Finding Freedom In Home Equity. Matthew Sullivan

Bob: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of Money You Should Ask, Where everyone has something they can teach you. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. And in this episode, we’re going to explore, question, examine, converse, dig deep, expose, laugh and cry about the money beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges of our next guest. Turn up the volume, listen, learn and laugh.

Our next guest is Matthew Sullivan. He’s the CEO and founder of Quantm RE, a company that helps homeowners access a portion of their home equity without taking on more debt. I like it. Matthew and his team have developed, have helped over a hundred homeowners, use their home equity to pay off expensive credit cards, remodel their home pay college tuition fees, or to diversify into other investments all without taking on extra debt.

Matthew has a proven track record in real estate innovation. Originally from London, Matthew worked with Richard Branson’s corporate finance team, and it was a director of the Virgin sponsored, London Air Ambulance. A helicopter pilot himself, he is also the host of his own podcast hooked on startups. Matthew is so great to have you here today.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:01:02] Thank you Bob, thanks for having me on.

Bob Wheeler: [00:01:03] You’ve got a big resume. You’ve done a lot of things.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:01:06] I was going to say that’s not my resume. Yes. It’s it’s funny actually looking back when you were saying things like, I  was thinking, “God, Yeah!

Yeah, that was, that was quite a while ago, but it’s funny, you know, as you continually sort of march forward, you sort of forget about the things that you’ve done in the past. So it’s yeah. It’s I think I must have peaked early.

Bob Wheeler: [00:01:24] There you go. Oh. Oh, it’s all downhill from here, right? No, it’s all, it’s all up.

It’s all up. Well, let me ask you this, you seem and I can appreciate this. You seem like somebody that gets bored easy. So you got lots of different projects going on or you’re always moving on to the next thing.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:01:40] Oh, it’s not, funny enough, it’s the opposite because the important thing is really, there’s a lot of stuff I get quite interested in.

So I like doing lots of things. But I don’t, I don’t think I get bored easily. And I think that’s you know, I just, I love throwing myself into stuff. And the problem is I just acquire you know, hobbies and you know, pursuits and passions and things. Most of the stuff I like doing as a hobby,

tends to involve gear. So, you know, things like diving and flying and stuff, you know, anything to do with gear is always, is always a, you know, really interesting.

Bob Wheeler: [00:02:15] And to me, when you talk about gear and diving and flying, what I hear is death.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:02:20] I mean, that is one, that is one unfortunate consequence.

If, if you know, in a gravity normally wins actually. And yes, and, and, you know, hard landings do sometimes involve a fair amount of paper work afterwards. But no,, so far so good as they say.

Bob Wheeler: [00:02:35] So far, so good. So let me ask you this. Did you have siblings growing up? What was it like in the Sullivan household?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:02:40] Well, yeah, I have two sisters, so one is four years younger and one is 14 years younger. So you know, being the older brother, I was actually sort of I went off to boarding school when I was about 12. Which was actually brilliant because then I could, you know you know, get away from being surrounded by a sort of sisters and things.

But no, I mean, the house that I was, I was brought up in Southeast of London. My, my father was the managing director of one of the very early merchant banks, Manufacturers Hanover. And so, you know, I went to a great school when I went to Westminster school in London. So I was out walking around Westminster Abbey in the mornings, complaining for goodness sake, complaining that every morning we had to go into Westminster Abbey to sort of do our morning prayers, you know?

And now it’s like, what, what’s wrong with you? I would kill to go back and do that. So that’s sort of…

Bob Wheeler: [00:03:32] Perspective.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:03:33] Yeah, it is. It is, you know, it is, it’s all these things. They say youth is wasted on the young, but no, I had a, I had a great it, it was you know, my only regret is that I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was about nine.

So I think I put, you know, I fixed that with my current children. They’re all, they’re all learning at the age of four months. Yeah.

Good. That’s a good, that’s a good age to start now. Did you, did your parents talk about money? Your dad worked in banking or worked for a bank, a merchant bank. Did you. Have an allowance.

Did you talk about money what’s the British way or the British way in your household?

Well, it’s funny because there was never any re- I mean, thinking about it, it’s one of those things that you, looking back, you think, well, there was never any education about money. Money you know I think my father used to refer to it as you know, “son, money is useful stuff.

You should get some.” I think that was sort of as far as it got. So there was never really any education about money and how it works and what you should do with it and how you should save it. You know, so I think a lot of it is certainly my background. It was, you sort of feel your way was a given, you know, money is there, you sort of figure it out for yourself.

Bob Wheeler: [00:04:49] And so what happened? So when you got out of college and did your, once you got out of college, were your parents like have fun? We’re locking the door, figure it out. Did they help you? W what were the struggles when you had to get out in the real world?

As you’re technically on your own.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:05:03] Well, well, first of all, they moved house without telling me where they’d moved to which, which I thought was a little unfair.

Bob Wheeler: [00:05:09] Unfair.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:05:10] And that was the beginnings of an indication of their attitude towards how I should carry on in life. And so and no, but really it was a case of luck, you know, after I left

university as it was then I was about 21. I went straight into a job and I actually stayed in Birmingham. So I bought a house. I think I left, I left university and when I was 21, got a job immediately with Pitney Bowes. And these are the guys that sold franking machines, photocopiers,

fax machines. Okay. So my first job I was, you know, and there’s this new fangled device called a fax machine had just been invented. So I had to go out and sell franking machines, which basically stop you from having to lick stamps and put them on envelopes. And the big challenge there was a fax machine because I would go and see people and explain how fax machine worked.

And they would say, but who am I going to fax? No one I know has a fax machine. So it was one of those sort of chicken and egg situation. It’s a great idea, but no, you know, it’s completely pointless. So until everyone has a fax machine, it’s as useful  as you know, a chocolate fire guard. So that was, that was a, a bit of a challenge.

And then I moved on and then I started working for an insurance company and worked there for a couple of years. So I, I never really wanted to go back home. So, so the idea of going back really wasn’t on the list. And I wanted to, you know, I had my own house. I bought my Opel Manta GTE and, and for, I don’t think anyone has any idea what that is.

But it was a really super car. It was like this sort of two liter sports car. So that was my first car. So I would drive around this sort of 21 year old in this bright red super-duper sports car that absolutely couldn’t afford. But that didn’t matter. So no, mine, you know, the early years of leaving university were, were fantastic fun.

Bob Wheeler: [00:07:01] I actually had an Opel. That was my first car. It was a very teeny car, but it was a four-door.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:07:07] Yeah, but this was, my mom was a two door. They had doors like we’re sort of 15 feet long. Cause it was a coupe. So you couldn’t open the doors anywhere because they were so big. You could, you have to sort of turn into a racing snake to be able to get in and out.

Bob Wheeler: [00:07:24] Now, how did you pick that car? What made you decide to pick the Opel?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:07:27] I just wanted it. One of those cars, you know, when I was younger there were cars, I used to dream about cars, so I would dream about AC Cobras and Opel Mantas. But, and I w w I actually built a Cobra. So. Couple of years later, I went and bought one of these kits , so you could buy a kit.

So it would come in this big box. And you would have some ended up, you know, the instruction manual was about as thick as the sort of new Testament. And, and, and so I built this car. I built this AC Cobra replica with a V12 Jaguar, engine which was out of funny enough, one of my dad’s cars. So he was furious when he found out.

But you know, I just explained, look, this is a much better looking car. Just think, the gas mileage is going to be significantly improved because it’s much lighter. So.

Bob Wheeler: [00:08:14] That’s perfect. Now, what car do you drive now and how did you pick that? Did you build it?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:08:18] Right now. I drive a 2008 Ford expedition. Not, you know, I have two cars.

I have a 2012 Suburban  and a 2008 Expedition. But I just love old cars now because you know, if anything goes wrong, you can fix them. You don’t have to plug them into some digital rights management, super computer. You just hit the appropriate piece with a hammer and it normally works. And, and I just love big old cars.

You know, so I’ve, I’ve been through my phase of super fast cars, money pits, and you know, all that sort of stuff. So I’ve, I’ve done the usual list of German and Italian you know expensive cars. Had huge fun with them, but I don’t think I’d ever like to go back there.

Bob Wheeler: [00:09:02] Go American. Go American, if that’s even true anymore. Cause I think all the parts are made everywhere. I don’t know.

 So how did you go from selling fax machines to insurance to now you’re doing innovative real estate financing. And creative things. W what was that journey like? Did you one day just say I’m sort of sick of this. It was just a gradual progression.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:09:28] No, it’s the, it’s the, again, it’s, it’s all driven by this sort of real, I love building things. So and I, and I think I’ve always had this sort of real entrepreneurial bug. Although I never knew that’s what it was. It was a sort of a restlessness you know, within a traditional work environment because I just wanted to go out and create.

So it’s that drive to build, to create stuff. And So my first so after insurance, I then moved back from Birmingham. Funnily enough, I actually went and sort of live with my parents for a few months which was actually quite challenging because having gone through that process of owning my own house and you know, met my first wife at a university.

And, you know, going back to my parents was you know, was challenging. But it wasn’t there for very long, but I started, I, I, I got a job as a stockbroker. So this was in 1989. And that was long, long time ago, but I was broking the far east markets. So it’s Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand.

So I would go out there twice a year for this sort of three to four week trip going around all of those countries you know, meeting all these different companies. And I did that for three or four years. Absolutely, you know, amazing experience, huge education. But from there a couple of guys that I was working with spun off their own company and I went to join them.

So we sort of set up this small corporate finance company. So I was there. My, my two sort of bosses were the the guys that created this company. And that’s how we met up with, with Branson. We, one of the companies that we bought was Perlin Strands Balloon Company, and my boss Rory wrote to Richard Branson.

We had an office in Kensington, High Street, which was a stone’s throw away from Richard’s office in Holland Park. So Roy wrote him a letter. I’ve always wanted to fly around the world in a hot air balloon. It’s the last great adventure. I think you would be a great pilot. Why don’t we go together? You know, why don’t we fly around the world in a hot air balloon?

It’s the last great adventure. So Richard Branson wrote back and said, Dear Rory, why not? So yeah. Moving from you know, Pitney Bowes to insurance, to stockbroking, to corporate finance, and suddenly I’m in the world of, you know, Virgin and Richard Branson and you know, building hot air balloons to fly around the world and, you know, meeting up with this.

And so we spend a number of years working closely with him after that. You know, with his corporate finance team. And we got involved with Virgin Clothing, Virgin Cosmetics Virgin Executive Jets, you know, Virgin Bride, which was quite funny watching Richard wearing a a wedding dress. So yeah.

Anyway, yes. Sorry. Very long questions of ratio, a very, very long answer to a very short question.

Bob Wheeler: [00:12:15] So, so after you did all that, and now you’re going into this you’ve got Quantum RE, and like what was the impetus for that? Like, was it, oh, this will be a quick way to make some good money. This is actually something that people need. I it’s just something, another thing to build.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:12:32] It’s a fascinating asset class. I want to move to the U S. Seven years ago. So in the interim after, you know, in, in the late nineties I left we, we sort of wound that the company up, I think, you know, Virgin took over in the end. So I then spent the next 20 years as a, an entrepreneur.

I had my own businesses you know, finance, telecoms, telecommunications you know, lending. So it’s very much all to do with platforms and money. So the things I, I was one of the early internet pioneers. We built a billing company in in 99, 2000. We were the first sort of, you know, internet billing company.

So I was always fascinated by the sort of machinery of platforms and large scale applications. Now circumstances brought me to the U S seven years ago. One of the first things that I did when I came here was something I’d always wanted to do, and that is get involved in what we call property in the UK or real estate.

Now, real estate is this fascinating asset class that I’d always been hugely interested in, but never had the opportunity or never really managed to get involved in the UK over here. It was. An open ticket and it was you know, a it was you know, what do artists have? You know, they, they paint on a canvas, a blank canvas, that’s it.

So I set up, I need more coffee required. So I set up a a crowdfunding company, one of the first real estate crowdfunding companies. And I met really great real estate partners that I still work with today. And what that crowdfunding company did was allowed people to buy into real estate projects that otherwise they wouldn’t have access to.

So they could invest a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there into projects when normally you’d have to have a minimum ticket size of, of a hundred or $200,000. While I was working on that company? I came across this incredibly interesting asset class, which was the ability to share in the equity in single family homes, without having to buy the home.

One of the biggest challenges with crowd venture was getting the deals. Every deal was different. Every deal had its own sort of complications, but if we could help homeowners unlock equity and at the same time participate in some of the upside, then it was a fantastic asset because we could tap into what was

a $15 trillion asset class, and we wouldn’t have any of the issues of ownership. So we wouldn’t have to own the homes, the homeowners own the homes, but we still managed to participate in some of the upside. So it was a very early idea about this was about five or six years ago. Since then there are a number of companies that are come into this marketplace. Contracts have evolved, which are option agreements that enable homeowners to allow the investor to share in the upside in exchange for a lump sum.

So that’s how it works. It’s not a loan. You have investors that say, okay, here’s a lump sum. When you sell your home. If your home goes up in value, then give me my money back together with a share of the appreciation. Right. So it’s that it’s very different. There’s no monthly payments. There’s no interest.

There’s no added debt. It’s a real lifesaver for many, many homeowners because we can work with people that have a credit score of 500 and above. Which is something that the banks just wouldn’t even consider. So it’s a great product is very scalable. Yeah. It’s something that I just became fascinated with and spent years trying to figure out how we could create a platform that enables homeowners to unlock equity and investors to buy into that asset class.

And really that’s what we’ve built with Quantm and you know, where we’re applying blockchain technologies where tokenizing the assets. So there’s going to be lots of really exciting announcements over the next you know, few months. But it, it was something that still fascinates me every day that the, I still am hugely motivated to build this because it solves a real problem for homeowners, but also it allows me.

It gives me that you know, the it’s the excitement of being a pioneer in such a big marketplace.

Bob Wheeler: [00:16:52] Well, and do you still think real estate, whether you own it with a couple of investors or you own it on your own is still a really good place to put your money? You know, economy is going crazy right now.

Stuff is, it’s, it’s a little, things are up-ended a bit right now.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:17:05] Yes, but do your own research. I mean, it’s a very large complex multi-layered asset class, real estate does not mean just one thing. It means a whole range of different things. It means you can lend people money. You can invest in projects.

You’ve got residential projects, commercial projects, triple net leasing. There’s layer upon layer upon layer of ways to get involved. Are you an active investor? You’re a passive investor. Are you a syndicate member? You a fix and flip, you know, the list goes on. So yes, real estate is a large, you know, asset class that is not correlated with the stock market.

So if stock market goes up and down, normally the real estate is that sort of market is disconnected to that. You can make some great money in real estate. You can lose a lot of money in real estate. It’s the same as any investment class. Just cause it’s real estate and you can prod it. B has made a bricks.

Doesn’t make it any more easy. It’s just as challenging as investing in stocks and bonds or you know, or anything, anything in fact.

Bob Wheeler: [00:18:08] Well, since you came here about seven years ago, you pro you wouldn’t have been around. I don’t think when in 2007- 8, when the housing markets, everybody was buying 20 properties in Arizona, and then everything just went completely bust.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:18:21] Yeah, it wasn’t. No, but there was a global problem. So the impact, the waves, and it wasn’t just a US issue. I mean, it was a, I mean, the impact, we felt that everywhere and again I was involved in. I think in that time in lending. So I was in, I was a second position package lending company. So we were packaging and, and arranging a second position or, you know, like cash out refinance, that sort of thing.

So our our marketplace dried up overnight. So, so we were very much. You know, finger on the pulse when that happened, but this is very different. So what we’re doing here, I know you didn’t mention it, but we’re not increasing the lending. One of the biggest problems then was you had people were just massively over leveraged.

You know, you had tons of debt without the underlying assets to support that. And that was the fundamentals of the problem. You know, there was, there was money was being lost. Against a zero asset base. So of course it was never going to be paid back. And there was never, it was always going to you know, be a write-off.

You know, what we’re doing is we’re investing in existing equity and we are reducing the leverage. And I don’t mean to sort of. Go on about it, but it just means that a homeowner potentially can use money from us to pay off their mortgage. So it’s not one of those things where we’re trying to increase the lending where it’s, it’s the opposite.

Bob Wheeler: [00:19:47] Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And I think this is something for a lot of people. I know, you know, sometimes people or maybe just in the U S or maybe it’s just me. No, I don’t think it’s me, but where, you know, I I’d rather, I think I want to have a hundred percent of something. Right. I want the whole a hundred percent of the profit later on, but a lot of times, I mean, my philosophy is I’d rather have.

Part of something than a hundred percent of nothing.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:20:13] You know, that’s the biggest challenge for us. It’s this psychological attachment to something that may happen in the future, even though I am suffering today and cannot make my, you know, I can’t pay the mortgage, I can’t pay for my grocery bills…

 -yet. You know, if someone offers me the ability to unlock some potential profit? No, no, no. You can’t have that. That’s all mine. It’s mine. I’ve been taught that equity is sacrosanct. Do not use your home as an ATM, never touch your equity. And again, that’s, that’s some of the, sort of a. I wouldn’t say it’s education.

That’s some of the legacy learnings that that we have to sort of unwrap and say, look, your home is an asset. Use it. Here’s the way to access some of the capital without borrowing money, you know, go and invest that somewhere else, make cash, make, make a better return or, or you know, use the money to pay off your credit card.

So, yeah. So that, that is a real big challenge, you know, when you talk about money. And so it’s amazing, the entrenched beliefs that people have that are entirely illogical.

Bob Wheeler: [00:21:27] Yeah. And that’s, I mean, I, that’s what I spend most of my time dealing with is these beliefs that people are holding onto that are held up as truth.

And in fact, they’re, they’re just beliefs that may or may not serve us. Do you talk with your children about money? I know they’re young four months old, but they’re learning to bike. Do they have conversations?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:21:47] Yes. Well, I think what we do is we try and yeah, so they have these Go Henry cards.

So that’s one thing. So that’s you introduce them to the fact that you know, it’s, there are things you can do with money. In other words rather than just sort of stuffing all of your $2 bills that you got for your birthday present into a, you know, a sort of ceramic dinosaur. You know, I think though that, you know, I’ve got my, my children quite young, they, they range from nine years old to one and a half years old.

So I’ve got four, four children. So you know, now is the time to try and talk to them about, you know, how it works, what is money, you know? And the fact is, you know, don’t go and spend it just cause you’ve got some numbers on your card, you know, your job is not to try and reduce that number to zero as quickly as possible.

You know, it’s, you know what it does, you know, save it up, you know it’s a challenge that you don’t want them to end up being, you know, so tight that they never want to spend money. You just want them to be aware that you know, when it’s gone, it’s gone and it’s actually a lot harder to make  than it is to spend it.

Bob Wheeler: [00:22:53] Well, let me ask you this. So when so your oldest is nine, right? The oldest is nine.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:22:59] I got other children in the UK. The oldest over there is like 28 or something. Okay.

Bob Wheeler: [00:23:04] Well then maybe on the other ones and, and the, the current one at nine, do are at age 12, or are they going to go off to boarding school or are you going to try and keep them around and teach them some of your perspective?

What happens when they get to 12?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:23:17] Well, I think they would it’s just very different. I mean, boarding school. It was you know, I would come home on the weekends. It wasn’t something like you see a Hogwarts, for example, you know, it was but now they’re staying here. No, I’m, I’m staying as close as possible.

One of the things that I love doing here is working from home. I’m surrounded by, you know, lots of loving, noisy children. So I have ample opportunity to shout at them on a regular basis which, which I would miss if I send them to, to boarding. And yeah, it’s, it’s kinda different over here. I just want them to be close.

I want them to, they, they pick up stuff from you anyway. There’s a lot of stuff you teach them, but there’s a lot of stuff that they just, through this process of osmosis, they pick up from you you know, from your attitude and how you speak and what you do, and, you know, the, the excitement that you feel rubs off on them.

So you know, I, I, I do fear for them, poor things.

Bob Wheeler: [00:24:09] I think they’ll make it low. Let me ask you this. Do you, how often do you review your money? How often do you take a look at a budget or just look at the numbers? Check the banking account. Do you do that on a regular basis?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:24:21] Yeah, very much so. Yes. On a number of different levels on a personal level, on a business level, I can tell you exactly how much money I have in every account business, personal, IRA.

I know what the budget is, what we’re going to spend, how much cash we’ve got you know, how long it’s going to last. So that means that every decision I make, I know where that fits in. And the reason for that is I have run out of money in the past several times. And I never want to be in that position again, because it is incredibly debilitating.

You cannot, it’s not having your legs tied together. When you’re in that position, it’s incredibly difficult to get out of it. You’re in a position of weakness, you cannot negotiate in a position of weakness. So. All of the things that we do when we have capital that’s when we go and, you know, that’s when we get our lines of credit set up, that’s when we get our you know, that’s when we build the relationships with the banks, when the capital’s there, because you know, when we don’t need the money, that’s when they offer it.

So I, I do keep a very, very close reign on every, but not, not to the point where. You know, we, we don’t, we don’t spend anything, but we just, we just need to know where everything is.

Bob Wheeler: [00:25:32] Absolutely. Just an awareness. Let me ask you this. What would you say to people? And I’ve been there to people where they’re in that place, where there is no money right now.

And it feels like you won’t get out of that situation. Right. It’s really incredibly humiliating, painful, shameful. And you’re just not in a position to. To negotiate, like you said, what would you say to people out there that are feeling like they’re in that situation?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:25:58] Well, I can tell you from a position of experience.

So I’ve had companies you know, in, in 08, I had my, my lending company went bankrupt. You know, we just lost all of our business overnight. And we were doing really well until we weren’t. And Again, moving over here to the U S you know, going through you know, that sort of change and the divorce and moving to another country where you have very little, it’s actually quite challenging.

So, you know, I can say this from a position of having been in that position where you do wake up at three o’clock in the morning, thinking how the hell am I going to get to the end of the month? I have no idea. And the answer is you always find a way. So that’s it. So the answer is you know, everything is transitory, everything changes, everything passes.

You are in control and it sounds terribly trite, but you really are in control is all about whether you want to go deeper or if you want to get out of it, that is always a way. And the other piece of that answer is the way out is staring you in the face. You just can’t see it. And that’s it. So the answer is it’s there.

It’s right in front of you. It’s obvious it’s slapping you in the face saying this is the answer, but for some reason you’re looking somewhere else. So the moment you learn to get out of your own way as it were and see what the, what the answers are. You know, and the more you sweat it what did they say?

Fair is a temporary lack of information. You know, you might be afraid of all this stuff you just, you know, so it will pass, but it’s up to you. You can, you got yourself into it. You can get yourself out of it just as easy.

Bob Wheeler: [00:27:40] Yeah, I was just reading rereading the book Presence and they talk about actually looking at the solutions instead of looking at the problems, focusing on the solutions and not the problems.

Cause most of us are like, oh my God, there’s no money in the bank. Oh my God, this is going to, and just letting go of that and looking at it from a different perspective, it

Matthew Sullivan: [00:27:56] isn’t, it is entirely that, right. I’ve, I’ve learned that the world just exists between your ears, basically, you know, it’s, it is you decide what your reality is going to be.

And if you decide that you’re going to get out of this problem, then what happens is you will get out of it. You know, it’s, it is as easy as that. It is as subjective as. But you are completely in control of what happens. Yeah. You know, again, it sounds crazy, but it’s not, it’s not, if you decide that you’re going to solve this problem, then you will solve the problem.

It is inevitable that you will solve the problem.

Bob Wheeler: [00:28:33] Yeah. Just a matter of when, so

Matthew Sullivan: [00:28:36] exactly, exactly. That’s it?

Bob Wheeler: [00:28:38] Yeah. So Matthew we’re at our fast five, I’m going to ask you some questions just top of the mind that comes to you. What is one thing you never mind spending money on?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:28:47] Tools. You can never have enough wrenches.

Bob Wheeler: [00:28:54] There you go. Exactly. I duplicated many times. How did your purchasing habits change during the pandemic?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:29:02] I think really, having  been through a number of financial crises. It was, I tell you what I sold all my shit. What’s everybody shouldn’t have done cause I just wanted cash.

 You know, really shouldn’t have done that actually, but again, I don’t beat myself up because if it had gone the other way you know, I wish I had, so, so I just became very conservative. So you just you just held back. I didn’t know what it was, hold on to the stuff that you’ve got.

And just, you know, just be conservative and sort of slowed in, just see what happens. So really, you know, very aware of changing the, any, everything and anything could change.

Bob Wheeler: [00:29:42] Yeah, absolutely. What emoji best describes your relationship with money?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:29:46] I think just fun. Just, just I, I, you know, it’s I know that I can make money and I think it’s taken me years to have that confidence, so it doesn’t scare me.

I’ve I haven’t worked for someone for, you know, 25 plus years. I’ve always been able to. You know, make money and support a large family. And, and, you know, it’s been incredibly challenging all the time. But you know, it’s, it doesn’t scare me. I know I’m not obsessed by money. I don’t want to make huge amounts of money because I know that that’s a you know, that’s a road to emptiness, you know, once you make the money as well, you know, what do we do now?

So it’s it’s tool. It’s fun. It’s a way to get it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, It’s it’s, it’s a mechanism for enjoying we, we bought a an RV recently, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. So it’s a way of, of buying experiences of what do they say is the most important thing is value for memory, not value for money.

So it’s a mechanism to create, you know, experience and fun and memories.

Bob Wheeler: [00:30:48] What’s one thing you would never spend money on. Again, if you didn’t have to.

I don’t know really. I don’t know. Cause all the things I swore I’d never buy again. Always do. I do. Yeah. I think the biggest challenges for me is, is investing in stock markets.

I know this is like a roundabout answer because I’m quite emotionally driven in terms of decisions in, in, you know, sometimes. So if I buy something which is outside of my control, like a stock, and then the next day the stock goes down. I’ll think God, I’ve got a sell it’s going to crash. So I, I, you know, I’m not a very good investor in things that I’m not in control of.

So I, you know, and any investment I do now is very conservative. So I only buy into you know, asset backed things. I won’t buy any, anything that sort of look sort of super high, alpha. So really having I hope this is answering your question. Having bought very speculative investments before. I will never do that again.

Okay. And if you had, if you had to work, but you didn’t need money, what would you do?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:31:50] I think it would fly. I would if I had to work, I would, I, I just love flying. I’m flying for quite a while, but I would just love to I just loved the excitement of flying helicopters because there’s, you know, there’s so much

concentration involved. So many moving parts, so many things, so much excitement every day is this sort of I think that’s the thing. I would do something where every day is different. You know, where, where you have that challenge where you never find yourself in a position where every day is just the same thing over and over again. Yeah.

Bob Wheeler: [00:32:21] That sounds awesome. We are at our sweet-spot moment, our M and M moment money and motivation. What is a practical piece of advice or a piece of wealth wisdom you can offer our listeners?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:32:30] When we talk about investing. And again, I was thinking about this. When you mentioned this earlier on. Treat, invest, investing like a job, a lot of people who get involved in active investing don’t do anything like the amount of research or work that is necessary to be successful. And if you don’t do that, then you won’t be successful unless you’re incredibly lucky, which can be quite Yeah.

How did you do that? You know Any, and again, you’re at, when we talk about real estate investing as well, we touched on it earlier. People tend to assume because it’s real estate, it will automatically make money. But I would just say that treat investing like a job, you know, do the research, do the work.

Think about what happens here. What are the risks? What, what, what can go wrong? Don’t just sort of leap in and then yeah, take your time. Meet people, talk to them, find out what their experiences are. And then, then make the investment. Because there were so many people that I know myself included who have lost money, where you didn’t need to.

If only you’d done that little bit more research.

Bob Wheeler: [00:33:31] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a big piece of what I was hearing today is do the research check things out, whether it’s real estate, whether it’s money is just do your homework. And I’m also hearing that Like our situations are temporary.

So whatever that situation is, keep moving forward. It’ll eventually work itself out. People are resilient and so I think there’s that mindset that even if you didn’t name it is there’s a positivity. About it’s all just going to work out and that even when you’ve made emotional choices, that didn’t serve you, you didn’t beat yourself up.

Even if it drove you crazy. But you just went, okay, well, let’s go from here.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:34:11] Exactly. Right. You have to take each day, you can’t allow yourself just to, you know, go through decisions that you’ve made in the past, over and over again, churning through them, you know, every night, you know, you’ve got to.

It is entirely up to you and positivity is one of those words that is used over and over again. So it’s, it’s its meaning has decayed and been diluted, but it is that. In other words, you have the choice of how you. You know what you do today. And again, I don’t want to sound like some sort of third rate novelist, but, but it’s, it is that you can either decide to sit back and do nothing and then let the, the, the bow wave of life wash over you and you become the flotsam and jetsam.

Like  like everyone else, or you can just drive forward and it takes time. It takes effort to do that. But at the end of the day, you can say I’ve done something today every day. I’ve, you know, you’ve got to be able to say I’ve achieved something, I’ve done something I’ve moved it forward. Even if it’s a little bit, you know, then you know, then that’s, that’s all you need to do.

Bob Wheeler: [00:35:20] Absolutely move it forward. Where can people find you on social media and online?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:35:25] The, the best place actually is, is the company, Quantm RE. We’ve got you know, contact details and you know, everything about us is there. So that’s, you know, quantmre.com. I mean, we have a, it’s not just me, there’s, you know, all of us there.

So I think that’s probably the, the the easiest place to reach me.

Bob Wheeler: [00:35:41] We’ll have people track you down and stalk you?

Matthew Sullivan: [00:35:45] Please do,  Yeah.

Bob Wheeler: [00:35:46] Well to our listeners, please, don’t forget to share the love. Like, follow and share on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, search for Money You Should Ask, all one word.

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For more tips and tools or how to learn have a healthy relationship with money, check out the money, nerve.com. That’s nerve not nerd.

Matthew, it’s been awesome having you on the show. I appreciate your time and wish you well.

Matthew Sullivan: [00:36:15] Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.