There is a moment in 2018 that a man I know cannot stop replaying.

He had built the company. He had run the years of late nights and sharp decisions and quiet bets that nobody saw. The exit was supposed to be the reward. He was already moving forward. He had shot something like 700 videos that year. He was lining up podcasts. He was sketching out the next venture, the one that was supposed to be his real swing, the thing he had been preparing for the whole climb.

Then the contract closed.

And the line his lawyer missed went to work.

The line allowed his mentor, the man across the table, to take the next two years of company profits and pour them into scaling the business. Every dollar. He had structured the exit on a percentage of profit instead of a fixed multiple. The math was clean. The math was brutal. The business showed zero profit for two years straight, exactly long enough to zero him out.

He was young. He took the lesson. (For anyone reading this who is thinking about an exit, take a set number. Take a multiple. Never take a percentage of profit. He paid the tuition so you do not have to.)

But the part of the story I want to tell you is not the contract. The contract is the easy story. Anyone can lose money. Anyone can sign the wrong line. The part that flattened him was not the loss.

It was what he did next.

The Silence After

He did not tell anyone.

His friends assumed the exit went well. He let them assume. He kept building the version of himself they expected to see, the version that wins, the version that handles it. He had the credibility, the haircut, the right answers when someone asked how things were going. None of it was true.

His marriage was bleeding underneath him at the same time. He would say later that he and his wife probably would have divorced if the timeline had gone any differently. But you would not have known that from the outside either. Two collapses, the financial one and the marital one, and a man who had decided he was going to carry both of them by himself.

The cruelest detail is this. After that exit, he found a phenomenal mentor. A real one. A man who could have moved mountains for him. And he sat across from this mentor and could not say the words.

He was too weak, he told me. That is the word he used. Too weak to say he was weak.

I know that word from the inside. I have used it on myself.

The Math High Achievers Run

If you have ever been the guy who wins, you know the equation.

You spent your whole life being told not to cry. Coaches said it. Maybe a father said it. The culture said it through a thousand small moments. Boys do not cry. Men do not need help. Put your head down. No one is coming to save you.

It became reflex. It became identity. The thing you were good at was handling it. The thing you were known for was not flinching.

So when the floor goes out from under you, the option of telling someone does not actually feel like an option. It feels like a forfeit. You did not get to the place you are in by asking. You got here by absorbing. The instinct that built you is the same instinct that traps you when you finally need help.

And so you do what he did. You show up to the softball league on Monday night. You high-five the guys. You talk about the Cubs. You do not say that you and your wife fought last night. You do not say that the deal you closed last quarter wiped you out. You stand in a circle of men who would actually run through a wall for you, and you lie by omission, because the cost of looking weak in front of them feels heavier than the cost of carrying it alone.

It is not.

It is never heavier.

But you cannot see that from inside the silence.

What Almost Nobody Tells You

Here is what I have come to believe after years of watching men I respect collapse quietly while keeping the same haircut.

Every high achiever has something. Every single one.

There is no exception. The guy you envy at the gym has something. The guy crushing on LinkedIn has something. The guy whose business you would kill for has something. It might be a marriage that is dying in slow motion. It might be a financial hit nobody knows about. It might be a kid he cannot reach. It might be a faith that is hollow in the parts that used to be loud. Something.

The difference between the ones who rebuild and the ones who lose the next decade to the silence is not talent. It is not work ethic. It is not even faith, although faith carries some of them through.

The difference is whether they were willing, at some point, to look across a table at one other human being and say the actual words.

I am struggling.

I need help.

This is what is really happening to me.

It does not have to be everyone. It does not have to be the softball league. It does not have to be the church small group where the guy two seats down works for a competitor. But it has to be one person. One real one.

The man I told you about found that out the long way. Seven, eight years later, his marriage is the strongest it has ever been. His finances came back. His kids are nine and seven and they have the dad he wishes he had been before the collapse. He says, and I believe him, that he had to lose all of it to get the man back. The breaking was the build. The replanting was the gift.

But he says something else too, every time. He did not have to lose as much as he lost. He could have moved through it faster. He could have arrived sooner. The only thing in the way was a version of himself that thought looking strong was the same thing as being strong.

It is not.

It never was.

The Decision Sitting on Your Chest Right Now

If you are reading this, you probably already know what I am about to say.

You have a thing you are carrying. You know exactly what it is. You have known for a while. And there is a person you could call. Maybe a few. People who would not flinch. People who have probably been waiting for you to call, who have wondered why a guy like you has gone quiet. People who, if you said the words, would meet you exactly where you are.

You are going to keep telling yourself it is not bad enough yet. You are going to tell yourself you have got it. You are going to tell yourself you will say something next month, after this quarter, after the launch, after the kids are out of the season, after the holidays.

That month does not exist.

The cost of staying quiet compounds. The longer you carry it alone, the smaller you become for the people you love most. Your kids start to know a version of you that is half-present. Your wife starts to learn that the door is closed. Your friends start to feel the layer of glass between you. None of them can name it. They just stop knocking.

You are not weak for needing someone. You were built to need someone. The whole architecture of a man requires another man across the table at some point in his life. The myth that the strong man does it alone is the most expensive lie the culture ever sold us, and high achievers pay the highest tax on it.

Reach across the table.

Say the words.

That is the moment everything actually changes. That is the moment the art of your life starts coming back online. The strokes only get beautiful again on the other side of that conversation, never before it.

You were made for this. The world is waiting. But the people who are waiting hardest are the ones already in your phone. Call one of them today.

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Full Transcript

Darren: Take me to that moment where you’re going, I gotta do something more than just this. What was going on emotionally? What were you feeling at that time? Just explain that moment.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. So the interesting part is, it hasn’t always been this way. Just like any entrepreneur, I’ve had massive failures. In 2018, I was about to exit my company, and I guess I’ll share it on this podcast, the exit happened, but it wasn’t pretty.

I had lost a significant amount of money that I thought was going to happen. I had a mentor at the time who, in our exit contract, there was one line that my lawyer didn’t catch. He basically took the next two years and used the entirety of the profits of the business to scale the company up. The business showed zero profit, which, I had made a specific deal with him that I would take a percentage of profit. Anybody listening, if you exit a company, never do that. Always take a set number, take a set multiple. I was young at the time.

It kind of put me back massively, because at the time, that year while I was getting prepared to exit, I had started doing a ton of content. I made, I think, 700 videos all across different platforms. I was on a bunch of podcasts. I was going to create this group, a different group, which I won’t mention the name on here.

But honestly, I think that God, it was actually supposed to happen. Because as everyone knows, when you look back, it all makes sense. When you’re in it, it sucks. Every time I look back at that moment, I realize one, I wasn’t mature enough at the time to handle the success that was coming. Two, my wife and I weren’t in a great position in our marriage. Honestly, we probably would have divorced each other. It’s very interesting how that had to happen.

Then over the last, what is it since 2018 and now, seven, eight years, we rebuilt. Not only did we rebuild our financial situation, our marriage is stronger than ever. We have two young kids, nine and seven, and we’re blessed. The kids are amazing.

Along the way, though, one of the keys that I saw was that I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I’ll be honest with you, just like all men out there, high achievers, you don’t want to look weak. So frankly, I didn’t really even tell people that the business, that the exit, didn’t go well. A lot of people assumed that it did. I put up a front and just kind of led through that world, which is not a great place to be.

I had a phenomenal mentor after that, and even with him, I was so weak that I didn’t want to share with him the situation. He could have helped me immensely. I think for men listening, the biggest thing is just know that it’s okay. You’re not weak. You just need someone that you can go to.

That’s why we created the Lighthouse Brotherhood specifically, because we want to have a group that we’ve selected, or they self-select, and we’re talking about these things so we can help high-achieving men through some of the struggles they’re facing. In most of life, you’re not going to go to your church and tell all your buddies that your marriage is struggling. Instead, what’s going to happen is that divorce creeps up, and then everyone’s like, wait, what happened? How did that happen?

That’s kind of the scenario, but it’s been awesome. Looking back now with God specifically kind of working through this, lots of magic, if you want to call it, but it’s really God. Relationships came out of nowhere. Finances kicked back in. I’m a big believer in the parable, the 11th hour parable, where God will always give you back, a 10 to 100X what you lost. I think I had to go through that to basically get to where I’m at today, where I feel like a much more complete guy versus back then. I was still insecure, and I would have done stupid stuff with my money.

Darren: No, I hear that. As you’re talking, I’m thinking of so many things in my life. I was one that went through divorce, lost everything that I thought was, as a man of faith, I was like, oh, God’s got me the whole time, nothing’s going to happen. Then all of a sudden it all falls apart and you go, what the heck? Your life gets flipped upside down. For me, it was a marriage. But for other guys out there, it might be business, like that one line in the contract for you that literally uprooted everything that you thought you had.

There’s so many moments in our life that we think, oh, we got this, we’re good, everything’s solid. Then when it flips upside down, it breaks apart everything that we hold true.

What I love about your story, Matt, is what I’m hearing is the breaking down, the replanting of who you were, was actually what allowed you to grow and become who you’re being today. It actually allowed you to become the artist that you’re starting to be today. Around here, art doesn’t mean just creativity and painting and whatnot. No, it’s the art of your life and the things that you’re getting to do now. The paintbrush strokes of your life now become so beautiful because of that breaking down.

Let’s talk a little bit about what you were saying about how men struggle so much to be honest in those moments. We might have a friend circle, we might have a church group, we might have those that we work with day in and day out, but we have a hard time looking at them and saying, I’m struggling, I’m hurting, I’m in pain. One, why do you think that is? Two, what do you think we should do about it?

Matt: Yeah, I appreciate this question, Darren, and you nailed it. The biggest thing is, specifically for high achievers, most of our lives we’ve been this way. Let’s be transparent. Whether it was through sports, school, and I’m not saying every single high achiever was a high achiever as a kid, but oftentimes it’s the case. Our whole life, we’ve won in some capacity. We’ve also been told by coaches, sometimes parents, fathers, hey, don’t be weak. Don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. You’re a man, dude. Man up.

We still see the memes out there. Obviously there’s a good push right now for men. But I also will say that for about a decade, men were looked at as toxic masculinity. From a perspective, yes, there’s horrible people out there. There’s bad guys doing bad things. But what ended up happening is traditional manhood kind of got roped into the toxic word. Taking care of your family, being respectable in the community, that got roped in.

What came up with the original group chat, and with every high-achieving man I’ve ever met, every single one, they have something. I know that that’s part of our journey on earth, that we’re supposed to go through stuff so we can learn, and we can go back to heaven, and it’s amazing. But also note, from a male perspective, anybody who’s watching this just knows, you don’t want to look weak. You don’t want to be the guy who can’t handle stuff.

All those groups, the softball leagues that I’m in, I’m not going to show up on a Monday night and be like, hey guys, my wife and I had a fight last night. We’re just high-fiving and hitting bases and chatting about the Chicago Cubs. It’s a surface-level kind of scenario.

I think we were just talked that way, Darren, as men. Just fight through it, put your head down, no one’s coming to save you. All these things that we hear all the time now. I’m like, well, that’s a good message, but it’s also pretty faulty. There’s a lot of people who come to save us all the time, people who come out of nowhere. I’m sure you have people that have popped up out of nowhere and have helped you through these challenges, right?

Darren: For sure.

Matt: The biggest growth area in my life always stems from the ability to be vulnerable enough to reach across the table and say, I’m struggling, or I need help. Those moments are the moments that change everything.