Pete Matthew: Meaningful Money Brings About Wealth And Freedom

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Audio Transcription Of The Pete Matthew Interview

Intro [0:00]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK, David Ralph.

David Ralph [0:24]
Yes. Good morning, my young friends. Thank you so much for being here on another episode of Join Up Dots. Yeah, do you need another episode? Of course you do. And today’s one is one I actually woke up in a little bit excited because this man is is he’s a mentor to me and he should be a mentor to every one of us out there from the UK to America to Bora Bora to anywhere that has money issues. Now he is a guest joining us on the show and we literally he needs no introduction. Not if you’re in the world of saving money investing wisely and making the most of your cash. fact he was on the show back a couple of years ago, beaming in from his mansion in Cornwall now. He’s a financial planner, a podcast or a video blogger, social media trainer, and managing director of Jackson’s wealth management and best of all, he can teach us how to take control of our cash in ways that simplify and are quite simply life changing. As he says I’m a certified financial planner and Chartered Financial Planner providing fee based holistic financial planning advice in Penzance West combo. I’m also I don’t like this bit, an award winning podcast. I’ve never won anything. I’ve never even won a bloody swimming badge, but he’s got an award and he’s a video blogger to now his passion is to spread the word that anyone can take control of their personal finances. I’m fulfilling this passion by my Financial Education website and podcast meaningful money through video podcasting and social media and reaching thousands of people every week with my simple financial planning message. I set out to provide simple accessible financial planning information to the masses, and decided that video might be a good way to do this and through trial and error, built a site or a basic instructional video. Now through my work with this site, I was also awarded IFA is a life social media financial advisor of the Year award in 2010. I also wonder professional advisor financial education ward in both 2011 and 2012. And if that’s not enough, he also received the Scottish widows award for industry innovation in 2014. And was also named UK podcast of the Year in 2013. Right and now he’s bringing all that information into one place and make it easier than ever to get out of debt and increase their personal wealth with the meaningful Academy split into three parts financial foundations being built first, when building worth and enjoying your money coming soon. So quick and painless things we can do to get our finances control. And with the effort it takes to build a platform like yours. Does he ever come close to burn out and content indecision? Well, let’s find out with the one and only the money Messiah, the financial freedom fighter, but debt destroyer, the one and only Martin Lewis no I mean, Pete Matthew

Pete Matthew [3:23]
What an intro. Nobody does intros lucky, my friend. Nobody does intros like you. Great to be here. David. You’re

David Ralph [3:29]
right. It is lovely. It’s lovely. And can I ask Pete Matthew, can I ask you you saw my nipples earlier? And I’m worth it looking good for a man of my age.

Pete Matthew [3:40]
Yeah, I saw him for a brief second because my retinas dissolved. And now they were looking good. My friend for a man, you’re, I do

David Ralph [3:48]
apologise. It’s very hot in the United Kingdom at the moment. And as podcasters we can’t afford things like air conditioning and fans, we have to just go through the pain barrier to bring it to you don’t.

Pete Matthew [4:00]
Yeah, we showed there. It’s boiling in here is all I’m in the shorts and a T shirt very seriously thinking about taking the T shirt off. So it’s good job. It’s audio only. This is not a mansion, by the way. I’m talking to you from a cupboard. But you know,

David Ralph [4:12]
Yeah, I know. But I’ve seen I’ve seen where you live. I’ve been I’ve been going into sort of financial advisors net worth and your your album. Now the thing I remember you being on the show last time, and it is stuck with me. And it’s funny, every podcast episode doesn’t stay with me. Unless every now and again, something hits home. And for some reason, and I remember you saying that you went to a financial conference. And as she was pulling up, you saw all these financial advisors with their BMW, Mercedes. And you were thinking, well, that’s not very good. You’re taking a loan out perfect. How are you providing good financial advice? And that was kind of the starting point to it. Oh, do you look back at those days and think, you know, well, things have moved on. And people are really reclaiming their financial control over people still making the same bizarre things by getting out car loans and stuff where quite simply they can’t afford it.

Pete Matthew [5:07]
A lot of people are still doing that, I do think there is a beginning of a ground swell to taking control of finances, just as there has been an increasing sort of focus on taking better care of our health through eating and exercise and things like that. And if you compare it to where we were in, you know, like 1985, or 1990, or something, you know, you see the kids these days coming out of college, and they’re all ripped, right? Because all boys are spending time in the gym stuff. And the girls, you know, they’re all looking a lot better than I did when I was 1617. And so I think there is a bit removed towards that. And I think that is now beginning to happen with the with the area of financial sense, financial management as well, which I’m very encouraged by a large part of that is due to what’s often called the fire movement, financial independence movement, which is massive in the US really starting to ignite over here too. So I’m excited by it’s extremely positive, I think for the future.

David Ralph [6:06]
Because I had a guy on the show recently, choose f5 choose financial independence, and he was a lovely guest. And at the beginning, I said to him, yeah, I’m financially independent. He said, Well, that’s brilliant, good on you. And as we started talking, I thought, Oh, I’m not financially independent at all. Because I actually still have to work for a living, I have to do things. Is that something that we should be aware of? But literally, we do have that opportunity to be purely financially independent by buying pieces of land or renting out properties? Or is it all about as we talk about passive income online businesses, training courses and stuff?

Pete Matthew [6:44]
Well, I think is probably a bit of all sorts, it’s certainly more complex than it than it most people might think it would be. I’m actually, as it happens about four hours from now interviewing Brad and Johnson from choose f5. Myself,

David Ralph [6:58]
how are you connected? That

Pete Matthew [7:02]
that’s because you introduced me to them for which I’m very grateful, sir. So I’m looking forward to that those guys are prime movers over there, along with like, Mr. Money moustache, in that whole area, essentially, financial dependence is really about choice, you work out of choice rather than necessity. So passive income, the whole Smart Passive income, Pat Flynn, all that sort of stuff that I mean, certainly Pat Flynn would never suggest that it isn’t still work, you know, even passive income requires some upkeep. Yeah. But really, for me, the definition of financial independence is not having to work because either you have other income streams, or you have sufficient capital from which to draw to sustain your day to day lifestyle. So there’s a whole load of nuance to it. And there’s a million ways you can provide either that passive income or you can amass the capital that you need. So as ever these things as a detail underneath the headlines right?

David Ralph [7:56]
Now, I am not a financial guy, I kind of control I’ve got to two for now, really. But for the wider sense. I wasn’t an opportunity monkey picking the day I used to go to work. And then they’d give me the money. I didn’t even query that I would sorting out the right tax. It was just what I got and away away. Since I’ve become entrepreneurial, it’s a different ballgame. And you know, I’m always got a spreadsheet where I’m moving 20% here and 20% there, and I’m keeping base and I’m keeping but do you think that literally people should be trained how to manage their money before they go to work? It should be a prime part, because I think Martin lewis is very big on getting kids to understand that they’ve got the financial control before anybody is making money, do what you want with it.

Pete Matthew [8:48]
I for sure. And I think the sweet spot for doing that is sort of tertiary education. So after GCSE, you know, with we have to stay in some kind of full time education now whether it’s sort of a you know, college vocational stuff or a levels or whatever. And I think there ought to be a mandatory element of basic money management at that point, because even then, you could argue that the banks have already got the got their claws into us. I don’t know about you, David. But I was a Gryphon saver, right. So I was a Midland Bank, customer, Dean, I had the blue binder, and all the sort of the action file, it was called all the cool stuff that you wanted to have as a kid. And of course, I still bank with first direct, which is a subsidiary of HSBC, which bought middle and bank so I’ve been with that bank now for 30 years, because they nabbed me when I was a teenager. And we need to help kids understand that this is a market and they need to shop around, and not just sort of drift into whatever financial arrangements they end up in. But ultimately, managing money isn’t difficult. It’s it’s about understanding a few basics well enough, so that you can avoid the pitfalls, things like, you know, easy day. We need to understand basic day to day money management, we call it budgeting now, word that anybody likes to talk about. But it’s really, really important. And it doesn’t need to be involved. It doesn’t need to be challenging and difficult. It just needs to be put in early enough. So I mean, I have zero financial education from either school, college, all my parents, but I’ve made sure I’ve made the difference with my own kids. But of course, a lot of kids don’t get that at home. So I would love to see some kind of mandatory, even if it’s like one half term focused weekly lessons that every 16 to 18 year old goes through. I just think that would potentially transform the country Transform, transform the economy, because it would reduce our dependence on debt, and just put us in better financial shape as as a country.

David Ralph [10:46]
Now I remember back in the day, my first bank was not West and I actually worked for NatWest birth for 10 years, and fixed Well, it was the pigs Yeah, it was Woody, Annabel Maxwell, Lady Hillary and send the fan your Yeah, they came up. David of pigs. And I think woody was the hard one to get. He was the one with the bow tie at the end. But it used to encourage kids to save to get this set. But as soon as I left my employment with NatWest, I said, why I’m leaving much thank you my bank account. I don’t want people to know how much I’m earning. Of course, I didn’t care anyway. And so I think I’ve been with every single bank. And one of the things that I reference him again, because he is very prevalent in the United Kingdom. But Martin Lewis, who was the financial guy over here, always says, ditch and switch, you know, move around. I’m interested why you’ve stayed for 30 years with the same bank then?

Pete Matthew [11:37]
Because they’ve Well, they served me very well, for the most part up until about three or four years ago, I had basically everything with them. I do have, you know, my mortgage is now with centre there now. And you know, but prior to that my mortgage, so first, all right. And the reason I ditched them in the end was exactly what you’re talking about. They have no loyalty to me, ultimately. Because I rang them because we were moving house, and I needed to borrow less money than I already had on my mortgage over a shorter term, right. So less risk, one would argue for first year at the bank, I spent a half an hour on the phone with them. And I think I needed to borrow some, like 200 grand. And at the end of the thing, this girl said, Well, I’m pleased to tell you, Mr. Matthew, that we’re prepared to lend you 115 or something. And I’m like, What? So is that on top of what I already said, No, no, that’s the total. So I said, that’s the less than I need, despite the fact that you know, I’ve been born or borrow with you for years. And you can see what I earn. It’s plenty, you know, and but the reason this they gave for it was, well, you have all these existing commitments, I said, they are savings and insurance, right. So I’m increasing my, you know, my wealth, my net worth, and my security by paying those monthly commitments is, but they’re a commitment, like, No, I’m not. I’ve just turned them off. No, no, no, no, that didn’t work like that. Then it was just a classic computer says no moment. And so that annoyed me. So I went to see a broker, which I should have done way before that and got much better deal in half the time for Santander, I think. So. You know, inertia is always the main reason. For me, a bank is just a commodity, I just don’t care about it. As long as it does what I need to do, it’s fine. I don’t have any issues with what they know about me. I just figured that’s that’s the way it is. But when it comes to investments and stuff like that, then I’m far more likely to shop around because then it comes down to charges and things like that.

David Ralph [13:29]
So let’s take it into the reason why we’ve got you on here. Because if you’ve been over to Pete Matthew site over the last few years, and you can sort of track it back. And I like to do that being a Do you ever use wayback machine? Yes, Gary in it. It’s scary. Yes. And I was I was teaching somebody the other day how to build a business. And he was saying, Yeah, but my website looks a bit crap. I say you think you’re as good as crap ever look at this. And I was showing him the very first evidence of Join Up Dots. Now I like to go back and I was looking at yours and yours was as it any of them. Now you’ve had a new one bill. It’s really sexy. And what I like about it, and this is why I want people to jump over to your site is there’s a sensible hierarchy of information. And there’s so much information in there. But it’s easy to find. Was that difficult to get set up? Were you sort of looking at it thinking, Oh, my God, I’ve got so much here six years, seven years of material, how to be sensible for people.

Pete Matthew [14:27]
Yeah, nearly 20 years. Well, I did it I did an exercise about three years ago. So up until this last iteration, I’ve always done my website myself, I’m a bit of a nerd. I like to mess around with software and tools and things like that. And I just built it with WordPress picked a theme spent time tweaking it relaunched occasionally. But when I did that, three years ago, I went through every single piece of content, there’s now over 750 posts on the website, went through every single one and re categorise them. And I re categorise them into one of four categories. I’ve now I’ve seen split them just into three, which are getting started building wealth and enjoying your money, really the main three life stages, financial life stages, if you like. So having done that work, believe me, my web designer, this time that goes at Jeremy digital, they were very grateful that I done that because it made life a lot easier for them to build what we call the Learning Centre. And so it’s front and centre there at the top in the in the menu, you can either go straight to podcast, video or articles, but then you go straight, go straight into the Learning Centre, the search thing works like lightning, but you can easily go to whatever your life stages and there’s some sort of initial places to start if you’re in that live stage. So I kind of did the heartbreak three years ago, but I’m not continually building on it. But if those three main life stages are the core of what I do, people should be able to find what they need fairly quickly.

David Ralph [15:49]
Well, they do. And I think it’s one of the nicest sites I’ve seen. And I’m not just saying that because you’re here. But it’s, it’s friendly money. And certainly lot of the financial organisations out there, I would say it’s boring money, I look at it, and I can’t be bothered, just shoot me, you know, but I go over there. And it’s like, it’s like uncle P is smiling at me. He just seems friendly. There’s a picture of him sitting in the betting shop. He’s making the next on there, and everything he’s happy in his world.

Pete Matthew [16:23]
Yeah, well, I’ve got to give credit to to Martin and Lindsey at Jeremy digital, they hope you don’t mind me giving them some No, you go for it. They they are experts, I think in building sites with calls to action, where it’s really clear what you would want a site visitor to do. And that’s either to In my case, I either want them to help themselves, right. That’s the whole point. I mean, for money to equip people to make decisions. I frequently say the most people don’t need to see a financial advisor until they are in the run into retirement, everybody can benefit from seeing an advisor. But not you don’t need to really, if it’s about building wealth, there’s just a few things you need to do consistently. But when you get to that transitional point into financial independence, there is a whole load of choices facing you there. And it’s an unbelievably complex world, a professional advisor can help you there. So I wanted to give people the information they needed to be able to do it themselves, or to get in touch with me to work with my regulated financial planning practice, which as you kind of said earlier on is Jackson’s wealth management. meaningful monies become this beast, it started very much as a hobby, a little bit of a gift to the world. I just love messing around with video cameras and editing software and stuff. And it’s become an incredible marketing engine. Turns out I was doing something called content marketing week before that phrase was even coined it. And so it’s been a real journey. I I feel supremely blessed and bemused by old, but really, it comes down to consistency. Just I mean, you wrote the book on this there. And you know, it’s just doing it week after week, after week, day after day after day. And you know, the better. It’s come in, both to me, professionally and personally. And financially, of course, but, you know, I get emails every day from people telling me how they’ve changed their own financial situation. And that’s ultimately why I do it.

David Ralph [18:11]
Well, you will get an email from me because I’m going to say this to you. But I’ve never said this to you personally. And we talked quite a lot. But I actually, I’m very competitive against you, I look at you, and I look you in the charts. And I think, right, okay, I’ve got to get higher than him, okay, I use you as the benchmark of what can be done. Because what I love about you, and so many people come across to me, and they will hear me say this. And I say, David, David, you do a podcast? Should I do a podcast? And more often than not, I say, No, don’t do a podcast, unless you’ve got a business. If you’ve got a business, Ben put a podcast on it. Because it’s great way for keeping people on your website longer. Building your personal brand, building the loyalty. Now, where I struggled at the beginning was mine was a podcast. And so I had to kind of grow the audience and Ben growth percent of it so that it started to become a sort of money making machine. And it literally killed me. Now with yourself. You’re juggling two things. You This is you but you’ve also you know, like Batman and Bruce Wayne, you got you got two identities? Which one is taking control? Which one is actually the more the one that you want to be known as? Is it Batman or Bruce Wayne?

Pete Matthew [19:27]
We’re going to assign let’s do, let’s say Batman has meaning for money, right? Well, that’s definitely you mean for money as well as partners to do I’m convinced to that. But I love my day job. I’m very fortunate that I am in business with my due to best mates in the world. So we have a blast working together. We challenge each other. And it’s great. So I’m very aware how lucky I am from that school. And I love seeing clients, right, we’ve got clients that we look after three or four generations of a family. And we Jackson’s been around since 1974. So you know, we’ve got very long relationships, I don’t want to just say, you know, Thanks for the memories and go off into the sunset and do me for money, permanently full time. So I am working to get Jackson’s to the place where in the not too distant future. I am literally just seeing clients for maybe a day and a half a week and the rest of my time is spot on to meaningful money. Now I am Fridays where we’re talking right now we’re talking on Friday is meaningful money day for me. So I shut the door, turn the phone off, don’t answer Jackson’s emails, the staff Don’t disturb me all sorts shoot them. And I just record I write, create stuff. And it’s been a godsend. And actually, it’s my colleague chairs, my co director who became aware that I my focus wasn’t really on point, I was neither here nor there. Yeah, I’d be so distracted with me for money stuff while I needed and getting behind on Jackson stuff and vice versa. So he said a lot for God’s sake, just do a day a week a demarcate the lines. So my job now is to try and, you know, make the balance between the two a little bit more balance. So this three days Jackson’s to dating for money, and then maybe the reverse. So

David Ralph [21:00]
how do you come up with your your content, because we’ve Join Up Dots quite? It sounds like I’m making it up as I go along. And quite frankly, I do. I wrote up here, I have one line of an idea. And I turn on the microphone, I start talking and he just comes out to me. And then 30 minutes later I edit it and he’s done boom on there. But I still had that. What should I talk about? What should I talk about today, you know, you are actually having to research and make it sensible, because you know, it’s not just being flippant and throw away and hope inspiring and motivating your match. You know, you’re an adult Pete Matthew, as I say, I’m poopy, you gotta trust uncle Pete Matthew,

Pete Matthew [21:40]
I got to be careful as well, because I’m in a regulated world. So I could potentially get in trouble. If I say the wrong thing. Now, it’s not difficult to stay the right side of those lines, if you know where the lines are. But I do have to be careful. And I’m in all of the fact that you can have basically a one line idea and then achieve what you achieve consistent suddenly, every time you record because I script mine is just the way I think. And it’s important, I think, for people to understand that either works, you know, so I do zero editing, essentially, because I’ve pre scripted. I read my podcasts, but I’ve taught myself to do so in a way that it didn’t sound like it. And, you know, that’s just the way I construct my thoughts. It helps me to be concise. But I mean, you asked, How do you think of stuff to talk about? Or how do you sort of flesh it out? One of the benefits of maintaining my day to day Client Access? You know, the work that I do one on one with clients is that they’re asking me questions all the time, and I’m forever writing them down. Right? Okay, I can answer that on the podcast that will be added into the next season. And for me, shifting to a seasons format has been transformational actually. So I’m in between, I’ve just finished season 14, I’m doing a few weeks of in between episodes now. And I’m starting to plan and write season 15. And that’s worked really well. But it means that right, I’m going to deal with this subject at length over maybe nine or 10 weeks even. And sit down and write it and I mean, I can really, you know, get into some detail. And the audience just loving it the least that’s what they’re telling me. So it’s working well for me, you just got to find out what works for you. And you?

David Ralph [23:11]
Well, it does. And you know, I scroll up and down your ratings and reviews on iTunes. And if no one’s listened to the meaningful money podcast, jump over there and leave him a rating and review not that he needs them. He’s got 16 in the United Kingdom. But this is one of the ones that I I’m going to reference and I hope you don’t mind me referencing this bear in mind that you were saying, you’ve got to be careful what you say. And this was, it said offensive content of a really meaningful money offensive. And I found a recent episode genuinely offensive when Pete Matthew stated he wanted to take a baseball bat. And Steve some heads in after referring to some financial advisors as alpha males and dicks. Mr. Pete Matthew, is it did you do look back on that episode and go actually that was me being my natural self and you’d stepped over? Or do you look at that and go No, actually, I mean that and you can’t please everyone all the time. I was mad,

Pete Matthew [24:10]
and not crazy mad. But I was really hacked off. And two colleagues of mine, I wasn’t able to go this particular conference, but it was right in the middle of probably the biggest scandal in my world for a very long time were some lifelong steel workers in October and South Wales had basically been appallingly advised. And robbed of a lifetime pension savings. Essentially, they don’t they were advised to transfer out of the perfectly good final salary scheme, move into personal pensions with massive numbers, in some cases, seven figure funds, which sounds great. But with horrendous fees being taken by the advisors, terrible commissions, just I mean, just appalling. And I could not believe that in 2017, that could still happen. You know, that’s the sort of stuff that happened in the end, right in the shiny suited white, light coloured shoe wearing advisors world were a lot more professional. Now the regular regulation is much tighter, I just couldn’t believe that it would still happen. And I was hacked off. And I maintain my view that most shouldn’t perhaps in most, many financial advisors are not worthy of the name. Many of them are charlatans, they are still product salesman. And really, we’re in the internet age. Now you do not need a shiny suit salesman to sell you an ISO or a pension, you can just do it yourself. And I spend my life equipping people to do it. But financial planning, which is a really detailed process takes probably four to six months of it’s done right. And a lifetime of sort of updates and reviewing with the client is nothing to do with products. It’s about helping clients achieve their goals and coaching them to keep them on track as they do it. You know, that is what I do. And there is an increasing number of great advisors who are doing that. But there are still too many idiots and I was really happy. And I was really glad to get that review. Because sometimes I think if you’re too vanilla, you’re not really hitting the mark. And sometimes you have to annoy people to make a difference in the world.

I agree

David Ralph [26:12]
with you totally. And I get so many emails from people I could literally do an episode a day on somebody’s not liking the way but I podcast. And that, you know, oh, David, you do? And I actually did a whole show where this one was so strong. I remember it. Yeah, I am. You make me vomit Ralph or something. And I probably get about three of those a week when people connect with me and say, I’ve been listening to your show. And you know, you make it seem so easy. And I always go back and go, Well, you haven’t been been listening to the show, because I don’t make it go easy. And if you reference Episode 400 when I was exhausted, and the burnout episodes and all that kind of stuff, do you have to grow a thick skin for people to be online because I coach people, as I say, I’ve kind of stumbled into this coaching business. And I love it. And one of the things I have to push people into is getting themselves there. And they all want to start this business but be secret scribbles and they say, you know, oh, I’m still at work at the moment. I don’t want my director to know, and I go, he’s not gonna know anyway, you know, he’s my family. Don’t listen to my podcast. So you know, your direct is not going to take any interest at all. But do you have to grow a thick skin to be online nowadays?

Pete Matthew [27:27]
I think it helps, right? I mean, you have a wider reach. And I do I’m quite pleased that I’m not the only one that checks other people’s reviews and standing. You’re currently ahead of me in the standings, which is entirely deserved, of course. But I mean, it’s just, I think, obviously, the wider your reach just its massive, isn’t it the numbers game, you’ll get more idiots getting in touch. Or maybe they’re not ideas, but you’ve just have hit a nerve that they weren’t happy with. And that’s okay, too. You know, I just think there’s never any excuse for in politeness, I always wonder at the psyche of somebody who makes a point of sitting down and writing a sort of 500 words would email about how you suck. You think that was a waste of your time, and I don’t care. So I think a thick skin helps. But do you know, I think if you’re behind your message and you’re convinced of it, we all deal to certain extent with imposter syndrome. And if we get too many of those negative messages early on, then that might actually be a problem that that might, you know, put some people off and actually stop some people. It really needs not to if you’re behind your message and convinced of it and if you know your stuff, and then there will be way way way more people who are behind you and for you than those haters and naysayers. So just ignore

David Ralph [28:38]
Yeah, but the unfortunate thing is and what I do, and I always go back with a personalised voice message, and I always say, Oh, thank you so much for spending the time. And let’s go through it point by point. And I try to be as charming as possible. And more often than not, about three weeks later, I get an email going. Sorry about that. I was having a bad day, and I took off, I’m you, which is fine. Because we all have those moments, you know, the amount of times I’ve almost sent an email to meaningful money, and I was just over. And I haven’t sent it just because he just just because he annoyed me. But the thing is about it is the bad people are more likely to slack, you often the good people, you know, the good people just sort of take it and just you know, you don’t know you’re changing people’s lives, do you? That’s one of those sort of difficult things, you hope it’s going to make a difference. But the good news doesn’t filter through to you as much as the bad news somehow.

Pete Matthew [29:32]
Yeah, that’s right. And that again, that’s just numbers in it. So I remember when I his previous life used to be a manager for McDonald’s, it was used to say, you know, if you get it wrong, you know, this many people would they’ll tell 10 people, whereas you do a good job, they’ll tell one person or something like that. And you know that I don’t know what the numbers are. But it’s just Yeah, you’re right. Those who negative they tend to shout louder, for sure.

David Ralph [29:56]
But it’s good to annoy them in it. I yeah, I actually go, I finish off with saying and in response to your email, I actually don’t care. I really don’t care. And it’s not. And this goes out to the listeners. It’s not an arrogant thing. It’s not cockiness, it’s just saying, Look, I’ve worked hard to get myself into this position. I am doing something that I 100% believe in. And no matter how much I believe in it, there’s going to be haters. I just can’t do it. You know, Mother Teresa would have had people slugging away, you know, ganda Gandy. Thank God, he was there before email, he would have had a terrible time.

Pete Matthew [30:35]
What Gary van der Chuck is, you know, one of my online heroes, and he always says, You know, I both don’t care. And yet I do desperately care I want to sort of means is that I actually, I’m a sensitive person, I identify with a song, when I say I know about me, personally, you know, I am a sensitive person, I do care what other people think. But I am self aware enough and convinced enough of my message to you know, just breeze over the negative messages now that I that I get. And just a lot, you know, I know I’m right in this thing. Thank you for your input, but you’re not going to divert me off my course. So I think a little bit of both, I think thick skin. Absolutely. But don’t dismiss, certainly not, don’t dismiss constructive criticism. I remember in an email, as I’ve seen holiday, I don’t even know why I picked up my email. I don’t do that anymore. But an email from somebody accusing me of using hetero normative language, I have to look at what that meant. But you know, when I talk about sort of couples and stuff I was talking more about, you know, he and she and of course, that’s, you know, not no longer relevant. It could be any mix agendas, of course, and she was right to call me out on that. And so it’s like, Okay, I will now be aware of that. I had another guy call me out on something that I didn’t agree with. And so he’s like, okay, I’ll just let that one go. So I think, be convinced be self secure, be self aware enough. And you can you can cope with whatever comes out.

David Ralph [31:56]
Yeah, I agree, value, value value people all the time, just keep on delivering that value, and things will be good. Now paid. course, I want to jump back into what you’re doing in meaningful money. Because with the Academy, and it looks sexy, sir. It really does look sexy, what I liked about it, and was the fact that you’ve got coming soon. Commonly, we’re building the first stage of meaningful Academy, but you’ve already sort of launched it. And I see so many people try to get like a billion videos and content before they can launch it. What made you do that? What made you sort of say lay isn’t finished part

Pete Matthew [32:36]
come in, play around, I give massive credit to my good friend, Kellyanne, Sylar, so cow works with me to is basically the marketing machine for meaningful money now, because I got to the stage where I could create content all day long, as well, in the time that I had on Fridays, and then evenings or weekends and stuff. By the time I’d done that I didn’t have the energy or the expertise, to build social messages to create, you know, Instagram, video, all that sort of stuff. Now he is the master at that. And he’s also a real student of some of the online and offline entrepreneurs. We’ve got Brian Harris, Eben Pagan, Pat Flynn, Mike Hyatt, you know, all these guys who are building these things. And he said, Look, what we need to do is to essentially do a founders launch. And so that’s what we did. So I built the structure of the Academy. So when you log in, there is modules and lessons. But in that first phase, the sort of financial foundations phase, we’re calling it, there will be seven modules. And right now only one of them is built, by the time this goes out, they’ll be two or three. And so what we did, we said, Look, we need help, I want your help to build the academy into a resource that people like you want to want to have. And I will give you a deep discount. You know, if you get in the beginning and feedback. And so then you know, signing up for the new is incomplete. It’ll be finished by end of August, early September is the plan. And so they are giving me feedback. And every time I am adding a new module, I’m saying right, please go through it. Let me know what you think, what do I need to tweak responding to those. And so it’s kind of a founders launch. And basically crowdsourcing? Yeah, the excellence of the thing. So that I know when it’s done, it isn’t just me thinking what I think this is what people want to know about, but actually real people in the position that the Academy is trying to reach, tell me what they want. And so it will eventually have three phases, financial foundations, for those that are getting started with budgeting getting out of debt, or some stuff, then the building wealth phase, which is about investing and saving and building wealth for the future, obviously. And then finally, it’ll be the enjoying your money face, which is that transition into retirement, how to invest in such a way that it’s sustainable into retirement, all this other stuff. So it’s a whole load of work, man, but I think is needed. In this country. There’s a lot of this stuff. One of my heroes is Dave Ramsey in the US. He’s a sort of financial megastar over there, and he has Nicole Financial Peace University, the idea of the Academy is that it’ll be the UK champion, really, in the UK version of that. So I’m excited about it.

David Ralph [35:08]
Yeah, you should be excited, you should be excited. And something I do, and I’m sort of building it at the moment and is I teach people how to start online businesses. And I kept on seeing that people were saying to me, I’d love to do it, but I’ve got no idea or I’m lost, or, or whatever. And so this is how I did it about three years ago, I just said to my audience, right, I’m going to do this. And I just did it live for 30 days. And so people connected with me, I didn’t have any content at all, it was in my head. And so I just basically spoke to four people every single day for 30 days, and felt like that was good, that wasn’t good. And then I kept on doing that until I got it to the point where I could do it twice a week. And then I got it to the point when I started doing videos and band, we’ve got it to the point where what is going to be launched is a very cost effective platform, which isn’t seen anywhere, but will take you from the idea through to the customer journey to providing value to email marketing, and absolutely everything but a real low price. So that you don’t have to buy this course and back course and whatever it is, it’s absolutely 100% body. But uh, yeah, at the beginning, I just basically said I’m doing this. And Ben, it was all bloody hell, I am doing this.

Pete Matthew [36:26]
Yeah, yeah. I love what you said that because it’s like, what, for me, the Academy is the distillation of nearly 10 years of everything I’ve been sort of preaching, yeah, on on podcasts. And it’s sort of, you know, people can go to the meaningful money website and find the content and help themselves. But the idea is like, okay, you want to move forward quickly, and not have to search anywhere else, but get this step, then the next one, then the next one, so that every single step, you’re moving forward, then the Academy is that for you? Yes, you’re going to have to pay me for it, but you’re paying for convenience, probably everything the academy will have some extent be dealt with been dealt with for free on the podcast, and in video, we have to search for it. You know, you may have already been searching for ages, and really just trying to get a cohesive view on these things. The Academy, just like with where you’re going to be launching is going to be the one place and why would you go anywhere else? So yeah, it’s much needed. I love the whole process. I’ve been through journey as well, I, I did a course called learn how to budget ages, your nobody bought it, then I did learn how to invest which a lot of my members and but I delivered it live four times. So for weekly live webinars live q amp a. And then I thought this would be a lot better if I didn’t have to actually show up live. And that’s now what I do there. So there is still a version of that. And that will be folded into the academy new course. So you

David Ralph [37:45]
know, p isn’t it you know, because I sell things now I do very well financially for Join Up Dots. And there was a time when I spent so much time creating these things, and no one bought it. And I couldn’t understand. Now I look back on it. And I thing well course I can understand. I’ve been around six years now back chest and that loyalty and that honesty, that is what you build to. So many people preach about, you know, create this in four minutes, and you will get this and you will get that but for me, it takes foundations, it really does take foundations and you need to competence,

Pete Matthew [38:22]
I think it takes knowing your audience. And what I really should have done was maybe ask my audience. So when Alan launch laid out the budget, obviously that is aimed at folks getting started with their finances is very much. Okay, what is the first thing I need to do, I need to know learn how to spend less than I earn each month. And at the time, what I did is I lost that course to tumbleweed, having spent quite a bit of time doing it, then I pulled my audience at the time. So I think 2015 and found out that less than 4% of my audience identified as being in the Getting Started phase, like okay, so it 4% of my audience and say maybe one or 2% of that 4% were up would actually buy that No wonder I didn’t sell anything. What do I really should be focusing on is the 75% of my audience who are in the I need to know how to build my wealth more effectively, phase. And so that’s what learn how to invest became, and that’s done very well for.

David Ralph [39:19]
And also what I did, I’m sharing all the tips of the trade for the listeners out there. I had a survey on the front, I’ve mentioned this before, because its policy here at Join Up Dots. It was something along the lines of you know, do you think you have what it takes to become an online success? And people would click on it? And at the end of it, it would say yes, I think you have or you haven’t. Now all I was doing on that was getting feedback and people answer 10 questions. And I ended up with 5000 people who had filled that survey out which told me exactly the steps, but I can see what you’re struggling with. Now, when you are building something, of course, you’ve got that belief of I need to get it out now. But actually by going the slow approach and canvassing opinion and finding out wherever it you know, is it worth it? You could take a couple of your friends out and say this is what I’m thinking of doing? Do you think that it’s got legs, it really pays you back in the long run, just getting something out quick to market. I don’t go with that. Even though I think the founder of LinkedIn said, If you wait too long, and you’re not embarrassed about what you’ve delivered, you’ve waited too long. So I mean, I like that that canvassing opinion and then really knowing but yeah, people are waiting for this.

Pete Matthew [40:33]
Yeah, I definitely go it just strikes me as common sense, really. And it’s just common sense of which I had not clearly because I didn’t do that first. So you know, it’s a learning thing, man. And that’s what I love about this the great thing I think about online businesses, certainly if it’s a side hustle is that you can make these mistakes and it isn’t gonna make or break you. It’s it’s easy to pivot pretty quickly. So it’s, it’s an extremely exciting time to be alive. And in the fact that you and I can do what we do without editors without, you know, record company or radio or TV execs telling us we’re you know, our nipples are not quite good enough to be shown on TV and all that sort of stuff. You know, there’s nobody, there is no gatekeepers now and I just love the fact that we’re we’re living in a time that we can do this,

David Ralph [41:15]
I’m going to start working out you know about I feel ashamed, I feel ashamed about my my moves. I feel like

Pete Matthew [41:22]
I’ll be I tell you what, you’re looking a lot better than I am with my shirt off to you.

David Ralph [41:25]
I’ve got Moves Like Jagger, that’s all I’ve got. And I need to sort them out. Now one of the things that I’m going to finish off with because you know, me p you know, the dark side. And you know, but one of the things that I can’t stop doing is spotting opportunities and thinking, yeah, I can do that. I can just do that. And we reference something that I’m thinking of doing at the moment. And you said, it sounds great. But it just sounds like too much hard work. Well, I don’t reference the hard work. I just being that’s an opportunity, I can make it work. How do you keep on track? Because with everything you do, there is an ability to go over happy sexy frova on let’s do that. I’ll only take a couple of afternoons a month. But then suddenly, something’s giving. And normally it’s our hairline and our blood pressure and we’re struggling.

Pete Matthew [42:14]
Yeah, it’s this sort of entrepreneurial curse, isn’t it? It’s like, oh, next shiny thing that I can get my teeth into over there. And I haven’t yet finished the form that I’m doing. And, yeah, one thing I do every quarter, I’m a big fan of Michael Hyatt, online, superstar, former CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing massive publishing house in the States, who blogs and podcasts and sells courses and has written books on basically personal productivity and leadership and stuff like that. So I subscribe to something called the full focus planner. Now, it’s a paper planner, and he’s got brilliant podcast episode on how to because my entire world is online. You know, my calendar here, Jackson’s in Gmail. So the stuff that I have a paper planner that says my desk all day, every day, and it comes home with me an evening. And every quarter, there’s a couple of pages, you get a new planner, every quarter is a subscription thing. And every quarter I map out my ideal week, right? So I basically block out the week. So you know, six, the Jim

David Ralph [43:18]
sort of 730? Jim, because you may

Pete Matthew [43:22]
well, could be Yeah, J moto Moto G y m, right. And it’s not every morning, but you know, so three, three mornings a week,

David Ralph [43:29]
exhausted spending time with you every morning, I would think.

Pete Matthew [43:33]
Can you imagine? You know, so it’s blocked out day, and sort of weeks. And I can see the week. And it’s not that, you know, you’re not going to actually live that week, perfectly every week. But it’s got an ideal week. And it’s a great tool, actually, for actually seeing the time that you have. So the first things that go in there are family time, so five to seven. Every day, you know, mealtimes walking the dog, helping the girls with anything that they need to my kids are pretty sort of autonomous these days are 19 and 16. But, you know, that’s family time. And it’s sacrosanct. I do mean for money stuff, two evenings a week, one evening is with my wife is solid date night thing we go dancing on a Friday nights moving over the kids are so Stephanie, you can block it out. And for me, it helps me not to overcome it. And it’s been a lifesaver, actually, because I am just like you, I see what could be done. But now I understand that I just don’t have the bandwidth to do it. And it also you sort of recommit to your goals every quarter. And that’s another way of just keeping this stuff front of mind. So that you don’t get sidetracked. It’s like, okay, I say I haven’t achieved my goal from the previous quarter. So I need to nail out first before I move on. So I found that super helpful.

David Ralph [44:41]
What I find helpful is a blocking out absolute disconnect time. You know, I say a lot that I am unable to be got hold of, you know, I don’t have phones, I don’t have mobile devices, I don’t have anything. And that is my saving grace, where they turn off my laptop, my PC about I’m talking to you now. And then that’s it. I’ve totally gone and not one person can get through to me. I don’t know how people build businesses where they’ve constantly got two phones in their hand.

Pete Matthew [45:11]
I know. He tells you to book recommendations on this, David, and I’m thinking a lot about this and making some changes the results I read two books on holiday which have been life changing. The first is digital minimalism by Cal Newport, which is an extremely practical sort of treatise on how being continually connected actually isn’t doing is any good at all. And very compelling. At one point I actually when I like to swear on

Unknown Speaker [45:37]
Jonah, you can

Pete Matthew [45:38]
do whatever you want. I actually was sat by the side of the pool in milk, read this book. And I just want everybody sort of looked around, because there was this chapter about the mental health effects on kids who have basically been raised with permanent connexion social from their early teens or even earlier. And the damage of that. That book digital minimalism by Cal Newport also quoted another book called lead yourself. First, the subtitle is inspiring leadership through Solitude by Katherine Catholic, Erwin, two guys. And they reference one of them is a lawyer and one of them is an ex military. And they referenced all kinds of examples from Abraham Lincoln getting out of the White House and walking to his cottage couple miles away, or half a mile away, whatever, just to get solitude and the impact of that. And it’s been very challenging for me. So I think you’re dead right to do that. plan out and map out a long time. So I’m starting now to if I’m walking the dog, I’d I always listen to stuff I made listening to podcasts or audio books, and I started not doing just to have time alone with my thoughts for me to compute what’s going on in the day ahead. What happened yesterday, or whatever? I think it’s, I think Time will tell but I do worry for the mental health of the upcoming generation who just never switched off. And it’s so important.

David Ralph [47:02]
Now I am going to reference a book because I read it. And then I read it again. And I’m reading it a third time. And I get so many people that come on the show and they go, I sent you my book. And I go Yeah, brilliant. And I don’t touch them. I’ll be honest, I don’t touch them. I think I’ve got I’ve got so many books to read. Now this one is essential ism the discipline pursuit of less by called Greg McEwen. And I’ve shared it with quite a few people and they’ve come back to me and gone game changer, and really is that you just simply look at your life, and you decide what is most important to you. And a lot of the stuff naturally comes to us like a kind of, you know, stuff floating around us. And little, little by little it sticks to us. But we don’t actually want it in the first place. It just sort of naturally occurs. And I looked at that. And I realised that my main focus in my whole life was family. It was actually family and I didn’t care about anything else other than family and supporting them. But I’d let that slip. So I started reclaiming that. But I then started looking at money because I realised the more money I earned, the more chance I’ve got to put things away, and then spend more time with the family. Absolute game changer. essentialism, the discipline pursuit of less loved it loved it. Right. Okay, Mr. Matthew, before we say goodbye to you, and for anybody who’s listening here, I’m thinking, why is he not played sound clips? Why is he not got stuff going on? We had a few technical issues. So we’ve left it very free as a conversation, to the people out there. three bits of amazing advice where they can start today to get control of their finances, if it’s something that they’ve been thinking is too difficult to do. Or they just haven’t been aware, but they’ve got an issue, what would be three bits of advice that we can leave them with? three bits of advice.

Pete Matthew [48:49]
It’s quite ironic that to sort of, you’re almost full time podcasters had technical issues, isn’t it? There we go. We just blamed each other. And, okay, the first, possibly non conventional piece of advice for taking control of anything, but certainly your money is I’m going to bring in another book if that’s all right. For me, this is a book that I have committed to read once a year for the rest of my life. It’s that good. And that humbling it’s called ego is the enemy by Ryan Holliday. So it references a lot of stoic sort of philosophy stuff, but that makes it sound boring. It really isn’t very rapid fire chapters. But the point of the book is that we are our own worst enemy. Very often. And that is certainly true in financial terms. Either we sabotage ourselves with spending habits or things like that. Or if we’re a little bit past that we’re investing, we can make investment mistakes because of our behaviour. And that book is humbling. It is entirely countercultural to be humble these days. In fact, most of the time we spend time at bigging ourselves up on social media we take you know, taken retake pictures on Instagram to get the best angle and stuff like that there’s not enough humility and sort of openness, I don’t think and so this book is a master class in cultivating humility. And I think it’s a superpower. Right? One of the things I love about Gary Vee, he’s both incredibly arrogant in a way and he turns a lot of people off, but actually, he has a streak of knowing himself and knowing his humble beginnings and stuff, which I think is compelling. So ego is the enemy by Ryan Holliday, easily the best book of last decade from my point of view. Now, practically, when it comes to money, does depend what stage you’re at. But it’s an awareness that really, we can sit down and think about money. And there’s there’s so much to know, potentially all these we think there is but really getting money, right is down to three steps. That’s all there is to it. Yes, there’s some detail behind it. But three things are all you need to do is these three things, firstly is to spend less than you earn. So if you’ve never set a monthly budget, which is telling your money, what you’re going to spend it on, before you do it, it’s not tracking where you have spent it, it’s about telling your money where to go, then that is your first step. Understand that you need to tell your money where it needs to go that setting a budget spend the less than you earn, because if you don’t do that, you’re going nowhere fast. In fact, you’re going in reverse, you are getting worse off every single month, spend less than you earn. Secondly, you need to do is to insure against disaster. There are things in life, which happened to us a terrible diagnosis, which means we maybe can’t ever work again, or an accident, which means you can never work again. Friend of mine fell off a sledge, when the snows hit in February 2018. In her head on a rock, she was an incredibly and he’s an incredibly talented photographer, but hasn’t been able to work since because of a brain injury happened in an instant. Are we prepared for stuff like that, both by having some money put aside, but also a basic insurance programme to, you know, to provide money in case the worst happens. So we’ve spent less than me and we’ve been shorting as disaster. And the next thing then is to invest wisely, which is very simply join a pension if there’s one at work, just join it, you probably be automatically enrolled anyway. But if you’re not join it is that the ultimate no brainer when it comes to finance. And then as you’re spending less than you earn, and hopefully you’ll have pay down debt by doing that, start to save for the future, just take out a nicer there’s a whole lot of stuff on me for money about how to invest, what funds to choose and all that sort of stuff. And the difference between cash and investments are kind of jazz, but really spend less than you earn, insure against disaster and invest for the future. Those three things really that’s it David, there’s nothing more complex really than that. Any detail is available for free at meaningful money. So I mean, I wrote a book and those are the three sections of the book and there’s all the sort of detail that you need in there. There is I can give tips and tricks and all this other stuff but the biggest thing you can do is understand that that is all about raise to it and just go from there

David Ralph [53:02]
right stuff and of course for all the listeners out there there be interested in what horse should they go for and the 230 at Chepstow today because what will you go with? I don’t know. I’ve come on come on. We know we know you’re a gambler. We’ve seen you on your website sitting there any old bookies? We’ve seen it the evidence has banned me.

Pete Matthew [53:22]
Yeah, it’s not actually a betting job. It’s outside of Premier Inn in Edinburgh. That photograph

David Ralph [53:28]
looks like a betting shop. I know I know betting shop Hey, what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you sir?

Unknown Speaker [53:35]
Okay, my life is at meaningful money.tv all the social stuff is on there as well of course but mean for money.tv the book is on there, the podcast is on there, the videos on there. That’s where to go. Brilliant stuff. We have all the links on the show notes as always be thank you so much for spending time with us today on Join Up Dots and please come back again when you cook more dots to join up because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our pasts The best way to build our futures Pete Matthew Thank you so much. If you’ll permit me just 30 seconds I want to thank you David because you are one of my dots my friend You are so encouraging whenever you email me or message me You are full of encouragement full of joy, your your enthusiasm is infectious. But it isn’t just fluff you are an inspiration, my friend what you’re doing week in week out, and the business you’re building and the difference you’re making in your family’s life is a deep inspiration to me. So I want to say thank you for everything that you do everything that you are and thanks again for having me on my friend. Oh, thanks, man.

David Ralph [54:34]
Appreciate that. Yes, Mr. Pete Matthew now honestly, he is one of the guys I I put my life down in front of you know, he’s reputation is my reputation. He is a great the information that he provides is great. It doesn’t matter if you’re in America or Australia or whatever. Some of its UK based but this sound on ensure principles. I’ll be honest, that don’t listen every podcast he does. But I certainly do jump over, I probably listen to a couple of weeks, I imagine something like that. But it’s really good advice. That’s meaning for money. And you can find it, of course on iTunes and other platforms or just go over to meaningful money.tv. And you can see happy little smiley face. Until next time, thank you so much for everybody who is joining us on the Join Up Dots bandwagon, as we’ve referenced in the show. Yes, I am going to be bringing a step by step course of teaching you how to make money online. And it literally is going to be as live as I can make it is gonna be raw, you’re going to see me working at my desk showing you how I do things and build it up step by step by step, giving you the ability to overcome 15 years of my mistakes. That’s what you want. And if that’s of interest to you, just drop me a line at Join Up Dots@gmail.com and say yeah, I’d like to know about that as soon as it comes out. But it will take you a to b to z or to Zed no doubt what do we say we say said? He said z Yeah, I’m confused between American and English we say said they say z i think so. Until next time. See again.

Outro [56:22]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you are wants to become so he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up Dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.