Matt Formston AM
For 15 years Matt has built trust under the most extreme conditions imaginable. In corporate boardrooms and on fifty-foot waves, at the same time, blind. The frameworks he teaches are not theory. They were stress-tested by a Senior Executive at Optus and a world-class athlete simultaneously, producing world titles across two sports and a Guinness World Record, in parallel, for 15 years.
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Matt Formston AM is a keynote speaker and trust and leadership expert. For 15 years he ran a Senior Executive career at Optus and a world-class athletic career at the same time. Not sequentially, not one after the other. In parallel. He did both blind. The frameworks he now teaches corporate leaders navigating change fatigue, uncertainty, and the pressure to perform were not derived from a textbook. They were stress-tested in boardrooms and on fifty-foot waves, in conditions where broken trust cost more than a contract. His father asked the question at the start. Matt has been answering it ever since.
From a five-year-old's diagnosis to a framework for corporate leaders
At five years old, Matt was told he would go blind. The professor who delivered the diagnosis told his parents the standard 1983 prognosis for macular dystrophy. He would never hold a realjob, never have many friends, never play sport, never live independently. Matt's mother andfather listened carefully. Then they asked a different question: Why can't he? Why not? Thatquestion became the operating system Matt has run on for over forty years. The methodbecame a framework. The framework became a [book]. The method became a [keynote].
He played full-contact rugby against the sighted kids. He played ice hockey on ice, where the speed itself is the collision. He was selected for representative teams in both sports, picked over his sighted peers. Sport was the only place he was judged on contribution and value generation, not on what he couldn't see. In those environments, he belonged.
At seventeen, two things happened in the same year. His best friend took his life. Glandular fever ended Matt's sporting career. The compounded effect of over a decade of schoolyard bullying because of his disability had already done its damage. The one place he'd been treated as an equal was gone. His parents had enforced every standard in the Formston house without exception. Now they eased off, terrified of losing him. Matt spent the next decade drifting. Building an image instead of a life. Borrowed pride that only existed when someone else said it out loud.
In 2008, at thirty, staying in his sister's small dark apartment in Killara after another failed relationship, Matt listened to a sixty-year-old neighbour downstairs telling stories about the awesome job he used to have. Past tense. His first thought was what a loser. His second thought was that could be me. The rebuild wasn't dramatic. A chin-up bar in the doorway. Ten reps every time he walked through. Every interaction at the end of each day replayed with brutal honesty. For two years, nothing looked different on the outside. Then 2010 arrived. The framework that began in that dark apartment is what Matt now teaches as the [Hard Standards Workshop].
Two elite careers. At the same time. Blind.
In 2010, everything arrived at once. Matt met his wife Bex. He was selected to cycle for Australia. He was appointed to his first board, becoming an executive. He bought his second property. Not one, then the next. All of it, the same year. The rebuild had taken two years of invisible work. The results took twelve months.
2014 was the year it compounded. Matt became Cycling World Champion and World Record Holder at the UCI World Championships in Aguascalientes, Mexico, setting the fastest tandem pursuit time in the world. In the same twelve months, he exceeded his sales targets by 140% and won a Pacesetter Award, Optus's annual sales award. His first child, Max, was born six weeks before Mexico. Sport, business, family. World-class in all three, at the same time, blind. The list he'd written six years earlier in a dark apartment in Killara had not just become real. It had become bigger than he'd let himself dream. That year became the empirical basis for what Matt now teaches as the [Business Trust Keynote].
Since then, Matt has won a world title, a world record, or a major business or community award almost every year. The same operating system, still running. In corporate boardrooms, on fiftyfoot waves, in negotiations, freediving at 60-foot depth on a single breath. The frameworks he teaches corporate leaders were stress-tested at the level where broken trust costs more than a contract. They still are.
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The method kept working. At rising stakes. Against sighted peers.
At nine years old, Matt won his first Best and Fairest trophy at Narrabeen Sharks junior rugbyleague. Judged against his fully sighted teammates, across a full season. No adjustments, noallowances. He still has the trophy. He still ranks it alongside his Heavy Water Award.
In November 2022, Matt surfed a fifty-one-foot wave at Nazaré, Portugal. The biggest wave ever surfed by any para athlete. It was recognised by Guinness World Records and became the centrepiece of the Netflix documentary The Blind Sea. Global media had reported for weeks that he was going to die. He didn't. He surfed the wave and went home to his children.
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In 2023, the Australian surfing industry awarded Matt the Heavy Water Award. Australia's Best Big Wave Surfer of the year. Not the para category. Not a special recognition. The open award, judged against the full field of sighted professionals. On stage, Ross Clarke-Jones handed him the trophy. The child who'd been told at five he'd never play sport had just been named the best big wave surfer in the country, against a field of fully sighted professionals. Full stop. Blind.
Now imagine doing it blind.
Imagine surfing a fifty-foot wave at Nazaré.
Imagine setting a cycling world record at the UCI World Championships in Mexico.
Imagine winning four world titles as a surfer.
Imagine exceeding enterprise sales targets by 140% at one of Australia's largest corporates.
Imagine being the subject of a Netflix documentary that played 1,200+ times in Australian cinemas.
Imagine publishing with Wiley.
Imagine chairing boards, building programs for blind children,and serving as a public ambassador for multiple charities and NGOs.
Imagine being recognised by the Crown as a Member of the Order of Australia for that work.
Imagine any one of these things.
Matt did all of them.
In parallel.
For 15 years.
Blind.
When we say blind, this is what we mean.
Matt has less than three per cent peripheral vision and no central vision at all. He cannot see faces. He cannot read the screen you're reading this on. He uses screen readers, a cane, and decades of pattern recognition to navigate the physical world. Every keynote, every boardroom meeting, every wave, every pitch has been delivered without the visual information you take for granted. The frameworks he teaches weren't built in spite of this. They were built because of it. When the visual shortcuts aren't available, the underlying standards have to hold.
Four ways to put the frameworks in the room.
The method, the standards, and the trust framework. Delivered as keynotes, a workshop, and the book they're drawn from. Matched to the work your team is ready for.
THE BUSINESS TRUST
Trust is the single biggest commercial lever most organisations underuse. Not the soft version.
The operational one. How trust is earned, how it compounds, and how it collapses when the
underlying standards slip. The formula Matt teaches is the one he lived in parallel careers for 15
years.
THE CAN MINDSET
There is no such thing as can't. Only a challenge not yet named. Most teams stop at the word. The best teams ask the next question. This keynote gives your people the method underneath the question. Not inspiration. A repeatable mental tool.
THE BUSINESS TRUST
Every organisation has values on the wall. The real question is which ones hold under pressure, which ones have quietly drifted, and which ones the leadership team is no longer willing to enforce. Hard Standards is the workshop where senior teams audit themselves honestly, and rebuild the standards they actually need to run on.
WHY NOT? (WILEY, 2026)
The book that sits underneath every keynote and workshop Matt delivers. Eight Hard Standards, one method, forty years of lived proof. Published by Wiley, August 2026.
Book Matt for your event.
Keynotes, workshops, or bespoke engagements. Matt's team will scope the right fit for your
audience, your team, and your brief.
Bulk orders for leadership teams: see above, or enquire here