Episode 177 - Matt Moger - Leaders on Leadership
Leadership's true currency lies not in titles, but in the priceless relationships we nurture along the way. This episode features a remarkable guest, Matthew Moger, to discuss the fascinating world of relational real estate. Matthew's book, "The Book on Relational Real Estate," is more than a guide; it's an eye-opener to the human side of real estate. More than that, Matthew also touches on the surprising twists and turns of leadership, emphasizing the power of humility and relationships. Join us in exploring how leadership and real estate intersect and how these principles can shape your path, both personally and professionally. Tune in now.
https://www.amazon.com/Relational-Real-Estate-Matt-Moger/dp/B0C2RM8Z7M
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Matt Moger - Leaders on Leadership
We pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I have a very special guest in a very special setting. We're going to talk about that. His name is Matt Moger. Let me tell you a little bit about Matt. Matt and his high school sweetheart Ashley started a real estate investing company in one of the worst recessions in US history. That's always the best time to start a business. They have two lovely daughters and the whole family enjoys music and traveling.
Matt's purpose is to develop relationships through business and personal interactions every day. Those of you who tuned in and were in my SPARK course know the name Kevin McCarthy. Those of you who have bought his little booklet, Tough Shift always know Kevin McCarthy with the two-word purpose. Tough Shift.
Matt was connecting with Kevin and then he saw that Matt had a Life Is Tremendous book. We'll tell you some more things. That's how Matt and I connected. I invited Matt to be on our show. We're going to talk about his real estate book. Also, Matt shared with me some things about my father and his interaction when Kevin saw his Life Is Tremendous on the bookshelf. Matt, we go way back. We just haven't met each other yet.
I was nineteen years old and I got to meet your father in person just for a few hours. It was one of the most impactful evenings full of fun and all sorts of things. A friend of mine who was also there reminded me that one of your siblings did this long Shakespearean quote of some sort in the library at your parents' house.
That may have been Jeff. Was he quoting scripture?
Maybe. It's hard to tie all this together so long ago. He made us put on silly hats and he was loving life and it was pure fun. We were being goofy.
Charles and the 3 therapies, 1 of his therapies is music. Charles was very musical. He knew four chords, but he could play any instrument. He played the trombone, the banjo, the piano, the guitar, and the trumpet. It was unbelievable. He was saying, “Let's have another cup of coffee and another piece of pie.” Those were in the house. It doesn’t matter if you sing one of them all because of this book, Life is Tremendous. You read that as a young person.
It is one of my prized possessions. I have the old-school leather-bound burgundy one and it's on my bookshelf. I try to revisit it every year or two.
The reason we're here too is when I connected with Matt through Kevin and knew about my father's connection. Matt, who lives in North Carolina said, “Could we do this in person?” I'm like, “That's cool because we have a tremendous library.” That's how I knew I was in love. I looked at my husband's, my betrothed’s, library books and I said, “That's a keeper.” We are now the Jones Wheeler Library on leather sofas with a candle and books talking about leadership. It doesn't get any better than this.
John Burgundy will be prime.
We are here to talk about this little gem, The Price of Leadership. For those of you who have read Life is Tremendous, my father also talks about a lot of entails leadership. One of the things he talked about in The Price of Leadership is that you're going to have to be paying a price, otherwise, you're going to be a leader in name only.
Matt, what we love about the show is we get to talk to people and hear about the stories of what it took them to pay the price. The first price my dad talked about was loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Jesus was alone a lot of the time. Can you unpack what loneliness has meant to you as a leader and maybe when you were in a season of loneliness, then what you would recommend to our audience?
At different stages in life and business, especially as an entrepreneur, there are versions of loneliness. I remember early on doing things that other people were not doing or willing to do. That, in and of itself, felt like you were on an island. I can remember specifically, and I might be crossing over into some of the other ones as well.
At different stages in life and business, especially as an entrepreneur, there are versions of loneliness.
That's okay because they're all interconnected.
I remember specific times when things had to work out so perfectly. It was incredibly stressful so much so that I feel this is a little embarrassing, but I would lay on the floor and pray. If this is what I was supposed to be doing, God would work it out somehow. We want to think that we're strong and we bootstrapped our way to where we are now but we've all had help, whether it be just encouragement, actual financial help, or just someone that came along to assist us in our work. That's very lonely.
Not to stay too long, but sometimes we've done things to create freedom for ourselves. Most people don't have that freedom. It's a catch-22 because you were happy that you created this freedom for yourself and your family. It's a little lonely because everybody else is punching the clock. They're going to work from 9:00 to 5:00. “Do you want to grab lunch?” “I can't. I'm working.” You have to find those people that are also in your stage. I'm almost 40. Sometimes I eat breakfast with a bunch of retirees at a local diner and I enjoy their company as well, but they're not necessarily peers of mine. A little bit on an island sometimes.
It’s interesting that you brought that sense of loneliness up, the entrepreneurial loneliness. You do get the freedom, but like you said, not a lot of other people. I can remember when we got married, we got married on a Monday and people were like, “Why'd you pick that?” I'm like, “We're all entrepreneurs. We can get married any day of the week.” It's interesting for people out there. A lot of our audience is at the stage of their life where they're making the transition to an entrepreneurial journey and it's phenomenal. It's a freedom that you pay the price to do.
It's great. You can't lament about your same work struggles when you say, “This is the worst.” People don't talk only about negatives.
Charles would always say that you can work for somebody else or you can work for yourself. Those are your choices. As long as you work for somebody else, you're going to hit that wall for aspirations. The goal is we all want the freedom to serve in our best capacity. You can only do that when you're the boss. You can do it in other areas.
I did it for many years with somebody else but always had that longing to break out and do my own thing. You have that lesson. For our audience out there, a lot of you are making the transition. Hang in there because people look at you and say, “Are you sure you want to do this?” I'm like, “I know, but I'll take the entrepreneurial stress over the bureaucratic stress any day.”
I do think people think you are different, which is what we like, but at the same time, it's different.
We want to be different. I lived in Austin. Keep Austin here. Keep Tracey weird. We're not like anybody else. That's loneliness. The next topic you talked about is weariness. You started this company in the midst of when the bottom was tanking out. I remember getting off the plane and coming home when I was working in St. Louis and just seeing the market had collapsed and thinking, “Dear Lord, I've got a house in the market. I'm coming back to run the business. Why am I choosing to be an entrepreneur in this horrific timeframe?” Weariness and you've got family and raising kids. Matt, how do you stay tip-top form?
I do my best. A lot of times, this is going to sound oversimplified. I like to nap.
My Jones siblings are big into napping. I can't believe you said that. That's funny.
If I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed, it's odd. You can let your mind wander towards the negative and you can start to feel it physically. Sometimes I just need to put the phone away. Let me close my eyes for half an hour. If it goes past half an hour, then it's no good. Set a quick timer.
When you let your mind wander towards the negative, you can start to feel it physically.
You could get a fifteen-minute nap. That was perfect.
I'm a big golfer. I love to play golf a few times a week. We live on a golf course. That's another way that I de-stress. Although golf can cause stress in a different kind sometimes. Those two things and faith, but that's such an easy cliché answer for a believer. There's a lot of praying in there. Reading is another big one because it shifts your focus from the weary side of just focusing on why is this happening. Why wouldn't this person do this? Why am I the only one?
It's a very internal selfish look and picking up a book that we like to read and having a self-help book problem. Picking one of those up turns it into an actionable step. Let's get our heads out of the sand here. Once you take one step forward, it's easy to take the next one. I know a lot of these things are repeats of what a lot of people say, but it's true. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Truth is timeless. What worked for Adam and Eve, everybody's dealt with it. I love that you talk about weariness. A lot of it is good weariness, but then there's a lot of self-imposed weariness. That self-focus, when you get inside yourself, that's the beginning of the spiral down. A book will help you stop, get off yourself, and look at something else. That's bibliotherapy. Books are wonderful therapy. I'm glad you brought that up. Loneliness, weariness, and abandonment.
We hear about fear of abandonment. We hear about abandoning animals until rescue, that's never good. Dad talked about it as we need to stop thinking about what we like and want to think about. More about what we ought to need to think about. We abandon what's easy, our comfort zone, and the things that are not the highest and truest value. Be it a bad habit, just watching Netflix for five hours a day unless you earn that. We get hyperfocused. I'm sure all entrepreneurs like new ideas. We could do 100 businesses a day. How do you stay focused on what's next?
I had a mentor in the real estate space specifically that called it What's On Your Stop Doing List? That was always a challenge for me. A lot of it's centered around negative thinking, or as you and Charlie would say, it's thinking that taking a hit. That's on the need-to-abandon list. It creeps in so subtly that you don't realize that you're focused on it because a text message comes in from a tenant and it's negative and spirals real quick. It can happen quickly.
Interestingly, when you talk about building relationships, which is solely my focus, I've gotten to a point where my bills are paid, can I focus on something at a more 30,000-foot view? That is the relationship behind all of these. It's very difficult when you're preaching and building relationships to abandon relationships on purpose. It seems so backward. I feel like when I'm talking about this, certain people come to mind, and maybe as you're hearing it, someone comes to mind with whom you need to release yourself. I saw your Boundaries book by Henry Cloud. I read that.
It's still something I'm constantly working on. Some relationships are very damaging to your goal, to even just your general psyche. That's hard for me because I'm like, “I don't want this to be failing because of me.” At the same time, some people are living up. That's a tough one to abandon someone on purpose. You're not sure that if you verbalize the whole thing, if you spelled it out for that person, it probably would fall on deaf ears. You want to remain impactful and keep that bridge there. It's hard sometimes to release those relationships. That is something that about often and it makes me sad a little bit.
It's so sad. Not everybody has the ears to hear. Some people, no matter what, have scales on their eyes, they don't have the ears to hear, and their hearts are hard. Until they make that choice, they have to get to that space. My father told me, “Tracey, you're responsible to people, not for people. As long as you give them truth and love, sometimes you're going to have to because nothing's going to change. You have other things you have to do, a higher calling.”
I know we were talking about abandoning certain thoughts and things that would be helpful for us, but sometimes it is a person. That's a heavy one.
Work is fun. It was just me on this earth with my dogs, my books, and my Bible. It’s the Millennial Kingdom. Charles and I say my problem isn't keeping myself motivated. My problem is keeping other people from being demotivated. He was such a realist and he loved people. He also understood I love people, but people.
I feel that way too.
Loneliness, weariness, and abandonment, because you're in the relationship business, that would be what you're dialing in even if it's maybe a client that is super highly needy. I do the same thing. Everything we do, whether you're publishing with me or hiring me, should be fun and joyful. It's challenging, but if it's not, some things were not meant to be you in capacity.
We've all had a business relationship that we've had to savor. That's it. The people you want to spend your time with should be effortless. It should be easy. You do have to work at it. Sometimes you have family members but no one's thinking about anyone specific. You're in a relationship whether you like it or not.
The people you want to spend your time with your business should be effortless. It should be easy.
Born into it. You got it. Loneliness, awareness, and abandonment. The last topic you talked about was vision. We know in Proverbs, it's a biblical perspective of, “Where there is no vision, people perish.” Growing up, your father was a minister, so we grew up around a lot of people who were very godly, wise, and discerning. I always thought, “They're just born like that.”
My dad would always tell me, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” I can have a vision too. It brought it down to me versus looking at a Henry Cloud or Zig Ziglar. Everybody has their vision. How do you hone your vision, especially the market? Talk about the best and worst years. How do you keep a vision crafting?
That's a million-dollar question. I don't know if this is the time to talk about what happens when you do what you set out to do. That's where you feel like, “I had this vision. I had this purpose.” I've heard you talk about that when you were in the military and then changed careers. You had this in childhood and that's what he was talking about. He had to transition into an entrepreneur. He had a couple of years of what he felt were floundering. I went through that work for nine years towards a goal.
It was a several-pronged goal, but one of them was to be out of debt except for things attached to real estate. That felt a huge weight off my shoulders. One was to have the freedom to play golf and to do things while my children were at school. That all seemed so great, but I felt so empty. That is not how I envisioned that. That vision was, you're going to feel just the way that the world is off your shoulders and now you can keep moving forward. That's when I had to surround myself with other like-minded individuals. That helps continue to craft a vision and focus.
We've talked about how I may or may not have an attention deficit problem or gift, let's call it. Shiny object syndrome, I could make money in real estate doing this and this. I have lots of friends who are agents and they make their living doing that. That was not my path. Once I got focused, I made such giant strides.
The vision now is the living is at least taken care of for now. We continue to look at the market as it goes up and down. It seems to be at its all-time high. That leaves less room for my deals, but at the same time, there are still things out there. There are still people that need help. If we start to focus and craft a vision centered around people and relationships, it's weird how everything falls into place.
Leadership: If we start to focus and craft a vision centered around people in relationships, it's weird how everything kind of awesome points you.
The market would be hot, the market would be cold, but there will always be people in need, looking for somebody to be their miracle or to help them.
It's very encouraging to be able to continue to plot forward in different markets. I see friends that have come in hot, they've done well, and I'm excited for them. All of a sudden, they've checked out, they're selling all their things, and they're getting another job. Clearly, that was not their end goal on their purpose, or they were maybe a little bit misguided.
That's where I feel like surrounding myself with folks like yourself who are constantly reminding me, “Matt, you're over here a little bit. Let's pull that in.” That's so powerful. If I'm around folks who are just yes people, that's not going to happen. If I'm around negative Nancies, that's not going to happen. No offense to anyone named Nancy. It’s just negative personalities. Surrounding ourselves with good people helps keep that vision focused.
People think once you have the vision, but then it’s like flying. You get turbulence, you’ve got to divert, or something in life happens. A vision is a living, moving thing that you have to keep doing. Now when you say you're a like-minded individual, do you have a group, everybody knows about the power of mastermind groups, and having that cord. A cord of three strands is not easily broken. Do you have a particular group of people in the business or do you meet with Vistage or Convene? How do you have a coach?
I have had coaches in the past. Entrepreneurship is different seemingly. Each business is different. I know there are principles around it, but there are few people in my life who understand what's going on. One of my great buddies from college is a developer down in the Greenville, South Carolina area. We stay connected.
Another friend of mine drives a monster truck for a living. He goes on those big tours with Monster Jam and flies with a 12,000-pound machine, 30 feet in the air. He's written a book about these very topics and how to stay focused. There are things that we've developed our mastermind. We're working on formalizing it and taking trips and things of that nature and bringing our families as a good way to remain focused. We're all believers. That's very big as well. My answer is no and yes, we're building one.
I can relate and mine's more informal like yours. The good news is it depends on where you're at. As you said, I've worked for Fortune 100 companies and I'm a solopreneur and everything in between. It depends. Your group should match the challenges. Are you going to be dealing with unions or lawsuits or just you honing your focus? As you said, value congruence. You want to make sure you're with people who have a shared world, which is our base. It's important once you get that value congruence and that synergy.
That's a great point for our entrepreneurs, especially if you're transitioning out of something bigger like Major General Donald Brosky talked about. In the military, it was a unique comradery. When you come out of that and we're not in the club in uniform together anymore, tell war stories, and work it all out, I'm just Joe civilian now. You have to remain based on where you are and your group. You made a great point illustrating that.
We've heard often you are in the top five people that you hang around.
Jim Rohn said that.
I've consistently tried to raise the bar, if that makes sense, without leaving folks and friends behind. Where are the people doing what I want to do? Your dad said that in his book. Don't you believe in talking things over? Yes, I do. I believe in talking things over with people who have done what I want to do. One of the ways I can do a lot of that by through comradery and the golf community, people who play golf often have disposable income.
Leadership: Believe in talking things over people who have done what you want to do.
That's initially why we moved into our area which is a golf community and country club. I'm not sure how it sounds elitist, but I've worked my way up there. I didn't do anything. It wasn't just how I was born. Not that it matters. You use all the advantages that have been given. You use that as a springboarding.
Righteous use as well.
I'm trying to be a good steward so that I can get my head out of the clouds and find some needs in there. That's an easy thing to say and it's harder to do when you're staring at your checkbook. That is a constant reminder too. I like to surround myself with generous friends as well. It's a moving target and a work in progress. I haven't figured it out, but I'm trying.
I'm so glad you brought that up. A lot of people get an entrepreneurial space because we want to wait for money so we can bless others with it. You better get used to writing from your own business. It happened to Dad even though he was in the top 25. It's happened to me. I'm like, “Lord, I want some so I can shovel it out and give it away.” It is that beautiful yearning, but also the realization that it's the parable of the talents. We're going to work to invest what God's given us. It's up to Him what comes in and it's all His anyway. It takes some stress out of it a little bit.
It can test your faith because there are plenty of times where I've said, “I don't have this to give. Did I prioritize it?” It's where it was at.
What you value is what you love. That’s excellent.
As a landlord, we say people buy what they want and beg for what they need. Sometimes it's true.
People buy what they want and beg for what they need.
You don't need to be spending money on this stuff. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. What do you need? What do you want?
That's our distinction. When you didn't have, now you have, what are you going to prioritize?
Matt, thank you. We covered loneliness, weariness abandonment, and vision. Anything else you'd like to talk about? I want to hear about that from a leadership perspective that you'd like to share with our audience, about paying the Price of Leadership. Something else you heard from Life is Tremendous you want to share?
I never quite understand leaders who have an air about them that does not include humbleness. Some of the most gracious, powerful leaders that I've ever met have been some of the most down-to-earth humble folks that I've ever met. It's easy when you feel like you've done the thing to not say, “I've done the thing. Look at this.” I feel like humility has to play a part in it because anyone who's truly a leader knows that they have a mentor. A lot of what they've learned is through mistakes. I talk about that at the beginning of this. I have a whole chapter dedicated to a massive mistake I made. It's called the House from Hell. It truly felt like it during that time. Humility, how can we part the threads that hold us together?
Did you ever read the poem, The Indispensable Man? The bottom line is, “You think you're indispensable, you're the brightest when you come into the room, and your ego's in bloom. Here's how it really works. Put your hand in a bucket of water and then pull it out. The mark that's left is how much you'll be missed.” The moral of the story is not to make you feel like crap. It’s to let you know there's no indispensable man. Just do the best that you can. Stay humble in Christ. We are all loved by Him. In the end, we are all good as dust. There's this beautiful duality of, “I'm everything in Him,” and, “I'm nothing.” You and I could evaporate and the world will continue to go on.
I'm sure you are indispensable to certain people that you have come in and helped find a home. My father was indispensable to you because of the impact he had on you. We never get full of ourselves. If somebody's not near there, the Tremendous Legacy dies. No matter what happens, it's going to go on because it's not about us.
The hope is that the folks you've impacted will carry that on. Again, it's still not about you.
He's like, “Don't you dare talk about me.” “Whatever Dad, we talk about you.” It was all about Jesus. You had to talk about Christ because there was no way he was going to sit there because he was like, “This is not what this is about.” We did both. We talked it out and hug it out. Can we talk about your book? You can see it a little bit here with the name. Tell them the name.
It's called the book on Relational Real Estate. It's a short plane ride. It's an overgrown children's book about people who had a unique situation surrounding a piece of property. That sounds like you have a property, it's worth something. How could that be a burden or whatnot? There are so many situations where it is the only anchor that has kept someone from moving on. It could be surrounding death, relocation, or something. They want to go be with family in another state. This thing is one thing holding them back.
The Book On Relational Real Estate
We ran into a bunch of unique situations over the years that no one was willing to just come to pay these people cash for this. We tried to fashion an offer that worked around their solution and created these win-win-wins, also cliché in the entrepreneur world, but created a way to get them relief. They know that we had to make some money and process. I’m not talking about like, “Here comes this company that's so great and they save me.” No, these are real people with real needs. Can we help them?
On the flip side, we've sold some homes to people who never thought that was a possibility. It is the American dream to have something that is your own and it creates stability for your family. It's a tangible thing that holds a lot of intangible feelings and things of that nature. Everything in this, there's a thread that runs through it that is just about the people behind the stories. It's very easy and fast. There are even some pictures in it just to make it a little bit more real. We've got fun quotes from other authors and people who made an impact on a family's life. The book is Relational Real Estate.
They can pick it up on Amazon.
Paperback or hardcover, whatever your preference, Kindle even.
What about The House from Hell? I got the book. Great stories.
The House from Hell was my second purchase in my investing career. I was 27 years old and after I'd done my first one, I made a little bit of profit. In my mind, 27-year-old Matt, I already had a handle on this whole thing. I knew how it worked. My realtor and I did the same thing from the first one. It turns out the area that I bought in and the particular house I purchased was not as good as I thought. It included a lot of renovations, hiring the wrong contractor, him stealing money, lawsuits, and all kinds of things. That's how I accidentally stumbled into being a landlord for the first time. I also had some tenants. I don't want to be too mean, but they were tenants from hell.
The moral of The House from Hell is that it ended up turning out well. I've got a good family in there after a while and they're still there. They've purchased the home from us over the past years. They're almost done with me. They've hosted weddings at the quinceaneras and all kinds of parties that invited me to several of them. It has been a joy that started as an absolute tragedy.
That's become the house from heaven. Great story. The older I get, the more I finally learn and unlearn. Leadership is all relationships. It isn't what you know. It is always going to be relational. That's the biggest lesson I've learned in many years of living.
We can't know all the answers. If you're honest with someone and say, “I'm not quite sure I'll figure it out? Would you mind helping me figure it out?” That's powerful too. Our egos get in the way and we want people to think that we have it all put together. We look and act a certain way. We're figuring it out. We're learning. As Kevin says On-Purpose, in progress in the beginning.
If you're honest with someone and say "I'm not quite sure I'll figure it out" or "Would you mind helping me figure it out?" that's powerful too.
Matt, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
I can't believe it all.
I don't know if we can do this.
Charlie, deduct my pay if I say I'm not Tremendous or I don't hug people. Thanks to our audience. Thanks for asking and saying, “Can you come off because this is pretty cool?” Anybody wants to travel to South Central, PA, come on now. We're excited. Matt and I, we're going to take them over to the warehouse, load them up with some books because that's a tremendous way, you got to get some cases of books but not for you. We're going to give away.
Everybody, pick up a copy of the Price of Leadership. It’s a wonderful quick little read. To our Tremendous audience out there, remember you'll be the same person 5 years from now that you are now, except for 2 things, the people you meet and the books you read. Make sure they're both tremendous. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button. Give us the honor of a share. We'd love it if you'd leave us a review. Reviews are really important. If you get Matt's book too, you leave a review of that and everybody out there, thanks for being part of the Tremendous legacy, and keep on paying the price of leadership. Take care.
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About Matthew Moger
Matt and his high school sweetheart Ashley started a real estate investing company, M5 Homes, in one of the worst recessions in US History. They have two lovely daughters and the whole family enjoys music and traveling. Matt’s purpose is to develop relationships through business and personal interactions every day.