Season 2 - Episode 37: "The Power of the Mind" with Matt Rosenthal

10 December 2021

Mark Edwards has a stimulating conversation with Matt Rosenthal, CEO at Mind Core.

What Matt Finds Inspirational..

Matt says he likes change and uncertainty, coupled with having to figure things out and not being quite sure what’s coming next. He also loves failure as it forces him to push himself and to learn and to see how far he can go and what he’s capable of - He’s often surprised by what he can do and inspired by seeing what he can do and how far he can go in his life and how many people he can impact.

Matt has read the book, “The 5am Club” by Robin Sharmer about 10 times because there’s so much information in it about the brain and how it works. Matt habitually gets up early and meditates for 20 minutes, then reads - He feels this sets the tone for the day.

Dysfunctional, chaotic childhood

To survive a dysfunctional, chaotic childhood after his father passed away, Matt become very organised and tried to control everything they can control.

His mother is a narcissist and Matt adopted a lot of the negative characteristics and behaviours that accompany the personality but ultimately found they didn’t serve him well in his personal life. Conversely, in business, these traits contributed to his success; he was so detail-oriented that his customers loved it.

At this time, he used to say he was ‘perfectly dysfunctional’.

He saw the fault in anything that was wrong - because that’s how he grew up - If his mother saw a crumb in the kitchen counter, that would cause 3 hours of problems. It had created a very unhealthy way of thinking for Matt but it wasn’t until his early 40s that he began to understand what was going on.

Personal Transformation

At this point, he and his business partner had enlisted the services of a business coach/therapist trying to save their ‘business marriage’. This coach said to him that for Matt to truly reach his potential, he had to address his traumatic childhood, adding that if he didn’t do this, he’d also be divorced and lose his family. This was 3 to 4 years ago.

The coach offered to work with Matt for 2 years to help him transform and to show him how others saw him, which Matt couldn’t do himself because, the coach said, his ego kept getting in the way.

Working with this coach transformed Matt’s life and all his relationships, for the better.

Mindset, Health and Fitness

Matt initially worked many jobs to make ends meet and also, finally, graduated college aged 28 (It had taken him around 10 years)

He wanted to be a Police officer but couldn't on health grounds so he became a volunteer fire officer for 15 years. Then one of his friends had a contract with Deautsche bank and they said they‘d pay him $40k for unpacking boxes and putting computers on shelves. So, he sort of fell into IT and finally had a direction.

He regarded it as an opportunity to learn, bought lots of books and taught himself everything he possibly could about IT. NOw he had a direction and focus, Matt rose very quickly up the ranks, moving to IT support.

Pivotal Point

He was let go from that job and ended up being the only person overseeing IT for a billion-dollar company in NYC. He was in way over his head as he didn’t know half the stuff he’d said he could do. In true Matt style, he went ahead and figured it out, getting to see the internal workings of a Fortune 500 company and gaining an MBA in the process

Mindcore

The company was founded in 1999 but Matt tactually took it over Mindcore in 2014. He focused all his efforts on growing the company to a multi-billion dollar company, including making a couple of acquisitions.

Today the company embodies all the evolutions of Matt himself - They are IT support, trusted advisors, strategists and risk managers for businesses.

Matt’s diverse background is a combination of business and entrepreneurial skills and experience - and failures. This is Mindcore’s personality - As a company, they give guidance on cyber security, cloud, collaboration tools, daily IT support, servers, networks, VoiP. Whatever a business needs, they figure out what is required to make sure the IT is on track to help grow the business.

It’s not just about fixing computers. It’s a partnership. Matt says he feels physical pain if a client is disappointed. He wants his customers to be happy and everybody that works with him in his company thinks and feels the same way.

Handling Failures Along the Way

Matt's advice when failure looms is to try to zoom out so you can see the bigger picture. Stay focused and stick to your road map. Step back from the moment and stay in the right mindset. In the worst of scenarios, things take time to percolate through but you still have to make decisions. You can’t just stand still - Don’t get stuck in ‘analysis paralysis’. Take action, even if it turns out to be the wrong course.

Matt draws on his experiences as a volunteer fireman to illustrate how you can’t see the full picture from inside a burning building - It’s the team outside who can see if the roof is about to collapse or the walls cave in - It’s all about perspective.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness - being in the moment - is a skill and you can acquire if you’re open to learning it. When he hires people, Matt always gets them to complete a personality test because he wants people on board with the right mindset for Mindcore.

When presented with fear, our reptile mind will freeze or run. By nature, then, our mind will tend to go to the ‘fight or flight’ mode because that’s wired into us from when we used to run away from dinosaurs. You can earn to calm your mind so it triggers a calmer more mindful response.

The One Thing…

Matt says the one thing he really aspires to is that feeling of happiness and joy - almost like constant sunlight that people around you can feel radiating from you.

Money is, of course, great and it can make life fun but it can also disappear at any moment, whereas an awesome state of mind that impacts you and those around you is something nobody can take away from you...