February 18, 2025 • 22 mins
Advocate and author Matthew Lesko, known to many as the “Question Mark Guy”, has spent over four decades uncovering ways for people to access billions in government grants and funds they never knew were available. Lesko covers the difference between the capitalist and community societies within the US, being a sought-after late-night "backup guy", finding government grants and assistance for business owners, entrepreneurs and freelancers, meeting, quite possibly, the nation's foremost expert on pasta, and most importantly, listening to your heart.
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Episode Transcript
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Stephanie Maas (00:00):
Well, we are so excited to have you here, and
(00:34):
I'll tell you what, this is areally fascinating background.
Matthew Lesko (00:38):
Anything you want to know, just lead me around by
the nose.
Stephanie Maas (00:41):
My understanding is you started your career in
the military.
Matthew Lesko (00:45):
Yeah, the Vietnam War. That's why I was in the
military. It was three years,two months and nine days. But I
wasn't counting. I was a shipdriver, and it was great. I
never had more responsibilityfor the end of my, rest of my
life. I don't think when he wasa 22 year old kid and learned
how to drive ships go out inSouth China Sea. That's before
there was any, you know, GPS, oranything like that. You had to
go out and shoot the stars tofind out where the hell you are.
(01:08):
And it was sort of fun. I hatedit every minute, but it wouldn't
be somewhere else, but itcertainly was a great
experience. I had nothing betterto do at the time. I couldn't
get into grad school. I thought,well, yeah, well, maybe I'll go
to law school. So I took theLSAT, so I got like two above
plant life, yeah, and if you gotdrafted, then it's the army you
(01:28):
get. And I'm not a camper, soliving in the jungle, this
camping distance sound appealingto me. So the Navy sounded
pretty good. Man, that's cleansheets every night. So I did
that, and then I was adiplomatic courier in Northern
Europe, briefcase handcuffed tome, him, and I finally got out
of there, went and got an MBAbecause of the GI Bill. And then
(01:51):
I started businesses that werefailing. And that's what you
have to do to do anything. Youjust have to fail. Fail, fail.
You practice failing. You don'tlearn how to succeed. You learn
how to fail. Learning how tosucceed is a waste of time. When
you succeed, it's easy. I mean,there's nothing to learn
anymore, so you really have tolearn how to fail. It's like
learning to walk. When a kidlearns to walk, take a step and
(02:12):
fall 100 times before they learnto walk. So when we do things as
a grown up, that's new. It's thesame thing.
Stephanie Maas (02:18):
So let me ask you this. Walk me through this
passion that you've had for thelast 40 years to help folks
access government funding forthe things that they need, or
they think they need. Talk to meabout where that passion came
from, what this looks like foryou, etc.
Matthew Lesko (02:39):
Well, it started trying to feed myself. You know,
that's what life is. You have totake care of yourself and get a
job and all that kind of stuff.I was starting businesses. I
mean, in the 70s, I had asoftware company that failed,
and I spent the only personalworld, and it's trying stuff.
And then I became a consultantfor big companies like market
(03:00):
research consultant. And I'd getinformation for them to buy and
sell companies and markets forthis and that and the other
thing. And I was stationed inWashington, so back then, before
the internet, you went tolibraries, remember them to get
information and helping richpeople. Rich people will pay
anything if they think they'regoing to make money at it. And
(03:21):
so I would go around and Proctergamma was a client of mine, and
they wanted to start a chain ofpasta stores. So that's probably
somebody on the board ofdirectors. Hey, why don't we get
in the pasta business? So I goout and look at the market and
competitors and stuff like that,and I go to libraries around
Washington, DC, because we haveso many libraries because every
(03:41):
agency has their own library forfor agriculture, for commerce or
for transportation. So you havethe world's largest collection
of literature on that topic. AndI'd go there and try to research
the data and the informationabout what the market is, and
talking to librarians, and Iremember, I was working on the
pasta. And they said, Oh, thelibrarian said, you want to know
(04:04):
about pasta? Hey, go up to thefourth floor in 407, or
whatever, and talk to Charlie.He's our pasta expert. That just
shocked me, and so went over,talked to Charlie. And Charlie's
been studying pasta for last 25years. He got a master's in it.
He's got a PhD in it, and that'sall he does is create Studies
(04:24):
and Information and that nobodyknows about. His wife was sick
of hearing about it. Yeah, whenI walk in the door with a
genuine interest in it, I mean,he just lights up and I could
never get out. He would give mestudies about all this stuff and
what happens, and how the pricesand everything, and who's making
what? And so I put it all in apackage for my client. And what
(04:46):
shocked me, though, is that,God, I had no idea. I mean, I
grew up in Wilkes Barre,Pennsylvania, coal mining town,
and my grandparents were cameand worked in the mines from
Czechoslovakia, and I'm a coalminer's grandson. And. I Why
does everybody know about this?Yeah. And I said, God, nobody
works for I, I thought thegovernment was a post office and
the IRS, you know, and to seeall the wealth that's there and
(05:10):
all. And I was makingmillionaires into billionaires.
They'd get money and help andall this kind of stuff. Why? Why
isn't everybody that? So I said,Oh, I got to do this. Rich
people boring to work for. Allthey care about is money, you
know, their hearts not in muchexcept their pocket. And so I
wanted to help the averageperson. How do I do that? And I
can't charge, like I charge richpeople to do this information.
(05:33):
So it had to be books back then.So someone who flunked English
all his life, you know, to writea book was like being on Mars
and but I did get a contract.There was an agent that found
me, and so he got me a contractto that. So what I did when the
government printing office founda book that has a description of
all the government programs,money program, took that book,
(05:54):
cut and pasted it and became aNew York Times best seller, all
I did is change the headlinesthe government doesn't explain
things as well. One of myfavorite stories is that there's
a program. We still have it too,but it's called the urban
homesteading act. And see what Iwould do is read on it. Well,
what the hell is this aboutmoney and hard? And I read it
(06:16):
and the details, it really says,yeah, they get homes that people
couldn't pay their mortgages. Sothe government, you know,
guarantees all mortgages. Sowhen your bank doesn't get your
mortgage, government gives thebank money, and the government
stuck with the house, you know,that's going downhill, and it
gets dilapidated and all thatkind of stuff. So what they do
(06:36):
is, okay, they give them awayfor $1 so they house this for $1
and they give you a grant forlike, $30,000 to fix it up. So
what I will do, I'll read that,I'll say, Hey, that's not urban
home study. AG, that's housesfor $1 you know, to make it user
friendly, from the government,became a New York Times best
seller. A lot of publicity andego satisfying stuff happened.
(06:59):
So I did a bunch of them. Andthen years and then I did
infomercials that were verypopular, because to me, the way
to sell books is, if you don'thave marketing money and
advertising money, you get freeadvertising. And the way you get
free advertising is you become aguest and you act like an idiot,
(07:20):
because television loves idiots.So I was a regular on talk
shows, because that's how I soldbooks. Famous talk shows would
use me as like the backup guy,like Larry King. I would. I must
have done him 1520 times, Idon't even know, but he had a TV
show that would be an hour long.There's usually some big, high
powered, famous person on thefirst half hour, then what do
(07:43):
you do? He said, Come on, you'llbe on the second half hour, but
let's go. If the guy said he'llstay for another half hour, he's
a big name, so they don't pushhim in the front. They get him
at the end of the half hour. Canyou stay for another half hour?
I'm in the green room as the guysays, No. They bring me up. The
guy says, Yes, I go home and Iknow they owe me and they'll use
(08:03):
me again. Or I also was used alot for people who cancel at the
moment last minute. Because,man, you're going to give me a
national 1020, 30 minutes ofnational TV, I'd have to pay
hundreds of 1000s of dollars ofthat if I bought an ad, and
being a guest to me is moreauthentic than an ad. So
Letterman would use me whensomebody canceled. What was fun
(08:24):
for me? Who am I subbing for?Like I said once, for
Christopher walk at the lastminute. I mean, they found me in
Chicago somewhere like noon.They got me on the plane, and I
think he taped about six o'clockin the early evening, and I was
there to go on, you know, withChristopher Walken, but that's
what sold books, man, you giveme national air time, and I
(08:47):
learned quickly that mediadoesn't care what you say. I
used to worry about becauseinsecure intellectually, and
they say, oh, let's go look atthis wrong. Nobody reads the
book. They're just entertainingpeople. And I like entertaining
people and making people smile.So I was the go to person for
that. And then I didinfomercials because I say, Oh,
(09:07):
I can't grow this. Because howmany times can you do Larry King
in a year? You know? Then Ifound out that that you could
also get commercials for free.You had to produce them, but
once you had it to buy time wasthe expensive part. You know, I
go to TV stations, I say, Okay,I know I can't afford your time,
and I don't know if it's worthit. If I knew it was worth it,
then I would. But so here's thedeal. If you don't sell that
(09:30):
time, nobody buys that time. Imean, they have to have
something there, so you putlet's go, and I'll give you half
the money. I knew theinformation was important. I
knew I wanted to try to get itto people. But how do people
want it? You know, nobody, theygot Google. What are they need
me for all that kind of stuff.Bookstores were going down, and
so nobody was getting the helpthere. But until a few years
(09:52):
ago, then it's community. Wehave a community of people. Now
people are helping people Idon't even help. People anymore.
It's the people who findprograms. They take advantage of
it, and they help other peopledo it. So it's a community based
thing, and that's even betterthan me, am I? You know, I've
been studying this for 50 years.It's hard for me to relate to
(10:13):
somebody who just found outabout grants, yeah, but the
members are though, are allthose people, and so they're
like volunteers helping. It'salso giving them the joy of
giving. I mean, this is whathappened business, because it
feels so good to give. It's veryselfish to me. So it's having
the joy of giving and helpingsomebody else. So that's what's
(10:36):
happening now. And we also giveour profits back to members. We
have half this country that 10of four to $500 bill wages in
our country. How the wages aredistributed? Okay, back in 1979
which is a turning point ineconomics for us, 70% of all the
wages went to 90% of the people.So the bottom 90% of the income
(11:00):
scale were getting 70% of thewages. The top 10% was getting
about 30% of the wages. Fastforward, that bottom 90% now
only gets about 55% and the top5% is now getting up to 45% so
the share of the pie for 90% ofus is shrinking every year, and
(11:23):
it's not like we haven't we'renot growing GDP growth in that
time. It's going like crazy. Sowe're growing economically as a
country. But who's getting it?There's another astounding fact
to me when I found this ispoverty rates in developed
countries, so only developedcountries, and this is, is the
percentage of people in thatcountry that are poor. We're
(11:46):
number one in creating poorpeople. We have more percentage
of our population that are poorthan any other developed
country. So it's like 17, 18% Imean, the average from all the
developed countries is about 10%or so, and some are down to 7%
so we create more poor peoplethan any other developed
(12:06):
country. Now this is what we arenumber one in, and that's making
millionaires. We're number onein making millionaires. 24
million millionaires. The secondis China, and they got 6
million. So we're number one inmillionaires, and number one in
creating poor people. So thatthat's what gets me up every day
(12:29):
earlier and earlier.
Stephanie Maas (12:32):
You have an amazing way of downplaying your
humility.
Matthew Lesko (12:36):
We're all struggling so hard. You know it,
I know it. I mean, I've justbeen here longer, god, 81 I
never thought I could even livethat long.
Stephanie Maas (12:45):
So let me ask a practical question, if I may. I
think that there is such anatural apprehension to go to
the government for help, right?It's you're either all in or you
have this apprehension, how doyou address that? How do you get
people over that, and where dothey start?
Matthew Lesko (13:03):
Yeah, well, that's two points. I mean, it
won't start as easy, uh, gettingover that. Other thing, I've
been wrestling that 24/7, for 50years, but yes, now to me, all
our incentives in this countryare against it. Like, if people
want information, they go to thewrong source, because if they
don't have money, because theygo to Google, and Google is the
(13:25):
last place to go for anything ifyou don't have money, because
everything, there are peoplethat want to get money. This is
capitalism, but if you don'thave money, then you can't go
there. But people don't knowwhat else to do, so they get
scammed, they lose money, andthey just get worse off. And
that's because they don't knowwhere this other stuff is. Now
the other stuff, which I callthe community society, you know,
(13:47):
we have the capitalist societyof us, and then we have the
community Society of us. Now,the community society is helps
other people for nothing. Theygive you money for nothing, and
but that represents, you know, athird of everything in our
economy is community, society.Two thirds is capitalism, but
1/3 is community, helping eachother like your neighbor, okay,
(14:10):
neighbors on fire, you chargethem to help put out the fire.
No, you're part of thecommunity. You're going to help
them for free, right? So that'swhy we have these organizations
to do that for people and tohelp them and to grow so they
could contribute to thecapitalist society more. But if
you're out of the game, you haveto get the skills or whatever
you need to get into that game,and that's what the community
(14:32):
society is. But people aren'ttrained to do that. They're
trained to go to Google andspend my so how do we do that?
Okay, I got a couple places tostart, but you have to believe
it's there, you know, becauseyou can't just say, Oh, I'm
gonna try. I'm gonna call one ortwo people and see what happens.
And that's probably wrong. It'slike getting a job. You're gonna
(14:54):
knock on one or two doors andnothing's gonna happen. And they
got hiring today. So. You gohome, yeah, there nobody's
hiring, and you can't do that.Go to find help.org. Put in your
zip code on the left handcorner, up on top, you have
community organizations thathelp you with money, help
housing. They're all importantthings, right? Labor, work,
(15:18):
health care, everything. Theseare non profit organizations,
every one of them will never askyou for money. They just give
you money. They give youservices. They give you now, the
next hurdle is now they're notall for you, so you have to
start calling and asking forhelp. See, getting help is a
people business. It's not aninternet business. You have to
(15:41):
find the people in yourcommunity that get paid to help
people like you. They knowwhat's out there. So you have to
learn where these people are anduse them. So starting a
business, let's say you want tostart a business. Okay, put in
sba.gov and then slash localdash assistance, sba.gov/low
(16:04):
sba.gov/local-assistance, andthere's a place to put in your
zip code. These are allnonprofit organizations that get
paid to help anybody, anybody,start a business, start a
nonprofit, work on yourinvention, be a freelancer, be a
real estate investor. Any way tomake money. They help you for
free. Help you find money. Helpyou find legal help for free.
(16:26):
Everything now they're all notperfect, yeah, and that's why
you call them. To me, call twoor three of them, four of them,
or whatever, but everyone willnever charge you money. Here's a
couple other ones. Anotherwebsite is called apex. Apex and
accelerate tours with an S andthen.us so that's a place again,
(16:46):
there in every city that ifyou're in business, small, big,
whatever, the biggest market foranything is the government. They
buy anything, and the problemis, learn the bureaucracy, and
they even have grants that helpyou figure out how to get those
contracts. Now there's anothergood one for businesses. It's
called Career one stop.org Okay.Now what they do is train your
(17:09):
employees for free. They pay forthat because businesses don't
like paying for training, so thegovernment does. So if you hire
people without the skills theyneed, they'll pay the salary up
to 80, 90% of the salary whilethey learn, or they just give
you, I mean, you get hundredsand hundreds of 1000s of dollars
to train all your call centerpeople or your marketing people,
(17:32):
right? It's phenomenal. Andthat's training money and as an
individual, too. Now in ourcountry, you could without a
college degree, you could getpaid $40,000 a year to train for
$100,000 a year job not going tocollege and paying them $40,000
a year, the government will payyou $40,000 a year.
Stephanie Maas (17:54):
That's awesome. So with a new administration
coming in, is that going toimpact how many of these
programs might be available inthe future?
Matthew Lesko (18:05):
They all say this. So every president says
this, but it's important in away. In the short term, you
won't notice anything the systemso baked in doesn't matter. And
everybody says this to getelected, and especially the
current guy, he justentertaining himself. The more
outrageous things he could say,the more people will pay
(18:25):
attention to him. That's how Igot a lot of TV time too. It's
being outrageous, but it issignificant because they're able
to change it a few degree. Andso by chipping at the edges and
changing a few degree, thatmeans 1020, years from now,
we're in a different place. Sothey do have a long term impact
by moving things a little bit,and that's about all they could
(18:47):
do, especially now in thebeginning, if it ever happens,
it'll take years to happen, andit'll just be around the edges,
and it'll be new opportunities.I mean, these people now, they
believe in capitalism, so Imean, why is Elon Musk following
along around this guy? Becausenowhere else Elon could get a
billion dollars except from thefederal government. He's looking
(19:10):
for his next billion off thefederal government. That's what
it's all about. So get yourfirst million off. They've heard
government. And the federalgovernment is not the
government. Most of thegovernment, for us is what's
locally, and then what happensis like right now, there are
nonprofit organizations that setup grants. We have this
community society that fills inthe blanks a lot of times. To
(19:33):
me, it's the lower income peoplethat are struggling, because
there's so much there that canreally change their life if they
stick at it, and look for thehell a third of our country,
their work is to help youimprove your life, and they have
money and help to do that, youhave to find the right one.
Stephanie Maas (19:50):
Like I said, you have truly spent your life
helping others. And don't arguewith me.
Matthew Lesko (20:00):
It's hard. I don't think myself are
professional or anything. I'mtrying to get through life like
all of us are, but I feel we allhave that obligation. And the
older I get now, boy, that is soimportant to me. Now it's just
giving, you know, it to me. Howmuch can I give before I die?
And that's a very selfish thing.That's not me trying to help
anybody but me.
Stephanie Maas (20:21):
Yeah, sure.
Unknown (20:22):
What I've been living with for a long time now is
realizing my heart's smarterthan my brain. We don't listen
to our heart enough when welisten to our grain, because
we're afraid we don't know whatwe're doing in life. So we take
expert opinion, like peoplesaid, I couldn't wear question
mark suits, and I just somethingmy heart, I had to do that I
(20:43):
did, and I got thrown off ofHome Shopping. I lost millions
of dollars, but I wanted to doit or something my heart was
telling me. But no, the realstuff in life is making those
real hard decisions, because itcomes from the heart, and you
have to listen to that heart.
Stephanie Maas (20:58):
Yeah. Very wise counsel. Very wise counsel. It
has truly been an honor to spendthis time with you. Thank you
for sharing your mission andlife's work with us.
Matthew Lesko (21:09):
Oh well, you're so kind, that touches my heart.
Thank you.
Well, we are so excited to have you here, and
(00:34):
I'll tell you what, this is areally fascinating background.
Matthew Lesko (00:38):
Anything you want to know, just lead me around by
the nose.
Stephanie Maas (00:41):
My understanding is you started your career in
the military.
Matthew Lesko (00:45):
Yeah, the Vietnam War. That's why I was in the
military. It was three years,two months and nine days. But I
wasn't counting. I was a shipdriver, and it was great. I
never had more responsibilityfor the end of my, rest of my
life. I don't think when he wasa 22 year old kid and learned
how to drive ships go out inSouth China Sea. That's before
there was any, you know, GPS, oranything like that. You had to
go out and shoot the stars tofind out where the hell you are.
(01:08):
And it was sort of fun. I hatedit every minute, but it wouldn't
be somewhere else, but itcertainly was a great
experience. I had nothing betterto do at the time. I couldn't
get into grad school. I thought,well, yeah, well, maybe I'll go
to law school. So I took theLSAT, so I got like two above
plant life, yeah, and if you gotdrafted, then it's the army you
(01:28):
get. And I'm not a camper, soliving in the jungle, this
camping distance sound appealingto me. So the Navy sounded
pretty good. Man, that's cleansheets every night. So I did
that, and then I was adiplomatic courier in Northern
Europe, briefcase handcuffed tome, him, and I finally got out
of there, went and got an MBAbecause of the GI Bill. And then
(01:51):
I started businesses that werefailing. And that's what you
have to do to do anything. Youjust have to fail. Fail, fail.
You practice failing. You don'tlearn how to succeed. You learn
how to fail. Learning how tosucceed is a waste of time. When
you succeed, it's easy. I mean,there's nothing to learn
anymore, so you really have tolearn how to fail. It's like
learning to walk. When a kidlearns to walk, take a step and
(02:12):
fall 100 times before they learnto walk. So when we do things as
a grown up, that's new. It's thesame thing.
Stephanie Maas (02:18):
So let me ask you this. Walk me through this
passion that you've had for thelast 40 years to help folks
access government funding forthe things that they need, or
they think they need. Talk to meabout where that passion came
from, what this looks like foryou, etc.
Matthew Lesko (02:39):
Well, it started trying to feed myself. You know,
that's what life is. You have totake care of yourself and get a
job and all that kind of stuff.I was starting businesses. I
mean, in the 70s, I had asoftware company that failed,
and I spent the only personalworld, and it's trying stuff.
And then I became a consultantfor big companies like market
(03:00):
research consultant. And I'd getinformation for them to buy and
sell companies and markets forthis and that and the other
thing. And I was stationed inWashington, so back then, before
the internet, you went tolibraries, remember them to get
information and helping richpeople. Rich people will pay
anything if they think they'regoing to make money at it. And
(03:21):
so I would go around and Proctergamma was a client of mine, and
they wanted to start a chain ofpasta stores. So that's probably
somebody on the board ofdirectors. Hey, why don't we get
in the pasta business? So I goout and look at the market and
competitors and stuff like that,and I go to libraries around
Washington, DC, because we haveso many libraries because every
(03:41):
agency has their own library forfor agriculture, for commerce or
for transportation. So you havethe world's largest collection
of literature on that topic. AndI'd go there and try to research
the data and the informationabout what the market is, and
talking to librarians, and Iremember, I was working on the
pasta. And they said, Oh, thelibrarian said, you want to know
(04:04):
about pasta? Hey, go up to thefourth floor in 407, or
whatever, and talk to Charlie.He's our pasta expert. That just
shocked me, and so went over,talked to Charlie. And Charlie's
been studying pasta for last 25years. He got a master's in it.
He's got a PhD in it, and that'sall he does is create Studies
(04:24):
and Information and that nobodyknows about. His wife was sick
of hearing about it. Yeah, whenI walk in the door with a
genuine interest in it, I mean,he just lights up and I could
never get out. He would give mestudies about all this stuff and
what happens, and how the pricesand everything, and who's making
what? And so I put it all in apackage for my client. And what
(04:46):
shocked me, though, is that,God, I had no idea. I mean, I
grew up in Wilkes Barre,Pennsylvania, coal mining town,
and my grandparents were cameand worked in the mines from
Czechoslovakia, and I'm a coalminer's grandson. And. I Why
does everybody know about this?Yeah. And I said, God, nobody
works for I, I thought thegovernment was a post office and
the IRS, you know, and to seeall the wealth that's there and
(05:10):
all. And I was makingmillionaires into billionaires.
They'd get money and help andall this kind of stuff. Why? Why
isn't everybody that? So I said,Oh, I got to do this. Rich
people boring to work for. Allthey care about is money, you
know, their hearts not in muchexcept their pocket. And so I
wanted to help the averageperson. How do I do that? And I
can't charge, like I charge richpeople to do this information.
(05:33):
So it had to be books back then.So someone who flunked English
all his life, you know, to writea book was like being on Mars
and but I did get a contract.There was an agent that found
me, and so he got me a contractto that. So what I did when the
government printing office founda book that has a description of
all the government programs,money program, took that book,
(05:54):
cut and pasted it and became aNew York Times best seller, all
I did is change the headlinesthe government doesn't explain
things as well. One of myfavorite stories is that there's
a program. We still have it too,but it's called the urban
homesteading act. And see what Iwould do is read on it. Well,
what the hell is this aboutmoney and hard? And I read it
(06:16):
and the details, it really says,yeah, they get homes that people
couldn't pay their mortgages. Sothe government, you know,
guarantees all mortgages. Sowhen your bank doesn't get your
mortgage, government gives thebank money, and the government
stuck with the house, you know,that's going downhill, and it
gets dilapidated and all thatkind of stuff. So what they do
(06:36):
is, okay, they give them awayfor $1 so they house this for $1
and they give you a grant forlike, $30,000 to fix it up. So
what I will do, I'll read that,I'll say, Hey, that's not urban
home study. AG, that's housesfor $1 you know, to make it user
friendly, from the government,became a New York Times best
seller. A lot of publicity andego satisfying stuff happened.
(06:59):
So I did a bunch of them. Andthen years and then I did
infomercials that were verypopular, because to me, the way
to sell books is, if you don'thave marketing money and
advertising money, you get freeadvertising. And the way you get
free advertising is you become aguest and you act like an idiot,
(07:20):
because television loves idiots.So I was a regular on talk
shows, because that's how I soldbooks. Famous talk shows would
use me as like the backup guy,like Larry King. I would. I must
have done him 1520 times, Idon't even know, but he had a TV
show that would be an hour long.There's usually some big, high
powered, famous person on thefirst half hour, then what do
(07:43):
you do? He said, Come on, you'llbe on the second half hour, but
let's go. If the guy said he'llstay for another half hour, he's
a big name, so they don't pushhim in the front. They get him
at the end of the half hour. Canyou stay for another half hour?
I'm in the green room as the guysays, No. They bring me up. The
guy says, Yes, I go home and Iknow they owe me and they'll use
(08:03):
me again. Or I also was used alot for people who cancel at the
moment last minute. Because,man, you're going to give me a
national 1020, 30 minutes ofnational TV, I'd have to pay
hundreds of 1000s of dollars ofthat if I bought an ad, and
being a guest to me is moreauthentic than an ad. So
Letterman would use me whensomebody canceled. What was fun
(08:24):
for me? Who am I subbing for?Like I said once, for
Christopher walk at the lastminute. I mean, they found me in
Chicago somewhere like noon.They got me on the plane, and I
think he taped about six o'clockin the early evening, and I was
there to go on, you know, withChristopher Walken, but that's
what sold books, man, you giveme national air time, and I
(08:47):
learned quickly that mediadoesn't care what you say. I
used to worry about becauseinsecure intellectually, and
they say, oh, let's go look atthis wrong. Nobody reads the
book. They're just entertainingpeople. And I like entertaining
people and making people smile.So I was the go to person for
that. And then I didinfomercials because I say, Oh,
(09:07):
I can't grow this. Because howmany times can you do Larry King
in a year? You know? Then Ifound out that that you could
also get commercials for free.You had to produce them, but
once you had it to buy time wasthe expensive part. You know, I
go to TV stations, I say, Okay,I know I can't afford your time,
and I don't know if it's worthit. If I knew it was worth it,
then I would. But so here's thedeal. If you don't sell that
(09:30):
time, nobody buys that time. Imean, they have to have
something there, so you putlet's go, and I'll give you half
the money. I knew theinformation was important. I
knew I wanted to try to get itto people. But how do people
want it? You know, nobody, theygot Google. What are they need
me for all that kind of stuff.Bookstores were going down, and
so nobody was getting the helpthere. But until a few years
(09:52):
ago, then it's community. Wehave a community of people. Now
people are helping people Idon't even help. People anymore.
It's the people who findprograms. They take advantage of
it, and they help other peopledo it. So it's a community based
thing, and that's even betterthan me, am I? You know, I've
been studying this for 50 years.It's hard for me to relate to
(10:13):
somebody who just found outabout grants, yeah, but the
members are though, are allthose people, and so they're
like volunteers helping. It'salso giving them the joy of
giving. I mean, this is whathappened business, because it
feels so good to give. It's veryselfish to me. So it's having
the joy of giving and helpingsomebody else. So that's what's
(10:36):
happening now. And we also giveour profits back to members. We
have half this country that 10of four to $500 bill wages in
our country. How the wages aredistributed? Okay, back in 1979
which is a turning point ineconomics for us, 70% of all the
wages went to 90% of the people.So the bottom 90% of the income
(11:00):
scale were getting 70% of thewages. The top 10% was getting
about 30% of the wages. Fastforward, that bottom 90% now
only gets about 55% and the top5% is now getting up to 45% so
the share of the pie for 90% ofus is shrinking every year, and
(11:23):
it's not like we haven't we'renot growing GDP growth in that
time. It's going like crazy. Sowe're growing economically as a
country. But who's getting it?There's another astounding fact
to me when I found this ispoverty rates in developed
countries, so only developedcountries, and this is, is the
percentage of people in thatcountry that are poor. We're
(11:46):
number one in creating poorpeople. We have more percentage
of our population that are poorthan any other developed
country. So it's like 17, 18% Imean, the average from all the
developed countries is about 10%or so, and some are down to 7%
so we create more poor peoplethan any other developed
(12:06):
country. Now this is what we arenumber one in, and that's making
millionaires. We're number onein making millionaires. 24
million millionaires. The secondis China, and they got 6
million. So we're number one inmillionaires, and number one in
creating poor people. So thatthat's what gets me up every day
(12:29):
earlier and earlier.
Stephanie Maas (12:32):
You have an amazing way of downplaying your
humility.
Matthew Lesko (12:36):
We're all struggling so hard. You know it,
I know it. I mean, I've justbeen here longer, god, 81 I
never thought I could even livethat long.
Stephanie Maas (12:45):
So let me ask a practical question, if I may. I
think that there is such anatural apprehension to go to
the government for help, right?It's you're either all in or you
have this apprehension, how doyou address that? How do you get
people over that, and where dothey start?
Matthew Lesko (13:03):
Yeah, well, that's two points. I mean, it
won't start as easy, uh, gettingover that. Other thing, I've
been wrestling that 24/7, for 50years, but yes, now to me, all
our incentives in this countryare against it. Like, if people
want information, they go to thewrong source, because if they
don't have money, because theygo to Google, and Google is the
(13:25):
last place to go for anything ifyou don't have money, because
everything, there are peoplethat want to get money. This is
capitalism, but if you don'thave money, then you can't go
there. But people don't knowwhat else to do, so they get
scammed, they lose money, andthey just get worse off. And
that's because they don't knowwhere this other stuff is. Now
the other stuff, which I callthe community society, you know,
(13:47):
we have the capitalist societyof us, and then we have the
community Society of us. Now,the community society is helps
other people for nothing. Theygive you money for nothing, and
but that represents, you know, athird of everything in our
economy is community, society.Two thirds is capitalism, but
1/3 is community, helping eachother like your neighbor, okay,
(14:10):
neighbors on fire, you chargethem to help put out the fire.
No, you're part of thecommunity. You're going to help
them for free, right? So that'swhy we have these organizations
to do that for people and tohelp them and to grow so they
could contribute to thecapitalist society more. But if
you're out of the game, you haveto get the skills or whatever
you need to get into that game,and that's what the community
(14:32):
society is. But people aren'ttrained to do that. They're
trained to go to Google andspend my so how do we do that?
Okay, I got a couple places tostart, but you have to believe
it's there, you know, becauseyou can't just say, Oh, I'm
gonna try. I'm gonna call one ortwo people and see what happens.
And that's probably wrong. It'slike getting a job. You're gonna
(14:54):
knock on one or two doors andnothing's gonna happen. And they
got hiring today. So. You gohome, yeah, there nobody's
hiring, and you can't do that.Go to find help.org. Put in your
zip code on the left handcorner, up on top, you have
community organizations thathelp you with money, help
housing. They're all importantthings, right? Labor, work,
(15:18):
health care, everything. Theseare non profit organizations,
every one of them will never askyou for money. They just give
you money. They give youservices. They give you now, the
next hurdle is now they're notall for you, so you have to
start calling and asking forhelp. See, getting help is a
people business. It's not aninternet business. You have to
(15:41):
find the people in yourcommunity that get paid to help
people like you. They knowwhat's out there. So you have to
learn where these people are anduse them. So starting a
business, let's say you want tostart a business. Okay, put in
sba.gov and then slash localdash assistance, sba.gov/low
(16:04):
sba.gov/local-assistance, andthere's a place to put in your
zip code. These are allnonprofit organizations that get
paid to help anybody, anybody,start a business, start a
nonprofit, work on yourinvention, be a freelancer, be a
real estate investor. Any way tomake money. They help you for
free. Help you find money. Helpyou find legal help for free.
(16:26):
Everything now they're all notperfect, yeah, and that's why
you call them. To me, call twoor three of them, four of them,
or whatever, but everyone willnever charge you money. Here's a
couple other ones. Anotherwebsite is called apex. Apex and
accelerate tours with an S andthen.us so that's a place again,
(16:46):
there in every city that ifyou're in business, small, big,
whatever, the biggest market foranything is the government. They
buy anything, and the problemis, learn the bureaucracy, and
they even have grants that helpyou figure out how to get those
contracts. Now there's anothergood one for businesses. It's
called Career one stop.org Okay.Now what they do is train your
(17:09):
employees for free. They pay forthat because businesses don't
like paying for training, so thegovernment does. So if you hire
people without the skills theyneed, they'll pay the salary up
to 80, 90% of the salary whilethey learn, or they just give
you, I mean, you get hundredsand hundreds of 1000s of dollars
to train all your call centerpeople or your marketing people,
(17:32):
right? It's phenomenal. Andthat's training money and as an
individual, too. Now in ourcountry, you could without a
college degree, you could getpaid $40,000 a year to train for
$100,000 a year job not going tocollege and paying them $40,000
a year, the government will payyou $40,000 a year.
Stephanie Maas (17:54):
That's awesome. So with a new administration
coming in, is that going toimpact how many of these
programs might be available inthe future?
Matthew Lesko (18:05):
They all say this. So every president says
this, but it's important in away. In the short term, you
won't notice anything the systemso baked in doesn't matter. And
everybody says this to getelected, and especially the
current guy, he justentertaining himself. The more
outrageous things he could say,the more people will pay
(18:25):
attention to him. That's how Igot a lot of TV time too. It's
being outrageous, but it issignificant because they're able
to change it a few degree. Andso by chipping at the edges and
changing a few degree, thatmeans 1020, years from now,
we're in a different place. Sothey do have a long term impact
by moving things a little bit,and that's about all they could
(18:47):
do, especially now in thebeginning, if it ever happens,
it'll take years to happen, andit'll just be around the edges,
and it'll be new opportunities.I mean, these people now, they
believe in capitalism, so Imean, why is Elon Musk following
along around this guy? Becausenowhere else Elon could get a
billion dollars except from thefederal government. He's looking
(19:10):
for his next billion off thefederal government. That's what
it's all about. So get yourfirst million off. They've heard
government. And the federalgovernment is not the
government. Most of thegovernment, for us is what's
locally, and then what happensis like right now, there are
nonprofit organizations that setup grants. We have this
community society that fills inthe blanks a lot of times. To
(19:33):
me, it's the lower income peoplethat are struggling, because
there's so much there that canreally change their life if they
stick at it, and look for thehell a third of our country,
their work is to help youimprove your life, and they have
money and help to do that, youhave to find the right one.
Stephanie Maas (19:50):
Like I said, you have truly spent your life
helping others. And don't arguewith me.
Matthew Lesko (20:00):
It's hard. I don't think myself are
professional or anything. I'mtrying to get through life like
all of us are, but I feel we allhave that obligation. And the
older I get now, boy, that is soimportant to me. Now it's just
giving, you know, it to me. Howmuch can I give before I die?
And that's a very selfish thing.That's not me trying to help
anybody but me.
Stephanie Maas (20:21):
Yeah, sure.
Unknown (20:22):
What I've been living with for a long time now is
realizing my heart's smarterthan my brain. We don't listen
to our heart enough when welisten to our grain, because
we're afraid we don't know whatwe're doing in life. So we take
expert opinion, like peoplesaid, I couldn't wear question
mark suits, and I just somethingmy heart, I had to do that I
(20:43):
did, and I got thrown off ofHome Shopping. I lost millions
of dollars, but I wanted to doit or something my heart was
telling me. But no, the realstuff in life is making those
real hard decisions, because itcomes from the heart, and you
have to listen to that heart.
Stephanie Maas (20:58):
Yeah. Very wise counsel. Very wise counsel. It
has truly been an honor to spendthis time with you. Thank you
for sharing your mission andlife's work with us.
Matthew Lesko (21:09):
Oh well, you're so kind, that touches my heart.
Thank you.
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