#54 Hearts Broken Open - with Matt Munson & Jerry Colonna

A disciple asks the rebbe: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rebbe answers: “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.” - Hasidic Tale, as told by Parker Palmer Every entrepreneur hears the call of an inner voice. We may call it drive, intuition, or our guiding voice. Regardless of name it pushes us forward. This voice can be our most powerful ally in the pursuit of authentic leadership, or become our greatest enemy when clouded by fear, anxiety, or self-judgment. Most of us equate struggle as a bad or wasted experience. But as we find in this episode, that association is far from the truth. Instead, heartbreak holds our greatest potential to allow true transformation to be possible. Fresh off an $8M round, Matt Munson led his team at Twenty20, a crowd-sourced commercial photography catalogue, in a radical pivot--changing the business model from B2C to B2B. The business seemed to be moving in the right direction, yet Matt began to feel crippling pressure to achieve more growth. This pressure, perhaps better defined as anxiety, quickly became all consuming, permeating through the entire Twenty20 team. It wasn’t long until the company had reached another tipping point to survive. With the support of his board, Matt made the difficult decision to layoff nearly 80% of his staff and embrace a new path-- one centered around simplicity, transparency, and embracing the open-hearted warrior within. Links Matt Munson on Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattmuns Twenty20 on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Twenty20app Twenty20 - https://www.twenty20.com How I burned 10 Million Dollars so you don’t have to - https://goo.gl/MIpPbW Getting Real - https://gettingreal.io