Leadership Without Unified Vision Is Chaos: Matt Haycox Reveals the Cost

if there isn't a unified course of action or a clear single central goal and a leader taking everybody in that direction, which by the way, even if there is those two things, there's still gonna be problems along the way. But if there isn't those two things, then you haven't got a hope in hell of any kind of success in the business.

Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level. The decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello everybody. We're talking with Matt Haycox and Matt, is somewhere probably the rest of y'all, including me, will probably never go to, Bali. Hello, Matt.

Hey, buddy, you should all come to Bali. Bali's a great place. Loving it here. A little bit different to Aspen, I'm sure, but it's a great little life in Bali.

Now tell me, how long have you been in Bali?

Well, I've been in this town for probably about 3 months. I only discovered Bali about 2 years ago. I've been living in Dubai for the last 5 years, and a couple of holidays in Bali, 2 weeks and then 1 month and then a bit longer. And then I just kind of fell in love with it, enjoy the pace of life over here. So, back in December, I've rented a house for a year. We're going to see what happens. I mean, look, I still have to go back to Dubai a little bit, but I try and travel as little as I can.

You're at the point where, Matt, just so people— I'll introduce you here in a second, but just so people know, the point is that you've had success early in your life and that's given you the opportunity to do fun things, things that keep you inspired. And, you know, the hard thing for us over the long haul is keeping ourselves inspired and motivated. And a lot of that has to do with the environment you put yourself in. And if you're in the middle of a place where it's full of people, dead, dull, discouraged, depressed, industries are dying, you know, you look out, the landscapes are bleak.

Bleak.

It's not a place, it's a harder place to keep yourself inspired and motivated, but it's kind of easier when you go to these, there are exciting places in the world, you know, you ought to get out and go see them. And some of them decide you're gonna taste it for a while and live there. But anyway, congratulations to you. And let's talk about, let's give people a few tidbits. You're a self-made millionaire by 25. You built— well, you could tell us about the business that you built before age 25, generating million-pound, multimillion-pound returns. Founder of the Matt Haycock Group, private investment advisory firm focusing on growth capital, deal structuring, high-impact investments, and from bankruptcy to investors. So you've seen the whole gamut. And after losing millions in the 2008 financial crash, which a lot of people did, you rebuilt and rebuilt your wealth and reputation through disciplined investing and strategic dealmaking, learning a lot of interesting lessons that a lot of people would, you know, like to get into. So congratulations, Matt. You're doing, doing well. And folks, it's 8:00 in the morning. Yeah. And Matt is a hustler because he's already done one podcast before this. So he is, he's in Bali, but he's working. He's, he's on the, on the train. And, you know, he's, he's driving into his future because it's fun to keep on growing it. And Matt.

Certainly is. And yeah, I kind of work all ends of the time zone here. I mean, I don't really, I don't have any Balinese business. I'm just here for lifestyle, really. So I kind of talk to Australia time. Time zone, UAE time zone, UK, and quite often, you know, quite often US as well. So I get to sleep when I get to sleep.

Yeah. And let's talk about your, you know, one thing I'm gonna bring up to you is I'm a little bit familiar with the UK. We spent some time over there trying to get a sales organization going in financial services. And we got blown out of the water with the regulatory explosion after Enron blew up in Houston, Texas, and we're sitting over there in the UK trying to build a financial services organization and they're just strangling us with regulations. So we finally said, forget it. We've wasted too many tens of millions of dollars trying to satisfy you people. But I learned about the culture over there. And the thing about the one, and plus, you know, you've been in the horse business. I've been in the horse business 16 years. I did show jumping. That's one of the reasons that brought me to Palm Beach. We were talking about Palm Beach folks. Before we got started. And the thing is that, you know, a lot of people from the UK were, you know, over in the US with their thoroughbreds and their show jumpers and all of that. So a lot of conversation going, but a lot of the people from the UK that are entrepreneurial and had a drive and energy felt like, they told me they felt like they had to get out of the UK because it was kind of a stifling environment where people, you know, not a lot of energy, the political structure and everything. Everything. This is way back, you know, 20 years ago, but— or 20 or 30 years ago. But you grew up in that stifling environment and you had enough. You know, what's impressive to me about you is you had enough piss and vinegar in you, you know, enough drive, enough motivation. Over in that environment, you became financially independent, a multi— self-made multimillionaire by 25. Congratulations to you, man. You got some— you got an engine running in Well, thank you.

I mean, look, I mean, environment is everything, you know, in terms of, I guess, in terms of success and in terms of happiness and being better, etc. But look, at the same time, you know, we can all play the hand that we're dealt. And look, you know, is environment going to pull you up? Absolutely it is. But if you've got that desire and drive and, you know, an ability and intelligence to do something, you're going to do it. Anywhere, anywhere. And look, listen, I'm not the UK's biggest fan for many different reasons, but look, it's not a terrible place to do business by any stretch. I mean, we have a legal system that works, we have people that have money, we have all the basics of a hungry audience in technology and the ability to distribute. So look, business can be done there, but I'd rather wake up with the sun on my back and not risk having my arm chopped off to take my watch.

What was it like growing up in the UK, in Britain, and, you know, with the class structure, you know, that's still, you know, people seem to feel that. And, you know, in terms of, you know, your heart's beating, you want to do things, looking for opportunities. How would— what was that like coming up that way? What motivated you? What attracted your attention? By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively looking for an edge. And that's who I built the Big Hitter community for. Not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have in the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single day. Week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside.

I, I grew up grew up, you know, I guess very much what I would call middle class. I mean, my parents were, you know, I certainly don't tell some fake rags-to-riches story. You know, I couldn't have really asked for any more during my childhood. You know, my dad had his own business. My parents gave me all the support and love that, you know, any kid could ask for. But— I guess I always wanted more, I always wanted something different. And I was growing up in the '80s and the '90s, it was from an era where it was very much believed that the only way to make money was to own your own business. And my desire was never to be a business owner, but my desire was to be rich. I can remember I used to say to my mom all the time, I'm going to be a millionaire, I'm going to be a millionaire. If I ever saw people in real life or on or whatever it was, my first question would always be, are they a millionaire from that? Because I was just obsessed with money. So, it was kind of inevitable that I would have to go into business because I was told that was the only way to make money. So, that was my driver back then. Like I said, I can't claim some fake story, the fact that I was sharing one carton of milk with my 7 brothers and we all had to take it in turns to wear the shoes to go to school. Life was good, but I just wanted it to be better.

Where do you think that came from? You know, I don't remember talking to anybody who would actually admit, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a millionaire. When I met people, it was be like, are they a millionaire? You know, like, that's the number one thing I wanted to know about them. Where do you think that came from? You know, you looked around, you said, I wanted more. Where do you think that came from? Because I'll tell you this, Matt. I'll tell you this, Matt. There's a lot of people out there that can relate to that. And they're not kids, you know, they're in their adult life or they're— and they're trying to deny it. You know, they're trying, you know, they've got this thing. You got to say, if this is what's in you, folks, you need to recognize it. That kind of desire and drive is in you for a purpose. And so anyway, how did that— where do you think that came from?

Well, I mean, look, I guess it can only have come from, you know, come from my environment and my parents. I mean, I mean, they They obviously wanted more than what they had. So whilst I grew up in a nice middle-class life, my parents certainly didn't. They grew up in working-class families, little to no money, no prior education. My dad was the first person in his kind of town and bloodline to go to university. So they were very much people who wanted more, and they did that for themselves. But then also, in the same token, I guess, yeah, they came from a— I don't know if 'ear' is the right word, but let's say they certainly came from an attitude of, 'We want more because we want to be out of this, but we don't want too much because that's not fair to the other people,' kind of thing. Whereas I didn't give a fuck, I just wanted it all. And yeah, I guess it was just that I would see things that other people had and and I would want that. And it was never that I wasn't grateful for what I had, believe me, I was very appreciative, very grateful, but my attitude is just always all like, listen, it's lovely that we can have a house in Spain, but why can't we have a house in Spain and France and America as well? And why do we have to— business class is lovely, but surely first is better.

Oh, and so where in the UK actually is this that you grew up?

I grew up in a town, a city called Leeds, which is in the north of England, you know, a regionally sized place. And I was there for, I mean, that was home, like my home base for all of my years, really.

Oh, and so where did you get your start? How did you get in the game? How did you make your breakthrough of getting in the game? You're out of the house. You're starting to get independent and you start to get your feet wet in doing things. How did that get going?

As I said, I always knew that I was gonna be in business. I had to be in business because it was my only way for my route to millions. So, I spent my teenage years trying everything I could to try and make some money. I was working the markets, I was buying every get-rich-quick potion I could find in the local newspapers and magazines. And then ultimately, when I finished school, I mean, I did try, I tried to go to university and lasted 6 weeks, and then I went to go and work in a family business. Now, not typically, it wasn't my family's business. It was a 3-generational family business in the uniform industry. They used to make uniforms, and it was something that my dad had actually invested at the time, a small amount of money in, which became a larger amount of money because the place was a disaster. And I went there to work in sales. I worked in sales. My dad wasn't physically in it, but he just invested in it. I was witnessing what was going on, which was a total disaster every day. I'd see all these people doing what I knew was wrong. I mean, it wasn't so much that I knew what was right, but I I knew what was wrong and surely there had to be a different or better way to do it. So I used to go home every night to my dad saying, Dad, you've got to come in and do something about this. He never wanted to. And ultimately one day he got sick of my moaning and said, you know what, Matt, you can't make it any worse than they've made it. So go in and do your worst. And I went in the next day. Fired everybody and started to rebuild the business from scratch. And like I say, it wasn't that I really knew what to do, but I guess I learned what to do by using my common sense of what not to do.

What are the things you notice people wasting time, not taking care of customers, missing deliveries? What are things that you remember noticing? Like even uneducated, it was so bad, it stood out to you because a lot of A lot of winning is doing the obvious things right. You gotta keep doing 'em, but do it, you know, it's like common sense. And I've had a friend of mine who built a business in the hair business, and he said, people ask me all the time how, 'cause he's making like almost $1 million out of that business where the average income is, you know, $30,000, $40,000 or something, you know, pennies. And they ask him and he said, well, he said like if he said, Let me make it simple for you. If I walk through that door and I happen to bump up against the right side, you know, the next time I walk through that door, I make sure I don't bump up against the right side 'cause I've already done that before. I make a course correction. And he said, that's what I do. When I bump up against something, I make a course correction. But he said, most people go through there and they keep bumping the darn door, make the same mistake over and over and over, don't even realize obvious corrections?

I mean, I could tell you, let's say, granular story after granular story of, like you say, you know, what was wrong? Was it missed deliveries? Was it poor customer service? Was it whatever? The short answer would be it would be all of those things. But I think the more interesting answer, if you like, is that it was because all— yeah, the biggest problem was that the politics were wrong, or rather the politics existed, that everybody, you know, because of these generational family members, there's a mother, there's a father, there's brothers, there's an uncle, there's an aunt, you know, everybody wants their piece of the flesh, piece of the action, everyone's running their own private fiefdom, and because there's all these, let's say, there's not one common goal and everyone's got their own self-interests, Everything that went wrong was really a byproduct of that. And I guess the learning from it is that if there isn't a unified course of action or rather a clear single central goal and a leader taking everybody in that direction, which by the way, even if there is those two things, there's still going to be problems along the way. But if there isn't those two things, then you haven't got a hope in hell of any kind of success in the business. You know, you've just got 10, 12, 15 people running around doing their own thing and, you know, the results you'll get will be whatever byproduct of daily disaster happens to generate.

It was obvious to you even at that young age, I'm not going to fix this. This has been developing. These situations, attitudes, and expectations are cemented in I've just got to get rid of them and start fresh. Is that right?

Well, you know, again, it's always easy to answer these questions with hindsight. And, you know, and if you ask me about that situation now, I would very much say, look, a leopard doesn't change its spots. And, you know, you've got to get rid of the bad eggs or the bad apples because they'll rot everything else. And all the things that I know after 25 years of doing it. Did I know that back then? Probably not. I probably just couldn't be bothered dealing with people I didn't like. It was probably a lot more along the lines of, well, you're not doing what I want you to do and I can't be bothered with this bullshit, so you need to leave. But look, it was the right answer by default, but maybe for a different logic.

Well, by default, you stumbled across if that was how you did. The issue in a lot of mediocre companies and non-performing companies, and that is they got up to a certain size and every department is got, it's like you said, their own little fiefdoms and they're fighting, you know, they don't really care what's going on in the rest of the company. They just want their attention and their pats on the back. And you really see this come out, Matt, when companies decide to get their own website out because their people are fighting like cats and dogs for a piece of that real estate on the front, you know, the homepage of the company. And that those distractions, when they're not unified behind a common purpose and they don't, you know, they don't take the most pride in how they're helping the company grow, they're more helping, you know, how much attention I get, that that's going to stall out. And you don't have to be relatives in there for that to happen. You don't have to be in there. 30 years, that can happen. And that is happening because it's amazing what stalls out companies today in terms of lack of productivity is management stupidity, you know, our management self-interest and everything. So anyway, you blow through that and then what happened? Is that— was that the company that got you to be a multimillionaire by 25?

No, no, not at all. Not at all. I, I saw— I did 3, 3 years, 3 and a bit years in there. When I took over, it was losing 300 grand a year. When I finished, we turned our first profit, which was a 30 grand a year profit. Now, these numbers, obviously, in today's internet, social media-driven world of making a million before breakfast at 16 years old, aren't very exciting numbers. But it was the principle rather than the actual numbers themselves. That 3 years was a learning curve of absolutely everything that I could possibly possibly a wonder— well, I thought it was everything I could have learned. Obviously, I then went on to realize that I still knew nothing, but it was a massive, massive learning experience and grounding. But I was also bored. It wasn't right. I was a 21, 22-year-old guy working in a factory selling polyester trousers to security guards. It wasn't really where I saw my life. So, I ultimately left there. I left, my dad came back in, and I went off to go and enter the world of leisure, bars, clubs, and pubs. Again, not that I knew anything about it, but I thought I know business now, or thought I knew business now. And what 22-year-old doesn't want to own a bar and sell beer, get paid, and meet girls? So that's what I did. I opened a bar or two that were reasonably unsuccessful and realized there was certain things lacking, which was basically a high-margin income stream. You know, I needed a point of difference and a high-margin income stream, and the best way I deemed to fill that was to bring strippers in and open a strip club. So, 2004, I was 23 years old, or March 2004, I opened my first strip club. And the rest, as they say, is history. Over the next 5 years, I became the biggest operator in the UK, had 11 trading venues, all kinds of ancillary aspects of the brand. I used to drive around from club to club in a 40-foot Hummer limousine, and I really thought life was perfect and nothing could go wrong until it did.

Where did it go wrong?

2008, credit crunch time. And the business that I built was built up on a lot of short-term, high-interest-rate lending. I found—

I find a lot of the leisure type, you know, clubs, restaurants, things like that are that way. And when they start to go south, they can all tumble down. You know, there's a lot of people are— get a lot of those open.

Problem with it wasn't the underlying performance of the business. I mean, all of our venues took good money, they made good, let's say, paper profit. But the problem was we were paying because we couldn't borrow proper. I was aggressively expanding, so I needed capital. The banks wouldn't give us capital because of the reputational risk of the strip club industry. So we were finding lots of niche lenders because it was all short term. Expensive didn't help, but the short term was the real cash flow killer and it put us under a lot of pressure. But we kept the wheels just about moving because there was always someone else lending to us or we were robbing Peter to pay Paul. When all of that came to a halt in 2008 and our lenders weren't lending more money, they needed their money back, we couldn't extend with them. Also, there was then downward pressure on customer spending as well. I mean, that didn't kill— the customer spending was down. I mean, that wasn't the real killer. The real the killers that our lenders wouldn't extend and needed the money back. And that was the beginning of the end. Once one brick fell, everything was intermingled, cross-guarantees, personal guarantees, this business is involved with that business, blah, blah, blah. And the lot came tumbling down and I kind of went to bed one night with an empire and woke up the next morning broke and about to be homeless.

I learned financial service from a guy that went through that. He used to be a professional baseball player, very famous, Bob Turley. But when he got out, you know, he's got to make money. So he goes in financial services, does well. Then he starts to open a restaurant, then another restaurant, then he opened a securities firm, then he opened up a, you know, I don't know, he had all the furniture company, but he financed these things like you did, a lot of it with private investors because he was moving fast. And I've, you know, when you're in that situation, you can find money. But a lot of the money comes from private investors who give you a referral to a friend of theirs who also has money. I don't know if you had that going on, but you have this network of friends out there that are private investors. And when all it takes, I mean, the business could be phenomenally successful. All it takes is for one of them to get worried. And what happened to this guy, he left. He used to go down to, from Atlanta and drive down several hours down to a place in Amelia Island, above Jacksonville. And this is before cell phones. So he's halfway down the road on the highway and his secretary on a Friday afternoon gets a call from an investor saying, "We'd like to get our money back," whatever. And she said, "Okay, well, Mr. Turley's in the car while I'll try and get him. I should be able to get him in a few hours when he arrives down in Abilene Island." Abilene Island. Now, this lady panics. Oh my God. Oh my God. He's running for the border. The whole thing. The house is coming down. So she, she calls all of her friends, the whole network. And by the time he got down to Florida, the whole house, all his businesses were burning from everybody wanting demand notes on there. And there was no way to talk it out of it because they were in a, they were irrational frenzy. You know, they convinced themselves and they were all profitable. Like yourself. So some of these things, you know, the lending aspect of it is, you know, can bring you, can bring you down. But especially if there's a hiccup in the market like you went through, or a huge hiccup like, you know, like we're coming up, we don't know. These are things we have to deal with. I got hit by the oil embargo, knocked me out of construction. You got hit by 2008. You know, We're just young guys trying to do well and we got blindsided by the market, but it doesn't care, does it?

A, it doesn't care. And I guess, you know, B, you know, we tend to operate in our own insulated little worlds, you know, whether that's not taking account of macroeconomic events, you know, microeconomic competitors or whatever, you know, there is always someone whether they intend to or not, whether you are the active recipient of someone's ill will or whether you are collateral damage, but there's always someone wanting to knock you off your perch. And I think every business owner needs to be well aware of the fact that you've got to be every day, you've got to fight for what's yours because there's always somebody ready to eat your lunch. Yeah.

Now you launched your comeback. Were you still in Leeds, primarily in Leeds, when you launched your comeback from this?

Leeds has always been home, home. Look, you know, I've always maintained a residence there. You know, when I had my first child, you know, that's where she was from, etc., or she was born. So I'd always get to gravitate back towards it. But, you know, I guess I would travel around the UK still, you know, spend a little bit of time abroad as well. But yeah, Leeds had always been, you know, very much home up until probably when I left the UK.

You came back and you decided, I'm going to get into— I'm going to do something different. And how— and you've done well because as we've talked earlier, you've lived in Dubai, you've been in and out of Palm Beach for I don't know how many years, spending a couple of months of the year down there playing polo, which is, if you know, one of the most expensive things, and dangerous, I might add, sports you could do. And it's— sometimes we got more time, you— I'll, I'll, I'll let you tell me your, your injury history with polo. But show jumping is bad. Show jumping is bad enough in terms of falling off horses and broken ribs and clavicles and things like that. But at least we don't have a little hard ball coming at us. And 80 miles an hour.

I was, I, I was pretty lucky, to be fair. My, my, my, my, my image— my injuries were somewhat limited, but I've, uh, I've been on the, been on the pitch where, you know, a lot of stuff's happened. There weren't many weeks where someone didn't get a ball in the face, you know, lose a tooth, break a jaw, fall off a horse, whatever it may be. But I was, uh, touch wood, uh, I've not got anything too, too problematic to tell So how did you come back?

How did you come back? Now, what—

what—

let's just— let's hit on this real quick. Emotionally, how much of a setback? Well, you know, did you have a heart attack? Did you go into a depression? I mean, because you were king of the world. I mean, you had multiple locations. You were the party guy. You were the fun guy. You're everybody's hero. You're a role model for a lot of people. And then all of a sudden, bam. And so what did that do to you emotionally?

Honestly, not a lot really for two reasons. One is I'm not really someone with an ego. I mean, look, on the one hand, I have an ego in that, yeah, of course, look, I love attention. I like to be successful or the center of attention, et cetera. But at the same token, in the same breath, I really don't give a shit. When I'm not, let's say, performing for a crowd, my happy place is at home alone with the kids eating food, watching Netflix and ignoring everybody else. So, I don't really care whether I'm, you know, out seen in the Ferrari or whether I'm taking an Uber. That side of things didn't bother me. The other just more practical concern was I was 27, 28 years old. I had a 1-year-old, 18-month-old kid, you know, a house that I couldn't pay the mortgage on, and a wife that, you know, A, needed to look after the kid, and B, would probably need a couple more handbags if she was going to stay with me. So, you know, I really didn't have any choice but to get back on the horse. I mean, look, you know, very much I was told by everyone around me, oh, that's it, you're finished, your career's over, you'll never work again, your reputation's savaged. You know, and my kind of attitude was, well, maybe they're right. I mean, they're all older than me, they know more than me, maybe they're right. But I kind of can't let them be right because, you know, the kid needs looking after, the missus needs looking after. And I always say that I was never born to be poor. So I just had to, you know, had to go and get back on the horse and see what would happen. And so that's my only—

So that's 3 things you said. I can't let that be true. And I forget what— I've got to get back on the horse and I've got, you know, I've got things I've got to do. So those are decisions you made about yourself is like, this has happened to me. But on the other hand, you're backed in the corner like, "Okay, there's only so much I'm going to take." And so you came fighting back because you decided, "No, I'm not going to let that stand." I mean, ultimately, I think the greatest gift any of us have is the ability to make our own decisions and change our own trajectory.

And yes, we can only play the hand we're dealt, but we can still play it our way. And, you know, we can fold a shit hand, or we can decide that, you know, we're gonna double down and we're gonna go out there and kick some ass and try and shake up the other players. Look, when I first got back into it, which was obviously pretty much within days of things going wrong, I didn't go out at that point with a plan of, right, I'm going to go and remake some millions again. My immediate concern was I got to put some food on the table. I've got to get some income. And how I did that was effectively learning from what had gone wrong for me, which was that I borrowed a lot of money because I was good at borrowing money. I found lenders I didn't know existed. I knew how to present a story to these lenders. So I went, I effectively became a finance broker approaching my network because, you know, what I found back then, and you know, it's still very much the case today, is that people, just because somebody's got a decent business doesn't mean that they're necessarily good at raising capital.

Right.

Invariably, they're not good at raising capital. You know, they, they, they know who their bank is and the bank manager is, and, and that's about that. So I, I effectively became a glorified finance broker. Connecting my network of borrowers with my other network of lenders, was paid as a middleman, earned well, got back in the game from that, and then started to raise my own capital to then become my own lender. So effectively went from, I guess, went from business operator to broker, broker to lender, and then really where I've been at the last kind of 15+ years, is lending, but lending with experience, if that makes sense. So, you know, we tend to lend to specialist situations, distress situations, or not necessarily distress, but people who could do with support as well as capital.

Right.

Because, you know, there ain't many situations I've not been in. You know, there's plenty of shit situations I've been in that I've kind of either come out the other side or now know how to help somebody else avoid them. So we, you know, we are money with money, with brains.

Yeah. And talk about that. You know, the description in, you know, in your bio relates to rebuilding your wealth and reputation through disciplined investing and strategic dealmaking. Talk about that. You know, those phrases are very critical and very precise.

I think the discipline, listen, I certainly wasn't disciplined in the beginning. I was reckless, I was all over the place. And I think there's still a time for that as well, particularly maybe in the earlier days where I'm young enough to kind of keep rebuilding, young enough to get it wrong and do it again. As an entrepreneur, I'll always be a risk taker. But I guess that there's a lot more discipline to the decisions I make nowadays. Now, I think also that's because I've got 25 years more knowledge as well. I guess it's easier to do something when you know how to do it as opposed to flapping around and just trying to see, I guess, what fits and what sticks.

Is this discipline investing and strategic deal-making primarily for your firm, or are you to help consult with people, your clients that you're raising money for and you work with?

Well, it's both, but in slightly different ways. So I guess the discipline and strategic side from my firm side is making the right decisions of who to lend to, picking the right bets, because very often lenders get blinded by the excitement of headline interest rates. It's like, oh, well, for example, we can lend on this because this guy will pay a lot of interest, or there's security on this. That's how we'll get our money back. But taking security and being able to recover security are two very different things. So I guess that's the discipline and strategy from my side. And then when it comes to the businesses that we lend to, I guess it's really helping them, not just give them the money that they want, but giving them the support and advice that they need. Because, yeah, I mean, very often people think that they want money, but they actually— it's not so much that they need money, they need a solution to a problem. And often there's other solutions for them than just giving them money. Sometimes money is a bad answer because if they've got a bad business, if they've got a leaky business, then all that capital is going to do is probably amplify the bad, amplify the leak.

What are things that when you're looking at companies, you know, a private, you know, the private equity firm and, you know, you gotta find, you know, you're looking for new deals, you know, all the time. And it's like a recording company's gotta find new artists eventually, you know, you need the fresh faces. And so when you're, so you're probably looking at a lot of companies. When you, what are things that you see that are red flags like, we don't— that's a no-go company for us, that's a no-go situation. What, what are some of the red flags immediately would flash out to you?

So I don't really have any sectors I, I don't like, but I would only get involved in a sector that I did understand, for starters. You know, I think one of the— I would say the successful business owner's curses, which, you know, I've been guilty of myself in the past, is that we, we, uh, we think because we've made money in one field that we can go make money in any field. You know, that arrogance and that ego, which I mean ultimately is no different to saying that I was a professional footballer, so I'm going to be amazing at tennis, I'm going to be the world's best swimmer, which is, yeah, again, when you put it in those terms, it sounds a ludicrous statement to make, and everyone would see it as a ludicrous statement to make. But when you put it in business terms, nobody seems to look at it like that. It's like, oh, he knows how to make money, so he'll go and make money anywhere. So I only like to do things that I understand which was— I've got a broad spectrum of what I do understand, but I, you know, I don't get involved in, in tech, so it's not in tech but in, in science and medical and biotech, like, like that kind of thing. Um, you know, red flags for me are, um, you know, the underlying business owners themselves. Because again, I'll say that probably 90% of business owners— and to be clear, I use the word business owner, not entrepreneur, because there's a big difference between a beer— between someone who owns a business and someone who's an entrepreneur. But most, most business owners be business owners. They're shit at it. They've probably fallen into it by accident or by mistake because they were under the delusion that owning your own business gives you so much freedom and control and more safety than working for somebody else, which all of those statements are true in isolation if you make it such. But You know, most of the business owners I see shouldn't be involved in the business, you know, well, they shouldn't be running the business. You know, we go and ask some very simple questions about their accounts, they can't answer them. Oh, well, you need to speak to my accountant about that. You ask them about the marketing strategy, they can't answer it. You need to talk to my marketing team about that. And you know, there's somebody you need to talk to for everything. And it gets to the point where you think, what do these people actually do? But what I would say is, you know, I mean, look, you know, when you say as a PE firm, you know, you like a recording artist or rather like a record company, you've always got to be looking for new artists. You have, but I guess the key is to not get yourself in a position where you've got too much capital to deploy. And I've always been in in the unfortunate but fortunate position that I've always had more deals to do than money available to me. So I've never really had to make stupid decisions. Not to say I haven't made stupid decisions.

Yeah.

I've made some out of greed and other reasons, but I've never been sat on money where it's like, oh my God, I've got to deploy this money. And typically I think what you tend to find is people are either good at deploying capital or good at raising capital and very rarely the two. And where you see the big funds go wrong is because— so invariably, I think when you see things go very wrong, it's because somebody's great at raising a fund and then they are sat on that capital, like you say, that they need to do something with. Right. Yeah. And then they just go and make either rash decisions or decide to wholesale out the money and it all ends in tears.

Yeah, just because they raise the money now, they feel like an obligation. I've got to spend it. You know, what kind— on the reverse, the flip side of that, what are some of the first signs you see that causes you to light up and say, I, you know, what I was going to ask you is like with your experience, you know, instincts, are, you know, the instincts that you've accumulated over the years are incredibly valuable, where you can kind of smell somebody who is likely, not, you know, it's not infallible, but, you know, it's like success gives us signals. You know, people are gonna be successful, situations are gonna be successful. They give off a smell, an aroma, a sign. You know, great events cast shadows beforehand. What, when you come across something new or a person new or a company that's new, what are signs that get you excited? It's like, I think this is something I want to be involved in.

And look, the first thing I look at for any lending decision or investing decision is I always look at the downside first. So I know this isn't a direct answer to your question yet, but you know, I'm always looking at downside. And obviously, as Warren Buffett's famous for saying, you know, there's only two rules in investing. Rule number one is don't lose money. Rule number 2 is never forget rule number 1. And that really is so, so, so true because when you lose massive chunks of capital, it's very hard to make that back. You can't make it back as quick as you can lose it. Not if you're doing normal business. Obviously, if you're taking wild risks, you can. When you look at crypto traders and commodities traders or something where they can go broke yesterday and then go and make millions again tomorrow. But that's not the normal world. I mean, that's when someone's doing highly leveraged, high-risk trades, et cetera. But when you're talking about, let's say, a normal investing business, PE lending business, where you might be making 10, 12, 15, even 20% returns, as nice as those returns are, when you start losing huge chunks of capital, it's very difficult and slow to catch that back up again. And you're also doing it from a diluted capital base, so it's going to take you even longer. So the first thing I'm always looking at is how do we not lose money? Is there, if I'm lending, is the security in place that's going to give us the money back if it goes wrong? And if I'm investing, what's my downside if this business doesn't work out? — Now, very often that downside may still be a 100% loss because if it goes wrong, it goes wrong. Well, in that case, then I just need to decide how much of a 100% loss am I comfortable with and how can I protect things along the way? So I guess that's my starting point. Then what am I looking at or what are my red flags with the people I'm involving in? Discussed a minute ago about the rich man's curse or the successful businessman's curse that we think we can do everything. Right. Thing. The flip side of that is, you know, having had some success in something, you know, obviously does show that there is a level of skill and ability and grounding there. So, you know, I like to see people that have performed already. That doesn't necessarily mean they have to have had a different successful business in the past, but, you know, the business that they've got now, as a bare minimum, needs to have some track record of performance, you know.

Yeah.

And again, these are all my things, by the way. And I think that's very important when it comes to making any lending or investing decisions that you've got to do what suits you. So for example, I don't like startup businesses. Everything I'm talking about to you now is about established businesses, is about security, et cetera. There's plenty of people out there who make fortunes from investing in starting businesses, so from investing in startup businesses. Businesses. But, you know, there's plenty— I said I don't like this sector. There's plenty of people who make fortunes from that sector. You know, there's probably no bad businesses and no bad sectors. I mean, maybe there are if you're trying to do it on a macro level, but on a micro-ish level, you know, to go and be able to make, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, few million dollars, you can probably— and, you know, anybody can probably do that. Well, rather, somebody can do that from every business. But But everybody can't do that from every business. And that's the key, really, that the right-shaped pegs are in the right holes.

This has been so much fun. I'm running out of time, but I've got to ask you about your— we're wrapping up the public portion of the podcast, and you have a podcast, and it looks like you have a lot of fun on your podcast. What got you started on that? How long have you been doing it and why are you continuing to do it?

So, I've been podcasting long before it was fashionable. I mean, I'm about 7 or 8 years in now, probably 700+ episodes. And originally, it wasn't even a podcast. I was just making some content to produce online, making some YouTube videos because I wanted some content, and then ended up stripping off the audio and sticking it on Spotify. And next thing you know, I was a podcast host. Listen, I always say everybody should have a podcast. It opens doors for me that would never have been opened in any other way. It's made me some great relationships. Some of my best business opportunities have come from podcasting. Some of my closest friends I've met from doing podcasts. So I always say that even if not one person ever watches one episode of my podcast, I've met a great guest and somebody who Googles me, then sees that podcast and it puts me in a whole new light and air of credibility. So, podcasting is the number one tool for networking, for opportunity growth.

Yeah. And you go back to your beginning with your title, Stripping Off with Matt Haycox.

Sure.

And so, have you had that title the whole time?

No, I haven't. I've got two podcasts actually. One's called Stripping Off with Matt Haycox and one's called No Bollocks with Matt Haycox. Stripping Off is, let's say, deep dives with celebrities. I mean, it used to be called The Matt Haycock Show, but I guess, you know, there's too many, you know, generic show names out there. And Stripping Off was— it's a bit of a play on words because it's stripping off because we strip that guest down and we get underneath the skin. The flip side is I'm well known for taking my clothes off in many different locations and, you know, posting pictures of my naked body Awesome. And then the other podcast, No Bollocks with Matt Haycox, that's deep dives into business. It's tactical business questions with talented business people, but it's no bollocks because we just get on with it and cut the fat and get direct to the mincemeat. Whereas most content online now, maybe not most, but vast amounts of content online. It's just, it's just young marketeers who are very good at marketing but not very good at anything else, talking absolute shite for clicks. So—

And so thank goodness you're doing what you're doing, because I know people are getting— because the thing is, Matt, when you have the experience yourself, you're able to get useful information from your guests, you know. And I could tell that from, from going through and looking at your content and everything. I hit click, I'm a subscriber now to your podcast. I didn't know there was two, but I'll go looking for the Nobolix because I know there's a lot of great content there. Is there anything you'd like to give to wrap up this portion, public portion of the thing? What would you like to give as a final word to the people who've stayed with us this long?

I think, just thanks for listening, and if you take anything from me, my biggest mistakes in the early days were because I didn't have someone to show me the path. And there's this romanticized image of finding your own way and of failing before you win, which it works and it can be done, but I also know that I could have shortcut my journey and made my journey a lot less painful if I'd have had my hand held earlier along the way. And you know what I'm a massive advocate of now in my later life is mentors and people helping me get to where I want to be quicker. Because the reality is there's always somebody out there where you want to be. And my advice would be find those people who are where you want to be and go and get them to help you go on that journey. And that'll probably mean paying them. But listen, anytime I have a problem now, I find someone who is much better at me than it, who is already achieving what I would love to achieve, and I knock on that door and I say, "Let me pay you some money and please, please, please shortcut my learning curve." And that's my biggest piece of advice to anyone.

I couldn't agree more. That's the kind of conversations we have inside of our Big Hitters. And we believe the world needs more winners. The world needs more Big Hitters. Others because positive ripples happen out in the flow of life when people do big things. And so I'm excited for your impact, excited for your podcast, and excited for your business. If you make sure, folks, you follow up with Matt on all the platforms out there. And if you're looking for, you know, he's got the Matt Haycock group. And if you're looking for help on investing, strategic restructuring, deal restructuring, high-impact investments, contact him. The man knows the game. Thanks so much, Matt. This has been fantastic.

Thanks a lot for having me, buddy. Pleasure to meet you, Larry Weidel.

That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, do me a favor, share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying, and there's no standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.