Mark Matson
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
This is a great question. And I'm so glad you asked it early on in our time together. I was very lucky to have a dad that believed in the American dream. And he built into me, psychologically, the ideals of the American dream. He gave me Thinking Grow Rich when I was 10 years old and said, read this at least one time every year of your lives.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But we came from the hills of West Virginia in the hollers. And my grandfather did not believe in the American dream. He worked in the coal mines. He worked in the factories, the chemical factories. He basically believed that money was a source of evil. He believed people that had it were greedy. He believed he was entitled to money that he didn't create.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And he always viewed it as anybody that had money was a crook. And my dad rejected that. My dad, by the time he was 10 years old, was an entrepreneur three times over. He sold newspapers, he sold cloverine salve to the miners where their hands were cracked, and he signed shoes. So he believed that if you created value for other people,
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
uh that you would be rewarded with wealth and prosperity and that people that had money weren't croaks but they actually were really hard working and dedicated and he loved this country and the values that it stood for so the minds every summer we'd go back to west virginia and i'd see the people living in the poverty
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
they didn't have physical shackles it was it was a mindset well i call it a screen by which they saw themselves as victims a screen a psychological screen made out of language language that you're taught and then there's and then there's the the language or the screen of the american dream and that and most people do look at money as a form of survival And that is largely in our DNA too.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I mean, for thousands of years, people had a real hard time surviving. And so money and property was a form of survival. But now we live in a relative world of abundance and creativity. And if you can get that screen of the American dream, you can start to escape that terrible bonds that really –
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
imprison you almost in a world of scarcity two things here one can you explain what the screen is is it a framework of thinking and language around what money is yes so it's it's the way that people can think about it sometimes you create that language on purpose like if i'm going to go be a doctor i spend many many years developing language around what a doctor is so they see the human body is very different as someone who doesn't have that language
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Well, we have all kinds of conversations in our lives about money, about the world, about how money works, how money is created, our place in the world and our relationship to money. And money, ironically, having a lot of money doesn't mean you're going to be happy.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
As a matter of fact, I've seen a lot of really, really wealthy people, tens, 20s, 30s, millions of dollars, and history is rife with people like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes, Prince, people with a lot of money, power, fame, but it didn't do them any good. It actually helped seal their fate in the end and became very destructive.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Well, that's great. And go back to my grandfather once. His screen was so strong. It was like they lived in two different worlds, two different dimensions of reality. His screen was so strong. When he was offered an opportunity to grow at Union Carbide, he was offered to be a foreman and have a crew underneath him. He told them no. Why? Because he didn't want to be part of the machine.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
That's evil and bad. He didn't want to be evil and bad in his eyes, so he proved it to himself that he was doomed to be. I call these money demons. These money demons, which we all have at various times in our life, they take us over and preclude us from doing things that could actually save us. So he never took that race.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
He never took that opportunity to save his family, even when it was offered to him. And I've asked my dad, I said, how did you? I mean, this poverty, this abject poverty, they would cut the tops off of instant carnation milk cans, and they would hammer it to the baseboards in their shack by the railroad so that the rats wouldn't come in their house in the wintertime.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
That's how much poverty my dad came from. He only had one pair of shoes a year right before school started, and then they were barefoot all summer long. I mean, this was true abject poverty. He said,
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
he said he said i i saw a couple examples of people that did have a little bit of money and they were nice and they helped me and i went to work for him and i noticed that my dad was wrong that people that had money weren't evil and they weren't bad and they were and they were actually willing to help and i had a couple good teachers in school that taught me about that but deep down my dad had and i don't know where he got it he had a deep-seated belief in capitalism
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
We all do to a greater or lesser extent. What are the money demons? So I'll give you an example. So when I started my company, I wanted to help a lot of people. We managed $11 billion for people all over North America, 500 advisors. But when I started, I only had three employees. And I had a demon belief. It's a belief created in language that then we don't realize that it's only just a screen.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
We take it on as reality. And that reality was that employees suck and they're too expensive. And when you hire them, they don't do a good job. And the other money demon I had was that I'm not a good manager and I don't know how to manage people. So I'll just do it myself.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Now, money demons are so pervasive because when we have them, we make their self-fulfilling prophecies and we make them come true. And we don't look for opportunities that violate our screen. So... I had to look at what I was getting out of it. What was I getting out of that screen? Well, I got to play small, didn't have to hire people. I got to be self-righteous. I got to be condemning.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
You were right all the time. I'm right and righteous. I got to gossip about other people, character assassinate. I got to be a victim. I mean, it was juicy psychological payoff. Right, right.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But I also had to realize that if I couldn't change those screens about the world, that I was going to be doomed, never to fulfill my mission, which was to help more people stop speculating with their money and fulfill their American dream. Wow. And then you have to do a cost-benefit analysis and say, okay. Am I going to keep that demon belief because there is payoff? Yes.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I can live a normal, ordinary life, not full of greatness, thorough set of the best, quiet desperation, or am I going to break that belief? And I actually call it due violence to the belief. Interesting. I have to actually kill it.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I have to kill that belief. But the thing about money demons is when you kill them and have more money, they don't disappear. They often morph. How so? Well, so after I became successful, then I went through a divorce. And then I started eventually dating after some therapy and counseling. And I started dating. And I started getting one string of really painful relationships after another.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And I developed a belief based on the divorce and dating that I'm not really that attractive. I'm not really that sexy. I got a lot of money. And that's what women really want from me. And so that I'll never really, you know, have someone I really, truly love and really, truly loves me. And then I had a, you know, string of dating examples that created that.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And so I had to do violence to that belief.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
So you so you have to look at the you have to look at the benefits you're getting out of it. The benefits, and I know it doesn't seem like there are benefits, but there are benefits to being right and playing small and not taking risk in life. And being a victim, too. And being a victim of being the martyr.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Oh, gosh. We try not to have a minimum because we want to help everybody, but there's portfolios up to 70, 80 million. Sure, okay.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
So when I realized that I had clients with a lot of money that were very unhappy, That was my next question. My dad, one of the key strategies in the book is to ask a good question. Yeah. And don't try to rush to get the answer. Take your time and really let it work on you and your subconscious and really think about it.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
So it took me years to think about this and that the reason it can't make you happy is because it doesn't fill anything in your spiritual nature that can bring happiness. But it fulfills the survival nature, right? Yeah. We all want things and we want things for our survival. That's instincts, food, clothing, shelter, love, that kind of stuff.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And then we go out and we obtain things and we obtain those things, most of us, but then we want more.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
toyota even had that commercial what a feeling you know when you get to toyota so you don't just want a new car you want a really nice car you don't want in the house you want a really nice house you don't so and then when you do get something whether it's the computer or golf clubs or a purse or whatever it is you have it for a while you obtained it you felt good about it for a little while then you start comparing it to what everybody else has
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I had a boat I bought in Florida when we had a house down there and it was a 37 footer, 300 Yamaha motors. I loved that boat, had tons of fun on that boat. It was adventurous, really great. And then one day there was 180 foot yacht and their dinghy was bigger than my boat. And I'm like, this ain't no boat. I got to get me a bigger boat. Really? Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But whether it's the size of your portfolio, the size of your house, you buy the perfect house, you think it's perfect. Then six months later, you're looking at the kitchen going, these cabinets really suck. We really need to rip these out. It's just human nature. And then, so then it brings us around to comparing it to other things.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Sometimes in technologies this way, they always come out with bigger, better, faster, cooler technology than one. And then you can lead you back up to this top at wanting stuff. So it can't, it doesn't fulfill at a deep, meaningful purpose. And that leads you back to what you mentioned earlier, which is survival.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I don't know about the majority, but I do know there is no correlation. And I know it from my personal life, too, because... To happiness and having money. Right. Because there's been times where I had a lot of money, was very unhappy. I had no money and was pretty happy. But you've also had a lot of money and been happy too. I would take the latter, the money and the happiness at the same time.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
That would be great. You've experienced that too. And I have. Yes. But if it's not the money, then what is it? And what I've found is it's having a purpose in life that's greater than money itself.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
something and if you think throughout history the people that have changed the world whether it's ronald reagan or whether it's martin luther king or whether it's uh jfk or whether it's walt disney or the wright brothers or you think about these people that have changed the world they've all had this deep purpose sense of purpose and value in their life so much so that they've even laid their life dr martin luther king laid down his life for his purpose
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And that's how strong purpose can be. And if you'll have a purpose first, then use it to create value for other people and align with their purpose. And then the more money you have, great, because then I can align how I use that money with my purpose in life. And I can do great things with my money. That brings me joy and happiness and freedom and fulfillment with other people.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But if I have the money without the purpose, it just becomes a burden.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Because in fact, if you have a strong enough purpose, you don't even need money. You know, like Mother Teresa, saints.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
It's about their purpose in life. If I don't have... Look, you can live in America for very little money. Even if you only have $40,000, $50,000 a year, you live better than the King of England did 500 years ago. You have chocolate, you have air conditioning, you have food, you have penicillin, you have running water, you have... Healthcare, yeah. I mean, it's a miracle.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Everybody should wake up every morning in a miracle going, it's a miracle, it's a miracle, I can't believe I live here. Of course they don't.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But it's a miracle that what we have, and if you only have a little bit of money and you have a friend in the hospital, you can make a card with a crayon or a pen, you could go to the hospital, you could sit by them and hold their hand, and you could express your love and affection. Mm-hmm. And that's going to be more fulfilling than a Ferrari.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I'm not anti-Ferrari, you got one, but... It's boring for an hour, but it's not, you know, it's... I call them cookies and toys. You say, you got these toys, and they're fun. Okay, fine, great. I'm not saying that they're bad, but they won't make me happy. And then food, it's anything you ingest to try to change your mood about yourself and feel better temporarily. But they're not permanent.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Right. This is powerful, man.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
It is. A model, a way of thinking? It's a mental model that you have that you, here's the critical part, that you don't know you have. Because it just appears like the truth. Yes. And not something that you just made up. A story. Yes, something happened. I lost money on a house. But I have a degree in finance and accounting. I'm bad at real estate? Really? That's just being a wimp.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
um um so it's it's the it's the story that i make up about whatever and a lot of it's money relationships with money and it all comes down to when i run these exercises with people and they'll make first you make a list of your complaints what's all your complaints about money and then and then what demon belief or relationship do you have based on that complaint and then where did it come from
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
what happened when you were eight years old the first time you heard your mom and dad yelling about money that gave you that story that you have about what money is because something did happen but then what you made it mean is not what is just a story you made up and you can start to do battle with those and and start to untangle them over time And then it's kind of like the demon in it.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
It morphs into other things. It only hides for 17 years, then it comes out as something else. And it changes usually into what your greatest fear is.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
guess you made decisions based on for many years until you became aware of it and killed it off yeah what would that look like for you if you give one example of here's your daddy or grandpa or whatever that might be yeah so there's there's screens money is people like to try to compartmentalize things in their brain like oh this is money this is my relationships this is my life this is my whatever but money doesn't work like that it's got tentacles
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And it's like a thread that goes through the carpet of your life. It touches everything. So when I have a money demon, I also usually have a relationship demon. When I went through divorce, I thought, okay, you're going to lose half of all your stuff now, including your company that you built. So that was less than ideal. That was a money demon.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But I also had another money demon or relationship demon related to that is that I had grown up most of my life as an atheist. and took classes in college about how there's no God and all this garbage. And so then when I went through the divorce, I mean, I was gutted. I mean, it was dark. I'm a bad father. I wasn't seeing my kids. I'm gonna lose my company.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
It's gonna be like, this is gonna be the worst thing ever in my life. I got depressed. and and then i was talking to a buddy on the phone so i lived in a world a screen because there is no god and i'm talking to a buddy of mine and he's i'm probably crying he's like well are you ready i said ready for what he said are you ready to admit there's a god and it's not you wow And I'm like, yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Yeah, I could have just stayed there. If there was a God, why would he let this happen to me? Yeah. Right? Well, I knew because I was a sinner and I didn't believe in God. Right, right.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
but he but you know what all of the in this and the screen sometimes can change slow or sometimes it can go fast but i knew instantly i could not live in a world without a god anymore wow i just it was empty it was devoid and it was hopeless and i didn't have any doubts or questions all the intellectual gymnastics i had been doing my whole life went away and he said get on your knees and let's pray and
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I was in that hotel room and started praying and I went from a screen, a world of no God to a world of God. And that's made all, it's made all the difference, kind of like the master screen that fits into the other screens. The screens are powerful. And people will literally die to keep their screens like my grandpa did. He died. He died.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
He came to visit us only one time at our house in Cincinnati. It was August. It was a cool for August. He walked in the front door. We had about maybe like an 1800 foot square house. It wasn't huge. He said, how many, he looked at my dad in front of his whole family. He said, how many people did you have to rip off to keep this house?
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
That's tough. And right in front of his whole family. And he said, George, Mary Lou and I, we're in a real business. We work really hard. We try to build a good family for the good house for our family and a nice home. And he said, well, you can tell yourself whatever you want that lets you sleep. Oh, my gosh. He said, but all I see is a big shot. You think you're better than me?
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And it got really heated after that for about five minutes. He left. He never came back. And three months later, he was dead in his little teeny shack he lived at in West Virginia.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And about freedom and about entrepreneurship and about helping other people and never expecting anything from – expecting anything free or that you didn't earn. And that always stuck with me. On the other hand, when I was a kid, I did go through some stuff. You know, I had trouble studying in school and trouble reading. So I made up, I'm stupid.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And, you know, I'd ask a girl to the dance and she wouldn't say no, you know, and I think, oh, I'm not handsome enough, or I didn't get to be the captain on the football team. And so I started like, I'm dumb. I'm not handsome. I'm not attractive. I'm not man enough. And that was early on. That was like eighth grade and I got bullied in school. And so I had all these in my strategy.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I heard your podcast with Pivot. My strategy was not unlike yours, which was to win at all costs. Whatever I was going to do, if it's going to be sports, if it's going to be grades, if it's going to be drama club, if it's going to be whatever, I got to have the lead role. I got to be the captain. I got to, you know, win state championship in discus.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I mean, I got to do all this or I'm not worth anything. And it got me through a little bit in life, but it ultimately would be a failed strategy. Right, exactly.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
One of the things is I think both people would want to define what their purpose for money is and then make sure that those are synergistic and they work together. Give me an example of what maybe yours was during that time. Mine was love, to create love in the world. And hers was family. Love, close second. So they were very synergistic. They worked really well together.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
She had a belief that her value as a human being was determined on her working. And that if she wasn't working, that she wouldn't have any value. Interesting. And that was something we had to work through because I wanted to be able to travel. I wanted to be able to do things with the kids. I wanted to be able. But her job, she was a physical therapist and went from the home physical therapy.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
But she couldn't take time off. Without thinking she's not valuable anymore. Well, she would lose her job if she took as much time as I wanted to take off. She would lose her job.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I'm not valuable. Interesting.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And so that was kind of a money demon we had to work through.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Yeah. And what if I turned out being like her last husband and then left her and then she'd given up her job. Right. And she has three kids to take care of. That fear. So that fear of being left, being abandoned. And then what would she have?
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I think it's a, well, it was another interesting thing. So her ex-husband had told her that, and this just gutted me when I heard it the first time, had told her that because she had three kids that no one would ever want her. Talk about a gut punch. I mean, that was just... The first day we went to Starbucks and had our first date together, we talked for like three hours. Just as friends. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Just as friends for the first... Yeah, yeah. And... And that made me so mad. And I don't know why, because I never really thought about getting divorced. Maybe it was subconscious. But even from the time I was in college, I thought if I did ever marry somebody that had kids, I would love their kids the same way that I love them. And I would never let that be an obstacle to having a relationship.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Wow. So when he was manipulating her like that and trying to control her and making her feel bad and really depressed about the whole thing, it really made me mad. Wow. But that was another one of her money demons was that she had kids and no guy was going to want to take that on. So how did she learn to let go of that and trust you and have faith?
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I think it was just tons of time and therapy and counseling and just lots of discussions about that.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
This kid's doing this, that parent's doing this, this kid needs that, and this kid needs that. And then working through all of those, working through all of those. We had a therapist one time tell us, you know, three years to get it all really aligned up and make it feel like one family. I was like, 10 years, maybe? 10 years, yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
Well, once I kind of came out of the sadness and some of the grief part of it, I was like, okay. Now what am I going to do to make this mess into a message? And we had a negotiator that helped negotiate the divorce, the mediator. And part of the mediation was, look, this is my company. I built this company.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
The income you're getting, the benefits, the money, everything you're getting is because I'm keeping this company running. And without me, there is no company. So I'm not going to let you double dip. I'm not going to give you half of the company and half of all the other stuff in addition. Right.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I'll stop running the company and I'll run it into a ditch. Yeah, yeah. And then... I'm not very great at negotiating, but that was, I was firm on that. But you're getting a really great deal. You're going to get going with your life. You're going to, you got lots of great resources to go on and be happy, do your own deal, but I'm not giving you my company.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
And that was, and I kept the company intact. That was, in retrospect, that was really, really good.
The School of Greatness
How To Break Free From Financial Anxiety & Create Wealth
I just felt like it was worth it. Yeah. I was like, whatever it's going to take to get through this and move on with my life, it's just worth it.