Kind: captions Language: en [Music] foreign welcome back to the show man I love it man it's like a family reunion man welcome home thank you all right thank you real fast what are three things that people do habits money habits that keep people broke three money habits that keep people broke I would say the first thing is not investing at all and the reason why I'm not investing that I invest in so the first thing is outside investing in yourself because the reason why you are people are broke or people don't have lack the money they should because they don't know how to operate money they don't know how to spend money they don't know how to invest money they don't know how to save money know how to lend money those are four important things in investing and well just money principles learning how to save learn how to spend right so I always say that if you have more money under your uh bed or in your closet than you have in your bank account or in your investment account you don't know how to spend money right so one is learning how to spend learning how to save learning how to invest learning how to borrow right so those are four important things just in money lessons money principles right so if you don't invest your money then you're now saying that the only way that I can grow my money is based on what I can physically do right time for money right time for money which is never an even exchange because you can't work 24 hours a day but your money can like you need a break you need rest you need lunch but your money doesn't so the one money was the most a powerful one is just not investing at all right the next one is spending money that we don't have I've read a stat that said most people spend a dollar and four cents for every one dollar that they make so now we're spending more money than we actually have at that point you can never catch up so I remember I used to work my job when I was working right I remember when I would get overtime I would always figure out how much of that overtime was and I was always a comfort in my head so most people do that if they get overtime they've already spent that money before it hits the paycheck yeah it's already you already know what they gonna spend it on so spending money we don't have and then most important is just buying things we don't need right most people don't have the financial fortitude to be strong enough to say you know what I don't need this right most people impulse buy right so impulse buying after that uh gratification is going after that you release those endure friends now it's like damn I really didn't need that but it's too late because you've already bought it right so those are three important things just before we even dig deep and just going into other things that are anchoring us to like poverty and and not being where we want to be and financial abundance all those amazing things those three things are most important not investing spending money that you don't have and not having that Financial Foster tool to not buy the things you don't need right like you buy some shoot like do we need every pair of tennis that come out every pair of J's that come out right do you do does the woman need every dope bag that she sees right I'm not saying that it's not cool but you need everyone right so I think having that financial fortitude not to spend on those things that you don't need that are like catapult you on a journey because the moment you don't spend on things you don't need now double back to the more things you can invest in right and that's that's truly the key well it's not entrepreneurship which is dope but be building Wellness for everybody all right so hold on so not entrepreneurship everybody thinks that's the path yeah like you I don't think that's the right path for everybody it's way too hard it's way too stressful you should only do it if you can't bear to not do it but how is wealth for everybody for real for real because right now as we're recording this right we're in a recession I don't know if you would say that but I will and I'm angry at the government for playing word games yes by the normal metric we're in a recession I think things are going to get worse before they get better and I think people need to understand how to navigate money to make it through this or it is going to be a bloodbath in the streets I've heard you say and this is just factually true the people that suffer in a recession are the middle and low class so it's like the people who know the least about money are the ones that are going to get battered by what we're about to go through so how do we navigate this period how what is it that so we know the mistakes that people make why do they make them and how are you going to help people out of that all right so first let's just double back to um entrepreneurship right so I you don't have to be an entrepreneur to build wealth right so we know that entrepreneurship is the is the underlying Catalyst to America right so someone having a a brave idea to step out and say I want to build this business and then that business contributes to humanity how do you know that how do I know what that you just said something that most people would never in a million years put the sentence together that America's built on the back of Entrepreneurship oh do you look at history like where did you oh yeah yeah so you study history so for me I think in order to build wealth you have to understand where did it originate from right and so if we live in an America to say okay how did America become America of course we can double down and say America's built on the backs of slavery and you know people did corrupt business and all that but at the end of the day it's built on entrepreneurship someone have an idea someone having a vision and being willing to do whatever it took to make that Vision come through right being able to say I'm not gonna quit I'm Gonna Keep Going I'ma persevere this is how we get here so we can even look at someone like JP Morgan right so we look at JP Morgan his daddy was a banker right his dad was a banker but he had his idea that he wanted to step outside of his daddy's like Shadow he wanted to do his own thing so he partners with Thomas Edison right he partners with Thomas Edison has Edison Electric right and then at the time Thomas Edison was giving us electricity you had Nikolai Tesla saying yo we have something better than what he has so they get this uh this world fair is going on and Thomas Edison and JP Morgan Chase are bidding against Tesla for the electricity bid to run this fare right Tesla wins the bid uh Thomas Edison is like beat JP Morgan's like I thought you said no one could beat you in this so he comes back and says okay I'm gonna prove that what he's doing is wrong so he does the first actual electric chair execution but it goes wrong you want to literally burn the man alive so here's what JP Morgan does just to sum it up JP Morgan buys all the shares in Thomason and Edison Electric uh I think the guy name is wittenhouse who funded Tesla he tells him that Tesla stole the idea from Thomas Edison he brings him to court the guy says no you didn't JP Morgan said well I know you don't want to go to court with me because court costs money your money is all tied up in this here's what I want to do I want to just buy from you so he gets the money from him he buys all the shares in Thomas Edison's electric and then calls it General Electric you know what I'm saying so when we think about entrepreneurship it's saying JP Morgan saying you know what I have an idea right I have an idea that I want to take come from under my father's Shadow but I may not have this is the Dual part about investing I may not have that actual business but if I can buy the business if I can buy the business Pioneer it the way that I want give it the Integrity that I want then now this business can reshape America this isn't an American Business a man but I did okay so this there's uh several things going on here so one night dude every time I'm with you right I have this screaming sense that you're one of the most important voices in America right thank you thank you so but I want to say why um you've said and I couldn't agree more there's never been a time in human history where more free information has been available you've shown what happens when you Avail yourself of that information you go learn and then you can deploy that knowledge so my favorite quote on Earth is Kobe Bryant booze don't block dunks yeah but you can get so good at something people can't stop you so you've gotten good at investing and thusly people haven't been able to stop you from continuing to excel despite felony conviction going to prison for 10 years all the hardships that you grew up in if people don't already know your story they can watch the first interview that we did together but so that's incredible you you are the the unexpected performer and the fact that you do it because you're a student of History you understand yeah okay so all of that so I want people to get rid of all their excuses which is something I'm sure that we'll talk more about later but the other part of this which is really interesting is you understand how money works and once people understand how money works you can't get tricked so this even in entrepreneurship something I think about a lot you have to know enough about the nature of things Marketing sales whatever Finance you don't have to master it all but you have to you have to understand the nature of it well enough that you can't be tricked so you just stated how money works but I really want to put a finger on it so people build a business yep the business needs something though that thing is capital it needs money so the people building the businesses in the beginning they often don't have the capital and so they need a way to go out and get the capital or it's going to get a little bit complicated fast but I'm gonna go through come on let's see if people can hang so go through it all right you're building a business one of two things is true you either don't have money and so you need somebody that can help you get the things moving that you need to then generate the capital okay I'm sure people have heard the phrase it takes money to make money she's entirely true but certainly as you scale that is very true you have to pay employees and all that okay so takes money to make money so you're building a business you need the capital you can get somebody to give you money early on you can make a little bit of money and reinvest it yourself but what most people do is either they need that money or they've managed to get the company going this is what happened to me at Quest so you get the company going you don't have to take money from other people in the beginning but all of your money is in the company so I was worth hundreds of millions of dollars right and I couldn't access it I'm driving a beat-up car and so it's like I'm rich on paper but in actuality not so much okay so one of those two things is true either need money to get this thing going or all the value that I've been able to build is trapped in equity in the company so to unleash some of that value they create shares you're now a public company and this is what you're talking about so hey you've got this JPMorgan realizes I'm not an entrepreneur I'm not going to be able to build something but these entrepreneurs are in a tricky situation they're maybe brilliant with business but they have another need yeah and so as they go public which is just turning creating shares out of your company that's a very technical breaking it down to Pieces exactly break it into pieces now you're going to sell those pieces to the public they can then buy a piece of that entrepreneur's endeavor right a piece of that company and so now the entrepreneur or the business depending on if they're selling their personal shares or if the company's selling treasury shares either the company has just gained a ton of money or that individual has taken money off the table and now they've actually got real wealth which always makes me laugh when people think that Jeff Bezos has 190 billion dollars his company is worth that he doesn't have that unless he sells the shares right so anyway so now it's like whoa whoa so as an average person I can go buy a piece of these storied companies but what I really want people to understand you just went and learned that yeah like you I can't tell you how late I came to this game you figured this out before I did I was building businesses already this is why I'm so [ __ ] enough when I think about how far down the road I went I learned the game of building businesses you learned the game of buying businesses okay maybe people don't want to do the thing that I did some days I wonder and you went down another road which is available to everybody okay so now the people have their little primer and how all of this game works right one how why don't people do it in fact let's start there we'll we'll definitely talk about how to do it well but why don't people do it I think because America has painted this picture that it is dangerous so think about TV I'm going to lose my money I'm going to lose my money uh stock market crashes right and then every show that you've seen about Wall Street is about people that are crooked that take advantage of people's money and then get rich you know and so people don't associate with that right people feel like you know what I don't want to be a part of that I don't know enough about that right when investing in the stock market isn't an IQ game it's not about it's not about being the most brilliant person in the world right it's about understanding basic economics and basic economics is what we know every day you understand this supply and demand right supply and demand says that if Michael Jordan drops a shoe then the line is going to be wrapped around the corner right but if you find a way to get that shoe hold on to that shoe and then later on you can now sell that shoe at a top tier Price Right supply and demand right if we can understand that you understand certain parts of basis economics right you understand that if Michael Jordan were to release a hundred million yep shoes won't be worth much it won't be worth but if he releases a thousand exactly now price gonna go crazy and then over time it becomes worth even more because most people will wear the shoes lower the value but for anybody that holds on to them so now you've got decreasing Supply which creates a even if the the demand stayed steady if the supply decreases now you've got um a positive Dynamic 100 and so that's and that's that's the that's the most amazing part about investing is everybody won't be able to build a billion dollar business right but everybody can invest in one and that's why I love it right so the three the three things in my wealth pyramid is stocks business real estate I believe you should have all three right but you can get away with two how are you differentiating between stocks and business so when I say stocks it means like me buying shares of a business yeah business second is me creating a business and then real estate third so you think everybody should create a business no no that's why I say you can get away with two out of the three gosh you got you you know what I'm saying so everybody doesn't have to create a business because it's just not for everybody but you can see what we do know is as America evolves through this business as business evolves there are some brilliant people that says for that business there's a problem for that problem I have the solution that's a business you'd like to invest in right and so if we can invest in the solutions I always say that if we invest in the solutions we cannot help but when invested in a solution okay making Amazon was a solution to so many things getting us information faster getting us books faster getting us to change the game it revolutionized how we how we got uh packages if ever it made somebody say you know what I could go to the store today but I'm willing to wait one day to get this package can I just say for the young people in the crowd who grew up with Amazon yeah there was a time you'd have to wait four times six weeks to get something in the mail exactly exactly that's insane if you can order something in the morning and get it in the afternoon and some places you get it the same day and so when we think about revolutionizing the game evolving that's what I love about investing right I'm thinking think about Tesla and I'm not advocating for anyone to invest in these businesses but I'm just showing how the how the world has evolved and you can build your wealth for me 100 if you're bold enough to bet on the future if you're bold enough to bet on the future and be patient enough to let it take place you will win and you will win big that is that's without a doubt so we we see the evolution of Tesla and we see what's going on with this business even if you don't agree with everything that Elon does you say okay well Rolls-Royce just dropped its first EV car for four hundred thousand dollars right they're saying they're going to be all electric by 2030. General Motors saying they're going to be all the electric by 2032 Ford is drop electric cars now what does that telling us right now the landscape of vehicles is changing right so what do I say okay I want to be a part of this Evolution I want to be a part of not only the electric car Revolution but the charging stations the batteries right these are the components the supply chain that makes this whole um sector possible and so for me that's betting on the future and if we can't understand if we can truly grasp that that your money is not doing you know Justice in a bank it's not especially now right it's not doing you know Justice in the bank why not well because the more they print money the more your money loses value right the more inflation goes up the more your money loses value so a hundred dollars spent in 2019 that same hundred dollars now takes a hundred and nine dollars right so your money is lost you need to buy the same so buy the same thing right so if you bought this mug for 100 in 2019 I mean it's not in the mouth if that's what you did yeah it now costs you a hundred and nine dollars right you need that much more money so we understand that One Lie we've been told is sitting our money in the bank so that's probably should add that to the equation earlier right putting our money in the bank thinking that the bank is the safest place to have our money right that's probably the most dangerous place because I always see a dollar that's not moving as a dollar that's losing right so sitting on money in the bank is not the place to be right so what would be how do you make your money move how do you make your money move by making great Investments or just investing so I'll give you an example for me personally I literally don't have but like twelve thousand dollar sitting in the bank all of my money is in the market 90 of it is in the market so I use What's called the vo which is the Vanguard index fund for the S P 500 I use that as my savings account so every month or every week I'm putting money in that well trap what happens when the market is going down well my money wasn't making no money in the savings account anyway so I'm putting it in there right and then what happens when the market rebounds we won't be here forever we won't be here forever what happens when the market rebounds well talk to people about realized losses versus unrealized losses okay because I think this really messes good that's good that's good so unrealized loss is when let's say I have a hundred dollars on something and that goes down to 89 right if I sold it today I wouldn't be able to sell it for what I paid for but so you you buy something at a hundred dollars it goes down to eighty dollars if you don't sell it you have an unrealized loss of twenty dollars I mean you didn't sell it your Equity just decreased but if you sell it you realize that game you have now made that game realistic I mean that loss you've realized that loss you've made that loss realistic so you've now essentially lost that twenty dollars right that's uh that's a realized loss not realize gains is the exact opposite right so if you go up to uh I buy something for 100 it goes up to 150 unrealized I have a hundred I have fifty dollars in unrealized games so it's there but I didn't sell it it's there realizing it is saying I've cashed out I've cast out on it think about like you talked about Jeff Bezos right this net worth is what 180 something billion dollars something like that last time I checked 60 of his money was an Amazon stock 60 of it so this is why you wake up one day and you say damn Jeff lost 18 billion dollars well that's unrealized because he didn't cash out so he didn't lose it it's still there wants to stop get it backs up he recoups all of that and so that's the adult part about the mark yes it fluctuates yes it goes ups and down but that's also the most scariest part about the market because people who come from a lower income working-class environments the worst thing that can come to their mind is losing money that I bust my butt for that's what makes the market so scary for them and that confusion keeps them out of the market yeah so this is where now people have to get into the intricacies of money so it's probably worth belaboring the point a little bit about the people don't even get to the starting line so I forget the percentage of households of people that live paycheck to paycheck but it's ungodly it's astronomical it's more than 50 72 is so ridiculous so this is for people even making six figures like most people live paycheck to paycheck 100 the truth is hitting your career goals is not easy you have to be willing to go the extra mile to stand out and do hard things better than anybody else but there are 10 steps I want to take you through that will 100x your efficiency so you can crush your goals and get back more time into your day you'll not only get control of your time you'll learn how to use that momentum to take on your next big goal to help you do this I've created a list of the 10 most impactful things that any High achiever needs to dominate and you can download it for free by clicking the link in today's description all right my friend back to today's episode so if you're living paycheck to paycheck one you're not going to survive any difficulty financially so if you get sick and now your hospital bills the number of people that go broke because they're already they have no savings and now they get sick your car breaks in I remember that when I was broke and your car breaks down it's like well then I don't have a car it's not like I can even choose to go get it fixed so of course people in that situation are not thinking oh I need to go put money into the stock market I'm not saving money anyway so that's number one to your point about people spend money that they don't have so whatever a dollar four out of every dollar that they make the only way I found where I could do it where I could save I had to gamify it I had to make it fun I had to get myself obsessed over watching the number go up so that I would get more of a dopamine rush out of looking at my I used to use mint I don't know if they're still around into it they stock they get home yeah yeah exactly well said well said so I would because it connected to my bank account every time I made a deposit into my bank account my dashboard automatically update and I'm like oh damn like I've now got five hundred dollars 527 and it was like cool is it going up is it going up is it going up and so people need to find that hook whatever that is to get excited about beginning to save money but that's interesting I like that you use the Vanguard as the savings account so do you is your money automatically allocated no so I do it one because I have I found that Financial discipline in myself so this now is a this is my routine how would you how did you develop that so growing up you realize that there's a thread that runs through just through especially poverty-strick in America right and it is that we have no Financial structure right if everyone is living paycheck to paycheck right so let me go back a second for a second Reaganomics cause so much Havoc to that low-income black community right why why so let's think about this in 1982 yeah I was born they were written Ronald Reagan took one million people off of welfare he took another half a million people kids out of a free lunch right the economy went through a real recession in 82. but then in 85 but I was getting into all of it around 65 tons of cocaine pillaged lower income in Black America in the form of crack cocaine 85 tons that came from Nicaragua which then was a result of Ronald Reagan being told he could not put illegal guns in Iran so he supported the South American contract go look that up this amazing story right that wreaked havoc so a lot of times in my culture we look at slavery and we look at that and that's cool but this generation can't identify with that right they they it's too far but what we can identify with is that everyone from 82 to now has been touched by the crack era cocaine crack abuse it's separated families and so now think about the mindset that came with money during that era right everything was lack right you have people trying to work you have functioning families now broken up by drug abuse fallers locked up mothers now with the term crack babies now another way to separate black women from kids so it pill is cracked pillaged the black community especially in major cities L.A Miami New York pillaged them so now the idea of money is separate I want you to think about the mindset that you have to have as a man as a as a friend I grew up with this brother I grew up with his mother and now his mother is buying cracks for me right for me to sell my friend's mother crack what type of mindset monstrous mindset that has to have and then that becomes the norm right and send them from that error we go to Bush where now the War on Drugs is important but how can we have a law on drugs if we are now pushing the drugs in this community right and then we get two non-mandatory minimums and then we get to Clinton where we get three strikes you out so now before we can even deal with the money mindset we got to deal with the pillage and the breakup of the family that happens and so now when a family is in survival mode we can't think about money because now we're trying to how is this next meal possible right Financial trauma Financial trauma now is anchored to who we are so for me when I was in prison when I got exposed to damn I'm playing the wrong game I had to look at the pieces on the board like in my night in my bishop and my Rook I damn sure ain't the king so I mean I'm a pawn s always get sacrificed so I'm always being sacrificed how the hell can I win this game something got to change and so one of the things I knew that I had to change was my relationship with money because that's how you change what piece you are on the board that's how you change the piece you are and then what happens with the Palm on a chessboard is if the pawn can find a way to get to the other side of the chessboard he then could become whatever he wants and for me it's the two things the information and learning how to use money I can become any piece on the chessboard and so now for me once I learned about money once I started healing my own Financial trauma it was easy for me to now start talking to people about it but also improving my life because now money is not the thing that dictates me it's the vision it's the how do I become successful for the next Generations how do I help the people that I know heal their financial crime we can't even talk about money we can't talk about wealth we can't talk about winning in this world if we don't disattach ourselves from the things that's keeping us from being successful and that is for me Financial trauma that is a harsh pill to swallow and just a forming that is just think about it like this why is that a hard pill to swallow well because if you think about it most people like to reflect I mean deflect right it's not my fault um um you know think about the years of slavery think about this people like to deflect they never want to take full accountability for it right but healing that Financial trauma saying yo check this out we talked about it earlier if you have more money under your bed in your closet than you have in your investment account or your savings account and that's Financial trauma if you are saying things if you're doing things like you know you're badly making and you know you live in check the check but for Christmas you go spend money you don't have to say well my kids can have a great Christmas that's Financial trauma because what you've now taught your kid is it's okay to spend money you don't have to have a good time and then come back later on and have to pay that or digging yourself in a deep hole so somebody has to break that Financial trauma if not the family the generations that follow will all follow the same suit you need one outlier any one person that's disrupt disruption you need one person to do that and if nobody ever does that you can look at a whole lineage of other people of a family and realize why nobody has never changed it and so for me to change was if I can become Financial literary if I can become financially conscious if I can increase my financial fortitude then I can not only change myself and my life I can lead by example and change my family and then that can have another effect that people around my friends you know so on and so forth but it was me being able to heal that Financial trauma in the beginning man that was important the only one I hear talking about something that I think is actually really connected which is values and knowledge to get the outcome that you want when did you start like hearing you talk about the disruption of the family um the more I look so I think you know my background yeah but so my story I saw big brothering for a kid in South Central and I'm I I was just too young to understand what was happening and so I have no idea why he's acting out why everything is just a mess and start getting older start Quest thousand employees that remind me of the kid that I and I Big Brother for him for eight and a half years so it's a long time yeah from the time he was eight till he was 16. yeah crazy yeah uh and seeing then later when I was finally old enough to understand what was going on a bunch of people that were growing up in the inner cities it is this is this is the fiery debate right now is it culture or is it that the deck is stacked against me and I felt like a man screaming into the void trying you've you've given such a cool analogy if people play chess so you've got the pawns the pawns are always sacrificed but if you get to the other side of the board you can replace them with something else That's The Human Condition um traversing the board is knowledge but if you learn and no one can stop you this is the age of free information if you can learn then you really can become whatever you want booze don't block Donuts no one can stop you from doing the thing that you want to do and so I was just like screaming and screaming and screaming like no no the only thing that separates you and I are ideas I found a better set of ideas and those ideas govern my life it's what I call frame of reference so if your frame of reference is poverty and I remember saying this before the internet was like really popping off and so there was nobody there to freak out and yell uh but I was like the day I realized oh poverty isn't about money it's about mindset um I was just like whoa and then you encountered the first person that's like offended by that idea and I was like whoa whoa what do you mean I don't I literally didn't understand why that was offensive I'm like this means that you can set yourself free you could do whatever the [ __ ] so getting people to understand okay there's taking it back to the family for whatever reason the predictive nature of a two-parent household is crazy if you have one the odds of you doing well are really high and if you don't have one they begin to decline [Music] why well so there is a disparity in what poverty is lack of information lack of resources money is infinite they never stop there's they've never stopped printing money the problem is getting the belief to understand that getting a getting a belief that you're capable of being something nothing against rapping and entertaining but for a lot of people that come from my culture that's the only way out it's the only way out see if you can't rap you can't play sports then you're probably gonna sell drugs or do something illegal because 87 percent of crimes are behind money or just live in mediocre just leave it and so nobody wants that right and so now we we understand that there are better opportunities and better segments just in White America just 100 but what happens is that can't be the defining part like I know what I said all right cool but what stops me well what stops me is me what stops me is me playing the blame game all my life what stops me is me keeps saying well I'm black they White well that's you're not going to go far doing that what stops me is saying I didn't have the opportunities they have that's going to keep it from going there if you can get past the [ __ ] and say all right these are real issues but the biggest issue is the belief of myself the biggest issue is I need to spend more time reading and researching than partying I need to spend more time reading researchers and chasing women I need to spend more time reading and researching then you know trying to go hang out playing that being on Netflix all day playing a game all day I need to spend more time developing a skill set okay boom as I evolve as I learn how the game is being played as I get exposure to their game my confidence builds up so the reason why it is more the success barriers high in a two-parent home a healthy two-parent home that's important I think though the stats are and I'm sure just because the sort of average to healthy ish uh homes it just overwhelms it is the the number but the the statistics and I remember the exact number but your odds of living above the poverty line it's over 70 over 80 something like that if you're in a two-parent home obstruction so in a two-parent home there's a formal structure there's a hierarchy and then there's you know there's a man there's a woman and then there's kids so now you have an infrastructure to when you don't have when you don't have this is good when you don't have a two-parent home not saying you can be successful but now there are so many other different influences in your life and I'll give myself for example right like again I'm homeless at 16. right but was your dad around when you were growing I've never even met my dad never ever in my life right so now the influences became like anybody who I saw had so when I'm looking at the hustlers I'm like all right yo like he got the girls he got the respect he got the money that's what I want to be like and so I'm getting that from him I'm learning I'm getting it from the hustlers and then boom death jail but because that's the only image I have this is what I'm holding on to right and then when I go to prison you know you get with the OG's and they start telling you yo don't do this don't do that okay cool now I've pivoted right I've pivoted from this to this okay so because this information is what's going to get me through prison this the information Gonna Keep Me Alive this is the information that's how I carry myself that's how I talk that's how I maneuver that's how you you know okay cool I got it but then you come home when I come home and I'm a 26 year old man but guess what I still never had a father so I'm still missing something in my life still missing something and honestly that void didn't feel so I had my daughter right but then I'm missing that voice so now I'm still influenced by anything that I feel has structure right so that two-parent home even the father may not be the best or whatever but it's structure you understand his position in life you understand his position in that family structure you understand that Mother's position structure is so important it limits the mistakes the less mistakes you can make on a journey the easier it is to become successful let me run a theory by you talk to me I'm reading a book now I forget the exact title it's by Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and it's about company culture and in it he's talking about the Haiti slave rebellion okay it's like the only successful slave rebellion I think in history or at least modern history and he's talking about the the first guy that did it I unfortunately I don't remember his name but the the guy that started the slave rebellion um his whole thing was you can't cheat on your wife and this is at a time where you know you're fighting and taking over like why can't we do a little rape and pillage we've been [ __ ] slaves like this is our right like why can't we get back to people do all this and he's like no no because your word is everything and if you won't keep your word to your wife how can I trust you to keep your word to the rest of the team I was like God damn so when I think about so marriage is hard when I think about why staying married would be a predictor of success there's already a high level a high function that you've shown by high integrity being able to maintain a relationship I'm not saying that everybody that stays married has been faithful or whatever but you're you're able to navigate the difficulties of a relationship of compromise of getting to know each other of course it's more complicated than having just two people to [ __ ] structure watch your time like that you're not off doing something you're not supposed to do so you know kudos to all the parents out there you you have my gratitude but I think I have a feeling that the being able to commit to somebody else being able to have a rule set between you adhering to those rules whatever they may be to have the Integrity to um say you're going to do something and do it like all of those things to your point about and I'll put different words on it but I've what you were saying was you're influenced by these people when I think about why we're influenced by people I get asked a lot like hey my I you know I love my kid whatever but they're really struggling in life how can I help them my answer is usually you can't and then the person's like no you don't understand like I love them so much they're my kid like I can't give up and I'm like okay for real for real you want to know how you're going to change their life yeah yeah tell me okay cool uh you're gonna have to kidnap them you're gonna put trap and I actually mean this seriously this would work it's the only thing I know that would work you're gonna kidnap them you're gonna take them to uh remote place in the [ __ ] desert whatever you're gonna take them somewhere away from everybody else I usually say a deserted island you take them to a deserted island but on that deserted island must be a group of people that they respect if you are around people you respect yeah you will want to win their respect yes to win their respect you must conform to their behaviors if their behaviors are honorable you're now conforming to earn that respect to honorable behaviors and now you get where somebody will turn their life around to fit in now they can turn their life around to fit in and go in the wrong direction just how you get influenced on the streets or you can get influence in the exact opposite direction so you have to be careful about who you emulate come on but I like that before you go I like that because that's even not even in with kids but even as adults that's what I had to do yeah like I had to get around a different set of people who helped me evolve because even in that where you're being influenced you don't evolve in that space right you adapt and you conform to whatever that environment is and so if you get around that's why the old saying around five six million as you become the sixth one is because you start to take on those uh values you start taking on those principles that they stand on right those conversations become like impregnated in you those behaviors like damn time gets up in the morning he does this he does that damn I need to do that trap does this trap does that damn I need to do that that's why I love mentorships that's why I love masterminds that's why I do that I asked you one time hey yo like give me a mastermind I can get into it's because when I'm around successful people I'm gonna go into the room I don't care how much a success I've amassed I'm going to throw them like I don't know nothing because that's what I want to evolve to so that is you're not pushing a line you're only touching the high stoves to people who are fighting for beliefs that don't benefit them ah damn most people fight for those beliefs dude yes they do it's really interesting to me so okay I've thought a lot about this because I spent a portion of my life fighting for beliefs that didn't serve me and I really so I and I don't know if this is a useful story to tell myself but it makes me chuckle and it feels way too close to the truth I'm just dumb enough that I have to learn everything the hard way and I'm just smart enough to be able to figure it out so I actually do learn and then I can articulate it to people because I'm like oh yeah this is what I tripped on tripped up on so for a long time I had a set of beliefs that were really stupid meaning that they moved me they actually moved me away from my stated goal they were moving me towards a silent goal I know you Journal I highly encourage people to journal so you can figure out like what are the subconscious things are driving you but I what I wanted out of life subconsciously was to feel smart and I valued I had a certain idea of what intelligence was and everything that lined up with things that made me feel that I was intelligent in the way that I subconsciously defined it I kept doing so I ended up in smaller and smaller rooms so after graduating college I was working retail in a game store selling video games and like not minimum wage but like not not a long way from it and I remember thinking why am I doing this and I'm doing it because the boss of the place is like why do you work here he's like you're too smart for this and I was like that makes me feel good now of course I wasn't thinking that my head it just made me feel good and so I kept doing it and I realized looking back okay what I do is I structure my life so that people tell me I'm smart and that is super dangerous because it's led me into these really small rooms and so things didn't turn around until I was like oh wait a second I don't read a book so someone will tell me I'm smart I read a book so I can get better at something and I really want people to understand that skills have utility they let you do something so if you go to get good at investing you can make a lot of money yes if you get good at architecture you can build buildings you can build a bridge that people can drive cars across do you know how crazy that is yeah you can be the next Elon Musk whatever and understanding oh wait a second I don't need to be smart I need to be good at learning oh yes and that that changed my life but that becomes the value system what do I value in myself do I value being smart or Worse do I value people telling me I'm smart because what if I was smart but everybody was telling me I was dumb I would have done different things back then just so that people would tell me I was smart because I didn't believe it myself and my value system was people that have this kind of intelligence kind of the way that people fetishize money I fetishized being smart and so it was like I just want to be smart like that that'd be so cool and once I realized oh that's a value system I can change my value system and now pursue something else and get all of the sort of neural chemical rewards and feel good and be excited about being the learner and so then once I started doing that then I actually started getting good because I was just obsessed with learning setting my ego aside walking in like I know nothing and just saying oh my God like make me better now the reason that I got so obsessed with that was because I realized they actually can make me better and then I can go do something somebody else can do and I can get ahead in life and I can get wealthy and I can build what I want to build and I can control my time and I can impress people if that's a thing and so it's like whoa this is all about skills but skills are controlled by values so I I love that because in setting yourself up for success and setting yourself I say you have to be intentional about something right and so for me the intentionality was what do I have to learn that takes me away from that like what do we have to learn so I don't go back to prison what do I have to learn that I don't become dead before a certain age and then I I got past that and then I'm like what do I have to learn to become a great father like right now I'm learning how to be a father right how to be a great father we talked about journaling one of the things I tell my daughter right now is okay write down how you feel and then we can talk about that right it's easier for her to do it that way than sometimes having that conversation with me so write it down and then we can talk about it well those values now help me keep evolving because if I want to be the best version of who I am if I want to be the most impactful person then I have to install in me a certain set of values integrity right honesty the commitment to being better why those well because where I come from why honestly you could lie lie if you honesty is so important because if you tell people the truth and if you are committed to um understanding other people's truth then people have no people don't like the truth because how it makes them feel but if you tell the truth they have no no other option but to face it right they have no other option but to say damn okay it's truth is like a harsh reality that everybody wants but nobody wants to give right but honesty comes in there saying you know what that's a value system that so many people don't have and for me if I can be honest then my name can go a long way if I can be honest then my my uh presence will precede me right so honesty is something that that people often don't want to do they'll say something like I lie to you because I love you you know uh I don't tell you the truth because I don't want to hurt you right well if you're honest to me then I can make that decision if you're being honest I can make that decision on what do I want to move forward or not if I'm honest with you then I know I can do business with this man because he's an honest man I could do business with this woman because she's an honest woman because I know there's no uh back end stuff there's nothing they're trying to do behind my back honestly it's something that's so underrated but for me even in the streets like honesty is so not there because everyone wants the edge everyone everyone wants murder is not off the table you know what I'm saying it's not off the table most people in the street get killed by somebody they know you know what I'm saying and you feel me and so that Honesty part is not there yeah so for me it's it's heavy on my list of just being an honest man man what is up my friend Tom bilyu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of one to ten if your answer is anything less than a ten I've got something cool for you and let me tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most people or possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline all right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University until then my friends be legendary peace out one thing about honesty that I find incredible is so you said you can do business with somebody that's honest that's where I think people really get why honesty is so critical [Music] if I so a relationship to work well to be a high functioning business friendly relationship I need a sort of deposit and withdraw system so no you should never do it for the deposit withdrawal but there is a reality to be facing Human Relationships if all you do is give give you a given the person never reciprocates it just humans are not wired for that and so it won't work the relationship will go your Separate Ways but if when I make a deposit I'm like I'm going to be able to make a withdrawal here at some point in fact trap you know where I think this comes from this is [ __ ] interesting when I heard this laid out I was like oh my God think from an evolutionary standpoint there's no refrigerator do you know how you store calories so let's say that you take down a buffalo okay you can't eat it even if you said ah everybody back off this is my Buffalo get away from my Buffalo I will kill you and your whole family if you touch my Buffalo you can eat it as much as you can literally until another bite and the lining of your stomach will tear okay you're stuffing your face it will go it will rot before you can finish eating it so now you have this dilemma even if I want to be selfish I can't eat the whole thing but if I let other people eat it I don't get anything out of that but you do because by feeding them you're now storing calories in them they're eating their full they've got fat what happens when you don't kill the Buffalo but they do now they're like my brother please come to my table and eat so it all that I'm going to say that again you can store calories in another human being I like that by feeding them when you have an abundance I like that they get to eat and now they will do the same for you I like that that's honesty it builds trust that word if I feed you you're gonna feed me next time and so this is where you get into reciprocal altruism where yes you're doing something nice but it just comes back to you and people are I think they they feel icky when they say part of why I do this is to make sure that I'm taken care of but that's awesome that's how people cooperate as a as a group that it's give and take always so honestly I think the reason so many people gravitate towards it is when I can trust you one Evolution has made that feel good so it just feels amazing I've told I tell people in the company all the time it really hurts to tell somebody something hard it really I don't like saying it and I know you don't like hearing it but if I tell you the hard things you know you can trust me no because you know exactly my mental map of who you are and so now there's no like unease about what's what and so I know if you're quiet it means you have nothing to say versus to your point murder's not off the table it's like well is this going somewhere bad so you can do business with somebody when I know if I make a deposit today that I'll be able to get a withdrawal later at some point huge okay so honesty integrity was the other one one how do you define integrity this is the one thing I tell my daughter doing the right thing when nobody's looking if I'm willing to do the right thing if I can do it like time is my guy so I'll give you an example so a couple friends of mine had a huge event that they put on and somebody hit me up and was like yo I would like to be a part of that event big person and I would um because they thought it was my event and I was like yo that's not my event I'll put you in contact with who that event is for that's Integrity because I could have kept that to myself try to do something in the middle try to make some money off it bitter Biddle man I didn't no look it's my guys here here's the information y'all do that don't put many email no more handle your business integrity Integrity is me being able to do something without me even expecting something on the back end but on a strength that I know Tom is a good guy hey Tom here's my people man here's an alley-oop yo I don't need nothing from it that's Integrity we talked about business earlier and I'm sure we'll get to but we talked about the healing Capital part I mean the capital part that people need in in building a successful business the next thing next to building a successful business that's more important to me than money it's building integrable relationships building relationships with other successful people are building relationships with people that's based off Integrity can help your business get to another level because some rooms you can't get in with money some rooms you can only get in based on who you know there's some rooms I can only get in because time says trap is my guy there's some room that that I don't care how much money you got that's not the value system here the value system to get in this room is based on the people in here do good business the people in here are integrable this is the room you need to be in money can't get you because everybody here got money what are you doing money is no longer the option you're gonna be based on what integrity and honesty truthfulness those are the things you can be based on and so even in business integrity and honesty is important massively yeah it's uh it's it's really interesting I mean this again goes back to culture rides in the back of values what do we think is good what do we think is right and when I look at you so it's interesting for people that haven't seen your show come on man trapping Tuesdays come on man uh watching it was really interesting because you you're attacking it from the point of value so you'll talk about your family you talk about your daughter I heard you tell the story about your daughter and there was friction at school and how you helped her through it and you're like like I know I haven't talked about stocks yet and I was like you haven't but this is why your show is doing well because getting the value system right understanding how to think knowing how to sort of move becomes really important and so that idea of that a culture is malleable that you can create a new culture [Music] um being a part of your group will have its own culture right same with impact Theory it's like there's a culture there's a culture to being an employee there's a culture to being in the impact your University and when you think about you've got your your frame of reference is being built around all of these things it's the fun house mirror that we all see life through there's a guy named Donald Hoffman who says everything that you experience is real life the only thing I can tell you is it isn't true at all and so we were sitting at this very table when he explained to me Tom when you see the surface of this table what's true about the surface of this table is its mass the number of photons that are reflecting off of it all that if you try to live life by going oh that has a mass of this and there's this many photons bouncing off in this part of the light spectrum he's like you can't get anywhere way better to go this is a table and it's sort of Gray and he's like that's what humans have evolved to do but that actually isn't the underlying reality okay so your brain is creating a wild simplification of the truth and this is my favorite example that he uses and I am going to answer the question about reading right right uh but the example that he uses is is let's say that you're in a VR game of uh Grand Theft Auto you think oh when I turn the steering wheel in the game The Car Goes left if I turn left the car goes right if I turn right he said what's really happening is electrical volts are toggling back and forth a trillion times a second or whatever inside of your PlayStation but if you had to go toggle the individual voltages to get the image the pixels on the screen to move in a certain way that it looks like a car uh going left he was like you'll never be able to play so you need the just ridiculous level of simplification in order to play the game [Music] that's life that's your frame of reference but it is so abstracted from the reality that so uh I'll put it into my terms I grew up lower middle class in almost rural Tacoma so I didn't have cows but my neighbors did yeah to give you an idea uh and I was taught to be a good employee to keep my head down do as little work as possible and avoid punishment at all costs um that it's all about make as much money as fast as you can you know trading time for money like they wouldn't have even known to say don't trade that you are trading time for money that's just the only way they knew how to make money so that was my frame of reference part of it the other part was oh I feel good when people tell me that I'm smart but I don't realize that so this is the Distortion that my brain is creating over time and I don't realize that these are things that I've chosen to believe that they aren't accurate representation of the way that the world really works and that I can get so good that people can't ignore me that even if I am uneducated today that doesn't mean I have to be uneducated tomorrow that even if I'm frustrated that I'm not as intelligent as I would like to be which I'm not by the way but I can get 100 100 times better at anything which anybody can so my frame of reference began to shift from I'm stuck in this brain and body that I'm not very impressed with to oh actually you can grow and get better that change in frame of reference took me from scrounging and my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car to building and selling a billion dollar business come on man so ideas frame of reference so I now see the world through a different fun house mirror it still isn't objective reality but it's really useful okay so you've got this frame of reference critically important to understand all right so because I know frame of reference is so important I'm constantly trying to get new information to alter my frame of reference however useful my frame of reference has become I have not reached an end state right so you can constantly re-warp that glass to show you the world in a way that's more effective that's the easiest way to think about it so effective as defined I have a goal is my behavior my beliefs and my values moving me towards that goal yes or no if yes you are operating in a way that is more true or accurate right you you can predict the outcome of your behaviors that to me is truth [Music] we could really derail on that I won't for now uh so all right so my I'm trying to shape my frame of reference so that the way that I think and act moves me more efficiently towards my goals you get what you celebrate I think about this a lot as a CEO that's good dude you get what you celebrate that's good and so if you celebrate being a badass this is the same with inner city same with being in prison it's like you get all these different cultures and you're going to get what you celebrate oh God I'm going to keep derailing have you read Up From Slavery no I have not Booker T Washington I have not controversial figure I like it I can't figure out why but that book he was born a Slave and he was like there's a way out of this I can get so good people can't stop me becomes the punchline but he starts a college trap he was born a slave he starts a college that's still running today let that sit in real quick right when I think about will impact Theory University outlive me about not as of yet insane how does he do it culture do you know that he made the students in his university the students in his university had to learn jeromeo please brick making they had to learn how to make bricks trap why so that they could build the buildings so that they would have respect for the knowledge because he was like if they just roll up and this is all easy and he was like people would show up outraged outraged you're gonna I I was a slave I'm sending my kids to your University and you're making them build bricks like what and he was like I'm telling you right now if people build the stuff themselves the level of respect that they will have for the hall the way they will hold each other accountable and I was like forget what the culture was because it's different now and of course it's going to change structure certain somebody said that at the beginning of this episode structure there are things that we do here and there are things that we don't do here he instilled a value system that allowed them to say because values tell you who's in and who's out oh you made the best and by the way they they became known in like that region of the South for making the highest quality bricks so now they can sell bricks to fund the school dude it was so insane in reading the book and I'm like this is [ __ ] genius [Music] values creates a culture you reinforce the culture by what you celebrate and what you tolerate that culture becomes so profound that you can defeat Nations so going back to the slave rebellion in Haiti I need to memorize this guy's name forgive me I'm in the middle of reading this book I'm literally just no but I don't pronounce it wrong and I won't be different no please please please no no no I'm just even as people um I don't want to say it wrong um I I remember because I went to DC so I don't want to say it wrong uh say it as wrong as possible I can't even remember it's kind of French sounding yeah it's a French it's a French name uh I don't want to say it wrong uh I'm not gonna say it wrong all right fair enough let me say this though please we were talking about you were talking about watch this the bricks the people who build the bricks for the college they'd appreciate it more the exact same thing goes with Building Wealth the person who builds the wealth in the beginning so I use myself as an example I become the Pioneer I become a Trailblazer I become the person who says that my family will eat for a lifetime based on the decisions that I make today based on the information that I've gained and applied because I'm the one in the beginning stage building it I will respect the wealth more if I don't install those values in my daughter if I don't install in her the respect for money if I don't install it in her why investing is important then what happens is she inherits a lot of money but don't know what to do with it and so now she may live well but the generations behind her don't benefit from it because they never had an attachment to the money they never had an attachment to the wealth they just got the wealth they obtained it and so when I think about Cornelius Vanderbilt we never talk about him in the pioneers of America the richest men in the world we never talk about him why because after he died his son did enjoy the money but no generation after that did because they went broke t-shirt to t-shirt and three generations it went broke but we still talk about JP Morgan we still talk about the Rockefeller we still talk about the Rothschild we still talk about Sam Walton who has five of his grandchildren and kids on the Fortune 500 list always why because there was a culture that the culture was about building that Walmart brand but then what we don't realize about passing well done is it's not just about passing money down it's about passing down information it's about passing down bylaws it's about passing down structure it's about I just so I just lost my great aunt um and I'll talk about on my last show I just lost and she was The Matriarch to my family right she was The Matrix she held it together in 11 months before that we lost her sister right so they were the last two and I honored them they did so much for me on my journey um and now that both of them have now gone our family now has to be restructured we have to now install New Traditions not saying it always run well but for instance we were all good at her house for Thanksgiving right we were all everything she put things in place so now that whole entire generation is gone to the generation that's available now is my mother's generation so it's my mother her brothers and then I'm the Next Generation and then my kids so on so forth so now we have to do now is we have to now put new values in place we have to put New Traditions in place we have to put a new structure in place and because I now have the financial literacy now I'm talking to my uncle the other day he like trap like yep I'm the leader but you're up next and that meant a lot to me and in a minute I got scared because I thought about yep I teach people about financial literacy all the time I talk about being a CEO of my family I talk about turning My Family's last name into an asset but now I am now because once you I always say this once you get the information you are not responsible like it's okay it's not okay but I'm saying it's using this figuratively it's okay that I mean literally it's okay you know you're blowing money because you don't know no better right but once you become cognizant and once you have the information now you are held accountable and so for me now more than ever I am held accountable one because I went from homeless to being where I am now right nobody else in my family went through that I went from not just once but twice so building a business to learn how to invest to giving my daughter a custodial account who I'll she'll be a millionaire before she's 15. right damn these things are so important to me so now we set new rules we set new rules of engagement what are those rules ain't gave okay so now everybody my little cousins just had a little boy I said bro we got to open up a custodial account now like now he's a couple weeks old we got to open a custodial account up now while I gotta do that because because if we start investing now we can now increase him being a millionaire but also we can start implementing impregnating him with certain things right we can start talking about money once he gets two years old like my daughter she's six her ABC's for me come in the form of a is for asset BSN Bank C is for Credit Union right this is how the ABC is coming up does she know the word fiduciary she know what it means dude that's incredible right so that's how the ABC's and I'll talk to her e is for Equity like that's how we now you got to give me a okay so what does it mean now not just the norm what does it mean now right and so now you we go to Disney World you you know you own stockiness right when I bought for her birthday she made six I said what do you want babe she's like I want to buy some Roblox stock right so normally for me it's breaking down the business going through my whole process but for her it was like let her get the exposure to it so yep let's buy the Roblox stocks how many shares you want she said I want 16 and then when I pulled it up on my phone she said no I want a hundred cool we bought 100 shares for our birthday it don't matter that the stock is down right now because it was her identifying that instead of getting me this this is what I want so now for me it's that my great aunt is gone this now has to be a she's transition this now has to be the value system that we stand on so everybody that has a kid as soon as you have a kid we opening up a custodial account but then we're going to double down with it and say when that person has a kid and open a custodial account everybody now is responsible of putting the first fifty dollars to it right so now we implementing new rules we're implementing things now that every family now has to take on right and now everybody Embraces it and so changing that Dynamic of my family implementing new rules becoming the leader if we look at a lot of people's family no one has a real leadership in their family but when we look at successful families there's leadership there I don't care how am I gonna like the Kardashians or whatever how you feel about them that mother leaves that tribe right and then if we look at it okay she leads that we look at The Waltons somebody leaves that tribe like we look at every Rich family and then after the lead is gone someone has grown to step up and take place so the family structure doesn't fall the Vanderbilt didn't have that and so now their families never talked about right so for me it's how to you know just with my family how do I now Implement those rules because I am not a leader and the most the most scariest thing anyone can do ever coming from lower class middle class poverty is the the most important financial decision to ever make is how much of your money that you make from your paycheck you're going to get to work for you it's the most important decision you ever made financially because if you never know how much money from your paycheck that you worked hard for that is going to work for you then you're always going to have to work for every paycheck and if you got to always work for every piece of income that you have physically put in that labor you have a cap on which you can make that's just the truth of the matter and so you know just changing that when you just gave that book of T Washington scenario that's what just jumped in my mind of you the family members don't appreciate the wealth if they didn't contribute to building it so now how do we set a culture that makes everyone contribute to building the wealth of the family I for me I don't want to focus on closing a wealth Gap I'm not that's not my focus my focus is how do we now contribute to every person's family increasing their purchasing power right the interesting yeah I gotta tell me more about it what do you mean so you're not interested in focusing on the wealth God that's just the wrong thing yeah I think that's the wrong so how can we how can we and so I'm always because it's about comparison why not focus on that so well you think about this so you say okay the wealth Gap is growing okay well when you look at it if someone has someone has a 200 year America as it was built right so the slaves now have to catch up to where the slave master was if we're looking at it like that like that's it's hard it's a race you can never win so if you're coming from poor you trying to close somebody a group of people who've had a 300 year head start on you like if you even if you looking at it like that you can't win because you coming at it from a defeatist from a victim Viewpoint man they have four years head start on me I could never catch up no that's not my thing like the wealthy people already know how to build wealth they're going to keep on compounding well they're gonna keep on on making sure they make the right Investments they're going to keep on making sure they build businesses they're going to keep on making sure that they're ahead of this curve okay the economy is going to crash guess who's going to win more money than all in a recession the wealthy people why because poor people are panicking right now if we talked about inflation going up well guess the the average person in America spends more money on Transportation bills and food no matter who you are those are the big three right well if you're poor then now because inflation is so high that instead of eating a 50 of your paycheck now it's eat up 75 percent of your paycheck right but if you're already in the upper echelon you was going to do that anyway it didn't matter because you still have Investments you still know how to maneuver in this type of market so why waste time to me why waste time on saying yo how do we close the wealth Gap no that's not my fight my fight is how do we get the information that help us participate in the game and the values how do we get that yeah I I see you pushing both which I think is really really interesting and super important not closing the wealth Gap so it's interesting I also think it's the wrong place to look I won't deny so when you look at right now baby boomers have a lot of wealth in their bank accounts there's about to be a huge transference of wealth 25 trillion since my since I was how old was I that's a lot that's a big number that's a big number uh when I was 21 I received the last dime from my family that I ever received and I graduated with college debt and my dad literally did a countdown I'm actually grateful to him for this so he did a countdown five more months four more months three more months two more months every time you send my rent check so basically paid my rent through college and then that was it and he wanted me to know the day you graduate that's it there's no more and so when I think about okay after that I got an education a hundred percent fair enough but this is why my punch line is going to be it's the information yes not the money so I was literally broke the scrounging in the couch cushions is actually a real story at the time I was so traumatized but now it makes such a good story I'm so glad that that actually happened um imagine being so desperate which I know you will not struggle with being so desperate to put gas in your car you're like maybe change has fallen out of people's pockets in the couch and I can get 75 cents or whatever to put gas in my car crazy uh and so I was super poor and then turned my life around I should say I was broke I was broke and then completely changed my financial situation with information so I struggle a little bit with the idea of um the the wealth Gap is increasing what I would say is the compounding effect in any one life of knowledge and the the knowledge that's driven from the values that you have that's where this gets problematic because any one person maybe statistically but any one person barring a big inheritance which my parents are boomers and I will have I have given my parents more money than they will ever be able to give me so that certainly is not something that I'm going to reap any benefit from but in my own lifetime I was able to you know gazillionx my own return what was that switch though when I went from thinking of myself as a finite entity that what you know is what you know you're as smart as you're going to be and so that's that to realizing that I could learn and get better and so it's a little bit like imagine so in in poker I forget the type of Poker where you start in fact it's it's just like um Texas Hold'em so your delt two cards and then they're gonna lay three cards down in front of you that is life so now you're like okay the river 100 I've got something and this this may suck what I'm holding my hands May suck but how do I play it am I good at reading other people am I good at bluffing whatever so some ability some luck that 100 is life but according to the science fifty percent of who you are is hardwired 50 is entirely malleable I agree and so it's what are you doing to make use of the 50 and so I just want people to obsess over that like you can get 100 times better at anything I'm never going to be better than LeBron James of basketball right but I can be a hundred times better than I am today if I completely gave myself over to it was like I'm going to get good at that one percent better every day that's that's literally my thing like hot I'm always so this is a switch I had to make in business so I had to because I see so we have this thing like because so many people have has have gained so much success um during these last couple years one of the things I did on Instagram was I unfollow everybody um follow everybody because I started seeing how it was shifting my vision I started seeing how I started comparing myself I started seeing how like we was doing great things I was we building a team up like I'm I'm stepping into the CEO mode you know I'm going out I'm going to the different conferences I'm going to the different masterminds I'm getting the information I'm applying it and I'm seeing the 10x results but then I'm saying bam I'm comparing myself to this person damn what I just did damn this ain't enough and so when I started I just unfollowed everybody and I said I'm only following Fitness people and TD Jakes that's the only person I follow all right because Fitness is important to me right now and then TD Jakes because I love to get there I think he's the greatest speaker of our era just for me I think he's the greatest speaker of our era the way he can deliver a message he's not just a pastor about God he talks about life he talks about business and what I did what happened to me in that moment was I was able to lock in on me because what happens is we can get comfortable I always talk about this fear finally exiting the average reality I always talk about that because even if you amass so much success or you imagine hitting different levels at the time that becomes your average and you'll get comfortable there and if you get comfortable there you can only stay there for so long before you lose it all because Comfort nothing happens in a comfortable space for sleep sit once you get comfortable you get tired you get comfortable you doze off and so for me it'll allow me to gather all my information and apply it and then just build and then become better and then I started looking now again looking at people like you studying what you're doing as I build out this platform study people like you study with CNBC doing studying people who are operating at a high level and saying what I know is nothing and be embedded in who I was yesterday like how do I be better than a trap from yesterday what did I do and I do this every day now I've been doing this for the last 90 days at the end of my day I analyzed what I did in that day how much did I do to help me what did I do that didn't help me go nowhere and then how do I get up the next day and attack Full Throttle and then I came up with Phil fear always interrupts Legacy Phil be willing to do it be willing to get past the fear because the fear interrupts the Legacy that you're trying to build that you're going after and so if I'm going after Legacy I got to do more than be consistent we talked about this earlier I got to do more to be consistent that is part of the equation but in the consistency how do I keep growing how do I stay motivated and what are those tweets that I have to make along the way I can't make those decisions I'm always looking at everybody else and so I've learned to be like all right this is how we operate high octane high level 93 this is what we doing every day and so now I'm not just being a great communicator but Building Wealth for my family mastering the markets like in my mind I read a thing that Warren Buffett said he reached 500 pages a day that pisses me off because after about 30 pages I go to sleep I get tired I'm like how does he do it right so he's listening to audible books so now that's the challenge because he's the Apex investor right he's the Apex investor to me like he is top of the food chain and what I'm loving to do I love the stock market so if he's Apex and he does this it shows that I have a lot of I have a lot of stuff to grow towards right because he's 90 something he's always still learning again we go back to information right he's accomplished something that most people would know he's the richest man in the world at one point in his life right how that means at 40 years old I have a whole bunch of learning to do and so I become the learning machine how can I read as many books as I can to become better how can I can easily become comfortable with what I learn and invest in like I've we've done great things we was a mess we've taught a lot of people how do we get better and if we focus on getting better every day a Compound Effect how do I not only compound my wealth how do I compound the information how do I compound my growth because who I am right now is a compound effect of what I was three four five years ago and everybody needs to understand that who you are now is not because of the decision you made yesterday these are compounded decisions that you've made that evolved in what you are right now and so now I want to compound what do I compound into into the future how do I compound the best version of me in the next three years five years how I become the Apex trap how do I do that like that's that's the goal that's that's what we shooting the aiming for and then how do we impact as many people as we can how do I go in every Hood how to go in every ghetto how to go in every prison system and say yup I was homeless too family yep I got shot too family yep I went to prison for a Timber on Robert family yup but guess what I did I learned how to play the market it's the best game you can ever learn because they don't care what color you is they don't care about none of the excuses don't care if you got three felonies don't care if you got two feelings it don't care what you got can you play the game and if you can play the game at a high level the return on investment is infinite and if we can play that like that and if I can do that and if I can keep being that that person that people see and be like yup he did it he relatable so I he talk about stocks but he do it in a hoodie he'd do it in a t-shirt he do it with the sunglasses on he talking in a way that we can understand it then I could do it too and that's representation that's me being the best version of myself that's me showing that wealth is attainable one share at a time why one becomes two two becomes four four shares become eight shares eight shares become 16 shares people don't invest in the stock market because they don't feel like they got enough money that's why my Mantra is one [ __ ] at a time right and then and from that it becomes attainable people people don't want to go out the world because they feel like it ain't fun the belief system we talked about the financial trauma what other beliefs that you anchor to that keep you from being moving forward how do we cut those beliefs how do we unanchor ourselves from the lack of the scarcity how do we unanchor ourselves from that but we got people in this world we're billions of dollars that mean the money is there they got information they got structure they got community right when I look at you look at your team you got people right you ain't just building this by yourself and I'm pretty sure you thankful for them all the time more than you know I'm becoming more and more obsessed with this yeah yeah so look I've I've built things in my life and so I know the power of people but the longer I stay in the game the more I'm just like dude you the amount that you can do by yourself is amazing it'll startle you right but right as you get into real scale you realize wow the amount I can do by myself is really paltry compared to what I really want to do and it it really does come down to people like how awesome are your people and this is the hard part man I love to see people succeed but the problem is that leaves me open to creating space for B and C players yup to make me feel like they're gonna make it they're going to change and then I'm I'm fatiguing myself by carrying them and that's hard that's hard because it's like damn you don't want people acting out of fear you don't want them being um you know thinking that you want them to know that you care about them right people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care word okay I subscribe to that but let me tell you there's an advanced class to that and people don't perform until they know that there's [ __ ] standards and those standards are going to be met culture values what you celebrate it's it's a tricky line to walk man a real tricky line to walk because I want one I attract people that have seen the content so someone Godly number of our team here saw the content first came on board so they they saw me as a Beacon of Hope and then they get in and I'm like yo we're [ __ ] Warriors here we don't play around yeah and so oh man it's uh it's so important to make sure the people around you adhere to a standard it's important to give them a chance to grow and get better you gotta have a standard man that's a fine line standard it is it's it's hard like even now at this stage of my career you'd think I like have this down path it's hard yeah because I I know as I'm building you know just on my journey I think again I'm never comfortable right because I always again when I see you I'm like yup he's still going and I study the game and I think everybody should study the game that they play right study the people even I tell people this is in Wall Street like study the game study the rules instead of the plays right when I mean but I study the game what is the broad goal of the game what is the goal what is the ramifications that's it then study the players who's playing at a high level in the game that in the field that you're going because that's going to be what you're looking at you can see the strengths you can see their weaknesses and then what plays do they love to run right like every team when you think about the Lakers you go like you're the head coach for impact Theory you know what I'm saying and then your team everybody has strong suits so when I look at when you look at the Lakers under Phil Jackson triangle offense mastered it right when you study Bill Belichick he did what's called um damn I forgot what it's called but like ever he didn't run plays they ran plays based on whatever wherever they were on the field and how much time was on the clock that's how he called plays and so you look at the players in the game what are their strong points so when I look I'm looking at okay bam they have time doing a million views all right like what is the sauce that he's doing what is it that they're learning what is that he how is he impacting people I'm always looking when I'm looking at Investments what is Warren Buffett really good at what is Joel Greenback really good at what is Peter Lynch really good at so I can study it and then I want to study everything they told me when they messed up the mistakes they made like that's how you get better this is why football players and allies get better because they study film we want to become successful investors we want to build wealth but we don't want to study the film we want to Freestyle our way to vote and put 100 right here it's gonna make me a million dollars nope that ain't gonna happen fam I can guarantee you that ain't gonna happen right but how do I study the film how did you compound to success right it wasn't one thing how did that 10 years turn into overnight success because that's what people don't know you see the successful Wall Street travel but what happened when I was homeless like real homeless not just I moved out my mama house we got no homes because you don't got nowhere to go because my mom went to prison and because my family members at the time they had their own thing going on so I had nowhere to go what did I do when I was sleeping another abandoned house what did I do when I was sleeping in the corner in that crack house but everybody smoking crack out of Coke cans out of crack pipes I'm in a back room like what did I do in those moments right what did I do when I was sleeping in an abandoned house what did I do when I was sleeping in abandoned cars what did I do in those moments those are the moments you don't see but those are the moments of when I'm figuring out damn where do I go with my business and I'm stuck those are the moments that give birth boom here we go what do we do then we never gave up right and so being able to use those dark moments in your life as a moment of empowerment instead of victimizing yourself how long will you hold on to the victim and talent and most people are so great at that most people are so great at holding on to the victim aspect of anything when it comes to building world you can put it up right I put up a clip on my Instagram the other day where um God was saying that um you know white white Americans are successful in America not because of anything other than they know how to maneuver during certain economic um environments politics um recessions they understand and I was like and so many people in my post was like well let's not forget about slavery that you'll never become successful if you hold on to that yep that did happen but are you going to hold on to that for 400 more years are you because if you are stayed up but if you can say hmm how can I learn how can I learn from something that maybe the people before me didn't learn from where is the gap where is the where what did they didn't what didn't they get when I look at civil rights leaders like every generation has to transform into something else I was civil rightly when you look at Malcolm X Martin Luther King Fred Hammond two of my favorite black men of all time they didn't even have time to get into the money component because they thought about civil rights right and so now when you evolve we those leaders no longer exist no there's no leadership and so now everyone is trying to Freestyle their way to success freestyle their way to freedom and all they have to look at is the past bam slavery we can't keep going back there right we can acknowledge it we can get history and culture from it but we can't anchor ourselves to it we cannot I can't anchor myself to the fact that my mama did drugs my mama so drug I can't let that be a reason why I don't be successful yep it's painful yep I went through it like imagine what it looks like to see your mom get shot in front of you that is a painful traumatic experience right and then the color back of maybe five six years later and you see your mama overdose on drugs she didn't die that's another painful traumatic experience that I can anchor my life to that and then we can add on to the fact that I felt abandoned right that nobody was there for me I can hold on to that I got all the right to hold on to it right I got another I never saw my father if I don't know my father but let's hold on to that too right and so now I've anchoring myself to all these traumatic experiences and now I've given myself an excuse not to be [ __ ] I never had a father so I'm I'm not going to be a good father to this beautiful little girl I gave birth to I can hold all of those traumatic experiences in a ball and let that be my core instead I cut that and released that [ __ ] and say you know what because I didn't have a father I'm gonna be an amazing father because I saw my mama do drugs I saw some of my mama sell drugs that was her traumatic experience I went through some of it but guess what I'm gonna be better than that and I'm gonna show my mom a better life I'm gonna show her that I appreciate everything she went through but here's a better life right because my people went through whatever they went through I'm the reason to say I want all of my ancestors my I want them to be proud and say you know what that's it right there he stood on integrity he stood on it he was honest he built a different type of culture not just his family but for the people around him somebody got to be the Pioneer somebody got to be the Trailblazer somebody got to be willing to take the risk to change so that's what I represent that's what I won't stand for and I won't do it my way I'm gonna do it my way man where can people follow you as you do so right now man just the Wall Street looks like us now Network on YouTube Just building that um I want everybody to just see it every Tuesday everybody to fall in every two to seven o'clock it's fought on YouTube that's it come there we just being impactful it's not just about stocks it's about stocks it's about information but it's about setting new normals it's about helping you free as Hell by understanding the information and evolving mentally and as a person man you know I love it love it man all right everybody if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary yeah take care peace if you want to hear more on mistakes that people make that continue to keep them poor check out this earlier interview that I did with jaspreet Singh why Financial education is so important is because if you don't understand this you are going to get screwed over by the system