Michael Jackson Wrote My Business Blueprint on a Napkin

“Why have you only got five locations?”

That’s what Michael Jackson asked Matt Fiddes, and what happened next turned into a global scaling lesson.

In this episode, Matt Haycox sits down with Matt Fiddes, founder of a worldwide martial arts franchise network, to break down how he scaled from local studios into thousands of locations by doing what most business owners avoid: relentless front-end marketing, tight systems, and brand-building that creates trust at scale. 

But this isn’t just business. Matt also opens up about his decade-long relationship with Michael Jackson, what it was like being around that level of fame, how the media fallout changed his life after Michael died, and his perspective on the child abuse allegations, including the documentaries he points people towards. 

You’ll hear Matt and Matt talk about:

• The “napkin blueprint” moment with Michael Jackson, and the scaling lesson behind it. 
• Why most founders fail: they over-focus on the service and ignore marketing + sales. 
• The “15 marketing ideas by the 5th of every month” rule (and why it forces execution). 
• How brand + social proof beats copycats (and why people buy the name, not the tactics). 
• What it was like after Michael’s death: paparazzi, grief, and mental health. 
• Matt’s perspective on the abuse allegations, and why he says people should look deeper. 

Timestamps
0:00 – Intro
3:15 – Bullied as a kid, leaving school with no qualifications
11:03 – The first studio: how he got to 700 members fast
17:50 – The real growth lever: marketing > “being good”
27:04 – “Hi, I’m Michael Jackson…” and the napkin blueprint
35:05 – What life with Michael was actually like
46:53 – Being around global fame (and why he did it for free) 
57:02 – The abuse allegations: Matt’s perspective + documentaries he recommends
1:08:47 – The MF legacy, Money Freedom Club + what’s next

Follow Matt Fiddes:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialmattfiddes/
Website: https://mattfiddes.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattfiddes1/

Enjoyed this episode? Please subscribe to Stripping Off with Matt Haycox and leave a ★★★★☆ review on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout – it really helps others find us!

Transcript

From Bullying To Black Belt

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Michael says to me, How's your business doing? I've got five locations. Why you only got five locations, Matt? Why aren't you took the thing global? And I gave him his top story. He's like, I'm a poor boy from Gary, Indiana. What have nine children with no money whatsoever? And I immediately bit back at Michael and said, but no one's ever done that in a martial arts before. He said, Well, that's exactly why you've got to do it. And he took out a napkin or like a notepad and he wrote down everything I needed to do. Six months later, 700 members. It was the biggest martial arts school in the UK. But I got bullied by a kid at school between the ages of five and seven. I left school with no qualifications whatsoever. I was getting praise from my instructor for something I was good at.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

How do you go from doing it as a hobby to wanting to do it as a business?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah, I woke up one morning, the phone was ringing off the hook, the landline. It would just go mad. And I thought, what the hell is going on? And I went to get some food, and everyone was staring at me and pointing at me. I was on the front page of every single tabloid newspaper that was Bloody Boy Becomes Millionaire. And it's such a unique story with martial arts. It was massive. And then on the back of that, TV researchers, they scanned the newspaper for stories. So you probably remember the shows like Esther Rampson, Trisha, Kilroy, Richard and Judy, GMTV. I did all the shows. And on the back of that, Yuri Geller was watching the world-famous mind power screwbender. They called him in the UK, but the rest of the world didn't call him that. Yuri Geller was watching it, he was hugely successful, especially in property and business. And his best friend was Michael Jackson. He introduced me to Michael Jackson as we became friends and he got to trust me. And Michael was already a black belt. Joseph Jackson made all the Jackson 5, studied martial arts. He wanted to proceed with his training to second down. Just a conversation in his hotel suite. Bored, we couldn't go anywhere. Michael says to me, How's your business doing? I've got five locations. Why you only got five locations, Matt? Why aren't you took this in global? I said, Well, the next town's at Tiverton is 40 miles away, and I gave him this sob story. He's like, What are you talking about? I'm a poor boy from Gary, Indiana. One of nine children with no money whatsoever. Got the biggest selling album in the world, Frill. Have you ever heard of it? And uh, of course you can work out how to get this thing to us this town. So it's called franchising. And I immediately bit back at Michael and said, Yeah, but no one's ever done that in the martial arts before. He said, Well, that's exactly what you've got to do. And he took out a napkin or like a notepad from the it was a Renaissance hotel in Higher Holburn in London, and he wrote down everything I needed to do because he was a master licensed in his name. He had the biggest brand deal with Pepsi Cola of all time, endorsement deal. And he he wrote down, you've got to manualize everything, you've got scripts, you've got genius from manipulating mainstream media, you've got to systemise everything, got to build a brand. Yeah, and then from that point onwards, my friendship with Michael became very different. So yeah, I took over, I was bodyguard to him and took over his security, but I did it for free. There's no money exchange. I didn't want his money, I was already a millionaire before I met the guy.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Matt, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I know there's going to be uh some super exciting things. There's a lot you've talked about already, and maybe we'll find some different angles as well. But uh your story is uh is certainly an adventurous one.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Crazy life.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Oh but look, let's uh let's go back to the beginning. There's many different parts to this, and each each one leads on to the next. What Wales you were brought up in, is that where you're from?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

No, it's not far from there, Swindon. Swindon. Yeah, Swindon, about an hour from there.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Tell me about your childhood because uh I think you were bullied as a child, which is ultimately what led on to that adventure into martial arts.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

That's what made me. I know it sounds weird, but I got bullied by a kid at school, and it was yeah, it was tough going between the ages of five and seven by one particular kid.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

What does bullying mean as a five or six-year-old? I mean, there's horrible things.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

When you look back at it now, it's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? And it's uh, but yeah, it's getting kicked under the table and stealing your milk, okay, calls names. I used to hide in the playground for me. The kid was just big compared to me. I was a skinny little flipping tiny guy and very underconfident, hated school, couldn't do anything at school. And if you're underconfident school, you just attract, you just attract these kind of people. This kid was from a wealthy family, super successful. Yeah, it's you know, it's one of those things that it was meant to happen because it didn't happen, and I would never have sought out looking to do martial arts, and none of this whole crazy stuff just happened. And we're good friends, me and him now. We we actually met on national TV on a TV show called This Morning in the UK.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

You were pushing him around in his wheelchair.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

They were worried I was gonna kick him in the head or something, but now we we met in front of millions of people, first time in 32 years, and now he's my anti-bully ambassador. Oh, really? Organisation, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

But whose idea was it back then to get into martial arts? I mean, were you coming home crying about this?

Early Confidence And First Dojo

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a massive thing. I would my mum was trying to get him expelled from school, and it was constant or bruised all the time, and used to try and make up excuses of why I couldn't go to school, you know, I wasn't feeling very well, I was very good at doing that. Yeah, just coming home and and basically there was a kid next to me in the class, and he did a martial art called Jiu Jitsu, and he said, you know, Matt, come along to the class because you can defend yourself against Anthony, who's the bully. And I went to the class, and I didn't like that particular martial art, but in the room next door there's another one called Taekwondo. And I had long legs, and obviously not as long as they are now when you're when you're like seven years old, but I was very good at taekwondo for some reason. I could do the splits already, all the high kicks, and for for a change, I felt I was getting praise from my instructor for something I was good at rather than getting criticized all the time for not being able to draw dinosaurs properly at school and doing pointless stuff that I was never gonna use. So I just found my purpose, my passion. I just knew that was gonna be my career path.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Tell me, I mean, as a parent now, uh, and I guess you know we we do live in a slightly different uh society than uh than 30 odd years ago, you know, when you were a kid. I mean, what would you say to your kids who are in the same position as you? Or or what would you do? You know, on the one hand, you get the parents who want to go into school and say, My kid's getting bullied, you know, you need to tell that kid off, you need to suspend him, you need to expel him. And invariably what happens is you know the kid finds out and he bullies you more and bullies you more. You know, the flip side is you know, as a parent say, right, go and give him a good kicking, which uh you know might might might shut him up, but then probably gets you expelled. And uh, you know, I mean what what would you do as you're a happy meeting?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah, it's a good question. I've not been asked this one before. So if if I put my head teacher hat on as the owner of the biggest martial arts chain in the world, that I need to say, I need to say the right thing, which is seek out help, basically, and that's why we've done well, we provide instructors for these kids to go to. But for my own children, Matt, I think that's an important thing. I've got six children that I would openly want them to defend themselves at school. Because you're all right, is the the more complaining you do, it gets back to the parent, and the parent slaps the kid, and then the kid comes back even more angry, and you get bullied even more. But more importantly than that, bullying is a part of life. I get bullied now as we're doing this podcast, there's people talking about me, Instagram, X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it, Facebook, talking nonsense about me. Bullying is life, it's just the way it is. The more you put yourself out there, the more you're gonna be challenged. Your haters are really your lovers, they're your free public publicists. And and once you understand that concept, you have to roll over it. So my own kids, I tell them that you're gonna have challenges at school, not everyone's gonna like you, there's gonna be peer pressure, and you need to be able to stand up to that. That's just the way life is. And when you're older, it's never gonna stop. You're always gonna feel that the world's unfair, that people are gonna treat you bad, and that's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I think as well, you know, the a kind of a let's say a non-physical but but business analogy, and it you know, and it is it's it is bullying in its own way. There's always gonna be someone who's after what you've got. Um, and you know, you've you've got to be able to find a way to stand to stand your ground and to fight back in any field. And I know you know some people listening to this might be thinking, well, how the hell have we gone from from bullying to business? But you know, that they are the same thing. You know, every day I wake up, someone wants my customers, someone wants my missus, someone wants something. It's my job to defend that in whatever way it is. I'm not saying I'm going around stabbing people, but you know, you you you you've got to the legal system and things and so forth, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

I mean, it never stops. And it that's an interesting way. You that you're here to defend your family, your friends, and your network, and and your name and your brand, and so forth. And yeah, to me, you you gotta embrace it. I mean, I wouldn't say I had it hard as a bully kid. Interesting enough, my parents' mechanism to try and stop it was keep changing me schools. But every time I change school, because I'm the underconfident shy kid, it used to attract another bully. So you just gotta teach kids to understand, recognise who is the bully and to stay away from them. And more confident I've got, it's just started to fade away. It went, you know, and I I've built off a huge career out of teaching stuff that the school system don't teach now, which includes anti-bullying techniques, you know, and made a fortune out of it. And I there's a big gap there. But a lot of it's down to boredom at school, you're getting taught things that are outdated, and the kids are bored and they're picking on each other, and you can't teach 30, 40 kids the same way, they're all individuals. And for me, when I look at my back at my school life, it was a complete waste of not a time. Yeah, just complete nonsense. None of it ever benefited me at all.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

So you were about seven when the martial arts started.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Oh, seven years almost.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

And I think I've read that you were a black belt by the time you were 12.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

I was 12, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

And in real terms, I mean, like as a 12-year-old black belt, I mean, are you are you still are you super handy? I mean, obviously, I'm sure you can knack the other 12-year-olds, but if a if an 18-year-old comes along, are you still like a weak 12-year-old or can you handle yourself in those situations?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

So being a black belt doesn't make make you the I mean, back then, I mean, it was brutal training that we had. I mean, you're from the north of the UK, so you've martial arts came from like the north, like from the Doncasto area, is it was massive. I swear, I took my black belt, funny enough. So, in terms of defending yourself, you you just get educated in the end that you don't use it for that. You don't need to use it for that. You wouldn't give somebody the pleasure to kick them around the head or whatever. It doesn't happen. Plus, people tend to leave you alone when you're the 12-year-old black belt. They don't want to come near you, you know. They the bullying stopped by that point, and you're so damn confident because you have this big goal of becoming a black belt, and on the way you've got these little colour belts that you're working towards, and each one's just ups your confidence. So you get to black belt, you're not cared about the bully anymore, about someone taking the mick out of you or saying bad things about you. You don't get in those situations, so yeah, you can defend yourself, but you have to be realistic, right? If you're gonna have like some strong 25, 30-year-old guy who's five or six stones heavier than you, who's got a knife or something, and no matter what, you're gonna who you are, you're Bruce Lee, you can defend yourself against that type of stuff. Like what I got interviewed recently by the media in the UK, we had this big fuss about these ex-al bully dogs, you know, and they said, Matt, can you realistically defend yourself against one of them with martial arts? Of course you can. You've got to be honest. You've got a pair of jeans on, tight jeans on. You're not gonna be doing high kicks, are you? When you're in your 40s trying to do those high kicks, I used to be famous for my early 20s. It's like I'll end up having a flipping hip replacement, you know. What do I want to be doing that for? So you've got to be.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

I'm gonna ask what you're doing with tight jeans on in your flottis anyway.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah, in that too, yeah, that as well. Yeah, no, that's not for me, but no, you have to be realistic with this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

So, 12-year-old black belt, you opened your first business, uh, you're up at being a karate studio when you were 16 years old. I mean, how how how do you how do you go from doing it as a hobby to wanting to do it as a business? And I guess what was your your entrepreneurial thought process and path at that time?

American Playbook And Systems

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Well, say it's entrepreneurial. I I just I was in my mathematics class at 13 years old in secondary school, and I remember because I I kept the exercise book. Remember, we had these exercise books we got iPads now, aren't they? For a per class, maths and religious studies and maths ones used to have little square boxes. That's right, yeah. And on the back of it, I just turned to the back page and I wrote down a series of goals because the teacher at the time was teaching us how many different ways can you put 50p into a red telephone box because they were a thing back then, like museum pieces now, aren't they? You put two 20p's and a 10 or 510p, I just thought it's just utterly ridiculous. I'm never gonna use this in my life. So I turned to the back of it and I got thinking, what can I do? And I want I was a big fan of like watching John-Claude Van Damme back then, and so some of the goals I put down were like doing how to do the side splits on the chairs, want to achieve that by the time I'm 18, I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 18, and I want a Ferrari because my brother used to draw Ferraris, he's uh a car designer, so I grew up with Ferrari pictures all over all over the house. I was insane the way he could draw them. So I wanted to own a Ferrari by the time I was 18, have a six-pack, big muscles, and so forth. And I that was my focus for secondary school. That's what got me through the damn process because I hated it. I left school with no qualifications whatsoever, other than my martial arts black belt. I did a personal trainer qualification just because I enjoyed that and I worked in the gym in the evenings. How old are you? 16. Okay, yeah. I did the baller qualification, I don't know if it's still around any British Summit of Weightless Association. Did that college you could gain that in like six months. I mean, you can get them in a day now, I think. Can't you personal trainer qualifications? And then um, backwards up against the wall. What can I do? I mean, my mum is one of 14 children, she was a lawyer, they're all university graduates, and then my dad's from a get a trade background, he worked for Bruneau Railways and engineer, so that my granddad from that side wanted me to get a trade, but electrician, plumber. I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to teach martial arts for a living, but no one had done that before. This was the challenge. You can kind of get by by collecting a three-pounder class in an ice cream container is what we used to collect it in and take it to the bank. But then when the sun's out, which is pretty rare in the UK, I don't like Dubai here, or holiday term or whatever, you don't get paid, people don't turn up anymore. So, law of attraction, whatever the hell you want to call it. I moved into a bed sit. My parents didn't believe in what I was doing.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Why did you move out? So, what did you do?

SPEAKER_01 13:36

I moved out at 16. I didn't get on my dad, we clashed, he he didn't believe he called martial arts legalized violence. Thought I was throwing my life away. Mum kind of supported me in a way. She said there was no such word as can. Obviously, they're not very happy that I failed all my GCSEs, you know. They weren't happy about that. I just wanted to get out and work, man. I didn't want to do all this nonsense, you know. And so I moved into a bedsit, I moved out at 16, moved into a bedsit with my girlfriend in North Devon, 30 pounds a week. Got evicted for three of them, went through three bed sits in the same town. That was quite an achievement, and then into rental accommodation. I kept on putting this damn thing off, this business. I got a job at North Devon Legislative working for£2.75 an hour as a lifeguard. That that got me by, just about covered the bills, it was pretty painful. And in the end, it was my girlfriend at the time who said, You keep talking about this business thing. Because I had a thing that no one takes me serious at 16. I'm too young. How's that? How am I going to start a business off? So I read somewhere if you grow, if you look at the old pictures of me, I had like a long ponytail, it became like my my symbol. I was worried if I had to cut the down thing off. My success was going off. It was like a lucky child. Yeah, like Steven Stigal type thing. I read somewhere, you look older if you grow your hair long. So I did that. And in the end, she bought me this briefcase. I think it's for Christmas or something, saying, Come on, you keep talking about this business thing, just get on with it. Because the problem you got in Devon, if you're a lifeguard, you've got loads of work in the summer, it comes to winter, there's nothing there because it's tourism. So I still waited like six months, and then I opened up my first martial arts class, and for whatever reason I knew I had to be aggressive marketing-wise, and I was very good at doing this flying kick. Obviously, back then we didn't have like the paparazzi technology of pictures, so I had to go hired a squash court for like five pounds, and I had to do many takes and get this kick right, and that became my logo in the end. Actually, my brother, Nathan, drew my four first logo for me using that flying kick, and then my posters made put it all over the village, had 100 members paying me£3 a class, and I was happy with that. My costs were£15 online for hall rent of a local school hall twice a week. I was happy.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

How long did it take to get those hundred members?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

I put up 100 members straight away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there weren't many people who are actually looking the part, doing it, and where I saw it was a negative at being so young, uh, people saw that's positive because when people view you, they they don't look at you, and it took me a while to figure this out. I think they're gonna come to you because of how high you can kick or how good a shape you are. All they're interested in is that you need to represent what they want their child to become. And I did. I called him Sir Mam, I made sure I was very respectful and so forth. And and the next chapter was is that one of my friends went to America on holiday, another martial artist, got a guy called Lee Charles, a good friend of mine. And then he paged me back then, started my business off of a pager. He said, and I went to the red phone box near my bed sit, I called him up, and he said, Matt, I've just come back from the States and you can't believe what's going on out there, they're like 20 years ahead of us. There's like martial arts millionaires, multi-millionaires. There's conferences just about martial arts business. And we're we're kind of funny in our industry because I didn't want to compromise standards for money. I said, Yeah, but I want to keep the standards high of Taekwondo, because no, they got standards and they got the money. So I saved up my money working for£2.75 as a lifeguard and£3 a class as a martial arts instructor. And I flew out to a convention in the States and it was at a Hyatt Hotel, three-day convention. The owner of it is a guy in his 80s, he's not a martial artist, but he's like a business guru. He owned a lot of the shares in Marriott Hotel, multi-multi-millionaire. I went and introduced myself to him, and America's very different to English. English is successful or have ambition, they just want to knock you down. In America, they he was impressed. I used my last money to buy a ticket to come to this convention, and he took me under his wing because I'd be like the perfect case study from I was 17 then. And if he could make me rich and lead me on a way, it'd be a great case study for his consultancy organization. So he told me, go and follow this person around, and I'll get up at four in the morning, go into all the staff trainings, watching their classes, understand how they market. I said, take it back to England. If it works, it works. If it don't work, it don't work. I mean, they just see England as like a tiny little dot on the globe, don't they?

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Can you remember a couple of things that you learned back then which would have been utterly revolutionary to you that you thought?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Oh yeah, yeah, like uh um put music on the lessons. Can't do that. I got kicked out on my martial arts organization because I was doing that. Not teaching in Korean, so we used to count in Korean and do the kicks in Korean, turned it to English. Everything that the school system doesn't teach, designing the program, so it does. So we teach goal setting, water safety, fire safety, how to be have good manners, be respectful. Topic of the month. They'll sit down with the kids at the end of each lesson for 10-15 minutes, and the adults too. Give them homework sheets. They have to have a sheet signed by their parent, teacher, and martial arts instructor, and unless they're being well behaved and disciplined at school and at home and keeping their bedroom tidy, brushing their teeth, then they're not allowed to go for the next colour grade. The other thing I did too is I was the first guy to put people on direct debits in the UK for martial arts, which is a seen as a no-no. Gyms were doing it. Uh, there's still some paid for gyms, like first class, and that stabilised my income. I went for 100 members who come as and when, pay me as and when to suddenly put them on£49,£59 a month memberships, depending on if they're family members or or singles. I was doing five, six thousand pounds a month plus gradings, plus joining fees merchandise, and my overheads were£30 a week.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

And you're still about 18 at this point.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

17.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah.

Media Explosion And Celebrity Doors

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And the next big dream was I wanted to be like the American way. So the American way is big, bold centres, full-time locations. It's actually the wrong thing to do. That's not my business model, but I wanted to do that because that's all I felt they could do there. The next town was Barnstable, which was a population of 30,000. So I built this business of five, six thousand a month, with 10,000 people. So Barnstable got me excited, and I wanted to have this building, and I saw the ideal building. It was above an estate agent, it's two floors, and it was owned by the estate agents. And I walked in there and they just laughed me out. Like, you can't make any money out of cry. Oh, you're 17, you're not even old enough to sign a lease, you know, on the laugh. Um, but I I just could saw I saw the vision here. It was mapped out as offices, you just had to knock the partitioners down, he had this ultimate dojo, and when it got bigger, I could expand it into the Second floor, but I couldn't convince these guys called Richard and Len to let me have this studio. Um, but my mum was a conveyance lawyer, property lawyer, so she knew all the estate agents. So she called Richard Smith, who's owned this building, said, Listen, I think my son's on to something here. Why don't you give him six months free rent? Let him fund the partition knocking down, so there's no risk to you at all. You got nothing to lose. The market wasn't great back then. It's like talking like 97, 98 time. Let's see what happens. And they very reluctantly said, Okay, we'll give you a six months' free rent. The issue I had then is I wasn't old enough to sign a lease, and my girlfriend was 19. She changed her name by deep for to Fidesz. And um, she signed the lease and we got in there. And I remember on New Year's Eve, and I was painting the walls, all the petitions down. We couldn't afford mats or nothing. We had carpet down, there's a lot of carpet bone going on when my first round of students that they can remember. Looking out the window, and it's right on the square in Barnesville on the front, where they did all the fireworks and celebrate New Year's Eve. And I saw the fireworks going off, and everyone getting drunk and thinking, what am I doing here? What the hell am I doing? Surely I should be down there. But that's the moral of the story, where you got to observe the masses and do the opposite to everyone else. Long story short, six months later, 700 members, making a million pounds a year, 80,000 a month from that building, and it was the biggest martial arts school in the UK. And I duplicated that five times.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

How were you marketing it?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Back then it was all offline. There was no online, there was no Facebook, internet was around, email was around, but it wasn't a thing. So I spent£140 on a little advert. Literally a picture of me doing my flying kit, full-time martial arts school at Barcelon, and I had a queue all around the corner. People just come in to sign up. No one was doing martial arts professionally as a business. They're all doing it for fighting and as an educational system. The word got around, like this, you've got this guy in town who's doing it's like a private school, what he's doing. They've got homework, the kids looks after, and he looks the part, and and so on, you know. It's like when you see all these personal trainers out there, and a lot of them are out of shape for these big chains. You're thinking, what are you doing? How can you take advice of someone who's hasn't done it themselves? And I left the part. So I I always knew the marketing was the number one thing. And I read all the right books, you know, Tony Robbins' books and Robert Kiyosaki's with dad, poor dad, and Jay Abrahams' marketing books.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

What got you into those books? What opened you up to that world? I mean, it was that off the back of when you'd gone to the American thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah, yeah. The Americans are just like you can be as great as martial arts instructor in the world, but no one's gonna go and say, Oh, that was a great class, here's a check for£10,000. Ain't gonna happen. It's all about how you get those members in the front doors, what brings you success, and then delivering the service. This is where people go wrong, they focus too much on the service and don't understand the front end. They gotta have there's three areas of business. You've got the marketing down, the sales down, and then you get to do what you do, the service, the service part. And I just knew from the outset, I had incredible mentors at such a young age that I had to get this marketing thing down. So by the fifth of every month, I had 15 marketing ideas already strategized and planned in my diary, ready to execute the following month. So every month there was 15 offline uh activities. In fact, that's still in place now. So my franchisees now, they have to have 15 marketing ideas in place offline by the fifth of every month, aside from Facebook and social media too.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

15 new ones every month, every single month, yeah. And and what what were some examples, please?

SPEAKER_01 23:27

So this time of year we're Easter now, so it would be like um uh Easter camp campaign, bring a friend to class, school talks, somebody parents nights out, um, leaflet drops, putting posters in all the places like GPs, doctors, dentists' surgeries, having a hundred lists, a hundred places where people can visibly see you, lead boxes, yeah, and go on and on.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

And back in the day when when you were doing this, you you got to do five studios. I mean, even when you don't want, to be fair, I mean, what were the competition saying?

SPEAKER_01 23:56

They hated me. Like, well the hell you can't do this. The hell do you think you are making money out of martial arts? You can't put music on the lessons. I mean, I was the most hated man in the martial arts industry. They compared me to McDonald's. They thought I watered it all down. They called it MacDojo. But now they're all doing it. Now they're all trying to be like me, you know? Well, they'll never be like me. It's like Arnold's score stack is going to say that, well, we don't want to look like you, Arnold. Don't worry, you never will. They're not going to catch us because we were the first and we're the biggest, and and we're still out there. But now they understand it and they embrace what I was about. But back then I took a lot of hate. I did for the sector. And even like growing up, I used to buy a martial arts magazine called Martial Arts Illustrated, and I cycle my BMX bike with my pocket money and buy that and read it every single month. And my goal was one day to be in it. And I was other than Bruce Lee, the editor tells me I was the most featured person on the front cover of Martial Arts Illustrated, because they knew they put Matt Fettes on the front, it was gonna sell copies, and all my thousands and thousands of students are gonna buy it. And it was controversial.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Were you still training hard yourself at this point with the martial arts? Okay, so you you you didn't kind of uh get chubby and move to business. You were you you were doing both sides.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I put my training first, and even when I started having kids and stuff, I'd get in and go train at 9:30 at night for an hour and still still want to be progressing. Those things are very linked together. And to get on the front cover of that magazine, I know it sounds ridiculous, but the editor wanted me to spar him, fight him. So I went up to Huddersfield, proper old school, and I had to spar him to show him I was a real deal. And uh at the end of it, he beat the hell out of me. He's got like ninth Dan and 10 martial arts. And he's like, Okay, yeah, you can be on the front cover. And uh, yeah, Bob laughs about it now. Um, but yeah, it was an incredible, incredible journey. And everyone who's anyone in the martial arts world will come in down to Devon to try and check out what the hell is this 18-year-old doing? How is he making all this money? Why has he got a Ferrari 355 at 18 years old? What's he doing different to us when we've been doing this 30 years and we've never made this kind of they've still got day jobs? Martial arts is the hobby to them. You know, he must be doing something criminal, so it can't be right. But now I just modernize the martial arts industry.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Let me hit you with a mad stat. You are probably not subscribed. Seriously, 58% of the people who listen to this podcast every single week do not hit that subscribe button. That is more than half of you. So let's fix this right now. The goal here is super simple. We grow the podcast, we bring in bigger guests, and we give you even more, no bullshit, actionable insights to level up your business and to level up your life. Now, in business, you set smart goals. That's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Well, here's one for you. Let's get that 58% down to well below 50% in the next three months. So please do me a quick favor. If this podcast has ever given you one good idea, one piece of advice that's helped you or helped your business, then hit that subscribe button. It takes a second, it costs nothing, and it means that I can keep bringing you even bigger and better guests, giving you even bigger and better insights. Go on, do it now. I'll wait. Done. Perfect. Great choice. Let's grow this together. And when did you start to franchise it?

Michael Jackson’s Franchising Lesson

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Okay, so this is where the story goes a bit wild. So the next town, the reason I stopped at five is you've got Bartsville, Biddeford, Ilfacum, South Moulton, etc., Bronton. The next town was 40 miles away, a place called Tiverton. And in my head, I felt it's hard enough getting people to work for an 18-year-old when they're in their 30s, 40s, let alone travel to Tiverton. So that was a mental block for me. I didn't think it was going to be able to happen. Now I sat in my reception at my main martial arts school, my full-time centre in Barstable, and one of the parents is a reporter. He had two students, a boy and a girl, come to my school and he said, Matt, I work for Southwest News Agency. I didn't mean anything to me at the time. I like to do a story on you. I'm a journalist. I know you're bullied at school, you've got no qualifications, you're clearly making a lot of money. And you got a nice car outside. Can I interview you? And I said, sure. I was looking for significance recognition after being bullied at school. I was just what I wanted, you know. So he interviewed me, he wanted a picture of me when I was at school, like when I had the bullied boy age in my school picture, seven years old. And then he took me through my whole childhood, what I was doing, how things are going now. And I was very honest, Matt, about the money I was earning because all these people who try and hide it. I parked my Ferrari right outside the building. Because if parents said, Oh, you must make a lot of money out of this, like, yeah, that's why you bring your kid to me. Because I'm going to teach you everything that the school system don't teach you, so they can have a Ferrari one day, wouldn't that be great? And parents like, yeah, you know, if I tried and park it around the corner and hide my success, then it would have had the same effect. So this guy who's called Nick Constable did a big feature on me and took a picture of me in my car, me doing a martial arts pose, went away, nothing happened for a few days. And this is back in 97-98 when mainstream media was massive. Like each publication, we picked up 20 million copies per day. And yeah, I woke up one morning, the phone was ringing off the hook, the landline, it would just go mad. And I thought, what the hell's going on? And I went to get some food, and everyone was staring at me and pointing at me. I was on the front page of every single tabloid newspaper that was Buddy Boy Becomes Millionaire, and it's such a unique story with martial arts. It was massive. And then on the back of that, TV researchers they scanned the newspapers for stories. So you probably remember the shows like Esther Rampson, Trisha, Kilroy, Richard and Judy, GMTV. I did all the shows, and on the back of that, Yuri Geller was watching the world famous Mind Powerbender. They called him in the UK, but the rest of the world didn't call him that. Yuri Geller was watching it, it was hugely successful, especially in property and business. And his best friend was Michael Jackson. He introduced me to Michael Jackson as we became friends and he got to trust me. And Michael was already a black belt. Joseph Jackson made all the Jackson 5, studied martial arts. He wanted to proceed with his training to second down. Just a conversation in his hotel suite. Bored, we couldn't go anywhere. Michael says to me, How's your business doing? I've got five locations. Why you only got five locations, Matt? Why aren't you took this in global? I said, Well, the next town's at Tiverton is 40 miles away, and I gave him this sob story. He's like, What are you talking about? I'm a poor boy from Gary, Indiana. One of nine children with no money whatsoever. Got the biggest selling album in the world, Frill. Have you ever heard of it? And uh, of course you can work out how to get this thing to let's this town. He said it's called franchising. And I immediately bit back at Michael and said, Yeah, but no one's ever done that in the martial arts before. He said, Well, that's exactly why you've got to do it. And he took out a napkin or like a notepad from the it was a Renaissance hotel in Higher Holburn in London, and he wrote down everything I needed to do because he was a master licensed in his name. He had the biggest brand deal with Pepsi Colo of all time, endorsement deal. And he he wrote down, you've got to manualize everything, you've got scripts, you've got with genius manipulating mainstream media, you've got to systemise everything, got to build a brand. Yeah, and then from that point onwards, my friendship with Michael became very different. So yeah, I took over, I was bodyguard to him and took over his security, but I did it for free. There's no money exchange. I didn't want his money. I was already a millionaire before I met the guy. I didn't want his money, and that's why the friendship worked for 10 years. But he kept me accountable.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

So it was when you knew Michael that he introduced that he introduced you the concept of franchising, and then you just you just went went back to England and uh and decided to give it a whirl.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

It was in London. Michael Jackson opened my mind to that anything is possible, and Yuri Geller as well. So Yuri's like, stop flipping, wasting your car, money on Ferraris, Matt. Buy houses and not build any more land. It's a great investment on the world. So he pushed me. I hated him for it. I hated Yuri for it. I love him for it now. The largest property portfolio in the southwest of the UK. Um, Michael, on the other hand, kept me accountable on building this franchise network. So whenever the phone calls took place, whenever he called me up, it changed. It was how's the business going, Matt? When we we used to get meetups and well, my my my friend network was unbelievable, like Mohammed Orfai, we used to go around his house at dinner and the owner of Harrods. And the conversation at the dinner table was very different to an average 18, 19, 20-year-old. What I was experiencing, I was a billionaires and superstars, and and um they just held me accountable.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

And what was the concept of the franchise? So I I'm a I'm a local karate owner, I don't know anything about business. I come and buy the you know the the MF karate, you know, MF martial arts package, and and and you teach me a business in a box and business in a box.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Do you know what it's nowadays you don't get martial artists buying them, we get investors buying them because it's the return so good. You think about it, it's just an empty room, it's a school hall. So the full-time America model, full-time centre, that doesn't really work in the UK. There's no need for that. You just hire locations for 10-15 pounds an hour. So, and also it's VAT exempt because it's education as well. We had to fight for that, and so now we get investors, they buy one for 10-25 grand and they get an 85% return on their money, passive income, and they just employ martial arts instructors.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Is it just the the sign-on food or they pay you like an ongoing commission as well?

SPEAKER_01 32:49

They pay me a commission, so they I only make money if they make money, so win-win, and that's always seen me good. Rather than some franchises just pay you a set amount, that's the way it's worked. And people have tried to copy it and stuff, but it's never worked out because you can't copy my story, you can't copy my social proof. You know, when you when you stick, if you're looking for your to take your child to a martial arts class or for you to join martial arts class, you put my name in Google, you get a long list of media articles going back 20 odd years and social proof, you put the competitors trying to copy what I do, you just get a website, an Instagram, a TikTok, or account. You're always going to pick the person who's been around nearly three decades with all these megastars and advising Kim Kardashian and stuff over the local guy. People want to be part of a brand. So people are happy to buy into a brand. And they they especially now where people are concerned about paedophiles and and are their children safe and the internet stuff. We even cover that internet bullying, cyber safety now, too. So yeah, the brand power is is is really really important.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

And how many have you got? How many units?

SPEAKER_01 33:52

1800 now.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

All around the world.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

All all around the world. We're expanding, we're about to go on our biggest expansion ever. We're gonna do we're gonna do 2,000 more locations, um, but big time in Australia, obviously UK, Ireland, and and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

And do you still do you still have the original five?

Building A Brand Amid Backlash

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yeah, yeah, I've still got the original building, which I yeah, 27 years later, which yeah, I go in there sometimes and I think back to when I was decorating it and how the hell did this happen? You know, and and they love it when I go. It's funny because that town gave me such a hard time. And when I go back now, they're like, thanks for putting my Barnes on the map. You know, if you if it weren't for you, you brought Michael Jackson here, you brought this here, and I was thinking, yeah, you guys gave me such a hard time, man. I was like, the most hated person in North Devon. But I don't blame them. Now I'm 44 and I look back at it. When you're 18 years old, you're driving around town in perfect condition, your body perfect, long hair, permed with in a Frari 355 spider with the roof down in the winter, multi-millionaire, and your best friends are Michael Jackson, Yuri Geller, Britney Spears, and and Mohammed Offad, people are gonna think you're not normal, and you're not from that town as well. So I get it now, but um yeah, I you got a part of a lot of hate to be successful.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Let's move from business to to Michael Jackson. And obviously, that was one of the two key things we we talked about at the beginning, and uh obviously what you what you're well known for. You've quickly glossed over the fact that when you started to get well known, you met Yuri Geller, and and you Uri Geller then introduced you to Michael. Just tell us a bit more around that story because I mean, even though you're a you're a successful young guy at the time, uh it still must have been uh a bit of a s surprise to walk into the room with probably you know what was and still is one of the, if not the most famous men in the world.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Yeah. Well, he the last award he got was Guinness Book of Record, the most famous man in the world. But no, Yuri Ghetto called me at three o'clock in the morning, said, Come to my house now, if you don't, you regret it for the rest of your life. Uh the problem I had is he wouldn't tell me why. He would not tell me why. And he lived in Sonnen on Thames, just outside of Redding in England. So it's about three and a half hours from me. Credible house, like a replica of the White House, 20 million pound mansion with all the ground and buildings attached, and next to George Clooney's house. So I said, Yuri, can you just tell me why? So look, I've never guided you wrong. Get in your Ferrari, stop moaning. I love you, bye. Put the phone down me. So I had a massive row on my missus, so you could imagine. What the hell you could try and explain where you're going and three o'clock in the morning. And I arrived at Yuri's house, the gate's open as they do, and it's a credible home, and walk in his living room, and yeah, this guy walks up to me and he bows to me, he says, Hi, Master Fideste, my name's Michael Jackson, pleased to meet you. And I thought, flipping it. I know you are, but what are you doing here? And then for a second, I thought, I'm quite high profile on all these shows. This is a prank TV show like Jeremy Beadle or something like that, you know. I know Yuri Geller was very powerful, he was internationally famous, and I'd hear presidents ring and and royalty and big names would be there, but not to this level. I never heard him mention Michael Jackson. It turns out he's his best mate, best man at his wedding. And we got like a house on fire. Me and Michael just got on so well.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Just talk about Yuri, because I mean I think for people, he's still alive, Yuri. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

He's got living in Israel, and you get a museum.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

But I think for people uh I guess who who are let's say younger than us, it's not really a name that people know now. But I mean, you're going back to certainly you know the 80s and 90s. I mean, the the guy was enormous. Like you say, he was known as, I guess, the spoon bender, and he and and that he had some money, some international connections. But I don't think people appreciate you know the quantum of wealth, you know, the the the amount of power. I mean, where where did it all come from?

SPEAKER_01 37:20

So, yeah, so um he's got companies all around the world. When you're world famous, you just release one book and it does moderate modestly okay with a publisher. He's translated in all those different languages. I think he's published like 52 books, and he's got production about my about my mind power, mind medicine, yeah, what creating wealth and health and and so forth, you know, autobiographies, there's there's all loads of books that he's done and co-written, and then he's got TV shows all around the world. You he used to say to me about the UK, he says, Matt, you can never be a prophet in your hometown. So in the UK, it's just spoon band. When you go around the world and you get it, there's none of that. Uh it's it's more about the mind side. So you got like Tony Robbins.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

I was about to say, as I'm listening to this, he he's he's basically sounding like a Tony Robbins with a with a who can do a few magic tricks if you like.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah, I don't know if it's I've seen that spoon thing, fork thing, metal thing, pound coin. If it's magic, then it's it's damn good because he literally just rubs it, hands it to you, and it bends in your hand. So I don't know. I've seen doing swimming pools, every kind of fury off all is it a chemical, is it this? But I can I've known that guy since I was 17 now, and I'm 44. He's my best friend, and uh I don't know how he does it, I've got no idea. And I've seen it probably more than many, many people. But no, he's been investigated by scientists and everything, but now he's got TV shows all around the world called the next Yuri Gellow, where people are trying to audition to in front of him to be the next Yuri Gellow. And in the UK, he's just never been given that kind of recognition.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

So you meet Michael um middle of the night, you miss it, you misses his pissed off with you.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

You've uh yeah, yeah, and then you try to tell him why. Oh yeah. That's the interesting. Where are you? I'm just hanging out with Michael Jackson, the singer.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

And and and you so you went to meet him because Yuri wanted to introduce you because he he's uh he was a martial arts uh practitioner himself.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

So so Michael Jackson was martial arts black belt.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

And was that was that common knowledge? I mean, I mean I've never heard that before. You can't imagine Michael Jackson as a martial artist.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

I know, he was damn good. Not just him, though, Tito Jermaine, all of them did it, all the Jacksons. Joseph made sure they wanted make sure they could take care of himself. Joseph was a boxer, their dad. They call him Joseph, by the way, they don't call him dad. That's why it refers to him as Joseph. And um, yeah, it's it's common knowledge. You know, you look back at Michael Jackson's dance and he puts all the kicks and punches and blocks in his dancing, it's all in there. He was a Bruce Lee fanatic. You sit down with Michael and watch a movie, he he would annoy you because he'd know every single word to enter the dragon, where the dragon, the big boss, no matter how many times you just watch the movies over and over again. And he wanted to meet Shannon Lee and Lyndon. Linderley, Bruce Lee's ex-wife and only surviving child, his daughter. Because he that's what he did. He studied the greats and wanted to know how they stayed relevant. And I had connections to Shannon Lee and Lindley. So he was obsessed about what made Bruce Lee so relevant all these years on. So he wish to study like James Brown, Charlie Chaplin, Fred Astaire, and take bits from them and put them into his own dance and his thinking and read four or five non-fiction books per week. If we go to bookshops, he just cleaned the whole place out, literally. Actually, one time we went to London, we we were running late for our flight, and it was a particular bookshop, and it specialised in art because he's an artist as well. And I said I went up to him and in public I referred to him as Mr. Jackson. I say, Oh, Mr. Jackson, we we need to get going, you know. And he goes, Hmm, damn, I love this bookshop too. Okay, can you just tell her I'll take all of it? I said, What do you mean? I said, I we'll just take everything. So, Michael, I'm not I'm not going up to that cashier in town, you can take the whole thing. So, okay, I'll do it. And he goes, I guess he goes up to her and goes, Hi. So, um, I got a cash or flight, apparently. Can I take everything? And you can send it to Neverland, and and uh my team will take care of the bill. Thank you, bye. And he and he and they shut the door down on the shop that day. It all got exported, every single book got exported to Neverland. Yeah, it was insane. So he would just like study with Tony Robbins, he was really into him. Tony talks about him in his personal power uh kit about that they Michael had the biggest endorsement deal of all time with Pepsi Cola, he was the the man who started off celebrity endorsements and licensing. So for him, he was a big inspiration to me. I mean, he took me under his wing.

Inside The Jackson Circle

SPEAKER_02 41:33

And so was Michael, I mean, I guess you're gonna say yes because of some of the things you've already been saying, but so I mean, was it was Michael an intelligent guy, a businessman who was in control of his own stuff? Because I mean, I again, I guess as a lay public, you know, we always look at people like that and we think, oh, incredibly talented performer, but you know, surrounded by these management team, these lawyers, these you know, these deal makers, and and and they just you know put him in a room and and he gets on with it, but they create all the stuff. I mean, was was Michael you know very much the creator of his own destiny?

SPEAKER_01 42:02

He he was the creator of his own destiny, but he was very bad in trusting the wrong people. So for the 10 years I knew him, he must have gone through 12 different managers, and some of them were very good and some of them were very bad. He if they were very good, why was he going through them? Because people would get in his ear. The late the latest friend, the latest I won't say family member, because he didn't have an awful lot to do with with them as such, but people would get in his ear about this or that, and and he would push the next person out, and even myself, I would find myself pushed out at some point.

SPEAKER_02 42:36

If he's an intelligent guy who's had good people around him, why does he listen to someone to then kick out these good people?

SPEAKER_01 42:42

The the biggest issue we had was the doctors. There was always a doctor, and I ain't joking, I remember one time I went into a bathroom of a hotel downstairs, not in Michael's hotel suite, and I could overhear a doctor talking to a Michael Jackson fan, and the doctor was basically doing a£10,000 deal, which was a lot of money back then, to introduce the fan to Michael in the hotel suite. I couldn't believe my ears. Problem I had is that go if you go back to Michael with that, you've got to hope he's gonna believe you because he'll shut you out, and then he's stuck with this doctor who's no good for him. And this is the issue we had. The doctors had a way of hooking Michael in with the medication and making him dependent on them.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

So let's talk about doctors. So, what why did he have these doctors? You know, what were they for? What was the medication? What was the dependency?

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Well, he he um he got burnt with a Pepsi Cola commercial, serious scalp burn. I remember that, yeah. And he was because he's Michael Jackson, they over-prescribed him in my belief.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

And and but that's when it all began. There was no drugs, there was no doctors prior to this.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

No, that guy would never try he and he given to a doctor by a doctor he saw his medicine. I mean, he was I know it's hard for people to understand this because the way he died, but he would not let me go to nightclubs. I was not allowed to drink alcohol. I definitely first alcoholic drinker saw I was 27. That's how tough he was on us. Because when he said when he was getting famous with the Jackson 5, we'd go around these clubs at five, seven, eight years old and see the way guys would treat women and alcohol abuse and drug abuse, and he was really tough on us about that. If you if you ever smoke Matt, you're out. If you ever see you drinking alcohol, you're out. He was pretty full on. But the doctor side, he had this as well publicised now, dependency on painkillers. You know, it's not like paracetamol, you get over here, it's over there, it's like hairy and opium-linked painkillers, and the damn doctors would give it to him because it's a way of them staying in his life, and we'd get rid of one doctor and another one to turn up. It was just a constant cycle, and that was is that all he was having, these these painkillers? Yeah, sleeping tablets. Like um, if I'm honest with you, obviously I know what he died of because that's been in the autopsy. At the time, I didn't know what he was taking. I was a guy in my 20s, mid-20s to late 20s, seeing my friend go into a room and then come out 20 minutes later like a flipping zombie, or be a bit erratic. I didn't know what the hell he was taking. It was all double dutch to me.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Yeah, obviously, well, he died, he died of Zendapines and I remember we used to you know see all the Michael Jackson stories like, oh, you know, he he's he's got his doctors on 24-7 call, he he he sleeps in an oxygen tent, he does this, he does the other. I mean, I mean, what were were these other things true as well?

SPEAKER_01 45:24

He designed all those stories. So the oxygen chamber one is um his first bash of controlling the media, so he was very much a close friend of Elizabeth Taylor, he admired Elizabeth Taylor and used to speak to all the time. And she used to get on a magazine called the National Inquirer, oh yeah, which was massive back then, and Michael was jealous of her because he wanted to be on the National Inquirer on the front, and that was a thing. You don't want to be on the front of the National Enquirer now, but that was a thing. And he, after the burn that he had, the serious burn situation, obviously Pepsi Cola thought he was going to sue them because a pyrotechnic went off and burnt his hair. Rather than do that, Michael made them donate a lot of money to a burn centre for children and he visited it and he turned up there, and there was this oxygen chamber there, which basically kids go in and it helps their skin get better quicker. Some kind of latest technology. He thought to himself, hmm. He said to his manager, Frank DeLeo, I'm gonna get in that quickly, take a quick picture of me, and we're gonna release that. So he led down on it, he said it was the most scariest thing of his life. Frank DeLeo, his manager, took a picture of him of it, and he said, Send that to the National Enquirer and tell them I sleep in an oxygen chamber. He did, boom, front page. That was it. And that story stuck ever since. And then he had like the elephant man bones and all the classic stories you can think of. He started to realise he could manipulate mainstream media extremely well and make billions off the back of it, and his record sales would go through the roof and create the mystique that became Michael Jackson, which also backfired on him too.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

So tell me, so you became friends as well as being friends, you would do security for him as well. Was that an ad hoc now and again, like when he needed something special, or did you did you have an official capacity?

SPEAKER_01 47:04

No, I wasn't employed, I wasn't paid, I didn't he offered me money, but I didn't want his money. I've got my own businesses to run. Um, so yeah, he would just call me and say, I'm at the airport, I'm about to fly to England. Can you can you meet me at Terminal 5 Heath Road, pick me up, come hang out with me, or I'm at Paris, or I'm in New York, can you come hang out on board? And um, because I was a martial arts guy, and back then I had big muscles, and I was, you know, I'm six foot four, and he's my little vulnerable friend, I would I would naturally be very protective of my mate because when they get out, it would get absolutely mulled, mobbed everywhere we went, we just couldn't do anything, and that became a thing. And also, paparazzi was a big thing back then, so pictures of me and it would be everywhere, and yeah, so it's an unofficial role. I saw bodyguard companies charging him 150,000, 200,000 a month, and he could answer phone calls around them when I think, because they would sell them out, sell stories. So I said, Stop all this nonsense. If you if you need me for public events, I've got hundreds of martial artists linked to me, instructors. I've got my family, my brother-in-law used to do the bodyguarding outside his bedroom door after his hotel suites and things. You can trust the nurse, just call on us whenever you want. And he did. And presumably they all got paid. So my team did not get paid. My brother-in-law, I believe, got paid for the night shift. Yeah, standing outside his door. In fact, he probably had more communication with Michael than all of us because Michael famously couldn't sleep, and uh used to come out wandering the corridors all the night and with my brother-in-law and chatting to him and stuff about everything and things. But yeah, they they got paid, but uh, I didn't know what I didn't want money off Michael. I got paid by Michael by the network, the contact book, the the the knowledge that he had being passed on to me.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Well, that's what I was going to come on to. Whilst you may have not been paid in money, you know, to be to be uh you know in proximity to someone like that, you know, with with his network, with his contact base, you know, with with the with the pull and reach he's got, that had to have been, I guess, a a massive attract a massive attractor to you. Just because somebody has something that you can benefit from, you know, you can still be mates. It doesn't have it doesn't have to be disingenuous. Like if we're if we're if we're mates together, we're mates together. But if I know you know someone, I'm gonna ask you for an introduction, I'm gonna ask you if if you can help in the same way, it's in the same way I'd do the same for you. It's not that's not why I'm your mate. Yeah. Um, some people might think there's a fine line, but I also think that you know, sensible or intelligent people can always tell when someone's trying to build a relationship with them from you know from a bad place or from from some disingenuous intent.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

He understood very well because he said to me, if you're gonna be friends with me, mate, your life's never gonna be the same. And I I just laughed off at the beginning. It was almost like a like a schoolboy asking if he could be friends with you at school. You know, you sure you want to be my friend? I didn't understand what he meant. But flipping ack, it's life-changing. There's that day that goes past, even now, where someone stops me or asks me, or a DM comes in about Michael, and uh 15 years after his death, it's it seems to be getting bigger. And they've got the biopic coming out next year. The same people who have made the Freddie Mercury one are currently filming the Michael Jackson one. It's called Michael, and his nephew, Jafar, Jermaine's son's playing him. He'll be it'll they reckon it's gonna be the biggest movie of all time. I don't doubt it.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

You were you were friends with him up until up until his death?

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Yeah, I spoke to him two nights before he died. He called me up, erratic, unhappy, and I was I knew something was wrong. I didn't think he was gonna die. If I thought he was gonna die, I would have been on the next plane out. He asked me to fly out. He called up, I was in Barnstable, my wife answered the phone, and she said, Um, Michael's on the phone. It doesn't sound good. I spoke to him and he was very erratic in his speech. I said, What the hell you've been taking? He said, Well, the doctor's giving me a drug to help me perform, rehearse that night. So he said to me the concert promoters were gonna pull the concerts. It was 50 shows in the O2 Arena. I had tickets, I remember. I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

I did, yeah.

Doctors, Dependence, And Control

SPEAKER_01 50:50

Yeah, and they he he had this thing about rehearsing, is that mate? I've been I wrote these songs, I wrote the dances, I've been doing this for 30 odd years. I don't need to be rehearsing every night at the Staple Center, but I gotta go tonight, although they're gonna pull the show, and that they advanced him a load of money apparently, and they were he was living off them accommodation, I wasn't doing the security. I had very hard to get hold of Michael at this point because they took over complete control of him the last two the last couple of years. Yeah, he got my number for a for someone who was at the house at the time, and he said, I need to get hold of Joseph. I said, And his dad, so Joseph Jackson is the only person that can sort this shit out. That's the exact words to me. And I was like, Whoa, because if Michael calls you asking for Joseph, you know there's something not quite good because they didn't quite well publicize, they never had the greatest relationship, it was better towards the end of his life. So I knew where his dad was, I had his number, he's in Las Vegas. Michael was in Los Angeles at the time. So I gave him his dad, Joseph Jackson's number, and then he asked for his best friend, Mark Lester's number. Now Mark Lester played the original Oliver Twist. Remember that film?

SPEAKER_02 51:56

I mean, I know.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Please, sir, have some more. He's the original one. They're the same age, they grew up in the magazines to give it a Jackson 5, and they that was his best mate. Mark was godfather to Michael Jackson's children, and Michael Jackson's godfather to Mark Lester's children. So I gave him Mark's number too. He then asked to speak to my children. He spoke to Madison, my oldest daughter. Um, then he spoke to Lola, my second daughter, so he tried to speak to Lola, she was only like a toddler at the time. Uh, came back to me and I said, Are you sure you're okay? Because I'm fine, I'm on the way to rehearse. So you make sure you ring Joseph, so I will, and I'll see you in London in the next few weeks. So I'll see you there, man. We've got the house ready, we're gonna move in with you, me and Mark Lester are. And the plan was my family was gonna move in with him, and Mart Lester's family's gonna move in with him. And rather than stay in a hotel suite and be stuck in hotel suite for nine months, he hired a house in Surrey, funny enough, between Surrey and Kent. And the plan was to get on the River Thames and get to the O2 Arena, so we don't have the paparazzi following the kids and him all the time. And we were gonna make sure he ate, slept, keep the doctors away, and so forth. And that was that. So I left him. I was he took a drug called Ephedrin, he said, which is not abnormal for a dancer to take or bodybuilder take before you work out. It's quite a and he I thought if the doctor gave it to him, then it was okay. Anyway, it turned out he did the most incredible performance ever that night. He blown them away, Billy Jean, everything just blew them apart, and came away. And the concert promoters are like, Yes, we we're we he's gonna do it. He's gonna smash out the O2 Arena. And he went home, and on the Thursday, I came home from the office, sat down on the sofa, put the TV on, sat down with Madison on my lap. Yuri Ghetto calls me up and says, uh, I got Fox News on the phone at CNN saying that Michael's in a coma. I was like, Yuri, you know what he's like with the publicity stance. He's fine. I spoke to him two nights ago. He's a bit unhappy about the way he's been treated out there, he rehearsed too hard, but he's fine. He's got a doctor looking after him as well. He goes, Okay, it's just Michael B. Michael hyping up the um the show that's coming to him. And about an hour later, Yuri calls me again. It's Matt, I'm driving down the driveway to my house. My landlines are going mad. We've got CNN, Fox News, Larry King, everyone saying that Michael's had a heart attack. I was like, shall I ring Michael or shall I not? Because the amount of times I rang him, Matt, and he's he's like, ha ha, you fell into my trap, Matt. It's a publicity stunt, and it's just too good to be true. This can't be right, it's right next to his show, you know. Even all the tickets were sold out. Come off the phone to Yuri, Mark Lester rings me. Now, when I saw Mark ringing me, I thought, shit, it's there's some truth to this. Because Mark's a different route to Michael, he's closer to Michael than me. So he speaks to the nanny, and the nanny was screaming down the phone, Michael's dead, Michael's dead, and so on. So he said, Where are you? So I'm at home, so Matt, listen, um Michael's died. I was like, Wow. And I said, Well, how? I said, We don't know, but the nanny's screaming down the phone, he's dead, he's gone. And anyway, it took hours for anything to go on the news. And by that point, I had his family ringing me up. Are you with my brother? Are you with Michael? I said, No. So there's rumors that he's not very well, he's been rushed to the hospital, and I just played dumb because I didn't want to be the one to deliver the news. I said, Call your mum, you know, and I knew he'd already died by that point, and uh yeah, but but about two hours later, I went on the TV, Michael Jackson the coma, Michael Jackson's heart attack, and then once they no one wanted to say it, and once they got the official coroner's report, Michael Jackson dead, and then that was it. It was freaking mayhem, helicopters over the house. It was like a couple of days of absolute madness.

SPEAKER_02 55:30

And and how how how did you take it? How did it hit you?

SPEAKER_01 55:33

Real hard, real hard, yeah. You can't like when you breathe somebody, you go for a process, you have counselling, and so I went to the doctors. I said, You imagine it, you know, you sat down, my friend's died. Who's your friend? They they they knew who my friend was because it got well known. They don't know what to deal with me. Everywhere I went, his music was playing like never before. The shows he wanted commissioned when he was alive were suddenly being commissioned, like Thriller Live in London and and so on. Musicals, everything was happening, everyone wanted to know why he died, and it was everywhere. Sky News, Top News. It was madness, paparazzi outside my house. I was getting treated like I was him, and you Mark Lester was too, and Yuri was. We were getting hounded. We just couldn't cope. Doctors put me on antidepressants, sleeping tablets, they sent me to a bereavement counsellor. I imagine I had a brand new Ferrari 360 spider at the time turning up, going in there for counselling, and if she doesn't know how to deal with the situation, she starts crying and I ended up giving her a hug because it's such an unusual thing. They're fascinated by it. But yeah, it was tough. We all had to have therapy and and uh learn to embrace it. I think what annoyed me the most is that I went from being Matt Fideste to martial arts millionaire, property tycoon, businessman, as soon as he died, ever since, and I've learned to live with it now. And I I I I wear it, I embrace it. Just got labelled as Michael Jackson's bodyguard. But he warned me of that. He did say, didn't he? My life's never going to be the same. So, but yeah, but that's the same with that. I know Alvis Presley's bodyguard very well. It's the same with him, too. He gets labelled that, and he's he's got some great credentials to his name.

SPEAKER_02 57:02

Well, look, we can't talk about Michael without talking about uh you know the the child abuse allegations, and uh they were multiple and frequent and uh over over a long period of time. And I guess you know, and if anyone was gonna be close to him and witness that kind of thing or or comment on it, it's gonna be yourself. What's uh talk about?

SPEAKER_01 57:20

So it all goes back to the 1993 allegations by Jordan Chandler, his dad was a dentist, Evan Chandler. Um, I encourage people to go and watch a documentary out there called Square One on Amazon Prime, and another one called Chase the Truth, which goes in deep into this subject. So in 1993, Michael was in the middle of a big tour called The Dangerous Tour. Billions were at stake, hundreds of employees, two 747 jets going around the world, massive. Had to be interrupted because this boy made these allegations. The same family, Evan Chandler, came to Michael with a finance proposal to budget, to make a film. He made a film called Men Men in Tights, and he wanted to make a big budget film. Michael declined the offer. The guy went away, and I don't know why it's not more out there, but you do see this a lot now where people just the mainstream media don't seem to want to report it, they want to report the narrative. There's audio tapes if you go and watch these documentaries where Evan Chandler says, if I go through this, I'm gonna win big time. You know, we're gonna get Michael Jackson, we're gonna stitch him up, and it's all over money. I don't know. You got kids, Matt? Yes. Yeah, I've got six kids. Someone accused, someone one of my kids said to me with daddy, Michael Jackson molested me. Anyone molested with me, I'll I'll kill him. Yeah. I would kill him. I'm not I'm not gonna go and sue them for money. My first phone call, well, but first I'll go get a gun, probably, and then call the police. I'm not having that. So they just went and sued for money. They were not interested in the criminal side. So they sued for money against Michael Jackson, and then the district attorney, the the police, basically, FBI, they approached and said, Well, don't you want to file a criminal suit? No, we're not interested in that. We just want to go for the money. And the story goes basically that Jordan Chandler was given some kind of a um medication to do a witness statement because his dad was a dentist. What happened next was Michael wanted to go and challenge these allegations. He wanted to fight the life out of them. Problem he had is that there was no criminal charges brought against him, it was just civil. And he had this big tour on the go. And you have massive insurance policies. So he got overruled, and this is not out there enough. If you go watch those documentaries, Square One and Chase the Truth on Amazon Prime, you'll see. And the documents are there. His insurance company sat him down with a board of people saying, I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson. This is not your decision. We will pay this to get rid of you. We need you back on the road. There's billions at stake. This is a 20 million problem, whatever it may be. We'll get rid of this damn thing, these liars. And the insurance company paid out. Michael never paid him out. He wanted to go and fight this damn thing. And he wanted them to file criminal charges.

SPEAKER_02 59:56

And this was this was the first allegation.

Allegations, Trials, And Narrative

SPEAKER_01 59:58

It's opened up the flipping. Floodgates, didn't it? They now because of that in America the law changed. You could no longer make those allegations just go for money. You now have to do criminal case first, then do a civil claim after. So then nothing happened after that. There was all these stories about other there is no other allegations. The next one that came about was in 2004 from Gavin Avisa, which Michael fought the criminal charges. He could have tried to settle it if he wanted. I'm going to fight the damn things. And was unanimously found not guilty on all charges, hands down, in the hardest court in the world. Now bear in mind, this family hired the same legal team as the 1993 people did. They had the same district attorney who's out to get him. And this whole Prophet in your hometown thing, they wanted to get Michael. And um why was the DA out to get him? Because he couldn't get him the first time around, because he it would have made his name. So as soon as that trial ended, he was called Tom Snedden. The district attorney retired. He wanted to retire on the putting the biggest star in the world in jail. And do you know what, Matt? I've been with Michael and the Jacksons in America, and the racism they have to put up with is unbelievable. I couldn't, I used to hear it from Tito and Jermaine about people swearing up the street and calling them names and that. And so I witnessed it for myself. I couldn't believe it. Because with Michael, we we would hide and try not to be with the public much because it was madness. But I'd hear Tito get racist remarks against him and stuff, and it was shocking. So there's an element of that too. And then it turned out too that the FBI had a 10-year investigation into Michael Jackson as well. Open. They couldn't find nothing, they couldn't do nothing. Now, the reason I stuck with him, I knew the guy really well. He used to hang out with my family and my kids. Well, my mum was dying of breast cancer, he was the biggest strength to me and her around. And the problem we had is that he was brainwashed by Motown to not be seen with a girl. Because if you seen with a girl, your fan base would be gone. And Tito Jackson was the first to get married out of Jackson 5. And he was devastated. He thought this is going to be the end of our career. Why don't why did you do this, Tito? He was crying. So we went to great lengths to hide his girlfriends, his wife's away from the public. Towards the end of his life, he started to get more open to the situation. He made the fatal decision to work with Martin Bashir, that he hoped that was going to help him. But no, he had a problem with flipping women. He was womanizer. He's the back of the car. We got audio footage. If you go back and watch the Michael Jackson footage, for anyone who wants to doubt me on this, go back and watch Living with Michael Jackson, that fatal hit piece that was done against Michael. When Pasheer, I was in that meeting, Bashir promised him all these things that never happened and stitched him up. Most of that footage was done on the last day because he didn't knew Michael would never see him again. Because he thought Michael thought Michael was his friend. Go and turn up the volume where the female fans are saying, Michael, can we have a hug? And he said, Sure, you can have a hug. And as he's huggling them, he said, I'll give you more than a hug. While that's happening, they turned down and Martin talks over because it goes against the whole narrative of the program. And this is the issue. Now let's go back and talk about his bedroom. Now I don't condone anyone sleeping in someone's bed, but Michael never slept in their flipping bed. Now you want to talk about his bedroom. It's it's massive, man. It's like it's two stories, three bathrooms, arcade. It's his only private sanctuary he's got. There's nowhere else for Michael Jackson. Even when he walks around Neverland, he's got security for it. Because people used to parachute in. So, oh I don't know where I am, and they hope to meet Michael Jackson. He had a panic room in his room, too. He said secret sex chamber. What a load of nonsense. He used to hit the button at Neverland Security, he had to run to that damn panic room multiple times because people would parachute in or break the boundaries. And he had stuff in there to keep him entertained and stuff for how long it took to his safe to come out again, like many billionaires do, and multimillionaires do. But no, it's nothing on True Order. But are you saying kids did or didn't sleep in his bed? They did not sleep with him in his bed. He used to sleep on the floor, go to the bedroom upstairs. It was on two stories. They used to fall asleep watching movies together, and his nephews and nieces, and but not just where this boys thing come from. It was girls, boys, adults, staff were in and out. The door's not locked or nothing. People used to come in and out. Now, I'm not saying it's right, right. He should not have done it, especially after 93. He should have been wearing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

I guess that's what I'm trying to get on. So I'm not trying to not try to be baiting you or be offensive. But I mean, as a parent, you wouldn't presumably want your kids to go and watch a movie and sleep with Michael Jackson while you're out for dinner with your missus.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

Michael used to used to go and hang out with my kids all the time, and I'd be in the same building, but I won't leave anybody who is not known to my family with him now. Well, Michael, I had no problem with him being with my kids because I knew what he was about. And a lot of the time, too, they don't want to talk about the fact that these kids keep trying, like some of the kids around back then, like Macaulay Colkin, for instance. You know, and was that a legitimate friendship? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Michael used to tell me that was his best friend. Well, he might Michael used to fall asleep on the bed watching movies with his family, with his nephews, nieces, and a few people used to hang around. His freaking wife used to be there as well. At least Marie Presley used to say, I was there. Why don't everyone mention the fact that I was there in the bed with Michael too, falling asleep?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

You know, but hey, this I think I think I'm just actually looking at uh looking at my internet now because I think just in the last couple of days something's come out again recently, hasn't it? Which was the uh the accusers that'll you'll know the name of the Wade and James. Wade and James, they've um they've seeked to open the sealed records that include new photos of him.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

So they lost their appeals. They were the star witnesses in the 2004 case, both of them, same age as me. And um they were there saying nothing said never done to them or anything, and then they changed their story later on down the line. And I didn't think you could do that, like Lion, but apparently, once you get past a certain amount, I think it's seven years in the United States, you can't do you for it. And they sued for money, they made this hit piece documentary, which was four hours long. A lot of that's been proven to be untrue now. James, I think it's out there on the internet as well now. James said he was abused in a train station by Michael Jackson, and it turned out that that train station wasn't even built until he was in his mid-20s.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

I can't imagine Michael Jackson taking the train.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

He had his own train station, never mind. Well, we did take the train actually. We used to take the train from Paddington. He loved it, that was his best form of transit. He used to love it, he hated flying. So we we took the train once from Paddington to Exeter, and lots of times we do that around New York and things like that. So, yeah, but no, it's all nonsense. The guy was into women. I mean, if you're gonna go after someone and bring them down, child molestation, murder, rape, other things that you're gonna go. And once you've been accused of that, you're over, aren't you? Michael never recovered from that, but I will say, and and it no one was around him strong enough to say, other than Yuri Geller, he would say this is not looking good to the world. You should not be hanging around with kids, especially after what you accused of 93. I know it, your insurance company paid it off, and you're innocent, you've got women, but you need to start cleaning up your image a bit. And he tried to do that through Martin Bashir, and it didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

And and what what was Michael's reaction to that? I mean, did he agree?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

It would have shut you out of your life. Yeah, if Michael heard stuff you didn't want to hear, you'd get shut out. I used to see those people shut out. Now I I I wish I was a bit stronger on him, Matt, but I was I was just sitting in my 20s. I I didn't feel I could raise my voice. I did with the drug usage, I thought he was gonna kill himself, but he was shooting me down, you know, because I was just a guy karate teaches to him in his 20s, who's as far as Michael was concerned, he may be a multimillionaire for his knowledge and power, and and I was just uh, yeah, who was I to say to him? But Yuri Geller used to shut shout at him and he shut Yuri out.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

I was gonna say, would he shut Yuri out as well?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:30

Yeah, he shut Yuri out. You used to shout at him, you've got to stop doing this. You the world don't perceive it right, you know. It's it's look one way to sum it up, I've got an incredible home in Devon. If someone moved next to another incredible home next to me, who appeared to be a single man having kids, come and sleep over. Of course I'll call the police. I would. But Neverland was built not for his term to be at home, he made that for Make Your Wish Foundation. Over 10,000 children a year were bust into Neverland to make their wish come true. It's like a fair ground, their zoo, everything you can imagine. That's what was built for. So they picked they say multiple accusers, it's not multiple accusers, there's only ever two, and these last two guys have been proven to be forsters, they've lost two of their appeals. Now they go in again because there's been a slight law change after it, but he's not even here to defend himself anymore, is he? And back in 2005, both Wade and James said they nothing happened to them, and they're suing for hundreds of millions of pounds, uh dollars. And when that TV programme was made, the four-hour hit piece, they never mentioned that. I think had they mentioned that they're suing the Michael Jackson State for money, a lot of people would have switched over, a lot of media would have ignored it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Well, it's Neverland up to now, is it still still there?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:37

Yeah, so they they're filming the um biopic there at the moment. Okay, but does it like private buyer, one of his mates bought it? Okay, and it's just 2005, a few years before he died. He lost that, got repossessed.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Well, so Matt, it has been a wild conversation which can't possibly do justice to the wildness of your life over the last uh 20, well say 25 years, since uh probably since that guy first nicked your milk back when you were seven years old. Yeah, um is a legend. What what's uh what's the next 30, 40 years hold for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:05

Well, we're gonna see the MF legacy and keep building. We've got MF martial arts schools opening all around the world, we're still expanding with our franchises. We've got MF Dance, MF Pilates, Loga, MF Yoga. We've got my property portfolio, which is still ever expanding, I'm still buying more than ever now. Bargains are back again, so I'm building that. And what I enjoy most, I run something called the Money Freedom Club, which is something that I do for fun. It's more of a passion project for me. It's not, it's only like tenner a month, but for me, it's getting like-minded people in the room, giving them proper, hard, honest advice about how to make money. The money freedom club, mf.club. And I just bring, I do an event on every three months. There's no selling, there's no pitching allowed. I bring my celebrity contact book to them. We talk about anything from social media to media to property investor, all the different sectors of that, how to build wealth. Because I don't think there's enough people teaching you how to become financially free out there. It's not taught at school, college, university teachers, you get university degree in business, you're getting taught by a lecturer who's never owned a business before, he's basically broke. Um, the world's in a mess. So I enjoy that. I so I'm gonna keep expanding MF Club and teaching the mentoring people how to make money, invest, and grow businesses and build their own economy rather than worrying about the our governments, which aren't in the UK anyway, aren't doing a very good job.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:23

I will put the link uh down in the uh down in the show notes or on the podcast, but just give yourself a little mention for where we can find. It's very simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:30

If they just go to www.mf.club, mf.club, like in your website, on there you've got all my social medias too. Uh official Matt Fedes. Follow me on Instagram and I'll DM me. You'll get me. Not a VA. I'm very I I like you know, people stay in contact with people and maybe they're struggling with their mental health or they want some guidance here and there, then just DM me and I'm uh they'll get me responding.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Awesome. Well, Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for taking time out to where you've been here in Dubai.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:56

Been a pleasure, thank you.