The Formula You Need To Get Your Finances On Track

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm super pumped for today's guest. This guy has done a lot and we're gonna learn a lot today. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss, I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Six Sigma Scott Todd from Scott Todd landmodo.com and most importantly, not automating your craigslist in your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com/land geek. Scott Todd, how are you? Wait, Scott, you're on mute.

I hit the button. Sorry. I'm great. How are you?

I'm good, I'm good. You want to talk to Matt Monero?

I do want to talk to Matt.

I really want to talk to Matt. Alright, let's talk to Matt. So in case you don't know who Matt Monero is, Matt launched his first company, Commercial fleet financing, in 1995 with just a phone, a folding table, in the unyielding confidence of a single client, a trucker. Now let's fast forward 23 years and CFS has funded over a billion dollars in transportation equipment with annual business of 150 million-plus. He's got more than 10,000 clients and has become one of the largest independently owned transportation equipment finance companies in America. You know what, Matt might like Geek Pay, by the way. Anyways, more than that, he's helping other people. He's written two cool books. The first in 2015. The Grit in his latest book, which I'm really excited about, you Need More Money. Launched in March of this year and published by Penguin Random House. Matt Monero, you got a lot going on, man.

I have way too much going on. Absolutely. It's a crazy schedule right now, but I'm happy to be here. Welcome. Thank you guys. Yeah, yeah.

So Matt, let's just rewind the tape a bit. And before we get into your entrepreneurial journey, why on earth would you write the book? You need more money.

Look, the genesis of the book is the story of my brother in law, John, my wife's only brother. And he was a wonderful guy. He was diagnosed at age 46 with stage four cancer and he died almost one year to the day and left a wife and four children with no health insurance, no life insurance and 100 bucks in the bank. And I wrote a story about that to try to purge, you know, this just incredible pain that my wife was going through and I was going through. And our families were going through and it got picked up by a company in New York who sold the rights to Penguin and I ended up having to write a book. So the genesis is very personal. It was my family's story of a tragedy that happened to us that because of the deal I end up realizing that, you know, it's an epidemic in America. The downside is, and the personal downside to it all, outside of the issues with our family, because is that I should have seen that. I mean we look at credit applications every single day. I look at thousands of trucking company and trucker credit applications every day. I didn't need to go through this strategy to see what's going on in America. I was looking at it every day, but I wasn't resident, it wasn't connecting to me of I should be helping these people fix their money situation until it happened to me and my wife and our family. And now it's my purpose.

So Matt, I mean if I go on, you know, let's just pick on Dave Ramsey, right? You know, there's, there's all these guys out there and gals out there, Suze Orman talking about money and money and investing money, saving money, money strategies, getting out of debt. Where do you differentiate yourself and all that noisy money information which apparently no one's actually executing on?

Well, look, I mean I'm not, I'm not here to say that what they do isn't good because it is. I do like your point though of, well, how is it really working? Or is it just selling books and products? Right. I don't know. But my experience and my money road to go from nothing to maybe something financially is what I talk about in the book. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what investment strategy you pick. I don't care whether you buy real estate or you buy annuities or you buy stocks or mutual funds. It's irrelevant to me. My whole thing started because of an understanding that I had this tremendous responsibility to take care of myself first. I think a lot of people lead incorrectly, gentlemen. I think they think that you have to help others before know you can achieve what you want. I'm a very selfish guy and I say I couldn't disagree with that more. You need to help yourself and your family first before you ever think about helping somebody else. And so I take a very greedy, self serving approach to the money side of things, which is make as much money as you possibly can by doing it in what I call the roadmap. This formatted method that I took and then go into the marketplace and see who you can help. And isn't it funny how it's actually played out like that for me? Right. I didn't. I didn't go to help anybody. I only went to help myself and my employees and my clients and my vendors. And now I end up with a book that I hope will help hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people wake up to the fact that they are deeply, deeply behind financially. Like, horrendously behind. That's the thing that Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman never talk about. They never give you any milestone. Dave Ramsey says you need $1,000 in your emergency fund. Well, come on, guys. What's $1,000 in your emergency fund going to do? Really? Really. What is $1,000 in your emergency fund? What emergency is it going to help you with? Right, right. It's old data. It's small data. It's dated stuff. And I hope that my book is not to debunk what they do, because I think both of them have an amazing process. It's just a little bit old.

Yeah. Yeah. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

Well, I mean, I think I. Matt, I think you said when you, like. I think you hit something on the head, right?

Like you.

You said you got to take care of yourself and your family first. And it's amazing how many people will drop everything to go help somebody instead of, like, helping themselves first. I mean, it's great there's. I mean, it's great to, like, help people out, but even when you're on an airplane, they tell you put your mask on first before you try to help somebody else put theirs on. And they don't do it to be selfish. But you can't possibly help anybody when, like, if you're not alive to help somebody. And I mean, like, I think that it's so important. I mean, I tell my kids all the time, my wife and kids, we'll go out on our boat and, like, we've. We've seen situations like maybe, like, you know, things where other boat. Boaters need help or whatever. And I'm like, look, if we ever come across a situation where someone's in the water and we need to help them, the very first thing we do is put on our life vest because we can drown in the process of helping them. You got to take care of yourself first. And it's not being mean. It's just being the reality.

I think you almost have to redefine what selfish is. I think if you're not taking Care of your own family for the sake of helping somebody else. I think you're being selfish to your own family. And so, you know, it's a big, it's a big issue, I think, of what's going on here. The reality is that I saw it firsthand, gentlemen, of what happens when you don't take care of yourself financially. And I had already vowed long before that that I wasn't going to let that happen to my family. And now I vow that I'm going to help millions of people not let that happen to them. And it's so easily fixable, gentlemen. I mean, literally one of the biggest concepts in the book is that regardless of the income that you're making.

Even.

If you're making 40 grand a year, 50 grand a year, and you're saying to stuff, I don't have any money for insurance and all that sort of stuff. No, no, you do have money for insurance. For $50 a month, my brother in law could have had $100,000 term life insurance policy and the entire outcome of the tragedy would have been totally different for $50 a month. And so the concept is, first things first, go buy some insurance. I, I don't care where you buy it. I don't care whether you buy whole or you buy universal or you buy term, it doesn't matter. But today, spend 50 bucks a month and get some doggone insurance to fix the problem. You will sleep better for $50 a month. And I don't care how much money you make, you can afford 50 bucks a month to get yourself 100 or $200,000 worth of life insurance. And that problem has already been fixed.

Yeah. Matt, how difficult is it to get people? Because I think it's a mental block. Right. There's this great quote about people that have people that build houses don't have an emotional issue with hammers. They use it as a tool. But people have these emotional issues with money, even though it's really, it's just a tool. How do you help people kind of break out of their own sort of tapes? Like, you know, money doesn't grow on trees or you know, we don't waste money or what do you need that for kind of thing.

Penny saved is a penny earned.

Penny saved. Penny. Penny earned.

Yeah. I mean, I think you have to get really straight up with it. I mean really, where are you in the financial journey? Right. And I always wonder where do I get that information from? I'm not actually sure who gives you milestones? I give a lot of milestones in the book of where I think someone should be at certain age brackets. But there has to be this massive level of truth, and I call it living in false positive. Falseposit. Big concept in the book where we actually fool ourselves to thinking that we are doing better than we really are. And of course, we see it in diets and even in physical fitness. I mean, hell, I'm £300. I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger for goodness sake, right? But I go to the doctor and he says, how many 80 year olds who are £300 do you know? The answer is none. You don't live till you're 80 when you're £300. But guess what? I still think I look like Arnold when I look at myself in the mirror, right? Massive false positive. I never did that with my money, but boy, do I do it in other areas of my life. And so if we can get legitimate and honest about our money situation and truthful about it and where we really are, then that to me is the first step.

Does it take another person to help you with that or can you do it yourself?

I think it often takes a tragedy. Think about it. How many? I just finished Penn Teller's book Presto. Have you heard of this book? You know, Penn Teller is the magician.

I know Penn Teller. They're amazing, but I didn't know they had a book out.

He just lost £100. He lost £100 in three months. And he wrote a book about it called Presto. And it's this crazy funky diet which he talks a lot about how he was lying to himself, just like I've lied to myself about physical fitness too. And it's really, really powerful. But the only reason that he changed at 59 years old was because they said, you're going to die and you should get your stomach stapled. And he being the person that he is, the meticulous person, he said, well, geez, if I'm going to be crazy enough to get my stomach stapled, maybe I'd be crazy enough to go out and lose £100 in 90 days. And that's what he did. It was the better of the two evils, right? And so tragedy triggers change. Very little change triggers very little change.

Interesting. Scott. Todd.

No, I think I can relate to Matt because, like, I was overweight. Still think I am a little bit, but whatever. I was overweight and like, I would say to my wife, I'd be like, man, I'm looking pretty good right now. A couple pounds. And she look, she's like, I love you. Yeah, but in my mind I thought I was thin, but I was like £250. More like 245, OK? And I look back at the pictures now, I'm like, holy cow, what happened? And now I look at myself from, like, even just a few years ago, I'm like, I was so thin then. What happened?

But if you relate it back to money, though, my friend, think about it. Because you can go from a poor mindset to now having money, but yet you still operate in a poor mindset, which means you never have the guts to pull the trigger on the investment that should be pulled the trigger on. Right? That looks good. We should do that deal. But yet, if we can't get that head cheese, it's the same thing. And with all due respect, you look very fit in our video today. But you still may look at yourself as a fat guy, right? It's huge, man. This head cheese, these lies, this craziness that we tell each other, it impacts all our lives. I'm just talking about in a book about money, but boy, you know, do I see it in all these other areas, this thing called falsepositive, where we think we're doing better than we really are.

So, Matt, which is more important, getting our expenses in order or making a lot more money?

100,000% you have to make more money. No, there's no combination. It's 100%. We have an earning problem. Most people do not know how to go into the marketplace and earn. Therefore they spend all their time worried about their expenses. It's absolutely the wrong mindset because it has never been easier to make the kind of money to fuel your lifestyle by design. Another big concept in the book. You got to figure out what kind of life you want to lead. Right? I do not argue that you need a private jet. I just argue that you need to take the time to figure out what. What is the life that you want to lead, figure out what math that equates to and then go into the marketplace and get it. So I don't even talk for a second about cutting expenses. I just talk about understanding where your money's going.

I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to have to ask you anyway. What is some of the worst advice you hear or see given on money?

Well, I think probably one of the worst pieces of advice about money is that debt is bad. It's just not true. Bad debt is bad debt, but debt that allows you to leverage someone else's money in an investment that you've done the research and analysis that says it's a good investment. That's the key part. Have you done the research and analysis, right? Or did you just take your friend's word for it? Have you really understood through research and analysis the investment then Debt is not a bad investment. In fact, it's the tool that has made probably the richest people on the planet through leverage. So I think that's a bad one. I also think from a human element, I think especially in an entrepreneurial world. And I was given this advice from people that I thought were mentors early on, which was, can't trust your employees. Only one hand works the register, right? Only one hand signs, Only you sign the checks. Who's signing the checks? Then? If I'm out, if I'm out making more money and there's checks back at the office that need to be signed and I can't trust anybody and I can't. No one else can sign checks and I'm the only one who hands them. It's so stupid. You have to build a team of trusted people around you. Whether they work for you or they're just advisors or they're vendors or they're clients, you got to build. You have to have people around you that support your vision and your mission. And those are just terrible data points that I got. Don't trust anybody. All debt is bad. One hand works the register. Your employers are going to steal from you. You're going to get screwed. So guess what? Stay a one person cabinet maker. I mean, that sounds like a dream, doesn't it?

You know what's interesting is I've got a buddy. I probably doesn't listen to this podcast because he'll know, he'll know I'm talking about him. But he, he has a store in the, in a bad area, like a grocery store. And he's got a big team. But like, he's like, you know, people steal, the customers steal. And he can't grow because he has to be there watching, watching, watching, watching. And it's, it's, it's heartbreaking.

Mark, my mindset changed on this. I heard an interview with a guy named J.B. hunt. If you've seen his trucks going up.

And down, everybody knows J.B. hunt billionaire, right?

And J.B. hunt said when he was talking, someone asked him the question of why did you start with one truck? And so many other people start with one truck and yet you have 10,000 trucks. And the other person still has one truck. And he said, because I saw far more risk operating one truck than I did operating 10,000 trucks. It's the same thing. Why is there an Albertsons or a Ralph's or a Tom Thumb or an Amazon or a Walmart or a Target? And yet your friend has one. He sees greater risk. Why does some person have one flip house and some people have 100? Why do you have. Have multiple pieces of land? And some people don't ever pull the trigger on one because they see more risk in pulling the trigger on one than you do seeing it on hundreds.

Well, I'm a deal junkie, Matt. I mean, I need my fix.

There it is. There's no risk in it for you, but the risk is gone because you did the research and analysis to make yourself an expert in the space. Isn't that reasonable to say no?

Absolutely. And I. And you become. After you've done, you know, so many deals and they work out, you sort of become bulletproof to it. Like, you're like, I love this. And even if one doesn't work out, which is, you know, it's really rare if you buy it 25, 30 cents a dollar, you have to pull the trigger. It's like I'm losing money by not doing it, actually.

What is your opinion of leverage on that? If you're buying at 20 or 30 cents on the dollar, do you care whether there's leverage against that?

Absolutely not. I love leverage.

Okay, there you go. I mean, really, if you're $0.70 in the plus on it going in on day one, and even in the worst place, you're still 20% on it. You're 20 or 30% leverage against it is a smart play. It just. There's no risk in the leverage.

There's no risk. And I mean, honestly, like.

I use.

My credit card for everything. I use American Express's money, like, kidding. But, you know, but that's, you know, that's more like a consumer kind of a fraud deal. But. So I don't use a debit card or anything like that. But like Scott and I talk about all the time, we probably have too much cash sitting in the bank. We got to keep deploying the money. Deploying the money. Money and in combination with leverage, right, Scott?

Yeah, I would say that. You know, like, I think it's so funny, Mark, because I see so many things that people, like, people think about. I think I see this in flight school. I see it when they go to list their land or sell their land. They think, okay, I bought A piece of property. Now, I got this one piece, and I've got to sell this one piece. And when you just think about just principles in play, we'll go to the J.B. hunt example, trucking example. The fact is that that one truck breaks down and, man, the guy's out of business. Versus if he has, you know, 10 trucks, well, two, because of the 80, 20 principle. Two of those 10 trucks are actually going to be making a boatload of money because of the driver, because of the route, because of whatever. Versus, you know, like the one guy who's sitting there with his broken truck. And now multiply that by a thousand or ten thousand or whatever the number is. You take that. And I see the same thing happen with people buying land. They'll say, I just want to buy this one piece of property. I want to sell this one piece of property. But I can tell you, like, when I look at the listings on Land Moto, the people that are getting, like, leads off of land Moto, guess what? They don't have just one property that's like waiting for lightning to strike. They've got, you know, the number one guy in the last week had. Has over 20 properties listening Moto. He's pulling leads like crazy. It's because he's attracting it. It's because it's a numbers game. Right. And so he's got more and more and more and more and more. And so then the deck starts to get stacked in its favor. And I think it's the same thing with money. I mean, this equates back over to the money. You start deploying that money, you start making money, and then the money just kind of pulls itself in. It's like a magnet, as opposed to let me just hold on tight. And I don't want to buy my soda because I want to hang on to that one single dollar that's not going to go out and generate the money that I need.

Right, right. I mean, you know, getting back to investments, Matt, what is the best or most worthwhile investment you've ever made? It could be an investment of money, time, energy, or something else.

Yeah, I mean, for me, there's no question I'm a junkie for information. I never really felt like I had a mentor my whole life, whether it was at home or on the field or in business, I never really did. So I had to turn to books and tapes. My investment in my own head to re record the tapes that I had been brought up with has been the greatest investment that I've ever done. As far as financial investment, there's absolutely no question the greatest investment I ever did was the starting of my business at about year 15. Right. The first 10 years of my 23 years in business were rough. The next five were rougher because that was the scale time. That's when we began to grow and that's when all my shortcomings began to come to reality. Right. I was being promoted to my level of incompetence, like year after year after year. And the last eight have been just magical, just the, just the most magical entrepreneurial experience. But what people need to understand is if you run the percentages on that, you know you're talking over 65% of the time was extremely difficult.

Yeah, absolutely. So what are some of the most gifted or recommended books that you offer friends and family?

Yeah. The number one book that I have is the 10x Rule by Grant Cardone, who's become a friend of mine. That book changed everything for me. And the reason, about six years ago, it changed everything for me because it allowed me for the first time to really understand who I'd been chasing all these years. I was so ferociously competitive and I was competing against everybody else and I never understood, it was never taught to me, never even talked to me that I was to be competing against who I'm supposed to be. And to me, that's the greatest takeaway. The 10x rule is you're competing against your own potential. I was competing against others. And once I really absorbed that, then everything just, I got happier, my relationships got better, I was a better boss. The company took off and all that sort of stuff, all that nasty burn, all that head cheese burned off real fast for me. And then it was just really chasing dreams. And that's, that's, that's where I'm at. I'm in this amazing, blissful spot of just everything I do is a chase of my dream.

I love it. I love it. Well, Matt, we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to put you on the spot and ask you for your tip of the week. I think your mentorship has been incredible and I can't wait to read the book. Thanks. But what would you recommend as a. Maybe another book or a website? Some other advice that's actionable to the auto passive income listeners? They can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

I'm going to give them a formula. It's called the 1, 3, 5, 10 formula. Here's how it plays out in your 20s, you should have a net worth and assets minus liabilities of one times your salary. In your 30s, that number should go to three times your salary. In your 40s, that number should go to five. And in your 50s, that number should go to 10. So the audience can take their own annual income, multiply time that formula based on their age bracket that they're in, and begin to figure out, are they on track or are they off track? I was looking for that my whole life. What is, Am I good? Do I have enough? Am I on track? Am I off track? Who's going to. How do we know no one's going to tell you that? You know, your father's not even going to talk to you about money for goodness sake, right? My book talks about the 1, 3, 5, 10 formula. Run the formula and see where you are.

I love it. I love it. Scott, Todd, what's your tip of the week? Marty, type one to be.

That's tough. But I do think this is a good one. Ready? It's a book that I've absolutely enjoyed and I think that everybody should go listen to it. It is Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. Donald's just an incredible marketer and really gives some great insight into how you should really build your company's brand. It's not the way that you necessarily think it is. It's all about branding and positioning and, you know, basically it's, it's, it's a great book, Mark. Check it out.

I'm getting it right now. I'm going to download. Matt, is your book on Audible?

It is, yeah. It's on, it's anywhere books are sold, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, in the stores at Barnes and Noble across the country. And then I read the book on Audible. So, yeah, you can download it right on Audible.

Oh, I love your voice. I'm gonna get the audio. Is it okay to get the audio or do you recommend the actual book?

Either one is fine. Either one is fine. I think we actually have more reviews on Audible than we do on the hard copy. But, and that's funny, you know, the publisher never even really cared about the, the Audible version. Can you believe that? I hardly ever read. I almost only listen to books.

See, yeah, same with me. And I just finished my audio version of Dirt Rich.

Shameless Plug Killer.

So, speaking of Shameless plugs, I just want to remind everybody, today's podcast is sponsored by the one software program that Matt Monero should be using to actually automate his, his sales with his truckers. And, and it's financing called GeekPay IO. It does all the amortization. It is a one time set and free system. It takes out the money via ach. If the ACH fails, it'll take the credit card on file. So it lowers your default rate by at least 50%. They can log in. No more. Hey Matt, what's my current balance? They can log in and see it. No more calling. Hey Matt, how to make a prepayment this month? They can log in and do it. You can do it for them. They can just email you. Charge me an extra thousand dollars this month. And then for anyone who's in equipment financing, Land notes. This is a one time set and forget system is the best thing on the market. And the best thing about it is your first note is free. Just check it out. Go to the landgeek.com geekpay Also, hopefully you're getting a lot of value on this podcast. Please do Scott and I three little favors. Just subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support the landgeek.com and we are going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit course. So please do that. Matt, are we good?

We're great, guys. It's a pleasure. I love talking to you. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Scott.

Thank you, Scott, are we good?

We're good.

All right.

Thank you guys. Pleasure to see you again.

Thanks, Matt. Let freedom ring. Matt's like, oh, gosh, was that cheesy?

He missed the old days. So that's good.

Yeah, it's good. We used to try to do that in unison. Matt.

I like it.

It was bad.

Hey, Scott, how much did you lose? How much weight did you lose?

Let's see. I went from 245 down to 177.

Wow.

And then I've gained, I've gained 15 pounds back. And I told my wife, I'm like, man, I just need to go back down. But I don't know.

That's powerful, man. Congratulations. You'll love this book called Presto by Penn Jillette. He reads it too. He's really entertaining. It was a great, great book.

I'm getting it. I appreciate it.

Okay, If Scott loses 100 pounds, man, he's going to be like, anorexic.

I don't want to lose £100. I just need 20, Mark. 20.

He's going to look like Karen Carpenter.

You're just, you're just, you know, you're afraid. You're afraid of, like, losing me, Mark.

I am. I'M very afraid he's going to wither away. We're going to go to boot camp. I'm going to like, hey, what are we having for dinner? And Scott's been like, I'm just going to Brussels sprouts.

That's what Penn Jillette has to eat. Now he says that spinach is cheating to him. Now he says it's mustard greens, chards, all that sort of stuff. Only he says so he, by the way, he lost that weight two weeks eating nothing but potatoes and it changed his taste buds forever. He said. So if you guys get the book, you'll love it. I'm telling you, it was a really awesome, awesome.

Listen, I'm definitely getting it. And then my wife's me, like, what happened to you?

All right, guys, great to be with you all. Thank you all.

Thanks, Matt.

Hey, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.