Matt Iseman: Reveals His Journey from Doctor to Comedian to Ninja Warrior Host

0:00In an arena with thousands of people watching and on TV with millions at home watching, you know, there's something about anyone who has the courage, particularly for these people who aren't professional athletes. For the most of them, they have families and jobs and they're doing this once a year. They're putting themselves out there and I just have so much respect for that.

0:21Mick:Welcome to Mick Unplugged, the number one podcast for self-improvement, leadership and relentless growth. No fluff, no filters, just hard-hitting truths, unstoppable strategies, and the mindset shifts that separate the best from the rest. Ready to break limits? Let's go!

0:45Mick:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back for another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today, we have someone who's a personal hero of mine. We're talking about a guy that's going from Ivy League MD to an Emmy-winning comedian, cancer survivor, arthritis warrior, and the soul of American Ninja Warrior. He redefines resilience, elevates grit, and inspires transformation. Join me in welcoming my hero, Mr. Matt Eisman. Matt, how are you doing today, brother? Nick, you are too good. You're making my ego huger. The soul of American Ninja Warrior. That's got to go on my business card, man. That's very kind.

1:19Mick:I mean it in every stretch of the imagination, man. Matt, I told you you're my hero. I want to tell you why. So rheumatoid arthritis personally affects my family. What you do for the foundations that you're a part of, man, truly have helped me bring awareness to my communities, to the clients that I represent, that I work with. And so I just want to thank you because we are so much now aware of rheumatoid and the foundations and the work that's being done. And with you being the front runner of that man, being a key voice of that, I just have to thank you, bro. You're very kind. I feel very lucky.

2:02So for those who don't know, I have rheumatoid arthritis, as you mentioned. And what's interesting is for me, the reason I got so involved is my background is I'm a medical doctor, as you mentioned. And when I was diagnosed, first of all, it took a year and a half to get diagnosed, a year and a half where my body was falling apart. And really, my life was falling apart physically. I gained 50 pounds. I was unable to work out. I had stiffness in my neck, my back, pain in my hands and my feet. I mean, my life, I became a shell of myself. And I was going to doctors. I was being tested for things, rheumatologic conditions like RA, and nothing was coming back positive.

2:42And the doctor said everything's normal, even though I knew something's wrong. And it took a year and a half before I got the diagnosis. And when I got diagnosed and was told I had RA, the thing was, first of all, I was relieved, not because I wanted, RA is a chronic autoimmune disease. There is no cure. Obviously, you don't want that, but I just wanted an answer. Because for anyone out there who's experiencing health issues, one of the most challenging parts is when you don't know why, when there's no answer. Because even if it's a bad answer, even if it's cancer, even if it's a chronic disease and there's no cure, at least you know what you're up against instead of just kind of facing like you're in a room blindfolded and you just keep getting hit.

3:27And so, but the crazy thing was once I was diagnosed as a doctor, as my dad's a doctor, my friends were doctors, I was surrounded by good doctors. I understood the disease. I understood the pathophysiology of it. But what I didn't know was how do you live with it? And so for me, when I got diagnosed, the crazy thing was, even though I was surrounded by all these people wanting to help, I felt alone until I went to a meeting with the Arthritis Foundation. And all of a sudden, I'm in a room full of people like me, a room full of people facing the same disease or a similar disease, people who could tell me, hey, this is how I cope with this day to day.

4:04These are some of the strategies I cope with. These are some of the things like you can have kids still. You can have a job. There are challenges, but here's what they are. And to me, what it was, was the reason I've become so supportive of the Arthritis Foundation in particular was they were my family when I was diagnosed with this disease. And not that my other family wasn't there, but the family of people who knew what I was going through. And for anyone who's experienced a challenge, and I don't think it's limited to just health challenges, but it's so helpful to have someone who's walked a mile in your shoes and who can understand what you're going through and who can give you the, the real practical advice.

4:43And sometimes just be there to say, yeah, it sucks. That's okay. It sucks.

4:49Mick:Dude, you are so true, man. Like, so my grandmother had it before she passed. My mom has it. My sister has it. I have an uncle or actually two uncles that have it. And I don't think people understand what you just said. Just that community of, hey I'm here with you. Sometimes that's what you need because the pain that could just hit you at one o 'clock in the morning. I mean my mom sometimes has to sleep sitting up in a chair just because when she gets that flare up like you said like there's not much that you can do like there's some things to ease it but it doesn't go away and then my sister you know just to walk up and downstairs sometimes can be a struggle.

5:29Mick:My uncle who's one of the strongest men that I know is like I can't use a screwdriver right now. Can you come over and help me? But I get it. And I don't think people understand just that dynamic of the disease and of the illness, man. How did you begin coping with it on both the mental and the physical side? I think there were a couple things that happened pretty quickly. I think the first thing was by finding that community and seeing people living with it. Because again, when you read the textbook, when you search online, the majority of the cases you find are the worst case scenarios. You're seeing people completely confined to wheelchairs, people with the gnarled hands.

6:13But the reality is for most people living with RA, a lot of times it's what's called an invisible disease, where people look at you and they can't tell anything's wrong. But when they see, you know, my friend, I was 30 years old and, you know, I went from like 197 pounds to almost 250 pounds. I couldn't move. And my buddy looked at me and he's like, what's wrong with you? There's something wrong. And I think for me, it was finding that community of people who could tell me it's OK. There's a way through this. You know, there's a bright side and we're living proof of it. That was important. But the other thing was at that point I was doing standup comedy.

6:54And for me, you know, that that that age old truism, laughter is the best medicine. I think for me that even even in that 18 months when I didn't have a diagnosis, but I was really struggling physically and even emotionally, I was probably clinically depressed by by the final few months where you're just so devastated, sleeping 10 to 14 hours a day and still feeling exhausted. I think for me, the highlight of every day was going to a comedy club. And even if nobody laughed at my jokes, it's being around a room of laughter. It's that thing of when you're laughing, you're not thinking about the pain.

7:29You're not thinking about the sadness. And so for me, laughter was such, I think, such a good tool to help cope with the struggles of it. And I was very fortunate. I started on a biologic drug, which those were only approved in 98. I was diagnosed in 2002. And I'm sure as you're certainly your mom knows and maybe even your sister before those biologics, the treatments were things like heavy metals. And very often the side effects of the treatments were as bad as the disease. And so it was it was a real catch 22. And I've been very fortunate where I've responded pretty well. My disease hasn't progressed a lot.

8:06So I kind of feel like I benefited from all the people who came before me, whose suffering and whose willingness to be experimented on led to the advent of these incredible drugs that now for so many of us have offered us a way back into what we would call, you know, a life where RA isn't dominating. And so for me, I think, you know, the having that that family of people going through it and then having the ability, the comedy where to me, no matter how bad I felt, if I was out laughing for that moment, everything felt normal. And I think when you're sick, all you want is to just feel normal, even if it's only for a few minutes, because when you're sick, when you're in pain, it's so hard to take your focus off of that and focus on anything else.

8:56And so for me, being being out doing comedy every night, which was very fortunately my job, I think was probably one of the most important things of me getting through it.

9:06Mick:I love that, dude. And again, I just want to thank you and applaud you for putting it on your shoulder, being a big visual, being a big voice because it's needed. And like I said, my family truly thinks. Well, man, you know, that's something else too. I think that, so again, when I was diagnosed and I started searching, you know, you read about the textbooks and you'll read about, obviously people tend to write articles, usually about the worst case scenario. And so one of the things I wanted to do, and also RA tends to be a disease. It predominantly favors women and usually women, you know, in their fifties or sixties, there can be juvenile RA and obviously men can get it too.

9:44But when you get diagnosed with this and you're like, I don't see anyone like me, even when I went to the RA meetings, I still felt that, you know, guys in their 30s were kind of underrepresented. And that was one of those chances where I said, you know, I can share my story now so that the next person who gets diagnosed won't feel so alone and go, oh, yeah, there's someone like me. And at that point, you know, I was already doing pretty well. And for me, the more I've gotten to do, you know, when I was on Celebrity Apprentice, my cause was the Arthritis Foundation. And we ended up raising a million dollars for it.

10:16And as important as that, though, was that I got to tell my story. So we raised the money for the research, but also you raise awareness and you let people know, hey, you know, there are a lot of people suffering with this disease. You're not alone. And that's what stuff is. You could be out. Your coworker might have the same disease. But because a lot of people aren't comfortable, they don't want to share their disease. They don't want people to look at them differently. For me, I just felt like this is a chance to share my story. so that because it was when I was diagnosed, you're just looking around and just to be able to latch on to somebody and go, OK, they're like me and they're doing OK.

10:52That gives me hope. I want it to be that for the next person.

10:55Mick:And you're doing it well, brother. You're doing it well. So I want to transition a little bit to this comedy world of you, man. So like, again, huge fan of you forever love seeing all of your i'm gonna say your old clips and bits that you post out on youtube dude like you're one of the the funniest people that i'm not sure the world knows how funny thank you for saying that because i totally agree with you but you know it's one of the things like on ninja warrior it's not a very funny show you know it right it tends to be very earnest and so i understand you know when i go out and do comedy not a lot of people go let's go see the host from Ninja Warrior, the really loud guy, because I'm not particularly funny on the show.

11:38But stand up has been my first love. It's what brought me out to Hollywood. And it's something to me. I love TV. I love Ninja Warrior. It's awesome. But there is something about being in a room with just you and a microphone in the crowd and that immediacy of you say a joke and people can clap even if you know you can fake clap. Faking laughter is very hard. And so it's kind of that response. It's such an honest exchange with you in the audience where if you get him laughing, you've earned it. And to me, I always say it's, it's such a rush, um, doing standup comedy because I, you know, I used to be an athlete.

12:13I was a college baseball player, not particularly good, but I always think back in sports when Michael Jordan, you know, that game when he hit, I think it was six, three pointers in the first half. And he just said, I was in his zone. Yeah. He got the hands up and he goes, the hoop looked like, you know, it was the size of a hula hoop. It couldn't go in. And he just talked about being in that state. And I think, you know, anyone who's worked at something and who's really good at something, we all have those moments when you're like, oh, it's, it's, it's like the matrix when everything slows down.

12:41And I think that's when standup comedy is at its best is when you're on stage and the crowd's laughing and you just feel like it's also, you see everything, you know, the joke you're telling you're present to it, but you're thinking about where can I go next and what's happening over here. And it's just, to me, it's, it's one of those States where you just feel present because I think particularly now in life. And I am so bad at this with my phone. I think we all get so distracted. We have a million things beeping at us, buzzing at us, instant ways to distract us. I love when something pulls you fully present.

13:16And to me, that's what standup does, which is why I love it so much. Dude.

13:19Mick:And you're, you're great at it, man. You have an amazing gift and talent, and I know you work hard at it. And I wanted to ask you this question because I know when you're doing stand-up, right? Like you've got your, your routine, you've got your flow that you're going to do over and over again. Are there moments when it's like, all right, I did this in LA and it was like, okay, but then I go do it in Alabama and the crowd erupts. It's the same joke, the same energy. What is that like? It'll happen in the same night. Like if you do two shows, you'll go out and say a joke, it kills. And you'll go out to the same audience or the, you know, virtually the same audience in the same city and it dies.

13:58And that, but, but, but that's one of the challenges of comedy is that it can, it's, it's always a high wire act. And, and that's what we say is, you know, if you ever kind of just go on autopilot where you're like, I know this joke works, I can just tell this, the audience is very perceptive. And if you're not really present, cause, cause you're right. You've often told the joke for a decade, you've told the same joke, but you're always tweaking it. But if you, if, and so the challenge is to make it feel though, like every night is the first time you say it. And that's when you have to be present in the room.

14:33And when you're not, when you go on autopilot and every comic will tell you, we know when we do it, we know when sometimes you're just like, I'm tired or I'm not feeling, you know, and something happens, you go down. That's when you feel, you feel like the audience slipping away because the audience, they might not articulate it, but they're incredibly intuitive. And one of the things I say is as long as the audience trusts you, as long as they feel safe with you, you can take them anywhere. If five jokes in a row go bad, but you don't panic and you're like, I'm setting you up for something. The audience is OK with it.

15:04But as soon as you start getting, we call it flop sweat. And I just took a shower. That's why I'm sweating right now. And I'm so excited to talk to you. But it is that thing when the audience sends fear or when they pity you, then it's dead. So that's one of the great things with standup is that, you know, you're set. Your jokes are always a living, breathing organism. There's always room to find something. And that's what we're doing. So we stand up. When I go out, I'll know if everything I have 45 minutes. These are the jokes I will tell them 45 minutes. But when I go out there, sometimes you're like something happens and you'll just run with it and you'll just go.

15:41And then you can dip back into your material if you need to. and then something else happens and you can go back out. And we, you know, my friends and I, we were talking about it. We go, that's when you're being a comedian. That's when you're not just saying your material. That's when you're, that's when you're being funny. You're in a room the same way you do with your friends, where you're commenting on something, you got something, something else comes up. You don't ignore it. You play with it. You have fun, but you always know where you're going. And to me, that's when standup is at its best.

16:07So, you know, there, there are a lot of right now on the internet, you see a lot of crowd work. because comedians, you know, a joke might take years to develop. And if you put it out online, that joke's kind of gone. But crowd work is something that kind of happens that's, you know, based on a night and you're like, let me just show this. So, you know, I'm funny. So you come out and see my material. So that's been one of the challenges with comedy is with the ubiquity of social media of, of how do I show people my material? Or how do I show people I'm funny without then burning all my material?

16:39So a lot of people are doing crowd work and it's also, it's it is fun it is fun kind of because the audience also senses when something's happened they they tend to know when it's a joke that hey they might have told that joke before but when something happens you're like guy with the glasses and it's like hey that was because of the guy with the glasses that happened this night and that you might have had that joke where anytime there's a guy with glasses but you make it feel special you make it feel present I think that's what stand-up is you always want to make it feel new yeah and that's why I appreciate your art man and I I was

17:11Mick:talking to a pretty famously well-known comedian. I won't say their name, but it's funny that you mentioned going on autopilot because this person said to me like, Mick, I had to go back in the lab because my 45 minutes set, I did two nights in a row for 30 minutes. It was like, I was just in a flow. I wasn't really connected with the audience. And then I had to go another point that you just made, I had to go to crowd work because I knew at least I could go do that. And so now they're working on perfecting their crowd work so that they've got new material every time because the audience changes.

17:49Mick:So you're spot on with that, brother. It is, you know, and then, and that's one of the things that, that I love about standup is it's, it's just, it's, it is a bucking bronco. You know, you, you, you can ride it, you can be on it, but at any second you can get thrown off. And that's part of the rush, I think, that we love about it. It is one of those things that forces you not to just kind of go through it. Because, you know, like I went to see a Vegas show, and it was a very, very famous magician who'd been on TV, who'd done everything. And I watched him, and I just saw him. Magic. And I was just like, this guy has done this for 23 years, and there's no magic left in his performance.

18:31He was just hitting the numbers. and you're like, wow, you know, that's, and that's the challenge. Like when you, especially when you have like a residency in Vegas, where you may be doing 10, 12 shows a week, you know, the real challenge as a great performer is how do you make each one feel like it's the first time you've done it? How do you make a Tuesday matinee show still feel special? And that's, you know, that's, that's, I think those are the really great performers are the ones who can do that. Yeah.

19:02Mick:So another thing I want to congratulate you on brother was, was winning celebrity apprentice in your season, your year, you were kicking names or kicking butts, taking names, right? What's the leadership lesson that you learned throughout celebrity apprentice that maybe you didn't know until you were on, you know, I think it was, I've played sports, been on some shows that were, you know, network shows and things. I think, I think the interesting thing with that was that was probably the biggest collection of people, alphas, people with big egos, people who might not have been, you know, at the top of their games success wise, but, but, you know, people who'd been Hall of Fame NFL players, world champion boxers, like, you know, superstars, heads of bands that were, you know, had sold hundred million albums.

19:50You're around these people. And especially as someone coming in, I was probably one of the lesser known people. I think it was a chance to really say, all right, I got to swallow my ego here and see what do I need to do to get people on the same page. And what I found was one of those things that that when you didn't make it about your ego, when you didn't make it, someone challenged you, make it like, hey, this is a maneuver going, all right, well, what's your idea? Let me hear you. It was one of those things that when I sought for collaboration, I found that was how I managed a lot of the egos.

20:21Now, the great thing about it was, for those who don't know, I was on with the new boss, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The old boss had moved on to a different job. And unfortunately, you know, I won. I'm the new celebrity apprentice. The show got canceled because of the political connections to it.

20:36Mick:Wait, it wasn't because you won? It didn't get canceled because Matt won? Well, it may be, but I'm going to say it was because of the political stuff. But what was great was when the show was canceled that day, I was literally standing in an airport, and I saw the text after I won. And it's like, you know, NBC announces Celebrity Apprentice is canceled. And right then I got a call from Arnold Schwarzenegger and he's like, I see. I just want you to know you're still my apprentice. In two weeks, we're going to Columbus, Ohio. And like since then, that was in 2017. Since then, I've traveled the world with this guy.

21:10I've gotten to be up close. And to me, Mick, that has been like business school, graduate school, the school of heart. Like being around someone who I think is one of one of one. But, you know, certainly in my generation, I can't think of many people who've had the amount of worldwide fame, the amount of success in so many different areas from bodybuilding to real estate to movies to politics to philanthropy to climate change. To be in his orbit has been such a lesson in leadership and seeing how he does it. Because he has me host this Austrian World Summit on Climate Change that's held in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, their version of the White House.