Leave Nothing To Chance

 

There is a famous Rocky quote, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Contrary to what many believe, we should embrace failure. Only then can we learn how to succeed. In the second part of this two-part series, join John Solleder and Jordan Matthews in this discussion about failure. Jordan is a Partner and Trial Attorney, and an author. Learn more about his upcoming book, Failure: When you Have Nothing, You Have Everything. Find out how all his struggles in life shaped him to be the person he is today.

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Jordan Matthews, Failure: When you Have Nothing You Have Everything, Part 2

This is part two of a fascinating interview with Jordan Matthews. Jordan is an attorney, has been a professional actor, and is the author of a new book coming out called Failure: When You Have Nothing, You Have Everything, which is a fascinating title. Jordan, thank you for doing part two with me. We have so much information still to go over. That’s why I figured we’d do it over two weeks. Welcome back to our readers as well. You’ve been in the entertainment field.

Let’s pick up, you’ve been involved and I know it’s ongoing. There’s not a whole lot you can say about it but a major suit against Steve Wynn. For those people who don’t know Steve Wynn, one of the largest names in Las Vegas in the resort industry for many years. Anything you can share on that? I know it’s been in the news media a lot. I’ve been following the case for the last couple of years but anything that you can share on that? What kind of experience is it to walk into a courtroom against a corporation that size and also an individual that’s bigger than life like Mr. Wynn is?

I’ll go into how a bit of it unfolded. I had a career doing film finance and whatnot for about a decade or so before becoming a lawyer. One of the most important things is psychology and understanding strategy. It’s funny because my daughter said something to me about playing chess. She told me either she had learned to play chess or wanted to play chess or could I teach her, something like that. I said to her, “I have never played chess,” but my life and every single thing I do on a day-to-day basis is a chess game.

For example, the specific point there is that fortunately because of my experience in business, I had lawyers who represented Tiger Woods and represented me or Kevin Costner, and had done very large deals in litigation. They were great lawyers and still very good colleagues and friends of mine. I was a very hands-on client. I was a de facto lawyer but I couldn’t practice because I’d never been licensed.

When I became a lawyer later, one of the things that lawyers typically do when they come onto a case is they’ll look the other lawyer up. One of the first things you do is check someone’s BAR number. When were you licensed? I got into this case and became lead counsel early on. The strategy there is that if someone looked at me, they would have assumed that I was green and didn’t know much because they would assume that I was early.

I was happy with that. That was fine with me because I knew that my experiences previously putting together hundreds of millions of dollars of deals, working on multi-billion-dollar deals, doing millions and millions at issue in litigation, very high paced litigation in the entertainment space, in a very real way. As a client with very good lawyers, I had experiences that a lot of other lawyers didn’t necessarily have.

I use that as an asset to the extent that I knew that they would not necessarily expect me to pull certain things or do certain things. I knew that they had sophisticated counsel. The first thing I did was I called my mentor, who’s been practicing for over 30 years and is a very big lawyer. I engaged him as a co-counsel. I did the majority of the work but I had him there obviously having a firm and whatnot, but I knew his experience and I had him on board so that he could be there to say, “You should think about this,” or “Let’s consider this,” or “Let’s go in this direction.”

Your life and everything you do on a day-to-day basis is a chess game. It's all about psychology and strategy. Click To Tweet

From my experience as an actor and training in theater in New York, when I went to law school, I would do trial competitions and generally win or get very high placed. Walking into a room and being able to present and be present to what was going on was something that I had been adamantly trained to do. I was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory. They were known for training Marlon Brando. I understood how to drop into a moment.

If I was going to go into court and get ready for an argument, or if I ended up arguing the Ninth Circuit, which I’ve argued in the Ninth Circuit against them. Not only was I prepped, I knew I would know every detail, every record. I wrote everything. I would be able to cite Page 26, Line 27, and Footnote 3 says X, Y, Z. Let me reference this. I was comfortable going into a courtroom for an argument if I had to fly in and do that because of my prior experiences in life. It was totally fine doing it.

I can’t go into too much detail because it’s an ongoing matter but how it originated was obviously after Harvey Weinstein was the dam breaking as everyone knows what this #MeToo issue that happened with Weinstein. Steve Wynn was the first executive or first CEO of a public company that experienced those accusations.

That was part of a report that the Wall Street Journal published in January of 2018. There was basically a bombshell report. At the time he was also chairman of the Republican Finance Committee. It was a big hit right away. He had to step down as chairman of Wynn Resorts and of the Republican Finance Committee immediately. We had emanated from a settlement.

There was a $7.5 million settlement that he had entered into with a woman back in 2005 who alleged that he had raped her. That’s what the allegation was and he denied that. Nevertheless, that settlement came up. There were a lot of other reports that he had engaged in misconduct. He denies these allegations but these were the allegations that came out as part of that report.

The client, in this case, was the main person who reported that incident and was immediately thrown out of the hotel and blacklisted. It was the central premise of that Wall Street Journal report that came out. In the middle of it, there are a lot of things that happened because they were in the middle of a $2.6 billion casino that they were opening in Boston.

The Encore Boston Harbor was at risk. It triggered investigations by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission that went into a year of very intensive investigations. We initiated the suit and it started in Nevada District Court, ended up going to the Ninth Circuit, Nevada State Court, California Central District Federal Court in the Ninth Circuit. I’ve been up to the US Supreme Court. There are so many things and a lot of depth. I’d probably need to go into it at a later point but that’s the general background of what that’s been about.

 

Let’s talk about some more fun stuff than lawsuits. I know that’s your day job. I know writing is something that you’ve brought up and started to do now. You’ve got your first book coming out. I want to talk about that. Before I do, I want to mention this and it’s a perfect segue because you’re on the show.

I’ve written four books. The third one was called Moving Up 2020, written in 2019. Who knew what was going to happen in 2020? I’ll never forget coming up with the title in 2019, 2020. What a great title. Of course, we know what happened with the world, unfortunately.

My books all referenced network marketing and things in the network marketing space but there’s a lady in this book named Arlie Lowey that I wrote about on Page 73. You may have heard of her. You can see all of that. I wrote another book that came out in 2021 called Leave Nothing to Chance. These have been Amazon bestsellers in six different categories, small businesses, all sorts of things when they came out.

Here’s another story about this same lady, Arlie Lowey, an entire chapter about her on Page 182. These books are available on Amazon in Spanish, English, digital, etc. During the writing process, I talked to your mom quite a bit. In talking to her back then, your mom has been a serial entrepreneur for as long as I know her, which is many years. What was it like? A lot of our audience were network marketing people. Some of our audience network marketing people dabble in small businesses as well. They’re in real estate insurance or real estate investors. They’re entrepreneurial people. What was it like being raised by an entrepreneurial mom? How did that help you? We’ve talked about your dad in part one but how did mom help you in part two?

I’ve called her a lot more and told her not only how much I appreciate her. It’s an unfortunate thing that it takes going through life and getting older to get to a place where you understand and appreciate someone. That was a process of osmosis and I was so fortunate because I remember, like yourself, working our way up to the top of a company, and especially as a mother, a woman in the ’90s, she had her own challenges, probably more difficult than it would be. She would work herself up to the top of a company, be a number one or whatever, and get knocked out.

I remember her going down and basically sleeping on people’s couches in West Virginia. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She’d do that for years. I would get frustrated with her at times as I got older. She would call me and after investing so much of her energy and money into someone that she thought was going to be a big hitter, or someone that she thought was going to be what she called a go-now person, they would fall apart after two years. She would tell me that she had a meeting with someone. Finally someone showed up as opposed to not showing up. She thinks that they’re going to be the next thing.

She would start driving down that lane to get ready for another year or two or whatever. I was like, “I’ve heard this story from you so many times.” I would get frustrated with it and be like, “How many times are you going to tell me about this person who didn’t work out?” I started to realize that it was not only something that was my experience but it was something that was drilled into me, that tenacity and persistence. She was blind to the idea of something not working out. It didn’t work out. She moves on to the next thing. Not only that but she’s an amazingly, incredibly giving, thoughtful, loving person.

Family is not someone who shares your same blood. Family is someone who shows up. Click To Tweet

She’s always been my number one fan. She is the most loving, wonderful person to me. She’s an incredible mother and teacher. What’s so interesting to me about her though is I often have these conversations with her where I’m like, “Mom, you’re so sweet.” She’s so thoughtful and sweet in many ways. At the same time, she’s a bull of a person that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. She’s an unassuming normal woman. At this point, she’s a little bit older. She is persistent. She had things. I remember we even had things in our house, these little things that seemed silly. I forget what those things are called.

These posters of water and it’ll have a saying under it, like, “One drip creates an ocean,” I don’t know. It can be some Eastern saying or whatever, all these mindset things that were around. I grew up believing that I could achieve whatever I wanted to achieve. There was no question. If someone told me no, I won’t say it here but it was like, “Screw off.” I don’t care. Not only that, I got to the point of even family members. I’ll openly say this and I remember a cousin of mine. He was big, a personal trainer in Hollywood, a lot of celebrities, and all this other stuff.

I don’t care about that. He’s a good guy in his own respect but when I first moved out here and lost my father, I ended up going to different things that he would do. He would go down to Muscle Beach in Venice and have some show or something like that. Maybe I was going through whatever I was going through at that time with my father. This is all relative to my mother because it’s her loyalty and the fact that she shows up is such a big character trait for her.

I didn’t feel like I was welcomed by my own family. I remember after about six months of being out in Los Angeles, I was super green. I felt like I’d been out here for a long time. I emailed my cousin. I had a couple of relationships, family-wise, and a chip on my shoulder. I didn’t want anyone to give me anything. I was hitting a wall, one wall after another. She was a big executive at Warner Brothers. This is a very personal story. She probably doesn’t even know this but that’s fine.

We set a lunch over at the private dining room at Warner Brothers. I came over and went into her office, parked my car, and got a pass. I went into her building. She was at the main building. There were basically twelve people who were running Warner Brothers at the time of the corporate offices. She was Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications. She handled all the corporate communications. I think Time Warner owned Warner’s at the time.

I get it with her job. Who knows what she was dealing with and what she was used to. She came out of her office and I don’t remember a very warm feeling. We walked out of her building and walked across this area where there was this dining area building. We go in there. I don’t think there’s anyone there. It’s a private thing. I sit down with her. She looked at me. This was my cousin through marriage. I had seen her at family events and stuff like that. She looked at me. We knew each other and she said, “What do you want?”

I will never forget that. I knew what I wanted. I said, “Can you please open the door for me? Can you introduce me to someone?” That’s what I was thinking. I paused for a moment and didn’t say that. I meant it but I said, “We’ve seen each other at family events. I’ve moved out here. I don’t have much family around here. I honestly wanted to get to know you a little bit better.” Her guard dropped immediately. We proceeded to have this two-hour great conversation and a nice finish up. She proceeds to walk me back over to her office and introduces me to every major Warner executive there.

 

I walked out of that building and said to myself, “I’ll never talk to you again.” I meant it. The reason why was because of those words, “What do you want?” After having lost my father, everything else and the way that I approach things, I’ve never talked to her since and that was probably several years ago. I think her husband, who’s my actual cousin, has tried to reach out and set dinners and all kinds of stuff over the years when his brother, who’s my cousin, also has come out. I’ve turned down every chance of it. There were a lot of other things when I would go there and I felt like he was very focused on himself.

My blood family, to me, is someone who shows up. That was a big part of my mother. She’s my blood but I saw her being someone who was a very big giver, showed up for people and that’s a big part of how I do business. I focus on building authentic relationships with people, thinking about what is important to another person, being a person who cares, who will show up for someone if it’s not in my best interest but will do what I believe is the right thing.

There was such a subconscious or whatever you want to call it, influence in my life from her in terms of the persistence and the tenacity but in the little things, the caring about people and showing up. That human component, building that actual relationship with another person. That personal relationship is crucial to anything you do in life. You hear this all the time and I hate this. I’m okay using the word hate. I don’t like the word sales or sell. I don’t like to sell anything because I don’t want to put on a show.

It is what it is. People are buying you or you’re selling yourself. Through my own process, I learned it was so much easier to be honest, truthful, and authentic. I don’t have to remember my story. It is what it is. I think that people do, for lack of a better term, they may appreciate that because they realize that on an intrinsic level, on a subconscious level, they realize that you’re not playing a game. I might understand how the game works. If I’m in litigation, I can understand what moves I need to make but that’s separate from drilling down into what is important. Those are a lot of lessons I learned from her.

I know your family, your grandfather, your grandmother, your uncles, your whole family, or your whole Pittsburgh family anyway. You come from such an amazing group of people. Tell me if I’m right on this. Your grandfather, your mom’s dad, was a Mayo Clinic physician when he met your grandmother, who I believe was a nurse. If I remember right, in the Mariana Islands, I think it was during World War II.

I know that she was there. They went to Saipan for some time.

Your grandfather was an Army doctor. His father was a famous chemist and I believe it was he who had a room named for him at the University of Pittsburgh or Carnegie Mellon.

There is such a gift in the loss. You become lethal because everyone else is attached to something. Click To Tweet

There’s the Lowy Room, which my mother’s Arlene Lowy. The Lowy Room is at the University of Pittsburgh. He worked for the government at the time so he didn’t get the proceeds from it. He created the patent for the grenade, tear gas, and sixteen different patents. He was, from what I understand, a very brilliant guy. On my father’s side as well, there was a lot of that. My father’s father was a brilliant psychiatrist. I think most of the people in my family on both sides were probably generational. That’s the thing. When you came to this country, their parents wanted them to get an education. You became a doctor. A lot of them became doctors.

You stand on the shoulders of a lot of great people. Let’s talk about your book.

It was interesting because it was going to come out and I got delayed with my publisher. It was a decision. I dealt with enough emergencies that came up every day that it got to a point where my schedule was what it was. I moved it. It could still come out. We still could have scheduled it earlier but all of a sudden, I had another epiphany. I realized that October 9th was the 19th anniversary of my father’s passing when I was nineteen. The publishing date is October 9th, 2022.

Let’s go through the basic stuff. When all these folks are reading and say, “I’ve got to get Jordan Matthew’s book.” What three things minimally will they walk away with when they’re done reading it?

I don’t know if I’ll hit 3, 4, or 2 but I think specifically. The book is called Failure: When You Have Nothing, You Have Everything. It speaks to that. These are very specific stories that go into my own personal loss of my father, his struggle with alcoholism, taking care of him, him dying, and the stories of taking care of him when he was relapsing and in and out of jail. Yet through all of that experience, in his way, he gave me such a gift because he, in my view, left and passed away to let me free, to live my life and take steps.

There’s a philosophy to this. I think there is such a gift in a loss. I can’t take credit for it. I have had these experiences with forced loss. It’s almost like whether it’s the universe or whatever it is, creating a situation where trauma and catastrophe happen. The amazing thing is what you realize you can do in those moments.

When you lose all of the things around you or perceptively all of the things around you, you become lethal. Everyone else is attached to something, afraid of losing their job or losing the client. Everyone is afraid. Is someone going to find out who I am? When you operate in a truly fearless way, I think it’s not only magnetic but the things that you can do if you’re willing to handle discomfort and pain are phenomenal. That’s one thing.

 

The other thing is the actual stories are very real and incredible. I say that humbly but the things that have gone on in terms of putting together $600 million in financing as a 26, 27-year-old and working on multi-billion-dollar deals. I don’t care much about the numbers. That was part of it, the belief that I knew that I could do it when so many people doubted me. Even when I was proving it, people would doubt me and people would try to take me out. Dad is such a big part of it. People constantly have this belief that everything is supposed to be okay. It’s like that saying that you can know the strength of someone by the size of their enemies.

I’ve always looked at that as a stronghold for myself. I want to take on the biggest thing because I’m testing myself. I’m seeing what I can do. That’s a big part of it but there’s another element. If you’re talking about a third thing, there is a philosophical, spiritual base for that. You and I were talking about the Wim Hof Method. I ended up getting into meditation, breathwork, and oxygenating my mind in a way that resets yourself. I do cold showers every day, cold plunges, and all of that stuff. It’s a shock to your physiological system.

When you experience it, not only do you have a physiological experience with endorphins and dopamine. You rebuild yourselves. It’s a proven scientific thing. This is why top athletes do this. You recover so much quicker. I was talking to you earlier about often I will douse my head in cold water. That’s a big part of it because my brain thinks quicker. The synopsis clicks quicker. I don’t own the technology to that but there is a technological experience to that.

It goes back to that shock. If you start your day that way or even if you end your day that way, whatever it is, it helps your sleep. You become lethal, for lack of a better term. Your ability to see through failure, not care at all about what anyone does or doesn’t do when you realize that you don’t need anything, any single person, meaning I love people. When you attach yourself to people and things, I don’t want to lose my car or my house. I’m not suggesting you go out there and be reckless. There’s a big distinction.

That’s probably the wisdom that I guess I’ve gained at some point. There was a time when I don’t know if I was reckless but I was willing to wreck myself more like a younger person without kids. Unfortunately, I think you’ve got to go through that. I often say to myself that every parent does. I wish that I could give my kids what I know because I don’t know that you can get this knowledge without going through the experience or the wisdom without going through the experience.

I’m also scared. I’m not scared much of anything but for them, I realized I’m like, “If they had to go through what I had to go through, I’m concerned if they’re going to survive it. I go back as a parent from a parenting, psychological, and business perspective. My main goal as a parent is to teach my kids how to fail. I don’t care about whether they win. They will win in life if they can learn how to lose, fail, or break and if they’re willing to break.

I think the biggest problem is that most people are not willing to break. They will either never start because of the complete failure of breaking or go up to the line and never cross it. What if I lose? That’s not the way that you’re ever going to get anything. You will live a mediocre existence if that’s how you live life. That’s a reality. That’s a large crux of what the book is about.

As a parent, you should teach your kids how to fail. They will win in life if they can learn how to lose. Click To Tweet

I can’t wait to read it and couldn’t agree more. It’s funny that you say that. I gave you three points on that. Listening to what you’re talking about. Number one is I read a book several years ago called What Losing Taught Me About Winning. It’s one of the 10,000 books on my bookshelves. That was by Fran Tarkenton, who was a quarterback back before you were born. When I was young, he was a quarterback for the Vikings and went to four Super Bowls, lost all four.

I met Fran a couple of times through business many years ago. To that point and to the point you’re making, he didn’t look at it like it was the end of the road. I lost a ballgame, big deal. He became a major entrepreneur and was an entrepreneur throughout his career even before he got to the NFL. I remember reading that. When I met him, I had a similar conversation that we’re having right now. Failure teaches us so much if we’re willing to learn from it and be empathetic towards it rather than pathetic towards it. Tom Brady loses. LeBron James loses. Magic Johnson lost. Dan Gable lost.

Some of the greatest winners in history, Abraham Lincoln lost every election until he became president. These people go down in history because they got past it to your point. That’s what your book’s going to do to help people. The second thing about failure is that my son right now is at a crossroads in his life, about to graduate high school and start college in the fall, go to business school and play hockey, what I want them to do.

Go to school, get a business degree, play hockey, learn the family business, which you’ll eventually inherit part of it with his sisters, and he loves cars. He’s a car guy. He’s debating, “Do I go to trade school instead or go to trade school after,” and we’re designing his life. I tell him about a guy who was a neighbor of mine in New Jersey growing up. You would see him down the street. He’d be smoking a cigarette. He’d be underneath his car hood at all times. Day, night, wind blowing, snow blowing. He’d be out there with the cars.

Long story short, his name was Frank Wright and he developed a product called Tough Oil. The product is still out there. I imagine Mr. Wright must be dead by now. I would tell my son about how he used to take us in his Piper Cub airplane down around the World Trade Center. We’d fly from Teterboro Airport down around the trade center and come back. Mr. Wright told me one time I was about to graduate high school.

I went down the street to talk to him because his son had told me that their company had gotten very successful. They had gotten a big offer that they rejected. I remember saying to him, “How did you get successful?” He was under the car hood and all dirty. He looks up and says, “I wasn’t afraid to fail. When everybody told me you’re going to fail or you’re going to go bankrupt.” He goes, “I didn’t care. I said I focused on what I want to do.” To your point, “I’ll make it happen.” Eventually, he did it in a very big way. The third thing about failure that I’ve found in my life and my career is, “You got to learn from those failures.”

Sometimes those failures are things like we talked about earlier. You mentioned Wim Hof, who you and I share that Wim Hof passion for biohacking and all that. Look what Wim did. He took his very negative, tremendously sad experience of his wife ending her life prematurely, leaving him with four kids, raising his kids, built a business around the world. Now that business is helping tens of thousands of people that are going through trauma, which we’ve talked about. You’ve experienced in your life, not only with your dad’s passing but with some of these circumstances financially, losing everything and coming back.

 

Final question for you, when you look at this book, it’s the first and by the way, knowing your mom and knowing the writing process, you wrote the first book. It will be the last book. It’s like guys who have boats. The best two days, are the day the guy buys the boat and the day he sells the boat. The writing process because I’m going through it right now, wrestling with another topic I want to write about. You got to go through it where you go, “I’m never doing that again. How did I do that?”

This book’s going to bless a lot of people because your story is unique. It’s genuine. You’ve overcome such a tremendous amount and gotten through it time and time again. I’ll give you a perfect metaphor especially with you being in the entertainment world. Rocky 1 comes out in 1977. I don’t know if you remember in the movie but in Round 14, Rocky was getting pounded and knocked down three times. The third time he gets knocked down. Burgess Meredith is his manager. He says, “Stay down.” He fights his way up and pulls himself up on the ropes. Even Apollo looks across the ring like, “You got to be kidding, buddy. Stay down and I’m killing you.” He gets up. Point being, it’s not how many times we get knocked down. It’s how many times we get back up.

First of all, I love taking a hit. I literally look for it. I love taking a hit at this point. It is an edge that I look for because I feel like every single time I do, it is something that makes me tougher. There are two points that I would think of. Number one, speaking to that Rocky moment. You and I were talking about this before but I think it was the last Rocky before they’ve moved on to Creed or whatever. I remember we were having this conversation offline. It’s that one scene where he’s fighting an exhibition fight. He’s an older guy and his son, Rocky, has this restaurant. His son came in and asked him to come outside so they could have a conversation.

I’m not going to go through the whole dialogue. His son is saying, “Can you not fight?” Rocky’s like, “I think I have to,” but he’s like, “Can you not do it? I basically always lived in your shadow and the moment that I started to get something for myself, I started to get a job where people started respecting me. You do this. Everyone’s looking at you. They’re making fun of you and making fun of me,” and Rocky pauses. He starts getting into this introspective moment. He holds up his hand like he’s holding a baby. He’s like, “I remember when I was looking at you or when you were a baby and I used to hold you in my hand.

I used to say, ‘You’re going to be the best man ever. You’re going to do all these things.’ You were and went and did all this stuff. Somewhere along the way, you started caring about what people thought.” He goes into that saying, “It’s not how much or how hard you can hit. It is how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” The fact of taking a hit and moving forward is so much more powerful. I look for that. That also goes back to having the right teachers and the right people around you. I never speak, by the way. I’ve entered into rooms. I’ve done huge deals.

I’ve worked on huge things. I’ve never, ever in my life thought that I didn’t deserve to be in the room. I’ve never looked at anyone and thought to myself I’m impressed by who I’m in the room with. I might be impressed from I’m interested in you. I’m interested in what you’ve done but I never am intimidated, or think that you’ve done something and I’m not at the same caliber or anything like that. I don’t mean egotistically that I know what I can do and what I’ve achieved and whatnot. To that point, I remember, I think it was Schwarzenegger’s documentary in the 70s when he was going for the seventh Mr. Olympia title.

I also remember how he talked about how he would train. It was either in his book or that documentary that talked about he would push himself. He would put so much weight on a rack that he would literally pass out and wake up about five minutes later. The way that he was able to grow stronger, there’s a lot of sculpting and all that stuff that goes into it but it was because he was willing to pass out. He was willing to put himself in a situation where he would literally, physically collapse and then he would come back. The takeaway is you have to be willing to be uncomfortable.

It's not how much or how hard you can hit. It's how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. Click To Tweet

The last point of that is I think there’s a lot of confusion in the world. There’s a lot of confusion where people will say, “They’re always seeking comfort. Let me go to this resort. Let me call my therapist.” Therapists are great and all that stuff, that’s fine. There’s a lie in life, which is that life is supposed to be a certain way. You hear people say, “I’m frustrated. I’m upset because it was supposed to go this way. This was supposed to happen. That was supposed to whatever.”

That’s not only a bunch of BS because it is a bunch of BS. There’s no supposed to or whatever. What’s going to happen is what’s going to happen. It’s like a wave. You’re going to get hit with one wave after another. I said this to someone, “Part of my training, part of my experience, is learning how to surf an 80-foot wave. It may take twenty years to learn how to hold balance when you’re in a situation that could totally take you out and how to be in a situation like that where you’re not panicking and you’re not flipping out or whatever.”

It is a way of life to understand that the very natural, normal way to live life, the normal biological experience of life is discomfort. You can look at Darwinism and natural selection. I talked to people about biology and cellular mitosis. You put pressure on something and cells divide. You either die or you survive. You adapt or overcome. It’s the same concept for people in the Marines or the military. You adapt. That’s what life is. When you have a mentality of learning how to adapt to whatever is in front of you, that’s when you can achieve things with a very clear mind and focus. You can achieve whatever you want.

You are a testament to that. You’re not even 40 yet. You’ve already done some amazing things in your law, entertainment, and academic career. You got a great young family and I know how proud your mom is. I know your dad is looking down from heaven. I know he’s proud of you. I know I’m proud of you. I know your grandpa certainly would have been if he was here. I know your whole family is. It’s amazing what you’ve done. Keep doing it because this country and this world, needs leadership, like maybe never before I didn’t live through the civil war, I’m not that old.

I did live partially through the Vietnam war but I was pretty young even when that ended. With what this country and what this world’s gone through the last few years, we need clear leadership of people who have a work ethic, clarity of purpose, and are willing to take a punch and say, “It is what it is. Let me get up and keep going.” That’s you, my friend.

Thank you. We’re all in this together. I mean that in a silly thought. It’s certainly not about myself. I appreciate that. It is definitely more about the message. That’s I think the driving force between what this is for me is saying, “I’ve had these experiences.” I appreciate a lot of people have their experiences but I also realize that everyone’s got their own story. Use that story as a strength and as a tool. It’s a gift if you learn how to use it the right way.

I can’t wait to read this book. I know our readers can’t wait to read this book. Once the book gets launched, let’s come back and do a recap of it because you’re going to go through a lot of different steps launching it and a lot of different scenarios. I’m looking forward to it, my friend. This is an amazing story. This book is going to be life-changing. You want to read it, folks. Jordan, I’m going to give you the last word.

Thanks. I appreciate that. Life is definitely a journey. My life is not perfect. No one is by any means. We all have experiences and I continue to have experiences every day that are trying and challenging but it’s waking up. I was getting up and felt very crushed. I was feeling depressed. I’ve had a couple of those experiences and I don’t get depressed but that’s a good sign for me. I felt when I was experiencing that, I was like, “This is a good time for me.” This means I’m experiencing whatever the hell I’m experiencing and I’m pushing up against the line. I know that the other side of that is me getting stronger, having to make decisions.

I think the biggest thing in life, as a final thought is we all have expectations. As human beings, we want to get some level of certainty in our lives and the challenges that certainly become very comfortable. The only certain thing is that that certainty is going to change. I know that I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow but I do want to live my life fully and to the extent that other people are doing that as well. That’s the purpose and that’s the message. Thanks, John.

 

Important Links

• Jordan Matthews
• Moving Up 2020
• Leave Nothing to Chance
• What Losing Taught Me About Winning

 

About Jordan Matthews

Jordan Matthews is a business trial lawyer and litigator with broad experience in the entertainment industry and business community. Mr. Matthews currently serves as lead counsel on multiple matters throughout the country and is actively litigating matters in California, Nevada and Pennsylvania. He handles matters in federal and state court and also has experience handling administrative proceedings with the California Labor Commissioner. He is actively involved in litigation covered by the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, and the New York Times, among others.

With extensive experience in entertainment and media law, breach of contract, fraud and interference, employment (wrongful termination and discrimination), and business law, Mr. Matthews represents a wide range of clients including producers, directors, production companies, athletes, entrepreneurs, C-level executives and high-net-worth individuals in the entertainment industry and business sector.

In 2010, he facilitated the litigation strategy regarding a breach contract dispute associated with $6 million in potential damages. He was involved with a breach of contract matter over a multi-million-dollar international oil deal. He also has broad experience related to partnership disputes and resolution.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Mr. Matthews spent nearly a decade as a film finance executive and producer. He raised the capital to fully finance his first feature film, which was then sold to a mini-major motion picture studio and licensed to various international distributors. Later, he managed a team of top entertainment executives and formed several slate financing arrangements with various motion picture studios. The deals were valued around $600 million.

He interfaced with alliances per international closings of bank guarantees and standby letters of credit valued in excess of $3 billion. As an executive, Mr. Matthews also negotiated a $30 million prints and advertising arrangement with a publicly held company; and evaluated a $15 million equity investment into a cable enterprise.v