Chat with Marco Matti on being a social media influencer and fin-tech founder, experience in China.

Yasi: Marco is a social media influencer and podcast creator.Apart from those, he’s a highly qualified and driven MBA graduate who started at chinquapin university, MIT and Columbia United. Nowadays, he’s working at uni liver as part of the Unilever future leaders program. What’s more his also a co-founder of a FinTech company called my war chart today.

He shares his motivations of funding, my war chart, and his personal experiences as a key influencer on Chinese social media platforms. Can you be in China?

Hello, Marco. Welcome to the Fast track podcast. 

Marco: Thanks so much Yasi. I’m really excited to be here. 

Yasi: I’m excited. So I want to know that, um, you have half a million, almost half a million followers on towing, which is a major Chinese social media platform. How did you start at it? And the why? Why did you have so many followers?

Marco: What’s the secret. Uh, that’s a good question. I’m not sure if I actually cracked the secret myself as so far. Uh, basically when I went to China to study, um, uh, chinquapin in beaching, I was very curious about the social media landscape in China. And I quickly learned from my Chinese friends that it is extremely different from what I.

Too in Europe. So I started experimenting. I downloaded the yin, which is the original Chinese version of Tik TOK. Um, I downloaded Seaholm shoe, quite show. So pretty much all the social media apps that were hopped, um, back one and a half years ago. And then I started posting travel content. And for some reason on the unit just exploded it.

Um, over time it grew, it grew, it grew. And then, yeah, I mean, it’s been a crazy journey so far. Only then realized how big China is when you look at your phone screen and you see that you got virtually a thousand followers every minute. So, um, it’s, it’s crazy. 

Yasi: And is it because of your travel content or did you speak Chinese in your videos?

Marco: I guess it’s a mix of both. So I use, um, I’ve been traveling. To many, many different places. I’ve used a drone, um, for many of my travels. So I think the combination of goods travel content, um, in combination with me speaking some Chinese, um, and being able to write a caption in Chinese and to communicate with some of the followers in Chinese was definitely a big advantage because, uh, as you probably know yourself, there’s not too many white people in China who actually, um, Take the pain of learning Chinese.

So it’s still a bit of a USP, uh, when you’re in China, 

Yasi: but nowadays there are more and more foreigners who can speak Chinese. 

Marco: Luckily. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve been surprised. I think many now take it, take it up. On the other hand, you still find so many people who’ve been living in China for 10 or 15 years and virtually speaking of course, 

Yasi: nothing, uh, same happens anywhere.

Um, and how long have you lived in. 

Marco: Just about one and a half years. Yeah. I mean, it was supposed to be two years, but then, um, yeah, COVID-19 struck and I left China about six months earlier than expect. 

Yasi: I see. And how did you manage to learn Chinese to an advanced level and too many people that think is one of the most difficult language that you were there for one and a half years?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, advanced level, it might be a bit of a stretch. I now completed HSK for. Intermediate level, let’s put it this way. Um, I think the key is really to be disciplined. Um, I dedicated or have been dedicated in one hour, a day on self study where I just literally practice characters and listening and writing, and then I have, or have had, um, up until now a Chinese teacher, uh, based in in south Southeastern China.

And we still have our weekly, um, Chinese class lessons. And so that’s been helping a lot. 

Yasi: And did you start learning when you arrived China or even before? 

Marco: No, I literally started learning when I arrived because I, I think I was also a bit naive. I came to China expecting that, you know, some basic English will be understood everywhere.

And then I realized that even in some Chinese restaurants in Beijing, um, the. For young. So the waiter or waitress would actually not even understand a water or beer. And so I quickly learned that speaking some Mandarin, this is pretty much a survival skill, um, in China, unless you may be live in Shanghai in an international area or Schengen, but even in Beijing, it’s, it’s still a big advantage if you speak basic Mandarin.

Yasi: And why did you decide to learn more besides the base. 

Marco: Obviously it’s a fascinating language because it’s so radically different than any other language I’ve ever studied with a character system and not an alphabet system. And also I think, you know, speaking Chinese for, for my career goals and my interests is just a vital component of what I want to achieve.

And it’s been helping me, um, communicating with my followers. It’s been. Helping me understand Chinese culture better to communicate with people and to learn about their point of view. And so to me, it is, it is a fun activity and also very useful one. 

Yasi: Did you find that your social media experiences and the language skills help you understand the culture, the people better there?

Marco: I think so. I mean, speaking the local language, I guess has already. A door opener to a country’s culture. And I think it’s especially the case in a country that is so culturally different, um, from what I was used to. Um, and that is linguistically so different to what I was used to. And so. You know, without speaking Chinese, it’s hard to really talk to people and to understand their point of view.

Um, I remember many times I used to take taxis from Alco where the university is located to suddenly turn, which is the, the area where people go out. And I would never understand what the taxi drivers were talking to me. They will always super excited to have a Swiss guy driving around and they wanted to speak to me.

And I, we just failed at having a discussion cause I was, I was lost. And then over time, once my Chinese got better, I could hold some basic discussions with them. And it was interesting to learn. Um, you know, just basic stuff, how proud they are. China’s economic achievements, how curious they are to learn about Europe and about Switzerland and about how I like China and what I like and what I dislike.

And so, you know, without the language skills, all these discussions would have been impossible. 

Yasi: Yeah, indeed. And also during the COVID time, I was reading news in English sometimes in German. And then I also use Baidu to read the same news in Chinese, 

Marco: and it’s the same thing, but 

Yasi: from different language and they wrote it a 

Marco: different way.

Interpretation is usually very, very different on the Chinese side and the Western side. It’s 

Yasi: funny, we understand multiple language. They, you see the same story, but it’s written different way. And then the audience were, had a different 

Marco: impression. Yup. We’re not thinking a good shop of bridging these misunderstandings and misconceptions.

And I think there’s a, there’s a big chunk of work for, for us to be done. Yeah. 

Yasi: Talking about misconceptions. What do you think are the typical. Misconceptions from the Western side. 

Marco: Um, I think one huge misconception that I hear very often is that China and the west is kind of perceived to be a threat.

There’s this China threat to URI theory, you know, of a rising China that is eating away off the West’s, uh, influence in the world. And I noticed that when I speak to Chinese, that their interpretation is actually very, very different. And if you look at history, it also makes sense why the Chinese perception is so different than ours.

Because if you look at a history just 500 years ago, China was already by far the largest economy in the world. Um, even up until 1800 fifties, China was the largest economy in the world and it was literally only after. Uh, century that the Chinese often call a century of humiliation influenced by foreign powers, mainly Britain, Russia, and Japan that China lost its mojo.

So to say, and just got radically smaller than it used to. And so from the Chinese perspective, China’s development is more seen as a restoration of former glory. Going back to the normal. Whereas I sometimes think in the west, we just always talk about China now popping up somewhere on the global stage as being a major power, um, which is actually very strange when you look at economic history.

And I think another misconception is I think many Westerners just underestimate the sheer. Uh, speed of development. That’s been happening in China where the past couple of years, um, it’s hard for people to grasp just how different China is. You know, we were used just, just one area payments systems. Um, Chinese have literally skipped the generation of credit card users.

They went straight from cash to mobile payments. Cash is now basically dead in, in China. And it’s just hard for Western news. I think. Understand, without having been to China, how advanced the country is in many aspects already, as I said, mobile payment being one, but then also infrastructure, you arrive at China and it’s just a gorgeous built airport.

Infrastructure is really good. Uh, high-speed trains. Um, and so, yeah, I think many Westerners on their estimate. How, how quickly China develop. Um, 

Yasi: and also I think even to technologies and also 21st century, so many new opportunities that our country can literally take advantage of the newest technology.

Uh, as you mentioned, like a bullet train, as you mentioned, like a digital payment, you don’t have to go through the traditional step. Like I use cash and then I have a card and credit card and then digital payments literally. Yeah, 

Marco: exactly. I really think they sometimes just took best practices of other countries and they just skipped some development stages and went straight to the most up-to-date version of it.

And I think to great success. 

Yasi: Yeah, that’s just also typical story from Singapore. Right? So Singapore, back then, literally visited so many different countries and then brought the best practice to Singapore. That’s how Singapore developed so fast, 

Marco: very smart. But I think increasingly it’s going to be us looking at China.

I see what are the best practices? And then we got a copy them because I really do think in some areas, China’s now far ahead of many other Western countries. And we will increasingly be looking at them more as a trendsetter than just as a copying machine. 

Yasi: I also think it’s also, um, deep rooted in working culture because everything moves so fast, but in the Western parts, people.

Put more emphasis on quality of life, like a personal time. Yeah. 

Marco: I mean, regardless of whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing, I do think that the Chinese work ethic is extremely impressive and also shocking to some degree. Uh, I mean, you know, 9, 9, 6 schedule the crazy nine to nine, six days a week, schedule that many Chinese tech companies, um, incorporate.

I mean, it comes with disadvantages too, to be fair. I mean, many people complain about mental health issues and just enormous amounts of stress, but it is, I think true, the Chinese have a exceptional work ethic and that has helped them among many other things to develop a very, very fast. 

Yasi: And since you came back to Switzerland, how did you get the idea of starting your own business?

Which I want to talk 

Marco: about now? Yeah, my wall charts. So the story is probably a bit, a bit long. So I’m, I would like to set you the stage of what has led me over many years to then come up with two friends to, to found my wall chart. Basically I’ve been interested in. Investing and money management. Since a very young age, I started a bank apprenticeship at age 16.

So you can already see that back then. The investing topics were a key interest of mine. Um, I didn’t become a client advisor. I worked in investment advisory in, in Swiss banking for a couple of years, and I, I noticed something quite peculiar or worrying. And that is that many things that I learned in my job have never been taught at school.

Um, you have all kinds of classes in your primary education, secondary education, but we’ve never learned how to make a budget, how to invest savings, um, how to choose the right payment services after we graduate from school. And so I do think that in Switzerland, and probably not just only in Switzerland, but in many other countries, there’s a big lack of financial education.

And that leads to all kinds of issues with many Swiss people now being very risk averse, and never investing in bonds or stocks. Um, if you look at the data there’s about just, um, 20% of young professional. And so it’s that actually invest in stocks and bonds and more, roughly more than 80% just keep their savings in cash accounts, which I think is highly problematic as it just leads to more inequality and those erosion of purchasing power with inflation.

And so there’s always been that urge to help people get on their feet in terms of finances to help them invest money wisely for the long. And then when I came back from China, my very close friend Eve who have known for more than 10 years. And who’s really one of the closest friends of my line in my life approached me.

Um, because he just recently got so fascinated by the fire movement and financial independence and. Told me about the books that he’s read. He told me how he’s tracking every expense, every income, every asset that he has. And he showed me the Excel sheet that he built, um, where he actually keeps track of all his finances.

And we started discussing more and more about these topics, about fire, about investing, and then thought actually, you know, there’s a big need for these topics to be combined. And so. Luckily found an amazing software developer and a mutual friend, um, Gabriel, who’s been helping us. And the three of us now set up my wall chart, which is basically two things.

One it’s a platform for financial education. So we’re posting blocks, um, write them ourselves or link to third-party blocks that we think. Come up with really smart advice to help people invest their money, to help people understand basic financial concepts. And then to second of all, my wall chart is also a web tool that actually replaces your Excel spreadsheet, where you can use the web tool to track every expense that you have, every income stream that you have, every asset that you have, and to help you visualize.

How your assets are developing over time, how you can reach financial independence and how you can cut down on expenses that are unnecessary and don’t really help you move forward in your life.

Yasi: Yeah, it was very interesting because in my second episode, my guest is Mateus Risha here. 

You 

Marco: listen to the episode. I listened to that one and I reached out to Martinez either fascinating guy. I could literally sense that he is probably one of the most passionate believers in fire that I’ve ever met.

And in your podcast, I think he shared some really, really interesting examples on how he adopts firing this daily life. And, yeah, he’s a, he’s a great guy to talk to. I was very happy that you featured him in the podcast. 

Yasi: The spreadsheet for so many years, and now is the technology people build apps and it could be much easier than tracking all your own spreadsheet.

Marco: Yeah. We actually reached out to Martinez and T uh, promised to actually give us feedback on my wall chart. And so we will incorporate his feedback into the future development and, um, yeah, it’s been great to connect with him and I’m very glad that you, you had him on the show. And so it was a great context.

Yasi: Yeah, glad to hear that. And also, this is exactly one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast and helping the audience learn more about personal finance through the conversations. And now back to your company, where is it? Are you developing it? Is it in the beta 

Marco: stage? No, we launched it. Um, it has all the features that we initially wanted for, for the launch.

Um, we’re currently or constantly working with Gabriel on new releases. Um, but basically you can find my world chart@myworldchart.com. Um, the block is up. You can find book recommendations about investing in fire and you can also reach a weapon tool. It works very well. Um, Yeah, all you need is your email address and you can choose a password and you’re ready to go.

You can start typing in your expenses, your income streams and your assets. We built it around privacies. So we will never ask you to link any bank accounts or credit cards to it. Um, first of all, because of you also don’t want this, I think it makes sense to have. Um, complete freedom on how you, how you name your assets, whether or not you want to disclose where these assets are held and really to have privacy at the core.

So that it’s just a replacement of your, um, spreadsheet that you might keep somewhere that does not such a good job of visualizing your progress over time. So you’ll save a lot of time just by the end of the month, going on my wall chart.com typing in, um, All the parameters of your financial situation and the tool will automatically visualize your progress over the past couple of months and help you achieve financial independence faster.

Only 

Yasi: when you see it, then you know where you can improve. Otherwise it’s. Everything it’s very in the cloud, I would say 

Marco: exactly. And I really think it helps to have, you know, I told you if Chinese, that I’m a strong believer in, um, in discipline and to have a routine that at the end of the month, you have all your expenses for that month.

All your income streams. You have like this routine of going to a tool like my wall chart to type it in, to see how have you done this month? Are there any things that you could improve, cut down on? Um, and then literally see how your investments are. Hopefully creasing month by month can be a huge motivation booster interest.

Keep this topic, this important topic of, um, financial literacy top of your, of your mind. So 

Yasi: people can learn about personal finance from my war charts, and also can track them. Assets, 

Marco: correct. It’s basically two things. So when you just go in my shop.com, you’ll just see the block, you’ll see the book recommendations, and then there’s a link to your personal dashboard and finance tool, and then you can register for it.

Everything is for free, um, no charges. And so we’re very, very happy for people to try it out and give us feedback on how they like it and what we could improve further. ’cause as I, as I told you, we have, you’re very lucky to have in-house our software developer who can constantly help us improve it. And so we’re very happy to receive feedback from, from users.

Yasi: And where do you see my war chart going next? 

Marco: We have a lot of ideas. I can tell you this. Um, I mean, currently we’re working on the mobile version to have it more mobile friendly, obviously many people these days, um, use their smartphones all the time. So the start of. The desktop version and I really want to optimize it.

And then there’s a lot, lots of new features and much more of Israeli station tools that you want to incorporate. Um, with Gabriel together, um, basically based on user feedback, we also want to share more of our own posts we’ve been posting about once a week, which, um, we’re not very happy with. Um, we want to increase that frequency a lot and to really become the number one, one star.

Platform for people who have questions about investing, who want to learn how other investors are doing it. And to want to also learn about our investment philosophy, because I think it’s quite different to what, um, you’ve been told by maybe some bank advisors or other people in. And what is 

Yasi: your investment philosophy?

Marco: Then? It is actually quite boring because it’s mostly about choosing low cost passive, uh, instruments like ETFs, um, largely on stocks on a will broadly, globally diversified portfolio of, of stock ETFs. So if you want to pull it down, And key parameters. It’s ultra long-term. So be in for the long run, don’t sell, just literally invest regularly or savings into the portfolio.

Then second half that portfolio and low cost passive investor. Like ETFs and then three half that portfolio as globally diversified as you can. And not just having everything in the Swiss stock market to really have good exposure to Asia, north America, emerging markets and Europe, obviously. 

Yasi: And can people buy ETFs directly from your 

Marco: platform?

No, we’re not a broker. Um, and the, also the want to be, we want to be an independent, um, platform that literally just share. What we believe in. And help people overcome like all these human flaws of becoming nervous when the market gets rough and to sell too early or to, to buy into, you know, cluster risks that are dangerous for the longterm health, um, financial health.

And so basically it should be a platform where we’re not giving financial advice, but literally a rather. How we personally do our investments, what our investment philosophy is and share the one, the few blocks that we see that actually share the same philosophy. 

Yasi: So it’s more focusing on the education side and also a tour to help them to track the investment and the personal assets.

Marco: Yeah. Correct. 

Yasi: Okay. And then, so right now, or the audience can already find it on my work chart.com and to test it. Yeah. 

Marco: Yep. You can start the register gave us feedback. You can also provide feedback to, um, our TMX customer accounts such as right to my wall chart at G M X, M dot C H. And we’re very happy to, to receive feedback or reach out to us on Facebook.

We’re also out. As I said, we’re really trying to learn as much as we can from the fire community to get their feedback, to learn what they need, how we could improve the tool. So we want to be very customer centric on this and gather as much feedback as yeah. 

Yasi: I think the fire community is quite big globally and didn’t the concept is not so complicated.

But what’s good is to have to tools like this to actually make life easier. So instead of using spreadsheets, now you have the tools to help people to track and understand and learn. And like you said, long-term investment. So if any of the audience here is. Like early twenties to thirties. You better start now.

Marco: I totally agree. I mean, I would, I wish I had already started at age 10 and my parents would, of course 

Yasi: I’ve started when I started working like 10 years ago, 

Marco: you know, there’s, I don’t think there’s, you can’t start too early on this. I strongly believe in this. And to be honest, you know, it’s, you’re you really need this.

This constant input of a strict investment philosophy, because it’s just way too easy to become nervous when the markets get off and to sell or to actually be irrational and, you know, do stock picking that you should know. You know, the theater, the academic research on individual stock picking is, is, is pretty depressing.

And it’s really hard to beat the market if you’re an average investor, um, especially after fees, it’s one of the most difficult things to achieve and actually very, very few, um, And mutual funds have achieved that. So Vito strongly believes that it’s best to go passive, to buy the whole market broadly diversify be in for the long game, invest regularly.

Um, just have maybe six months of expenses in a cash account and the rest. Um, you should be investing, be in for the long game. And that’s how we believe you can achieve, um, financial prosperity in the long run. 

Yasi: And the most importantly is start now. 

Marco: And starting out kids stop, stop procrastinating. Um, we all know how easy it is to procrastinate.

And once you figure it out that it’s actually quite boring and you don’t need to do much, you need to set it up once, once you have your portfolio, um, don’t feel pressured that you need to be a stock trader that you constantly need to monitor your investments. And you really believe in that boring philosophy.

So to say to people true, long-term. Buy and hold, and then you don’t really have much work to do. All you need to do is to decide how much money each month you want to put in your portfolio. You just ignore it, you let it grow. And you’re going to see that it will most likely grow significantly over 2030.

Yeah, 

Yasi: they start now. Yeah. Otherwise it’s just 10, 

Marco: 15 years. Yeah. And you know, the, the very interesting study that came across, um, a couple of years ago showed that the more you look at your investments, the Porter, uh, your investment returns. So I really think this is a very powerful indication. You know, human behavior and human psychology is prone to error and to overreaction.

And so being boring and investment investing is actually a very, very good thing. And it doesn’t need much of. Yeah, 

Yasi: but, um, first of all, I think, oh, the audience need to check out your content on the website who really understand it because if people don’t understand it, just follow the advice when the market started job on the big volatility, and then they will do irrational things, but you really have to understand it and believe it.

And then whatever the market happens, you just like 

Marco: B 10. Yeah, exactly. It’s just stay calm. And, you know, we had a, we had a blog post written about, um, why investors, investors should stop timing the markets. Because what we hear many times is people keep procrastinating their investment investments because they think it’s not a good time.

Well, guess what? Nobody has a crystal ball to know what’s going to happen over the next couple of years. Um, and if people claim to do so, I will be very, very suspicious. And so there might be never a good time to invest. You know, you can wait for decades and still find excuses why you should not be investing now.

So we really think, um, timing the market is something that. Nearly impossible to achieve. And so once you have enough income that you can put a certain fraction of. Into savings. Um, you should start investing and be in for the long run. Obviously, you know, this is not financial advice. You should obviously check what your financial needs will be, how much cash you need to have in reserves.

How, if there’s any big expenses that you expect over the next couple of months or years to happen. So obviously you have to look at the individual situation, but as. General rule of thumb. It makes sense to maybe have six months of expenses in a cash account and the rest of your savings should be somehow broadly diversified, um, invested in stock ETFs in our review.

Yeah. 

Yasi: Especially for the 2030s people. 

Marco: Exactly. And, you know, it’s, uh, it’s interesting that people, um, you know, it’s been a lot of talk about, uh, Inequality, um, income inequality, financial wealth inequality. And it’s really interesting to see that one big driver of this is actually the middle class being disproportionately, uh, under invested in, in stocks.

And that top 1% the richest, um, off in our world are actually heavily invested in private equity and stocks and bonds in real estate. And so when you have a period. Years and decades of stock market booms. It just further increases inequality because the rich take all the gains from, from the stock market.

Whereas many middle class, uh, households have older savings and cash accounts get very, very little interest on it. And in the worst case, even have it eaten up by slowly but steady inflation. And so it is, I think really important to help educate. Um, especially now young people have such a long term investment horizon, um, that it’s really, it’s really time to.

Yeah. 

Yasi: I think the most powerful is to show the compound, the graph, like from the year 10, a year 15, and from the year 15 to a year 20, it’s a huge difference. It’s really the last five years, the compound. 

Marco: Totally true. And I think this is really compound interest is something. Hard to grasp for the human mind and you have to visualize it in order to understand, um, how powerful it can be.

If you just, I remember there was one example from a Chinese teacher, um, who told us a story about, um, if you took it a board of chess and you put two rice corns on the. Top left corner, and then you double it on each, um, on each little box you can actually calculate on your calculator, this enormous, enormous, uh, amount of rice corns that you going to have.

If you literally double as 64 times, it’s inconceivable to the human mind and you need to visualize it and calculate it in order to. 

Yasi: Since you are already very active on social media. So besides my ward chart.com, where, where else can the audience find you follow you? If they want to. Follow your travels.

Marco: So, um, if there’s any Chinese listeners or people who’ve lived in China downloaded though, even though the international, the Chinese version of Tik TOK, then you can find me under my Chinese name, which has shown yen, um, Marshawn yen. So please follow me there. Um, you can see. Check out all my travel stories on it, then I’m also on Instagram.

I’m on there. Marco, Luca dot park. 

Yasi: My cave sped 

Marco: for the audience. Yeah. It’s M a R C O L U C a dot. P a R K and then I’m most. Yep. Correct. Yeah. And then I’m on LinkedIn, um, with my real name, so to say, which is a Marco Monte. Um, so feel free to reach out. 

Yasi: Yeah. Thank you so much, Marco coming here today and I’m very looking forward to the new development of my ward chart.

I will check it out myself and hopefully the audience will check it out too. 

Marco: Great. That was very happy to be here. Um, it was great. It was a lot of fun. And let me know what you think. Let me know if you have, uh, if you identify in your rooms, uh, of improvements, uh, and we’re very happy to adjust and keep building.

And your financial tool. Okay. 

Yasi: So hopefully the audience will not flatter your  inbox.

Marco: We’ll get, we’ll prioritize, identified clusters of feedback and work on it. That’s um, you know, when you say you’re open to feedback, you should also be able to take it and to work on it. So we’re happy to. Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye thanks so much. Bye.