"How To Get Rich Starting From $0" - Master The 3 Laws of Money In 2025 | Wallstreet Trapper

Wall Street Trapper, welcome back to the show. Man, I love it, man. It's like a family reunion, man. Welcome home. Thank you. Welcome home. All right. Thank you. Real fast, what are three things that people do, habits, money habits that keep people broke? Mhm. Three money habits that keep people broke. I would say the first thing is not investing at all. And the reason why not investing at all 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. They don't know how to lend money. Okay. are four important things. In investing? In Well, just money principles. Learning how to save, learning how to spend. Right? So, I always say that if you have more money under your 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. Mhm. 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. Mhm. Like you need a break, you need rest, you need lunch, but your money doesn't. So, the one money was the most uh powerful one is just not investing at all. Right? The next one is spending money that we don't have. I 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 when I used to work my job, when I was working, right? I remember when I would get overtime. I will always figure out how much of that overtime was, and I will always account for it in my head. So, most people do that. If they get overtime, they've already spent that money before it hit the paycheck. Yeah. They already They already know what they're going to spend it on. So, spending money we don't have, and then most importantly 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 gone, after that uh you you release those endorphins, now it's like, "Damn, I really didn't need that." But, it's too late cuz you've already bought it. Mhm. Right? So, th- those are three important things. Just before you 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 in financial abundance and all those amazing things, those three things are most important. Not investing, spending money that you don't have, and not having that financial fortitude to not buy the things you don't need. Right? Like, if you buy some shoes, 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 do you need every one? Right? So, I think having that financial fortitude not to spend on those things that you don't need. That will like catapult you on a journey. Cuz 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 to wealth. Not entrepreneurship, which is dope, but b- building wealth is 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? Cuz right now as we're recording this, 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 are 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. 100%. 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. Mhm. 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 is built on the back of entrepreneurship. Do you look at history? Like where did you hear that? 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 living in America, let's 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 having 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 going to quit, I'm going to keep going, I'm going to persevere." This is how we get here. So, we can even look at someone like J.P. Morgan, right? So, we look at J.P. Morgan, his daddy was a banker, right? His dad was a banker, but he had this 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, we had Nikola 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 J.P. Morgan Chase are bidding against Tesla for the electricity bid to run this fair, right? Tesla wins the bid. Te- uh Thomas Edison is like beat. J.P. Morgan is like, "I thought you said no one could beat you in this." So, he comes back and says, "Okay, I'm going to prove that what he's doing is wrong." So, he does the first actual electric chair execution, but it goes wrong. It wind up literally burning the man alive. So, here's what J.P. Morgan does. Just to sum it up, J.P. Morgan buys all of the shares in Thomason and Edison Electric. Uh I think the guy name is Whittenhouse 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." J.P. Morgan says, "Well, I know you don't want to go to court with me cuz 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 Electric and then calls it General Electric. You know what I'm saying? So, when we think about entrepreneurship, it's saying J.P. Morgan is 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 dope 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 is an American business and my idea. Okay, so this there's a several things going on here. So one I Dude, every time I'm with you I I have this screaming sense that you're one of the most important voices in America right now. you. Thank you. So but I want to say why. Mhm. 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. That 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 the game. 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. Mhm. So, the people building the businesses in the beginning, they often don't have the capital, and so they need a way to go and get the capital. Or, it's going to get a little bit complicated fast, but I'm going to go through it and see if people can hang. So, 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. Mhm. She isn't 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, and I couldn't access it. Mhm. I'm driving a beat-up car. Mhm. And so, it's like, I'm rich on paper, but in actuality not so much. Mhm. 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 JP Morgan 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. And so, as they go public, which is just turning creating shares out of your company. It's a very technical thing. down to pieces. Exactly. Break it into pieces. Now you're going to sell those pieces to the public. Mhm. 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. 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, 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 [ __ ] in awe. 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. Mhm. Okay, maybe people don't want to do the thing that I did. Some days I wonder. Mhm. And you went down another road, which is available to everybody. 100%. Okay, so now the people have their little primer in 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 basic economics, right? You understand that. If Michael Jordan were to release 100 million Yep. shoes Mhm. won't be worth much. Won't be worth But if he releases thousand Exactly. Now price going to 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. Yep. Business second is me creating a business, and then real estate third. So, you think everybody should create a business? No, no, no, no. That's why I say you can get away with two out of the three. Got you. Got you. You know what I'm saying? So, everybody doesn't have to create a business because this is 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 win. Investing in a solution, okay? Making Amazon was a solution to so many things. Getting us information faster, getting us books faster, getting us It changed the game. It revolutionized how we how we got packages. It It made somebody say, "You know what? I could go to the store today, but I'm willing to wait 1 day to get this package." Can I just say for the young people in the crowd who grew up with Amazon, there was a time you'd have to wait 4 to 6 weeks to get something in the mail. Exactly. That's That's insane. 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 Think 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 what I'm all about. 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 $400,000. Right? They're saying they're going to be all electric by 2030. General Motors saying they're going to be all electric by 2032. Ford has dropped electric cars now. What is 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 no justice in the bank. It's not especially now. Right? It's not doing you no justice in the bank. 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 $100 spent in 2019, that same $100 now takes $109. Right? So, your money has lost You need that much to buy the same thing. Right? So, if you bought this mug for $100 in 2019, I'm going to slap you in the mouth if that's what you did, but yeah. it now costs you $109. 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 have added 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 say a dollar that's not moving is a dollar that's losing. Right? So, sitting our money in the bank is not the place to be. Right? So, what would be 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 $12,000 sitting in the bank. Mhm. All of my money is in the market. 90% of it is in the market. So, I use what's called the VOO, which is the Vanguard Index Fund for the S S&P 500. I use that as my savings account. So, every month or every week I'm putting money in there. 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? Cuz we won't be here forever. You won't be here forever. What happens when the market rebounds? Well, Talk to people about realized losses versus unrealized losses. Okay. Cuz I think this really messes That's good. That's good. That's good. So, unrealized loss is when let's say I have $100 on something and that goes down to $89, right? And if I sold it today, I wouldn't be able to sell it for what I paid for. Mhm. Mhm. But, it's there. have to sell it. It's okay. So, so you you buy something at $100, it goes down to $80. If you don't sell it, you have a unrealized loss of $20. Meaning you didn't sell it, your equity just decreased. But, if you sell it, you realize that gain. You've now made that gain realistic. I mean that loss. You've realized that loss. You've made that loss realistic. So, you now essentially lost that $20. Right? That's a That's a realized loss. Now, realized gain is is the 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 100 I have $50 in unrealized gain. So, that it's there, but I didn't sell it. It's there. Realizing it is saying I've cashed out. I've cashed out on it. Think about like you talked about Jeff Bezos, right? His net worth is what? 100 80 something billion dollars? Something like that? I Last time I checked, 60% of his money was in 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. Cuz he didn't cash out. So, he didn't lose it. It's still there. Once the stock get backs up, he recoups all of that. And so, that's the dope part about the market. Yes, it fluctuate. 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. Mhm. 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. Mhm. So, I forget the percentage of households of people that live paycheck to paycheck, but it's some godly. It's astronomical. It's more than 50%. 72%? That's 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 down. 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. Mhm. 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 for 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, but Intuit, man. A stock that they got on. 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 $500, $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 is now is a is my routine. How'd you How'd you develop that? So, growing up you realize that there's a thread that runs through just through especially poverty-stricken America, right? And it is that we have no financial structure. All right, if everyone is living paycheck to paycheck, right? So, let me go back a second for a second. Reaganomics caused so much havoc to that low-income black community, right? Why? Why? So, let's think about this. In 1982, yeah, I was born, there were written around Reagan took 1 million people off of welfare. He took another half a million people, kids, out of uh free lunch. Right? The The economy went through a real recession in '82. But then, in '85, when I was getting into all of it, Ronald 65 tons of cocaine pillaged blow income 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 contra. Go look that up. It's an 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 separated families. And so now, think about the 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. Fathers locked up. Mothers now with the term crack babies. Now, another way to separate black women from kids. So, they pillaged crack pillaged the black community, especially in major cities, LA, Miami, New York. Pillaged them. So, now the idea of money is separate. I want you to think about the the 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 crack 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 since then from that era, we go to Bush when now the war on drugs is important, but how can we have a war on drugs if we are now pushing the drugs in this community. Right? And then we get to now mandatory minimums. And then we get to Clinton where we get three strikes you're 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 happened. 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 am I a knight? Am I a bishop? Am I a rook? I damn sure ain't the king. So that means I'm a pawn. Pawns always get sacrificed. So if 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 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 what piece you are. And then what happens with the pawn on a chessboard is if the pawn can find a way to get to the other side of the chessboard, he then can become whatever he want. 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 trauma? 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 disassociate ourselves from the things that's keeping us from being successful. And that is for me financial trauma. That is a hard pill to swallow. And just a form of 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. Mhm. 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 is saying, "Yo, check this out." We talked about it earlier. If you have more money under your bed than in your closet than you have in your investment account or your savings account, then that's financial trauma. If you are saying things if you're doing things like you know you're barely making it. You know you're living check to 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 with a 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. You need one person that's disrupt disruption. You need one person to do that. If nobody ever does that, you can look at a whole lineage of a people, of a family and realize why nobody has ever changed it. And so for me the change was if I can become financially literate, 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 to people around me, 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. You're the only one I hear talking about something that I think is actually really connected, which is values Mhm. and knowledge Mhm. to get the outcome that you want. Mhm. 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, but so my story, I start big brothering for a kid in South Central. Yeah. And I'm I I was just too young to understand what was happening. And so, I've 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 8 and 1/2 years. So, long time. Yeah. From the time he was 8 till he was 16. So, crazy. 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 th- this is this is the fiery debate right now. Mhm. Is it culture? Mhm. Or is it that the deck is stacked against me? Mhm. And I felt like a man screaming into the void. Try 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. Mhm. That's the human condition. Mhm. Traversing the board is knowledge. Mhm. But if you learn, and no one can stop you. This is the age of free information. That's right. If you can learn, then you really can become whatever you want. Booze don't block don't. 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, no. The only thing that separates you and I are ideas." Mhm. I found a better set of ideas. And those ideas govern my life. It's what I call frame of reference. Mhm. 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." Mhm. I was just like "Whoa." And then you encounter the first person that's like offended by that idea. And I was like, "Whoa, 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 can do whatever the fuck." Mhm. 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. Mhm. Why? Well, so there is a disparity in what poverty is lack of information, lack of resources. Money is infinite. They never stop They They've never stopped printing money. The problem is getting the belief to understand that. Getting the getting the 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. Sit. If you can't rap, you can't play sports, then you're probably going to sell drugs or do something illegal because 87% of crimes are behind money. Or just live a mediocre life. live and 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 keep 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 you from going there. If you can get past the [ __ ] and say, all right, these are real issues, but the biggest issue is the belief in myself. The biggest issue is I need to spend more time reading and researching than partying. I need to spend more time reading and researching than chasing women. I need to spend more time reading and researching than, you know, trying to go hang out, playing net 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 the game, my confidence builds up. So, the reason why it is more the success barrier is 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 homes, it it just overwhelms It is. the the number. But the the statistics, and I don't 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. Structure. So, in a two-parent home, there's a form of structure. There's a hierarchy, and then there's a 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, I'm not saying you can't be successful, but now there's 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 up? I've never even met my dad. Never. Ever in my life. Mhm. Right? So now the influences became like ev- 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 who 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, debt, 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 OGs, 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 cuz this information is what's going to get me through prison. This the information that's going to keep me alive. This the information, this how I carry myself, this how I talk, this how I maneuver, this how you, you know, okay, cool, I got it. But then you come home, when I come home from prison, 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 fill till I had my daughter. Right? But then I'm missing that void, so now I'm still influenced by anything that I feel has structure. Mhm. 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. It's like the only successful slave rebellion, I think, in history, or at least modern history. Mhm. And he's talking about the the first guy that did it, and I 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? Mhm. We've been [ __ ] slaves. Like, this is our right. Like, why can't we get back at people do all this? And he's like, "No, 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?" And 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 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?" And 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, yeah, tell me. Okay, cool. Uh you're going to have to kidnap them. You're going to put trap and I actually mean this seriously. This would work. It's the only thing I know that would work. Talk to me. You're going to kidnap them. You're going to take them to a remote place in the [ __ ] desert, whatever. You're going to take them somewhere away from everybody else. I usually say a deserted island. You can 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, you will want to win their respect. To win their respect, you must conform to their behaviors. If their behaviors are honorable, you're now conforming to earn their 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, which is how you get influenced on the streets, or you can get influenced 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 is, "Be around five, six millionaires, you'll become the sixth one." It's because you start to take on those, uh, view values. You start taking on those principles that they stand on, right? Those conversations become like impregnated in you. Those behaviors like, "Damn, Tom 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." This is why I love mentorships. This why I love masterminds. This why I do that. I asked you one time, "Hey, yo, give me a mastermind I can get into." It's because when I'm around successful people, I'mma go into the room. I don't care how much of success I've amassed, I'm going into the room like I don't know nothing. Because that's where I want to evolve to. So, that is you're not pushing a line, you're only touching a hot stove to people who are fighting for beliefs that don't benefit them. God damn. Most people fight for those beliefs, dude. It's really interesting to me. So, okay, I've thought a lot about this cuz 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 cuz 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 that 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. Mhm. And I remember thinking, why am I doing this? Mhm. 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. Mhm. And I was like that makes me feel good. Now, of course, I wasn't thinking that in 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. Mhm. And that is super dangerous. Mhm. Because it's led me into these really small rooms. Mhm. 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. Mhm. you do something. Mhm. 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 a 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, "Oh, 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 neurochemical 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't 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 I have to learn so I don't go back to prison? What do I have to learn so that I don't become dead before the certain age?" And then I I got past that, and then I was 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 honesty? You could lie, lie, lie, 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 a it's Truth is like a harsh reality that everybody wants, but nobody wants to give. Right? But honesty comes in as 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's 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 whether or not I want to move forward or not. If I'm honest with you, then I know I can do business with this man cuz he's an honest man. I can do business with this woman cuz 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. Honesty is 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 want 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 it's heavy on my list of just being an honest man, man. What is up my friend? Tom Bilyeu 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 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, 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. 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. Mhm. That's where I think people really get why honesty is so critical. Mhm. If I So, a relationship to work well, to be a high-functioning business-friendly relationship, Mhm. I need um a sort of deposit and withdrawal system. So, no, you should never do it for the deposit-withdrawal, but that there is a reality to be faced in human relationships. If all you do is give, give, give, give, give, and the person never reciprocates, it just humans are not wired for that. And so, it 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, Trav, 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? Talk to me. So, let's say that you take down a a buffalo. Okay. You you can't eat it. E- 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. Well, 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 by feeding them when you have an abundance. They get to eat and now they will do the same for you. That's honesty. It builds trust. That word, if I feed you, you're going to 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, honesty, 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 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 is 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? I This is the one thing I tell my daughter, doing the right thing when nobody is looking. If I'm willing to do the right thing, if I can do the like Thomas my guy. So, I'll give you an example. So, a couple of 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 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, be the middle man. I didn't No, look, these are my guys. Here, here's the information. Y'all do that. Don't put me in the email no more. Handle your own business. Integrity. Integrity is me being able to do something without me even expecting something on the back end, but on the strength that I know Thomas a good guy. Hey Tom, here's my people, man. Here's the 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 it, but we talked about the human 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 is building integrable relationships. Building relationships with other successful people or 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 Trav is my guy. There's some rooms that that I don't care how much money you got, that's not the value system here. The value system of getting 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 here cuz everybody here got money. What do you do when money is no longer the option? It's going to 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. Trap and Tuesdays Come on, man. uh watching it was really interesting because you you're attacking it from the point of values. 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. 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 Theory 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 funhouse 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 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. Uh but the example that he uses is is let's say that you're in a VR game of um 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. Mhm. 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 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. Mhm. Um that it's all about make as much money as fast as you can, you know, uh 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. Mhm. So, that was my frame of reference. Part of it. The other part was, "Ooh, 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 a hundred 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 in 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 funhouse mirror. It still isn't objective reality, but it's really useful. Mhm. 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 rewarp 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. Mhm. 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. Mhm. 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, Mhm. 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. Trep, he was born a slave. Mhm. He starts a college that's still running today. Let that sink in right quick. Uh-huh. Right. When I think about will Impact Theory University outlive me? But not as of yet. Mhm. 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 drum roll, please brick making. Mhm. 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. Cuz 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 going to I was a slave, I'm sending my kids to your university and you're making them build bricks. Like, what the and he was like, I'm telling you right now, if people build this 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 cuz 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 cuz values tell you who's in and who's out. Oh, you made the bricks 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. I'm reading the book and I'm like, this is [ __ ] genius. 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. No, please, please, please. No, no, no, no, I'm just even as people I I don't want to say it wrong. I remember cuz I went to DC. So I don't I to say it wrong. Say it as wrong as possible. I can't even remember. It's kind of French sounding, as I remember. It's a French name. I don't want to say it wrong. Uh I'm not going to 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'll use myself as an example. I become the pioneer. I become the 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 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 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 in three generations. They went broke. But we still talk about J.P. 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 there. And the culture was about building that Walmart brand. But then what we don't realize about passing wealth down 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 talked about her on my last show. I I just lost And she was the matriarch to my family. Right? She was the matriarch. She held it together. And 11 months before that we lost her sister. Right? So those were 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 the old ones weren't 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. So 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 and 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 was 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 now 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 blowing money cuz 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. To building a business to learn how to invest to giving my daughter custodial account who I'll she'll be a millionaire before she's 15. Right? Damn. That these things are so important to me. So now we set new rules. We set new rules of engagement. What are those rules of engagement? Okay, so now everybody my my little cousin just had a 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. Well, why do I got to do that? Cuz 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 to him about money once he gets 2 years old like my daughter she's 6. Her ABCs for me come in the form of A is for asset, B is for bank, C is for credit. That is genius. Right? right. is the ABC's coming to her. Does she know the word fiduciary? She know what it means. Dude, that's incredible. Right? So, that's how the ABC's and now I'll talk to her. E is for equity. Like, this how we Now, you got to give me a Okay, so what does it mean now? Not just a norm, what does it mean now? Right? And so, now we go to Disney World. You You know you own stock in this, 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, the the the the the the the the the the the 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 100." Cool. We bought 100 shares for her 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 transitioned, 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 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 $50 to it." Right? So, now we implementing new rules. We implementing things now that every family member now has to take on. Right? And now everybody embraces it. And so, changing that dynamic of my family, implementing new rules, becoming a 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 much you want to like the Kardashians or whatever how you feel about them, that mother leads that tribe. Right? And then when we look at it, okay, she leads that We look at the Waltons, somebody leads that tribe. Like, we look at every rich family, and then after the leader is gone someone is groomed to step up and take place. So the family structure doesn't fall. The Vanderbilts didn't have that and so now their family is never talked about. Right. So for me is how do, you know, just with my family, how do I now implement those rules because I am now the 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 you 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 make 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 what you can make. Mhm. That's just the truth of the matter. And so, you know, just changing that when you just gave that Booker 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 the 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? Interesting. Yeah, like I don't Tell me more about it. What do you mean? So you're not interested in focusing on the wealth gap. That's just the wrong thing to look at. that's the wrong So how can we how can we in in 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 a 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 looking at it like that, like that's that's hard. It's It's a race you can never win. So, if you coming from poor, you trying to close a some amount of a group of people who had a 300 year head start on you. Like, if you even if you looking at it like that, you can't win. Cuz you coming at it from a defeatist from a the victim viewpoint. Man, they had 4 years head start on me. I can never catch up. No, that's not my thing. Like, the wealthy people already know how to build wealth. They going to keep on compounding their wealth. They going to keep on making sure they make the right investments. They going to keep on making sure they build businesses. They going to keep on making sure that they're ahead of this curve. Okay, the 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 are poor, then now, because inflation is so high, that instead of eating up 50% of your paycheck, now it's eating up 75% of your paycheck, right? But, if you're already in the upper echelon, you was going to do that anyway, it didn't matter. Cuz 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 Yeah. in their bank accounts. There's about to be a huge transference of wealth. 26 trillion. Since my since I was how old was I? That's a lot That's a big number. That's a big number. 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 he 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. 100% fair enough. But this is why my punchline is going to be it's the information, not the money. Oh, wait. 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. Mhm. 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, gazillion X 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, you're dealt two cards and then they're going to 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 in 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, 50% 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 at basketball. Right. But, I can be 100 times better than I am today if I completely gave myself over to it and was like, I'm going to get good at that. 1% better every day. That's that's literally my thing. Like how 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 doing these last couple years. One of the things I did on Instagram was I unfollowed everybody. I unfollowed everybody because I started seeing how it was shifting my vision. Mhm. I started seeing how I started comparing myself. I started seeing how like we were 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 a 10x results. But then I'm saying, damn, I'm comparing myself to this person. Damn, what I just did. Damn, this ain't enough. And so, what 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 that what I think he is 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 average reality. I always talk about that because even if you amass so much success or you amass hitting different levels, after a 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 but sleep. Sit. Once you get comfortable, you get tired. You get comfortable, you doze off. And so, for me it allowed 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 doing as I build out this platform. Studying people like you studying what CNBC doing. Studying people who are operating at a high level and saying what I know is nothing and being better than who I was yesterday. Like how do I be better than the trap from yesterday? Mhm. 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 analyze what I did in that day. How much did I do that help me? What did I do that didn't tell me go nowhere? And then how do I get up the next day and attack full throttle? And then I came up with fail. Fear always interrupts legacy. Fail. 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 than 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 tweaks that I have to make along the way? I can't make those decisions if 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 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 reads 500 pages a day. That pisses me off because after about 30 pages, I go to sleep. Right? 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 in 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 toward, right? Because he's 90 something years old and he's still learning. Again, we go back to information. Right? He's accomplished something that most people would never 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 learned in investing? Like I We've done great things. We've amassed We've taught a lot of people, but how do we get better? And if we focus on getting better every day, the compound effect. How do I not only compound my wealth, but 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 3, 4, 5 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 3 years, 5 years? How I become the apex trap? How do I do that? Like that's that's the goal. That's that's who we're shooting and aiming for. And then how do we impact as many people as we can? How do I go in every hood? How do I go in every ghetto? How do I go in every prison system and say, "Yep, I was homeless, too, family. Yep, I got shot, too, family. Yep, I went to prison for attempted murder and robbery, family. Yep, but guess what I did? I learned how to play the market. It's the best game you can ever learn. Cuz it don't care what color you is. It don't care about none of the excuses. Don't care if you got three felonies. Don't care if you got two felonies. 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 yep, he did it. He relatable. That's why he talk about stocks but he do it in a hoodie, he 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 share at a time. Right? And then and from that it's it becomes attainable. People would 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 are the beliefs that you anchor to that keep you from being moving forward? How do we cut those beliefs? How do we un-anchor ourselves from the lack of the scarcity? How do we un-anchor ourselves from that? Well, we got people in this world worth billions of dollars. That mean the money is there. They got the information. They got structure. They got community. Right? When I look at you, I look at your team, you got people around you. 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. 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. But 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. Mhm. But the problem is that leaves me open to creating space for B and C players Yep. to make me feel like they're going to make it. They're going to change. Yep. And then I'm I'm fatiguing myself by carrying them. And that's hard. That's hard. Cuz 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. Mhm. Right? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Mhm. Word. KI subscribe to that. But let me tell you, there's an advanced class to that. Mhm. 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. I like tricky line to walk, man. I like that. tricky line to walk cuz I want one, I attract people that have seen the content. So, some ungodly number of our team here saw the content first, came on board. So, they they saw me as a a beacon of hope and then they get in and I'm like, "Yo, we're [ __ ] warriors here. We don't play around." Yeah. Yeah. And so, 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 got to have a standard, man. That's a fine line. have a 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 pat. It's hard. Yeah, cuz I 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, "Yep, he he's still going." And I study the game and I think everybody should study the game that they play. Mhm. Right? Study the people even I tell people that's in Wall Street like study the game, study the rules, and study the plays. Right? What I mean by that is 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 their 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 every 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. Damn, Tom's doing a million views. All right. Like what is the sauce that he's doing? What is it that they're learning? What is it that he How is he impacting people? I'm always looking when I'm looking at investments. What What is Warren Buffett really good at? What is Joel Greenblatt 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 athletes get better cuz 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 wealth. I'm putting $100 right here. It's going to make me a million dollars. Nope, that ain't going to happen, fam. I can guarantee you that ain't going to 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 Trapper, but what happened when I was homeless? Like real homeless, not just I'm moving out of my mama's house because no homeless cuz you don't got nowhere to go. Because my mama went to prison and because my family members at the time, they had their own thing going on. So I didn't have nowhere to go. What did I do when I was sleeping in the abandoned house? What did I do when I was sleeping in the corner in that crack house where everybody smoking crack out of Coke cans out of crack pipes? I'm in the 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 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 mentality? 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 wealth, you can put it up right. I put up a clip on my Instagram the other day where um guy was saying that um you know, white white Americans are successful in America but not because of anything other than they know how to maneuver during certain economic um environments, politics, um recessions. They 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? Cuz if you are, stay there. 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? Hmm. When I look at civil rights leaders, like every generation has to transform into something else. I was civil rights leader when you look at Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, two of my favorite black men of all time. They didn't even have time to get into the money component cuz they fought 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. Damn, 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 was a soldier. 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 to come back up maybe 5, 6 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 before. I don't know my father. Well, let's hold on to that, too. Right? And so now I'm anchoring myself to all of these traumatic experiences and now I'm giving myself an excuse not to be [ __ ] I never had a father, so I'm I'm I'm not going to be a good father to this beautiful little girl I gave birth to. I can 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 said, "You know what? Because I didn't have a father, I'm going to be an amazing father. Because I saw my mama do drugs, I saw saw my mama sell drugs, that was her traumatic experience. I went through some of it, but guess what? I'm going to be better than that. And I'm going to show my mama a better life. I'm going to show her that I appreciate everything she went through. 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. And so that's what I represent. That's what I won't stand for. And I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to do it my way, man. Where can people follow you as you do that? So right now, man, just the Wall Street Looks Like Us Now Network on YouTube. We're just building that. Um I want everybody to just see it every Tuesday. Everybody to fall in every Tuesday 7:00. Just follow on YouTube. That's it. Come there. We 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 yourself 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.