to be about 12 or 13, I just didn't feel connected to that particular faith anymore.

Mathew Blades: It's not that I didn't appreciate it or understand its value, but it just for whatever reason, it didn't speak to me.

Mathew Blades: And that put a lot of tension between my mom and I.

Mathew Blades: And it created a really contentious relationship for us pretty much my entire teenage years and even into my, you know, 20s and 30s, man, I can remember.

Mathew Blades: So now I'm married. I got married in 2004 to my wife, Nicely.

Mathew Blades: And I remember when we were planning our wedding back in 2003, And we were trying to figure out where we were going to hold this wedding.

Mathew Blades: And my mom called me and she was just mean about it. She was like, you better get married in a church.

Mathew Blades: And she'd said, because I need God to be there.

Mathew Blades: And I was like, whoa, like, mom, if you believe in God the way that I believe in God, he's everywhere anyways.

Mathew Blades: So, you know, and again, it just kind of gives you a glimpse into our relationship surrounding religion.

Mathew Blades: Now, what I will share with you is much later in life, and I mean much later in life, my mom and I came to a great bridge, and it was never that I didn't respect her viewpoint.

Mathew Blades: It was that she didn't respect mine.

Mathew Blades: So that probably lays a little groundwork for some good juicy conversation.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, of course, of course. Now- When it comes to the topic of religion and stuff, where do you stand today?

Mathew Blades: So I went through a whole bunch of stuff, man. I became a practicing Buddhist for a long time and kind of dwelled into that topic.

Mathew Blades: And I would say that I feel most aligned with those types of Eastern religions.

Mathew Blades: And Buddhism is where I feel the most centered. but I can't tell you that there's any faith, one in particular, that feels like it's the whole thing to me.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, this is what I would be really getting into with my mom.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, I even I even sent her this book that I had read called The Diversity of Religions.

Mathew Blades: And if you look at the, you know, let's say the 10 biggest religions in the world, the seven of the biggest, they almost share an identical through line.

Mathew Blades: You know, the things that are important to one faith are exactly the same things that are important to another faith. And all of them boil down to the concept of live your life in a way, you know, like that you would want to be treated by others.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, the golden rule, if you will. So I have a really, really, really deep spiritual connection to just oneness is I think what I would what I would call it today.

Mathew Blades: Where the world that I want to live in, Kevin, is the one where it doesn't matter if you love Jesus and you love Muhammad and you love Buddha.

Mathew Blades: And like, it doesn't matter. Like, we're all really good people just here doing our best.

Mathew Blades: So that's where I align the most. But I will say, and I think this is important.

Mathew Blades: I'm very, very grateful that my mom kind of pushed us into the window that she did early on, because I think what it did for me more than anything is give me a good place to start.

Mathew Blades: And there's a lot of people today that I think don't have a place to start, you know?

Mathew Blades: And I even wonder about my own kids as we've never really brought them up in a church and never really talked a lot about religion in my home.

Mathew Blades: It's been more about spirituality, but I wonder if they're gonna have the same compass that I will or did in life, meaning a place to begin.

Mathew Blades: So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the best I can do to tell you where I'm at today.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, no, I mean, I think what I love about your answer with that is it's all a very personable journey for each one of us.

Mathew Blades: For sure, man.

Kevin Lowe: You know, and I'm a firm believer, too, that I don't understand all of it.

Kevin Lowe: I don't have all the answers.

Kevin Lowe: You know, I'm a Christian. I believe in Jesus. But in the same regard, I feel as though when we talk about religion— I feel like people try to put it in a box.

Mathew Blades: And I am- It's not fair. It's not fair to the people that practice to put it in a box.

Mathew Blades: It's not fair. Because you're more than just a Christian, right?

Mathew Blades: Yeah, you're bigger than that.

Kevin Lowe: Well, and that's what I've said, is I feel as though it's all bigger than any of us.

Kevin Lowe: It's bigger than we can. That's it. We can't comprehend it. You know what I mean? On its type of size.

Kevin Lowe: And so at some point, you have to just like come at peace with finding what is for you, you know? Yeah.

Mathew Blades: And if that's Jesus, man, that's incredible. Like if you, I always say this, man, when I'm talking about religion with people, I'm like, if you get into the Bible and you read the words written in red, you do the stuff that Jesus talked about, you can achieve really one of the greatest lives on planet earth.

Mathew Blades: It's when you get caught up in some of the other stuff in any religion, right? It's when you take any religion to the extreme where you lose me.

Mathew Blades: And quite frankly, that was the case with Buddhism. I studied it for a long time.

Mathew Blades: And then we would get into some of these teachings and I would be like, this doesn't, it just doesn't feel like me.

Mathew Blades: And so, you know, I'm 51 now, so I'm a little older than some and younger than most.

Mathew Blades: But I'm in a place now where I'm more settled with the way that I see the world.

Mathew Blades: Like I went to church last Sunday.

Mathew Blades: You know, I had a friend that invited me to church last Sunday and I had the greatest hour of my life. I cried.

Mathew Blades: It brought me to tears. I was so moved by the things that they were saying.

Mathew Blades: I was so moved by the words that we were singing.

Mathew Blades: To this day, I love church music. I always tell people I don't go to church, but I love church music.

Mathew Blades: And those songs can bring me to my knees because I just love the way they make me feel. So I'm whatever that is.

Kevin Lowe: Yes. Yes. I love it, man. I I absolutely love that. I love it.

Mathew Blades: Now, I'm whatever that is.

Kevin Lowe: Now, going back to kind of like this journey that you've been on.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Losing your father at such a young age.

Kevin Lowe: Here you were, you were just getting engaged. Now, that engagement, would that go on to become marriage?

Mathew Blades: Nope. No, we gave it a shot, but I was way too focused on my career.

Kevin Lowe: Yes. Yes.

Mathew Blades: Yeah. And so there wasn't room for that.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Now, fast forwarding way ahead and you can fill in gaps in between.

Kevin Lowe: But we talk about this career spanning 28 years in radio.

Kevin Lowe: What after 28 years, what made you get out of it?

Mathew Blades: Man, this is such a big conversation.

Mathew Blades: Okay, there's a lot of truths like there is for anybody. I don't think, I mean, sometimes it's one thing, but more times than not, it's a cumulative effect of a few things.

Mathew Blades: I had stopped enjoying what I was doing. It just, it wasn't fun for me anymore.

Mathew Blades: The politics of the business, the audience shifting, the programmers that were in place, it just stopped being what it used to be and it shifted in such a big way.

Mathew Blades: But that's just a small piece of it. The bigger thing was I was shifting.

Mathew Blades: I was ready and feeling this itch to do something more in my life.

Mathew Blades: And I'll share with you this. So like, I remember being 12 years old and looking around my house and my situation, Kevin, and feeling like, what the hell are we doing?

Mathew Blades: Like, none of this makes any sense to me. I always tell people like I had really good, loving parents, but they were also alcoholics and they were abusive and they were really like unstable in a lot of ways.

Mathew Blades: And so while I grew up with like great Christmases and family vacations and lots of hugs and I love you, we had all the other stuff to all the really tough, violent, nasty stuff, too. And as I remind everybody.

Mathew Blades: Nobody's in therapy because they got too many hugs.

Mathew Blades: So adding all of that stuff up, man, I'd been feeling this tug my whole life that I was destined to I just feel in my heart, man, like I'm here to help people move out of dysfunction.

Mathew Blades: That's really at my core who I think I am now.

Mathew Blades: I call myself a transitional character in my lineage because a few years ago I went to a retreat and I had a Native American healer that sort of imprinted that on me.

Mathew Blades: And that's really how I see myself now. I see myself as somebody who's here to move my family out of dysfunction, to move the people around me out of dysfunction.

Mathew Blades: I see myself as somebody who's here to break all the generational cycles that I can for my kids and for their kids and for their kids.

Mathew Blades: And that's really how I feel. That's how I see myself.

Mathew Blades: And so when you're on the radio day in and day out and all you're doing is giving away concert tickets and talking about your life and all this fluffy crap, it just stopped feeling authentic for me.

Mathew Blades: And it wasn't what I wanted to be about. And it was one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life was, you know, that idea that I'm going to walk away from the one thing that I've wanted to do since I was 10 years old, which is to be on the radio and entertain audiences.

Mathew Blades: And to a lot of degrees, it was my entire identity. It was the only thing that I thought I was good at.

Mathew Blades: But I just know that like the last 10 years, I started to feel this tug of like, are you really the father that you dreamed that you would be when you were 12 years old? Are you really the husband that you dreamed you would be one day?

Mathew Blades: Are you really the friend that you dreamed you would be one day?

Mathew Blades: And it got to a stage in my life where I really started to grapple hard with those questions, Kevin, and I was really, really thirsty for some answers.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Okay. Amazing.

Kevin Lowe: Amazing the fact of this personal just dialogue going in on your head and especially what's very just kind of interesting about this topic is I literally just recorded a solo episode the day that we're recording this.

Kevin Lowe: I think it's episode 380 about this idea of starting over in life and this idea of when we feel like we're called for something more, but it means quitting what we've been working on.

Kevin Lowe: And this idea of like, we feel like we're failing in one way.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, we're taught not to quit.

Kevin Lowe: And yet you understand that there's got to be more out there.

Mathew Blades: Yeah, I call it blowing up what you built. And it's it's a phrase that I've coined and it really resonates with a lot of people.

Mathew Blades: But, you know, I think that so many of us would be better off if we would sit down one day and say, oh, Huh, is this really what it's going to be?

Mathew Blades: Is this really what it's going to be about for the rest of time?

Mathew Blades: Am I just going to keep waking up and this is what it's going to be?

Mathew Blades: It's an important question to ask yourself at some point.

Mathew Blades: I know not everybody's maybe got the luxury of walking away from their career in the middle of it like I did, but I think in a lot of small ways, I don't think I know, in a lot of small ways, we can start to tweak our life.

Mathew Blades: And so we can kind of like, let's use a radio analogy, right?

Mathew Blades: Like back in the day, there wasn't, there wasn't the digital radio.

Mathew Blades: You had to turn that knob. And if you didn't turn it just right, you couldn't get the signal of the radio station clear.

Mathew Blades: So many of us, I think that's what we need to do. We need to fiddle with that knob a little bit.

Mathew Blades: We need to turn it to the left and we turn to the right. We need to figure out where is our clarity and how do we live the truest version of ourselves and just start to get really curious about what that would look like, right?

Mathew Blades: I have a kind of a four-step process that I walk through everybody through now.

Mathew Blades: And I think step one is let's renegotiate. So that's what you're talking about.

Mathew Blades: It's like renegotiate with yourself.

Mathew Blades: Where do you wanna go? What do you wanna be about?

Mathew Blades: How do you wanna live your life? Who are you? Who are the man?

Mathew Blades: Who is this guy that's gonna live out the rest of time?

Mathew Blades: And then what are you gonna leave behind? So, and I did listen to a little bit of that episode before you and I got started.

Mathew Blades: And so I really appreciate that you're putting out into the world this idea of, are you doing it the way you wanted to be doing it?

Mathew Blades: Because we all dreamed up the way it would be when we were little kids.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Kevin Lowe: Now, before we move on, I want to go back and I would love for you to talk to me a little bit more about it because I'm intrigued to understand more about the retreat that you went to in this, I think you referred to it as a transitional character.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Can you dive a little bit deeper into that?

Mathew Blades: Oh, my God. It's my favorite thing in the world to talk about.

Mathew Blades: Of course, I need to set up what happened. So I was starting to develop, and I'm going to mention this because I think this is a really big truth for a lot of people in life.

Mathew Blades: I was starting to develop physical symptoms that doctors couldn't explain, had gut issues that people couldn't figure out, had back pain that nobody could figure out.

Mathew Blades: And then I got shingles on my face, which if you've never had before, sucks, like to high heaven. It's the worst.

Mathew Blades: It's like one of the most painful things that you can ever get.

Mathew Blades: And you learn once you get shingles that the only reason that they come to fruition is because you're stressed out.

Mathew Blades: Like that's when you get shingles, it's literally stress.

Mathew Blades: It's chicken pox that lie dormant until you get stressed out so much that your body just goes, you know, like I can't take it anymore.

Mathew Blades: I'm just going to explode. And I'm going to give you these rashy things that it's like crazy for a few weeks.

Mathew Blades: And then after that, Kevin, I started to get these panic attacks and I'd never gotten panic attacks before in my life.

Mathew Blades: And I didn't know what they were because, and you have to remember, like I told you, my dad died of a heart attack.

Mathew Blades: He died of something called sudden cardiac death. And for those that don't know what this is, it means the first time you ever find out you have a heart issue is the day you die.

Mathew Blades: So when you get a panic attack, the symptoms can feel eerily similar to a heart attack.

Mathew Blades: And in fact, you know, I work with a cardiologist now and he tells me all the time that people call him every single week about panic attacks because they think it's a heart attack.

Mathew Blades: So anyway, I have my third and final panic attack in July of 2020, I think.

Mathew Blades: And it's such a fierce panic attack that I think I'm dying.

Mathew Blades: And so I go to the emergency room after trying to cope for a few minutes.

Mathew Blades: And I spend 10 hours in the emergency room.

Mathew Blades: And because I have some connections in the hospital, I have access to the best doctors in the hospital.

Mathew Blades: They run every single test. We leave no stone unturned.

Mathew Blades: And at two o'clock in the afternoon, Kevin, the doctor walks into my room.

Mathew Blades: What do you think he says to me?

Kevin Lowe: You have anxiety attack?

Mathew Blades: Exactly. There's nothing physically wrong with you.

Mathew Blades: You have, there's nothing, that we can't find anything on any test.

Mathew Blades: And because I had been on a little bit of a spiritual journey the last, you know, pretty much since my dad's death, right, that that it's funny how death will kind of set you on a trajectory and a path.

Mathew Blades: I knew in that moment that if it wasn't physical, then it was probably mental and it was probably spiritual.

Mathew Blades: And I was wise enough to know that it was both.

Mathew Blades: I knew it was both. I knew it was time to start working on my mental health and I knew it was time to get back into connection with my spiritual health because I kind of lost my way.

Mathew Blades: I didn't really know who I was anymore to get back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago.

Mathew Blades: So I wanted to set that table for you because I think it's an important precursor to what happens. And so after that third and final panic attack, four days later, I checked myself into a mental and spiritual retreat for five days.

Mathew Blades: And I work with what I call my 12 angels.

Mathew Blades: I have 12 people whose job it is to take care of me for the next five days.

Mathew Blades: Some of them are counselors. Some of them are like healers.

Mathew Blades: Some of them are Native American spiritual healers. Some of them are like psychotherapists.

Mathew Blades: Some of them are sound healers. Others are massage therapists that are trained in Reiki.

Mathew Blades: And so I just do this deep dive into my mental and my spiritual health.

Mathew Blades: And I spend five days talking to people, listening to people.

Mathew Blades: And what I come to realize in this retreat, on my third day, the gentleman that I was working with, Troy, looks right at me and he was like, Matthew, I think that you are a transitional character in your lineage.

Mathew Blades: And I had no idea what that meant.

Mathew Blades: And I said, help me with that. What is this?" And he said, well, the transitional character comes here and they feel like the world doesn't fit and they feel like what's happening in and around them doesn't make sense.

Mathew Blades: And you know, this is what I told you about when I was 12 years old, right?

Mathew Blades: Like instantly I went back to being 12, looking around my house going, what the hell is going on? What are we doing here?

Mathew Blades: And in a moment, I had all the clarity that I needed.

Mathew Blades: And so what he challenged me then to do was he said, OK, if you are really this transitional character in your lineage, you have a set of responsibilities now.

Mathew Blades: And the first responsibility that you have is to yourself.

Mathew Blades: Moving forward from this day forward, you are the most important person in your life because until you feel whole and you feel good, you will never be able to be the father that you want to be. You'll never be able to be the husband you want to be.

Mathew Blades: You can't be the brother you want to be. You can't be the son you want to be.

Mathew Blades: And you need to get to work on all of these relationships that feel like they don't fit.

Mathew Blades: So imagine me, right? Three days into this retreat and he's telling me like, basically, I have to confront all these demons that I've been avoiding my entire life.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Nobody said it was easy.

Mathew Blades: Nobody said it was easy. But it is simple, right?

Mathew Blades: That's what makes it such a mind-eff, if you will, right?

Mathew Blades: Because it's not complicated to solve the Rubik's Cube of your life.

Mathew Blades: It's actually quite simple. And it starts with you.

Mathew Blades: It starts with you doing what you need to do for yourself, not in some mean, arrogant, spiteful, hateful, terrible way, but in the highest way possible.

Mathew Blades: How can you move yourself and your family and transition the lineage so that you break a lot of these generational cycles and you don't keep repeating history, which is showing how messed up it is?

Mathew Blades: And so, oh man, what I had to do was I had to do two things that were really, really difficult.

Mathew Blades: The first thing that I had to do was I had to quit my job. I knew I had to quit my job.

Mathew Blades: I had fallen out of love with it and I knew that I just didn't want to do it anymore. And why is that so impossible?

Mathew Blades: Well, like I told you earlier, man, the goal of radio is to get to the biggest market you can and do a morning show, which I had done. And, you know, I was making multiple six figures and had a contract for the next.

Mathew Blades: I could still be on the radio.

Mathew Blades: Like, let's just put it like that. Right. I had probably a never ending deal with these guys. I could still be on the air making that money if I wanted to right here, right now, today.

Mathew Blades: But I I knew that it just didn't serve me anymore. And so I had to have two incredibly hard conversations.

Mathew Blades: The first one was with my family to let them know that I'd fallen out of love with this thing and I just didn't want to do it anymore. And there was nothing anybody was going to do to convince me that that's what I needed to keep doing with my life.

Mathew Blades: So that was very, very challenging. The second thing that I had to do, Kevin, was I had to confront my mom and I had to finally tackle the tension that we'd been experiencing our entire lives.

Mathew Blades: And I'm happy to walk you through both those conversations if you think there's value there.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. And I mean, 100%. And I think that ties in with what I've been sitting here thinking as you're sharing this, I'm thinking you went away to this retreat that you talked about.

Kevin Lowe: And you've had this incredible personal breakthrough within you.

Kevin Lowe: And you've come back home and you're trying to make these changes.

Kevin Lowe: But trying to relay that same drive and feeling inside of you to others is not an easy task to get them to understand what you're feeling and what's driving your decisions behind you.

Kevin Lowe: And so I would love for you to kind of explore that while, yes, continuing on with exactly how this all went down.

Mathew Blades: Yeah. And I get back to something that, you know, Troy, who was one of my most influential healers said in this thing, you know, it's like, this is your journey.

Mathew Blades: And so, and listen, man, my life made no sense.

Mathew Blades: It was nonsense, right? Like I didn't have any, it literally was nonsense. And I was ready to do anything it took. And these are the conversations that I was having in my head when I was in this retreat.

Mathew Blades: I was saying to myself, if you need to end your relationship with your family, you're going to do that. If you need to end your marriage, you're going to do that.

Mathew Blades: If you need to move out of your house, you're going to do that.

Mathew Blades: If you need to stop talking to your best friends, you're going to do that.

Mathew Blades: Like I was at a stage where I just was like something had to change.

Mathew Blades: What was happening didn't work for me any longer. And I was really willing to do anything it took, which was terrifying, right? Because I didn't know what it was going to take.

Mathew Blades: But what I started to figure out was if I could just go through these conversations with a really open, loving heart and not make it about anybody other than myself, right?

Mathew Blades: I didn't need to play the blame game. I wasn't a victim here.

Mathew Blades: I had just gone about my life in a way where it's it had stopped making sense.

Mathew Blades: And I was the one responsible for being the person who stopped asking myself, what do I need?

Mathew Blades: Like, what do I need to feel good in life?

Mathew Blades: So I approached both of those conversations with that kind of love.

Mathew Blades: And I think that's a critical thing for most people, because a lot of us and listen, I've been podcasting, you know, like you have for a long time and week in and week out, all I do is talk to people who've had very traumatic backgrounds and have found a way to overcome whatever obstacle it is in their life.

Mathew Blades: And there's a lot of common through lines that I see. But I, what I do see a lot with people is they get to that stage where it's not working for them anymore and they get a little nasty about it.

Mathew Blades: And they start to very unlovingly have these conversations with people and you did this and because of you and because of this.

Mathew Blades: And I just wasn't interested in any of that anymore.

Mathew Blades: And so I approached both of these conversations, both with work and my family about quitting my job and the conversation that I needed to have with my mom from a very loving standpoint.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, so I remember calling my mom after the retreat and I asked her to give me a couple of weeks because she knew she knew full well why I was there.

Mathew Blades: Right. Like I was there to work on some stuff from my childhood, to work on the deal with my dad and to work on a few other things that are interesting, but maybe don't need to be brought up in this particular conversation for the safety of not spending three hours on a podcast with anybody.

Mathew Blades: But so I called my mom, Kevin, and I said, hey, mom.

Mathew Blades: And I was already crying. I said, hey, mom, we need to talk about our relationship.

Mathew Blades: It doesn't work for me anymore. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't work for you anymore.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, she she got a little bit quiet on the other line.

Mathew Blades: And within 30 seconds, Kevin, we started we we went from talking about the things that I was dealing with, with these counselors and the stuff that I wanted to unfold and talk to her about.

Mathew Blades: And she started to let me into her life. And she started to tell me all of these things about her childhood that I'd never heard her talk about before.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, I think most people know where I'm going with this.

Mathew Blades: Her childhood was maybe twice as bad as the childhood that she dealt me, right?

Mathew Blades: A terrible father, again, loving, good things, great things.

Mathew Blades: Nobody's in therapy because they got too many hugs.

Mathew Blades: And she had a really contentious relationship with her brothers and her sisters.

Mathew Blades: And that led itself to her makeup, like the person that she is and was becoming and living her life.

Mathew Blades: So in that 30 to 45 minute conversation that I had with my mom, we probably became closer than we had since I was a little boy.

Mathew Blades: And we finally started to find some common ground with each other.

Mathew Blades: And the reason that this story is so important to me to share with people is because from that moment on, My mom and I really went to work intentionally on our relationship. And I can't tell you it was easy. And I won't tell you that it was roses every day.

Mathew Blades: And I won't tell you that we got along every minute of every day for the rest of time, right?

Mathew Blades: But what I can tell you is that we both laid down our swords and we both, more importantly, took down the shield, the walls, the protective layer of coding that we had around our relationship.

Mathew Blades: And we started to get a little bit more vulnerable with each other.

Mathew Blades: And I don't mince words here, man.

Mathew Blades: There was a long time where my mom would call me and I would send her straight to voicemail. I wasn't interested in talking to her.

Mathew Blades: And after that conversation that I had with my mom, number one, I almost never sent her to voicemail again. I would at least pick up and say, hey, I'm right in the middle of something. Can I call you back in a little bit?

Mathew Blades: And so we went on to develop, I think, a much healthier relationship between the two of us, one where I would call her every Sunday and I would say, hey, how was church today? What did you guys talk about?

Mathew Blades: And we would talk about the sermon and we would talk about how we were both going to try to put that into our lives in the days ahead. And it became a really much more peaceful relationship between the two of us.

Mathew Blades: And the reason that this is so important, Kevin, and the timing of you and I recording this podcast is very interesting because one year ago today, we were in a hospice center with my mom and she was experiencing her final day.

Mathew Blades: She passed away April 1st of last year.

Mathew Blades: And I know in my whole heart that if we had not done our best to mend that relationship in some way, shape or form, I'd be living today with a lot of regret and I'd be living today with a lot of what ifs.

Mathew Blades: And I don't have any of that. I don't have an ounce of that in my heart or my soul. I know that we put our relationship back together the best that it could possibly be.

Mathew Blades: And that's why I want to encourage other people to jump into these really hard conversations with people they know they need to talk to because of the amount of freedom that's waiting for you on the other side.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. You know, what you just said, honestly, what you just said summarizes all of it and it makes it applicable to every single person, no matter where they are in life, no matter where in the world they are listening to this conversation today.

Kevin Lowe: That is it is the tough conversations that we don't want to have because it's uncomfortable and yet it's the tough conversations that lead to ultimate freedom that's.

Mathew Blades: It both with yourself and other people exactly but you gotta go there

Kevin Lowe: Yeah wow I am, I'm so grateful that you had that opportunity with your mom.

Mathew Blades: You don't know, man. I mean, literally, like I said, I went to church last week.

Mathew Blades: I was invited by a friend to go to church.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, I've kind of decided that I'm going to go back to church from time to time because I really feel close to my mom there.

Mathew Blades: And do you know the guy, do you know the artist, Brandon Lake?

Kevin Lowe: Yes, I do. I know. I recognize the name. Yeah. Yeah.

Mathew Blades: He's in a group called Elevation Worship. And he's just broken off into a fantastic group called the Sons of Sunday.

Mathew Blades: At any rate, Brandon's got this really beautiful song called Gratitude.

Mathew Blades: And it's just a song that I really think that always moves me when I'm listening to it. And sometimes it can move me to tears.

Mathew Blades: And because I think about that as it relates to my relationship with my mom and bigger than that, the relationship that I have with myself and the relationship that I have with my kids now and my wife now, my friends now, and the people that are the most important to me.

Mathew Blades: I'm so grateful that I went on this journey, that I had all of those difficult conversations, that I wasn't afraid to step into the energy of being the transitional character and moving myself and my family out of dysfunction and breaking cycles for us that I knew would make us better.

Mathew Blades: And I kid you not, man, I walked into this church last Sunday.

Mathew Blades: And what do you think I think the first song that they played was Gratitude.

Kevin Lowe: Wow.

Mathew Blades: It was so powerful, man. I instantly started bawling. I mean, I was brand new at this church.

Mathew Blades: I was there with a friend who I don't, you know, not a super close friend, but we hang out from time to time.

Mathew Blades: And I mean, just waterworks. And they weren't even like, they weren't sad tears.

Mathew Blades: That's the best part about it.

Mathew Blades: They were just these really joyful, happy tears, almost patting myself on the back. Like, Hey man, you did it. You did the work.

Mathew Blades: Like, be grateful, be grateful that you did all the hard stuff because it's paying off and it's going to continue to pay off.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. I want to ask the question and I'm asking it kind of from two fronts, both curious from how you handled it, but also curious from the perspective of the person listening today who maybe they're thinking, yeah, but how do you do all this internal work when you're juggling being a husband, a father, you have your career, you're trying to provide for your family.

Kevin Lowe: How do you balance all of that while at the same time giving enough time and energy to pour into yourself?

Mathew Blades: Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll tell you just what's coming through to me right now.

Mathew Blades: I had a beautiful Buddhist teaching that I went to one time.

Mathew Blades: And this type of question came up.

Mathew Blades: I think it was a mom who asked this question to the Geshe-la that we were working with. And she said, I've got my job and I've got my kids and I'm just so busy.

Mathew Blades: And I don't know how to like, how do I do it all? Right. Is basically what she was asking. And I think that's kind of what you just asked too.

Mathew Blades: And he said something so simple to her. He said, I want you to make your kids your teachers.

Mathew Blades: And so what that means is stop looking outside, stop getting external with it and just take your situation that you have right here, right now and make that how you practice this life.

Mathew Blades: So when your kids, you know, are crazy, appreciate it because it won't be like that forever.

Mathew Blades: When your kids are can't sleep at night and they want you to lay with them, go sit with them because one day they're not going to want to sit with you.

Mathew Blades: When your husband drives you crazy because of whatever, sit down and let him know how you feel right now.

Mathew Blades: Just tell him. Don't make it about him, but just tell him. And so I think that the way to answer that question is to say, just start to make really tiny shifts in your life that add up to a whole lot more. And I know this to be true.

Mathew Blades: One day you will wake up and you will look back over the last year or the last two years and he'll go, wow, we've really made some incremental shifts.

Mathew Blades: And so I'm going to keep going on this because I think it's important.

Mathew Blades: I would love for people to remove the word balance from their vocabulary.

Mathew Blades: I was somebody who was chasing balance my whole life, which is obviously a very Buddhist principle, yin yang, right? There's good, there's bad, find the balance.

Mathew Blades: And what somebody told me was the more important thing for most of us to figure out is flow. how can you just go with it?

Mathew Blades: How can you just move with the wave?

Mathew Blades: And, you know, what was truth about me, Kevin, was when the waves were high and the ocean was rocky, I was at my best.

Mathew Blades: But when the ocean got really calm and got really still, I sort of longed for this chaos and I longed for the choppier waves.

Mathew Blades: I just felt like I was better in those scenarios.

Mathew Blades: And I was really challenged to become better at going with it, not taking things so personally.

Mathew Blades: Stop not advocating for myself, right?

Mathew Blades: Like speak up when you need to say something. And I'll, if you give me a minute, I'd like to explain why that's so important.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, absolutely.

Mathew Blades: Yeah. No, what I've come to learn, Kevin, is that, you know, it doesn't matter what happened to you in your life.

Mathew Blades: You know, we've all had hits and I've told you earlier that one of my hits was my dad dying at 23 years old.

Mathew Blades: When I was trying to save his life, I was doing CPR.

Mathew Blades: I was it worked.

Mathew Blades: And this is totally unfair, but this is what happens to all of us.

Mathew Blades: In those moments, this entire set of beliefs gets set up within you.

Mathew Blades: And two of the core beliefs that got set up within me in those moments, and I didn't know this until much later in life, where number one, you didn't know enough and you weren't useful.

Mathew Blades: And so if you live your life with that little programming in the back of your head that you're not useful and that you don't know enough, you're likely to act that way in a lot of situations.

Mathew Blades: So you'll be in situations where you should speak up because you know better, but that little voice is in the back going, you don't know enough.

Mathew Blades: You might be in a place where you really know that if you inserted yourself in this situation, you'd be very, very helpful to it.

Mathew Blades: But that little voice is in the back of your head going, you're not useful.

Mathew Blades: And so when I was in that retreat, those were a couple of things that I really had to go to war with and go to battle with and then ultimately surrender to was, which is, you are smart.

Mathew Blades: You know a lot of things and you're really useful.

Mathew Blades: You've helped hundreds, if not thousands of people in their life.

Mathew Blades: And so I mentioned that because I want people listening to this right now to really sit down and get quiet with themselves, meditate, pray, call it whatever you want.

Mathew Blades: But what is the outdated programming that you're running that you know is probably holding you back.

Mathew Blades: There is so much value in figuring that out because a lot of it is so outdated.

Mathew Blades: Like it's stuff for me that happened back in 1996.

Mathew Blades: It's completely unfair that I'd be living with the same programming in 2025 as I was in 96, right? That's ridiculous.

Mathew Blades: So I really want to challenge people to get quiet and say, what are those pieces of programming running in me that are outdated.

Mathew Blades: And, and I know our, it's time for an upgrade and then start to move towards those things, because I'll say it again, there's so much freedom waiting for you on the other side of that.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. 100%, man. Wow. So extremely powerful.

Kevin Lowe: Thank you so much, man, for, for being willing to.

Kevin Lowe: To share such a vulnerable and personal part of your story.

Kevin Lowe: What you just shared with us, I mean, is stuff that a lot of people don't share.

Kevin Lowe: But the fact that you can share and help who knows how many people just listening to this podcast alone, let alone your own podcast.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, it just, to me, it takes things to a whole nother level of, of being able to use what we've gone through and be a help to somebody else.

Mathew Blades: It's what you do every day of your life, Kevin. I mean, when you, when you were on Learned from People Who Lived It, you were one of those guests that I had on. I was like, whoa, man, you just leave a, you leave an imprint, right?

Mathew Blades: And it's, it's, it's such a special skill that you have, the ability to light up people's lives.

Mathew Blades: And so I'll say it right back to you. Thank you for being one of these other folks out in the world who's willing to light things up.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Oh, man. Well, thank you very much. Well, well, so Matthew, let me ask you one of my next questions, which is the logical next question is you were in radio for 28 years.

Kevin Lowe: You have all this stuff happened.

Kevin Lowe: You walk away from it. So what the heck do you do then?

Mathew Blades: Yeah, right. What do you do with your life now, man?

Mathew Blades: Um, I'm on a journey right now and I will tell you that initially, so on my fourth day of my retreat, I knew that I was going to walk away from my career and I was going to start a podcast and speaking series.

Mathew Blades: I had learned so much in that retreat and my gift, right?

Mathew Blades: My gift in, in from God, from the universe is my ability to communicate.

Mathew Blades: I have just always been good with my words.

Mathew Blades: And so I felt viscerally in my heart that it was my responsibility now to share all of the things that I learned in that retreat with other people.

Mathew Blades: And so what's interesting is, in a lot of ways, I still see myself as that radio guy.

Mathew Blades: I mean, look at me right now. I'm right behind a microphone.

Mathew Blades: I'm having a conversation with somebody. I'm just using different words now.

Mathew Blades: And so my podcast, Learned From People Who Lived It, has just been really the labor of love for me because I sit down every single week with people like you.

Mathew Blades: I sit down with these unbelievable thought leaders in every kind of space you can imagine. And we talk about the nitty gritty. We talk about money.

Mathew Blades: We talk about everything. And we really get to the root of why people act the way that they act.

Mathew Blades: And, you know, then there goes my challenge again to update your programming with those people.

Mathew Blades: And then similar to you, Kevin, I'd love nothing more than to be on a stage.

Mathew Blades: I spend about 30 dates a year delivering this content to people that are willing to listen to it.

Mathew Blades: I spent some I spent a lot of time in corporate America helping helping corporate folks kind of break the cycle of dysfunction because, you know, this stuff that I'm talking about right now, it has an enormous impact with the way that people show up for their careers.

Mathew Blades: And and you think about it like you go to your like, you know, you go to your job tomorrow and you got 15 co-workers that are kind of in your sphere.

Mathew Blades: And if 12 of those people are really dealing with some serious life issues, how do you think they're showing up for work, right?

Mathew Blades: It's impacting our daily lives in every way, shape, and form.

Mathew Blades: And so I really get into these situations and I challenge people to go to work on themselves so that they can show up as the best version of themselves, so that they can be the best co-worker, So that they can have the kind of career that they've dreamed about and be the kind of parent or brother or sister or friend that they want to be about.

Mathew Blades: Because we've been lied to this entire time and we've been lied to that it doesn't make any sense for us to pour into ourselves.

Mathew Blades: But the truth of the matter is, it's not selfish to put yourself first.

Mathew Blades: It's the only way we ever get the best version of yourself. End of discussion.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Yeah, well...

Kevin Lowe: Well, Matthew, for the person today, I mean, obviously your podcast learned from people who lived it, but where else can people go who want to connect with you to whether the podcast, you as a speaker, or just to get plugged into your world?

Mathew Blades: So I've got a couple of different websites, man, that I think are fine for people to key into.

Mathew Blades: Learn from peoplewholivedit.com is my podcast website. and then matthewblades.com is where people can go to kind of snoop up the speaking side of things.

Mathew Blades: Obviously, people are on social media, but I won't lie to you and tell you that I spend a lot of love and attention on my social media.

Mathew Blades: I see it as kind of a drain suck, so it doesn't get the attention that I probably should put there.

Mathew Blades: But, you know, those two websites are a great place to start.

Kevin Lowe: You know what? I've come to adopt the feeling of social media in terms of that is it's a digital business card.

Kevin Lowe: It's there if you want to go look at it. But otherwise, I'm not going to let my world get consumed by it. So, yeah, right.

Mathew Blades: That's kind of how I approach it. I put just enough effort and attention into it to be there, to be relevant.

Mathew Blades: But I can get sucked down that algorithm hole way too easily. So I have to be careful.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Matthew Blades, my man, it has been an absolute joy and pleasure.

Kevin Lowe: To have you here today to get to hear to get to hear your story but I guess more than your story to get to hear this this personal journey that you've been on that I believe so many aspects of this journey can relate to so many people and I can only just hope and pray that the person listening today is There's been something that you've said that's just really touched them.

Kevin Lowe: And I appreciate you for being here.

Mathew Blades: Brother, I hope we share a stage together one day. I really do.

Mathew Blades: I think you've got so much to offer the world and to the audience that comes to Kevin's podcast week in and week out and to the people that are thinking about bringing him in as a speaker.

Mathew Blades: I can only tell you that your life will be better after he's done.

Kevin Lowe: So is it being announced? Kevin Lowe and Matthew Blades coming to a stage near you.

Kevin Lowe: What a way to be inspired.

Mathew Blades: That's it, man. Appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time.

Kevin Lowe: 100%. For you listening today. Oh, man.

Kevin Lowe: I hope you're coming off of today's interview is inspired, empowered, and honestly, just as enlightened as I feel today.

Kevin Lowe: Matthew is one of the most genuine, most amazing people you'll ever know.

Kevin Lowe: So please be sure to support him. Go check out his podcast.

Kevin Lowe: All those links are inside of today's show notes. So be sure to not let this be the last time you hear his voice. The guy is amazing.

Kevin Lowe: And I appreciate you. I appreciate you being here.

Kevin Lowe: And hey, get out there and enjoy this beautiful day. This, of course, is another episode of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Theme Music Plays: I will not fear the storm, my hopes will define. I walk by faith, not by sight.