How I Built a $40M Company Without a College Degree | Matt Sapaula DSH #906

Because I want to call out the hotel and get you in trouble, right?

But they're like, yeah, party, right?

And so, no, hey, bro, click, click, click, clicking with the cards.

Trip club, strip club, strip club.

Nah, bro.

The top guys at our company, married, love God, love their wives, honor

their biblical responsibility in terms of how to run and build a family.

We love having kids.

And the weird part about that, brother, is I talk about those morals and values principles today.

We're considered weird.

All right, guys, Matt Sapaola of Seven Figure Squad here today, just coming off a a big conference, man.

Congrats.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Great to be here.

I saw the lineup.

It was stacked.

It was.

It was amazing.

We had close to 9,000 people.

Hold on.

At the end of the grand, yeah.

Well done, dude.

How long has that conference been running for?

I've been there since 2015.

I've been part of PHP and C4, going on nine years now with mentorship, the CEO, founder of that company called PHP, and agency called Patrick and David.

That's right.

And you built your way up to the top of that company, right?

Yeah, it's all about capitalism in that company.

It doesn't matter when you start with the company.

If you're not performing, if you're not doing the fundamentals of the business, growing your organization, you don't understand what your KPIs are and focus on the fundamentals, you get past that very quickly.

So FOMO is a big part of our culture there at PHP.

I love it.

That's a good thing, though, right?

Very good thing.

Because it gives hope for the new guy.

Anybody can come into the company.

There's no, what do you call that?

Entitlement.

There's no,

what teachers say?

Tenure.

Right.

You know, it's all about, hey, can you perform today and keep it sustained?

There's no tenure bonuses?

Zero.

If you're there for five years, zero.

10 years.

None.

Wow.

Zero.

So you think that's a good thing.

Very good thing.

Because don't you want to reward loyalty?

Well, you loyalty if they're performing.

Right.

You know,

it's earned both ways.

If you're there thinking that, oh, I was here, you know, for example, I see guys now in my ninth year of the company rise up in a company and they're passing me up in certain categories.

Really?

Well, good for them.

Michael Jordan can be dunked on.

Just because I was at the company nine years and slammed duck and everybody doesn't mean that I can, in return, get dunked on.

If you're not performing, I mean, capitalism, this thing, is such a very funny thing.

If you're not improving, you will be passed up.

And you can't get mad that the person that wants to outwork, out and strategize, out improve, and outlast, you're done.

Right.

Yeah.

They say if you're not improving, you're going backwards, actually.

That's right.

Yeah, if you're not growing, you're dying.

Right.

I agree.

So how many years did it take you to get to the top?

Well, it took us my progression with PHP.

First six months, made 50 grand there.

Nine months, 100,000.

14 months, 250.

17 months, 500K.

Wow.

37 months, 1 million.

Holy crap.

So three years.

Big jumps.

Yeah.

Dude, so in three years, you made a million profit?

Yeah.

So I've been able to build a $40 million top-line revenue company in

nine years.

Yeah.

And that's within a company.

So this company is massive.

Correct.

I have a company within a company.

For me, that's the benefit of partnership.

Damn.

And the model is just to get agents under you, right?

Yeah, I mean, any business, right?

You're recruiting.

I was just talking to your

mom right here, and she formerly worked at Netflix.

One of the things that Patty McCourt did with Reed Hastings is on a commute from the city into

where Netflix is located on a 45-minute drive.

The entire drive that they had coming in was all about who we were recruiting from who.

Wow.

Who we recruit from Twitter, who we come from Facebook.

We got to get the best people over here.

And we got to create a compelling offer wanting to come here.

And they have a beautiful thing online that everybody had access to called the Netflix Culture Deck.

And Netflix Culture Deck was the biggest downloaded thing about how Netflix builds their culture.

Because in business, culture attracts people and culture eats talent for lunch.

Wow.

So

you might have the best talented people there at your company, but if you don't have culture, you don't have fun, you don't have excitement, you don't have the spirit of competition and not working out, lasting, out, improved, et cetera, the next guy's come in.

It's going to be your lunch and take your spot.

Right.

Because if you don't have culture, you can even offer more money and they'll deny it.

That's right.

You know?

Exactly.

And sometimes, just because you get paid somewhere else doesn't mean it's better for you over there.

Right.

You know, sometimes, for example, in free agency in football, sometimes guys get paid higher to go from team to team, but they realize that culture, that system, that locker room really wasn't as fit for them.

And so as part of the recruiting process, if I'm an NFL player, if I'm an NBA agent, if I'm a player and I'm talking to my agent, I'm looking for the best culture for me to this has the best paycheck right what's some recruiting advice you give to your uh your clients under you as i'm am i tracking clients or recruiting agents uh agents yeah so i gotta tell them listen where where you at what's your outcome over there in the insurance industry sadly it's the uh oldest richest but sadly undisrupted you know the technology lags in the life insurance industry so if i'm looking some for somebody what type of uh financial technology or what we call fintech combination of you are you're using to build your business over there what type of social media are you allowed to have at your financial services services from where you're at?

What type of compensation?

What are we incentivizing you?

Are you going to be incentivizing your current firm to build and scale an agency, to build your passive income long term, to build an asset, or are you just a glorified salesperson?

So these are some of the conversations we'll have with folks.

And by the way, 95% of the people that we recruit don't come from a financial services background.

Really?

All the insurance companies want to poach other insurance companies.

99% of my guys, my personal team, not PHP, my personal team don't come from the insurance industry.

I got a guy that's a former engineer.

I got a guy that's a former breakdancer.

I got a guy that's an Apple executive.

I got another guy that's selling newspapers in a kiosk at a mall.

I got

a bunch of guys not from the financial services industry.

What we do have, however, at our company, a major attraction for us to come over to our firm, is that we believe in values, principles.

We believe in our faith.

We believe in capitalism.

We love America.

We love families.

We love our individuality.

being able to work together.

That's attractive for a lot of people.

I mean, we're just at a conference, 9,000 people.

We talked about Jesus.

We're talking about faith very openly and confidently, not to push the Bible that anybody should, but hey, listen, this is what I stand for.

And these are morals, values, and principles, why I love America and why we love building our family under these principles.

And we're here in Vegas.

Not once, brother, you just see us gambling.

Not once, you see us taking a bump.

We're in the bathroom.

The guys, we've got a party over here.

Party over here.

What good for you?

Wait, people did that?

Oh, in the bathroom.

Wow.

Right there at the, I'm not going to say the hotel because I want to call out the hotel and get you in trouble, right?

But they're like, yeah, party, right?

And so, no, hey, bro, click, click, click, clicking with the cards.

Strip club, strip club, strip club.

Nah, bro.

The top guys at our company, married, love God, love their wives out of

their biblical responsibility in terms of how to run and build a family, but love having kids.

And the weird part about that, brother, is I talk about those morals, values, and principles today.

We're considered weird.

Yeah, you're right.

Odd enough, right?

No, it's disciplined.

Times are changing, though.

I'm glad people are opening up on stage.

About their faith.

Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

About faith and personal stuff.

What's that saying?

Good times create

weak men.

Right.

Right.

And tough times create

strong men.

Right.

And it's a whole cycle going back and forth.

So, you know, that's...

No, that's a fact, so, because we're in tough times right now.

It's a very tough.

We're about to be in a recession potentially.

Has that impacted your business at all?

Negative times, bad times, bad economy actually help us a lot.

Yeah, during pandemic, during COVID, our business shot.

Oh, wow.

What happened to the stock market last week?

Major drop in the market, you know, $4.1 trillion of wealth.

None of our clients lost any money.

Zero.

Not because we're great great financial advisors, because that's not what we are.

We're insurance agents.

And what insurance agents do they provide?

If an insurance policy called annuities or insurance policy called Index Universal Life or Fixed Life, where it's safe, guaranteed, backed by bonds.

So none of our clients are ever in any risk.

So there's contractual guarantees with inside policies.

Sometimes there's contractual guarantees of what you're going to earn in the next five, 10 years.

So it's very predictable.

And that's what a lot of people need.

They need a financial foundation, what to expect.

And once they have that financial foundation, what to expect, they can be a little bit more adventurous, a little bit more risky, and other things they do outside the core way of how how they build a financial house.

Right.

So, when PBD sold the same, did that change up your world at all?

Actually, we grew.

Oh, yeah.

We actually already doubled our company size after that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And by the way, I'm not saying that because Patrick gave us the tools, the system, the strategy, the culture, the values, and principles, and we doubled our company since Patrick sold the company.

Yeah, we're close to half a billion dollar company right now.

Dude, that's impressive because sometimes when you sell and the leader leaves, I don't know if he's still involved, but that's why there's pride in the people that take over.

Right.

For example, Tim Cook, there's pride when he took over from Steve Steve Jobs.

There's pride when

the CEO of

Uber, right?

Travis Connecticut steps down and new CEO comes in.

He takes it into Texas novel.

Asatia from Microsoft, there's pride when he took over Microsoft because right now,

what's his name?

The former CEO of Microsoft.

He owns the Clippers right now.

Oh, Balmer?

Yeah.

Balmer right now is richer than Bill Gates.

And he was the 30th employee at Microsoft.

Right.

And the same thing at Facebook.

The twin brothers are richer than Zuckerberg.

Check that out, right?

Yes.

It's an amazing thing.

So just because you weren't necessarily the founder of the CEO, even an employee or an entrepreneur, as we call sometimes, right?

Because an entrepreneur is somebody that may not take the risk of their finances or their reputation to go in business, but it's take the same entrepreneurial habits of value,

of creating

his space with inside the company being invaluable, unfireable, right?

They're going to find a position for that person.

That's an entrepreneur.

Right.

Right.

An employee, just kind of kicking around, all good.

But if you are an employee with an entrepreneurial mindset, we call that an intrameter.

And I actually recommend people to get that type of job or a consulting job or whatever before they become an entrepreneur because to jump straight into entrepreneurship is tough.

Big time.

I failed at it for years.

Big time.

I mean, it's not easy if you don't have any knowledge.

It's hard because you not only have to have the basic fundamentals of why your product or service is awesome, but it's the other 90% of the stuff of operating a business, that's where people get hung up on right right chefs i cook great plate of food but bro you got to have people at the front of the house back of the house you got the inventory you know you got to have a refrigeration for your your food don't over buy don't under buy right they got hr yeah people quitting on you they don't show up to work anymore you got to be the cook the chef the host you got to wear a lot of hats yeah customer service is the worst man i used to do that

customer service is the reason why people come back so if your customer service experience is poor then you're not going to have referability or repeat customers Agreed.

And a lot of people neglect it too.

They do.

Dude, I just ordered, I don't want to call anyone out, but I ordered a mattress.

It's been eight weeks.

Damn.

I've been sleeping on like my old mattress.

Eight weeks, dude.

I emailed them four times, no response.

And it's not crazy.

And this is a big brand that's promoted on podcasts.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's pretty nuts.

It's not good.

Like, I would never reorder or recommend that brand.

And I spent four grand on this.

That's a good point you make.

So you can attract a lot of people.

For example, I had a,

you know, those

agencies like the advertising agency, you know, for our digital ads.

Great marketing.

The people are brilliant.

Great ideas.

Great reason why we shoot a business with bump, bump, bomb, bump.

It's like you're impressed for them to be now working on your stuff.

But the customer server experience, once we got in there, horrible.

They promised us one thing, never delivered.

They promised us one thing, then never followed through their promises.

And then he says, I don't, you know, here they say, you know, we don't care.

We're going to find another client anyway.

Wow.

The reason why, by the way, our company,

Patrick sold it,

a company worth between $250 million and $300 million.

Now we're double the company.

Do you know how much advertising we've done online?

Do you know how advertising we've done on social media, on regular billboards, and newspapers?

Zero.

Exactly.

Zero.

Wow.

We've built a $300 million company, which is now a $500 million company purely on word of mouth.

Crazy.

Client experience, customer experience.

I've paid my guys in the last nine years, in terms of commissions, commission life insurance agents, $100 $100 million in the last nine years.

Wow.

We've served and helped families.

They paid their bills, expanded

their kids' education to private school because you know, it's just crazy to be in public school.

That's a whole podcast right there.

So, yeah.

And I know, speaking of kids, you got five, right?

I do.

That's impressive.

Older kids, and then I got two younger kids because I was married before.

Okay.

So my oldest son is now 28.

He made me a grandfather.

Wow.

And so he's.

You're a grandfather?

I'm a grandfather.

Yeah.

You're young.

I'm 50.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so my twins are 23.

They have a 13-year-old and a five.

What have you seen, the difficulties of each one as social media has been introduced and all that?

The old ones, not so much.

I challenged the three older ones not to think that going to college was the only way for you to make money.

Oh, even when they, so 28, that's my age.

So that wasn't a normal way of thinking back then.

That's right.

To not go to college.

Correct.

So I'm in the counselors

with the advisors there.

And my kids are there.

You go to this college, get this sick, get your SAT, AC, whatever it tests me.

She's got a big Notre Dame thing behind her.

I said, cool,

can I offer some feedback?

She goes, sure.

Hey, girls, son, do you think that going to college is the only way for you to make money?

Why do you got to go to college?

Just because she went to college or everybody else that went to college?

What classes of entrepreneurship and capitalism and free enterprise do you teach her?

She's like,

open.

She couldn't respond.

She's like, she used lip lock for 10 seconds.

Right?

So that's the thing.

Your father has built his way through his life with a 2.2 GPA in high school.

I have a PhD, a public high school diploma.

I built my business through sales.

I built my business through customer service.

I've been my business through building a reputation.

I'm a single father of three kids that raised you in this neighborhood so you can have options better than the option I had.

And a college degree, they didn't bring me there.

So it's up to you.

Now, college is a great place to go.

But if your outcome is to make money, there's other ways to make money.

You don't want to be a doctor.

You don't want to be an engineer.

You don't want to be a scientist.

The STEM subjects, kids aren't very good at math and science.

Then there's other ways for you to make money.

And fast forward, my son right now, he runs a stretch clinic.

My daughter owns an

esthetician business.

My other daughter's still trying to figure it out, but meantime, she got a job in Creighton Valley, not being a burden at the house.

Nice.

But none of them have stood alone debt.

Wow.

I asked him, so how are your friends?

Boppy, they're all $100,000 in debt.

You know, I didn't like it when you said that when I was in high school because, you know, everybody's going to college.

But I'm so thankful you coached me and guided me not to go to college.

Because all my friends are six six figures in debt working at nurse rooms.

Retail.

Yeah, it doesn't guarantee a job anymore like it used to.

Yeah.

My 13 year old, he's great in sports.

His mother, my wife, she was a D1 athlete, played softball at the University of Pitt.

So we've been feeding him that language.

Nice.

And he's like, hey, dad, you know, I want to be a D1 athlete.

And after that, I want to be an agent in PHP.

So he's getting paid $1,000

this summer for reading three core books, for doing 150 shots with your right, 150 shots with your left, 150 free throws, run a mile, and I want you to do it during the hottest time during the day.

Wow.

That's some gogging stuff right there.

And

he doesn't wait for me to tell him.

He does it.

He sends me this long text message.

Dad, I wrote this book in a game of tennis, wrote this book, Entrepreneurship for Kids.

I wrote this book, Rich Kid, Poor Kid by Robert Kiyosaki.

Dad, I'm waiting for my $1,000

because he's asking me, what's the next book?

What's the next book?

He's going to do it before the deadline because I'm incentivizing him to do it before the deadline.

If you do it before the deadline, it's another 500 bucks

to read the books.

So I want him strong mentally.

I want him strong physically.

And he's coming up.

He'll be going into

eighth grade here coming up.

I'll stay.

So he's fine.

He's savage.

Yeah.

He's going to be thinking differently.

Is he in public school?

No, Christian school.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I'm either doing private or homeschool, but I'm 100% agree.

100%.

Yeah.

It's not even a question at this point.

One of my agency builders in Memphis, she felt so bad about the public school system.

Using the skills she used in entrepreneurship, she went out and rallied 3,000 votes.

So she's now the new school board commissioner.

Wow.

Unseats the incumbent, and she's bringing in a whole new team of people to run the school.

That's awesome.

Because she's now a school board commissioner.

So entrepreneurship is a vehicle to have positive influence in America.

People think it's just about money.

No, your business is a way for you to magnify the values and principles which you're about because people can work to you and God can work through you.

And she became a school board commissioner.

That's amazing.

There should be an entrepreneurship class in every school.

Well, do you think that an entrepreneurship class would benefit?

because just like most classes, academia, you don't really, like entrepreneur, you learn about entrepreneurship because you did it.

Or because you sat, right?

That's a good point.

Yeah.

So maybe I would structure it like this.

I would bring in entrepreneurs to speak.

That would be great.

Yeah.

100%.

That's how we got recruited into the military.

Oh, yeah.

Because an Army soldier walked in, didn't join the Army, though, enlisted into the Marines.

But I was inspired by serving a country through the lens of an Army soldier that formerly went to high school.

Exactly.

Like I would listen to that if I was in college rather than the professor teach out of a textbook.

100%.

Like if a nine-figure entrepreneur came in and talked for an hour, that would be amazing value.

Correct.

You know?

Like imagine you speaking to college kids.

You know, moral authority and leadership by example is a big thing.

I mean, I was asking my kids when he was going through a public school.

So when's your gym class?

What time?

Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Wait a minute.

Not Monday through Friday?

Only Tuesdays.

and Thursdays.

And we wonder why America today is an obese generation.

Because the public school system has even removed physical education, gym

from a school system.

And even the gym class itself is a joke.

I mean, you just stand around for 30 minutes.

Right.

They don't actually work you out.

You're not sweating at all.

I think one of the worst things they did with kids is to allow cell phones in class.

They should put the cell phones in the locker.

You know, don't put it, you know, to make it an easy thing for kids access because what are they doing?

And I'm observing, because I observe, because I go to some high schools that teach financial literacy, like what you were saying.

I'm just sitting in the back watching these kids what they're doing.

They're playing video games on their phone.

They're not listening to the teacher.

They're playing chess.

They're not listening to the teacher.

They're playing chess with one another.

They're playing games with one another in the classroom.

They're not paying attention.

So, you know, I think the way for people to educate their children or academia just has to be reformed and they have to find a different way.

Yeah.

It's more doing it.

And that's why private school and homeschooling is really, I believe, the way to go.

That's the move.

So were you a D1 athlete?

Nah.

I was in the Marines, bro.

Okay.

I was in the Marines and I was too tall, too skinny.

You were skinny?

Oh, bro.

Yeah.

It wasn't until I left the Marines, because in the Marines, I was even skinny, but I was in shape and I was strong.

I'm a late bloomer.

I didn't start blooming until I was 44, 45 years old.

Damn, I didn't add any muscle until I was 44, 45 years old.

Yeah, I gotta throw up some old photos of you on the screen.

Yeah, maybe we showed it at the screen.

I'll send them to you.

But in 2017, because my body, you know, sometimes people are obese and they're in their fat and they're out of shape, and their obesity and their body fat will show that.

Well, I would say the opposite too as well for certain body types.

I call it, because I was skinny fat.

I was out of shape.

I was skinny, right?

I had a lot, I didn't have a lot of

body fat, but I was out of shape.

I had chronic pain, arthritis, I had gout, all these different things.

My fingers were all messed up from the military.

I felt bad.

I felt poor about myself until I got, until I invested in my health to fix my problems, to take the right medications, to take the right, eat the right foods.

Because in business, you need a lot of energy.

You actually need to be in shape.

I got a teacher out there called hashtag entrapathlete.

As an entrepreneur, I'm actually looking at it as an athlete looks at their sport.

Wow.

Steady game tape, know my competition, know the X and O's of my industry, right?

Recruit talent, retain talent.

I'm an entrapathlete.

The same disposition and intensity of people approach their sport, athletes approach a sport, the same disposition I'll approach business.

And so that's the attitude and the character of why I created that hashtag my entrepreneurship.

Mark Cuban said business is the biggest sport in the world.

100%.

24-7.

Yeah, exactly.

Because you don't shut off after three, three and a half hours.

You're on game all the time.

And that's the stress sometimes people.

But I love the stress because I don't even call it stress.

I pull it pressure.

See, most people get a job.

They don't control the odds.

They don't control their boss.

That's stress.

No wonder they have cancer.

No one have a heart attack.

Was this that?

Most people have a heart attack on Monday morning, eight o'clock.

Really?

Because people are dying to get to their job.

Wow.

I didn't know that.

Because they're under stress.

But a lot of entrepreneurs, if they don't take care of their health,

stress will come in versus pressure.

Pressure to me is like you throwing on plates on the barbell, barbell, but you ask for it.

Right.

But at least you can ask for a spotter or you can remove the weights and start lifting the weight and the reps you can handle.

To me, that's pressure.

To me, that's entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

I love pressure, too.

It forces you to grow.

Yeah.

You know, you're in charge.

You're adopted.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But stress is, I've had burnout too, so you got to play that balance.

Correct.

Correct.

Well, you also have to be passionate about and love what you're doing.

You got to love that you're improving all the time.

You got to love that if you're not improving, your competition is.

That's the excitement of it.

Right.

But then again, if you are operating your business in ways, because I a lot of guys that I knew in Chicago that they were way ahead of me in business in my 20s, in my 30s, they were way ahead of me, right?

Like, you know, I find out they're cutting corners, they're burning bridges, they're taking advantage of clients, they're not building a solid reputation, even though they were a lot ahead of me, five, ten years ahead of me in terms of five, ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred million dollars ahead of me.

Today, they're back to square one because they burned those bridges from 20 to 40.

No big mistakes, man.

Wow.

This is this is the uh what we interviewed George Bush, 20 The 2020 plan.

20 to 40, no big mistakes.

Don't get the wrong girl pregnant.

Don't get arrested and get in jail, thrown in jail.

Don't go to prison.

No DOIs, right?

No big mistakes.

Mistakes that take years away from you.

The next 20, from 40 to 60, make your money.

Get married, take care of family, take care of kids, compound your wealth, 40 to 60.

Then from 60 to 80, dedicate your life to public service.

Dedicate your life to a purpose bigger than yourself.

That's the Bush 2020-20 plan.

You're playing the long game out here.

Most people don't want to wait till 40 to make money like that.

My staff was, my social media staff younger.

I recruited 21, 22 years old.

I'm 45 at the time.

My whole staff is in their young 20s.

They were giving me a hard time why I was going hard in my podcast and my company with PHP, with crypto.

They were giving me a hard time about why I was going hard in NFTs because I had the lens of the long game.

I've seen this play before.

It just comes in packaged differently.

I saw this played in real estate.

I saw this played with 07, 09, Great Recession.

I saw this play in 01 with

dot-com bubble.

Everything dot-com.com was being bought in 01 when the internet was coming alive.

The same attitude, behavior, and spirit I saw with crypto.

I saw with NFTs.

And I saw people selling their homes to put everything in crypto, getting their retirement plans into crypto.

Next thing you know, they lose everything in crypto.

NFTs.

Fast money, all right?

They lost everything in NFTs.

My clients, they lose stuff.

Why?

Because

we set up our clients with a foundation.

Once you build a foundation, you can get excited about other things, but make sure you build your money so you know down the road road it's going to be there because it has to be there.

Because America today, bad shape with retirement.

America, brother, 10, 20, 30 years from now, America's all broke.

America is all broke.

The average 50-year-old today, 60-year-old today, has less than six figures in retirement savings.

How long is that going to last in retirement?

You see at the Costco, Walmart, grocery store, how many 70-year-olds?

are sadly still working up because they want to, because they have to.

And one of the things we take for granted in our 20s, 30s, and 40s, our ability and capacity to work.

When you're 67, by the way, you go like this, you blink like this, you're 60.

Life just

passes by in a flicker.

You're like, shit, I didn't save nothing.

Inflation, I couldn't save nothing.

So that's why we're encouraging a lot of people, if you don't have a business today, at least start some form of side hustle.

You have to go 100%, go in business 100%,

but start a side hustle, something that can help you earn the same amount of income part-time.

as you did your full-time job.

And then you got options that a lot of people don't have with their boss, with their job.

Right.

So how much money are you recommending your clients to retire with at 65 right now?

Well, it depends on what type of income they want to live.

We have a rule called the 4% rule.

So whatever you got to save up, don't draw more than 4%.

For example, if you got a million dollars saved up, don't withdraw more than 40,000.

Because you don't want to kill your principal.

You don't want to kill the 40,000 a year?

$40,000 a year.

That'd be tough to live on.

No shit, right?

So let me ask you, what do you come to living on?

A year, I would need at least $400,000, dude.

That's right.

So the 4% math, you actually need, if you want to retire and not play the entrepreneur route, you need in retirement savings $10 million dollars right ten million dollars four percent

is that number and that's assuming that the million ten million is making money right that's correct because you're hoping that whatever you drive four percent whatever you're investing in is growing at five six cent above what you're pulling out right that's the idea so you can't take a big hit on that money or else it's it's tough that's right like right now a lot of stuff's taking 30 hits stocks crypto yeah 40 hits even ethereum's down 40 this week that's right and by the way i don't think that people realize that those things are great make your money i'm not saying don't go into crypto i'm not saying even even the nfts go put your adventurous risky money there knowing that potential you might lose but people are putting the whole entire portfolio inside these things right because they're thinking like it's a lottery ticket that you know and proverbs says what money gets quickly and and and not earning it is something that's going to fail down the road king salon wrote that right obviously i'm paraphrasing but if you're looking for always get rich quick get rich quick trying to cut corners you know not think about long-term wealth, eventually it's going to catch up to you.

And that's what I fear.

The mindset of my generation is very get rich quick kind of mindset, because I think partially because of social media.

Well, I think your generation too is very innovative.

I think your generation two finds many, I hire a lot of 20-year-olds.

Oh, yeah?

A lot.

I love hiring the 20-year-olds.

The future of our country is going to be based on a 20-year-old, right?

The president of our country eventually be some form of 20-year-old.

In this generation, it'll eventually be 40 and 50 from the things he learns in his 20s.

So I think this generation is going to to deal with AI very quickly.

I think AI is going to, in the next 24, 36 months, is going to take on more of a crazy upswing in companies.

Because what's a major expense of a company?

Staff.

Correct.

So guess what?

That company is looking to replace eventually using AI staff.

What does that do to the profitability of that company?

Skyrockets.

What happens to the stock value of the company?

Skyrockets.

So I believe the play next 5, 10, 15, 20 years is not real estate.

It's equities.

Growth, Nuclear.

Because AI is coming in and all the EVs are coming in.

Right now in Texas, we have a power shutdown.

If everybody starts plugging in their Tesla, their electric car in California, California's power should get shut down.

Wow.

We cannot base the future of EV.

We cannot base the future of AI on its current electric power grid.

We have to have nuclear.

And so to me, that's one of the things I'm looking at in terms of my investments.

Nuclear.

Energy.

Interesting.

New generation of energy.

Are you telling your kids and your employees that you might be replaced in a few years, so you need to develop a really good skill?

The cool thing about the insurance industry,

it's that high-talent type of operation.

You know,

AI actually enhances

a lot of our operations.

The only thing we foresee ourselves in the future is going to explode the insurance business because tough times,

Fear Sharpens listening.

Tough times, none of our clients have lost any money because of insurance policies.

And the insurance contracts is based on because the insurance companies, some of the brilliant

investment managers in the world are managers of investment firms' finances because they have to promise a client, you'll not lose and we'll pay you a death benefit or pay you an interest rate guarantee, contractually guaranteed by what we promised 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Investment manager insurance companies can't get risky.

They have to be stable.

They have to be secure.

Otherwise,

they get bad ratings from the rating agencies.

And we get bad ratings from the insurance agencies.

Correct.

Nope.

No client wants to to go there and put their money in that insurance company.

Dude, I love the way you built your lifestyle because you're recession-proof.

I am.

That's incredible.

It's really hard to get to for most people.

And pandemic-proof, too.

Right.

A lot of people got wrecked during that.

Yeah.

And so when the stock market goes down, my second book, Gotcha, it's a best-selling book.

It talks about my favorite client for 21 years, 22 years now.

She hasn't lost any money.

Withdraws her money from her retirement account without paying a dime in tax.

Wow.

Her and her husband now are now retired, now living this next golden chapter of their life in dignity, even though they have to pay $5,000 a month into a retirement community because they can't get up and down their house in Chicago anymore because of their age.

Selling their house, they move into a retirement community, not retirement home, retirement community where there's activities.

Every day,

they look at it like, look at the schedule.

It's a cruise ship on land.

Yeah.

Having make new friends, enjoying this chapter of life.

Why do I talk about this client so much in my book, Gotcha, who's safe and secure in this world today?

The reason I talk about that client, it's my mother.

Wow.

So I've made sure I got involved in the financial services business to help the people I love and care about.

And that first person at that time was my mom.

Because I'm seeing this financial firm and this insurance firm helping these strangers.

And I'm like, man, I'm thinking about my mom that way.

How come I'm not helping my mom?

How much come help

my family?

So that's one of the selfish reasons I got involved in financial services outside of the great money that you make.

But I want to take some of the values and principles and strategies.

while people are getting wealthy to help my own family.

Because people today, the middle-class incomes generation, that's a gender, or or the

demographic that I serve, the multicultural, middle-income demographic sadly will never get rich,

but they don't deserve to be broke.

Agreed.

They're never going to get fancy with crypto.

They're never going to get fancy.

They're not going to get sophisticated their investments inside their 400K, but they don't deserve to be broke.

They need to deserve all their life, not retiring at 60.

They deserve having consistency and not having stress.

Where's my money coming from?

Inflation is kicking my ass.

So if I have aging parents, if I have aging relatives, I should care about their financial situation because if they're not taking care of themselves, guess who are going to be asking for help?

You.

Yeah.

Kids, grandkids.

Yeah, you literally found your purpose, your mission, it sounds like.

It's exciting.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, dude, that must be a terrible feeling.

Imagine working your whole life and then you're worrying about, do I have enough money to live out my days?

Ain't that crazy?

It probably takes years off your life.

And think about this, Sean.

When you get older, what do we lose?

When I was younger, I got invited to live birthday parties, graduations, weddings.

When I'm, let's say, 38, 40 years old, guess what I started experiencing?

My invitations were from.

Funerals.

Correct.

And the people that you grew up with, the people that you assigned with, two days ago, one of my good friends, sadly, 40 years old, four kids,

passes away.

On vacation, he's financially free, financially independent.

On vacation, passes out.

Wow.

Can't be revived.

Four daughters he leaves behind.

Jeez.

So, you know, you look at life today, it can be gone in a flicker.

And so when you look at that scenario, when we get older, we start losing our associations.

We start losing our friends.

We start losing our partners.

We start losing our family.

Imagine being 60, 70 year old and everybody you grew up with or everybody you've had befriended in your business or your career is dead.

They're gone.

And you're sick, 70, 80, and you're lonely.

See, the thing here too, Sean, is that most people, sadly, in their entire life, after high school or college or even in the military, you know what they don't do in their adult life?

Make new friends.

They don't build a new network.

They don't build new associations.

As we said before in business, if you're not growing, you're dying.

Same thing happens too with your personality.

Absolutely.

Your personal life.

If you're not self-improving in that category, investing in new friendships and relationships, sadly, emotionally, deep down inside, you're starting to die.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I've gone through phases where I was very lonely, had very little friends.

It eats your health physically and mentally.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, you need that support group.

How did you meet PBD?

Was it in the military?

I got introduced to him by Pastor Dudley Rutherford, who I met four years prior to actually with that introduction.

My sister worked for Shepherd of the Hills Church in L.A., And she was, my sister, it was an Orlando Magic girl.

She thought she'd go into LA to be a Laker girl.

She found Jesus instead.

Goes to the church.

I meet Pastor Deli Rutherford.

He goes,

you need me to meet the Iranian version of you.

She's PBD because PBD was going to his church.

He goes, you need to meet the Filipino version of you.

So Pastor Deli Rutherford, God bless you.

Massive shout out because that introduction changed my life.

That's hilarious.

You two talk very similarly.

Do we?

I can tell you hang out a lot.

Yeah.

Because I watch his podcast and you guys talk the same way, dude.

It's been an honor to be mentored by a once-in-a-generation, I would even say once-in-a-lifetime type of CEO.

Oh, yeah.

Founder, leader.

Yeah, he's different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he's only 45, brother.

What?

He's only 45.

Dude.

He might be the GOAT by the time he's done.

Easy.

Wow.

Easy.

Yeah, his shift into politics was brilliant.

And behind the scenes, he was always feeling that way.

Really?

Like, we would go on trips.

How do you feel about this?

How do you feel that?

So, Paul, where do you lean in politically?

I said, I don't care about politics.

Why should I care?

No, you should care.

Why?

Because these knuckleheads create policies that affect all of our lives.

They affect our businesses.

So I'm not trying to tell you to vote for anybody.

Just be aware of what's going on and

make your analysis there and make your vote count for an educated decision.

Now, I'm coming into the political season.

I got five policies that I'm prioritizing, not personalities, policies.

Americans are so damn sensitive.

Like, I see Trump today.

To me, he's, okay, he talks shit.

So what?

I'm used to that in the military.

I'm used to that growing up in Chicago.

Right?

People are so damn sensitive today.

If he's calling out somebody because they're not performing or country because they're not performing, yeah, you're right.

You should talk shit.

I know it's not presidential.

It maybe needs, he definitely needs to polish that up.

You know, maybe a little bit more diplomatic.

Yeah.

But that's his thing.

But to me, that doesn't affect me.

But when I look at

potential candidates, I'm looking first for me is economic policy.

Do I have you in my way, government?

If you're in my way with regulation and unnecessary high income taxes, you're disincentivizing me to be an entrepreneur.

And I wonder if that's what they're trying to do.

But America was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Government should not be big.

The number one employer, Sean, who's the number one employer in America today?

Is it

Google?

No, it's the federal government.

Oh, really?

It's the federal government.

Is it a good thing?

Is it bad thing?

I don't know.

It's not a good thing.

You and I, through our taxes, are funding the largest employer in America, the federal government.

It's expansive.

It's expanding.

I don't know if that's a good thing.

Yeah, they just hired a bunch of IRS people, right?

Have you ever gone to the DMV?

Yeah.

Two months wait and packed.

How would you like our health care to turn that way?

Healthcare is already a shit show.

Imagine it being run like a DMV.

Yeah, it'd be bad.

ER, emergency room.

You get away from an appointment, come back, come back for your heart attack appointment.

You'd die right there

in the air room.

So when government takes over things, it becomes a shit show.

It becomes inefficient.

It's too bureaucratic.

Because there's no incentive in the federal government to improve.

Wow.

There's no, matter of fact, when I was in the military, I'd order things from our suppliers.

A hammer of $10 at Office Depot, our Home Depot, will cost $50 if we go through our federal approved contractor.

Damn.

Because these companies, they get the contract to sell their products and services to the government.

They see that, ah, federal government, we can overcharge and they won't care.

So they abuse the system.

Toilet paper.

I'm ordering supplies when we're deploying.

Toilet paper is costing 50 bucks for something you can buy at Walgreens or CVS for four or five, six bucks.

$60 going through our supplier, federal government approved.

So companies out there have been taking advantage of the federal government.

And that's where you need oversight.

Wow.

That's where you need regulation.

Like, huh, this doesn't make sense.

We're spending too much money here.

Nobody cares about overspending in the government.

Nobody cares about efficiencies in the government.

You know who cares about that type of stuff?

It's entrepreneurs.

Right.

More entrepreneurs need to go in there, but here's the downside of an entrepreneur going into the government.

It's a pay cut.

And nobody listens huge pay cut at least as an entrepreneur i can hire and fire and track people i want to build inside bureaucracies people got voted in they're embedded in so that's the institution that we're up against trillion dollars in debt right now yeah oh my gosh it's it's horrible by the way uh the stat uh what uh and in america 1.4 trillion just credit card debt holy crap so if america is not allowing allowed to make its own money they drain down their savings or don't even save at all which means down the road they're dependent on federal government and federal government social security or some form of government program.

Now you're dependent on the government instead of being independent.

And when you don't control your income, your life is controlled by somebody else.

He or she that controls your income controls your life and the decision you make in it.

So if you don't not control your income, you don't have your freedom, your autonomy, you're controlled.

So that being said, do you use credit cards?

Of course I do.

But you just control it.

I control it.

I love credit cards.

I fly for free online.

Oh, yeah.

Credit card use.

I meet my friends at the Amex Centurion lounge.

Right?

But that doesn't mean I carry debt.

You pay it off ACE.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's a tool.

Yeah.

Some people just spend a ton on cards and then never pay it off.

And then the interest is 10%.

That's why it's mindset over money.

If you don't train your mind and your attitude and your disposition, how you view money, then you'll always be broke.

Absolutely.

What's next for you?

What's next for a seven-figure squad and PHP agency?

PHP agency, we're building a billion-dollar company.

We just partnered with a company called Integrity Marketing Group, and their CEO and their chief distribution officer was just at our conference.

Very inspired and impressed by what we're doing.

We're very inspired and impressed by them.

Nice.

Just just let me just share with you a quick servant leader a servant leader uh type of scenario um i was sitting down by the way we had ludicrous they were doing a concert oh yeah so i sat down and somebody had spilled their drink their coffee and i was kind of straddling because there's no napkins or whatever and like i was just kind of sitting in my chair straddling the the the spill next to you know this billionaire brian adams comes out with a towel that he asked one of the people to get and he wipes the spill in front of me.

Wow.

He's a billionaire.

What the hell is he doing wiping the spill in front of me?

That's servant leadership, man.

If you don't get a guy or people around you that wants to help you, if you can give you another example, backstage, Patrick was there with his families and the kids around.

We're talking about a Trump documentary that he had his kids watching and the political documentary on the left side because he wants his kids both informed on both sides.

And I'm sitting here and I realize that Jen, his wife is walking in.

All the seats are taken.

What do I do?

as a husband too.

I said, Jen, I get up.

Jen, sit down.

Right?

She sits down.

He notices I'm up because I'm preparing to interview Bill Belichick.

And you notice I'm focusing on my notes.

Guess what I find?

He taps me on the shoulder.

I said, Paula, sit down.

He comes behind with two different chairs.

Patrick, you don't have to do this.

I'm thinking, I'm so blessed to be around servant leaders.

Patrick David, who's a servant leader, he just sold his company and now it's worth, what, half a billion dollars,

giving me a chair to sit down.

I get a billionaire.

care enough about how I'm sitting in a, over a spill to bring a towel and wipe it up.

You kidding me?

Wow.

These are the type of leaders I'm just blessed to be around.

That's powerful because some leaders lose touch with their customers and with their staff and everything.

That's right.

And eroding the customer and client experience.

Right.

Thereby eroding their referability or ability to attract and recruit people.

Some brands, some companies attract people just by reputation, not by what they put on Indeed or Monster.

People say, I want to work for that company.

I got no good things to say about the company to work for that company.

Hey, get a foot in the door for me so it can get me a job.

Right.

And that's the way we've built PHP.

How to create a client experience.

Now, are the people that come into our sales organization and quit and badmouth the company?

Of course, but they're going to quit.

I've never met, I've never met, ever met a winning quitter.

Why?

Because quitting is a habit.

Now, I'm not saying that you stop and move here because you want to improve your skills, but if you go from one tough decision to another, instead of pushing through it and learning through it and innovating and improving through it, but you quit, that's a habit.

Right.

And the entire life, when times get tough, you got quitters' blood.

And guess what you're giving to your children?

You're giving your children quitters' blood.

You pass down generational quittedness.

Not generational wealth.

Wow, that's crazy.

That was Bill's first interview since retirement, right?

Was it?

I think so.

I haven't seen him on a pod or anything.

By the way, I had some

very cool questions.

I can't wait for that interview to come out.

Yeah, I can't wait to see that one.

Will that be on Seven Figure Squad?

It will be.

It will be up into either that or a PHP.

We just got to get everything approved through his camp, his PHP camp.

Congrats on that one.

That's huge.

It's amazing.

I mean, because earlier this year, we interviewed Patrick, interviewed Tom Brady.

I saw that one, yeah.

So I said, Patrick, so what's some of the things that you'd learned too?

So I combined my questions for Bill Node with like, hey, Bill, was Tom wanting to get a seventh ring to beat you or to beat Jordan?

You asked him that?

Yeah.

Wow.

That's a blunt question.

There was a lot of media drama over that, that split, I remember.

Yeah.

Right.

Another question, Bill, you're about to have a perfect seed in 2007.

You won all 16 games.

You won every playoff game.

You're in a Super Bowl.

You're about to have a perfect season.

Nothing that's been happening since 1972 with the Dolphins.

You're one minute away from winning.

It's 14 to 10.

You're up.

Eli Mennon spins out from a sack, chucks it down to Tyree.

Tyree catches the ball off his helmet.

Four plays later, score a touchdown, beating you in the last minute in a Super Bowl, destroying your perfect season.

It's like, man, thanks for making me feel bad.

He probably couldn't sleep for a year.

But I'm wondering, how do you deal with the loss?

Some people have a bad day.

They're, right?

Oh, this business sucks.

My wife sucks.

My husband sucks.

And they quit.

This guy, answers to this question, I can't release it right now, but his answer to that question shocked the shit out of me.

Wow.

Shocked the shit out of me.

I was like, what?

Okay.

I don't want to give too much.

No, that's fire.

I can't wait to see that one.

When does it come out?

And I'm like a month.

Depends on when we get the approval.

Matt, where can people find you, man, and see what you're up to?

Very simple.

Money Smart Guy, all over the place.

Money Smart Guy on

X now?

Money Smart Guy on X.

Money Smart Guy on Instagram.

MoneySmartGuy.com.

My YouTube channel is called Seven Fear Squad because my YouTube channel is dedicated to helping people think like a millionaire, strategize like a millionaire, so down the road, they can be a first-generation cash flow millionaire.

That's what you did.

Can you bought?

Thanks, guys.

God bless you, brother.

Yep, Sean, thank you.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Always, see you next time.