This is not just an inspiring story. It's a blueprint for
performing at your best when the stakes are highest.
Matt Formston AM is a multi-sport World Champion, Guinness
World Record holder and Paralympian. Parallel to his elite sporting
achievements, he has built a career as a senior corporate executive, board
chair and executive coach. He is also blind.
None of Matt’s successes happened by accident. They were won
through a system ― the eight Hard Standards ―that Matt forged at the
intersection of professional sport and corporate leadership. He tested them
over decades, inside fifty-foot Nazaré waves, on championship cycling tracks,
freediving blind through shipwrecks and in boardrooms where the same principles
had to hold.
Why Not? weaves those standards through every
chapter. In Matt’s story, you’ll discover practical, immediately applicable
principles for building clarity, discipline and accountability in your own
performance.
- Know
when to plan, when to pull the trigger and how to tell the difference.
- Audit
yourself with brutal honesty before the world does it for you.
- Build
capacity now so your future self can perform under pressure.
- Declare
the goal before you’ve earned it, and do the work to deserve it.
- Lead
with empathy and understand what motivates others beyond the KPIs.
Why Not? is for anyone who wants to perform more consistently when it
counts. If you suspect you’re capable of more, but keep finding reasons not to
prove it, it’s time to stop saying, ‘I can’t.’ You need to start asking, ‘Why
not?’
About the Author
MATT FORMSTON AM is a four-time Surfing World
Champion, a Para Track Cycling World Champion and a Rio Paralympian.
He holds a Guinness World Record for surfing a 51-foot wave
at Nazaré, and in 2023 became the first para athlete in history to win Surfing
Australia’s open Heavy Water Award.
He has spent fifteen years in senior corporate leadership
and now speaks globally on performance, leadership and trust. His story is told
in The Blind Sea, now streaming on Netflix.
