And so that's the mindset, it comes in and says,
"everybody around me has the same problem." No one represented the solution.
So, if I don't change something, I'm only going to end up like everybody else I know.
Somebody has the solution somewhere. There's too many people out here living
the life of their dreams that I'm watching, they know something I don't know,
and the only thing that they had was access to a different type of information.
Like most people look at the stock market, 98% of the people who I know
look at the stock market and say, "yo, that's not a game that I can play."
"I'm staying away from it." And so, the way that it's set up
is, the world is set up, "well, listen, cool,
I don't even want you to play, just give me your money, I'll play it for you."
So we look at banks, we understand that banks don't necessarily work in our favour,
banks only give us 0,05% interest on the money we have there.
Or we can get 8% just by putting our money in an index fund, s
o why would I just set my money in a bank and let the bank make all the money
'cause all they're going to do is invest the money for you, so they're now operating as the plug.
They operate now as, "man, I'mma front you this, I'mma make money, I'mma take the cut,
I'mma give you just enough to keep coming back." I want to go to the plug,
who is the plug? The stock market. And so, once I understood the fundamentals of...
the most important thing too is we don't understand how money works.
That's a whole different language in its own. The relationship with money in my community is
you make money just enough to pay bills, and once you get tired of paying bills
you say, "you know what, I need to treat myself to something."
"No matter if I got to go in debt, I need to treat myself to something to take this misery away."
So you treat yourself to something that you can't afford at the time
but it makes you feel good in the moment. And so, because it makes you feel good,
you say, "you know what, I'm living..." this is a reprieve from everyday struggle.
"Let me get back on the hamster wheel." And so, the sacrifice, now it becomes hard.
Because now you're saying, "I've got to work, work, work and never get that reprieve?
I'm not willing to do that." And so that's the mindset, it comes in and says,
"everybody around me has the same problem." No one represented the solution.
So, if I don't change something, I'm only going to end up like everybody else I know.
Somebody has the solution somewhere. There's too many people out here living
the life of their dreams that I'm watching, they know something I don't know,
and the only thing that they had was access to a different type of information.
Warren Buffet, in one of his meetings, I want to say it was the 1995 show,
and he said that owning a stock is like owning
a percentage of a great business. And so, once I understood that concept,
I understood that the key to wealth is through ownership.
That was one of the things that made it click because I studied the wealthy people.
Like I studied them. And I was like, "damn..."
Even when you go back to Black Wall Street or O.W. Gurley,
the reason why he had the 40 acres and those acreages,
one of the things he did was he said, "I'm going to sell these pieces to my people
so they can have ownership." I was like, "damn..."
When you study Reginald White, one of the first Black men to make a billion dollars on Wallstreet,
it was about, he wanted to have ownership.
The key to building wealth is not how much you can work.
You can't work your way into wealth. You've got to invest your way there.
And all wealthy people, Black, White, Asian, Chinese, they own a whole bunch of shit.
The people who aren't wealthy, it's because they don't own anything.
You only have your money sitting in cash, if your money is just sitting in cash,
realistically, you're becoming poorer every day. It's a depreciating asset because the moment they
print more money, that money loses value. It's the reason why the bank wants you to
have your money there, so they can take it and
use it and invest it so much, and be like "hey, this is just sitting, I'm going to give
you 50c on whatever you had in there." And so, the idea of ownership was
we can just start owning everything, no matter if it's just a stock, that's powerful.
Because if you can start owning the businesses that you now
consume every day, you turn a one-time transaction to a lifetime of profit.
And that was major for me. Because if I go to the
store and buy a pair of Nikes, that's a one-time transaction.
In order for me to get something different from them again,
I've got to come back and buy another pair of Nikes.
But if I own the Nike stock, as long as I own it, it's a profitable vehicle for me.
So that one-time transaction can become a lifetime of profit if I own that business.
If I know I'm an Apple user, if I know I got the phone, I
got the earbuds, I got the Macbook, I got the PC, I'm excited when Apple's about to drop something,
why wouldn't I own it? As much of it as I can. Right?
If I understand that concept, if I know people are going to...
America has one of the biggest thrash problems in the world.
So if I know that Waste Management is going to be here forever
'cause we aren't going to stop throwing things away, why don't I own that company?
Because I know everybody throws things away! And so, now instead of me getting excited
about Apple, a line being
around the corner because it's a new phone, I'm like, "yo, yo, I can make me some money."