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

His name is Matthew Blades.

And Matthew, he had it all going for him until one day when he finally decided he had to walk away for him, for himself.

Today is a deep conversation, a meaningful conversation.

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

There are so many meaningful takeaways, so many life lessons that you're gonna be able to gain from today's episode.

My friend, you might want to grab a notepad because today is the day that I introduce you to Matthew Blades, but more specifically, it's the day that, well, I hope everything changes for you.

My friend, this is episode 387 of Grace and Inspiration.

I'm of course your host, Kevin Lowe, and man oh man, am I excited to have you here today because this is an interview I've been excited to bring you, and whew, the day has finally arrived.

SPEAKER_02: I got grip, great inspiration on my mind.

SPEAKER_00: What's going on, and welcome back to Great Face and 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.

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

Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

We're doing this, aren't we, Kevin?

We are finally doing this.

We are doing this.

You know what?

I said, I'm like, if this is a bottle of wine, it is a fine, well-aged bottle of wine indeed.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's all good, man.

I'm so happy to be on the podcast and and thank you for you know thinking I'm somebody who can add some value to what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, 100%.

100%.

Well, well, my goal today is for us to unpack this journey you've been on.

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.

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

SPEAKER_01: Sure, man.

I grew up in a really blue-collar family in a really blue-collar town in a small city in just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, called Coon Rapids.

And my father was in the army.

My mom was a part-time cashier, slash, uh, she had several kind of jobs, but working mostly at a grocery store.

I'm the oldest of three kids.

I have a younger brother and a younger sister.

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

We, like I said, man, we were a pretty blue-collar family.

We we had enough to uh, you know, have clothes and food and all the things, but it wasn't a big extras kind of a family.

And it at about 12 years old, my dad got relocated for the military and we moved to St.

Louis, where I spent a few years in a town called Florscent, Missouri, and went to Hazelwood uh school district.

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.

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

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

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, fascinating.

Well, moving, I mean, I mean, I'm gonna see the obvious that that can't be easy, but how was that on you as a teenager, sophomore year, changing schools, friends, all of that?

I was pissed, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I had all my childhood friends, 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.

This one, one of them was not their fault.

We had to put a we had to put a dog down who wasn't well.

And and I just hated that we had to do that.

And then the other one was and they came home and they said, you know, we're gonna be moving because it meant that I was gonna start, you know, what everybody calls middle school now, but uh back then, junior high, had a brand new school in a brand new city where I didn't know anybody.

And I will tell you that hindsight's 2020, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I and I look back on my move to St.

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

But yeah, I wasn't a big fan of it, man.

And then we had to, we we we ended up moving back to Minnesota when I was in 10th grade, and so that meant that I would be jumping into the middle of the school year again with a bunch of kids.

I mean, I had a few friends from, you know, back when I was a kid, 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, and there was no way for us to stay connected back then unless we wrote letters.

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

No, I don't think so.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna be your pen pal, buddy.

Sorry.

So that was it was tough, Kevin.

I uh but like I said, uh I look back at it now, and it was, you know, I mean, this is this is life.

I mean, you know this, and you and I have talked about this when I had you on my podcast.

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

Like every single thing happened for me.

And uh, 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.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I mean, I can can totally understand.

And now you mentioned that 19 is when you got into the the radio broadcasting realm, correct?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Now, what prompted that?

What led to that direction?

SPEAKER_01: So this is a funny story, man.

I grew really into music when I was about 12 years old.

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.

And I was pretty good at it.

I could, it was an instrument that made a lot of sense to me.

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.

And I really thought that I was gonna be a classical musician for my whole life.

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

And I was starting to uh study under the principal bass player for the St.

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

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

And in five minutes, I knew that was what I was gonna be doing with the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Now, why?

What was it about it that just totally captivated you from the get-go?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was just the way that he, man, you walked into that studio, and number one, you just felt like everybody in the city of Minneapolis and St.

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

Uh, his phones were ringing off the hook.

He was he was taking phone calls while he was playing songs.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

And it was just the way that he handled himself, man.

For four hours, it was absolutely non-stop fun.

He laughed, he joked with people, he hyped people up.

You know, he was obvious, he was a hip music station.

So he was playing the coolest music uh that was out there.

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

SPEAKER_00: That is awesome.

That is awesome.

Now, I'm curious though, like, how did that actually pan out?

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

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

SPEAKER_01: 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 because I had no idea outside of the music thing what I wanted to do with my life.

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

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

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

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

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.

And I went in and and did my audition and we, you know, was the best worst version of whatever uh I was gonna be, but it was enough to get me in.

And I I stayed at Brown for the next year and some change and got my um 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.

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

It was unbelievable, man.

I I I 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.

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

I mean, you know what 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.

Like, how do you how do you put a value on that?

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 a local celebrity in your area and where people knew you and listened to you.

And I 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, you know, I was working in Washington, D.C.

And and every night, every night, bro, we had people on the like in the studio, like Jay-Z, like InSync, like Britney Spears, 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.

SPEAKER_00: That that is absolutely ridiculously cool.

That is pretty darn epic.

Wow.

Yeah, it was epic.

SPEAKER_01: It was epic.

SPEAKER_00: 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.

SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of partying, right?

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

At some point I had to get sober, Kevin.

Uh yeah, but I uh I now I spent so I don't know how much you know about the radio and television business, but I'll give you like the the quick landscape version.

So every city is a market, and markets have size, right?

And so where do you live in Florida?

Daytona Beach area.

Daytona Beach.

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

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 want to get in the biggest market you can doing a morning or an afternoon show.

Okay.

That those are the two, because they're drive times, they're the two positions that pay the best.

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

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

And then after the show was done, it was very, very common that I would go to a nightclub after that and I would, you know, do a two-hour appearance.

That's what they called them.

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

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

And then in about the late, I guess it would have been right around 2002, 2001, something like that, the dream job that I had fizzled out.

The format of the radio station changed, I was fired, and we had an opportunity to move to Kansas City after that.

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

And then I that only lasted like two years.

And then about uh 2004, I had my first opportunity to host a morning show, and that's when I that's when I segueed into morning radio, and I did morning radio from 2004 until I walked away in like basically 2021.

Wow.

What what was your favorite, if you have one?

Man, for different reasons, right?

The the the my my 20s are a blur and were freaking fun.

Um just I I just had so many unbelievable life experiences, right?

Like, you know, I'll share a quick story.

I I w one time, this was at the height of the boy band era.

And so, you know, I I don't know what team you're on, Backstreet Boys or InSync, but I was I was team in sync, and you know, Carson Daly was doing TRL.

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.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 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 Eggler or Britney Spears or LFO or who insert boy band there, O Town, whoever you want.

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.

But Brittany Spears had this fragrance.

It was her first fragrance that she released, and she was doing a mall tour across the country, right?

And her first stop was in what's called Hex.

I don't even think they make them anymore, but it's a huge department store in uh in at a mall in Tyson's Corner, which is outside of Washington, DC.

And her and I are scheduled to arrive at Hex at 9:30.

They're gonna open up the store at 10 o'clock.

And the goal is that Brittany is gonna be there.

I'm gonna MC the thing, and we're, you know, we'll sign a few autographs, we'll take a few pictures, and it'll be a really fun event, right?

So we get there at 9:30, and there's cops everywhere.

And we are thinking, like, oh my God, what happened?

And what we what we came to find out was there was already 5,000 people at the mall waiting for us to get there.

There was no parking.

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

And when we get into Hex, you you you can't move.

It's like literally people are like sardines.

And after 10 o'clock, there's probably another 2,000 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.

And so we had moments like that, bro, that were just so fun, right?

Like so cool and exciting.

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.

You're bringing up your life, you're talking about things, and so there's a greater sense of connection because you're really spending time with folks, getting to know them.

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

And so I love them both for very different reasons, but I will tell you that there is nothing cooler in the world than having a morning show on the radio.

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.

SPEAKER_00: It's so fun.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I I think that's amazing.

And 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 uh a morning radio show.

Did you?

I did.

It was a different style because it was AM, so they did like like local political news, but it was it was uh, you know, it was uh WNDB AM 1150, and I was there from 6 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

And um and I loved it.

So awesome.

Yes, man.

SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So now but I don't do that anymore, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: But that's okay.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly.

So now during this time though, I mean, we're talking about this thriving career, having fun, time in your life.

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 of two kind of aspects that I've I've read about and preparing for us, is one kind of your religious, like kind of faith journey and also the loss of your father at a very young age.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're two really pretty big pillars in my life.

And so again, it goes going.

So let's start with my dad's story, and then we can move into the religious part of this thing.

But I had my my first night on KDWB in Minneapolis, Minnesota was going to be Sunday, I think it was August 26th, and I was getting ready to go on at eight o'clock that night.

And during that, or before that, I should 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.

And so we were gonna have a barbecue and you know, have the dads meet, have the moms meet.

And at uh 4:30, everybody was scheduled to arrive.

And at 420, my then fiance came screaming around the corner that there was something wrong with my dad.

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

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

And as you can imagine, that that has a pretty significant impact on a kid, right?

On a 23-year-old kid.

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

And because I just put my head down and and plowed into my career, I didn't really give credit to how that was going to impact me later in life, right?

Like it's one of those things where eventually it catches up to you.

It did.

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.

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

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

We were there most Saturdays, and we weren't even Catholic, but we we were so involved in the church.

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

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.

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

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.

So now I'm married.

I got married in 2004 to my wife Nikkly.

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.

And my mom called me and she was just mean about it.

She was like, you better get married in a church.

And she said, because I need God to be there.

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

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

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, it was that she didn't respect mine.

So that probably lays a little groundwork for some good, juicy conversation.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course, of course.

Now, when it comes to the topic of religion and stuff, where do you stand today?

SPEAKER_01: So I went through a whole bunch of stuff, man.

I I I became a practicing Buddhist for a long time and kind of dwelved into that topic.

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

And 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.

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

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

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

You know, the the things that are important to 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.

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.

Where the 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, and like it doesn't matter.

Like we're all really good people just here doing our best.

So that's where I align the most.

But I will say, and I think this is important, 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.

And there's a lot of people today that I think don't have a place to start, you know, and I 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.

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

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

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I mean, I think I think what what I love about your answer with that is it's all a very personable journey for each one of us.

For sure, man.

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

I don't have all the answers.

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.

And I am a it's not fair.

SPEAKER_01: It's not fair to the people that practice to put it in the box because you're you're more than just a Christian, right?

Yeah, you're bigger than that.

SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's what I said is I feel as though it's all bigger than any of us.

It's bigger than we can, we we can't comprehend it, you know what I mean, on its type of size.

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

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if that's Jesus, man, that to 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.

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.

And quite frankly, that was the case with Buddhism.

I studied it for a long time, 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.

And so, you know, I'm I'm 51 now.

So I'm a little older than than some and younger than most, but um, I'm in a place now where I'm more settled with the way that I see the world.

Like I went to church last Sunday, you know.

I I had a friend that invited me to church last Sunday, and I had the greatest hour of my life.

I cried.

It brought me to like it brought me to tears.

I was so moved by the things that they were saying.

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

To this day, I love church music.

I always tell people I don't go to church, but I love church music.

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.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, I love it, man.

I absolutely love that.

I love it.

Now I'm whatever that is.

Exactly.

Now, going back to kind of like this journey that you've been on, yeah, losing your father at such a young age.

Here you were, you were just getting engaged.

Now, that engagement, would that go on to become marriage?

Nope.

SPEAKER_01: No, we gave it a shot, but m I was too way too focused on my career.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

And so there wasn't room for that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

Now, fast forwarding way ahead, and then you can fill in gaps in between, but we we talk about this career spanning 28 years in radio.

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

SPEAKER_01: Man, this is such a big conversation.

Okay, there's there's a lot of truths like there is for anybody.

I don't 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.

I had stopped enjoying what I was doing.

It just it wasn't it wasn't fun for me anymore.

The politics of the business, the 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.

But that's just a small piece of it.

The the bigger thing was I was shifting.

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

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?

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 in like unstable in a lot of ways.

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

And as I remind everybody, nobody's in therapy because they got too many hugs.

So we um adding all of that stuff up, man.

I'd been feeling this tug my whole life that I was destined.

I just feel in my heart, man, like I'm here to help people move out of dysfunction.

That's that's really at my core who I think I am now.

I 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.

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.

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

And that's really how I feel.

That's how I see myself.

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.

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 that idea that I'm gonna 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.

And to a lot of degrees, it was my entire identity.

It was the only thing that I thought I was good at.

But I 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?

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

And it got to a stage in my life where I really started to grapple hard with those questions, Kevin.

And I and I was really, really thirsty for some answers.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Wow.

Okay.

Amazing.

Amazing the fact of this personal just dialogue going in on your head.

And especially what's 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, 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.

And this idea of like we feel like like we're failing in one way.

I mean, we're we're taught not to quit.

And yet you understand that there's gotta be more out there.

SPEAKER_01: 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.

But, you know, I think that uh so many of us would be better off if we would sit down one day and say, huh, is this really what it's gonna be?

Is this really what it's gonna be about for for the rest of time?

Am I just gonna keep waking up and and this is what it's gonna be?

Uh it's an important question to ask yourself at uh at some point.

And I I know not everybody's maybe got the luxury of 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 we can start to tweak our life.

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

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

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.

So many of us, I think that's what we need to do.

We need to fiddle with that knob a little bit.

We need to turn it to the left and we need to turn it 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?

I c I I have a kind of a four-step process that I walk through every everybody through now.

And I think step one is let's renegotiate.

So that's what you're talking about.

It's like renegotiate with yourself.

Where do you want to go?

What do you want to be about?

How do you want to live your life?

Who are you?

Who are the man?

Who is like, who is this guy that's gonna, you know, live out the rest of time?

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.

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?

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

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

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

Yeah.

Can you dive a little bit deeper into that?

SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, it's my favorite thing in the world to talk about, of course.

I need to set up what happened.

So I was starting to develop, and I'm gonna mention this because I think this is a really big truth for a lot of people in life.

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.

And then I got shingles on my face, which if you've never had before, sucks, like to high heaven.

It's the worst, it's like one of the most painful things that you can ever get.

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

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

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.

I'm just gonna explode and I'm gonna give you these rashy things that itch like crazy for a few weeks.

And then after that, Kevin, I started to get these panic attacks.

And I'd never gotten panic attacks before in my life.

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

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.

So when you're when you get a panic attack, the symptoms can feel eerily similar to a heart attack.

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.

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

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

And so I go to the emergency room after trying to cope for a few minutes, and I spend 10 hours in the emergency room.

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

They run every single test.

We leave no stone unturned.

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

What do you think he says to me?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of anxiety attack.

SPEAKER_01: Exactly.

There's nothing physically wrong with you.

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

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.

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

And I was wise enough to know that it was both.

I 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.

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

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.

And I work with what I call my 12 angels.

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

Some of them are counselors, some of them are like uh healers, some of them are Native American spiritual healers, some of them are like psychotherapists, some of them are uh sound healers, others are massage therapists that are trained in Reiki.

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

And I spend five days talking to people, listening to people.

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.

And I had no idea what that meant.

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.

And, you know, I I this is why I told you about when I was 12 years old, right?

Like instantly I went back to being 12, looking around my house, going, What the hell is going on?

What are we doing here?

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

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

And the first responsibility that you have is to yourself.

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, you can't be the brother you want to be, you can't be the son you want to be.

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

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.

Wow.

Wow.

Nobody said it was easy.

Nobody said it was easy.

And what what's what, but it is simple, right?

That's what's so that's what makes it such a mind F, if you will, right?

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

It's actually quite simple.

And it starts with you.

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.

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.

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

The first thing that I had to do was I had to quit my job.

I knew I had to quit my job.

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?

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.

You know, I was making multiple six figures and uh had a contract for the next.

I could still be on the radio.

Like let's just put it like that, right?

I 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.

But I I knew that it just didn't serve me anymore.

And so I had to have two incredibly hard conversations.

The first one was with my family to let them know that I had fallen out of love with this thing and I just didn't want to do it anymore.

And there was nothing anybody was gonna do to convince me that that's what I needed to keep doing with my life.

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.

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

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I mean 100%.

And I think that ties in with what I've been sitting here thinking as you're sharing this, is I am thinking you went away to this retreat that you talked about and and you've had this incredible personal breakthrough within you.

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

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, what's driving your decisions behind you.

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

SPEAKER_01: 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.

And so, and I listen, man, my life made no sense.

It was nonsense, right?

Like I didn't have any, it literally was nonsense.

And I had gotten to a point where 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.

I was saying to myself, if you need to end your relationship with your family, you're gonna do that.

If you need to end Your marriage, you're gonna do that.

If you need to move out of your house, you're gonna do that.

If you need to stop talking to your best friends, you're gonna do that.

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

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.

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?

I didn't need to play the blame game.

I wasn't a victim here.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

And they start to very unlovingly have these conversations with people.

And you did this, and because of you, and because of this, and I just wasn't interested in any of that anymore.

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.

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, why I was there, 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 safe the safety of uh not spending three hours on a podcast with anybody.

Uh but so I called my mom, Kevin, and I and I said, uh, hey, mom.

And I was already crying.

I said, hey, mom, we we need to talk about our relationship.

It's it it doesn't work for me anymore.

And I'm pretty sure it doesn't work for you anymore.

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

And within 30 seconds, Kevin, we started, we go, 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.

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.

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

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

A terrible father, again, loving, good things, great things.

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

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

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

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.

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

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, and I can't, I won't tell you that we got along every minute of every day for the rest of time, right?

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 coating that we had around our relationship.

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

And I don't mince words here, man.

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.

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?

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?

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, in the, in the days ahead.

And it became a really much more peaceful relationship between the two of us.

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.

She passed away April 1st of last year.

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.

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.

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.

SPEAKER_00: 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.

That is it.

It's 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.

SPEAKER_01: That's it, both with yourself and other people.

But you gotta go there.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow.

I am I am so grateful that you had that opportunity with your mom.

SPEAKER_01: You don't know, man.

I mean, literally, I like I said, I went to church last week.

I was invited by a friend to go to church, and you know, I've kind of decided that I'm gonna go back to church from time to time because I really feel close to my mom there.

And do you know the guy?

Do you know the artist, Brandon Lake?

SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01: I know I recognize the name.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's in a group called Elevation Worship, and he and he's just broken off into a fantastic group called the The Sons of Sunday.

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

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.

And because I think about that as it relates to my relationship with my mom.

And uh, 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.

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.

And I kid you not, man.

I walked into this church last Sunday.

And what do you think the first song that they played was?

Gratitude.

Wow.

It was so powerful, man.

I instantly started bawling.

I mean, I was brand new at this church.

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.

And I mean, just water works.

And they weren't even like they weren't sad tears.

That's the best part about it.

They were just these really joyful, happy tears, almost patting myself on the back, like, hey man, you did it.

You did the work.

Like, be grateful.

Be grateful that you did all the hard stuff because it's paying off and it's gonna continue to pay off.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to ask the question in and I'm asking it kind of from two fronts, both curious from how you handled it, but also curious from 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 you're juggling being a husband, a father, you have your career, you're trying to provide for your family.

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

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

It's a great question.

And I'll tell you just what's coming through to me right now.

I had a a beautiful Buddhist teaching that I went to one time, and this type of question came up.

I I think it was a mom who asked this question to the Geshalar 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, 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.

And he said something so simple to her.

He said, I want you to make your kids your teachers.

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.

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

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 gonna want to sit with you.

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

Just tell them.

Don't make it about him, but just tell them.

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.

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

And so I'm gonna keep going on this because I think it's important.

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

I was somebody who was chasing balance my whole life, which is a obviously a very Buddhist principle, yin-yang, right?

There's good, there's bad.

Find the balance.

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?

How can you just move with the wave?

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

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.

I just felt like I was better in in those scenarios.

And I was really challenged to become better at going with it.

Not taking things so personally.

Stop not advocating for myself, right?

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.

Oh, absolutely.

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

Uh, you know, we've all had hits.

And uh, I've told you earlier that one of my hits was my dad dying at 23 years old.

When I was trying to save his life, I was doing CPR, I was doing all of the things that I had learned or seen on TV or whatever, and none of it worked.

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

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

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, were number one, you didn't know enough and you weren't useful.

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.

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.

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

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

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

You know a lot of things.

And you're really useful.

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

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.

But what is the outdated programming that you're running that you know is probably holding you back?

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

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

It's completely unfair that I'd be living with the same programming in 2025 as I was in '96, right?

That's ridiculous.

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

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%, man.

Wow.

So extremely powerful.

Thank you so much, man, for for being willing to share such a vulnerable and personal part of your story.

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

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.

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

SPEAKER_01: It's what you do every day of your life, Kevin.

I mean, when you when you were on Learn 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?

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

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.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Oh, man.

Well, 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.

You have the all this stuff happened.

You walk away from it.

So what the heck do you do then?

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: What do you do with your life now, man?

Um, I'm on a journey right now, and I will tell you that uh initially, so on my fourth day in my retreat, I knew that I was gonna walk away from my career and I was gonna start a podcast and speaking series.

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

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

I have just always been good with my words.

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.

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

I mean, look at me right now.

I'm right behind a microphone.

I'm having a conversation with somebody.

I'm just using different words now.

And so my podcast, Learned from People Who Lived It, is just been really the just a labor of love for me because I sit down every single week with people like you.

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, we talk, we talk about everything, and we really get to the root of why people act the way that they act.

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

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

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

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.

And and you think about it like you go to your, like, you know, you go to your job tomorrow and you got 15 coworkers that are kind of in your sphere.

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

Right.

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

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 coworker, 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.

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.

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

It's the only way we ever get the best version of yourself.

End of discussion.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

100%, 100%.

Well, well, Matthew, for the person today, I mean, obviously your podcast learn 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?

SPEAKER_01: So I've got a couple of different websites, man, that I think are fine for people to key into.

Learn from people who lived it.com as my podcast website.

And then Matthewblades.com is where people can go to kind of snoop up the uh the speaking side of things.

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.

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

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

SPEAKER_00: You you know what I I've come to to adopt the feeling of social media in terms of that is it's a digital business card.

It's there if you want to, if you want to go look at it, but otherwise, I'm not gonna let my my world get consumed by it.

SPEAKER_01: So yeah, right.

That's kind of how I approach it.

I put I put just enough effort and attention into it to be there, to be relevant, but I can get sucked down that algorithm hole way too easily.

So I have to be careful.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, Matthew Blades, my man, it has been an absolute joy and pleasure 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 um, I can only just hope and pray that the person listening today, there's been something that you've said that's just really touched them.

And uh I uh I appreciate you for being here.

SPEAKER_01: Brother, I hope we share a stage together one day.

I really do.

I think uh 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.

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

SPEAKER_00: So so is it is it being announced?

Kevin Lowell and Matthew Blade's coming to a stage near you.

What a way to be.

SPEAKER_01: No, appreciate you.

Thank you for for taking the time.

SPEAKER_00: 100%, 100%.

For you listening today, who man, I hope you're coming off of today's interview, is inspired, empowered, and and honestly just as enlightened as I feel today.

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

So please be sure to support him.

Go check out his podcast.

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.

And I appreciate you.

I appreciate you being here.

And hey, get out there and enjoy this beautiful day.

This, of course, is another episode of Grit Grace and Inspiration.