He Started Living on Purpose (and how you can too)

Ryan Hanley: The worst possible feeling you can have about yourself, it hit. But at the exact same time, it was like Jesus said, "Hey, I'm going to give you a hug anyway." And this ridiculous, unfair, unmerited, undeserved love just hit at that same time. I broke as a human being. It was like it happened in that moment where all of a sudden, like, boom, everything about me just completely changed. I fell to the floor. I just started weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping.

Ryan Hanley: Let's go. Make it look, make it look, make it look. The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business. This is the way.

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Ryan Hanley: Incredible. And it's necessary to understand how he got to the point where he is helping entrepreneurs and leaders define their purpose and convey that message through how they communicate. His thoughts on communication in general, what makes good communication versus bad communication, are all battle-tested through his time as a minister. This is an emotional roller coaster. It's an incredible story, and I just can't be more excited to share it with you. I'm so excited that I can't even come up with a good way of describing it. That being said, I love you for being here. I love you for sharing this show. I love it when you guys leave us a rating and review. I read them all. I appreciate the hell out of you, and it is my great pleasure to bring you Matthew Huber.

[Transition]

Ryan Hanley: Dude, I was incredibly excited when our mutual friend Sailor Hirsch introduced us. We started rapping about some business stuff, except we talked for like an hour plus, and I'd say less than 10% of the conversation was actually about what we were supposedly supposed to be talking about. It was real life stuff, man. Talking about manhood, talking about life, talking about faith.

Matthew Huber: Yeah, it's awesome.

Ryan Hanley: I was like, "Dude, you gotta come on the podcast." So first and foremost, I love what you're wearing. For those listening at home, you've got the "Built on Purpose" sweatshirt with the "Built on Purpose" hat. The intentionality that implies is something that has been a struggle in my own life, and I love it. I've really come to that message because for so long I felt like maybe I have some talents in certain places. I certainly have energy, drive, ambition, but I was reacting to things that were pressed upon me versus, like your slogan, "Built on Purpose." Here's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to focus that energy in an intentional way to get to a goal.

Matthew Huber: That's right.

Ryan Hanley: In getting there, you have this amazing origin story. I would love to start in that place. Start wherever you want, take it from there. We'll head on.

Matthew Huber: Sure. I'll try to consolidate this because there's a lot of wild things that have happened throughout my life. I was born and raised in California, Central Valley, Modesto, California. If you happen to know where Modesto is, chances are you're addicted to some type of methamphetamine. No, literally, it was like the meth capital of California. It was crazy down in the Valley.

Matthew Huber: Anyway, I grew up in the Central Valley. Parents got divorced when I was eight years old, which really served to mold and shape the next 25 years of my life. Dad really wasn't in the picture. He was in and out. We were on welfare, Section 8 housing. We didn't have a working washer or dryer at our house. We had to take all of our dirty clothes on a city bus and go to a laundromat. Sometimes you'd see people, and you're carrying your dirty clothes in a black Hefty trash bag, and they're like, "What the heck are you doing, bro? Are you homeless?" And you're like, "Kind of."

Matthew Huber: Anyway, I felt like education was my way out of that lifestyle, so I did really well in school. I originally was going to focus on sports medicine. But I had this crazy encounter when I was 17 years old. My family really wasn't religious growing up. I think after the divorce, my mom was searching. She was searching for maybe her next husband, I don't know, but she was searching for something. So we bounced around to all these random churches, all these different denominations. I didn't have a fat clue what was going on. Honestly, once I became a teenager, had my sense of independence, my mom really didn't have a lot of supervision over us kids because she was working. She was trying to go take herself back through school. There were a lot of things distracting her, so we kind of got to just be wild. We loved it. Got into a lot of trouble.

Matthew Huber: When I was about 17, this crazy situation happened. I befriended this kid named Derek, and his dad was actually a deacon at the church. He invited us to go to this youth event. Most times when he would invite us to church or any church-related thing, we'd be like, "Heck no, bro, we ain't doing that." But this time, he paid for it. I don't know if it was just my poverty upbringing or my relationship with money, but the fact that the dude actually paid money for us to attend, I felt an obligation to go. Sure enough, me and my buddy took a couple of girls and we showed up to this random church event.

Matthew Huber: We showed up late. We didn't even know what was going to happen. I wasn't uber familiar with church, especially the type of church we were about to walk into. We sat in the very back row. I remember they were singing their songs, kids were on their knees, the band was playing, there were kids crying. The only thing I was thinking about the whole time was, "The music ain't that good. The music is seriously not that good. What are y'all doing?" But obviously there was something else happening in that room that I was totally unaware of.

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, they wrap up the music, and this guy gets on the stage and starts preaching. He was this thin Mexican guy with these eyes, man. His eyes would bulge out of his head. He had the veins going on, the sweat going on. He was screaming and yelling. Honestly, for the first 10 or 15 minutes of this dude talking, I was like, "What a phony. This is all BS, dude. I've heard about these type of guys, and I can't believe I'm actually seeing one firsthand." But then this crazy thing happened. I started looking around at all the church kids I was surrounded by. There were like 200, 300 kids in this big auditorium. They were passing notes to each other, cracking jokes. It didn't really seem like anybody was actually paying attention to what this dude was saying. That struck me. I was like, "Either these kids are totally missing the gold this dude is trying to drop into their life, or this dude is just full of crap." My curious brain said, "I got to figure out the answer to that question."

Matthew Huber: I started listening, and Ryan, I'll tell you, it was like... You hear about people saying they go to church and God's talking to them or they get this crazy feeling. All of that was happening at level 11. All of a sudden I'm like, "Whoa, this dude is reading my mail. This dude knows what I'm thinking about, knows what I'm going through, and he's actually speaking something encouraging." Again, I have no church etiquette. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. This dude kept saying this rhetorical question—I didn't realize it was rhetorical at the time—but he kept saying, "Who's gonna stand if everybody in your generation were to bow down to all the idols of this world? Who's gonna stand?" His eyes were popping out of his head. I remember he kept saying it, saying it, saying it. I was starting to get pissed off. I was like, "This guy's been up here for like 25 minutes, sweating, screaming, yelling, doing all of these things, and not a single one of these church kids is doing anything. No one's standing up. Am I missing something? Are they missing something?"

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, I'm sitting there, and this crazy thought comes to my mind: "Maybe you're the one who's supposed to stand up, Matt." I'm like, "Oh, heck no, man. No way I'm going to do that. I don't know these people. I don't even know what's happening here." But that voice just kept getting louder and louder and louder. Every time he'd say, "Who's going to stand?" I felt this impulsion to just stand up. So sure enough, in the middle of this dude preaching a sermon, I just stand up. I don't know if I felt bad for the dude, like, "Stop yelling at everybody, man. I'll be the guy. All right, I'll stand up."

Matthew Huber: I stand up. He's talking to this side of the auditorium, and when he looks back over to the side I was sitting on, the dude just stops dead in his tracks. He's like, "Young man right there in the white polo shirt, God's been highlighting you in my heart and my mind this entire service. God's going to do something radical in your life. He's going to use you to impact people." I'm like, "Ain't no one standing behind me, so I guess he's talking to me." What ended up happening at that moment is every kid in that auditorium turned their eyes straight to me. I went from bold and confident—"Yeah, baby, I'm gonna stand. I'm gonna show these churchy kids how this is really done"—to all of a sudden they start looking at me, and I just feel tiny. I felt so insecure. I felt like, "Oh my gosh, I've just made a horrible, horrible mistake."

Matthew Huber: But this preacher guy, dude, he must have been tapped in with the supernatural or something. He said something that in a moment seemed a little strange, but when it happened, it made complete sense. He's like, "Young man, I want you to look at me." When I did, Ryan, I will tell you, I felt like I could do anything. I felt like I could stand there confidently. I felt like my life could be different. I felt like maybe I didn't have to keep repeating the stuff that I was born into, that maybe my life could make a difference.

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, he's like, "Hey, I'm going to ask you to do something brave." I'm thinking in my head, "Is this not brave enough, man? Come on, I already stood up in front of all these people." He's like, "Hey, I want you to come down here to the front. I'm going to pray for you." I'm just like, "Oh, dang, dang, dang. Now I'm in it." Literally, the exit door was like four feet away from me. We were in the very last row, so I could have easily just been like, "I'm out," and exited the scene super quick. Something told me I was supposed to walk down there. So I start walking. Bro, it was like I was floating, man. I don't even remember how I got there so fast. It was just like, yeah, all the way there.

Matthew Huber: This dude reaches down to talk to me, and he says, "Hey, I'm about to put my hand on you and pray for you. When I do, you're going to experience the power of God. You're going to feel all of God's power just hit you." My first thought was, "Should I get a helmet on or something? What does that mean? Is a freaking meteor gonna hit me?" I'm like, "All right, cool, whatever. Let's go." The dude puts his hand on my shoulder. The only way I can describe what happened was when he put his hand on my shoulder, simultaneously, I felt my absolute worthlessness. All the things I'd ever done wrong, all the ways I'd hurt people, all the ways I'd hurt myself, all the scary and embarrassing and wrong things I was hiding in my heart. I felt like absolute crap. I felt like, "Dude, I've screwed this life thing up. I'm a mistake." The worst possible feeling you can have about yourself hit.

Matthew Huber: But at the exact same time, it was like Jesus said, "Hey, I'm going to give you a hug anyway." This ridiculous, unfair, unmerited, undeserved love just hit at that same time. What happened, Ryan, was I broke as a human being. It wasn't because someone was beating me. It wasn't because somebody had brainwashed me. It happened in that moment where all of a sudden, boom, everything about me just completely changed. I fell to the floor. I just started weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping.

Matthew Huber: I don't even know how much time goes by. I finally get off the floor, and there's this puddle of boogers and tears and everything. I'm like, "What in the world just happened?" My friends are gone. All the people in the conference are gone. There's a couple people in the back cleaning up trash, but they just left me laying there. I was like, "This is the craziest thing that's ever happened." The first thing I'm thinking is, "I need to go wash this junk off my face." So I go to the bathroom. This is a part of the story I haven't talked about until now.

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Matthew Huber: I had a bad case of acne. My mom's got rosacea. I had an overactive oil pore that was overproducing vitamin A. When I would get zits, it wasn't just those little white ones that pop up. It was under the skin, pockets of oil. Dude, it freaking sucked. I had them on my chest, my back, my face, my arms, my legs. It made me incredibly insecure. What I did that day, standing up in front of everybody, was the boldest thing I'd ever done in my whole life. I really just wanted to blend in, lurk in the shadows, and not draw too much attention to myself because I 100% believed that when people were talking to me, they weren't really listening to what I had to say. They were just looking at my face and looking at how jacked up it was. I was carrying that as a 17-year-old, super insecure, on top of all the other stuff—the poverty, not having a dad around. It was crazy. A lot of stuff happening.

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, I go into the bathroom and start washing my face off. I look up, and my skin looks just like it does right now. Obviously I didn't have a beard, but it was clean. There was no acne. There was no issue. Everything had been completely healed. As a matter of fact, I was on this experimental drug for the type of acne I had that actually could cause liver damage and kill me. I had to take a supplement on top of it called Retin-A, which replenishes your vitamin A supply. All the little cracks in your fingers—the reason those cracks happen and allow flexibility is because your body is producing vitamin A that moisturizes and nourishes those things to bend. When you deplete your body of vitamin A, you have to replenish it or really bad things will happen. All of these things started cracking and bleeding. In between my elbows, behind my knees, under my arms, anywhere there's folding of skin, we were depleting all the vitamin A supply. I was in pain, dude. It freaking sucked. It was embarrassing.

Matthew Huber: But let me tell you something. That day, I washed my face in that church bathroom, and I looked at myself. It was the first time I'd ever seen my skin clear. I'm like, "What is happening here?" People talk about hearing a voice from God. This was my moment, I guess. I'm sitting there looking at myself in the mirror. Ryan, I am not that smart of a guy, so there's no way I could have come up with this. But I'm sitting there looking at myself in the mirror, and I hear this voice say, "What is your excuse now?" It was like He took away every excuse. He took away the hindrance of my skin. He put a new heart in me. He helped me view the world differently. He put new passions and dreams and desires in me. I really had no excuse to hold back from this new life.

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, I jumped in and started getting involved with the local church. I became a student leader. When it came time to select college, I actually got a full ride scholarship to any California state university I wanted to go to because I graduated top 5% of my class and I was also low income. But I walked away from all those scholarships to go to a non-accredited Bible school at that church to become a pastor. I was so deeply moved. My life was so radically transformed. When I thought about making a difference in the world, nothing could top helping other people experience the same thing that I experienced. That's really how the journey began right there. Up to that point, I was just an obscure kid with no direction, just trying to escape his past. But for the first time in my life, I had purpose.

Matthew Huber: What's crazy is as I built ministries and traveled all over the country and built different churches, that message stayed with me everywhere I went. I'll be honest, as a pastor, I didn't really like preaching sermons. I didn't really like doing weddings. I didn't really like doing funerals. I didn't really like doing counseling sessions. I didn't really like most of the things that a pastor does. But the one thing I absolutely loved more than anything else was sitting down and hearing people's stories and then helping them find purpose, even in the pain, even in the dysfunction, even in the setback, even in the temporary trial or circumstance they may be in. Just pointing them towards, "Hey, there's always hope. God's always working. You never know how this circumstance or situation, although painful and tough right now, might actually be preparing you for something greater in your future." Those types of conversations, I just naturally gravitated towards.

Matthew Huber: When I left the ministry in 2021 and started what I'm doing now with marketing and branding, I knew without a shadow of a doubt we needed to build it on the most firm foundation we could, which is this idea of purpose. If you have someone shoot video and photos and write copy and create all this design stuff, but you don't even really know what you're trying to accomplish or what image you're trying to put out into the world, all that stuff is going to fall flat. But if you take the time to do the hard work to look inside and say, "Hold up, why am I really here on earth? What am I supposed to be doing with the talents, the personality, and the unique worldview that I've been given throughout the course of my life? How am I supposed to be using that to help the human species survive? Not just my own survival, but all those around me as well?" When you start to zoom out of your life and really begin to look at it from that particular lens, either you're completely overwhelmed because you don't know where to start, or you begin to feel this sense of empowerment and you become this unstoppable force once you discover and put some words to the question of what is your purpose.

Matthew Huber: Now that's what I get to do every single day. Every client I work with, we always start with, "Let's discover your purpose. Let's start with the foundation of purpose." Then we can build all kinds of cool creative stuff after the fact. But if you don't know your purpose, number one, you're going to struggle as a human being. Number two, you're also going to struggle in business or whatever endeavor you're trying to move forward if you can't connect it back to something bigger than yourself and something that actually helps other people solve problems or helps point them toward a purpose of their own. That was my story in a super tight window. That's where it started, and that's where we're at today.

Ryan Hanley: Why did you listen to that message?

Matthew Huber: What message?

Ryan Hanley: The church service. "What is your excuse now?" I think a lot of people might have heard that and gone right back to the same lifestyle they were living before. You decided to listen and keep pushing forward.

Matthew Huber: You know, Ryan, if I'm being totally honest, I was guessing, man. I was guessing at life. I was a teenager, so you can't really have that much expectation for a teenager that had no father figure, no real leadership throughout their life. I was just guessing. I was rolling the dice. I was hoping that maybe education, going to college, would somehow better my life and my future and maybe change the trajectory of my family. I was wandering. I think I was lost. I was looking for leadership. That was the first time in my life where I felt like something had happened to me that nudged me and led me and pulled me towards a destination as opposed to, "Good luck, kid. Good luck figuring it out." There was a tremendous amount of direction. There was a tremendous amount of hope. I think for the first time—and we can talk about this a little bit too—I was chasing validation. I think that was the first time I actually felt validated as a person, as a human being. That a God in heaven would care enough to get my attention at this crazy church thing, invade my heart, cause it to radically change, heal my body, and not just be like, "Yo, good luck." But then the cherry on top was like, "I ain't done with you. You are going to do things in your life. I've just removed some of the limitations that were preventing you from even thinking like that, from even dreaming like that. So don't allow an excuse or your previous past excuses to define your future."

Matthew Huber: I don't know. There were probably so many psychological things happening in that moment that caused me for the first time to have hope about my future. That hope was so strong that it altered the course and trajectory of my life.

Ryan Hanley: It's interesting. Different context, different scale, but I do a lot of youth coaching. I coach basketball, coach baseball. You hear parents—parents are the worst, except for the ones I coach. You hear all these things: "They're only 11 years old. Don't put expectation on them. Don't put pressure. It's supposed to just be fun." I listen to that, and I understand where they're coming from. I think it's coming from a good place. But there's another part of me that's like, "Okay, when is the arbitrary time that we start putting expectations? That we start holding these kids accountable?" It doesn't have to be things we'd hold a 25-year-old accountable for. But when does the "they're just kids" excuse go away? When do we start saying, "Look, you've been doing this for five years. I expect you to act classy in every situation. I expect you to show up on time"?

Ryan Hanley: For someone who had lived so long, as you said, without expectation, what I hear in that story is that there was a different kind of pressure on you. It went from the pressure of "How do I stay alive?" to the pressure of "Time to get something done." That expectation allowed you to start feeling worthy. You started to feel like you had value. And then you got direction. This is one of the things that drew me into Jordan Peterson's work, which I came in contact with back in 2016, 2017, when he published *12 Rules for Life*. He has a previous book, *Maps of Meaning*, but that is a difficult one to get through. Amazing, but difficult. *12 Rules for Life* is all about purpose and meaning, purpose and meaning. When we find these things, all of a sudden that job that maybe didn't feel like what you expect—I work in the insurance industry. No little kid grows up and goes, "I want to be an insurance agent when I grow up." Nobody. There's not a single person that does that. But when you get in and you start to find purpose in the work, regardless of what the work is, all of a sudden you start to love what you do and love the people, and it becomes fun and interesting and engaging.

Ryan Hanley: I don't want our entire conversation to be about religion and these types of topics, though I do think they go hand in hand. It feels today like—and I'm not the first one to say this, it may have been Jonathan Haidt or someone else, I think he wrote a wonderful book, *The Coddling of the American Mind*—there's a God-sized hole in people's heart today, and we're filling it with the wrong things. From your place, from doing as much work as you've done with individuals, both as a pastor and as just a friend, as a family member, where did that hole come from? And how do we start to fill it with purpose and meaning?

Matthew Huber: Man, that's a fantastic question. It kind of dabbles in the realm of what's the meaning of life type deal. I've got my own unique theological perspective and my own philosophical perspective on that question. If you have a different one, does it mean you're wrong? It just means you have a different perspective on these things. But my unique perspective is this.

Matthew Huber: The Bible outlines this creation story where God creates the heavens and the earth, creates man and woman. Then there's this adversarial character introduced—the devil, the snake, the tempter. The tempter gets the woman alone and says, "Yo, God didn't really say that you couldn't eat this stuff and touch this fruit. What does He know, man? He just knows that if you eat this, you're going to be better than God. You're going to know more than God. You're going to be wiser than God. You're actually going to be God's God. He's just trying to keep you from all the good things. So have at it. Go be God's God."

Matthew Huber: Sure enough, like any human person, we have flaws, we have insecurities, we have aspirations. The snake manipulated our natural tendencies to get us to overstep a boundary that unfortunately brought in a ton of consequence. The moment that Eve ate the fruit and then shared it with her husband, and God confronted him about that, that was when this idea of sin—S-I-N, missing the mark, however you want to define it—became this mortal flaw of the human race that we now have. According to Christian theology and according to what I've researched and identified in myself, I see it in my children, I've seen it in all the people I've ministered to. This sin, we're born with it. We're born with that hole. I don't think you were good, good, good, good, good, then you got punched in the soul, and all of a sudden there's this massive hole you need to get filled. No. Every single person, because of what happened with Adam and Eve's passing of the bloodline—so why did God set it up like that?

Matthew Huber: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why He set it up like that, but the way He set it up was that every human being from that point on would then inherit the consequence that happened in that garden. And so the consequence is this idea of sin. Now, sin isn't like, "Yo, you're bad, you're a terrible person, you've got no value, you're worthless, oh my gosh, you're such a heathen, get up out of my church," right? It's not that. What sin basically is, is the separation, the gap between who God created you to be and who you are right now.

Ryan Hanley: Right. Right.

Matthew Huber: And again, there's a lot of people who may want to disregard like, "Oh, God didn't make us a certain way. It doesn't tell us how to live a certain way." Well, then, dude, why the heck is there this like 5,000-page book that's outlasted every other book? And if it went away today, it would completely destroy all literary understanding, all civilization. It will literally destroy the point of human life if this book goes away. Right. If He didn't give us a manual on how to live, then through that book, man, I don't know what you're not seeing.

But anyways, through the Bible, they outline all these different things that we should do to be a good civilization and to ultimately close that gap between God and where we are currently with our sin. And the reality is, Ryan, that gap is way too far. And the people in the Old Testament, the way that they thought that they could close that gap was that I just do enough good things. I just become a good enough person. Don't make any mistakes. And like somehow if I achieve perfection, then somehow that gap has been traversed. And now I'm like one with God and I'm holy and I'm accepted by God and whatever. I get all the benefits of the God stuff, right? Paradise, living forever and all these things, right?

And so what God did was like that chasm between where you are now and where God wants you to be is just too big. And so that's why He sent His son, Jesus, right? To be the filler of the gap that we could never be for ourselves. And so you want to talk about a God-sized hole. The God-sized hole really isn't like something in us. It's the separation between us and God. That's the God-sized hole. And the way that God chose to solve that and bridge those two worlds was through His son, Jesus.

And again, a lot of people probably have a bunch of different beliefs about Jesus. But the cool thing about Jesus is the story goes, right, like the theology goes that He lived a perfect, sinless life. He was a completely innocent man, but yet He took on the penalty of everybody. Like, we were the guilty ones, so we should have been penalized. But instead a dude who did nothing wrong, who pointed people to God, had to lay down and sacrifice His life to pay a penalty that we owed? Like, what the heck? What kind of freaking logic is that, right? Because this was like in a day and age where it was like eye for an eye. You punch me in the eye, bam, I'm going to knock you out, right? And we still live in that world, right? That sense of justice, right? If you do me wrong, then I get to do you wrong. Or if you ruin my life, now I get to ruin your life.

And really what happened when Jesus came to the earth was like He upended the entire model of justice in our mind. Like, wait, hold on, wait. An innocent person is dying for the guilty and they're choosing to do that? Wait, that doesn't—that messed with my head. And so really what Jesus introduced through His sacrifice was this idea of sacrificial love. Up until that point, there really wasn't this idea of sacrificial love in the human race. It was, "Dude, I will sacrifice my child to keep my kingdom." You see that all throughout the book of Kings and all the Old Testament. Even Abraham was willing to kill his own son so he could become the father of many nations, right? And a lot of people say, "Oh my gosh, that must have been so hard for him as a father." Well, in that custom, it might not have been as hard as you think, right? Because again, that was kind of common practice. You were always thinking self-preservation. How do I build my kingdom and how do I keep others from taking it away from me?

Whereas what Jesus modeled was you can take as much as you want but it's not going to make you happy. It's actually when you flip it and open your arms and invite others in and sacrificially give for others that's where you're going to find true fulfillment and true purpose. And that's why I fundamentally believe that purpose is the most important thing that any human being should understand. And at the root of purpose, it is not self-preservation. That's the root of selfishness. That's actually purposelessness, is only caring about yourself, only absorbed in your own things, only trying to make sure that you survive. But true purpose, the kind of purpose that God put inside of us, is actually when we lay our lives down, when we give, when we are willing to work and sacrifice and do everything we can to elevate the lives of others.

Just like what you're doing right now with this podcast, right? Like, I get it. Podcast is a thing. It's a medium. It's a platform. But I guarantee the reason why you're bringing in all these guests and the reason why you're having these interviews and these conversations is that you hope that someone will hear this and it will bring some sense of fulfillment or betterment or enhancement or hope or encouragement to their life. And why do you care about that, right? Because you want that human to survive. You want that human not just to survive, but you want that human to believe that they can actually do something in the world and make a positive difference. And so even through something like this podcast, you are living out your purpose, which is finding a way to serve others with your life.

And if you don't approach life from that view, then you are always going to have a hole in your heart. And a lot of people say it's a God-sized hole. I'm going to challenge that a little bit. It's a fulfillment-sized hole. We all want fulfillment. That's what we all want. We want our lives to matter. We want to be able to put our head on the pillow at the end of the night knowing that we did something good for somebody else, that we actually did something to better the world. Like all of us want that, right? But the problem is the only way to find it, the only way to attain it, the only way to grab hold of it is when you're actually helping other people survive and finding ways to help them thrive, not just looking for ways to feed yourself. And when you just feed yourself, you're not going to get anything.

So I'll share this one really cool story and then we can move on to whatever questions you have next. So this Jewish rabbi was once asked to define heaven and hell, right? He said, "Let me start with hell." He said, "In hell, there's this big, long table, as far as you can see, a massive table. It's got all this food on it, the most beautifully prepared, the most decadent, the most delicious, flavorful, savory, sweet, every possible thing that you can imagine. But in hell, everybody sitting around this table are starving. They're weeping. They're gnashing. They're in constant turmoil. They're in a constant point of torture and torment because they have one problem. Their elbows don't bend. So they can reach the food, but they can't get it into their mouth. So they have everything they could ever want. It's all right there. But they can't get it to themselves."

He says, "Now let me define heaven for you." He says, "In heaven there's this big long table with the most beautiful decadent food you can imagine. There's people sitting all around this table, but all the people around this table are joyful. They're celebrating. They have more than enough. Oh my gosh, every single person is having a blast. They're enjoying themselves. They're enjoying what's happening around this table, but their elbows also can't bend. How is this possible? They're feeding each other."

And if you don't understand that concept, fulfillment will always be out of reach for you. When we think about fulfillment and you really think about it, in the moments where you felt the most fulfilled, I would guarantee for 99 plus percent of the people listening to this podcast, it was in the moments where you participated in someone else's joy. That's right where you felt it. Your kids getting the hit, your spouse doing something amazing, or taking on a challenge and achieving it, a co-worker, a friend, someone who's in need that you just see on the street. You feel the most fulfilled always in the moments in which you participate in someone else's joy.

Ryan Hanley: And it's—but today it's so easy to forget that with the messaging that comes through to so many of us. My kids asked me—my kids go to Catholic school, I shared that with you I think last time we spoke—and they asked me about hell. They said, "Dad, does hell really blow us?" And I said, "I don't know, maybe. Honestly, I don't think so." I said, "I think I would go so far as to believe that hell isn't even a real place. I think it's an experience that you have. And that experience is you meet God and you pass away and God shows you who you could have been. And you have to see that thing. Hell is how far away from that thing you are."

Matthew Huber: Wow. You're right.

Ryan Hanley: And I said that's what I think it is. I'm definitely a sinner. I make mistakes all the time. I constantly am fighting the inner demons that we all have. Right. But I'm trying to figure out how to become the person, whatever it is that I believe God created me to be. He puts you on this earth and He says, "If you find your purpose, if you work through fulfillment, joy, love, sacrifice, hope, compassion, caring, all these things, you can become this amazing thing." And that doesn't mean you're a billionaire, right? It doesn't mean you're the president. It doesn't mean you're some powerful influencer with a huge audience or a Hollywood star. There's a thing that you're supposed to be in which you live every day in a massive amount of joy. And our job is to get as close to that thing as we can. And hell is when you pass away and God says, "This is what you could have been, but you chose this path. And look at that difference."

And that's the best way that I can frame it in my head. I'm not nearly as scholarly, but I just honestly believe, and this is why we connected so quickly. I think within 15 minutes, I was like, "Dude, you got to come on the podcast." All right, we can keep talking. Because I just align so much with what you're saying. And then I want to kind of take this out of the theological sense and put it into the business world. I guess my first question is, with all this experience and everything that you just shared with us, all these emotions and challenges that you overcame and work that you did, and you've—I don't want to say moved away from God, but certainly moved away from being a pastor.

Matthew Huber: Vocational ministry.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. What was the impetus for that move?

Matthew Huber: Yeah. No, I appreciate it. It's a great question. It's a fair question. So it's kind of two-pronged, right? I wasn't healthy and the environment I was in was not healthy. So when I first got into ministry, right out of high school—I'm sorry, right after Bible school—I had these big dreams of working for big churches, multi-site mega churches, tons of influence. Because I guess I saw that as success. The more people you can pack in a room, the more desirable you are as a communicator. That is what made you valuable, and that's what made you successful as a pastor. I chased that for a long time. I started with a church plant, then I went to a mid-sized church, then I went to a large church, and then ultimately landed at a multi-site mega church where I was part of the leadership team and overseeing massive amounts of responsibility and ministry.

And I think what happened during that time was, like I said, I don't think I was healthy. We had mentioned this a moment ago in my story. I was chasing validation. Even though I knew God, even though God had given me this, like, "Hey, no excuses, go get after it, go change the world," I was taking steps towards that. But man, I didn't go through any counseling. I didn't go through any processing of my past and how it altered my mindset, how it altered the filter that I was looking through all of my decisions and all the relationships that I was having. And it's only recently, probably within the last three years, that I recognized, "Holy cow, the whole time that I was in leadership over other people, I had a love for God, but I was really chasing the affirmation of my leaders."

I wanted the leaders, the lead pastors, the guys who are leading the projects, I wanted them to look at me and say, "Matt, you're a good guy. Man, God's using you. You're doing the right thing. I'm proud of you." I was looking for these leaders in my life to say that. And I will tell you, they can say it one day and then not say it for a couple of days, and I need it again. It was like a freaking drug. It was a drug. And so because of that, it motivated me to work harder, perform higher, hold myself to a higher standard. When everybody else was sleeping, I was working. But it wasn't because I had this crazy work ethic. I think I'm a pretty hardworking guy, but I was chasing their validation. I was chasing their approval. I wanted them to say, "Matt added value to what we're doing here. Look at how hard this guy works. He's great. He's awesome. He's amazing."

Let me tell you something. It doesn't happen that often. Nor should people have this obligation to make sure that you are affirmed. That's just a deficit in you. That's an insecurity in you that you need to personally go on a journey to uncover and discover why you're longing for that so badly. So I got to a point in ministry where I got to where I wanted to go. I pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. Didn't advocate for myself. Was seeking approval, seeking to please people, seeking to be accepted and affirmed by my leaders, which is a terrible position to be as a leader. That's a very unhealthy place to be because guess who I was thinking about last? The people I'm supposed to be leading and caring for. It was all about me, me, me, me, my, my, my. What do I get out of this? What do I get out of this? And I rarely thought about the people that I was actually supposed to be serving. Even though I was a pastor. Even though I was under the guise of the shepherd of the flock. Oh, the servant of all. Let me tell you all something. There was a point in my life where that shifted to where I really just started caring about me. And so I started recognizing that tendency and the problems it was creating on the team and the problems it was creating for me relationally.

And then on the organizational side of things, you don't get paid a lot—well, depending on who you are, I guess. Most pastors don't really get paid all that much. They're not in it for the money. They're in it to serve God and honor God and things like that. There are some that are probably in it for the money, right? Because we all have different needs, and we all have different ways that we believe in taking care of our family, whatever. That's someone's personal decision. So we were really struggling financially after the birth of our fourth child, which was unexpected. And I knew the only way for me to make financial means work for our family was I had to go down the road of the celebrity pastor. I had to start self-promoting. I had to start running conferences and writing books and basically telling people, "Hey, if you really want to get to know Jesus the right way, you got to come talk to me," which is a complete farce. It's freaking terrible that people do that and then profit on top of it.

And so I guess I had a shred of morality left, even though I had served so long within the church. And I said, "You know what, that's a line that I'm just not going to cross." And I saw that that was the only way for me to financially take care of my family. So I said, "Holy crap, the church isn't going to give me enough to take care of my family. And I'm not going to go down this road of self-promotion in the name of Jesus. I'm not going to do that." And so I only had one other option. And with how unhealthy I had become as an individual, the choice was really clear. I got to step away from my post. Because I'm sure if I kept going, I'd probably get fired or I'd probably get caught up in some scandal or there'd probably be some other residual negative impact. If I didn't take ownership, take responsibility for myself and exit a situation that just wasn't healthy for me.

And so, it was funny though. When I resigned, we had some conversations. This is the only thing that I'm going to say about money, right? I was asking for raises and different augmentations to my salary. They're like, "No, no, no, no, no. Your wife's got to work and all this kind of stuff." And it was terrible during COVID. It was awful. And so when I turned in my resignation, the last words they told me was, "How much do we need to pay you to keep you?" Oh, in which I was just like, "Oh my goodness. Okay. I knew I made the right decision." And I peaced out and moved to Texas and started my life over.

Ryan Hanley: Well, there's an incredible amount of awareness in what you just described because many people get caught in that trap and don't come up or don't make a change until something really bad does happen. So there's a lot of awareness in there and I think it's a very good point and something that needs to be called out, that validation is an addiction like any other.

Matthew Huber: 100%. Oh my gosh. Could be deadly.

Ryan Hanley: Yes. We have a much more crass way of describing that on the show. It's GNF, "Give No Fucks," right? And the idea is not that—and I've described it before on the show—but it's a mindset that I remind myself often of. And actually, you can't see it probably because of the camera, but for those watching on YouTube, I have a piece of wood behind me that was made by one of the audience members, and it's the letters G and F. And it's a reminder that we cannot live our lives based on what other people think or say about us.

Matthew Huber: That's right.

Ryan Hanley: And how I describe it to people, because they'll be like, "Wow." And I've had people say, "Well, if you say that, then that means you really do care or whatever." And my point is, it's not that I don't want you to like me. I want Matt Hoover to like me. I want you to like me. But if you don't like me, it has zero impact on my life.

Matthew Huber: Bingo.

Ryan Hanley: That's what it is. I want to do a good job for you in this interview. I want to put your expertise, your story, your experience, what you have to share with this audience on display. I want you to have an amazing time. And I want the audience to pick up insights, opportunities, thoughts, ideas, little tidbits that they can apply to their lives. I want all that to happen. But if every single person listening to this hates me, if you hate me, I literally will go upstairs after this podcast is done and make lunch for my kids, and I won't give a shit. It will mean nothing to me.

Matthew Huber: It's a superpower, man. It's a superpower, for sure.

Ryan Hanley: Cultivated, I'll say that it's something I've cultivated over many years, but I will say it's also a blessing from God because I've also always had this in me. I've always been an outsider my entire life. I went to a very large high school for the part of the country that I live in. But I came from a town of less than 900 and we were 30 minutes away from the school. We were the smallest town associated with this school. So from the rip, me and the five kids from my town—because there just wasn't that many of us—we were always outsiders in everything. We always had to fight to get on the team, fight to get in the club, fight to move up because we weren't part of this crew that had grown up together in the neighborhoods together, gone to the biggest elementary schools, etc. We were all poor, that's why we lived in this tiny little town. So there's that.

But through all that, I was never—I always had this, and this is kind of why I promote this idea as much as I possibly can to people because I do feel like it's a blessing that I've had and many other things that I struggle with immensely. But this particular thing, it bothered me but not in the way that it kept me ever from doing anything. It was more of, "Okay, I got to figure this out on my own." And I think when we search for validation, oftentimes what we're looking for is, "Tell me the answer and I'll do that answer." Not that I think it's the right answer. Not that I've put the time in to figure out whether this is the right path. It's, "I'm going to do this thing regardless if I think it's right or wrong because it's what this person over here that I need validation from wants." Which means we're living askew from the core concept of this podcast. It means we're not living our purpose with intention. We're living someone else's purpose. I always say you either dictate to the universe or the universe dictates to you.

Matthew Huber: Preacher, brother.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, there's no in-between area. So kind of coming off of that, I want to spend the last few minutes that we have together pulling all this big, huge, amazing conversation to the business world. So now you're helping people with a message, with a business. You're helping them get that out, find their purpose. And you had something you said to me off air before we went live. And this is where I want to start this transition.

Matthew Huber: Sure.

Ryan Hanley: Communication is meant to solve problems. I 100% agree with you. But why? What does that actually mean? And what is the difference between most communication, which I think does not—especially communication on social media—and the communication that actually does?

Matthew Huber: Yeah. So I was recently asked to share about communication to an entire district of mayors, city mayors. And as I was preparing for that, I obviously went through my presentation checklist as far as like, "OK, who's going to be in the room? What subject matters appeal to them? And how can I add value? How can I just deposit something that they can all walk away with and say, 'Okay, this was worth the cost of admission'?" Right?

And so I started looking at the idea of communication and started digging and digging and digging into it. And you've heard all the different things. Communication is talking and listening. Communication is sharing a belief or connecting over a similar idea. But if you actually dig a little bit further than that, what do all those things have in common? And what I discovered was the core purpose of communication is to solve a problem or avoid future problems. If there were no problems, we would never have to communicate. We would have never developed that skill. It would have never become part of the human experience. But because we have problems, both societal, internal, in the environment, we have all of these challenges that we need to overcome in order to survive, communication became an absolute necessity. And that necessity was born because of problems.

And so when you think about any type of communication that you are trying to deliver, at its core, you are attempting to address, solve, or avoid a future problem. Some people say, "Okay, all right, give me some examples of that." All right, so why does a manager at a company have team meetings? Everyone hates meetings. Everyone thinks they're a waste of time. But why does that manager have some sense of passion and intentionality and they see some great value in those meetings? Well, they're trying to solve problems and they're trying to prevent future problems from happening that will cost them their job, cost them their livelihood, or cost them the culture of the team.

You think about a sports team. Why do they have practice? Why do they have huddles? Why are they talking to each other? Well, they're talking to each other because there are problems all around them and they have to find a way to navigate the problems to come out victorious. And without communication, you can't have that happen. And I'll even break it down to human relationships. Why do we as friends have to talk to each other? Well, because we're trying to prevent losing that friend and losing that relationship. Because that relationship gives us fulfillment. It gives us fun and care, love, support. It gives us all these things that we need as human beings. And if we were to lose that tomorrow, that would be a problem. And so the reason why we actually communicate with each other and stay up with relationships is because we're actually trying to solve the problem of loneliness, but then also avoid the problem of future loneliness.

So it doesn't matter if your communication is widespread and global, like a world leader, or in a one-on-one conversation, the ethos, the purpose, the whole reason why that interaction is happening is to solve a problem. Now, you can tell very quickly if someone's communication is effective or not. Do they have a clear problem that they're trying to solve? Do they have a clear plan on how to solve it? Do they know how to motivate people to do it? And do they actually have action steps that a person could do to participate in solving that problem?

And in the business world, your problem might be we have low sales. Okay? So if your problem is low sales, how can you leverage communication to solve that problem? But if you never acknowledge that that's the real problem, you don't want to look at any of the evidence that's contributing to that problem, you don't even want to consider how that problem is affecting those around you, and you don't want to put any time into actually thinking through what is the best approach to solving that problem, then you should keep your mouth shut because your communication is doing nothing unless it's directly anchored to you solving a problem or avoiding a future problem from happening.

Ryan Hanley: What is the number one sales killer? Make this hyper tactical.

Matthew Huber: The number one sales killer is barfing features and benefits onto a customer. The reason that barfing features and benefits onto a customer, in the context of what you just said, is because you have no idea if any of those features and benefits actually solves the problem that that potential customer has. Now, what happens is occasionally you get lucky and one of those features and benefits does solve a problem and the person is able to connect the dots and they go, "Okay." But when you look at the great salespeople, the people who actually get things done, they call it consultative sales, call it listening sales, call it empathy, put whatever adjective on top of it, right? They're listening for the problem.

Ryan Hanley: And then they solve the problem that the person actually has.

Matthew Huber: Bingo. Because you could have 17 features and benefits associated with your product, but there might only be one of them that actually solves a problem that customer has. And if you haven't listened and aren't able to articulate and you aren't able to explain how it actually solves it, the sale never happens.

Ryan Hanley: This idea of framing communication and solving problems, I absolutely love and will 100% steal, give you credit for it. But I think this is dialing in on why so many people struggle on social media to build an audience, right? So say you're growing a brand and a business that could be a coffee shop on Main Street. And why is everyone still going to Starbucks? You're local, you source it from these crazy places and all this flavor and it's amazing. It doesn't mean—because you're not explaining, you're not solving a problem in the way you're talking about your product. You're taking pictures of your coffees or doing dances on TikTok and none of that is actually solving a problem for the customer.

Matthew Huber: Absolutely.

Ryan Hanley: And to me, it's wild. I'm going to share one more example with you. I, on two separate occasions, have grown insurance agencies at a massive rate by doing one simple tactic. I open up my phone and I answer a common question associated with a problem that insurance customers have. Literally, I've done this twice. I've grown two YouTube channels, more than 400,000 views in a year about insurance because I did one simple thing. "Hi, my name is Ryan Hanley. And today I'm going to answer the question, what is general liability?"

Ryan Hanley: So if you have a problem with general liability, I just gave you the exact answer to that problem.

Matthew Huber: Exactly.

Ryan Hanley: They go, "Geez, if he knows the answer to the problem I have, maybe he's the guy I should call to solve the problem." And what's insane to me is that this simple tactic—I mean, I know we've gone from God to tactical marketing. It's all connected, baby. Right. But it takes you all the way there to the idea. And to bring it all the way back to what we were talking about earlier with God and the Bible—again, bring Jordan Peterson in here just because I think from a secularist viewpoint, Jordan Peterson, in my opinion, is the best conduit to the Bible from a secularist viewpoint, right? But as a conduit for people who tend to be more secular, Jordan says, "Act as if these stories that are told in that particular book solve problems." That's right, that's what the book does.

So even if you're like, "I don't believe there's this guy up here and he set his kid down and he had this flood and all the crazy stuff that's in the Bible," right? If you can believe none of it, if you just listen, appreciate, and internalize the stories, they will solve problems in your life. Which is why the book has been around for so long—because it solves so many problems. And this is where I'm going to pass it back to you and we can wrap up.

Matthew Huber: Sure.

Ryan Hanley: This is why I believe all these new age, postmodern, woke-ism stuff—and on the right too, right? Some of the stuff that comes out of the MAGA stuff, right? All these new concepts—we have to be so careful of them. They haven't been tested by time. You know what I mean? It's okay to contemplate them. It's okay to even play with them a little bit. But we cannot base our belief structure on concepts that are 15, 20 years old.

It doesn't have to be Christianity. If Christianity is not your thing, look into some of the ancient Eastern religions. What you're going to find is the stories are pretty similar. I always say this to my mom, who's a devout Bible purist. So every Japanese person before 1823 is like, "I don't understand." But when you dig into their culture and you go way back, the stories are very, very similar. So pick whatever ancient stories—these ancient stories are there. Believe, don't believe, that's your decision. I ultimately think that when you start to embrace some of these things, you will start to believe. But the stories are there to help you solve problems, associate yourself with people and ideas that are battle-tested, that as you said, are solving real problems.

My friend, I could talk to you for hours, hours and hours. We both have things to do. The audience has things to do. I appreciate the hell out of you. We will absolutely have you back on the show. If people are digging your vibe, if they want to find out how to work with you, how to help find their purpose, how to get their purpose out into the market—how do they do that?

Matthew Huber: Yeah. So the name of my company is called Message Masters. You can find us online at message-master.com. You can follow me on social media @MasterYourMessage. And I actually have a resource that in four prompts, I can help you discover your purpose. Like literally the ethos of your existence. I can help you do it in four prompts. It takes about five to seven minutes. And many of the people that I've taken through this particular resource, they're like crying. They're like, "Holy crap, I've never seen my life through this lens before. I never thought I could do something like this. I never put the pieces together."

Because here's the deal: many of us are living out our purpose, but we're just doing it blindly. There's no real intentionality to it. So when I hear someone's story and I take them through this exercise, it's putting words and some direction to what you're already doing and showing you just how valuable it really is to the greater whole. So yeah, we have our focus in brand development. We do video production services. Really, our bend in business is: your business has an incredible purpose, it has an incredible story, it's incredibly valuable. And if you're not telling your story, you are missing so many opportunities to make the world a better place. And so that's our whole goal.

Ryan Hanley: Where can people get that prompt resource? Is that something on your website or is that something they go through you for?

Matthew Huber: The way that we've primarily distributed it is through a one-on-one conversation. I'll sit down with you for 30 minutes and then we'll go through the process. I have thought about making it more easily accessible, but the problem is it takes a level of coaching. You can't really do it on your own because there are a lot of things that you have to think about and consider. And I haven't taken the time to consolidate it down into a how-to step-by-step.

Ryan Hanley: So they will go to your website and reach out to you through the contact form and go through the process that way.

Matthew Huber: Awesome.

Ryan Hanley: Man, appreciate the hell out of you. We will absolutely have you back on the show. This has been incredible. Thank you so much.

Matthew Huber: Right on, brother. Take care. Peace.

Ryan Hanley: Let's go.

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