I was a strip club baron earning £3m a year & blew £2m on watches…I lost the lot overnight now yacht is my secret weapon
WITH a strip club empire, £150,000 Ferraris and lavish holidays that cost more than a million pounds, Matt Haycox lived the life of an ultimate playboy.
The Leeds-born entrepreneur, 43, was raking in up to £3million a year in profit at his peak from Wildcats, Britain’s biggest lap dancing club chain at the time with 11 sites.
Matt – who appeared in Rich House Poor House in 2020 and is also a podcaster – says he became as “good at spending money as he was earning it”.
He lived a “party-filled, opulent lifestyle” that saw him take friends away for lavish holidays to Las Vegas, Barbados and Marbella and was ferried around in a 40-ft stretch Hummer limousine – with strippers in the back for company – or flashy Bentleys and Ferraris.
But in 2008 it all came tumbling down when investors called in loans and changed terms during the credit crunch, which led Matt, then 27, to go from mega-rich to bankrupt within weeks.
Now 43, he tells The Sun’s Money Talks – a series where we speak to celebrities and business tycoons about their financial highs and lows – about “losing everything” overnight.
Plus, he reveals how he bounced back to become “10 times richer” and now lives an even more lavish lifestyle where he pays himself £100,000 a month.
Matt says: “I made some catastrophic mistakes but I was young and full of ego. I paid the price for all that.
“I had built my house on a bed of sand. All of a sudden the whole lot came tumbling down.
“While I had a high-turnover profitable business, I’d built it on massive debt. I’d had to borrow a lot of money to open up the clubs and other businesses and naively thought I’d always be able to borrow until the credit crunch.”
But when the financial markets crashed, in 2008, his creditors demanded he paid back the huge loans in full.
“If they needed £1million I could have found that but it was more like £45million and that wasn’t happening overnight,” he adds.
“I went from hero to zero in literally a few weeks, it wasn’t like a long lingering decline that eventually led to death.
“It was like you had found out you have an life-ending illness, say your goodbyes right away and you’re gone. The downfall was very quick.
“When the first person attacked to make me bankrupt I never put up a fight because if it wasn’t them it would have been the 85 other people I owed substantial amounts of money to.
“I put my hands up and waved the white flag and I lost everything, literally absolutely everything – the houses, the cars, the bank accounts, the lot was gone.
“I was told by most of my peers at the time that I’ve never work again and that business life was over for me. But now I’m worth 10 times what I was back then.”
School hustler
It was a massive fall from grace for Matt, who had been a hustler from his teenage years and found several clever schemes and money-spinning ventures early on.
“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be in business, it’s just I always wanted to be rich and the way to make millions then was being a businessman or a Hollywood star,” he tells us.
“I spent my teenage years doing everything possible to try and earn a crust because I was desperate to leave school.”
Matt’s first business was at 14 years old, flogging sweets to fellow pupils. Each day before lunch, he would leave class five minutes early, pretending to need the toilet, and race to the tuck shop.
He bought as many treats as he could and sold them to classmates who didn’t have time to wait in line, for a premium price – making up to £20 a day.
It was followed by ‘get-rich-quick schemes’, including snapping up the website domains for celebrity names that he tried to sell for vast sums – inspired by a friend of a friend who he claims earned £250,000 from flogging SpiceGirls.com
Strip clubs were seen as ‘seedy businesses’ and owned by gangsters, who were laundering money, or rich guys having fun. I knew if I treated it like a real business I could make a fortune
Matt Haycox
Matt says: “In 1997, I bought NatalieImbruglia.com. My plan was to ransom it back to her management team and somehow marry her at the same time.
“It didn’t work out. They said I was trying to blackmail them and didn’t go for it. So I sold it to a fan for around £500. It only cost around a tenner so I made a chunky profit.”
‘Paid in garlic bread’
He used his hobbies to make money too, including convincing a popular Italian restaurant to allow him to work for tips as a magician on Friday and Saturday nights – and earning a fortune.
Matt says: “I remember they used to give me garlic bread at the end of each night. So basically I would get one garlic bread for a seven-hour shift and whatever tips I could make.
“However, people always tip magicians and, because I was young, I made more than the rest of the staff, it was probably between £200 and £300 a night.
“It wasn’t just more than my friends could conceive of earning but was way more than the restaurant staff earned, they all hated me because I was getting their tips.”
Before carving out his lap dancing club empire in 2004, Matt begged his businessman father to let him run a failing uniform business he had invested in.
It followed the late teen “jacking in” his university degree after six weeks believing it was “a waste of time” when he could “be out in the real world making money”.
Matt says: “The business was losing about £300,000 a year and on its way to being shut down. The management team were incompetent, verging on fraudulent.
“I’d come home every night bang my hands on the table and say, ‘You’ve got to come in and sort this out Dad. They’re robbing you’ but he always used to say ‘I can’t be a***d’.
“Finally he relented and said, ‘Look you can’t do it any worse than they are’ and let me take over. The next day I fired everyone and started the business from scratch.
“After three years with me at the helm, it made £30,000, which wasn’t a huge amount but it was more the principal of being able to turn a big loss into a small profit.
Quickfire Questions
Are you a spender or a saver?
I think I’m both, money is for spending but you also need to have something saved too. Having been bankrupt I’m a realist and know tomorrow isn’t promised with your life or your money. So I do spend but I’m not reckless to the point where if the rug was pulled tomorrow I’d have nothing.
Will you leave your children a big fortune?
I don’t want to leave with my kids with nothing but I’m also not going to stress 24 hours a day to give my great-great-great grandkids money who are never going to meet me. I believe it would be anti-parental to leave all my money to charity while my kids are struggling to pay rent but I will never allow my kids to be spoilt. I’ll buy them a nice house and help them with university but I’ll never say, ‘Here’s £3,000 a week to go and dance on nightclub tables with your pals’. They will never walk around with a credit card, spray champagne or hire yachts on my bills.
Does money motivate you?
I’ve always said, I wasn’t born to be poor but I think it’s always been about the journey for me. I’ve never not woken up with a smile on my face, maybe it’s because I’m crazy. I think I’ve always enjoyed running businesses and the money is more of a byproduct. I’d say to anyone in business it’s important to do something that interests you because the money alone won’t make you happy.
What’s your most prized possession?
It sounds cliche but it’s my kids. It may not seem it but I’m super-low maintenance. You could give me a passport and my iTunes password and I could chill all day. I don’t need seven-bedroom houses. I would rather fly business than economy but that won’t stop me getting on a plane.
What’s your most expensive outgoings?
I’ve got a lot of expense watches, probably £2million worth but I keep them all in a safe. I buy two or three a year but in one month bought five, they cost between £25,000 and £250,000. I buy them because I love them but I only get them when they are at the right price so that I won’t lose money on them.
What’s your favourite normal restaurant?
Eating out costs a lot in Dubai, especially wine, which costs a blood fortune. I can comfortably spend £1,000 on a dinner for two. But for every night I spend a couple of grand on wine there are another five nights where I take the kids to Nandos or am sat at home in front of Netflix.
“It was a hell of a learning experience. I’d rebuilt, restaffed and did everything from the ground up – in those three years, I learned more than my mates who went to university.”
Seedy business
Matt ran several pubs before launching Wildcats in 2004 – and realised “you couldn’t make enough from alcohol alone” and needed an “extra revenue stream”.
As someone who was “spending a lot of time in strip clubs”, he realised that could be an opening.
“I was a 21-year-old guy. Who doesn’t want to own a bar, drink beer, meet birds and make money all at the same time?” he says.
Matt says strip clubs were “becoming more socially acceptable at the time” and he noticed “guys would go with their girlfriends”, which made him think he could be onto a winner if he ran it with real business acumen.
“Strip clubs were seen as ‘seedy businesses’ and owned by gangsters, who were laundering money, or rich guys having fun. I knew if I treated it like a real business I could make a fortune,” he explained.
“I knew if I could make it into a brand and have venues that weren’t hidden in the back streets but in the most prominent units in city centres it would be huge.
“We rammed it down everyone’s throats and obviously it got a lot of attention because I was a cocky 25-year-old opening strip clubs around the country.”
At its peak, Matt was generating more than £3million a year in profit from 11 lap dancing clubs and his other business – including 50 pubs and eight retail stores – combined.
By 2008 it all fell apart. He was bankrupt and later disqualified from being a company director for 12 years – a ban that only expired two years ago. But instead of crumbling, Matt went back to work immediately.
He says: “The next day I woke up and started working again. I just didn’t have a choice, I had a missus and a one-year-old daughter who needed a roof over their heads.
“I always knew I was never born to be poor and believed I would be rich again. I didn’t sit on the couch watching Jerry Springer, moping, playing the victim, I had to get back out there.”
In the following years, Matt would eventually rebuild his fortune working as a financial broker – helping to connect businesses with those who could lend them money.
There was a time where I went through every car you can imagine – Ferraris, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, BMWs but after a couple of drives I got bored.
Matt
He says: “I took the skill set of raising money for myself and did that for other people and got paid a commission.
“It wasn’t what I’d do forever but I knew I could make some quick wins and put food on the table with it.
“I became known as the go to guy for shortfall funding and could match people with borrowers from lenders you’d never even heard of, not your typical banks.”
£450K secret weapon
Now Matt – who gave single mum Anna Bardget £10,000 to start a business after they swapped homes in Rich House, Poor House in 2020 – describes himself as a ‘career entrepreneur’.
He invests in small-to-medium-sized UK businesses and is involved with companies in fashion, retail, leisure and property.
He claims to be worth 10 times what he was worth in 2008 thanks to his savvy skills and while he doesn’t spend as wastefully as before, he enjoys a lavish lifestyle in Dubai.
“I don’t earn a salary but I take enough money out of the businesses to cover my expenses – normally £100,000 a month ticks the boxes,” Matt says.
Among his most expensive purchases are watches – he has more than £2million worth of timepieces and buys up to three a year, the most expensive cost around £250,000.
Matt also snapped up a 27-metre yacht named Sea Squirter, which he bought from a bankrupt Italian for £450,000 and renovated for a further £250,000. It sleeps seven guests and four crew.
“It costs me about £300,000 a year to run the boat, which is a wild expense, but I only have it because it earns me a hell of a lot more money than it costs me.
“It’s a marketing tool, I also use it to entertain guests, to lend to investors and host weekly dinners with five people I want to build a business relationship with.
“That’s more than 260 people in a year that I’ve got a deeper relationship with and while that hasn’t led to 200 deals, it’s led to maybe three or four and just one of those will pay for the yacht alone.
“That’s the thing about my spending, you will never catch me forking out £25,000 on a table at a nightclub or spraying champagne anymore because that’s money down the toilet.
I keep trying to learn more and hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes again – it doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes but hopefully not as big ones that are less catastrophic.
Matt
“But I will buy a yacht or a £250,000 watch because if s*** hits the fan I wouldn’t hesitate to sell it and I know I will sell it for what I bought it for if not more.
“There was a time where I went through every car you can imagine – Ferraris, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, BMWs – but after a couple of drives I got bored. It’s the same as every watch I buy, I wouldn’t care if it never came out of the safe.”
Matt also has three properties – one in Marbella, London and Dubai, the latter of which cost £2million to buy and he claims is worth double that after renovating it.
He budgets £250,000 a year for holidays and travel, including taking private jets that cost between £7,000 and £10,000 to charter for an hour, and flies business class.
Additionally, Matt spends a fortune eating out in Dubai. His love of fine food and wine costs around £1,000 per meal and tallies up to £20,000 per month.
Alongside his career, the businessman runs the podcasts No B******s With Matt Haycox and Stripping Off With Matt Haycox, where he interviews celebrities and entrepreneurs about their journeys.
He says one of his biggest lessons has been “over-surrounding” himself with wise business people – as they have helped to shortcut his success in business.
“The right advice is invaluable and saves years and years of pain,” he says. “The reality is I went bankrupt because I didn’t know something about something.
“So I keep trying to learn more and hopefully I won’t make the same mistakes again. It doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes but hopefully smaller ones that are less catastrophic.
“My experience has taught me to surround myself with fantastic mentors, which will hopefully prevent me having the arrogance I had before I was bankrupt.”
You can follow Matt’s business tips on Instagram or tune into his podcast Stripping Off With Matt Haycox and No B******s With Matt Haycox.