← The $100 MBA Show
The $100 MBA Show
MBA2548 From Michael Jackson’s Bodyguard to Martial Arts Franchise Mogul with Matt Fiddes
01:20:47
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- [00:01]
MasterCard Representative
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- [00:32]
Carl's Jr. Advertiser
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- [01:00]
Omar Zenhom
Burger before we dive into today's episode, a quick note this episode contains discussions around mental health and suicide.
- [01:09]
Matt Fidesz
If you or someone you know may find this topic distressing, please listen with.
- [01:14]
Omar Zenhom
Care or feel free to skip this episode. Hey, welcome back to the $100 NBA show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm, and today's episode is a very special extended interview, a conversation with one of the most interesting people I've met, Matt Fidesz. Matt Fidesz is the owner of the largest martial arts franchise business in the world. With just 100 pounds, he started his first school and then a few years later he expanded to five schools and today he has over 1800 martial arts schools around the world. But that's just the beginning of his story. Mephidos, at the age of 20, meets probably the most famous person in the world at the time and this person teaches him about how to franchise and how to expand beyond five locations. That person is this guy, Michael Jackson. I know it's pretty crazy that there's a Michael Jackson twist to this story, but yeah, he became his close friend at the age of 20. But of course, in today's conversation, he's going to share what he learned from Michael Jackson as his close friend, being around him all the time. He also shares how much his network has helped him as an entrepreneur, how he built his businesses, his keys to success, and how you can get started if you have little to no money like he did. And of course he shares some really interesting stories about his relationship with Michael Jackson, about all the controversy, about all the things that people have said about him, the allegations, as well as all the things that people don't know about him that he Wished the world knew this episode, this conversation is about business, is about mindset, is about growth. It's about being great and being even greater than the greats. It's incredible. I'm so glad I got to sit down with Matt Fidesz. So let's jump into that conversation right now. Matt Fides, so great to have you on the show. I'm so, so excited to have this conversation. Prior to this conversation right now, you know, we're going to dig into your history. We're going to go and figure out how you became. I want to start. And by the way, mind me because I'll have my iPad. I'll be looking down on my iPad, but I want to start. When you were 16 years old, you leave school, you start your own school, your own martial arts school, and you do it for just £100. I've been dying to ask you, how did you do this?
- [03:47]
Matt Fidesz
Well, when your backs up against the wall and you got no qualifications and everyone's telling you you can't do that, and your school career advisor, where you go into the main assembly at school before you leave school and you see your career advisor and they have all these different stool stands that are available, says, ask you what do you want to do? And you turn around and say, I wanna, I wanna teach taekwondo for a living. She thought I was crazy. So she said, don't be ridiculous. You've got no school qualifications. You can't make any money out of that. Go and become electrician. And because you've got no qualifications, you're gonna have to go retrain. So you're gonna have to go to college as well. So go and cure V. Stop being so ridiculous. Had I listened to her, it would have been devastating, not just for me, but for the thousands of people that work with me and for the thousands, hundreds of thousands of students that we changed their lives for. Plus the entrepreneurs are mentor and stuff. So she could have given me the worst advice ever. Instead, I got this thing with me where someone tells me I can't do something, I'm going to do it, you know, So I was like, screw you, I'm going to. I'm not interested in going over to that restudy and become an electrician or a plumber. So when your parents are against it, your dad's called it legalized violence and your grandparents were about get a trade and that's all they've ever known because they come from the industrial age, then I had my back was up against the rule. I mean, that was it. And Then the next thing that happened, which is the best thing could have happened to me, my parents got relocated. My mum was a lawyer, solicitor, attorney, depending on where you watch and listen this from. And she got relocated to the coast of the UK and I was literally 16 and in our family we have this tradition that not, not now, not with my kids, but we're at 16. If you're a guy you leave home. That's the way it works. So I was out of the house at 16. I was quite happy to get out there to be honest. I don't regret my parents over that fact. Good way to get out of that toxic environment I was living in with no self belief in what I was going to do and I was just like the dumb kid basically out of the four of us. So they moved away which forced me to move in with my girlfriend at the time they were quite shocked at the situation and I had to earn some money and one thing I was very passionate about is weight training, fitness and so on. So I took a course at the local college, become a PT personal trainer and there was one person who really believed in me, which is my granddad on my mum's side. He's got 14 children and he was six times Irish weightlifting champion. He was picked for the 1980 Romeo Olympic Games and he wanted to have an athletic child but out of all the 14 kids he had they were very academic and went to university but none of them showed an interest in sport to that kind of level professional. Whereas I came along as one of the first grandchildren. I was the only one literally showing this other than my cousin Wendy who went down the bodybuilding route, female body with aesthetic route. Became a champion. She won Miss Australia actually I was the only one and he took me under his wing, he believed in me so he came to my martial art class and watched it. He got the bus with me. It was too old to drive and wouldn't too well but everyone else was against. When your backs against all you've got to find a way. So in the end me and my girlfriend, we moved to North Devon which is on the coast of England and I moved into a bed sit. So that's basically a sofa that turns into a bed every night is one room, a tiniest bathroom, a tiniest kitchenette type thing and it was devastating. It was £30 a week. Got evicted from three of them, couldn't afford it. I had a lifeguard qualification so I got a job as a lifeguard working for two pounds 75 an hour. That was painful so we struggled, we really struggled financially, me and her. She worked in a local chip shop. But when the winter comes around, when you live in a tourist area, it's like the sunshine coast in Australia. There's nothing going on, everything closes up. So it was a real struggle in the wintertime. And I kept on putting off this dream that I had of wanting to become a full time martial arts instructor. Now initially when I was at school at 13, I wrote down all these goals and I'm a big believer in the law of attraction due to this and they were I want to be a millionaire by the time I was 20. I want to be the most well known martial arts instructor in the world. I want to have a Ferrari. Because I grew up with my, my brother Nathan, who's an incredible artist that drawing cars from Ferraris. He actually, I think he had an apprenticeship at Ferrari in Italy. So I grew up with Ferrari, Testarossa's and 355s and F40s on the wall on his bedroom. He had all these incredible, very academic guy and other funny things to want to be able to do the splits like John Claude Van Damme and all the high key out the six pack and the muscles. So that's what I focused on every day. I knew academically I wasn't going to be able to pull anything off and it did interest me. And so working as a lifeguard, I started up a local martial arts class, Taekwondo. It's very traditional taekwondo that I taught because I belong to this organization. At the time I charged three pounds a class. We taught in Korean. It was very hardcore. When you do press search, your instructor comes around and kicks you in the belly and all that type of thing and, and that's the way it was. But I knew out there there was something a lot more. So yeah, between the lifeguard job, £2 75 an hour and a £3 the class lessons, I saved £100 to open up a business bank account, which is what you needed to have back then. This is like in the late 90s and that was the start of things to come. I mean, at that point my parents would look at me thinking, this ain't gonna work. When the sun comes out, no one comes to your classes. They go to the beach, it's Devon, it's the south coast, you know, it's not sustain. You can't live in a bed sit forever. You need to stop this nonsense and get a job, get a career, get a train. But every time they say that to me, I just flash back to the school bully who made me start martial arts in the first place. I wanted to prove everything wrong, everybody wrong and it was deeply embarrassing. I just clapped out old Ford Metro that when they got to about 45 miles an hour the steering wheel used to shake.
- [10:25]
Omar Zenhom
I had one of those, not a Ford car that did that. Yeah.
- [10:30]
Matt Fidesz
And I said to my girlfriend, don't worry any years time of having a Mercedes or something because you know I just unbelievable belief in myself. And yeah, I mean then the next part of the story, I mean if believe in law of attraction or whatever you want really. I had a friend who's also a martial artist instructor, guy called Lee Childs and he went to America on holiday and back then we had pages. Sounds like I'm really out of money at G45. Amazing our technology. I couldn't, we couldn't. If you had a mobile phone they're kind of like come around but they're very expensive. Back then I launched my business off of pager. So Lee paged me and he says can you call me urgently? And back in the UK we have these back then they're not now the museum pieces but they're like the red telephone boxes. So I went, went to the red telephone box opposite my bed sit, put the money in the machine called Leah said Lee, what's up? He goes I just come back from United States, Matt, you would not believe what's going on out there. So you've got multi millionaire martial arts school owners and we're kind of funny, a bit like we want to protect our art. And I said well I don't want to compromise the standards of my taekwondo, my martial arts and money. So you don't understand. They got the money and they've got the standards and it's. They even have events where millionaires, martial arts scholars get together over three days. So that was the next goal. How can I raise enough money, I think it was about £350 to go to this conference and attend this conference, buy a ticket and stay three days with thousand, over a thousand multi millionaire martial from all over the United States and that I achieved it. I remember flying on that, that airplane thing and I had no money left. I mean I was staying in the grubbiest place in this place in San Francisco and went to this event at the Hyatt Hotel. The organizer was there a guy called Nicholas Coquinas, he was in his 80s. Now America's are very different to the UK. If you're successful in the UK, if you've got Ambition, they want to knock you down. I don't know what it's like in Australia and stuff, but, but in America, so I had nothing to lose. So I went up to this guy and he was sat with his two sons, John and Mark. And I said, hi, Mr. Kikinas, my name is Matt Finesse, I'm from the UK, I'm 17, I've used my last money to get here. What should I do? What do you recommend I should do? He was so impressed that I took it for myself to introduce myself because this guy was worth millions. He had shares of Marriott hotels, extremely successful. He's not a martial artist, he's a business consultant, mentor. He had his fingers and many pies. And he turned around and he said, the fact you've introduced yourself to me, you've flown over England, you don't even know if this business model is going to work in the uk. We don't know why it's not there yet. And you had the confidence to use. Myself said, I'm going to make you rich and I might as well make you famous at the same time. And he said, study the three days, take lots of notes. And there was no pitching back then. So if you go to an event now, you just get pitched to death. Pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, none of that. It was just content, information, networking. And at the end of it, I was staying there for two weeks. He said, I want you not to go in sightsee, I want you to go follow this person, follow this person. Visit their staff meetings, watch their classes, watch their marketing and model them. Looks like Tony Robbins teaches. So I came back on the, on the plane, I had no money left, but I came back with this notepad full of this incredible information and I tried to implement it. Now, some work, some didn't, like the high fives and the hugs in England didn't go down very well. But I was one of the first people to put people on direct debit. It's called stand in order down there or electronic transfer. To stabilize my income, I made it educational. Kids had homework. We no longer did. I teach in Korean, I taught in English because we're in England. I left. Well, I got kicked out of my organization. They disagreed with what I was doing. In warm ups, we put music on adolescents, we, I modernized, disrupted the whole martial arts industry. Took it from the dark ages, from 2000 years ago and modernized it to what parents want. So parents would look at me and they want their child to represent what I, what I was. You know, how I, how I acted and from doing that I went for three pound a class to stabilize my income. I got very good at marketing, so I studied the greats the marketing and states and I built this income of 5 to 7,000amonth. Now bear in mind my overheads are only higher in a school hall for £15 a night twice a week. So it's £30 a week. So I got out of the bedsit rented accommodation into a house and then I was able to get a mortgage and buy my first home at 18. And then I did it all over again. Long story short, there's a big building I wanted to do the big marathon way, which is not the way to do it, which is have a big building and there's offices above an estate agent, two stories. It's all been empty for a long time in a town called Bar 30,000 population. Perfect because I was operating in a town with 10,000 population and I went into the estate agents and I said listen, I want to hire your space above here and make it a perfect martial arts school. The guy thought I was completely nuts. How are you going to make any money out of karate? That ain't gonna work. He laughed me out of his office. We can't let give you a lease or too young for a start. You're not even at legal age 18. Anyway, I mentioned to my mum, my mum was a conveyance and lawyer, so other place will that be a property real estate lawyer. She knew all the estate agents so she called up the estate agent said listen, I've got to be honest, I'll be very skeptical about this martial arts son thing with my son Matthew, but I think he's onto something. Why not give him six months free rent, let him fix out the partitions, carpet the place, do whatever he needs to do and give it a go. What have you got to lose? The market was bad, this was back in like. Yeah, vacant space, yeah. And then he said well he's 17, how the hell is he going to sign a lease? So I, we changed my girlfriend's name who was 19 to finesse. She signed the lease, we got in there, they gave us six months free rent. Six months later I had 700 members pay me on average between 59 to 100 pound a month plus graders and merchandise, joining fees and events and I was making a million a year and my, my rent was about 180 pounds a month for building I took on the second floor. So I went from three pound a class to earning a million pound profit per year, 80,000 pound a month profit. It was insane. And I got my first Ferrari 355 when I was 19. In fact, I just got it back again. I was. Been on the hunt for it. It's in the garage, but on the hunt for it for years. It's like a simple thing for me. Of course, it's now 30 years old and I've got it back and it's. I picked it up yesterday. It's in the garage. So that's. That's the quick version.
- [17:34]
Omar Zenhom
That's incredible. That's incredible, man. There's. There's a few things I want to touch on from that story. First of all, like, I don't know how the world works, but there's so many similarities with your story, with my story. I too started everything off a conference. I went to this conference. Nicole, my partner in life and business, we went to this conference in Las Vegas. We had no money at all. We barely could pay rent. But we found a way to get a cheap, cheap ticket, an early bird ticket for the conference and fleabag motel in Las Vegas. And that conference conference changed everything for us. We met so many interesting people. We made our first contacts and grew our network there. And that was the inspiration to start the podcast. And it just all kind of changed from there. But part of that story for us was leaving our comfort zones, leaving our environments and moving somewhere new. How much do you think your success was due to the fact that you left your house, you maybe left the community that maybe would drag you back down or maybe not believe in you and you go into new Devon and starting a new life. How much does that contribute to your success?
- [18:49]
Matt Fidesz
It was everything. Although that where I moved to when I made it, if you want to call it that, when I had the Ferrari maker, boy, did Devin want to bring me down. He shouldn't be here taking all our money. What's he doing? You know, why is he driving around in the furry of his top off of muscles and long perms hair at 19 years old? Who the hell does he think he is? And go back to. Go back to where you come from. I got no love from the public. I mean it was literally. They graffiti the wolves, kill Matt finesse. They actually that's how far I got. The hate was unbelievable. They just couldn't. Especially when I. Which we'll get on to. My best mates became superstars. They just couldn't. I mean this is a small town. Thinking if you imagine a place in the dark age where they say nobody comes here, no one famous ever Comes here. No one's ever made any money here. Well, the place I came from was Swindon, which is one of the most commutable, should be a city places in the uk. You can get to London within an hour, you know, and all the airports within an hour. Whereas this is right on the coast. So unheard of. So the hate I got was unbelievable. You know, if I stayed in the place that I did it, the only reason I didn't, because my parents moved away and I didn't want to open up on my instructor's territory. If I stayed there, I probably would have got a warmer reception than what I did. Being this alien in a place that they felt I didn't, they just couldn't get their head around it. And strange for me too, because I didn't know any different. This is my first. This is my introduction to adulthood. I didn't know I was poor. So poor, like you, like Christmas time in the bedsit. The family would send me hampers, baked beans and stuff. I was an idiot because I was going down the wrong path as far as they were concerned. But they didn't. The town don't appreciate you where you come from. You got to work it out. They always try and justify it with, he must have been given money from his mum, who's a lawyer. She didn't give me nothing. They struggled, you know, just because lawyers don't have a lot of money, especially in Devon, it's just a basic salary, you know, and especially by the time you're taxed on it. They always try and justify, we must be doing something criminal or, you know, this can't be right. How the heck's he doing this? His car is worth more than our houses, which was the case. I mean, the car was worth more than most houses and. But I didn't get. I got the most tremendous hate. But in a way I understood that your network is your network, who you hang around with. That conference was everything to me, everything. Those people I stayed in contact with, now they are in their 60s and they come to me for advice. They fly in to me, visit my headquarters on the latest trend, social media, what's going, what to do next and so on. Whereas I used to study them. So I ignored all the haters and I studied the great stand on the shoulders of the giants. I also got educated very early on and people find this hard to understand. I get asked this, how do you put the haters, the trolls, the comments and negativity? They are your free publicists. They're the people who are going to keep up there in Google, pump your algorithms and they used to be tabloids and newspapers without them, they, they are your measure of success. And when I used to ring my friends with billionaires and complain about this, put this articles coming out about me and it's false, or this person is talking nuts about me, should I sue them? They say, what are you talking about? They're your free publicist. You gotta worry about it when people don't talk about you. Matt, we love you. Bye. They put the phone down me. A lot of people turn back at that point. I don't want this. I'm going to take a job at McDonald's. Thank you very much.
- [22:27]
Omar Zenhom
Yeah, I mean that's, that's a tough one because a lot of people feel like they need to get the story straight or they feel like, you know, that's not me, I need to defend myself. But the interesting thing is that there's not really anything you could say that's going to change anybody's mind in general. Like most people don't change their mind. So what's the point?
- [22:49]
Carl's Jr. Advertiser
The kind of burgers you get today tells you a lot about yourself. You're either someone who settles for sad, same old, same old burgers, or you're at a Carl's Jr obsessed with a tangy OG Western bacon cheeseburger, demanding a house made guacamole, loaded guac bacon, fired up for the insanely hot El Diablo, or craving a classic Char famous star. Give into your flavor cravings. Do your mouth to Carl's Jr Good Burger.
- [23:20]
Matt Fidesz
As entrepreneurs, when it comes to our finances, it can get confusing. It can get overwhelming. From expenses to vendor payments to reconciling.
- [23:28]
Omar Zenhom
Accounting, it's a lot.
- [23:30]
Matt Fidesz
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- [23:35]
Omar Zenhom
Be a complete game changer for you.
- [23:37]
Matt Fidesz
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- [23:43]
Omar Zenhom
I like the sound of that.
- [23:44]
Matt Fidesz
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- [24:52]
Omar Zenhom
I really want to get into. So you build your first studio, which is incredible. Today you have over 1800 karate studios around the world. One of the largest franchises in the martial arts. How do you started this concept of franchising your brand? Because a lot of entrepreneurs know the idea of franchising, like, oh, I'll start a subway or something, but they don't actually think about it as a way to scale their business.
- [25:14]
Matt Fidesz
Misunderstood concept out there, isn't it? On how to scale and grow your business so fast without the overheads, the risk, the liability. I became best friends with the late superstar Michael Jackson. I know it's a weird thing to come up with halfway through a podcast, but that's, that's basically, basically what happened. Michael and me got on very, very well. We had a mutual friend called Uri Geller. He saw me on TV before he becomes a millionaire, and he wants to introduce me to his best friend, who is Michael Jackson, who back in the 90s was the biggest pop star, famous man, genius on earth. And me and him became close. For a year we were friends, and then I took over his whole security bodyguard operation for free. I didn't need his money, although he opened a lot of doors for me. I mean, there's no doubt that it paid off through the loyalty when you meet billionaires. And Michael was a billionaire. I know he died broke, cash broke, but he had a billion, over a billion on assets with the Beatles catalog and music rights and assets and stuff, his own music. When you meet billionaires, they get sick of people asking questions about them. They tend to ask questions more about you. Another one of my friends was Mohamed Al Fayad, who owned Paris in London. He mentored me and I was around his house for dinner. And he owns a Ritz hotel. They have people ask questions about them all the time. So what you find with them, they're more interested in little, little young man, you know, and what are you doing? So I remember having this conversation in a hotel in London with Michael. We were bored. We couldn't go out there's. Over a thousand fans outside. It would have been chaotic. We couldn't find anything on the TV to watch. So Michael turns around to me and he said, man, how's the business going? The martial arts was he loved martial arts. One of the reasons he wanted to meet me, he wanted to meet Bruce Lee's daughter, an ex wife. He wanted to find out what made Bruce Lee relevant all these years on from his death. He wanted what made me Bruce Lee tick and he knew I had connections to that family. You want to take his martial arts level to another stage and go to second degree black belt. So he turned to me, said, man, how many martial arts you got? So I got five. And they're all located within like five, 10 miles of each other and in a suburb, I think you would call it in a corner of England. The nearest town, next one is 40 miles away, right? So like 60, 70K away. And I said, he said, why have you only got five? I said, michael, I can find people to work for me. I'm flipping like 20 again. 35 year old, 40 year olds to work for me is difficult. Take me seriously, you know, let alone trying to get some to drive 40 miles to open up my next location, which is a town called Tiverton. And he's like staring at me like I was a complete fool. And he said, you do realize I was a poor boy from Gary, Indiana, sharing a two bed house with nine kids where my dad had no shoes to go to work at the steering wheel. We had handouts in the family. He said, you do realize I got the biggest selling album in the world. It's called Thriller. Have you heard of it? Matt being sarcastic. So yeah, yeah, I know about Thriller. Of course. I sell out stadiums all around the world, Matt, My records all around the world. If I can figure out how to do that, surely you can figure out how to get someone to travel 40 miles and get rid of this mind block that you have. You're just not thinking big enough. You read in the wrong books, you're not studying the greats. And I said, well, how am I going to do that? He goes, well, it's called franchising. And I said, well no one's ever done that in the martial arts before because that's exactly. I remember this very well. He pointed at me with big eyes like, that's exactly why you got to do it. No, you got to be a pioneer, not a follower. And he's very used to, back then he was very used to doing something called licensing, which is Very similar where you lend your name out. Like Pepsi Cola was the biggest endorsement deal at the time that Michael Jackson did license deals. So he knew about franchising, licensing, brand endorsement. Very clever. He knew about the power of a brand. So he wrote down on a napkin exactly everything I had to do. Marketing, sales and client retention, script everything out, manualize everything, be so controversial, manipulate mainstream media up to date on current trends, study all the greats out there, make yourself better. You wrote all this stuff down and we had a very deep discussion about this about three hours now, if I'm honest with you. After that conversation he had to go off to a meeting and I had to get back to my family, my kids and I. I was hoping. I didn't really have a lot of belief in it. It sounded a bit far fetched. I just felt Michael Jackson was so out there, so massive that comparing me where I was with my five martial arts schools making, I was making a million point five a year. I was quite happy. I was a bit bored, but I was quite happy for that. You know, looking at what he was earning compared to what I was doing seems so far fetched. But anyway, Michael wouldn't leave it alone. I used to ring up the landline at home and my wife used to answer the phone, mainly because I was trying to avoid it. And he would say, can I speak to Matt? And oh, Matt's not in I get you plugged games, bring you back, Michael, yeah, please get rid of me back. And I knew why he wanted.
- [30:32]
Omar Zenhom
He's trying to hold you accountable.
- [30:34]
Matt Fidesz
Don't hold me accountable.
- [30:35]
Omar Zenhom
That's incredible.
- [30:37]
Matt Fidesz
And on the other hand, I had Yuri Geller, very much into property, always drumming. They're not going to build any more land map. Wasting your money on these supercars, like being real tough on me, like hard as hell on me. And I used to hate him for it, now I love him for it. I've got this tremendous wealth in property. So he was pushing me to buy a house. So he'd be ringing up, how many houses you bought this month? And then I got Michael Jackson ringing me up saying, how many franchises have you sold? In the end, obviously I had to take their phone because I couldn't keep avoiding these phone calls forever through the accountability. And also there was an element of, you know what? Screw you, Michael, I'm gonna, I know it sounds ridiculous. I'm gonna catch you earning wise. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick your ass. So I used to say that to the phone. He goes, you're welcome to try. That's what he used to say because he was so competitive. That guy was so into golfing. He used to write his goals on the mirror and so on. Yeah. And I wanted to blast Michael Jackson out the part in terms of earnings and show him, come on, get off your backside, get up earlier, get out there, make it happen. What's going on? You're 25 now. Why have you only got this many schools? But because of his accountability, because of Yuri gal. I did 400 franchises in one year and it became the biggest, most controversial thing in my sector. I disrupted the whole martial arts sector. People don't like change. They thought what I was doing was wrong. Now everyone tries to copy me. Now they all do the education system, they all put people on direct debit. They all try and sneak in and pretend, I don't know they're trying to buy, pretend to buy a franchise to try and learn it. But what you can't recreate is I was part of the greatest inner circle of mastermind there ever was where Britney Spears, you know, Muhammad Al Fayed, Michael Jackson, Yuri Geller, David Blaine and all Sultan of Brunei. I was hanging around with these people as my network. And you're going to pick up the way they are. You can't recreate that. It's just. They call it a mastermind then we used to call it networking, just get together network. There's a, there's a saying like small minds talk about people, great minds talk about things and amazing minds talk about ideas. I mean these guys just talk about ideas. They were not gossiping at a table. It's like how you make the next billion by changing people's lives. And you can in your early 20s, you're going to pick up on that. Just like a child will pick up their parents accent, you're going to pick up on that. And I had a huge impact on me. So time I was 20, 28, 29, I was worth 30 million. I mean it was insane. And then it went on now to be it's the biggest in the world. I don't, people do try and copy. I would. They just don't have that work tenacity like I have. They don't stay up to two in the morning and they, they won't put themselves out of the box and make it happen out there or they're scared to be. I understand the more attention I get on me or the more successful I am. Money goes where attention flows and, and I go out of my way and I've had Great teachers. To be as controversial as I can, you know, to. Is there any way you, you reach people is people want you to be controversial, you want to go viral, mainstream or social media, you need to be out there and staying relevant all the time. And I go out of my way even to this day for my franchises. I do all the marketing for them. I do the brand building for them. So I don't really believe in personal brand. I believe in brand building. Personal brand is for people who are broke, who are trying to do it the slow way and it's, it's a hard slog. And you got some very much fake gurus out there who are making a lot of money selling these courses right now. Because I believe just going, if you got the knowledge, you've got the right mentor. Just go and build a brand, get on with it. Just go and get. That's what I did. Just don't, don't publish a book and buy a thousand an hour to make it an Amazon bestseller. That's just not, don't sit right with me, you know, and you gotta have a business before you start mentoring. You gotta done it yourself. But you'd be amazed how many thousands of them are out there who get rich. The Selling get rich program.
- [34:42]
Omar Zenhom
I love this because I always say that you should never learn from somebody who makes their money trying to teach people how to make money like you. They should have some track record. They should have businesses under their belt. They should be sharing examples of how they did it, not how to do it in a, you know, in a theoretical way. So that's so important. I wanted to touch a little bit about, you know, the idea of the franchising and standardizing your brand because you talked about brand, how important that is. So with a franchise model, you have a set sop, you have rules, you have regulations. You license that system to somebody else who wants to open up a method as martial arts school and then they go ahead and, and start their school and they pay you a license and all that. How do you keep the standard consistent across 1800 schools? How do you make sure that everybody's kind of following the Methodist philosophy and not doing their own thing and throwing in, hey, we're going to do jazz dancing too and we're going to also do this.
- [35:43]
Matt Fidesz
Yeah, good question. So probably the biggest challenge, and for me it's a great responsibility because my name is above the door. It's called the map Finesse Martial arts schools. Now initially it was not, when I first started, it was called the Fighting FIT school of Taekwondo. If it was still called that nowadays, it wouldn't be so successful because every TV appearance I do, every podcast I do, every media piece, they have to mention my name, which puts me in Google, gets me higher ranked and people can search me and they find my schools and my products and mentoring and so on. But I take great pride. Every single instructor has to be signed off by me and we have thousands of them. So the emails come in with a criminal check, their insurance, their background and so on. And they have to. The franchisee gets an email back from it for me signal. Even now every single one personally gets signed off by me. It's on my head if anything goes wrong and the franchise is kind of like it, that my name's above the door because they know I'm not gonna do anything stupid, they know I'm gonna go out of my way. But when we went through, it's going on YouTube, so I won't mention it because you'll get a YouTube stroke. When we went through the period where we all had to stay at home in a 2020, that period of time, they knew I had their backs and that I would sell. I went on a zoo with them all, as many as I could. There was a thousand turn up a half past 12 UK so Australia could attend too. And I said to him, I sell every one of my houses. You guys are like family to me. A lot of you been here for 20 years. We will get through this. Don't worry, I will find a way. And within 24 hours, we took everyone online. And then when we came out of it, I used my own money, several hundred thousands of pounds to rebuild. And because most of the competition, if you want to call it that, we say the competition is not really martial arts, it's more after school activities like soccer, football, rugby and violin lessons. Because most of that's been wiped out and people were scared to spend their money when they come out thinking this is going to come around again. I went out there and I always say, observe the masses, do the opposite. So I knew the franchise were going to spend their money on advertising. They're holding their, their grants, their handouts from the government to their hold to their chest. And I get that. But I had to do something radical to I saw this as big opportunity. No one else is advertising on Facebook. Everyone's too scared. Facebook price has gone down. So I went out there, Bam. I used my own money and I grew up from a 30, 40 million pound valuation. Well, I want entrepreneur of the year. 2022 coming out of that and franchisor of the year. That's how you think. And it got valued at 120 million because I had the guts to go out and do what others don't, which I learned very early on. First of all, we have this amazing KPI CRM system where I can type in now and I can see an overview of all my schools and I got graphs if they're going down. It says there's an issue with the retention, client service. We need to jump on that, find out what's going on. I got a team, we'll go and look at that. If they're not growing, they've got an issue to market it. And also every eight to 10 weeks we have, they have a color belt system where they go for grades. If we have a high failure rate, there's a problem, you know, maybe is there too much of a pass rate? We've got a problem as well where we go in a zoom there. So they are, they are checked and we have mystery shoppers or random people. Plus people know they, they will write there's an issue. They're right to head office. So we are high on the standards. That's why we've been around for these three decades now and leading the industry. We, we go out of the way to, to keep that there, monitor our team. We have MF University, which is internal, where they. It's a never ending journey because things are changing all the time of education and safeguarding laws and so on. And I put my team all through it. Like recently, they, they thought I was joking. But the laws changed so much now where all my instructors had to go on how to treat transgenders and they all went through that and got that certification. So we're very much hot on that. And that's really my job to protect my name, my brand. We've been extremely successful in that. Occasionally it will go wrong, someone will mess up, but you have to take that on a chin and that's business. And brush yourself off and get on with it. A lesson learned. Let's move on, you know. And so yeah, we're high on the standards. It's. It is difficult to do, but not. I don't know. Again, it comes down to the fact I don't know any different. This is all I know. He's franchising. I franchise so many businesses now, from bird tables for birds of prey to HMOs, which is houses, multiple occupancy. People don't know where you rent the rooms out Yoga, Pilates, just about to franchise. Nurseries, childcare, MF nurseries, dance schools, we've got a lot of them. MF dance schools. Same business model, different subject. So we got this thing now. But yeah, you gotta open the front door as wide as you can to get new students in or clients in, and you gotta shut the back door as tight as you can. Can give them the best services you possibly can. That's the key to success in business. There's only really three areas of business, which is marketing, being as loud as you can, being out there, social and mainstream media. There's still a place in mainstream media. The second part is sales. If your product service is so good, you don't have to do that. It takes care of itself. I don't believe in all this high ticket sales monster. You don't need all that mess around with people's minds. If you're not good people buy. And the third area is service, what you get to do. Most people just focus on the third area, coaching, mentoring. And unless you're good at area one and two, marketing, sales, you've got no one to mentor in the first place. They don't get a head around that. So as a franchise, I take care of the first and second part for them. They just turn up and they provide the Service.
- [41:24]
Omar Zenhom
So with 1800 franchises, with all the different businesses you're running, you obviously had to build a strong team because you're only as strong as your team. From the last 20 years, you've been trying to get your net wealth to a certain point, build your business to a certain point, you're on your way to a billion dollars. What role did recruitment have to do in your journey? And what were some of the mistakes that you wish you avoided when it comes to hiring the right people in the right places?
- [41:54]
Matt Fidesz
Yeah, well, the mistake thing, that's like a whole different podcast. I think I could spend a couple of hours on that one because you know, well, that's where the real lessons come from and what I'm on stage, entrepreneur events and I'm not talking about martial arts, I'm talking about business in general because sort of same principle. Mostly entrepreneur mentors don't speak about their mistakes, but behind the scenes, that's our biggest lessons. Now I make a point of talking about my mistakes and it's interesting. You watch the crowd move. They, they sit forward and they start taking notes and they start thinking, I can relate to this guy. It's not just Lamborghinis, Ferraris and all the rest of it, he's been antidepressants. I've been Anthony. He's been for a divorce. I've had a divorce. He's tried to commit suicide. I've tried to commit, I've been depressed. They get it. And I think the mistakes are the biggest, biggest lessons. So for me that I had to have a couple of wake up calls and I, I'd love people if they take nothing else from this podcast to understand from somebody who's been there, who's been broke with nothing, with a strong family unit to someone who's considered to be very wealthy now, what really matters now? This. This is the honest truth, right? So today I'm not asking people if he's sorry for me because this is where I've landed at. When you get to your destination, sometimes it's kind of shocking because everyone's after this dream, but when you actually arrive there, it's not like you think it is. So my wife has to make a tremendous effort with me because she'll find me sitting in, we've got this incredible home. I mean it's insane, overlooking these amazing hills. And she'll find me sitting there staring into outside to the scenery and she say, what's wrong with you? And I'll be like, I just want to be successful. Matt, you got everything. You got six kids, you've got the wife who loves you, you've got a Lamborghini, you've got Ferraris. You can do anything you want. But the reality is once you get past a certain net worth, which I believe is 10 million, there is nothing else to do. So the biggest lesson is if you want to go past 10 million, you're going to incur a lot more stress. You've got to kind of work out. Do you want to do that? Because there's only. You could do everything on that. That's like the new million, by the way. That's what I believe. So 20 years ago, 25 years ago, a millionaire is something. A millionaire now won't get you anywhere. 10 million is a new million.
- [44:16]
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- [45:15]
Omar Zenhom
Good Burger.
- [45:19]
Matt Fidesz
So I got all these properties that are happening. The issue is that you become quite paranoid. People don't relate to you because they got to go to work nine to five or night shifts. People my age look at me as not normal. You know it's not right. And when I come off this podcast I've got no plan for today. I've got such a team in place that are incredible. I only going to get a phone call. People are going to ring me when there's a problem. That's it. So my dates can be quite negative. People only call out Matt Finesse when there's something happened. A suicide in one of my properties for instance last week or heart attack in one of the students in one of the classes somewhere. No one's going to ring me to tell me positive things. My biggest mistakes have been my biggest life changing one. So the most hard hitting one for me is my mom. Although my mum and dad were very much against my martial arts pursuit that I can make money obviously they became raving facts in the end they're like so proud of my son. Their son you know best friends are the superstars and always in the magazines mega rich. I could change their lives you know they could do but my. My mom she self educated. She had four sons. I'm the oldest she was a legal executive which is before you become a lawyer account a lawyer. Attorney I don't know they call it in Australia over there's attorney right. I think she self educated my memories of her study study. She wants to provide a better life for us four boys and my dad and my mom saw roles my dad became the house husband My mom could earn more money than him because there was a major recession 1989 and that's what she had to do. Made my dad quite depressed because he wanted to be in a masculine role providing for his family although he did a wonderful job. But mum always had this little belief where she'd whisper my ear that there's no such word as can Matthew. You can do anything you want long as you believe it. Even everyone else is telling me you're failing your exams. This martial Arts good thing she wouldn't say in front of them but she'll say to me there's no way this cat just believe in yourself, you'll be okay. Because she's managed self educate herself she became a solicitor at 42 so she qualified as a lawyer at 42 and then we went to a graduation and she calls me up she says Matt I've got six months to live. I've been diagnosed with breast cancer. And I went and saw her now me thinking I missed a big shot all these famous. But she knew Michael Jackson very well and, and lost all my other famous friends. I was worth a lot of money. Don't worry mum, we're not normal. I've not worked my butt off all my life. We're gonna get the best professor out there. We're gonna get you the best health care we're gonna, we're gonna beat this damn thing. Anyway the we have National Health Service over here. The next appointment for her to have a full breast removal mastectomy was. Was three months wait. Shocking. So I wrote our check, don't worry. So I wrote our check. I'm going to get you in. I got room in two days and she had both brush move done and she went into remission. We got her through it no problem and then she, she kind of lived her life unless she traveled a lot more realized what was real to her becoming a solicitor probably she blamed getting breast cancer on, on the stress of becoming a lawyer who was just after that literally all the studying and and so forth bringing up as family. Anyway sadly when she was 52 she got rushed to hospital and we had this thing in the uk although you guys had it around the world but called the swine flu. Her lungs basically filled up with water fast and she had to be ambulanced in. I'm at the hospital at the end of my mum's bed in hospital and he turns to me, my stepdad, he said we, he said I think we both know this is not swine flu Matthew, you know and I looked at him thinking because we got warned when the first bout of cancer that there's a good chance to think about within eight to 10 years. That's how it works back then. That's how it worked. I was looking whoa, we could be dealing with the big C again. He said yeah, I think so. And she had tubes coming out of her lungs into buckets literally like that with fluid taking the fluid away. Sure enough they tested our cancer cells in it and she was riddled with cancer all over her body, lungs, liver, secondary breast cancer. So at that point, again, I still wasn't having it as I, I said so one of my younger brothers that we're going to hunt out the best out there in breast cancer and we're going to tackle. And we flew to Dublin and I spent £50,000 on experimental drugs that weren't licensed yet. Try and save her. It nearly killed her. It was this chemo is the most horrific thing ever. Yeah, she passed away. She passed away just a few years later at 56. I was 32. I was divorced, I was single at the time. My daughters were 7, 5 and 4. And when you stood outside of a grave and your mum's going into the ground at 56 and you're looking at your daughters and their nannies that you're trying to explain to them and I've got all this mega wow for success behind me and I couldn't save my own mum. I'm thinking, screw this, all that matters to me is those three kids now. That's it. I could even care less about finding another partner. I just want my babies to be okay. I don't need to make any more money. I'm done. I've got enough property. You know, I couldn't even say I was just traumatized by the whole thing. It was like unexplainable how my success and my wealth and my famous friends by the way, were ringing around for me. So Michael Jackson and Uri Geller and people were ringing these because they weren't return Michaels. I was like an unknown back then. But everyone would return Michael Jackson's phone call, everyone would call him back in minutes so he would ring out and we couldn't save Mum. And I was just absolutely fascinated. And that big mansion I had then as well. 2:00 in the morning, pacing the corridors on my own. I'm not the loneliest guy on earth. I think this, this is not right. I've got all the supercars on the driveway. I've got a multi million pound house but. And I was getting battered. Then Michael died. Michael, Michael died. And then one of my siblings tried to copy what I was doing. It was very close to me and didn't work out but kind of split the family. Hence why I don't speak to my. My dad is just. I understand it now. I was young, in my 20s. They couldn't get their head around my success. And I was probably a bit cocky back then too. I mean, how can I win Ferraris in my twenties? And most famous Friends in the world. So my, so my biggest wake up call was losing mum. And then a few years later my kids, granddad, my stepdad who's like a dad to me, he wrote a letter and he couldn't take without mum anymore and he. Yeah, I mean there's no easy way to tell you but he hung yourself on a tree in the garden. Killed himself. Yeah. So mum gone, dad gone, biological dad is out there somewhere. I've got six kids. I got married again. I got three of my first wife. Three, three with Monique. We have an amazing relationship, me and my ex wife and the first three children but they. That is the ultimate school of hard knocks. That is what makes you reflect and realize from that point onwards I dedicated my life to building generational wealth for those six kids so they don't have to worry about money again. Because I believe well most divorces, sleeping problems, alcohol, bad relationships, they're all caused by the lack of money. And I've got this incredible knowledge from the most incredible successful people in the world which I can pass on and I know they'd want me to do that. I know Michael Jackson would want me to do that and Mohamed Al Fayed would want me to do that and everyone around me and success is not that difficult. That bit was the easiest part of my life to work out. It's the other stuff they don't teach you at school that you're going to come against big challenges, how probably you're going to lose loved ones. Your health has to come first, number one. Having all this and not having your health is pointless. I was sat next to somebody recently, earned 16 billion a year but he had a belly out here. Hopefully you won't be watching this. I don't care if he is, he might be awake. All he needs, he sat next to big belly out here and I said to my wife this guy's making billions per year, owns a massive company and why is he like that? He should have the best personal trainer, you should be looking after his health but all the stress that comes with it. So I've got a very stress free business model whereas been going a long time now. I have got this incredible team of loyal people been here for 20 years who got their own roles, they get paid very very well for it. People already be loyal to you. This is the thing, if you're loyal back to them but their compensation has to match their contribution to your business. If one of them goes up or down is not equal to they're going to quit, try and copy you or they're not going to like you. So all of mine are compensated much more than what they contribute to your organization. That's what I learned early on. And because of that all my companies have been flourishing ever since. So they're not on capped earnings. Whatever they put in, they can get out. They all got a chance to be multimillionaires and a lot of them have become multimillionaires. It's a painful journey, but my biggest lessons come from the wake up calls. It was interesting because in 2009, which is where most of this started, that's when Michael Jackson died and first got told mum was ill again and this time it was proper terminal. I, I, before that I was driving my German business partner for MF Germany, my martial art schools out there back to the airport and I just bought myself a brand new Ferrari 360 Spider, 140 grand. He loved the car and he goes, Matt, this can keep going on like this, you, everything you touch goes to gold. Since you're like 17, something's gonna go wrong eventually. I said no, it's called Lance and Lance don't go wrong. I'm Wonder Boy. Look at stuff they write about me. It's just, just the way it is. I've worked this thing out and then you get hit with everything in the same year. But challenges. Yeah. What really matters if I lost everything tomorrow? I couldn't care less. I did this show called Rich House, Poor House. You, you can watch it on Netflix. It was massive. Where I went and live in a council estate, local authority place and they got to live in my mansion and I was driving that claps out 300 pound car. They were driving my under 50 grand Bentley. After eight days of being in that council house with cameras, honestly filmed my kids separately and I watched it. It got me in tears. They, they said, the producers asked my children, what did you most enjoy about this week? So this TV show got my daddy got daddy back. He's not been on his phone, been present with us. They didn't have access to iPads, PlayStations. There's no plastic toys, no 500 pound trips to adventure parks. That's all they really want. It's your time and that's all you really get. But money is a tool. It's not a thing, it's not a person. People say money is the root of all evil. It's not, it's not a thing. You can use money, if you like a hammer, you can use it to construct something or you use it to Kill some. So with me, I donate to great causes. I help local hospitals out, take kids out of my supercars, can do all that. When you're broke, people think, oh, must have no problems. I do have problems. But you have big money problems. You have bigger problems.
- [56:36]
Omar Zenhom
There's so many things here that ring true. You know, you gotta know your priorities, prioritize your health. Without your health, you can't do anything. Can't build a business, can't grow your wealth. You know, you're in the, you talked about, you pick up the phone and you get calls with problems. And as entrepreneurs, we're in the problem solving business. That's, that's our value is to solve problems. So that's a huge takeaway. And of course, this concept of understanding that, yes, money is a great tool. And then one of the reasons why I started the Hundred RBA is because I didn't come from money. My parents are immigrants from Egypt. They came to the U.S. i grew up there. We were, you know, I was just wealthy enough to be the poorest kid in my public school. So that was my, my upbringing. And I. It's not that money is everything, but in a lot of ways, it's very hard to fulfill your potential. It's very hard to fulfill your potential if you don't have it. Because like you said, you can't do all the things that you want to do and learn and grow. One of the things I want to mention is you mentioned earlier Michael and your relationship with Michael and how much you learn from him. I'm unashamedly one of the biggest Michael Jackson fans. I actually got this connection of getting to know you over the years, man, through a friend of mine who knew your team member and he knew that I was a big Michael Jackson fan. And, you know, today I read a lot of books. I read about 30 to 40 books a year. But the book that actually got me into reading, my mom wanted to get me into reading. I was 11 years old and she knew I loved Michael Jackson and I loved his music. Like, to me, when I was growing up, I grew up in the 80s and in the 90s. I was born in 1980. So basically, music was Michael Jackson. The book that got me into reading is actually his biography that I have right here. This is the book that I read when I was 11 years old. And it gave me a chance to feel like I knew Michael Jackson somehow because it was in his words and all that kind of stuff. And I actually learned a ton from him. One of the things I Learned about from him in this book was how much like you said, he studied the greats and wanted to become greater. How competitive he was. He really didn't have competition because he was the best. So he was owns his own competition. Probably his biggest demon was Thriller. I know we were talked about that earlier but from you are a close friend of his and you know him more than anybody that is ever going to listen to this podcast probably. What was the one thing about his character that you really admired the most?
- [58:58]
Matt Fidesz
He was so loving and this is why the controversy around him exists because he was so nice. And that comes from his mom Catherine. If he would like, I remember we would. He doesn't like to watch the news because he is very tunnel visioned on his own. He lives and breathes. I still talking like he's still here, right? But like a present sense. But he lives and breathe being Michael Jackson. So if he would catch the news and see starving kids in Africa, you would have tears rolling down his face and they'd be like we need to do something about this. And then he'll put a concert on with Nelson Mandela, which he did in 99 to raise millions. The guy would. There wouldn't be a place we wouldn't visit where that we would not. He would turn up unannounced. A hospice, adults, hospice and children. I know the media just want to say children's hospitals to fits the narrative but we go to adults, adults, hospitals and I recently. It's quite interesting because I recently did an interview and the podcaster knew some new kid. Now Michael believed in this. He really did believe in the power of the mind so much. So in 2002 I had a phone call from a children's hospice in Fremington in Devon and there was a girl there that was dying and one of her dying wishes was to meet Michael Jackson. Just so happened I had an opportunity to make it happen. Michael is going to be in England and it goes without saying, as long as I get Michael on the phone he would find a way of making that happen. Even though the guy was tremendously busy, we didn't have the Internet back then. And so if he had a meeting, he had to fly to a meeting, you know. So I call Michael and I say, this girl's dying, Mike, can I bring it to you? She hasn't got long left to live. And he said of course. I said, how's your day looking? So just bring him up. Consider it done. Just bring her. Come along. And he's staying at a hotel In Devon, actually. So I brought. She was like 13, something like that. This girl was crying with him. They hugged. He had a picture of her, did an autograph. I filmed it. And this was the interesting thing, I filmed it. And every now and then I got over 100 hours of footage because camcorders, back then, we filmed everything because people used to throw themselves under his cars to sue him for money. Anyway, I was on this podcast just a few weeks ago. The guy said to me, I've had someone reach out and they want to thank you for what you did for them when they were 13, you introduced her to Michael Jackson. I said, how long did she. Did she make it for? Because just the other day, I was going through the footage to archive it, and I found the footage of this girl hugging Michael and Michael saying positive words to her. And you can beat this thing, you know, no map. She's alive, she's got kids, and she wants to thank you for making it happen. I said, God, you wouldn't believe it. I got footage of it. I thought she passed away years ago. I was scared to even ask the hospice to arrange her now to get the footage to work. But she survived. Now, he believed in that. But somehow, for the power of the mind, we only use 10% of our brain. And there's some connection that we'll never understand, that positive words, affirmations and so on will change someone forever. And I. I learned that from him. So I go, great way. I went to Melbourne for a business meeting, filling up my car, petrol station. And then behind me, a car pulls up and he says, matt, Matt, I can't believe it's you. I look over, it's my bank manager, some kind of thing there. And if you look at my life too, there's some kind of definite law of attraction. And I'm not a religious, but I do believe there's a higher power of something because you can explain my life. And Michael used to say that. I used to say, people say I'm talented, Matt. But they said, see the three, four hours of dancing I do a day and singing all day, all night to the point of annoying me. Every morning he would apologize because I'd have a room, office room at hotel suites. And he'll be up all night singing Lionel Richie and Diana Ross and his own creating music. And next morning. So. I'm so sorry for keeping you awake. So sorry, Matt. They'll do it again the following night. And I was totally knackered.
- [63:04]
Omar Zenhom
He can't help himself.
- [63:06]
Matt Fidesz
Yeah, yeah. And he used to sleep in the day, you know. And oh, wow, the hard work that goes in behind the scenes. So the guy. Yeah, it's just unbelievable to my mom. She used to live in a little bungalow in the Midlands. He would sneak in there and do the same thing, keep it going. I don't believe mum would have made 56. And one for Michael. He used to be so positive.
- [63:27]
Omar Zenhom
Incredible.
- [63:28]
Matt Fidesz
Yeah, incredible. And donating. What doesn't get publicized about him too. He's the biggest donate to donate the charity. I want to say he views little boys. They're so stupid. I mean, what's wrong with them? I said, I just don't understand it. You're conditioned by Motown records that he mustn't ever show. He's married. That's the thinking about that. Could you cut off your fan base? He loved women. Why would I associate myself to flipping? I've got one of the biggest children organizations in the world. I share a room with a guy, I know his girlfriend. What happened to his death? Why would I associate myself to someone like that? And it annoys me. It's sad that his image got tainted. But they all go for money. They all go for money. People don't see through that. You got kids, I imagine, right?
- [64:09]
Omar Zenhom
No.
- [64:10]
Matt Fidesz
You don't have kids. Well, I'll tell you something, right? If you got kids or nieces or nephew, if someone comes to you and they say to you they've been abused, you're not going to go and sue them for money and file a lawsuit. You want them shot in jail, gone for good.
- [64:25]
Omar Zenhom
Yeah, I've heard your opinion on this on so many interviews. And, you know, he's been through the wringer, you know, twice through the law. I mean, if there was anything that obviously, you know, that would. That would come up. But I think what hurts the most as his friend. Friend is after his death, where he can't defend himself. You know, this stuff comes up and that's. That's got to hurt. You mentioned, you know, when you're growing your team and having the family and the friends around you, you have a team of loyal people. I heard a story of when Michael, you know, tested your loyalty. Can you share that story with us?
- [64:58]
Matt Fidesz
I don't know. I fell for that one, I tell you. So I was. When the tabloids were a big, big thing, there was one over here called the News of the World. Come out on a Sunday and they would offer massive money for stories. That era has gone a long time ago and Michael Jackson was the biggest seller. He would Sell newspapers. Basically, anything with Wacko Jacko on which he hated would sell newspapers. So they'd always try and pin stories on him. Now what irritated the media is that Michael went to great lengths to protect the identity of his children for two reasons. Number one, he wanted them to decide when they wanted to be famous. They're not chased by paparazzi. And the second reason is so they can have a normal life with a nanny and go to the parks and no one would recognize them. And I did. And also they were high ransom risks so they could be kidnapped, blackmailed Michael, and he would have paid whatever it took because they were his. Those three children were his life. The tabloids were irritated. Every time the kids would come through the airport or walking around London or New York. They had these masks on that Michael made them wear, right?
- [66:07]
Omar Zenhom
Cover their face.
- [66:08]
Matt Fidesz
Cover their face. So anyway, I was driving back from somewhere and I had one of my franchisees in the car with me. It was on loudspeaker, withheld number and it was this newspaper. And they said, matt, we understand you're going to be seeing Waco Jacko next week, Michael Jackson. And I said, I'm not going to confirm or deny if I am. Well, we know he's due in London and no doubt you're going to see him. So we want to put a deal to you. We'll give you a million pounds if you get us one picture of any of his kids unmasked. And I said, ah, you guys never leave it alone, do you? You just never leave it alone. You're gonna kill this guy. I said those words to them, you just constantly. He's my friend. I saw them put the phone down. Gone, end of story. That was that. And I made a mental note of myself next time I see Michael to mention it. Actually, I thought about dialing them up there and then, but I had my franchisee in the car and I didn't. He might have said some confidential stuff I didn't want them to overhear. I left it and I forgot about it. A couple weeks later I was with Michael. We're in the back of the car, we were traveling to a meeting and Michael says to me how things? I said, great. And he goes, anything interesting happening lately? No. Oh, Michael, I forgot to mention, be careful with the kids because there's a million pound ransom on your kids at the minute from the media. They're offering people up. Really? So, yeah. How'd you know this? I got a phone call. They knew I was going to be with you and they offer me a million pounds for a picture of Prince Paris or blanket without the mascot. Oh, thanks for telling me, Matt. Great. And he started crying and I said, what's up? He goes, that was me, Matt. I was just checking because someone said, maybe I can't trust you. And every now and then. So why, of course you trust me. I got a bit offended and I realized, put myself in this position. I understood it. And it was him. Yeah, he was incredible actor. You got to watch the movie the Moonwalker. And he also, also, whenever we used to ring him, he couldn't just answer the phone in his real voice. He'd have like a robotic device and he was switching. Once he knows it's you, then he'll put. Because people used to pretend to be Acorn or pretend to be R. Kelly or somebody, or tend to be the President of the United States to bring him up.
- [68:26]
Omar Zenhom
Yeah, I don't think anybody who's not from our generation really understands how famous Michael Jackson was. I don't even think it's even possible to be that famous again. He was humongous. I mean, people were fainting at his mere sight. At his, at his, at his concerts. I mean, he was just a mega, mega star. Yeah, I'm sure that that was pretty flattering. But when I look back at his life and. And your relationship with him and you being such a incredible friend and protector of him. You know, the thing that comes to mind to me the most is just this idea of like ride or die friendship. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna take care of you. You're. Because of just the gratitude, of just the advice you've given me, helping me with my franchises, helping me, just being my friend. And I'm sure it was reciprocal. Would you be here today with all your successes, without your network?
- [69:18]
Matt Fidesz
Honestly, no. I would not be anywhere near. Not even close. How could I have been? When you're Michael Jackson's friend, everybody wants to be your friend. I can't explain it because you've got to experience it. If you're on tv, going to an award show with the most famous man on the planet, and you're known to be his best mate or one of his best friends and got that access to him, and he's ringing you up when you're shopping around the supermarket and stuff like that, or a loudspeaker, and I've got. Everybody is fascinated by that to the point of disbelief. It can't be real. I remember checking out hotels when walking down hotel Corridors and other people checking out their room and they bump into us and they're like, it can be. He said, well, I have to be somewhere. I'm a human, I've got me somewhere on the planet. It's definitely me. The biggest challenge we used to have, and I may sound comical to a lot of people, but if he wanted to go use the bathroom and we're on the motorway or the highway, that would be an issue. I mean you can't just stop off at a service station, can you? Nip in, nip out. So I have to go in and I have to find a manager, say, listen. And you can't tell them who it is because they don't believe you. Yeah, I'm Irvis Presley. So you have to say, I've got someone in the back of this car who's very famous, so famous that'd be unsafe to bring them into this service to use the bathroom. I need you to do me a favor and shut off the bathrooms and put the cleaning signs up and have security around just for five minutes. And they're like, we don't do that. I said, wait, please, can you do it? Sometimes we'd have to bribe him or pay him and then Michael be bursting for a wee in the back of the car right when this is going, like begging us. And in the end they kind of hoping it's going to be. They kind of assume it's going to be royalty like Prince William or something like that, you know. And then we walk in with him and their jaws just used to drop. I just couldn't believe it. And he'd have the face mask on and it'd be, hi, thank you so much. They'd be so polite, shake their hands and I can't believe it that Michael Jackson's just gone in there. Yes.
- [71:20]
Omar Zenhom
Glad you shared that story because that's an everyday blessing that most people experience and they don't even know it. They can go out in the world, they can use the restroom when they need to go to use the restroom. They can go shopping, they can go to amusement parks, they can go and travel and get on a plane and no one's even gonna recognize or bat an eye. Maybe there's. Especially now with social media where fame is now becoming so ubiquitous, you know, so I'm so glad you mentioned that because you mentioned a couple things I want to kind of close out on is this concept of like if you were going to give advice to 20 year old Matt or to somebody who's young and up and coming and trying to build a life for themselves. You mentioned, you know, after 10 million, really your life doesn't change financially too much. I remember I read this book called. It's called how to Get Rich by Felix Dennis from Felix publishing in the UK and his number was 30 million. He said 30 million. You can basically live off that for the rest of your life, off the interest, blah blah. You also mentioned this idea of being significant enough so that you can also have significant friends, people that can really help you network and learn and grow and also just be connected to other people. If there's some young kid in downtown London or New York or Sydney or whatever who's just like, hey, I'm just trying to figure this all out. I'm trying to make a few bucks so that I can not be late on my rent. What advice would you give this person to be like, okay, how do I build this wealth? How do I build my network? How do I build this life that Matt did?
- [72:55]
Matt Fidesz
Okay, it's quite a loaded question. I'll do my best to condense it. I know this is going to be important to a lot of listeners. So essentially I do this every day. I take people who've got no money and I teach them to earn a big income and build wealth. Earning a big income is different to building wealth. Wealth is something that grows in time. That's like real estate, capital growth, etc. Passive income. Income is quite easy to generate, so you need to be earning six to seven figures. Profit, not gross. Gross is ego is vanity. Profit is sanity. You've got to be careful who you listen to. So make sure whoever you take advice from. This may seem narrow. Good way it is. Make sure you only take advice from people who earn more than you and see evidence of that. Because in this online world we have now, there are so and I could name the shame them, but I won't. They're big names by the way, people out now who are broke. And I recently know someone who's just gone to Australia, toured Australia, spoke to 10, 000 people in stadiums and I know they're facing paid personal bankruptcy at any time and they're selling. Follow this get Rich program. Join my online mastermind for $10,000. I think it should be regulated and there should be and I think that was coming. It's going to happen. So make sure you ask, do your due diligence check. It's okay to ask a mentor for their five years profit and loss accounts how much property they have if they claim they got it what's their leverage on that? Their mortgage versus equity. What is their true net worth? From an accountant, your accountant, not theirs. Greatest bit of advice I give you now. Next thing, what is it you love to do? If you don't love to do it, you're not going to get up and put the hours in and deal with the stresses and the demons. I come over with the owning of being an entrepreneur. So turn your passion into your profession, your hobby, into your career. That's all you simply do. What do you love to do? Turn the information you've got into your head into an online course and then all you focus on is six figures profit or seven figures profit. And then from that point invest that money into what I believe is the greatest investment class in my opinion. I'm not a financial advisor but I'm pretty well qualified to say this which is real estate people are always going to need a roof over the head. People are having babies quicker than they're building property. That's always going to be a challenge. So work that one out. Now I don't recommend people do gold crypto and so and all the rest of it. There's no get rich quick scheme. There are get rich slow methods and strategies and build wealth is a slow way. It's just not going to happen overnight. So you turn your passion, your promotion six figures and invest it into wealth building this thing and then you just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Now you're going to get distracted by shiny objects. I think we are bombarded. J. Abraham I think once said unknowingly, probably even more now we're bombarded by about 40,000 different marketing messages every day. Walking around, you seeing billboards, you see an apple you don't notice on your phone Facebook. So don't get distracted by the next shiny object you notice. What I've done three decades almost I have ignored all the latest trends that have come and gone like step aerobic side in this that way aerobic thing and all the other franchises like there's been loads half an hour workout franchises. I've just focused on doing the same thing over and over again. And many times I wanted to, I got bored of it, I wanted to pack it in and do something else. You got to do the same thing over again. Repetition is the mother of skill. Read at least three to four non fiction books by proven authors or proven back record. I recommend you start with Tony Robbins books and then get onto which I think still current to stay Robert Kiyosaki Rich dad Poor dad series. Read all of his stuff and keep studying. Now you've got audiobooks. I mean me and you have to do it the old fashioned way but you put them on, you can whisper a lot quicker and educate yourself. Next thing your network is your network. The five people you're going to hang around with, who you're going to come. I don't have many mates, I don't have any friends. So they. And that's not through choice. A lot of that comes through success. It's a true statement because people don't relate to what I do nor do I want to pick up their character traits. I make an effort of that too. So the people I hang around with are billionaires and millionaires because they. We've got similar goals and we know what we're Most of the time we're talking about longevity. Allow health and being better. Dad, it's not about the money. Money is the byproducts of success. That's a lot less. They need to learn. Focus on the best service or products you can provide are not the money. The money will come in naturally. That's the byproduct. People focus on the money. Don't get rich. You know you're going to get that and it's a process. I think Tony Robbins says something really good. People overestimate what they can do in a year and the underestimate what they can do in a decade. And that's so damn true. So most of my wealth, my mega wealth has come from my property portfolio. You can't do that overnight. You know, you get deals with 30, 40 grand like flipping properties and so forth. So get around the right people, read the right books or listen to the right audiobooks. What Turn your passion into profession or your hobby into your career information into a package or online course or whatever it may be. Shut yourself out now. Study the greats. This information has been out there for years. Study the greats stand on the shoulders of giants who have been there. That's what Michael Jackson did. He studied James Brown, front of stair, Charlie Chaplin and incorporated into his dance moves and so on. Study the grapes and make yourself better than that. You don't need any more new ideas. By the time I go to entrepreneurial events, I come off stage, I've got this idea. Matt, we found this idea. You don't need it unless you're Elon Musk and you want to go to Mars and stuff. Everything's pretty much been done. If you're just looking at being wealthy and getting out of being able to pay your bills. Just finding somebody who's already done it, it's okay. Copy them and put your original stamp on it. Make it better and get it done. Make sure. This is why franchises such a great concept. I work all this out for my franchisees. They copy what Matt done, they listen to my mistakes, and they can just get on with it and make it happen. And then you scale, scale your business out once you've done it, once you've got a proven pilot, then you don't have two or three years, you're making good money. Then from my opinion, don't have employees because they're a nightmare. Just franchise the thing out over and over and over and over. There you go. There's 80s out of making millions there in 10 minutes.
- [79:36]
Omar Zenhom
The discipline, the consistency is so key. A lot of people ask me, omar, how does this podcast make seven figures? How do you have 3 million listeners every month? It's like, I've been doing it for 10 years. If I haven't gotten it right, there's something wrong with me. Like, I would be ashamed if I wasn't this successful by now, you know, so you're totally correct. And the thing that I love about what you just said is you gotta be careful about where you learn anything. You gotta look at the person that's teaching, what do they do, how do they actually apply what they're teaching in their real life and their real businesses. And it's going to be a little bit of a homework assignment because it's, you know, there's a lot of good salesmen out there and a lot of people that promising, you know, these incredible lifestyles and, you know, live anywhere, laptop on the beach, kind of BS but you are 100% correct. It's going to be hard, it's going to be challenging. You're going to have problems. But that is why nobody, you know, not that many people do it. You know, not that many people do it because it's not easy. If you're an entrepreneur and you don't have days where you're like, I totally get why people get jobs. You know, I get that.
- [80:46]
Matt Fidesz
I used to do some math when I'm on stage. I tell these stories and people think, really? When I had that car, which just got back, the first, the first Ferrari when I was 19, I used to drive, I used to go into town. We. I don't know if you had it in Australia. We had Blockbuster Videos, a big thing over here. So on a Friday, Saturday night, me and the wife Would get a video vhs and I used to go out, get excuse to take the Ferrari out. And you know what the most exciting thing was? Wasn't getting the VHS tape. Because I used to drive around and look inside the nightclubs and think, I wonder what that's like. I wonder what it's like just to be. Have a normal job and get drunk, drowning your sorrows.
- [81:23]
Omar Zenhom
Yeah. At the end of the week and just working for the weekend.
- [81:26]
Matt Fidesz
Work at McDonald's, to sign off at 5:00 and never have to think about anything. You need it. How does that work?
- [81:32]
Omar Zenhom
My whole network of friends and even family has changed. People I communicate with in the last 20 years of me becoming an entrepreneur because you can't relate anymore. You can't relate. They don't understand. What do you doing this for? What are you like? It's all about money, Omar, what's going on. And it's just like it's actually not about money. It's actually who I'm becoming in the process. It's an incredible journey. I'm a personal believer that entrepreneurship is the best personal development program in the world. Because in order for you to create something great, it's not going to happen by accident. You have to become great. You have to become the person that can pull that off. Right. And throughout your life, throughout your journey, meeting all these people, networking, growing these businesses, I think that's the best gift you got is like who you became in the process. You know, of course we've had some crazy heartache, you know, the stories you shared today. But like anybody's life, nobody's immune to the winters of life. We're all going to have these winters. Matt, thank you so much for your time, man. I'm so glad that we connected. I'm so glad that we had this chat. I'm so glad we finally made it happen. We've been working on this interview for like over a year and a half and then when we finally got got in touch, you know, it was a bit of a, bit of a struggle, but we made it happen. Matt, you know my number. You know, anytime you need anything, you, you can reach out to me. Every time you're in Australia, let's have a coffee, let's have a dinner. Thanks so much for your time. This has been an incredible conversation. I can't wait to share with the audience. I can't wait to share it with my closest friends in my network and so they can learn from you as well. Thank you so much, man. And we'll keep in touch, of course.
- [83:05]
Matt Fidesz
Anthony sir, thank you for having me on. It's been awesome.
- [83:09]
Omar Zenhom
I absolutely loved this conversation with Matt Fidez. He shared some incredible gems. One of the things I'll never forget from this conversation is how Matt shared so many difficult times in his life from the start of his career. No one believing in him, living in basically a hostel so he can be able to go and have a bed to sleep on and out in Devon. And then once he got on his feet, no one wanted to believe him and think that the studio idea was ridiculous and not even worth his time or money. But he persevered and then he grew and then he met the most incredible people in the world and then he expanded and became a multi, multimillionaire. He's close to being a billionaire soon. And through all of this, he recognizes that there are other winters down the line, just like he experienced with his mother, with his father, with the death of his close friend Michael Jackson. So we're going to have winters. You know, it's not all summers. It's not all beautiful springs, right? You're going to have winters in life and you got to be ready for them. And you got to understand that we have to have winter so that we can have the springs so we can have the summers so that we can find those opportunities. Thank you, Matt Fidesz, for your time and for sharing your knowledge with our audience today. And thank you for listening and tuning in. If you want more great stories, more inspiration, more lessons on how to grow your business, go ahead to our website. Over at 100- MBA-NET we have over 1500 business lessons, extended interviews, book reviews, resources, worksheets, templates, a ton. Okay, you're going to love it.
- [84:44]
Matt Fidesz
It's all free.
- [84:44]
Omar Zenhom
And it's just my way to give back. So go ahead and check it out over at 1-00- MBA-NET until we see each other again on the next episode. Keep moving forward. Keep working on yourself, on your business. Keep investing in what you know so you can grow. I'll see you next time. Take care.
- [85:09]
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