‍Take The Lid Off of Your Earning Potential - Matt Fore

Thu, Jun 15, 2023 1:35PM • 42:59

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

podcast, real estate, realise, understand, years, matt, happened, property, talk, world, helping, money, assets, investing, action, call, investment, tax benefits, share, ironman

SPEAKERS

Billy Keels

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00:00

Today's conversation is sponsored by first generation Capital Partners. Be consistent with your actions. Pick little five minute tasks that you can repeatedly do over and over and over again every single day without fail. And you'll be surprised where you'll be at the end of the year.

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00:16

You're listening to the going long podcast with Billy keels, the number one podcast for long distance real asset investing.

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Billy Keels  00:26

Welcome to the Golang podcast. We're back once again to continue to help to educate you so that you feel much more comfortable as well as confident investing beyond your backyard. Yes, I'm your host, Billy keels, and I am super excited to welcome you back to another awesome awesome conversation. So today you're gonna get a massive amount out of this one, I'm sure especially if you are a highly paid it sales or sales leader. Check it out. Definitely listen to this one. There's a lot of nuggets in here for you. I want to thank each and every one of you that continues to listen continues to download continue to share with others. Podcasts continues to be ranked in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally in there are so many more podcasts that are coming on. So thank you very much. If you're already left your honest written reviews rating, thank you. If you want to do that, if you haven't yet, we got a simple video, you can do that here, just click the video, leave it on the Apple podcast platform, Spotify would be awesome. And thanks for tagging us and sharing across social media means the world to me. Also, if you want to pick up any of the previous episodes, and we're well into the three hundreds now just go to first gen cp.com forward slash podcasts once again, it's Christian cp.com forward slash podcast. And you can check out every single episode. So listen, and I know I've kind of already told you before but if you are someone who is in a working at a big company, and you are still trying to figure this thing out, like how can I make these real assets work for me? Well, today, me and the guests, we're going to dive into a couple things, he's even going to share a couple of his methodologies with you, that I know are going to add a lot of value to so we're gonna get to that conversation with Mr. Matt four. And we're going to get to that just after this. So if you really want to be able to take the lid off of your earning potential in long distance investing, and take your game to the next level. And guess what, today is the conversation you're going to want to listen to until then we last word, I promise. You know why? Because today's guests like literally, you just hold on to your seats here, head over has had over a decade in sales and sales leadership for some of the major largest IT companies in the world. He was also able to find his focus, and his why and was able to achieve his personal goals in less than five years. I really want to hear about how he did that. You know, aside from enjoying things like reading and adding value to others. Today's guest is also trained for an Ironman, if he's not already done it or half Ironman, but he's training for an Ironman, which I actually want to hear more about that. And he is a partner at next level income. It gives me great pleasure. Oh, one other thing you know, he's also the host of a pretty pretty pretty cool podcast. And the podcast is ice cream with investors giving me great pleasure to welcome to today's conversation Mr. Matt for Matt, welcome to the show, man.

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03:10

I swear you're like my own flavour flav that was probably the best intro I've ever heard you like that. Did you like that? I liked it. I like it. You

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Billy Keels  03:16

made a lot of people making the flavour flav kind of record some people. Anyway, that's it. No, I appreciate that. Appreciate that. No, I mean, I'm so looking forward to having this conversation with you, man and just really sharing. Having you share your knowledge with the going on family. Matt, you kind of know the format already. You know, I'm gonna ask you two questions in the beginning. When to ask you during the middle or in the end. In the middle is what I don't really know how many questions I'm going to ask but as long as you are ready, alive for us to just jump right in and get the go along family get to know you are with that. Let's go. All right. Question number one man. Help us understand where is it that you call home?

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03:54

I call home and Nashville Tennessee.

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03:57

Is it Nashville or Nashville? Nashville.

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04:03

If you're familiar you're from or you went nowhere since he is local. The Visitor Centre has Louisville, Lewisville Louisville. It has like all the different pronunciations around it. It's kind of cool.

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Billy Keels  04:14

And I love that man. I love that. So in question number two, I love positive stuff positivity, positive energy. Help us understand what is the most positive thing that has happened to you or for you in the last 24 hours.

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04:26

A little proud parent moment over here. So I'm going to extend it out to 48 hours but over the weekend. We're trying to teach our six year old son about money, how to make money, how to save money and all these sorts of things. And so he really wanted this smartwatch where he could call us we would know where he's at. He could text us Gigi, he could FaceTime people and all that sort of stuff. And so we said hey, if you want to watch you got to earn it. So for the past three weeks, he's been doing chores he's been making five US dollars per week and then if he saves the money and doesn't spend it we add $1 so that we can teach him the idea of saving for something? Well, he was a little disappointed with how long this process was taken. So he's like, what else can I do? And that's where we came up with the idea of doing eliminate Stan, and Billy. And one hour, he made more money than he made the previous three weeks of doing chores. And we talked a little bit about adding value customer service, telling people what you want, telling them why you're doing it. And it was just such a proud moment for me as a parent to see him go out there, take the initiative, add value to the world and then ultimately achieve what he wanted, which was to get that smartwatch. Well, that's what's my positive story for the past 48 hours here.

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Billy Keels  05:37

Fantastic. So he actually it's six years old, right? You said he's, he's understood the power of adding value to others, compound interest, and then also that it's really not just about the money, it's about what is it that you were looking to achieve?

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05:52

That's right, I'm sorry. It's

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Billy Keels  05:53

man, love me sharing that. And those are you parents out there? I mean, that just left already like platinum, Platinum positivity, so that that's a lesson for your children, whether they're younger or older. But hey, listen, thanks, man, I appreciate you sharing that. Listen, I'm gonna let you in on a little bit of a secret that everybody here at the going long family already knows. I'm a recovering perfectionist. So I tried to do things that are like impossible to do. Because it's just like a genetic thing. And I want to call it a where it's just a genetic thing, right. So what that means is I try to do things that are impossible, like I said, and like to try to tell your entire backstory in I don't know, if I tried to do it in like one and a half seconds, that was never gonna happen, almost forgot the the podcast and all that kind of stuff, which is something that we definitely don't do here. So I'm telling you that because it's just what it is. And then I'm also going to ask you for some help. Because I guess since I'm sitting on this side of the microphone, I'm allowed to ask as the host for you, number one to tell your backstory, Matt, in your own words. And you can take as much time as you need, and, or and or want so that we can get a chance to know more about you. The one thing I'm also going to ask is if you could help to share some of the major decisions that you've made to get to this point in your journey, and then we'll see where you're not take the conversation after that. Sure.

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07:09

So by way of introduction, like you mentioned, I've spent over a decade sales and sales leadership roles at some of the largest technology companies in the world. And in 2015, I actually got started into real estate because we had landed a $10 million net new logo account. And I knew my eyes were huge and wide, because I knew the commission check that I was going to get. And so that's what started me down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out like, how is that gonna invest that money was I was told things like bonds or crypto stocks. And then I had a mentor at the time who said you should look into this real estate thing. I own three properties here in Nashville full and clear, I get cash flow, I get tax benefits, and they're gonna appreciate over time. So then I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which led me to bigger pockets, which led me to all the different world of real estate. But then I got a fateful call on the week of Christmas, from my VP at the time, who said I wasn't going to get that life changing commission check that I was only going to receive two cents on the dollar. And I asked him during that conversation, like, wait a minute, how did we come to that number? And Billy said, Matt, how much money have you made this year? And when I told him, he said, Well, isn't that enough. And it was at that point where I realised if I wanted to pursue the causes that I cared about if I wanted to live in an abundance, and if I wanted to give back to the causes that mean matter most to me, that I was going to have to find a different financial path. So what started off with one turnkey rental, just around the corner a few months after that situation grew into a portfolio of 4000 doors in the southeast 12 self storage facilities about two dozen carwash is a debt fund and five mobile home parks. So along the way, I'm happy to talk through anything from single family to kind of the business we run today. But I'll I'll stop

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Billy Keels  08:51

there. And so you know, it's one of these things that when you start talking about certain moments in time, right, and you talk about 2015, and you make this eight figure pay for yourself, and you're expecting these big bonus checks is, I mean, this is the IT world, wherever you are on the spectrum, these, you know, these deals, these types of opportunities are gonna happen pretty frequently. And usually, we get really, really happy because we start doing the calculations at sales at sales leaders like okay, and this is going to be cool, we're going to do this, we're going to do that like your six year olds, right? We're going to do all this kind of stuff. And then when you realise that two things happen, one, either the internal controls within the organisation are always going to want to control costs. And then you've got our famous Uncle Sam that always wants to put his hand in your proverbial pocket. So you were able to learn a lesson in 2015 Very fortunate for you to be able to do that. But at the same time you had a mentor that talked to you about real estate that had the three homes free and clear and was able to, you know, really start to show you the power of what was happening now. Was this this? So this was a business mentor, right? was also working in relation. That's right. That's right. Cool. So I want to talk to that person specifically is like going to be a very specific question. But because we're so busy are we tended to be right? Because I did 26 years in multinational. And you and I've even shared some of the same working at the same places. So we really understand certain mindsets. What was it like for you, when you heard your mentor, say, Hey, I've kind of got this other thing going on on the side, which is generating more revenue for me. If you can go back to that moment in time, what what was your take, like, what was your reaction?

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10:35

Yeah, I never understood that people could do things on the side like that. And as I've grown and evolved over the past seven, eight years, in the real estate business, I was told this the other day that really stuck with me, he's like, Matt, never let it never let it never be fooled. Everybody's got their own little side thing that they're doing, whether it's they're running their kids PTA, or they're investing in real estate, everybody's got their little side thing going on. But as you mentioned, I'm an Ironman athlete, like I do, Ironman is all across the world. And we'll talk about it and your last three questions. They're some of my favourite places in the world that I've done some races. But it was funny to me when I talk about doing these Ironman races and training 20 hours a week and how much it takes and, you know, the effort behind it and all that people were like, Oh, wow, that's really, really cool. And then the second I switched that from Ironman to real estate, I make money on the side, then all of a sudden, it's like, wait, wait a minute, what what you're not taking calls 24 hours a day, you're not fully available, all those sorts of things. So it was a healthy balance. And he kind of helped me see that. Look, real estate when done correctly, when you have a team around, you can be very, very passive and an opportunity for you to compound your wealth while still being intentional in your in your W two world.

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Billy Keels  11:49

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so when you saw when you actually got that reaction, you're kind of thinking to yourself, Well, okay, well, if it's tied to money, it's wrong. But if I'm training for my iron, my Ironman race isn't that then it's okay. So I appreciate that. The the openness, the honesty, because it's one of those things where when you when you realise it later, I remember when I used to hear people, it motivated me, I was like, wow, how can you actually do that? Like, number one I didn't think was possible, because everybody that was around me was constantly running at the same frantic pace. And then when I realised, wow, you can actually create streams of income with something that you like doing. Let me find out a little bit more about that. But there are others that just say like, I can't believe you do that, like you're saying, like, just stay completely away. So to find out about hard assets, it sounds like you didn't take any action at all. And somehow you've gotten to a goal, a life goal. Is that accurate? Yeah, pretty just, you just read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts and just been boom, all of a sudden things happen. Talk about the very first time that you decided to take action, like what was that like? Because, once again, not just the study, not just the theory, not just the podcast, but actually putting cash down? What was that like for you emotionally? When you were going through that? And what was it that actually took you to that point?

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13:12

I'm gonna give you a terrible answer and say it was it was fairly easy for me. Because I had come off of this life changing event where I thought I was going to get a life changing amount of commission check and trying to figure out what to do with it to that being taken away from me with no power or no say so whatsoever. And so I remember the first time I invested in a real estate deal, I had a lot of my friends colleagues, my mom who was like, Hey, didn't you watch what happened in 22,008? Didn't you see what happened in 2000, during the.com bubble, like that's super risky, and all that sort of stuff. But my first property was $210,000. So I put down 20%, which was $42,000. And I'm like, let's put this in perspective. $42,000 is an MBA, where as this situation, I'm going to learn marketing, how to get tenants maintenance, how to hire out property managers, and different things like that, I'm gonna get some leadership skills because I'm now managing, managing a virtual team. And I'm going to understand a little bit about finance. I'm going to learn more about taxes and loans and leverage and all those sorts of things. So I think pain, we've all had our pain in life and our pivotal moments that have brought us to where we are, but pain can be viewed as something that's done to you or done for you. And I think pain when viewed in the right lens can help accelerate you to wherever you were supposed to be in your life. And that's how I should view this situation. That's how I viewed it.

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Billy Keels  14:37

In Yeah, you're running away from something or running towards something I think someone famous has written and also stated and yeah, it is about taking it taking that that situation and really looking at it and saying okay, well what how is this why is this happening for me? Versus happening to me was one of those things that that we've heard so. So you take your action you get your your your first step. Opportunity, everything happened perfectly. I mean, exactly as you thought it was exactly as all the podcasts that it was gonna happen was everything perfect?

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15:07

You know what terrible answer on that one it did. I mean, it was in the right neighbourhood at the right place, and it accelerated its growth. My first person that applied for to be a resident there was working at the hospital, she stayed in there for five years, she took care of the property, she painted the wall, she planted a garden, she did everything correct there. The only issue I had on that property was an H fac problem when we flipped over to winter, and I got a call at 10:30pm at night, like, Hey, I'm cold, and the H fac won't work. And I had to go solve that problem. And it was at that point where I'm like, Okay, I don't want to have a second job here. I don't want to receive these calls right now. So let me hire a property manager. Now, I'll say that that property went very, very well. But I've also had some learning lessons along the way as well that we can talk through.

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Billy Keels  15:56

Yeah, well, we're definitely going to do that. But this is one of the things met. So my very first property started off really, really well. And it motivated me so much to take action even sooner than I anticipated, right? Because it was so easy. This is so fast. It's so perfect. In my bootcamp, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. And then the second thing happened, and then the third purchase happened. And then eventually, well, I kind of rested on my laurels, I think is what we'd like to say in English. But tell us about the the first challenge that you had beyond the age back.

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16:28

Yeah, so in that property, it wasn't anything. But to your point, like I think it motivated me to continue to gobble up properties, and I ended up buying three that year. The second one, I probably the third one I purchased is where I started seeing a weight, there are going to be issues that happen with this, I bought it as a wholesale for 80 grand, took up some private money to do a fix and flip and ended up burning that property where I took I got paid $5,000 to hold that property. But before I could get to that point, I had a tenant in there who I personally tried to evict. And then I got property managers to try to evict and then it had to go through the eviction process through the courts. And that process ended up taking three to four months. And one of the things I learned during that process was if you inherit tenants, usually they're going to be the worst tenants you ever have. So this one was a family member of the previous owner who hadn't been paying rent. And when we asked them to pay rent was all of a sudden very upset at that. And while they didn't tear the place down on the way, the way out, they certainly didn't clean up on their way out. So it was a little bit of a process and learning lesson there.

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Billy Keels  17:37

It's pretty interesting, right? When these when these types of things happen for you, because as an investor, you start to realise, okay, well, everything's not going to be perfect. There's more actions that I'm going to have to take. And eventually we'll do you start to learn and use and you start to grow. And also, you know, it's helping others to realise you said it took you say, three to six months.

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17:57

The victim Yeah, that one took like four months, I think, okay, for

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Billy Keels  18:00

months, by the way, you are still working. At the time, you were still working in a full time job that was relatively highly visible. So how was that? Taking these kind of phone calls where you got this, like massive responsibilities, sales, sales, leadership kind of stuff. Talk us through that? How that have you feeling?

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18:18

Yeah, it really gave me this concept of ROI and finance is return on investment. A lot of people think about that. But I've reframed that to return on intentionality. And what I mean by that is, is this action cannot be intentional with this action, can I pay somebody to take on this and while it might even eat into my profits, I'm more intentional at soccer games, that lemonade stands at cheerleading events and those sorts of things. So I think it was for the first time I realised, and I also listened to a podcast there, around that same time where this guy was talking about, I always valet Park, I never go look for a parking spot, because it's not worth the frustration that I have. And the 20 minutes it takes me to circle the parking lot only to be cut off for somebody else to steal your spot. It's just not worth it in my life. I'm going to pay the $10 $5 to go valet Park and be on my merry way. And so I think both of those things kind of lined up at that time, where it really started helping me think about this concept of return on intentionality.

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Billy Keels  19:18

All right, so you got your ROI, return on intentionality, helping people to also think about valet parking, parking. Think this happens once you start to realise how valuable your time truly is. And I mean, for each individual, we have we placed different values on it. You talked about being at the lemonade stand or being at the sporting events, whatever the case may be. And I had a major event in my life that changed my perspective of the value of time. And that helped me. And so I guess it makes me think of really as you start to put the value on your time. I know you've thought through a lot of these things even so much to a point that this isn't just about time but you've come up with methodologies and frameworks and things like that. Before we go there, what was it like going from managing the properties on a day to day basis? While you're still working your big time, highly visible day job, to also recognising that, hey, listen, you mean, there's actually a way that I can do something very similar. And I can keep working at my day job and somebody else is taking care of all of the rest of this stuff. You talked about a lot of different types of assets and lots of growth that happened in, you know, a relatively short period of time. But what was that like for the most important thing, which was your time as someone who was who is still at the time working in a very large multinational? Yeah, I think it's

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20:41

this idea of effort. So one of the things I talk about is when we think about investing, we think about levels of effort, there's mental effort, and there's physical effort, there's active effort, and there's passive effort. And after I scaled my portfolio to about 10 units, I started then having the calls like you've got an H back out, you got to flood damage, you've got this property maintenance, this tenants coming up for renewal, do you want to raise rents Do you want to lower rents. And while I was never physically swinging a hammer, I was having the mental burden of having to deal with a lot of those issues. And the level of effort you have to produce a financial result in real estate is hardly ever talked about. It's always I've got this much units under management, I've got this much dollars under management and things like that. And I'm like, that's great. But you're not being intentional with your friends with your family and the things that you care about. So it was about that time when 2020, where I started investing more passively and trying to understand, okay, I might not make as great returns, but I am going to get better tax benefits. And I'm not going to have to deal with any of this overhead or mental burden that I'm carrying on me. So I don't know if that addresses your question directly. But I would encourage everybody, as they're going through their own investment journey to think when I take on this project, what's the level of effort that I'm going to have both from a physical standpoint and a mental standpoint, and in my mind, if you're going to take on an active project, it has to produce 25% returns every single year, or else you're probably better spent not learning a new job, not dealing with a new project, etc. And going to going to do what you're already best at, which might be it sales, which might be being a doctor, which might be being an attorney and things like that.

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Billy Keels  22:23

No, absolutely makes sense. To me, I love the fact that you're sharing with the go along family, which is really thinking about the not just the physical aspect of of the effort, but also the mental aspect in especially when you're making so many decisions during the day from your, let's call it 8am to, I don't know, if you're in Europe, nine 9am, depending on which minute in the US the same, right, because you're either checking mails, or your phone and all that other kind of jazz, it happens to the best of us, it's really, it's important to consider that the mental effort that it has also taken you. So you talked about a couple of different assets. And I think it's really, really important because we also talk about real estate, there's a lot of different types of assets that are out there. I think, real estate what it did for me, man, I'd love your perspective on this. And I think you've touched on a little bit earlier, it helped me realise that it was more than just the nine to five, it was more than just guessing at the stock market investing with my company because they gave me an x percent discount. And so I justified it to myself that hey, it makes more sense to put my money here and then somewhere else. But it was that first for me was the duplex. And that started to an area where you know, now it's not just that, but it's, you know, larger multifamily. It's investing in commodities, like the oil and gas sector and investing in things like ATM machines and, and all of these different types of things. But I'd love to know in share your journey as to how you started to be exposed to in and really start to invest your time, effort and energy into so many different from me to more perceive it so many different types of hard assets. Yeah, a couple

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24:07

of things one, so I grew up dyslexic. And in I remember the first book I read as a child was when I was in middle school, and it was about the stock market. And for some reason that just really interests me. And then whenever I graduated from college, I was asking all my friends kind of how they manage their money and all those sorts of things. And it would surprise me how many people didn't have a plan or didn't really understand what was going in and out. So I bring that up, but to say like I've always had this interest inside of me from a very young age that I never even knew was an interest for me until I kind of opened my eyes to real estate and seeing me not be able to receive the commission check that I earned and things like that. So how I got interested in all that we have is always a burning desire. But most importantly, I started listening to podcasts when I run and when I ride and we talked to ride my bike we talked about earlier like Ironman training your turn I mean up to 20 hours a week and some of these long weeks. And so you can think about if I go on a six hour bike ride listening to podcasts at 2x, like, I'm just starting to pick out these little nuggets from everybody, this guy's talking about accelerated depreciation, this guy's talking about return on capital versus return of capital when you start piecing all of this together. And so when we decided to get involved in multiple different asset classes, it was to really help our investors diversify within side of real estate, you will find more dumb millionaires in real estate than any other industry out there. Because it's really an income coming in expenses going out. That's essentially it. It's not rocket science. So when we find people that want to get involved with real estate, but all of a sudden have a lot of multifamily, they want exposure to other asset classes. So we made the strategic decision, okay, let's go pick out the best asset classes within sight of real estate to be able to offer that and to be able to partner with our investors on those.

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Billy Keels  26:00

Fantastic. So it's really been able to have number one, have the exposure and take action, right, you can have all the exposure in the world. But if you don't take action on me, it's right. You know, it's very difficult for you to complain about being in the same situation that year, or two or three or 10 years later, which usually if you're in the same situation, it probably means you're moving backwards, because everything around you continues to progress. But just having that perspective on things, Matt, is really, really helpful, really useful and insightful. Before we get to because we went, as you mentioned before, you know, 1000s of units and different self storage and a lot of different places. But I think you have your own method to things. Talk to us about what's what's, what's the four method all about, man, I know that stuff that's going on clearly doesn't know it. So I want you to share and give us some context and help us understand more about the four methods.

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26:51

Yeah, so I've got a couple of different frameworks that I put together after years of learning, reading, and also being on the bike listening to podcasts. But I think kind of what you're going towards is I develop this model around helping investors learn how to understand any asset, or any investment, and then how to justify or create criteria that says this is a good investment or a bad investment. Because I'm sure like yourself, Billy, like a lot of people were coming to me when they knew I was interested in finance, and the real estate portfolio started growing and 2020 happened, jobs were getting lost all across the board. And they were like, What are you doing with this real estate thing? How do you get involved? Is this should I invest in this investment? And I'd ask the question like, Well, can you explain to me what the investment is, and most people wouldn't understand it. So the four method is really just understanding any investment. And really, it's understanding the liquidity of it. So the financial liquidity of it. And I'm not saying that an illiquid asset is bad, or liquid asset is good, but just understanding like, if I put money into this asset, when can I get my money back? How can I get my money back? The second is ownership. So do I own a meaningful stake in this property. And when I think about ownership, it's really debt or equity. Debt is a little bit risk adverse, but and more protected, but not any upside, equity has a little bit more risk, but you've got a lot more upside. And if things were to fail, then typically you're a second lien holder in that, and then returns so fo r returns is really about when you get paid how often you get paid some investments, you bury money into the ground, and five years later, you get a big pop, some investments sprinkled cash flow along the way. So you should understand how and when you get paid. And the last and most important is the effort. What is the effort going to require? What is going to be the effort required from you for this investment to be successful? Is it active? Or is it passive? Are you going to have to be physical mental effort, all those sorts of things. And so the Yeti method. So that's how you understand it. A Yeti is really how do you determine criteria for you to know whether it's a good investment or not? And the first thing I look at the why is yield. So I believe yield and cashflow is the most important thing you should look for in an investment. Because one, it allows you to compound take that and take those dollars that the assets spinning off and throw it into other assets, but to de risk yourself in your position in an asset. If you have $100,000 in an asset, they distribute $10,000 of dividends or cash flow or whatever, then now all of a sudden, technically your net position is $90,000. So you're de risking yourself along the way. The second is equity. So navall has this great podcast out there how to get rich without getting lucky and one of the things he talks about is that you should be working for equity versus trading your time for dollars. So you want to understand what is your equity position in this asset am I going to have an ability to do some asymmetrical returns the third and the Yeti is taxes. So I believe taxes is the most this the highest expense that you're going to pay for in your Are life. So I want to find legal ways to reduce my tax burden natively as possible. And what I mean by natively is not I can take this strategy, this strategy, and technically this is approved. So let me just jumble all this together and boom, I got a tax benefit. No, if you're looking for tax benefits, you look at energy, housing, and food. Those are the three areas where most governments have tax benefits built in already. And then the last is inflation hedge. We haven't had to talk about inflation for decades in the United States, and all of a sudden that reared its ugly head last year. So I just want to make sure that my assets, whatever I invest in, grow at the pace of inflation, or higher. So that's kind of the fourth method helps you understand a little bit about investments, you should understand those what your position is, and those four areas. And then Yeti is saying yield, what do I want my yield to be equity? What do I want my equity to be taxes? Do I care about tax benefits? Do I not what do I how do I want to cobble together a tax strategy? And then I as inflation hedge? Do I want to beat inflation? Do I care because inflation slowed that I'm not growing at the pace of inflation?

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Billy Keels  31:07

Love it, man. Love it, love it. Love it. So it's really helping. It's helpful. And it's frameworks. The thing is, Matt, before we get into going on final three, because we got to get there. Right. I do want to ask you just one question, because especially for very busy, professional sales and sales leaders, of course, I've got just a special piece of art because I spent 26 years in this kind of world. You've talked about it a couple times that it wasn't just an iron minutes multiple iron. Can I say Iron Men? It's movement, iron, iron man, is this this kind of thing? Talk to us about how that training and competition also is helping you in what you're doing to add value to others in this facet of your life, with what you're doing both through podcasts as well as next level income.

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31:56

Yeah, so when I talk about real estate, and kind of what we're doing next level of income and Ironman, and work, people are saying, Get the comments like Isn't that too much. And I actually think because I do all three of those things in conjunction, it helps me be more efficient, and more intentional with what I'm doing when I'm there. So Ironman has really helped me from a clarity standpoint, like no one signs up for a race without understanding I want to get to that finish line, it helps me define my longer term goals. It's helped me with consistency, so you can't wake up and do a two hour workout, and then not do anything next day, and then say, Oh, wait, I need to double my workout today to make up for no, be consistent with your actions, pick little five minute tasks that you can repeatedly do over and over and over again, every single day without fail. And you'll be surprised where you'll be at the end of the year. So it's helped me with clarity, defining a goal consistency towards those actions, coaching, understanding that I need coaches in my life to make sure that they have an outside view of what I'm trying to accomplish. And then last, this idea of compounding, I went and raced a half marathon the other day on two weeks notice without really training for it, just because I'm like, Man, I need to see where I'm at right now I've got this goal of trying to qualify for Boston this year, I want to kind of understand where my body is, before I enter a big training block. And it's just amazing that I didn't PR, but I was pretty darn close. I was where I was, you know, five years ago when I was at the height of my training. And it's just because I continue to do little things over and over and over again that it compounds. So it's the same with investing, define what your real goal is. Find little actions that you can do every single day that help you get there, find a group that you can be around that can help be outside eyes on what you're trying to accomplish, that you can ask questions to and that you can make sure that you're not stepping into unforeseen holes, and then just allow compounding to take its time. Real estate is a Get Rich Slowly scheme. It is not a get rich, fast game. So if you allow real estate to grow and compound over time, you'll be astonished where you are in 10 years, five years, 30 years,

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Billy Keels  34:08

GM delayed gratification is something that if you can hold on, it's fantastic. Er, by the way, anybody just I don't want anybody to get left behind. So it's personal record. So meaning that it's not continuing to compete against yourself. That's the thing that's important. You're always competing against yourself, not others. Because Matt has gone from where he went to 1000s of doors and multiple things, you have to get started. And so when he talks about his PR his personal record, it's one of those things to keep in mind because he's tracking against himself. And he's surrounding himself with himself with others and being able to continue to move forward. So man, I appreciate you sharing that man but like here's the thing, I gotta get us to the going long final three, but I've never asked anybody that go along with brown three unless you tell me that you're ready. So are you ready?

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34:58

I am ready.

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Billy Keels  35:00

I need to be ready. Plus, you already told us kind of like you're ready for one of the answers. And so even though you're over stateside in Nashville, I'd like to bring things back to this side of the pond. Although I'm originally from Columbus, Ohio, Europe is home for me. So help us understand what's your favourite European city that you've either visited or still on your bucket list visit?

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35:18

Yeah, I'm gonna give a shout out because I bet no one has said this on the show yet, but it's Xlm, Z, Austria, and Xlm Z Austria's tucked right in the Bavaria region of southern Germany and I did a world championship Ironman race there in the belly of the waters are so blue, you can see through the mountains or snow covered peaks in the community there and the people are just some of the friendliest people in the world that I would put it on your bucket list if you can get the Xlm Z Austria

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Billy Keels  35:46

zones, the Austria and I've been here for every single episode, man. And I can tell you, no one has ever said Xlm z. So that is number one. Appreciate that, Matt, especially with the graphic, the description. Question number two, I'm just gonna get right to the appointment. You have done lots of things you talked about your very first property was worked out really, really well you have this H back thing that was kind of wasn't so great. But overall, it was fantastic. But I'm gonna guess because you've taken so much action, you've had so much growth, you've impacted so many lives, that not everything is gone perfectly. And so you got you paid full price for some lessons for some things, right, and you made mistakes, or had learning opportunities, or whatever you want to call them. Now and so they want you to dwell on those, I want you to dwell on what did you learn? Because if you can just think of one thing that probably hurt pretty bad, and you know that the going long family can kind of avoid doing the exact same thing. By learning from your lesson, I would ask you that you please share that one lesson that was really, really important for you so that you can impact one or who knows hundreds of 1000s if not millions of lives? Yeah,

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36:57

I would think it's trying to do it alone, and not telling people what you're trying to do. And it's shocking to me as I continue to go down this journey. When I tell people what I do, how many are willing to offer resources, or say, Wow, that's really cool and want to connect because of it. So I was very shy at first around. No, I'm just gonna do the single family, I'll build it myself. I've got all the equity and things like that. But when I started reaching out to different folks, I started seeing more opportunities, problems became easier to solve. And we got more investors in our opportunities because of it. So if you're out there on this journey for financial independence, make sure you're not doing it alone. Either reach out to people on podcasts like cold reach out, I used to do that all the time, cold, reach out to people on LinkedIn, and just try to surround yourself with a good network to help you along your journey.

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Billy Keels  37:48

Love that. Oh, keep a secret to yourself, especially when you're doing awesome stuff, share it, because I didn't for a long time. So yeah, I love that you share that meant really, really cool. And it's okay everybody, because I was doing it while I was working at a really, really big, large branded company. And so we're still able to figure it out. Thank you for sharing that Matt. And then the last one man, it's about filling our brains with knowledge, help us understand what is the one book that you would recommend to the go along family.

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38:18

So I'm going to give a shout out to this book. It's called The Last Lecture. It's one I keep on my desk because my mom gave it to me when I graduated high school. But the long story short is this guy is a professor, and he's given cancer, he's he's got pancreatic cancer, he is going to die. And he starts the book that way. And he just talks about but you shouldn't feel sorry for me, here are all the things that I wanted to accomplish. In my life. When I was a kid, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to go to space, I wanted to be an imagineer at Disney, and just all these different things. And he said, and I got to achieve all of them. And here are the lessons I've learned. And the most important thing is that brick walls are put in your way not to prevent you from getting what you want. It's to make sure that you really want what you say you want. And it's a fantastic book. If you're not a reader. He's done the last lecture on YouTube. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. It'll leave you inspired. And I would encourage everybody to go see it. Because it is is just amazing story.

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Billy Keels  39:18

Absolutely fantastic. So the last lecture amazing. I'm gonna add that one to my book list. So, but I'm just thinking about the very beginning of the conversation, man, I cannot believe how fast these conversations fly by. And yeah, it's mom, it was easy with you because like you got a lot of really cool awesome things to say especially when you start talking about your six year old and speaker now like what else he could do. He goes from like realising that he can not just work for exchanging for money, but then you can actually make his money multiply and then from the money multiplying figures Wow, there's even more stuff that I can do. That will allow me to get what I want which is not really the money. It was the watch And so going from that to talking about your experience in 2015, you know, getting two cents on the dollar, when you just crushed, you know, a lot of a lot of dollars or euros or whatever yours was dollars, of course. But it left you also kind of feeling like, Hey, listen, this is really cool. But there's also more stuff that I want to do. And so you had the good fortune of having a mentor that talk to you about what they're doing money coming in, clear, free and clear. I get tongue tied, sometimes coming in free and clear. But that set something in your mind that said, Hey, listen, you don't want to push that away. You wanted to bring that idea closer and figure out how you could do it. So you started on your own path, and realise, like, hey, I can keep doing this. But then eventually you realised Hey, listen, I've got this day job that I really enjoy. I'm starting to create my path to freedom. How can I accelerate it and you figured, just like you were doing in your training, that will have a clear objective, start to put your path together, surround yourself with others and while taking action? Well, and doing that consistently, that you're going to be able to go out and massively impact so many different lives. And you're continuing to do that today with your podcast we talked about and also at next level income. So everybody's thinking yeah, Billy, but just asking the question, man, because that's what everybody really wants to know Matt, what's the best way that the go along family could find out more about you and what you've got, what you've got going on and how you are positively impacting others?

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41:20

Absolutely, I'll give you three ways one, definitely check us out ice cream with investors it's podcasts on every podcasting app out there so your your greatest show host here has agreed before the recording to attend as well so you might be seeing him pop up soon, too. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So if you want to reach out to me there send me a DM by all means shoot me a message just know I love talking about this stuff. And last but not least you can find my calendar on next level income.com You just go reach out to contact us and my calendar will be up there.

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Billy Keels  41:52

Alright, fantastic, man. Listen, man. I can only say thank you and I graciously upset accept your invitation. So I've listened to check check them out at ice cream with investors, everybody and I just want to say Matt thank you very much man from from bottom my heart appreciate you investing your time with me and the entire go along family today man. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Hey, listen, just really really quickly on wrap things up and I'll get you out of here. Go along family I think Matt Ford left everything he shared his method he shared about the form Febe method and he's helping you to get clarity shared a story about how it positively impacting others. Even being able to have his ROI intentional being there with his son, he gave you a perfect example. Take today's conversation, repeat it, share it with family share it with friends talk about it. Don't just leave it as a podcast, put these concepts into action. Heck, even reach out to Matt directly. He's giving me a way to reach out to him. So with that, while you're taking action, I'm gonna be here preparing for the next conversation. So until then go out and make it a great day. And thank you very much

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