Getting Yours, with Matthew Lesko – Episode 480 of The Action Catalyst

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.

About Matthew:

You might recognize him as the ‘Question Mark Guy,’ or from his unforgettable infomercials and TV appearances that showed millions of Americans how to unlock government grants and benefits, but Matthew Lesko has spent over four decades uncovering ways for people to access funds they never knew were available, and he’s sold over four million books in the process! Now in his 80’s, Matthew is still on a mission to help others through his platform, Lesko Help, where he’s guiding a community of thousands toward the resources they need.

Matthew Lesko is an energetic, passionate advocate with over 40 years of experience helping Americans access billions in government funding. Known for his colorful suits and infectious enthusiasm, he has made it his mission to reveal hidden pathways to financial support for everyday people. With a background that includes over 100 television appearances on Oprah, Larry King Live, and Good Morning America, Matthew is a captivating storyteller who connects with audiences from all walks of life.

His community, Lesko Help, has grown to over 15,000 members, where he empowers individuals to cut through red tape and access funds they may not know exist. In a time of economic uncertainty, he’s dedicated to teaching people how to get the support they need from resources they already pay for with their tax dollars.

Lesko also served in the Navy and earned a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from American University in Washington, D.C.

Learn more at LeskoHelp.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

LISTEN:

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEED: https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-action-catalyst/

SUBSCRIBE ELSEWHERE: https://the-action-catalyst.captivate.fm/listen

__________________________________________________________________________

(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Stephanie Maas
Well, we are so excited to have you here, and I’ll tell you what, this is a really fascinating background.

Matthew Lesko
Anything you want to know, just lead me around by the nose.

Stephanie Maas
My understanding is you started your career in the military.

Matthew Lesko
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 ship driver, and it was great. I never had more responsibility for the end of my, rest of my life. I don’t think when he was a 22 year old kid and learned how to drive ships go out in South China Sea. That’s before there was any, you know, GPS, or anything like that. You had to go out and shoot the stars to find out where the hell you are. And it was sort of fun. I hated it every minute, but it wouldn’t be somewhere else, but it certainly was a great experience. I had nothing better to 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 the LSAT, so I got like two above plant life, yeah, and if you got drafted, then it’s the army you get. And I’m not a camper, so living in the jungle, this camping distance sound appealing to me. So the Navy sounded pretty good. Man, that’s clean sheets every night. So I did that, and then I was a diplomatic courier in Northern Europe, briefcase handcuffed to me, him, and I finally got out of there, went and got an MBA because of the GI Bill. And then I started businesses that were failing. And that’s what you have to do to do anything. You just have to fail. Fail, fail. You practice failing. You don’t learn how to succeed. You learn how to fail. Learning how to succeed is a waste of time. When you succeed, it’s easy. I mean, there’s nothing to learn anymore, so you really have to learn how to fail. It’s like learning to walk. When a kid learns to walk, take a step and fall 100 times before they learn to walk. So when we do things as a grown up, that’s new. It’s the same thing.

Stephanie Maas
So let me ask you this. Walk me through this passion that you’ve had for the last 40 years to help folks access government funding for the things that they need, or they think they need. Talk to me about where that passion came from, what this looks like for you, etc.

Matthew Lesko
Well, it started trying to feed myself. You know, that’s what life is. You have to take care of yourself and get a job and all that kind of stuff. I was starting businesses. I mean, in the 70s, I had a software company that failed, and I spent the only personal world, and it’s trying stuff. And then I became a consultant for big companies like market research consultant. And I’d get information for them to buy and sell companies and markets for this and that and the other thing. And I was stationed in Washington, so back then, before the internet, you went to libraries, remember them to get information and helping rich people. Rich people will pay anything if they think they’re going to make money at it. And so I would go around and Procter gamma was a client of mine, and they wanted to start a chain of pasta stores. So that’s probably somebody on the board of directors. Hey, why don’t we get in the pasta business? So I go out and look at the market and competitors and stuff like that, and I go to libraries around Washington, DC, because we have so many libraries because every agency has their own library for for agriculture, for commerce or for transportation. So you have the world’s largest collection of literature on that topic. And I’d go there and try to research the data and the information about what the market is, and talking to librarians, and I remember, I was working on the pasta. And they said, Oh, the librarian said, you want to know about pasta? Hey, go up to the fourth 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 25 years. He got a master’s in it. He’s got a PhD in it, and that’s all he does is create Studies and Information and that nobody knows about. His wife was sick of hearing about it. Yeah, when I 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 me studies about all this stuff and what happens, and how the prices and everything, and who’s making what? And so I put it all in a package for my client. And what 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 came and worked in the mines from Czechoslovakia, and I’m a coal miner’s grandson. And. I Why does everybody know about this? Yeah. And I said, God, nobody works for I, I thought the government was a post office and the IRS, you know, and to see all the wealth that’s there and all. And I was making millionaires into billionaires. They’d get money and help and all 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. All they care about is money, you know, their hearts not in much except their pocket. And so I wanted to help the average person. How do I do that? And I can’t charge, like I charge rich people to do this information. So it had to be books back then. So someone who flunked English all his life, you know, to write a 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 contract to that. So what I did when the government printing office found a book that has a description of all the government programs, money program, took that book, cut and pasted it and became a New York Times best seller, all I did is change the headlines the government doesn’t explain things as well. One of my favorite stories is that there’s a program. We still have it too, but it’s called the urban homesteading act. And see what I would do is read on it. Well, what the hell is this about money and hard? And I read it and the details, it really says, yeah, they get homes that people couldn’t pay their mortgages. So the government, you know, guarantees all mortgages. So when your bank doesn’t get your mortgage, government gives the bank money, and the government stuck with the house, you know, that’s going downhill, and it gets dilapidated and all that kind of stuff. So what they do is, okay, they give them away for $1 so they house this for $1 and they give you a grant for like, $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 houses for $1 you know, to make it user friendly, from the government, became a New York Times best seller. A lot of publicity and ego satisfying stuff happened. So I did a bunch of them. And then years and then I did infomercials that were very popular, because to me, the way to sell books is, if you don’t have marketing money and advertising money, you get free advertising. And the way you get free advertising is you become a guest and you act like an idiot, because television loves idiots. So I was a regular on talk shows, because that’s how I sold books. Famous talk shows would use me as like the backup guy, like Larry King. I would. I must have done him 1520 times, I don’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 the first half hour, then what do you do? He said, Come on, you’ll be on the second half hour, but let’s go. If the guy said he’ll stay for another half hour, he’s a big name, so they don’t push him in the front. They get him at the end of the half hour. Can you stay for another half hour? I’m in the green room as the guy says, No. They bring me up. The guy says, Yes, I go home and I know they owe me and they’ll use me again. Or I also was used a lot for people who cancel at the moment last minute. Because, man, you’re going to give me a national 1020, 30 minutes of national TV, I’d have to pay hundreds of 1000s of dollars of that if I bought an ad, and being a guest to me is more authentic than an ad. So Letterman would use me when somebody canceled. What was fun for me? Who am I subbing for? Like I said once, for Christopher walk at the last minute. I mean, they found me in Chicago somewhere like noon. They got me on the plane, and I think he taped about six o’clock in the early evening, and I was there to go on, you know, with Christopher Walken, but that’s what sold books, man, you give me national air time, and I learned quickly that media doesn’t care what you say. I used to worry about because insecure intellectually, and they say, oh, let’s go look at this wrong. Nobody reads the book. They’re just entertaining people. And I like entertaining people and making people smile. So I was the go to person for that. And then I did infomercials because I say, Oh, I can’t grow this. Because how many times can you do Larry King in a year? You know? Then I found out that that you could also get commercials for free. You had to produce them, but once you had it to buy time was the 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 worth it. If I knew it was worth it, then I would. But so here’s the deal. If you don’t sell that time, nobody buys that time. I mean, they have to have something there, so you put let’s go, and I’ll give you half the money. I knew the information was important. I knew I wanted to try to get it to people. But how do people want it? You know, nobody, they got Google. What are they need me for all that kind of stuff. Bookstores were going down, and so nobody was getting the help there. But until a few years ago, then it’s community. We have a community of people. Now people are helping people I don’t even help. People anymore. It’s the people who find programs. They take advantage of it, and they help other people do it. So it’s a community based thing, and that’s even better than me, am I? You know, I’ve been studying this for 50 years. It’s hard for me to relate to somebody who just found out about grants, yeah, but the members are though, are all those people, and so they’re like volunteers helping. It’s also giving them the joy of giving. I mean, this is what happened business, because it feels so good to give. It’s very selfish to me. So it’s having the joy of giving and helping somebody else. So that’s what’s happening now. And we also give our profits back to members. We have half this country that 10 of four to $500 bill wages in our country. How the wages are distributed? Okay, back in 1979 which is a turning point in economics for us, 70% of all the wages went to 90% of the people. So the bottom 90% of the income scale were getting 70% of the wages. The top 10% was getting about 30% of the wages. Fast forward, that bottom 90% now only gets about 55% and the top 5% is now getting up to 45% so the share of the pie for 90% of us is shrinking every year, and it’s not like we haven’t we’re not growing GDP growth in that time. It’s going like crazy. So we’re growing economically as a country. But who’s getting it? There’s another astounding fact to me when I found this is poverty rates in developed countries, so only developed countries, and this is, is the percentage of people in that country that are poor. We’re number one in creating poor people. We have more percentage of our population that are poor than any other developed country. So it’s like 17, 18% I mean, the average from all the developed countries is about 10% or so, and some are down to 7% so we create more poor people than any other developed country. Now this is what we are number one in, and that’s making millionaires. We’re number one in making millionaires. 24 million millionaires. The second is China, and they got 6 million. So we’re number one in millionaires, and number one in creating poor people. So that that’s what gets me up every day earlier and earlier.

Stephanie Maas
You have an amazing way of downplaying your humility.

Matthew Lesko
We’re all struggling so hard. You know it, I know it. I mean, I’ve just been here longer, god, 81 I never thought I could even live that long.

Stephanie Maas
So let me ask a practical question, if I may. I think that there is such a natural apprehension to go to the government for help, right? It’s you’re either all in or you have this apprehension, how do you address that? How do you get people over that, and where do they start?

Matthew Lesko
Yeah, well, that’s two points. I mean, it won’t start as easy, uh, getting over that. Other thing, I’ve been wrestling that 24/7, for 50 years, but yes, now to me, all our incentives in this country are against it. Like, if people want information, they go to the wrong source, because if they don’t have money, because they go to Google, and Google is the last place to go for anything if you don’t have money, because everything, there are people that want to get money. This is capitalism, but if you don’t have money, then you can’t go there. But people don’t know what else to do, so they get scammed, they lose money, and they just get worse off. And that’s because they don’t know where this other stuff is. Now the other stuff, which I call the community society, you know, we have the capitalist society of us, and then we have the community Society of us. Now, the community society is helps other people for nothing. They give you money for nothing, and but that represents, you know, a third of everything in our economy is community, society. Two thirds is capitalism, but 1/3 is community, helping each other like your neighbor, okay, neighbors on fire, you charge them to help put out the fire. No, you’re part of the community. You’re going to help them for free, right? So that’s why we have these organizations to do that for people and to help them and to grow so they could contribute to the capitalist society more. But if you’re out of the game, you have to get the skills or whatever you need to get into that game, and that’s what the community society is. But people aren’t trained to do that. They’re trained to go to Google and spend my so how do we do that? Okay, I got a couple places to start, but you have to believe it’s there, you know, because you can’t just say, Oh, I’m gonna try. I’m gonna call one or two people and see what happens. And that’s probably wrong. It’s like getting a job. You’re gonna knock on one or two doors and nothing’s gonna happen. And they got hiring today. So. You go home, yeah, there nobody’s hiring, and you can’t do that. Go to find help.org. Put in your zip code on the left hand corner, up on top, you have community organizations that help you with money, help housing. They’re all important things, right? Labor, work, health care, everything. These are non profit organizations, every one of them will never ask you for money. They just give you money. They give you services. They give you now, the next hurdle is now they’re not all for you, so you have to start calling and asking for help. See, getting help is a people business. It’s not an internet business. You have to find the people in your community that get paid to help people like you. They know what’s out there. So you have to learn where these people are and use them. So starting a business, let’s say you want to start a business. Okay, put in sba.gov and then slash local dash assistance, sba.gov/low sba.gov/local-assistance, and there’s a place to put in your zip code. These are all nonprofit organizations that get paid to help anybody, anybody, start a business, start a nonprofit, work on your invention, be a freelancer, be a real estate investor. Any way to make money. They help you for free. Help you find money. Help you find legal help for free. Everything now they’re all not perfect, yeah, and that’s why you call them. To me, call two or three of them, four of them, or whatever, but everyone will never charge you money. Here’s a couple other ones. Another website is called apex. Apex and accelerate tours with an S and then.us so that’s a place again, there in every city that if you’re in business, small, big, whatever, the biggest market for anything is the government. They buy anything, and the problem is, learn the bureaucracy, and they even have grants that help you figure out how to get those contracts. Now there’s another good one for businesses. It’s called Career one stop.org Okay. Now what they do is train your employees for free. They pay for that because businesses don’t like paying for training, so the government does. So if you hire people without the skills they need, they’ll pay the salary up to 80, 90% of the salary while they learn, or they just give you, I mean, you get hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars to train all your call center people or your marketing people, right? It’s phenomenal. And that’s training money and as an individual, too. Now in our country, you could without a college degree, you could get paid $40,000 a year to train for $100,000 a year job not going to college and paying them $40,000 a year, the government will pay you $40,000 a year.

Stephanie Maas
That’s awesome. So with a new administration coming in, is that going to impact how many of these programs might be available in the future?

Matthew Lesko
They all say this. So every president says this, but it’s important in a way. In the short term, you won’t notice anything the system so baked in doesn’t matter. And everybody says this to get elected, and especially the current guy, he just entertaining himself. The more outrageous things he could say, the more people will pay attention to him. That’s how I got a lot of TV time too. It’s being outrageous, but it is significant because they’re able to change it a few degree. And so by chipping at the edges and changing a few degree, that means 1020, years from now, we’re in a different place. So they do have a long term impact by moving things a little bit, and that’s about all they could do, especially now in the beginning, if it ever happens, it’ll take years to happen, and it’ll just be around the edges, and it’ll be new opportunities. I mean, these people now, they believe in capitalism, so I mean, why is Elon Musk following along around this guy? Because nowhere else Elon could get a billion dollars except from the federal government. He’s looking for his next billion off the federal government. That’s what it’s all about. So get your first million off. They’ve heard government. And the federal government is not the government. Most of the government, for us is what’s locally, and then what happens is like right now, there are nonprofit organizations that set up grants. We have this community society that fills in the blanks a lot of times. To me, it’s the lower income people that are struggling, because there’s so much there that can really change their life if they stick at it, and look for the hell a third of our country, their work is to help you improve your life, and they have money and help to do that, you have to find the right one.

Stephanie Maas
Like I said, you have truly spent your life helping others. And don’t argue with me.

Matthew Lesko
It’s hard. I don’t think myself are professional or anything. I’m trying to get through life like all of us are, but I feel we all have that obligation. And the older I get now, boy, that is so important to me. Now it’s just giving, you know, it to me. How much 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
Yeah, sure.

Matthew Lesko
What I’ve been living with for a long time now is realizing my heart’s smarter than my brain. We don’t listen to our heart enough when we listen to our grain, because we’re afraid we don’t know what we’re doing in life. So we take expert opinion, like people said, I couldn’t wear question mark suits, and I just something my heart, I had to do that I did, and I got thrown off of Home Shopping. I lost millions of dollars, but I wanted to do it or something my heart was telling me. But no, the real stuff in life is making those real hard decisions, because it comes from the heart, and you have to listen to that heart.

Stephanie Maas
Yeah. Very wise counsel. Very wise counsel. It has truly been an honor to spend this time with you. Thank you for sharing your mission and life’s work with us.

Matthew Lesko
Oh well, you’re so kind, that touches my heart. Thank you.