The Power of “Common Heart” & Its Impact On Community Effectiveness

[00:00:00] Lucas Root: Richard Matthews joins me to talk about the power of creating connections through community and how his experiences from his mastermind that has exploded his business to Being on the jury in a murder trial recently, right through to the end, the very end where he talks about how one piece of advice that his father gave him shaped his life.

[00:00:32] You can't miss a minute of this. Richard Matthews on the elements of community.

[00:00:36] So I'm really excited that you were finally able to hop on my podcast with me. You and I have known each other for two years. You interviewed me for your podcast. And it was one of the most fun interviews that I've ever had even to now. So I, I just wanted to let you know, like, I probably have not actually said that, but it was a fun interview and it was a really cool concept and I enjoyed it. And it worked. It worked like it, it did its job. And, and that in itself is actually really cool. It's something that I enjoyed. So to not prolong the suspense any further. Would you like to introduce yourself?

[00:01:12] Richard Matthews: Yeah. My name is Richard Matthews and I am the host of the Hero Show, which is the podcast you're referring to. And I'm the founder of a company called Push Button Podcasts, and we actually are the company that produces this show.

[00:01:25] Lucas Root: Yes. You are. That was all about work. What about Richard?

[00:01:30] Richard Matthews: So this is where all the fun stuff comes in. Cause the work stuff. You know, might be impressive. But the stuff that's fun, I'm a full-time traveling father of four and husband to one beautiful wife. We got a big poodle that travels around with us and a ferret that I just built a cage into our RV for.

[00:01:46] But yeah, we've got a traveling family of, of six plus two, two critters, and we have over the last five and a half years traveled all 48 states in the us. Fourth child was born on the road while traveling. And all four of them have seen all 48 states, and we're currently in the process of looking for a sailboat to move over into a start sailing port to port around the world.

[00:02:07] And I do run both my podcast s from, I'm actually in the back bedroom of an RV and a custom built office that I made. So I made the desks, I made the lighting situation that we have here, the cameras, the backdrop, all that I built into the rv. I've recorded over 225 episodes of the Hero Show exclusively from the back bedroom of an RV while traveling the country.

[00:02:28] And we run the Push Button Podcasts organization remotely my entire staff of which there are four full-time members currently and growing. We're looking for a fifth part-time person right now. Run all of that entire organization from a from the back of an rv.

[00:02:41] Lucas Root: Love it. You know what's coolest about Van Life? You probably have your own but from my perspective, not having. Not having lived it. The coolest thing is your backyard never gets boring and you don't have to maintain it.

[00:02:56] Richard Matthews: That is a, a very apt thing to say about it. I was like, just this morning my wife and I were chatting on our morning walk how much we enjoyed this particular campground. We've never been here before, but we've been here for a week and already they've had, like, they had a drive-in movie last night that was amazing and food truck festival.

[00:03:13] And they've got the they've got a whole wildlife thing going on here this morning. So like, my son got to go over and see barn owls and red shouldered hawks and some snakes and they haven't had flying squirrels over there. It's just a Saturday morning for us.

[00:03:25] It depends on where you are, but it's literally in our backyard, we walk out our front door and that's what's going on. And depending on where you're at, sometimes it's waterfalls and Yosemite that are outside your front door and sometimes it's food truck festivals and sometimes it's just a boring cornfield and there's nothing.

[00:03:38] So it's always, it's always different. And my littlest one, she's three. When we go and visit friends, like, you know, you guys or anyone else that we go and see, she was always like, why, why does your house not have wheels? And like, what happens if you get bored of where you're at and you wanna go somewhere else?

[00:03:54] She's like, she doesn't understand the stationary lifestyle cuz she's never lived it. So.

[00:03:59] Lucas Root: Yeah, that's a completely valid perspective. I think I think one of the things that holds people back from Van Life and, and it's a powerful thing, is and, but it's erroneous. It's, it's one of the reasons why I have this podcast. The people are afraid that if they're in there, if they adopt Van Life, if they, if they stop living in a neighborhood, they will be bereft of community.

[00:04:24] They will have no community. And the unfortunate truth is . Yeah, it's a legitimate fear. The unfortunate truth is most of them have no community anyway.

[00:04:34] Richard Matthews: Yeah.

[00:04:36] Lucas Root: I don't know if this is the thing that you want to talk about from the perspective of community, but why don't you tell us about your community?

[00:04:42] Richard Matthews: I have a lot of things to say about that very particular thing because before we moved into the rv, we lived in a neighborhood, a nice suburban, modern American neighborhood where we had neighbors friendly ones even with children and families, and that were in the same, you know, areas of life that we were.

[00:04:59] And we lived there for three and a half, four years. I can't remember exactly how long we were there before we moved into the RV and decided to travel. And in the amount of time that we were there, I knew the names of maybe two of my neighbors and had had meals with exactly none of them. And since moving into the rv, we have several communities now, but like our traveling community, for instance, I have people in probably roughly half the states in the US that we could show up with a moment's notice and they would have us in for dinner kind of thing.

[00:05:28] And and that is we have traveling community, sort of like all over the place that is, that are fellow travelers. And then we also have in particular areas places that we stay or go to often we have communities that we've built in those areas that we have found because of, you know, we all regularly frequent the same places, like, if that makes sense.

[00:05:48] And the strength of intimacy with those communities is significantly better now than anything I've experienced in my life. With the exception perhaps, of living in a college dorm when I was in college.

[00:06:03] Lucas Root: Mm. Wow, that's beautifully said. And you know, I want that cause your, your description of the neighborhood you lived in perfectly matches the description of the neighborhood that I just moved out of in San Diego. That I loved living. I loved it. And I was there for four years and I knew one of my neighbors, one, I knew one of my neighbors.

[00:06:27] And I had had dinner in four years. I had had dinner with exactly zero of them.

[00:06:31] Richard Matthews: Exactly. Zero.

[00:06:34] Lucas Root: And I love living there. I'm, I'm, I'm not saying this out of complaint, but neighborhood and community are not the same thing. They are not the same

[00:06:41] Richard Matthews: they're, they're not. And I, it is the difference that I have noticed is, when you are traveling, there is a required element of intentionality when it comes to creating community that is obvious while traveling. That doesn't go away if you are in a neighborhood but is not obvious.

[00:07:05] Lucas Root: What

[00:07:05] Richard Matthews: changes is how obvious the intentionality is.

[00:07:08] Does that make sense? Am I saying that clearly?

[00:07:10] Lucas Root: it makes sense to me.

[00:07:11] Richard Matthews: So what, what I mean to put that in, in the, I guess less in, in simpler terms is when you are traveling in one spot or another, right? And you move and you know, you're only gonna be here for one week or two weeks or three, or maybe three months, right? Cause we, we'll stay in places anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months depending on where we're at and what we're doing.

[00:07:31] Like we spend all summer in a particular place in Florida that we, we do every year. And so we've built a nice community there. But when you show up in a place, if you're, even if you're only there for a couple of days, if you want to have any experience of community, there is a very obvious like, Hey, we've got either today or we don't have anything at all, right?

[00:07:48] Because the people that are around you today aren't gonna be the same people that are around you tommorow. Which happens when the neighborhood you're in is full of transient people who could or could not be part of your community . And so some of our best friendships that we have built over the last four or five years have been the result of seeing someone who is next to you in your temporary neighborhood and calling out to them and saying, Hey, it's nice to meet you.

[00:08:14] Would you like to come over for dinner tonight, , and moving immediately to how can we break bread together? And because you realize if you don't do it today, you may never do it ever. Right? You may never have the opportunity again. And out of that requirement of being intentional , which again, my point is it should always be required, we're just not always aware of how required it is that you have to reach out and say, Hey, I would like to.

[00:08:39] To create community with you. And the easiest way that we have learned is to offer a meal. So like one of our families that we're good friends with now and have been good friends with for years we still giggle about it because it was their first day traveling. Like they had just decided that like their, as a family, that they were going to move out of their house, move into an RV and travel the country.

[00:09:00] And we'd been doing it for a couple years already. So we were like practiced at this whole process of like, you meet someone new and you, you work on creating friendships or you got nothing. And you know, it was just sort of obvious when we ran into them at the park that you know, they had kids that were the same age as ours.

[00:09:13] We were sort of like in the same sort of life situation and they were new travelers and whatnot. So they, they had like pulled in and we got to chatting and we invited them over for dinner. And the wife of the couple was like, well, that's really awesome. We're getting invited to dinner on our first day out.

[00:09:26] And the husband looking back on it, he was like, You guys freaked me out. He was like, I'd never been invited to dinner, like 10 minutes after meeting someone and here you guys were inviting us to dinner. And now nearly four and a half years later, they're some of our best friends. Right. That comes from, that comes from just taking that step and learning to be intentional about creating community.

[00:09:45] Lucas Root: And also we're human. And like, shouldn't that be quintessentially human?

[00:09:52] Richard Matthews: Yeah.

[00:09:53] Lucas Root: Maybe it should.

[00:09:55] Richard Matthews: Maybe it should

[00:09:57] Lucas Root: Maybe it should.

[00:09:58] Richard Matthews: Spaghetti. We still remember , if you remember the in and Out movie from foundational memory in that relationship, it's like, Hey, we had spaghetti at the first day we met.

[00:10:08] Lucas Root: Very cool. Was it otherwise special spaghetti?

[00:10:11] Richard Matthews: Nope.

[00:10:12] Lucas Root: Like handmade noodles or?

[00:10:15] Richard Matthews: Well no handmade noodles. We do, my wife does occasionally make handmade noodles, but she does home make all of her sauce.

[00:10:21] Lucas Root: Nice.

[00:10:22] Richard Matthews: So she makes everything from scratch.

[00:10:23] Lucas Root: So it was otherwise special. from scratch The

[00:10:25] Richard Matthews: only reason we don't hand make the noodles is cause we don't actually have a noodle press. So we have to like, actually hand roll and hand rolling spaghetti is a royal pain in the So it's actually on our, one of our little wishlists get a to get the noodle attachment for our KitchenAid stand mixer so she can make more homemade noodles, she does like doing

[00:10:42] Lucas Root: Yeah. That's pretty cool. What is it that makes an effective community now that spent time engaging with intentionality? What is it that makes it effective?

[00:10:52] Richard Matthews: This definition has grown for me over the years. And part of it is informed because of a lot of the conversations you and I have, in fact that I've listened to all your podcasts, so I have more of a language framework for it now But if I were to exclude that and sort of go back to like what I used to think it was versus what I think it I used to think that an effective community required proximity.

[00:11:13] Lucas Root: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:13] Richard Matthews: And what I have learned is that effective community, more likely the, the more apt word is intimacy.

[00:11:23] Intimacy, not to be confused with sexual intimacy, which is a type of intimacy, but more I don't, I don't know how to effectively describe the word intimacy for someone to understand, you get to see someone with out the mask that they put on for everyone else who's outside of your community.

[00:11:43] Is that a, a good way to describe that? And the, the more, the more you see them without their mask, the more intimate you have, the more intimacy you have in the community, and the more intimacy you have in the community, and the more the members in that community share that intimacy, the tighter that community gets,

[00:11:58] Lucas Root: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:59] Richard Matthews: and that intimacy leads to effectiveness. And effectiveness requires some sort of a purpose. Like what are you being like what's the what's the reason for, for it? And depending on what the community is or it's about, like, in, in one of our, like if I refer specifically to like the community that we built in the place, we go to Florida for three months every year.

[00:12:20] The purpose of that community is literally just camaraderie, right? It's just a, we hang out together and we go to the pool and we, you know, take the boat out and we go fishing and we just, we don't do anything together other than hang out. And, you know, break bread and, you know, take the kids on Halloween things and you know, go out and, you know, when the kids have birthdays, we take 'em out to whatever the stuff is going on in Right. So the, the purpose is camaraderie and the camaraderie gets both engaging and more fun. The more of that mask gets removed and the more in intimacy you have in the group.

[00:12:53] Lucas Root: Beautifully stated, and I completely and a hundred percent agree, know, the purpose of a community can be anything and, and camaraderie is valid. You, we've, we've, we've talked about this on the podcast before, there could be a community of people who want hugs, right? That's, that's a version of exactly what you're talking about.

[00:13:12] And they get together share hugs and Right. The projects are getting together and sharing hugs and the purpose is fulfilled by those projects. That's so cool.

[00:13:21] Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:23] Lucas Root: So, intimacy. So the progression of intimacy is, is the thing that makes communities effective.

[00:13:30] Richard Matthews: Yes, that is my, if I were to contend with definitions of community and how you improve effectiveness, it would be the intentional increase in intimacy.

[00:13:44] Lucas Root: How does that stand up? And obviously I have an answer to this. And my guess is that your answer in my answer will match. How does that stand up in a business community?

[00:13:53] Richard Matthews: So I've got a couple of small business communities that I can sort of relate this to. One would be as a leader of the organization, Push Button Podcasts, that's my company or as a member of my mastermind, that I'm a, Which I believe you've had some of my other Mastermind members on this show

[00:14:10] Lucas Root: of them is a Van Leifer too.

[00:14:13] Richard Matthews: So shout out to Zach Hammer and Liana Ling if you haven't watched those episodes. They're fantastic to learn from those two, those two individuals. when it comes to a business community, I believe it's the same, the same kind of thing. To give you an example from my

[00:14:26] company, one of the things that as a leader who is working with employees on customer deliverables, one of the things that happens on a regular basis is that we have mistakes or errors, and that is part of just the human experience And of course we are working on building systems and processes that reduce those as low as possible, But you can't, you can't achieve perfection. Right. There's no such thing. And so it is just a matter of how can we adjust our processes and adjust our culture and adjust our communities such that errors have the smallest amount of impact on our customer experience, and if they do have an impact on our customer experience, how do we rectify that on the other side?

[00:15:13] And that's just sort of like the process that you build. So when it comes to the intimacy, and you have staff, who are, looking to you for your leadership, part of part of that is learning how to have enough intimacy in your relationships with your staff that they are bringing mistakes or bringing errors and knowing that it's not going to bring back judgment, but instead bring back collaboration to improve the systems, right?

[00:15:42] So it. The mistakes and errors are not a reflection of the character or of of the people who had the mistake or were a part of the error, but is instead a reflection of the state of your processes. And that you can collaboratively work together to improve those. And it requires a certain level of intimacy with your staff for them to be comfortable knowing that, hey, there was an error here.

[00:16:07] Or even if I find an error or one of my staff or one of my customers says, Hey, there's an error here and they're upset about it, be able to bring that to your staff and know that they're not going to be judged for that, but instead are going to be asked to be a part of the collaboration to improve it. And it's a difficult thing to build, but part of it, and one of the things like I I, we had this situation last week, which is one of my staff members was like, oh, that was my fault. I had an error there. And. And she apologized And I was like, I was like, you don't need to apologize for an error, right?

[00:16:38] I was like, it's an error. And if there's an error like that, I was like, I, I've mentioned this all the time on our staff meetings, this mistakes are stepping stones to improvement. And what can we learn from this error and how can we adjust our processes to catch an error like that before it happens in the future?

[00:16:54] And her response, was just like, oh, thank you so much for that. It's been a while since I've heard the mistakes are stepping stone for improvement and it really makes me feel better about just the whole, the whole thing because the gut reaction is I caused an error, it caused a customer unhappiness.

[00:17:08] That's a reflection on me as a human being,

[00:17:10] Lucas Root: right.

[00:17:11] Richard Matthews: right? And cuz that that's a natural inclination and that's not actually what's, what's happening. So being able have the the intimacy in your community to reframe that and to put it in the, in the right thing. So it's, I guess that's a very detailed, like prescriptive answer I guess.

[00:17:27] But that's,

[00:17:28] Lucas Root: No, it's awesome. How, how about in the Mastermind?

[00:17:30] Richard Matthews: So in the Mastermind, we actually, we practice that exact thing with a level of intentionality. So one of our weekly, I guess you'd call it frameworks that we work through in terms of our discussion points is we start we start every mastermind meeting with each, each one of us goes through and talks about a mark micro failure from the week that we can, and that we can use to leverage leverage some sort of personal growth or business growth or, you know, systems documentation growth in, in our life, right?

[00:18:02] So where do we find micro failures? And it's just a practice of learning reframe failures into opportunities because that's what they are. Failures are always opportunities That's that's something that we, we do in the same group. But again, but it, it, it took us probably a good six to seven months in that group to get to the point where we could start regularly framing our discussions in failures, because we had to build the intimacy with each other first before we could get to the point where we were vulnerable, vulnerable enough to regularly discuss our own failures and how those failures can be leveraged into future successes.

[00:18:34] Lucas Root: And how does that intimacy increase the effectiveness of the community?

[00:18:39] Richard Matthews: So, I'm trying to decide how much I should reveal on, on just a particular thing. I, I can tell you that we started that mastermind roughly two years ago, two, two and a half years ago. I can't give you an My business is six times bigger now than it was when we started.

[00:18:56] Lucas Root: Oh Shit!

[00:18:57]

[00:18:58] Richard Matthews: That is if you, if you sort of measure by revenue, client base, employee, like number of So there's, there is that, the other couple of things, my business is profitable every single month now has been since January of this year. It was not profitable when I Started with that group. I was making money, but we weren't profitable. But I have, I actually have a profit account that has money going into it every single month, . I, every single time I ha we get to a point in that mastermind group where there is a group a, a group unanimous decision where they're like, you should take this step next.

[00:19:31] Even if I'm like, I don't wanna do that, I feel like it's dumb. I'm, and I listen anyways because I've learned at this point that when the community in that mastermind is like, Hey, you should do this thing, and I go and do it, I always get positive results from it, positive results that literally impact my bottom line.

[00:19:49] So I would say that it has a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of that community's purpose, which is to grow our respective businesses.

[00:19:58] Lucas Root: Okay. Now the, the devil's advocate question, and I think it's a valid one here, so many people are willing to shell out buku dollars, like monstrous amounts of money to join a mastermind or even just a networking group because of the people that are in it. So the, the devil's advocate question here is, is that is your experience, is, is your experience of how powerful that Mastermind has been because of the caliber of the people or because of the progressive growth of the community through intimacy.

[00:20:34] Richard Matthews: It's the second I think. That if you could take the three people that are in there with me now out and replace them with other people who are of the same sort of caliber and desire that even if I didn't know them, and if we went through the same sort of process to build the intimacy and build the understanding of each other's businesses and went through the same sort of process of learning where our failures are and how to leverage those and turn those into successes and then harp on each other to actually take the actions to, to make those changes specific people are not are not the make or break on the effectiveness.

[00:21:19] It is the level of intimacy we've created in And I'm, I'm not saying that to say that we're hot swappable. I'm just saying that have taken

[00:21:27] at that a little,

[00:21:29] cause I think we're in agreement. But I, I, I want to give the audience an opportunity to really clarify this. So what, what you're telling me is if you took, you know, Zach and Liana out and put in carbon copies of them, but who are not Zach and LIana, it would take time, months, maybe, potentially even years to get back to the point of, of the level of power that the community that you've built is providing to you and to the other members. Even though these carbon copy are equivalently powerful people, equivalently high caliber. It would take time.

[00:22:08] That is, that is, would take time

[00:22:10] time to build intimacy.

[00:22:11] It would take time specifically to build thaty and build the, the care for each other and the and to understand other's. And I'm sure we'll get into this, but the language and to make sure we're all on the same page with what our purpose is and how we're getting there.

[00:22:26] Cause you don't, it's very hard for a community to just be like, Hey, here's, here's our charter, right? And in our charter we list our, our you know, our purpose and our project and our value and our language, and we put it all out there. you have to let that, those aspects of the community become a part of your identity.

[00:22:43] Lucas Root: Yeah

[00:22:43] Richard Matthews: And each member of the community has to do the same thing. And that doesn't happen overnight. It happens with practice.

[00:22:50] Lucas Root: that's really cool. Yep. It's powerful not because of the individual people. It's not, it's powerful, not because of what they bring to the table. It's powerful because of the fact that we do it together as a community through, through experiences of shared purpose, language, and projects to build that value and heart.

[00:23:13] Richard Matthews: Yeah. And just to, to bring in, you mentioned people pay buku bucks to be part of masterminds where they have access to a certain caliber of people. It's not that that's not a valuable thing to do. But that in and of itself, without the stuff that we're talking about, the spending the buku bucks to be in front of high caliber people is not what gets you the results. Right. It is building the community with those high caliber of people, which is going to take the time and the practice that we're talking about, regardless of whether or not you spend buku bucks or regardless of whether or not you have access to the high caliber of people, I'm sure that if you get a, you know, you get into a group with, you know, I'm just, cuz it's a name that everyone recognizes, like Tony Robbins And you can build the same level of community with him and whatever people are in that group that we've built in ours that you could probably have even see a higher level or faster level of success. Success because of just the results of the people in that group. Right? They have more experience or higher levels of experience than maybe we have in our group.

[00:24:12] But the power isn't going to come just because you're sitting next to someone named Tony Robbins. It's going to come because you've built a community with a group of people and that includes someone like Tony Robbins. I know that's like a, a minor difference, but it's the important

[00:24:27] Lucas Root: Think it's really important difference. Yeah.

[00:24:30] Thank you. What makes an effective community leader? And you started talking about this a little bit through your own company community.

[00:24:36] Richard Matthews: Being an effective community leader, I think has a lot to do with caring about the people who are in your community. I'm gonna define that a little bit. I don't have a lot of staff. I've only got four people on my team, right? So it's not a huge community, but I make it a point to know not just how they work in our company, but how our company and being a part of our company helps them get to where they want to be in their lives.

[00:25:10] Lucas Root: Hmm.

[00:25:12] Richard Matthews: So, one of my staff members who left recently it was early I knew which town he wanted to move to. I knew how much the apartment he wanted to buy was going to cost. And I knew why he wanted to move that community and who he was looking forward to meeting in that community he was working for us.

[00:25:31] And I wanted to see him reach his goals and realize that like the reason why he shows up every day to do a good job for our company and for our clients is not because he is as invested in our mission of the company as I would be. Right? Cause it's not his company. It's because he's invested in whatever his mission is, whatever his goals are.

[00:25:52] And in order for me to be an effective community leader, I have to know the motivations of the people in my community. Why are they showing up? What are they getting out of this? And in the of employee employer, if the members on my team they have goals and reasons, right? So like one of my newest staff who I'm sure will listen to this episode at some point, she lives in Florida.

[00:26:17] She's got a with some friends of ours. She's getting out of you. Like I know the type of company that she came from, and I know where she, why she's interested in working for us having the you know, work from home, set your own hours kind of things.

[00:26:28] And I know why those things are important to her. Like I know what's going on in and why she's interested in showing up and doing a good job And so it helps me to know how I can assign tasks and when we can meet together and how to frame, you know, when we do have errors or problems, how to frame them so you can understand like how to communicate with them better and how to improve our systems to work with the people that are in there. my, my point is just that if you're going to be an effective community leader, You cannot look at the members of your community like COGS in your community machine, right? They are, they are living, breathing people with their own dreams and their own goals and their own desires and their own reason for even showing up and being a part of your community in the first place.

[00:27:10] And if you're going to lead them in the purpose of your community, you have to care enough to know and not just know, but direct the community so that it helps them achieve those goals.

[00:27:21] Lucas Root: Beautiful. That's the value. That's the, the fourth element of community is the value. It's shared value. It's, it's the value that you receive, each of you that you receive by being a member of the community. Some people want to be a member of a community for very small and very simple value, right?

[00:27:38] Your comradery community, the value that you receive is close friends that you get to do cool shit with. Which is simple, right?

[00:27:47] Richard Matthews: Yeah.

[00:27:48] Lucas Root: when, when we show up to work we don't stop being human. I'm letting that sit out there so that people can have that sink in. We don't stop being human. We don't get to work and become a computer, become a machine. We're actually still human. And in all cases and every circumstance that we are a human, we need our human needs to be fulfilled. And part of our human needs are to be seen, to be heard to receive value from the circumstances that we're in. And sometimes those values are simple. Sometimes the value that we receive is just camaraderie. Sometimes it's just pay. But in this world of extraordinary abundance, and you know, those of you who are are dubious on this a little bit, in this world of extraordinary abundance, I get to choose where I go get my paycheck.

[00:28:39] Richard Matthews: So you have to offer more as a community leader than just a paycheck.

[00:28:47] Lucas Root: And my human needs still need to be met.

[00:28:50] Richard Matthews: yeah, and I think, I think part of that is the community that you build in the workplace, the camaraderie that you build there, the mission that you're building for your Cuz people want to be a part of something that's doing something, even if it's a small something. And I actually, you know, I, I can probably share this cuz it's it's useful.

[00:29:09] Let me pull this up. I have A core values that has four points to it, that every time I get my community together, our company for a meeting, I start the meeting off and literally just read these or type them out for our, for the people who are there. And it's, and I'll just read through 'em real quick.

[00:29:26] So I think it's a, it's useful thing to talk about, but core values is we pride ourselves on the high quality of work. Our clients depend on us to deliver good, consistent output, right? So that's Number two, and I think this is where we get into the community aspects, is our work has an impact greater than our individual efforts.

[00:29:40] Because of the type we work we do, it impacts not only our clients, but it also impacts our clients audiences and their clients. Our work has a tremendous ripple effect that impacts lives all over the world. He the reason we have to have a high quality work. Number three, we believe strongly that mistakes are simply stepping stones to greatness.

[00:29:57] All we need to do is communicate about them, learn from them, possibly adjust our, our, just our processes to catch them earlier. But we don't grow and get better if we aren't making mistakes every now and then. And number four, we believe every member of our team is valuable and has contributions and value to give to the world.

[00:30:12] We want the time you spend as a part of our team. Cause we realize it's probably not going to be forever, but to help you achieve your goals, to help you grow and to be something that you enjoy. And anytime we have a company meeting, I start with those four core values.

[00:30:25] Lucas Root: Amazing. So one of the things that I've talked about from time to time is the notion of creating community using a one way communication tool, which is podcasting, right? So my, my podcast audience shows up to receive value from what it is that we talk about here. But , it is an inherently one way communication tool.

[00:30:45] I'm, you, you and I, right now, we're, we're standing on a pulpit somewhere away from the audience shouting into a bullhorn. You know, to use a, a physical metaphor and, and creating community through a one way communication tool is challenging. , it is challenging at best. And what you just did was share one of the ways that that can be improved, which is start out to, to, to quote Simon Sinek, right?

[00:31:14] Start with the why. And remind the people who are showing up every single time that they show up, the reason that they're there and the reason that you're there so that they can continue to feel enrolled and engaged. Start with the why.

[00:31:30] Richard Matthews: start Cuz the, the why the why is the reason anyone shows up to anything.

[00:31:37] Lucas Root: Yeah. Cool. I love it. As we transition into one of the elements of community, did you have one in mind that you wanted to talk about?

[00:31:45] Richard Matthews: So just cuz cuz you and I have been chatting a bit about this over the course of this last week and just some, you know, things that have happened to me recently and just things is I think heart was a useful place to start because, well, one, I think the language framework doesn't exist in the, in in English.

[00:32:04] And I think, I think that'd be a fascinating discussion.

[00:32:06] Lucas Root: You know what's interesting? And, and, and now is exactly the time for us to, to hammer this now in we create space in our lives and in our language for the things that are important to us. So really, truly, how many different how many different words are there for our sexual apparatus, right? Penis, vagina? How many words do we have for those Huge numbers of words for those? How many words do we have for

[00:32:29] Richard Matthews: money?

[00:32:29] One eyed blue veined, purple headed trouser, trout,

[00:32:31] Lucas Root: Yeah. How? , more than one word, but yes. many words do we have for money?

[00:32:36] how, how many? Yeah, it's crazy. How many words do we have for for cow?

[00:32:42] Richard Matthews: I don't know many.

[00:32:43] Lucas Root: And when you, when you start to look at the way that you exist in the world through the lens of the language that you use, It opens your eyes a little

[00:32:53] Richard Matthews: have a.

[00:32:53] Lucas Root: Yeah. And, and the way you choose to use them, it opens your eyes a little bit. We have an enormous number of words for the things that are entertaining to us.

[00:33:06] We don't have a single word for the idea that's encapsulated by common heart,

[00:33:12] Richard Matthews: Yeah. like I was when you were, when you were talking about list of words, I was like, it's the same thing when you get sick to your stomach, we have a tremendous number of words that are all hilarious to That, which is not even a fun thing, but for whatever reason, we find it hilarious to have different words for it.

[00:33:29] Lucas Root: Toss your cookies.

[00:33:31] Richard Matthews: Yeah.

[00:33:32] Lucas Root: Yeah.

[00:33:33] Richard Matthews: to the Praying porcelain god.

[00:33:36] Lucas Root: But this thing, this thing that is

[00:33:38] Richard Matthews: you ,

[00:33:38] Lucas Root: word Intended, elemental to humanity. It's elemental to community and it's elemental to our, you know, because community is elemental to humanity. This is also elemental to us being humans. It's a thing that we don't talk about and we can't talk about cuz we don't have a word for it. We don't have a word for this thing. Common heart.

[00:33:56] Richard Matthews: so I want, before we get into like what it means, I want to give a just a story that I'll think really help people understand why having a language framework is so vital to being able to accomplish any sort of goal. That we're traveling. We're actually in our that we've renovated from the ground up.

[00:34:14] Our first RV was a real It was an old one. It was like 1986, but it was, you know, like for travel makes them, and they've been around. They're the longest standing RV manufacturer. And they started making RVs for movie stars back in the sixties. And so we had one of their first GrandVilla motor homes.

[00:34:29] It's beautiful. Looks like a bullet train. All fiberglass, all a hundred percent te wood, all on the inside. And like, know really, really nicely made, rv. Now the reason that's important is the storage, the the, the storage

[00:34:42] Lucas Root: but before you go on, that sounds like so much fun.

[00:34:47] Richard Matthews: It was and we we, we, we renovated the whole thing and brought it all back. We actually got to go to the four manufacturing place. And they, they make every RV one at a time with their entire team, which includes master plumbers, master carpenters, you know, master electricians. And they were like, we remember making that rv.

[00:35:01] We know who we made it for. Like, cuz

[00:35:03] Lucas Root: Wow.

[00:35:04] Richard Matthews: they build them. So, When we had our fourth child, the RV was too small for us. We had to move on to this larger one, but we didn't, we didn't move straight across into a same level We went to a newer one, but a much lower quality build than the previous one.

[00:35:18] But, The reason why this, makes sense is one of their storage base were storage base where the doors dropped down like this, right? So you would, you would open, open the latch and the door would drop down and they were held up with these chains. And in the renovation process, I was trying to replace these chains cuz they were old and they were rusted.

[00:35:35] And, you know, I got new latches, we'd polished all the fiberglass on the outside, we'd making her look beautiful, right? And brought her back to her former glory. But every time you open these storage bays, we had these rusted chains that I just couldn't find a replacement And I went like I, and it's, they're, the chains are flat.

[00:35:51] So when the storage bay door comes up, the chain is just sitting in there and like a U-shape and it's flat. The, the chain halves will be flat against each other. So you can't just put a chain in there cause there's not enough space. So they have to be these flat chains where every link is sort of like, they're, they're all, they're all flat in the same way, if sense. So they can lay up against each other. And I tried every combination that I could think of, of words that meant flat chain searching for these things and I could not find them. I went to hardware stores, I talked to people at Lowe's and Home Depot RV Fix at places, and I could not for the life of me find flat chain for any reason.

[00:36:28] And nobody knew what flat chain was. And when I showed it to them, they're like, we've never heard of that or seen flat chain before until I was in this little tiny town And, and found a little old hardware store with a little old hardware gentleman who knew everything about everything and has probably forgotten more about hardware than I've ever known.

[00:36:43] And I brought these chains and I was like, do you know what these are? And he goes, yeah, that's Sash chain. And he is like, I don't have any, but if you go on Google and type in SASH chain, you'll be able to find it. And sure enough, right in front of him, I pulled it up. Sash Chain, there's a hundred different options.

[00:36:55] It was like a dollar a foot and I could order it and have it sent to my house. But because didn't have the language to describe what this was, I was unable to find it for nearly a year. And as soon as I had the word, I had them at my doorstep within 48 hours.

[00:37:11] Lucas Root: Wow. That's right man. Language is really, really important.

[00:37:18] So talk about, talk to me about heart. Cause this has been a, a really powerful a, a really powerful story in your life for the past couple of weeks,

[00:37:28] Richard Matthews: Heart in, so just give the context for the audience was I selected to be a juror on a murder trial. Which yeah, just, recently. And like, it just, it just finished the other day. I don't suggest being a juror in a murder trial. It's not a fun experience. It's not a negative experience necessarily, but it's not a fun one. What, what struck me is I, I have heard in the US that our government institutions described as, you know, the executive branch would be the mind and the, you know, the Congress and the House of Representatives. I'm gonna forget what the legal term is. Would be the body and the judicial branch would be the legislative branch.

[00:38:10] That's what I was going for. The legislative branch would be the body and the judicial branch And I had never up to this point had an experience with our court system until going into a high level murder trial And the outside of the details of the case, just the process of how our judicial system functions, really stood out to me as someone who pays attention to the way frameworks and stuff work.

[00:38:34] Right. That's the kind of nerd that you and I are , Is, is we pay attention to the frameworks around what's happening is it was incredibly methodical, right? Like ev every single piece of it. From the juror selection to the questions they were asking you to, the defense attorneys and the the prosecuting attorneys and the judge and the court clerk the court stenographer and what do you call 'em, the bailiffs that were in the court, they all show up and they on a daily basis engage and perform.

[00:39:06] At a very high level. Right? And, and it's a performance all the way through that's like a dance almost. And it's, it's, it's slow and it's thought out and it's methodical and you could almost feel it where it has, it has the, it has a rhythm, like a heartbeat would have a rhythm and it has a care, like your heartbeat has a care.

[00:39:24] And it was really fascinating to see, just to see the way that it was being done and to see how much every person who's in that room wants to be a part of this system of justice that we've created. And when you get to the jury system, like all the way into the deliberation room, you can tell that even the people, like, we don't particularly want to be there.

[00:39:46] But when you're there, what you have, what, what the jurors bring to the system that no other thing that we've ever come up with, could ever bring to the system is we bring, we bring, again, I don't have a word for this. We're using the word heart. We bring the heart, we bring the, we bring the. Social consciousness of our community, of people as Americans to the room to bring justice both to the victims in a situation and most importantly, the defendant in the system.

[00:40:19] Right. And understanding how do we bring justice to that system that comes from our, it comes from the jury part. So anyways, my, my whole point was that the experience was really clear to me that we have this very heart, for lack of a better word, that is the judicial system. And it was really fascinating.

[00:40:38] Lucas Root: you used going to language here, you used, you used language of performance.

[00:40:45] So, let's break that down a little bit and then, and then maybe respond to it. Language of performance suggests that this might have been performative and in, in the world of massive entertainment we're all familiar with the difference between between care and engagement and performance.

[00:41:04] You know, when we think about a dance, most of us probably think about dances that we've seen on tv, Dancing With The Stars, for example, which is performative as opposed to tango.

[00:41:16] Richard Matthews: Exactly.

[00:41:17] Lucas Root: How can you describe to me and to our audience, how can you describe to us that this was not performative? How did your experience help you see that this was really heart, that this was really care?

[00:41:31] Richard Matthews: So there's a couple of things. And I'll, I'll bring them up in individually, like one after the other cuz there were several things that, that were obvious to me. Again, as someone who pays attention to the frameworks of these things. Our Bailiff, his name was Officer Rosario. Officer Rosario was probably mid fifties, wearing his, sheriff's outfit. I don't know if that's the correct term for it. His uniform. It's all green. It's the one that he wears. We got to chat with him in between coming in and out of the courtroom, which happens a lot. And he would never, never once answer any questions about what was going on in the courtroom to us. Several times you mentioned to us, he's like, I could answer that question, but I won't. Right. Because the person who answers those questions is the judge. Right? And so I, he would answer other questions like, how long have you worked here as a bailiff? And he said, 25 years. And I was like, how long have you been in this, this courtroom, 25 years courtroom four F in the ninth district court of Kissimmee has had bailiff Officer Rosario for 25 years.

[00:42:32] That's his courtroom. And he treats it like his courtroom, right? It's, it's mine and I take care of it. Right? He takes care of it like the shepherd who's taking care of his sheep, whether that is the judge or the clerk or the, the defendants that are the the, the jurors that are in there.

[00:42:50] It's his court and he takes care of it. And every

[00:42:53] Lucas Root: or the grandmother who's cooking food for her, her grandkids in her kitchen.

[00:42:58] Richard Matthews: it's, it's his and he cares about it and you can tell that he cares about it. Right. And, and that level of care you saw in every single person that courtroom for whatever their job was. Right. So the judge interacted the same way where he treated it like his courtroom, cuz it is his courtroom.

[00:43:23] Right. And when the attorneys

[00:43:25] Lucas Root: holding the gavel, but, but because he's a member of the Courtroom 4F community.

[00:43:33] Richard Matthews: Yeah. It's his community and he takes care of it. And the attorneys that came in, they only come into that courtroom when they're called into that courtroom, but they're a member of that judicial system, the ninth Circuit Court. Right? Both the defendant and the prosecuting attorney. And you watch just the, the, the very, this is the, the performance aspect of it is, you know, I'm going to submit into evidence, you know, states number one or states marked s as state's number one, right?

[00:44:06] And that's one of the things that happens over and over again. We had like 30 different or 35 different piece of evidence that were involved in every single time. They use the exact same language pattern and go through the exact same performance where I have this piece of evidence, and we're gonna call up an expert witness.

[00:44:20] And that expert witness is going to vouch for this evidence. That is, does this evidence fairly and accurately represent the events that happened on X, Y, Z? Do you recognize this dog? Do you see it? Yes, I do. Wonderful. Thank you for your, your testimony on that. The state is now going to move to input this into evidence states s as state's number one, every single time the same language, the same movements, and before they go to introduce it, they bring it over to the defense and the defense gets to review it.

[00:44:48] Is there anything that you see that is different or wrong with this? No, no objections to introducing that as evidence. Bring it over. The court clerk takes it, it takes it in. Then later, whenever it makes sense in the the actual proceedings. We're going to publish evidence from state's number one.

[00:45:01] Right. And is the defense okay with that? Yes. Is the court clerk's gonna do it. The performance is methodical. It's a heartbeat. It happens same way single time. It's not

[00:45:10] Lucas Root: What I hear here is that this, this procedure is actually the common language of the purpose of that community.

[00:45:20] Richard Matthews: Of justice. Right. And what was interesting to me is you could see from the beginning of jury selection and to the conclusion of the case, the impact that the care for the performance had on the jurors, to the point that by the time we were in the room for deliberation, they took this as seriously as they have taken anything in their lives as seriously as the people who were in that room doing the performance up to this point, had impressed upon all of us, the gravity of what we were a part of. By their performance. And you could see how that carried over into the actual deliberations and how much care and emotion and heart went into the deliberations. And when I say it was one of the most difficult things I've ever been a part of, bar that is absolutely true. But it was also one of the most impressive things I've ever been a part of.

[00:46:19] And the thing that's fascinating to me is I was randomly selected from a group of people and randomly put on this murder trial and randomly put into this courtroom, particularly because I travel and I just recently became a member of this state and have an address in this area. To even be selected for this and to have a experience that is a, that caliber means that this is, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't a happenstance that it just happens to be this level of performance, this one time.

[00:46:52] They always do that every single time. And you only get that level of

[00:46:59] Yeah. If you care if you have that heart, which is, again, heart is not, is not the right word. But it's close enough for what we have. And I think it might be useful to get into like, the word that you, you introduced me to this morning, the philatimo and what that actually means.

[00:47:13] Cause it actually brings a level of, I think, conscious intention to the love,

[00:47:20] Lucas Root: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:21] If

[00:47:21] Richard Matthews: that makes sense.

[00:47:22] Lucas Root: Amazing. What I hear both in your energy, right, in your words, and, and the inflection, the way that you're describing this, it, it sounds to me like your experience at Courtroom was kind of like being a member of a really engaged church,

[00:47:37] Richard Matthews: Absolutely. As someone who went to Bible college and studied religion religiously the courtroom was one of the best descriptions of a religious experience that I have physically been a part of.

[00:47:51] Lucas Root: Wow. Because it's not just performative following the process and executing it with, with care, with intention, with pride, with honor it, it means something and it's not just in the face of God.

[00:48:06] Richard Matthews: Yeah, it means something to the face of the community that these people are serving. And at the end of the court case, the judge came in after he released all of us, he was like, I'll stick around for a few minutes if you have any questions. And he said a few minutes, he's like, literally, as long as you were here to ask me questions, I will answer anything I'm allowed to answer. And so we sat stayed with us probably another 20 minutes while we just sort of pelted in with questions about the whole process. And one of the things that I brought up was, I brought up this, this idea of heart. I didn't quite have a good as good of a description for it now as after a few days of being able to think about it. But I asked him about it and I was like, the first thing I wanna do is just when you get the chance, thank the people in the courtroom for providing the level of experience that they do. And, and I, I had asked him, I was like, is that normal? And he was like, not only is it normal, it's normal.

[00:48:53] All over the place. Like if you end up in our judicial system, that is a very common thing to see in the US. And it's also sort of rare and unique, right? It's one of the things that makes America great is our judicial system, right? Because it's the heart of our country. and he was like the, the people that you were seeing in there, like the, the prosecuting attorney, she's like, she's one of the most prolific prosecuting attorneys in central Florida.

[00:49:17] And a defense attorney was one of the best defense attorneys in central Florida. And they, they work a lot of cases. They work a lot of cases together and they are both good friends. Because they see each other in this community, in this space all the time where they are they're head to head in a court case, but they are both serving the same purpose.

[00:49:37] Right. And that purpose is justice for their community. Right. And justice for their community means like in this case, there was someone's death, right? Someone in our community died. Right? And the defendant has some culpability in that person's death. You know? I'm at the end of the court case, we can say that now, we couldn't before the court case, cuz they were very clear, he's innocent until proven guilty.

[00:50:01] At this point he's been proven guilty. So he had some culpability in this person's death. And the defense attorney showed up in that courtroom because as a member of our community, he requires the highest and most care level of defense that he can have. Right. And the prosecuting attorney shows up and works with the same fervor because the community of people The deceased individual is a part, needs the same level of defense and care in this system. And so even though they are not elected representatives but are instead hired representatives from the community, they come in and they show up with the same level of care that the ones who are employed in the court in the courtroom did.

[00:50:41] And it was very obvious for someone like me who's paying attention to that stuff.

[00:50:47] Lucas Root: That's awesome. Thank you for sharing.

[00:50:50] Richard Matthews: Yeah. And I mean, that's a lot of words to say heart

[00:50:55] Lucas Root: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:56] But because

[00:50:57] Richard Matthews: we don't have a word for it, you sort of have to like paint a story.

[00:51:00] Lucas Root: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's one of the elements of community and yeah, it's hard for people to really connect with the complexity of that idea that you have to make and receive care for the community and from the community. You have to enroll and engage with the community and create space in your life for the community to enroll and engage with you. You have to show up and do the right thing for the community and do your work with pride and honor for the community.

[00:51:29] Richard Matthews: Yeah, and it's the heart. And what, again, thing that, the thing that struck me more than anything else was how they showed up for that, with that heart. How everyone in the courtroom showed up for that heart impacted the jurors on a level that when we got to the point where it was our job, we were like, we have to operate at the same level that everyone else is.

[00:51:52] We have in order to be a part of this system, we have to up our game to the point where we are operating at the same level that everyone else that we saw

[00:52:00] Lucas Root: What you just said is actually a really cool thing to say. It's a, it's a benefit and a feature, right? That that in I ideally, what a community can do is help every single member up their game, rise to the occasion, rise to the purpose. And you talked about. In the community of your mastermind, where together through progressive intimacy, you're all able to rise together.

[00:52:26] Nobody's holding anybody back, nobody's lifting them all together on his shoulders or her shoulders. It is the progressive intimacy and the work of the community that together rises. You do the same thing inside your company. Together we rise. And now you're talking about that, that exact same thing as a community inside the justice system.

[00:52:46] Together we are rising and the community helped the jurors rise to the challenge of that project.

[00:52:56] Richard Matthews: Yeah. Of that project of the particular case and the justice that needed to be brought there. And, I was asking my wife yesterday, I was like, can you have a good experience, that was also traumatic, right? Because ,you know, it was a murder trial. It wasn't exactly a, a happy, fun thing to be doing. But the experience of it was very powerful, in a positive way. As an American to appreciate our justice system. It was powerful for that, but also powerful to just be a part of something that is performing at that high of a level is something that we don't always get to experience, right?

[00:53:32] And in this case, it is a performance that has centuries of practice and centuries of honing behind it, that it's not something that we regularly get to be a part of. And so it stands out as a singularly impressive experience to be a part of.

[00:53:49] Lucas Root: Very cool. Alright. The fun. Wrapping up the three questions at the end. The first is Richard, for those of those of us who like me, have decided that they want to get in touch and stay in touch with you, where do they find you?

[00:54:05] Richard Matthews: So personally you can find me and all of my social media and anything else on my personal website, www.RichardMatthews.me so, and my last name is two ts in it, so R I C H A R D M A T T H E W S . ME, that's got all my stuff on it. You can find me there. For those of you who are interested in what we do with Push Button Podcasts, and the production efforts and stuff that we go into producing a show like this one or like The HERO Show or any you can find us at www.PushButtonPodcasts.com

[00:54:28] Lucas Root: www.PushButtonPodcasts.com. Thank you. What question? You ready for this? It's, it's the zinger. What question have I not asked you that you wish I had?

[00:54:38] Richard Matthews: It's a good question. I wish you had asked me. So, question I enjoy answering, the advice I would give to someone who wants to live life more

[00:54:54] intentionally. That question asked a lot ways on different podcasts.

[00:54:58] Lucas Root: me, tell me, tell me the advice that you would like to give to someone who is listening?

[00:55:04] Richard Matthews: The advice is simple, but it's got layers to it is take the risk you've been vacillating on.

[00:55:11] Lucas Root: Hmm.

[00:55:13] Richard Matthews: And what I mean by that is, if I go back to when I was 19 years old and engaged to the first girl that I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with didn't work out, but I thought it was going to. I remember sitting down with my dad and being like: I think I wanna ask this girl to marry me, but I don't think I'm ready. And the advice that my dad gave me at that point has been something that has shaped the rest of my life. And it was, if you wait until you're ready, you'll never do anything

[00:55:36] Lucas Root: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:36] Richard Matthews: And the implication was, and has impacted me greatly, that the act of doing is what takes you over the finish line to being ready.

[00:55:50] So if you are vacillating with some decision on "Do you want to?" Or "Should you?" Or "Can you?" Or "Am I ready for?" Doesn't matter what it. Having kids. Starting a business. Moving to a new location. Jumping off of the rock to do your first time cliff diving.

[00:56:05] Doesn't matter what it is. Take the risk. Because the act of doing is what is going to make you ready.

[00:56:12] Lucas Root: Oh, cool. In a way we touched on that throughout the entire podcast. You touched on that with moving from neighborhood Life to Van Life.

[00:56:21] Right

[00:56:22] You touched on that with launching your own business and, and in fact how you weren't even profitable at the beginning. You touched on that. Take the risk that you've been vacillating on. The act of taking the risk, the action is what gets you ready.

[00:56:36] You touched on that in community. The community together rises the, it is the action. It's the projects that we take that make us better

[00:56:46] and

[00:56:47] Richard Matthews: Yeah.

[00:56:47] Lucas Root: the progressive intimacy.

[00:56:50] Richard Matthews: The ones that you've been vacillating on. And for those who don't know what vacillating, that's the ringing of hands, right? When you put Vaseline on your hands, you are vacillating. And what that means, is it something that you have been thinking about, something that you have been considering and that you have been holding back from because of either fear or, something that is keeping you from taking the next steps.

[00:57:08] And when you find yourself in that state of vacillation, generally speaking, the next best step is to take that step. To take the leap and to take the actions and start working on that project.

[00:57:21] Lucas Root: Love it. Yes. Amazing. Thank you, Richard.

[00:57:25] Richard Matthews: that was two questions. I heard there was a

[00:57:27] Lucas Root: third one.

[00:57:27] that's three. Where do people find you? What's the question you wish I asked and that question?

[00:57:35] Richard Matthews: Oh, ask that question. There you go. I see how you're doing that. That makes a lot of sense,

[00:57:38] Lucas Root: All right. We are signing off. Thank you, Richard.

[00:57:42] Richard Matthews: Thank you Lucas.

[00:57:43] Narrator: Thanks for joining us this week on Elements of Community.

[00:57:46] Make sure to visit our website, ElementsOfCommunity.us, where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or via rss, so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes, or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, that would help us out too.

[00:58:08] Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode.