said, “I’m here to collect your work laptop.” That’s how
Matt found out he was laid off, and that was the day he
decided to expand his part-time consulting business into a
full-time endeavor.
Now Matt lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but his business
is wherever his clients are: San Francisco, Boston, New
York, Chicago, Washington. His story is not the typical tale
of a little boy who always knew what he was going to do
with his life and after overcoming insurmountable obstacles,
finally persevered to find his dream. His journey is like a lot
of ours, full of failure and unexpected mishaps, frustrating
moments that make you question what you’re doing. For
those familiar with the confusion of not knowing if you’re
pursuing the right thing, Matt McWilliams’s story offers a
subtle encouragement: there’s room to get your calling
wrong.
And through all the twists and turns, after repeated
rejection, something beautiful emerged: Matt found his
calling. Not in the way you would expect, of course, but by
now we should be expecting that. He didn’t come to his
life’s work by success. He found it through failure.
The Power of the Pivot
In basketball, you are only allowed to take two steps once
you stop dribbling the ball. When you take that last step, the
foot you land on becomes what’s called a “pivot foot.” That