Latest / The Action Catalyst / Getting Yours, with Matthew Lesko (Business, Finance, Government, Entrepreneurship)

Transcript

Getting Yours, with Matthew Lesko (Business, Finance, Government, Entrepreneurship) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Stephanie Maas: Well, we are so excited to have you here, and
• 0:34
  I'll tell you what, this is a really fascinating background.
• 0:38
  Matthew Lesko: Anything you want to know, just lead me around by
• 0:40
  the nose.
• 0:41
  Stephanie Maas: My understanding is you started your career in
• 0:44
  the military.
• 0:45
  Matthew Lesko: Yeah, the Vietnam War. That's why I was in the
• 0:47
  military. It was three years, two months and nine days. But I
• 0:50
  wasn't counting. I was a ship driver, and it was great. I
• 0:53
  never had more responsibility for the end of my, rest of my
• 0:56
  life. I don't think when he was a 22 year old kid and learned
• 0:59
  how to drive ships go out in South China Sea. That's before
• 1:01
  there was any, you know, GPS, or anything like that. You had to
• 1:05
  go out and shoot the stars to find out where the hell you are.
• 1:08
  And it was sort of fun. I hated it every minute, but it wouldn't
• 1:12
  be somewhere else, but it certainly was a great
• 1:15
  experience. I had nothing better to do at the time. I couldn't
• 1:18
  get into grad school. I thought, well, yeah, well, maybe I'll go
• 1:21
  to law school. So I took the LSAT, so I got like two above
• 1:24
  plant life, yeah, and if you got drafted, then it's the army you
• 1:28
  get. And I'm not a camper, so living in the jungle, this
• 1:33
  camping distance sound appealing to me. So the Navy sounded
• 1:38
  pretty good. Man, that's clean sheets every night. So I did
• 1:40
  that, and then I was a diplomatic courier in Northern
• 1:44
  Europe, briefcase handcuffed to me, him, and I finally got out
• 1:47
  of there, went and got an MBA because of the GI Bill. And then
• 1:51
  I started businesses that were failing. And that's what you
• 1:53
  have to do to do anything. You just have to fail. Fail, fail.
• 1:56
  You practice failing. You don't learn how to succeed. You learn
• 2:00
  how to fail. Learning how to succeed is a waste of time. When
• 2:04
  you succeed, it's easy. I mean, there's nothing to learn
• 2:06
  anymore, so you really have to learn how to fail. It's like
• 2:09
  learning to walk. When a kid learns to walk, take a step and
• 2:12
  fall 100 times before they learn to walk. So when we do things as
• 2:15
  a grown up, that's new. It's the same thing.
• 2:18
  Stephanie Maas: So let me ask you this. Walk me through this
• 2:23
  passion that you've had for the last 40 years to help folks
• 2:27
  access government funding for the things that they need, or
• 2:31
  they think they need. Talk to me about where that passion came
• 2:36
  from, what this looks like for you, etc.
• 2:39
  Matthew Lesko: Well, it started trying to feed myself. You know,
• 2:43
  that's what life is. You have to take care of yourself and get a
• 2:46
  job and all that kind of stuff. I was starting businesses. I
• 2:49
  mean, in the 70s, I had a software company that failed,
• 2:51
  and I spent the only personal world, and it's trying stuff.
• 2:54
  And then I became a consultant for big companies like market
• 3:00
  research consultant. And I'd get information for them to buy and
• 3:04
  sell companies and markets for this and that and the other
• 3:07
  thing. And I was stationed in Washington, so back then, before
• 3:10
  the internet, you went to libraries, remember them to get
• 3:14
  information and helping rich people. Rich people will pay
• 3:18
  anything if they think they're going to make money at it. And
• 3:21
  so I would go around and Procter gamma was a client of mine, and
• 3:26
  they wanted to start a chain of pasta stores. So that's probably
• 3:29
  somebody on the board of directors. Hey, why don't we get
• 3:31
  in the pasta business? So I go out and look at the market and
• 3:35
  competitors and stuff like that, and I go to libraries around
• 3:38
  Washington, DC, because we have so many libraries because every
• 3:41
  agency has their own library for for agriculture, for commerce or
• 3:45
  for transportation. So you have the world's largest collection
• 3:49
  of literature on that topic. And I'd go there and try to research
• 3:53
  the data and the information about what the market is, and
• 3:57
  talking to librarians, and I remember, I was working on the
• 4:00
  pasta. And they said, Oh, the librarian said, you want to know
• 4:04
  about pasta? Hey, go up to the fourth floor in 407, or
• 4:07
  whatever, and talk to Charlie. He's our pasta expert. That just
• 4:11
  shocked me, and so went over, talked to Charlie. And Charlie's
• 4:15
  been studying pasta for last 25 years. He got a master's in it.
• 4:19
  He's got a PhD in it, and that's all he does is create Studies
• 4:24
  and Information and that nobody knows about. His wife was sick
• 4:27
  of hearing about it. Yeah, when I walk in the door with a
• 4:30
  genuine interest in it, I mean, he just lights up and I could
• 4:34
  never get out. He would give me studies about all this stuff and
• 4:37
  what happens, and how the prices and everything, and who's making
• 4:41
  what? And so I put it all in a package for my client. And what
• 4:46
  shocked me, though, is that, God, I had no idea. I mean, I
• 4:49
  grew up in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, coal mining town,
• 4:52
  and my grandparents were came and worked in the mines from
• 4:55
  Czechoslovakia, and I'm a coal miner's grandson. And. I Why
• 5:01
  does everybody know about this? Yeah. And I said, God, nobody
• 5:03
  works for I, I thought the government was a post office and
• 5:06
  the IRS, you know, and to see all the wealth that's there and
• 5:10
  all. And I was making millionaires into billionaires.
• 5:13
  They'd get money and help and all this kind of stuff. Why? Why
• 5:17
  isn't everybody that? So I said, Oh, I got to do this. Rich
• 5:19
  people boring to work for. All they care about is money, you
• 5:23
  know, their hearts not in much except their pocket. And so I
• 5:26
  wanted to help the average person. How do I do that? And I
• 5:30
  can't charge, like I charge rich people to do this information.
• 5:33
  So it had to be books back then. So someone who flunked English
• 5:37
  all his life, you know, to write a book was like being on Mars
• 5:41
  and but I did get a contract. There was an agent that found
• 5:44
  me, and so he got me a contract to that. So what I did when the
• 5:47
  government printing office found a book that has a description of
• 5:51
  all the government programs, money program, took that book,
• 5:54
  cut and pasted it and became a New York Times best seller, all
• 5:59
  I did is change the headlines the government doesn't explain
• 6:02
  things as well. One of my favorite stories is that there's
• 6:05
  a program. We still have it too, but it's called the urban
• 6:09
  homesteading act. And see what I would do is read on it. Well,
• 6:12
  what the hell is this about money and hard? And I read it
• 6:16
  and the details, it really says, yeah, they get homes that people
• 6:20
  couldn't pay their mortgages. So the government, you know,
• 6:23
  guarantees all mortgages. So when your bank doesn't get your
• 6:27
  mortgage, government gives the bank money, and the government
• 6:30
  stuck with the house, you know, that's going downhill, and it
• 6:33
  gets dilapidated and all that kind of stuff. So what they do
• 6:36
  is, okay, they give them away for $1 so they house this for $1
• 6:41
  and they give you a grant for like, $30,000 to fix it up. So
• 6:45
  what I will do, I'll read that, I'll say, Hey, that's not urban
• 6:48
  home study. AG, that's houses for $1 you know, to make it user
• 6:52
  friendly, from the government, became a New York Times best
• 6:55
  seller. A lot of publicity and ego satisfying stuff happened.
• 6:59
  So I did a bunch of them. And then years and then I did
• 7:02
  infomercials that were very popular, because to me, the way
• 7:06
  to sell books is, if you don't have marketing money and
• 7:10
  advertising money, you get free advertising. And the way you get
• 7:15
  free advertising is you become a guest and you act like an idiot,
• 7:20
  because television loves idiots. So I was a regular on talk
• 7:24
  shows, because that's how I sold books. Famous talk shows would
• 7:28
  use me as like the backup guy, like Larry King. I would. I must
• 7:32
  have done him 1520 times, I don't even know, but he had a TV
• 7:36
  show that would be an hour long. There's usually some big, high
• 7:40
  powered, famous person on the first half hour, then what do
• 7:43
  you do? He said, Come on, you'll be on the second half hour, but
• 7:46
  let's go. If the guy said he'll stay for another half hour, he's
• 7:49
  a big name, so they don't push him in the front. They get him
• 7:53
  at the end of the half hour. Can you stay for another half hour?
• 7:55
  I'm in the green room as the guy says, No. They bring me up. The
• 8:00
  guy says, Yes, I go home and I know they owe me and they'll use
• 8:03
  me again. Or I also was used a lot for people who cancel at the
• 8:08
  moment last minute. Because, man, you're going to give me a
• 8:10
  national 1020, 30 minutes of national TV, I'd have to pay
• 8:14
  hundreds of 1000s of dollars of that if I bought an ad, and
• 8:17
  being a guest to me is more authentic than an ad. So
• 8:20
  Letterman would use me when somebody canceled. What was fun
• 8:24
  for me? Who am I subbing for? Like I said once, for
• 8:29
  Christopher walk at the last minute. I mean, they found me in
• 8:32
  Chicago somewhere like noon. They got me on the plane, and I
• 8:36
  think he taped about six o'clock in the early evening, and I was
• 8:40
  there to go on, you know, with Christopher Walken, but that's
• 8:43
  what sold books, man, you give me national air time, and I
• 8:47
  learned quickly that media doesn't care what you say. I
• 8:50
  used to worry about because insecure intellectually, and
• 8:53
  they say, oh, let's go look at this wrong. Nobody reads the
• 8:56
  book. They're just entertaining people. And I like entertaining
• 8:59
  people and making people smile. So I was the go to person for
• 9:04
  that. And then I did infomercials because I say, Oh,
• 9:07
  I can't grow this. Because how many times can you do Larry King
• 9:10
  in a year? You know? Then I found out that that you could
• 9:13
  also get commercials for free. You had to produce them, but
• 9:16
  once you had it to buy time was the expensive part. You know, I
• 9:20
  go to TV stations, I say, Okay, I know I can't afford your time,
• 9:24
  and I don't know if it's worth it. If I knew it was worth it,
• 9:26
  then I would. But so here's the deal. If you don't sell that
• 9:30
  time, nobody buys that time. I mean, they have to have
• 9:33
  something there, so you put let's go, and I'll give you half
• 9:35
  the money. I knew the information was important. I
• 9:39
  knew I wanted to try to get it to people. But how do people
• 9:42
  want it? You know, nobody, they got Google. What are they need
• 9:45
  me for all that kind of stuff. Bookstores were going down, and
• 9:49
  so nobody was getting the help there. But until a few years
• 9:52
  ago, then it's community. We have a community of people. Now
• 9:58
  people are helping people I don't even help. People anymore.
• 10:00
  It's the people who find programs. They take advantage of
• 10:04
  it, and they help other people do it. So it's a community based
• 10:07
  thing, and that's even better than me, am I? You know, I've
• 10:11
  been studying this for 50 years. It's hard for me to relate to
• 10:13
  somebody who just found out about grants, yeah, but the
• 10:17
  members are though, are all those people, and so they're
• 10:21
  like volunteers helping. It's also giving them the joy of
• 10:25
  giving. I mean, this is what happened business, because it
• 10:28
  feels so good to give. It's very selfish to me. So it's having
• 10:31
  the joy of giving and helping somebody else. So that's what's
• 10:36
  happening now. And we also give our profits back to members. We
• 10:40
  have half this country that 10 of four to $500 bill wages in
• 10:45
  our country. How the wages are distributed? Okay, back in 1979
• 10:51
  which is a turning point in economics for us, 70% of all the
• 10:54
  wages went to 90% of the people. So the bottom 90% of the income
• 11:00
  scale were getting 70% of the wages. The top 10% was getting
• 11:06
  about 30% of the wages. Fast forward, that bottom 90% now
• 11:11
  only gets about 55% and the top 5% is now getting up to 45% so
• 11:17
  the share of the pie for 90% of us is shrinking every year, and
• 11:23
  it's not like we haven't we're not growing GDP growth in that
• 11:26
  time. It's going like crazy. So we're growing economically as a
• 11:30
  country. But who's getting it? There's another astounding fact
• 11:34
  to me when I found this is poverty rates in developed
• 11:38
  countries, so only developed countries, and this is, is the
• 11:42
  percentage of people in that country that are poor. We're
• 11:46
  number one in creating poor people. We have more percentage
• 11:49
  of our population that are poor than any other developed
• 11:53
  country. So it's like 17, 18% I mean, the average from all the
• 11:58
  developed countries is about 10% or so, and some are down to 7%
• 12:03
  so we create more poor people than any other developed
• 12:06
  country. Now this is what we are number one in, and that's making
• 12:12
  millionaires. We're number one in making millionaires. 24
• 12:15
  million millionaires. The second is China, and they got 6
• 12:20
  million. So we're number one in millionaires, and number one in
• 12:25
  creating poor people. So that that's what gets me up every day
• 12:29
  earlier and earlier.
• 12:32
  Stephanie Maas: You have an amazing way of downplaying your
• 12:34
  humility.
• 12:36
  Matthew Lesko: We're all struggling so hard. You know it,
• 12:39
  I know it. I mean, I've just been here longer, god, 81 I
• 12:43
  never thought I could even live that long.
• 12:45
  Stephanie Maas: So let me ask a practical question, if I may. I
• 12:48
  think that there is such a natural apprehension to go to
• 12:52
  the government for help, right? It's you're either all in or you
• 12:56
  have this apprehension, how do you address that? How do you get
• 12:59
  people over that, and where do they start?
• 13:03
  Matthew Lesko: Yeah, well, that's two points. I mean, it
• 13:05
  won't start as easy, uh, getting over that. Other thing, I've
• 13:09
  been wrestling that 24/7, for 50 years, but yes, now to me, all
• 13:14
  our incentives in this country are against it. Like, if people
• 13:18
  want information, they go to the wrong source, because if they
• 13:21
  don't have money, because they go to Google, and Google is the
• 13:25
  last place to go for anything if you don't have money, because
• 13:28
  everything, there are people that want to get money. This is
• 13:30
  capitalism, but if you don't have money, then you can't go
• 13:33
  there. But people don't know what else to do, so they get
• 13:35
  scammed, they lose money, and they just get worse off. And
• 13:40
  that's because they don't know where this other stuff is. Now
• 13:44
  the other stuff, which I call the community society, you know,
• 13:47
  we have the capitalist society of us, and then we have the
• 13:50
  community Society of us. Now, the community society is helps
• 13:54
  other people for nothing. They give you money for nothing, and
• 13:58
  but that represents, you know, a third of everything in our
• 14:02
  economy is community, society. Two thirds is capitalism, but
• 14:06
  1/3 is community, helping each other like your neighbor, okay,
• 14:10
  neighbors on fire, you charge them to help put out the fire.
• 14:13
  No, you're part of the community. You're going to help
• 14:15
  them for free, right? So that's why we have these organizations
• 14:19
  to do that for people and to help them and to grow so they
• 14:23
  could contribute to the capitalist society more. But if
• 14:26
  you're out of the game, you have to get the skills or whatever
• 14:29
  you need to get into that game, and that's what the community
• 14:32
  society is. But people aren't trained to do that. They're
• 14:36
  trained to go to Google and spend my so how do we do that?
• 14:39
  Okay, I got a couple places to start, but you have to believe
• 14:43
  it's there, you know, because you can't just say, Oh, I'm
• 14:47
  gonna try. I'm gonna call one or two people and see what happens.
• 14:51
  And that's probably wrong. It's like getting a job. You're gonna
• 14:54
  knock on one or two doors and nothing's gonna happen. And they
• 14:58
  got hiring today. So. You go home, yeah, there nobody's
• 15:01
  hiring, and you can't do that. Go to find help.org. Put in your
• 15:06
  zip code on the left hand corner, up on top, you have
• 15:09
  community organizations that help you with money, help
• 15:12
  housing. They're all important things, right? Labor, work,
• 15:18
  health care, everything. These are non profit organizations,
• 15:22
  every one of them will never ask you for money. They just give
• 15:26
  you money. They give you services. They give you now, the
• 15:29
  next hurdle is now they're not all for you, so you have to
• 15:33
  start calling and asking for help. See, getting help is a
• 15:38
  people business. It's not an internet business. You have to
• 15:41
  find the people in your community that get paid to help
• 15:44
  people like you. They know what's out there. So you have to
• 15:47
  learn where these people are and use them. So starting a
• 15:51
  business, let's say you want to start a business. Okay, put in
• 15:53
  sba.gov and then slash local dash assistance, sba.gov/low
• 16:04
  sba.gov/local-assistance, and there's a place to put in your
• 16:06
  zip code. These are all nonprofit organizations that get
• 16:09
  paid to help anybody, anybody, start a business, start a
• 16:14
  nonprofit, work on your invention, be a freelancer, be a
• 16:18
  real estate investor. Any way to make money. They help you for
• 16:21
  free. Help you find money. Help you find legal help for free.
• 16:26
  Everything now they're all not perfect, yeah, and that's why
• 16:29
  you call them. To me, call two or three of them, four of them,
• 16:33
  or whatever, but everyone will never charge you money. Here's a
• 16:36
  couple other ones. Another website is called apex. Apex and
• 16:40
  accelerate tours with an S and then.us so that's a place again,
• 16:46
  there in every city that if you're in business, small, big,
• 16:50
  whatever, the biggest market for anything is the government. They
• 16:54
  buy anything, and the problem is, learn the bureaucracy, and
• 16:57
  they even have grants that help you figure out how to get those
• 17:00
  contracts. Now there's another good one for businesses. It's
• 17:03
  called Career one stop.org Okay. Now what they do is train your
• 17:09
  employees for free. They pay for that because businesses don't
• 17:14
  like paying for training, so the government does. So if you hire
• 17:17
  people without the skills they need, they'll pay the salary up
• 17:22
  to 80, 90% of the salary while they learn, or they just give
• 17:26
  you, I mean, you get hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars
• 17:29
  to train all your call center people or your marketing people,
• 17:32
  right? It's phenomenal. And that's training money and as an
• 17:36
  individual, too. Now in our country, you could without a
• 17:40
  college degree, you could get paid $40,000 a year to train for
• 17:46
  $100,000 a year job not going to college and paying them $40,000
• 17:51
  a year, the government will pay you $40,000 a year.
• 17:54
  Stephanie Maas: That's awesome. So with a new administration
• 17:58
  coming in, is that going to impact how many of these
• 18:02
  programs might be available in the future?
• 18:05
  Matthew Lesko: They all say this. So every president says
• 18:07
  this, but it's important in a way. In the short term, you
• 18:11
  won't notice anything the system so baked in doesn't matter. And
• 18:15
  everybody says this to get elected, and especially the
• 18:19
  current guy, he just entertaining himself. The more
• 18:23
  outrageous things he could say, the more people will pay
• 18:25
  attention to him. That's how I got a lot of TV time too. It's
• 18:29
  being outrageous, but it is significant because they're able
• 18:33
  to change it a few degree. And so by chipping at the edges and
• 18:36
  changing a few degree, that means 1020, years from now,
• 18:40
  we're in a different place. So they do have a long term impact
• 18:44
  by moving things a little bit, and that's about all they could
• 18:47
  do, especially now in the beginning, if it ever happens,
• 18:50
  it'll take years to happen, and it'll just be around the edges,
• 18:55
  and it'll be new opportunities. I mean, these people now, they
• 18:58
  believe in capitalism, so I mean, why is Elon Musk following
• 19:03
  along around this guy? Because nowhere else Elon could get a
• 19:07
  billion dollars except from the federal government. He's looking
• 19:10
  for his next billion off the federal government. That's what
• 19:13
  it's all about. So get your first million off. They've heard
• 19:15
  government. And the federal government is not the
• 19:18
  government. Most of the government, for us is what's
• 19:21
  locally, and then what happens is like right now, there are
• 19:25
  nonprofit organizations that set up grants. We have this
• 19:28
  community society that fills in the blanks a lot of times. To
• 19:33
  me, it's the lower income people that are struggling, because
• 19:36
  there's so much there that can really change their life if they
• 19:40
  stick at it, and look for the hell a third of our country,
• 19:44
  their work is to help you improve your life, and they have
• 19:47
  money and help to do that, you have to find the right one.
• 19:50
  Stephanie Maas: Like I said, you have truly spent your life
• 19:53
  helping others. And don't argue with me.
• 20:00
  Matthew Lesko: It's hard. I don't think myself are
• 20:01
  professional or anything. I'm trying to get through life like
• 20:04
  all of us are, but I feel we all have that obligation. And the
• 20:08
  older I get now, boy, that is so important to me. Now it's just
• 20:12
  giving, you know, it to me. How much can I give before I die?
• 20:16
  And that's a very selfish thing. That's not me trying to help
• 20:19
  anybody but me.
• 20:21
  Stephanie Maas: Yeah, sure.
• 20:22
  Unknown: What I've been living with for a long time now is
• 20:25
  realizing my heart's smarter than my brain. We don't listen
• 20:29
  to our heart enough when we listen to our grain, because
• 20:33
  we're afraid we don't know what we're doing in life. So we take
• 20:35
  expert opinion, like people said, I couldn't wear question
• 20:39
  mark suits, and I just something my heart, I had to do that I
• 20:43
  did, and I got thrown off of Home Shopping. I lost millions
• 20:45
  of dollars, but I wanted to do it or something my heart was
• 20:48
  telling me. But no, the real stuff in life is making those
• 20:53
  real hard decisions, because it comes from the heart, and you
• 20:56
  have to listen to that heart.
• 20:58
  Stephanie Maas: Yeah. Very wise counsel. Very wise counsel. It
• 21:02
  has truly been an honor to spend this time with you. Thank you
• 21:06
  for sharing your mission and life's work with us.
• 21:09
  Matthew Lesko: Oh well, you're so kind, that touches my heart.
• 21:12
  Thank you.