About this episode
Matt Stone reflects on the metaphor of iconic towers in relation to personal and brand development.
The CN Tower turns 50 today — it opened to the public on June 26, 1976 — and Matt can’t stop thinking about what makes a tower iconic: the way one structure becomes shorthand for an entire city, from Toronto to Seattle’s Space Needle to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It’s his new metaphor for the operator-to-icon journey. Becoming an icon means raising a tower rooted deep in your base — your brand, your story, your personality — that throws a beacon far past it. The catch is that towers take a long time to go up, and the base has to be ruthlessly focused before the signal can travel. Which leads to a candid reflection: Matt’s own tower is still under construction. He’s wrestling with a real tension in who he serves — the established, hypergrowth founders he’s built around versus the people in transition whose stories tug at his heart — and why focus, not breadth, is what finally gets a structure off the ground. Along the way: a warm recap of his first “DiNNr” (six people, two and a half hours, the real stories behind the polished exteriors), a quick lap through this day in history, and a Substack milestone coming into view. A reflective Friday send-off to close: who will you connect…
People in this episode
Host: Matt Stone
Topics covered
- iconic structures
- branding
- entrepreneurship
- personal reflection
- focus vs breadth
- self-care
Keywords
- CN Tower
- icon
- entrepreneur
- storytelling
- focus
- self-improvement
- business
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: DiNNr
Places: Toronto, Seattle, Paris
More episodes of Backstage w/ Matt Stone
- Report from the Frontier · September 8, 2026 · 12 min
- Start With a New Story · September 4, 2026 · 10 min
- People Love to Be Sold To · September 3, 2026 · 10 min
- Lead the Whole Industry · September 2, 2026 · 10 min
- A Different Font · September 1, 2026 · 13 min
- Take Them on a Field Trip · August 31, 2026 · 12 min
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