Why do you think goals alone aren't enough to really change us or, or I suppose guide us? Like, what is that distinction between a standard versus a goal?

Well, I mean, a standard's something you do every day.

Like, what time do you get out of bed every day? How much water do you drink every day? What time do you turn up for a meeting? I remember when I was rowing for Australia, our, um, high performance director, he, uh, clearly articulated that 10 minutes early for the meeting was on time.

So if you were nine minutes early, you were late, and you'd get told and dressed down in front of the whole team.

If you were on time, you were, like, very late, and the door would be closing.

You wouldn't be included in the meeting.

So I think that's a standard, right? So that's the thing that we say, "This is, this is what we say is our standard, and this is what we do.

Are there any final thoughts you wanted to, to add, uh, for those that may be feeling like they're in a little bit of a, a rut in terms of their own capacity right now?

How did your mother and father approach that? What, how did they guide you from that crisis?

Look, it's really unique, and obviously they come up a lot.

I, as, as a keynote speaker, I obviously talk about my context, which is my parents and that change in my life, you know, losing my vision.

And I'll say, 'cause we, the word can't, the word can't was banned in our house.

So there's no such thing as can't.

And I think a lot of people will say, "Yep, my parents said the same thing." But what was unique that my parents did, I've now found out, which not, which sort of no one else seems to have had this, this experience, is, and this is the title of my book, Why Not? So my dad would say, you know, I'd say, for example, we went fishing.

And I'd say to, to Dad, I've, you know, a hook's come off my line.

Yeah.

Can you break down the equation for me?

So I'll go back because I know I was trying to answer a question and I talked for too long.

No, you're good dude.

But I...

To your answer around like doing things for yourself, like intrinsic or extrinsic, I was first for footy, I was doing it because I just wanted to prove to everyone that I could.

And then I got to the point where I was like, I just wanted to prove to the world that, you know, this was all I was proving.

And then I got to surfing where I just loved my sport.

After everything you've done, all the accomplishments, both in business, in sport, in the family, what are you most proud of now?

Mm.

Um, so over a period of about two years, I, I built myself to be that person that I said was worthy 'cause I think there's this, there's a saying and there's a sentiment that everybody's worthy.

But I would say, look, if you're...

You know, there's different levels of worthy, and f- if you have aspirations of, you know, things in your life, people in your life, then you need to, you need to bring an equal thing to the, to the party.

You know what I mean? I, I, anyone that's, you know, gambling and spending all their money or, you know, is violent or whatever, I don't think that they're worthy of having someone that's gonna...

They should have love from people, and they should be looked after by the community, but they, they're not int- they're not, they don't, I don't think they're worthy of having the same level of, you know, wife or husband or whatever it is as somebody else who's actually, you know, delivering a lot of value to the community and being a nice person.

So anyway, I built this p- version of myself.

Mm.

Is that the trigger point for you for that change?

Well, yeah, the, the, the, the, there was lots of it.

I mean, so 2008, so it was about a 10 year period and there was no, um, there was a bunch of really bad things that happened in that time.

Um, but there was, it wasn't just like a light bulb.

There was a light bulb moment, but it wasn't like I'd sort of started getting better and better.

And 2008, I was, um, Working in enterprise sales, running sales teams, like on paper, I had property in Sydney, um, on paper, everything looked great.

Yeah.

actually quite a good way to look at it.

Can you give our audience, because we've got a large slant towards corporate audience and defence and entrepreneurs and business people, what are two or three standards? And can you give us an example of the accountability that would go behind that, that you think constitutes high performance?

Yeah, I'm going to keep really, really simple.

There's a nuance to this as well because you will have standards in your team.

So if there's five people or 10 people in a team, you need to agree on what your standards are as a team, but they might actually be different for your stakeholders.

So if you're in finance, you might have different standards that you allow for sales or someone else, right? But you need to, as a team, agree on what your standards are.

Then with your relationships, you need to agree on what those standards are as well.

But I think some really good basic standards are do you need to be on time for a meeting, early for a meeting? When I was writing for Australia, our high performance director, Peter Day, was famous.

There's times we get had by our emotions and it becomes a self-limiting belief.

Was that because you can't – because the athletes get better at that stage or was there something else happening for you?

Well, I think it was compounding.

So, yeah, I think absolutely that's a big – and that was an inevitable outcome.

I'd played to a good – very high standard.

I'd played representative level for union and ice hockey, you know, at teens.

I'd played my first ever representative jersey.

I was a Manly Seagulls jersey in rugby league when I was 11.

Yes.

Yeah.

And we played cards.

We'd flick cards at a wall.

I learned how to trap an air pocket under it and I could sort of walk and touch the wall and walk back to the starting point so I could work.

So there's ways that I could do most things and compete.

But the problem I had is I had to stay with the boys.

So if a teacher said, Matt, stay back, because they were not sure that I'd understood everything, that was like they'd just executed me.

God's gift to women.

And as I've listed off there, you know, people hear your achievements, hear about the Guinness World Records, the Netflix documentary, but y- in your book, Why Not?, you have the opening line, "Blindness was never my biggest fight." So we'll start there, and tell us what was.

Uh, so I mean, yeah, people just assume because I'm blind that that is my biggest challenge in life.

Uh, and they...

I mean, they can be excused for that, but it was actually...

I went through school, I got bullied a lot.

Every kid would be saying, "How many fingers am I holding up?" And, you know, I'd write something...

I, uh, was one of the first kids in Australia to have a laptop.

And when you went through that self-reflection work and, and set out to really, you know, work on yourself, was that with external, you know, mentors or coaches or so forth? It's just really you had that light bulb moment in a way that realized, "Hang on, I've actually gotta put in the work myself here."