Dreams are a bit like pearls.
Something has to get inside your brain to inspire you to do what you never thought possible.
For pearls to be made, an irritant must find its way inside the shell of its host.
For humans, that “irritant” might be passion or purpose. For mollusks (e.g., oysters and mussels), parasites, crabs or worms can get into the lining of the shell and cause irritation. A liquid substance coats the irritant, which hardens to become a pearl over time.
The beauty that results from a mollusk’s internal struggle can take years. For Matt Harris, it took half a lifetime.
As one of the world’s most sought-after pearl experts, his ascent didn’t happen overnight. And it didn’t happen without many “irritants” entering his brain before he found the career he was destined for.
Discovering a new passion
When he turned 50, Harris had a job he liked “just fine” and was making good money, but he wasn’t fulfilled. Change can be hard, but it’s even harder, he admits, “the older you get, when you have mortgages and bills.”
Thankfully, he knows hard can be easy when it’s the right thing for you.
Having done everything from conducting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and selling fine art to managing all of Warner Brothers’ West Coast retail stores and running his own software company, Harris’ niche-fluid career helped him become a lifelong learner.
So, it was no surprise that, in preparing for his wedding, he volunteered to research a topic that fascinated him.
“My wife and I decided to get pearls for the bridesmaids, but neither of us knew how to buy them,” he recalls. Because he’d accompanied his mom to her jewelry making classes when he was a child, he was comfortable walking into a shop at the California Jewelry Mart in Los Angeles and asking the women working there if they’d teach him Chinese pearl stringing, which uses silk and closely knit knots. “They thought it was the cutest thing in the world,” he says, “so I learned how to string this traditional silk method.”
When his software company reached its 20-year mark, he moved to Napa Valley with the intention of building a winery but says he felt stagnant.
“At a certain point later, I’m like, ‘Where did the fire go?’” he says. “It wasn’t that I was in bad shape. It’s just that I got comfortable, and I realized I didn’t want to be mediocre anymore, so I had to reignite that.”
Reigniting the fire
The fire returned when Harris moved to Austin, Texas, and started selling his pearl creations at a local jewelry store. He convinced the owner to let him manage the store and earn 50% of the profits if he doubled their revenue.
After quadrupling their revenue—and having reached a milestone birthday—he says he asked himself, “Do I want to die being known as a really great jewelry store manager, or do I want to leave a mark? Something people can remember me by—something that my daughter can remember me by and say, ‘My dad did that.’”
Turns out, the mark he wanted to leave was sitting in his drawers. With thousands of collected pearls, Harris realized pearls had a story to be told, yet no one was telling it in a way that did them justice.
“There was no one person that was the person,” he says. “It seemed like there’s this spot open, and it seemed like it was waiting for me.”
A few years and many celebrity and travel experiences later, Harris has found his purpose. He has some advice for living the life you were meant to live.
Find your 2.0
Harris attributes his shifts to The Super Connector Mastermind run by Jen Gottlieb and Chris Winfield. In the 2.0 exercise, where attendees were asked to imagine themselves a year into the future, he remembers questions like: “How do you feel?” and “What does it look like?”
“I saw myself speaking about pearls in exotic locations like Tahiti, where a lot of pearls come from,” he says. “And I saw myself being known in the industry… as the guy that’s teaching people about pearls.”
Harris 2.0 was born.
Take a leap of faith in yourself
When Harris learned of a conference in Tahiti for jewelers touring pearl farms, he asked to speak about the history of pearls. He got the gig.
He didn’t have a speech written or experience but still pitched himself as the right person for the job.
“There’s a saying that I love: ‘Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours,’” Harris says. “If I would have had the slightest thought that I couldn’t have landed that, then I wouldn’t have asked. So, I did. And before you know it, somebody says, ‘Oh, Matt, you’re speaking [in] Tahiti?… Why don’t you speak over here?’”
A year later, he’s in a video about the history of pearls shown on all Air Tahiti Nui flights—all because “I got into 2.0, and I believed that I could do it. And that’s kind of like that leap of faith in yourself.”
Don’t be afraid to ask
When Harris started designing jewelry as a hobby—long before he launched into it full-time—he emailed everyone he knew, asking if anyone knew actress Debra Messing, who he thought would look perfect in one of his necklaces.
A friend who Harris shares wine tastings with responded. “He says, ‘I don’t know if you know this, because we don’t talk business over wine, but I’m a photographer for NBC, and I work on the Will & Grace show.’”
Harris gave that friend a necklace for Messing, and her wardrobe person called, asking to meet. After designing for Messing for two seasons of the show, he asked her to connect him with Britney Spears, who was going to be a guest on an upcoming episode.
“Britney then asked if I could make a necklace and earring set for her,” Harris says. “If you don’t ask, you’re never going to get it…. In order to have the courage to ask, you have to believe that you’re the person that can do it…. You are your 2.0.”
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo courtesy of Matt Harris Designs.
