Stop being the victim. Take responsibility for your own actions. Grant Cardone, I read his book called 10x it's about focusing on bringing in more income. Increase the top line. Don't worry about cutting these little, tiny expenses. I can guarantee you that a lot of these businesses on the side here, they're suffering as we drive through all this road works. You know, I feel for you, this is happening, but you need to now start looking at other opportunities, because you can't rely on this bricks and mortar business here, because state government's going to come in and just start ruining your business. And that's why online is so powerful. Because I'm Matthew Fraser, and this is Amazon ecom secrets. I'll be sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from millions in debt to an eight figure entrepreneur, if you're ready to escape the nine to five and live life on your terms, let me show you the way. Look. There was a time when I was in a million dollars in debt, before I had Mercedes Benz spirit of that way, and it was freaking brutal that amount of debt hanging over you. I tell you what it can make or break you. For most people, it breaks them, okay, but you got to push through. You got to find the right answers and find the pathway through it. Fortunately, I found Amazon paid off the debt, ended up with Mercedes. So guys, that's what we're going to be talking about today. What is it like being in a shit ton of debt, and how do you get out? Let's go. There's one thing I love doing. Is whenever you get in the car, you've got to turn the exhaust on, as in, it has a mode that's on here. If you can see that right down here, you could make it silent, semi silent or loud. Loud is always better. VA twin turbo power.

Let's roll. Matthew has a bit of a story here, and he's talked about that in one of his first episodes that he did, which is actually his story, everything that he's gone through, and it's a very, very interesting story, because he was actually in a big debt, right? How much was it? Was that exactly

that was like a million dollars?

A million dollars, yeah. How did you get there in the first place.

When I was younger, I worked at Maccas with my wife. Now she wasn't my wife at the time. I sort of put that in, you know, I'm like, 15 years old. I started, I think I started when I was 13. When you start at Maccas, you sort of get indoctrinated into the McDonald's philosophy, right, the golden arches. And then you think, look at the owner, and the owners rocking up in a Mercedes, yeah, this is, this, is this could be this could be it. And then you have this dream of, like, maybe I could become a McDonald's manager and climb up, because they're in this position of authority, and they think, you think you want to be in that authority as well. So my wife is working there. I ended up leaving Maccas and went off and did some other things in music. Worked in a music store. I worked as a DJ, and so my wife, however, she stayed on working in McDonald's, and she stayed there for about 16 years and became the highest paid restaurant manager. I'm pretty sure in Australia, she was earning an absolute fortune. This is back in like, early, early 2000s Yeah, early 2000s

How old were you back then?

She was like 21 she was like 21 earning like 150 grand package with a company car and this whole, the whole thing. Now, the reason why the owner, who was a franchisee, right? Wasn't the company. You can pay your employees whatever you want, and if you are good, and you can take a lot of pressure off the owner, of course they're going to pay you right, because the owner doesn't want to have to be there making burgers all day, right? And managing all the staff nicely, 632, door doesn't do all that stuff, right? So he's going to be like, hey, look, I'll just pay you a really good salary. And anyway, so she was phenomenal at her job. And then at some point, Paula and I decided, by this stage, we've, you know, we've become friends, and eventually we never get together, we decide we want to buy a McDonald's store. And the idea at the time was actually to buy the McDonald's store from that owner. And that ultimately didn't happen. But what did happen is we found the Hungry Jack's business. So we packed up our stuff from Brisbane, moved down to Tweed Heads, this is in oh eight, and bought this Hungry Jack's restaurant. And I tell you what, I was 29 she was she was 29 as well. And we thought we were freaking awesome. We thought we've made it, but it seemed like such a long journey all through our 20s. Right by the top we were about 19. We were like, Yeah, we're going to buy a McDonald's store. So took us even back then. It took us still a decade to get to the position of actually buying. A Hungry Jack's restaurant, yeah, and look, if, if only I'd known what I know now, of course, right? But the reason why it took so long is because we didn't have any money. That was the first thing, but we had to come up with capital to put into the store. And at a very early age, like my first property I bought at 21 Paula started buying property, and we started buying property and we started buying property together. So by the time we were about 25 we had about four or five residential properties. We ended up selling some of those because the property market had had increased. We sold some, and we put some of that money into the Hungry Jack's business right to buy and yeah, so we thought we were awesome. We're like, we're here. We get to make Whoppers. Now, this is amazing, and we had to do all this training. But the dream was not to just to buy one hungry Jack store. We wanted to create an

empire. So the original idea was to buy multiple, yeah,

just buy, you know, because, because, in the McDonald's world, that's what these McDonald's franchisees did, right? They bought up multiple McDonald's stores, and they all seem to be doing quite well. So we thought, Look, we'll follow that pathway as well. We'll own a multiple hungry Jack stores, and we'll become super rich. I thought, as I do, I've said this before. I thought that everybody wanted to create an empire. Turns out that most people don't even think about it. This actually relates to something else I spoke about the other day, which is about superannuation, retirement, building your wealth. And I spoke to my sister, who is six years younger than me, so she is around 39 years old. And I said, What are you guys doing for retirement? Like, what's the plan? She's like, I don't know. She was like, What? What do you mean? You have no idea. It's like, no, we've got super. And that's And, look, I'm not, I'm not having to go my sister. This is normal for people. They just like, well, I've got super and, you know, that's just gonna and when I get to 65 I'm gonna retire on that, and it should last me. Well, it turns out right now that you're gonna need $6 million minimum in your super fund to live an average lifestyle by by the time 2040 2045 comes around $6 million today, seems like a shit ton of money, but it's going to be pittance in 1520, years. So growing your empire, and it doesn't have to be, of course, growing Hungry Jack's restaurants, it can be a property portfolio right now. You know that I'm heavily into Bitcoin. So my my wealth play right now is Bitcoin, although I still own commercial properties. And of course, the Hungry Jack's restaurant is doing well so but Alice, you asked about the debt, yeah, and how we got into the debt. Now, what had happened was just, I'll give you this short story. Bought this business. In one year, we increased the sales by 30% we're like, because we're just focusing on operations and cleaning and all sorts of things. And then what happened was the state government and the federal government combined started doing roadworks like right now, we're stopped at the roadworks. They're doing some work, and they've ripped up the whole road in front of our store, okay? And that those roadworks lasted for three years. So people just stopped coming into the restaurant, as you can appreciate, because the traffic is being diverted all around. Diverted all around and what have you. And it was a tough, tough time, really brutal that you can imagine you've got this store, the staff need, still need to be paid, although you can reduce the staff, you know, you can reduce the staff. He's like, yep, come on buddy. Come on through. That was the stop go by. The stop go by probably is earning 200 grand a year standing there doing the stop go so good on it, yeah, making the cost of properties go through the roof. So, so here we are. We the sales have now dropped. We've still got all these overheads that we still have to pay, such as wages, such as rent and such electricity and gas and the whole, the whole thing, right? They don't stop when the sales or the traffic stops walking through the door, right? They still keep going. There's no There's no like, bring up the landlord and just say, Hey, can we just stop paying rent now? Because our sales have dropped, don't give a shit, right? They want to get paid. So the love, VA power, the sound beautiful. So quick

question there, yeah, with,

what was your what were your first thoughts when you saw the roadworks coming,

when I saw the water, when you saw the well, we're thinking, Oh, this, this can't be good, but you don't really know what's going to happen, because we didn't, hadn't experienced anything before. I think now we do have some experience, because we can look back at, for example, the the tram line on the Gold Coast. You. The tram line in Sydney. It was on, I think it's, I think it's George Street where they built the tram line. All those businesses on that road just collapsed. Even worse than that, a lot of other businesses have have suffered during covid, where the government just came in said, No, you gotta shut the door, right? That was absolutely brutal for for businesses. So we'd been through that. And in fact, when covid hit, it was devastating for a lot of businesses. But when covid hit, I had already set up the Amazon business to mitigate the risk, and I remember talking to other business owners, and I thought, this is the thing. You've, you've, you've relied too much on that one income source, and you can't do it. So the roadworks have come through, the traffic starts coming in, and what then happens is those overheads that I talked about, they just still, they keep stacking. Okay? So the rent keeps, you know, the rent keeps coming in. But more than that, you've got to pay taxes, and this became a really big problem because we, we had to use the GST that we're collecting from the customers to help pay the bills. So now we've got a problem with the tax office, because now we don't have enough money to pay the GST, which is basically on a quarterly basis. And so then I was it was so brutal. Every quarter I'd have to call the tax office and put put a payment plan in, right? And that went for years. So every court, I just ring up, redo the payment plan, tack on the next one tackle, the next one tackle, the next one. Now I will say that the tax office at the time were very good, and a lot of people hate the tax office, but I can tell you, there's a couple of tips when dealing with the tax office. The first thing is communicate. If you just stick your head in the sand, like if you get the GST bill and you just put it or throw on the bin or put it at the bottom of the bar, it's not going to work, right? They're not going to just say, Oh, he didn't respond. We just, we won't worry about him. He must be doing it tough. We'll just let him go. Now. They don't give a shit, right? They're going to send you another letter, and it's going to be a big problem, and then it'll be a letter demand at some point, legal letter. But as soon as you know that you've got a problem, get on the phone, speak to someone at the tax office. They are human. They understand that shit happens, and as long as you are proactive in in wanting to solve the situation of paying the tax debt, they will help, okay? Because, from their side of things, if you just went into bankruptcy, well, then they're not going to get the money at all, right. So they'd rather put you into a payment plan on on terms that you can sustain yet, based on your new turnover and what have you, yeah, so they can get some money back. Okay, that's going to be their first port of call, but if you just ignore them, and the other thing too is, when you're talking to the Tax Office, again, they're human. Be respectful. Don't whinge about the fact that you've got to pay all this tax. It is just a fact of life. If you don't want to pay the tax, then don't get into business. That's pretty much it, right? Or move to another country where perhaps they don't have any taxes, or less taxes, like Dubai or something, right? But if you want to live in Australia, and you want to live in the lifestyle that we have, then you're going to have to go along with the system, yeah, where the system is, you got to pay GST and other taxes, that's just the fact of life. So don't get, don't get angry at the agent that's there, because they could be the key to helping you get out of the shit. Yeah, and they do want to, right? So let them help you.

I know also that at some point you were driving Uber, yes, right? How do you how do you get there? I

can tell you, it was funny enough. We're just coming up behind an Uber cup, and I was driving a Toyota Kluger at the time. How do you get to Uber look? So things were really bad in the shop. I it was very, very hard to make ends meet. We were going into more and more debt, so we're accumulating more tax debt. But even further than that, I actually had to rely on my parents to loan me money to put into the business, to keep the doors open. Right? It was a really it was horrible, because I may have shared this one time before, but I had my parents actually gave, ultimately gave me about 900 odd $1,000 out of their super, say, so they had retired by this stage and they could access their super. They've handed over 900 now. It wasn't just like. Of time it was over. It initially was like, hey, could we get some money? Was like, maybe 200,000 and then, you know, a year later it's like, oh, we get some more money. 400 500,000 and then eventually it was like, $900,000 and this is all coming out of the their savings or their super and I know there was a period of time where my parents actually went back to work because they weren't even sure if they were going to get that money back. Now, they didn't tell me that at the time, but in their mind, they're like shit. This just may not. They may not ever get out of this debt, right? And I've got $900,000 of their money now. And there were times that I was talking to my wife about, okay, look, if we could just get out of the store for, you know, pennies on the dollar, and then we'd still walk away with probably half a million dollars worth of debt. We would still have to pay that back to my parents. And I tell you, we would have, we would have done whatever it took to make sure that my parents got that money back. Now, when I found this is going back to your question about getting into Uber, that was just one of the things I was, you know, I was desperate to get more money in the door. One of the things I did at the time, actually, before I got to that, I was selling everything in the house prices. The first thing you do looking around the house like, I'm talking like sneakers, jackets, I had a BMX bike collection. Sell everything that was really not essential, sold, sold, sold, sold just to get more money in the door. And then, and that was the time when I had the picture of this car. The Mercedes C 63 was a picture in front of me thinking, one day I'm going to get that car as I'm selling off everything in the house. So then I've now gone through everything in the house is now sold. I'm now like, hey, what else can I do to bring in more money? I'll go drive Uber at night times and on the weekend. And so that's what I did. And I drove all over the Gold Coast. It was I

it was a bit, it was,

was a embarrassing, in a way, you know, because you can imagine, if you own a Hungry Jack's restaurant, most people think that you're really, really successful. And next thing you're like, if someone knows you're like, hey, you're drunk. We're doing, driving Uber. Oh, he must be, must be, something's gone wrong, right? Not. No one really goes out and drives Uber just for the fun of it. And but that I had to, I had to do it. And so it was also getting over my own ego, yeah, yeah. Because here I am. I'm the big guy. I've got this. I'm a young I'm fairly young, you know, I'm in my early 30s, and I've now gone from owning all these properties to a Hungry Jack's restaurant, and now I'm out driving Uber. Yeah, it is very deflating, and but, but this is the thing, though, is that it can really hold people back when they do get into the shit. And I've got a friend who who's currently in in a in a financial shit storm, right? He works for the government, is always telling me how broke he is, right? And I do, why don't you go drive Uber or go and lay some bricks on the weekend, or go do some painting, whatever? And he can't do it. He can't do it, and the reason why is he can't get over his own ego. He could not handle the fact that if he was out driving Uber in his town and someone he knew jumped in the car, he would just be too embarrassed, and he just couldn't handle Yeah, it. Couldn't handle the thought of, what are they thinking about him?

But Okay, question there were, were you still embarrassed of doing it, but you were dealing with it? Or

I got out of it pretty I got over it pretty quickly. I was like, Look, because the way I saw it was, look, this is temporary. I'm just doing this as a means to an end to bring more money in the door, but there's more. I know. There's going to be bigger things for me, yeah, and I just have to get through this to get to the to the next level. That's how I saw it wasn't like, Oh, I'm driving Uber. I'm going to have to now drive Uber the rest of my life, right? And I end up driving for probably six to nine months, or something like that. I got to know the Gold Coast streets very well. It has one advantage, but I'll tell you what, though, something that you may not know is that 99.9% of people that jumped in the car were really nice. People really had great conversations. Everyone wanted to know why you were driving Uber. Was it like? And then I would, of course, ask them I'd picked up a lot of guys who was, who were living in really, really nice properties in, like, mermaid waters, which is like a super, super high end part of the Gold Coast, like, I'm rocking up at their mansion. They're jumping in the car, you know, they tell me about their Maserati or that they just bought. And I was really fascinated, you know, how they made money as well. So, you know, pick up. Um, you know, strippers quite often in CAVAL they jump in the back of the car. They quite often wouldn't talk. But I was one of those drivers, too, that I don't make people talk, right? They jump in the back and they just want to relax, just be quiet. And most of the girls did, they just suck them in the back. They're exhausted after a hard night of being on the poles. You know what I mean. So I can imagine, takes up a lot of work. So, so there we go. So I was driving these over Uber cars, and it wasn't as bad as what incentives. It's just your ego can hold you back.

Obviously, you had to sell a lot of things that you had at your house, right? But you were also, you also had to drive Uber for nine months, let's say internally, your family. What were sort of some of those struggles that that financial situation brought? Look,

my parents. You know, I was telling people who I knew that I was driving Uber. I wasn't that embarrassed, but I certainly wasn't telegraphing that on Instagram. I wasn't doing Facebook posts about how, hey, look at me. I'm now driving Uber because it was, it was in that sense, it wasn't inspirational, yeah. Funny thing now is, as I've become a multi millionaire through Amazon and e com, now, I talk about the trials and tribulations of getting to where I am right, and one of those things is driving Uber. I was just talking to a guy yesterday who is looking to become one of my clients, and there were so many similarities. And one of the things he was doing, literally, as I was talking to him, was he was doing Uber Eats? I said, Yeah, man, I hear you I was doing Uber. And when I said to him that I was also had also driven Uber only in the last sort of probably six, six years or so, he was absolutely blown away. He couldn't believe it. And I think it gave him a lot of hope that, Hey, he is doing Uber Eats, and his, he's me who's done Uber and now become multi millionaire. So there's like a there's like a synergy there, and a pathway for him, like, Hey, if you can do it, I can do it right. And that's what I try and steal in people too, is that, look, I've been through tough times, and I know a lot of people out there are going through tough times now, but there is a pathway forward, but you've got to be, you've got to be realistic about it, and you've got to take action on things. You can't just think about it all the time, because thinking about it will never result to actions, and actions won't, won't give you results if you don't take those actions. So that is the pathway. Get training fast, right? Get into a mentoring program. Get Even if you start off, like even, in my case, for those guys who are watching this now who are like, hey, you know, I perhaps I want to join Matthew's mentoring, you can start even under that because, of course, mentoring costs money, but these videos, the stuff I'm putting on Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, I'm giving away so much gold in those videos, and it's free. It's absolutely free, even if you came and joined my entry level program, it's only 49 US dollars a month. Now you cannot tell me that even if you drive an Uber, and I know how much you guys are earning, you can still afford $49 US a month to get in, and then you get access to me in that as well. So that's something I would definitely say that people should do. So

let's talk about your presage perception with money after being in that massive debt. Yeah, did anything change the way you view money, the way you see finances in general? Yeah, look,

it's funny, because when you're in

when you're in financial turmoil, every single cent counts, and you look at things very differently. And in fact, what you're trying to do, in desperation to get ahead is cut expenses as much as possible, like cutting the foxtail maybe, you know, just things like, Oh, we're not going to use the air conditioning because, you know, we use a fan or something like that, right? We're not going to put the heater on when you use blankets. Like really tight, really, really small things that, in the big scheme of things, make hardly any difference. But when you've got limited funds, it seems like it does make a difference. And so now, I mean, I don't think about those small things anymore. I think about more of the big needle moving things. And there was a there was a time when I was listening to Grant Cardone. If you don't know Grant Cardone, check him out. He's an incredible guy, and he was, I read his book called 10x in that book, it's not about. Uh, cutting the foxtail. Okay? It's not about that. It's about focusing on bringing in more income. That's the focus increase the top line. Don't worry about cutting these little, tiny expenses, right? And once I had that mental shift, because I was cutting expenses as much as I could, right? I was in that mindset of, I need to cut everything, even at the shop, right? I was cutting out the music that you hear over the speakers, you know, the background of music. It was like 50 bucks a month or something like, that's going, yeah. But so I've been through all that. I was rearranging the bin pickups, right? Anything I can do to try and save money. And of course, you're cutting labor, and also I'm working on the floor to making all the burgers on drive through. But once I heard this from Grant, just you need to focus on the top line and bringing in more revenue, I was like, Wow. I just that was like a whole mental shift for me. And then I would reread the 10x book. I'd listen to it over and over, even when I was out doing Uber every moment I get up, you like listening to podcasts, things like that. I was absorbing so much of Grant Cardone at the time, and he definitely has a big has been a huge influence on my life and my success. Now he's just getting into getting his mindset on things, and so that's, that's my recommendation to you, is focus on the top line bringing in more income. There is a balance, okay? I'm not saying that you shouldn't cut anything. I mean, cut things where, where possible, right? Because that's going to be the most immediate effect to your to your budget. But don't let that be the sole focus. And I'll give you the the the ideas some people would focus on. I'm going to hunt around and find the cheapest petrol okay, I wouldn't worry about that the petrol price between one to the other. You know, if it's $1.70 and $1.80 is nothing, okay, if it just happens that the dollar 70 place is right there, and you can jump in there and get the fuel short, but I wouldn't be hunting around and making it and taking up mental space. Yeah, that's what it is. And so you want to shift it so that your focus every day is, how can I make more money? How can I bring in? How can I grow my business? You know, it might even be something as simple as if you're working the nine to five. How can I get a pay rise? Most people probably don't even think of that if they're too busy cutting, you know, looking for dollar 70 fuel or something, right? How can I get a pay rise? Go and talk to the owner of the business, try and get a promotion, maybe, maybe even change jobs. Maybe go from a government sector job, let's say where there is no, there's minimal chance of getting bonuses and things like that, and move into a sales role. Maybe, like, something like selling cars. Selling cars would be incredible, because you could, you could negotiate higher income based on the work that you put in. So you're going to get reward for the work you put in. Guys

and wise, what do you what would you say to people who are always in the complaining mentality? Oh, it's because of these. Is because I'm not getting much from here, but it's because of that, yeah, but not taking action towards anything.

This is another lesson I got from Grant Cardone, which was to stop being the victim. Yeah, okay. And I know a lot of people who I was, I was doing the same thing. You know, the government had come in, they've done all the road works. My business is now suffering. You know, poor me. I'm now having driving Uber and all the rest of it, million dollars of debt and and, and Grant said, stop being the victim. Take responsibility for your own actions. And even at that point, I'm thinking, but it wasn't my actions, it was the government that came in and fucked me. But then, but then, but then I was like, now you know what, it is my fault. I no one's no one. No one forced me to go and buy the hungry Jack store, right? I I bought the hungry Jack store with my wife. We bought the hungry Jack store, and we should have done more due diligence, because, as you can appreciate, it's not like the government just waltz is in one day and just starts redoing a highway, right? They would have been, they would have been planning that for years. So we should have known that there was a highway coming down the pipeline, right, and that, and that was the lesson. But you know what? We didn't do, no, we didn't do any due diligence of, like, what's going to be happening around the area, in the in the within the next sort of year, right? We were just so wrapped up in, oh, we're going to get this business, and it's going to be awesome, and we're going to make all this money and stuff everything else. You know, nothing can, nothing can wreck a hungry Jack store right now, of course, after that time, we find out from even. Donald's owners, right? Similar type situations, because we always thought I would own a McDonald's. Everything's hunky dory, fantastic. No, no. Problems. Just not the case, right? Just things can happen all the time, so you got to be prepared for the downside. And I think that's probably one really big lesson coming out of the shit store is that