"I Got RICH When I Understood THIS..." (Principles For Success & Money) | Wallstreet Trapper

you got to stop trading time for money i start learning how to make your money work for you you got to learn how to give value to people i didn't learn that message the value part i didn't learn that so i started my business and i was like i have never heard nothing like that was like i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome when did you realize that you were gonna start learning about financial literacy and then what did it look like when you got out oh man so you know born and raised in new orleans first and foremost and new orleans has always been a city um that i feel is full of culture right and on the front side people knew it for food and music music you know the good times but there's a part of new orleans that also is on the other side that gets a lot of light which is it being a murder cavity high crime right a lot of poor a lot of undeveloped people um financially just in so many different ways and so i grew up in that uh saw my mom's get shot when i was um nine years old shawn gets shot i saw her get shot when i was like nine wow um maybe like a hundred yards away from me wow so immediately i had a connection and understanding of violence right so at nine years old kind of like when i got older like i don't think about how that played in my brain over and over and over again and when someone when when a kid sees violence at an early age in the family what does that do to the kid does it normalize it does it does it make them want to be more violent be less violent like and run away from it what happened so what it did for me was they did two things when it made me it made me realize that violence in my environment was a necessary evil to do one protect yourself protect whatever like and if anything happened violence was now the first result no matter what that violence looked like whether it was fighting whether it was shooting what it was like okay if if someone could shoot my mother a while then they could shoot me so now i'm automatically in protect mode okay cool this is what it is but also it becomes a tool for regulation like you you understand like okay like violence is what gives me respect violence is what keeps me from being a prey right and so you just start to normalize it like i always i said this to somebody before i said if you come to new orleans and you're in a park and a gun goes off if there's a bunch of kids in the park i can almost guarantee you they won't run they know the protocol they need to get down look both ways see where the gunshots coming from and then go the opposite way that is normalized that's trauma no kid should understand the protocol to what to do yeah but it's like understood like i even knew it at a young age i would be inside gunshots ring the first time we do we get under the bed wow you know what i'm saying like this this is understood so it's like the you know in school they teach you like what's up rules yeah yeah it's like there's a tornado warning assignment it's like that's what you're doing this is what you do so it's like a survival handbook but in real time and you also see that no age limit is off limits to getting killed wow because young kids are getting young kids shut up yeah like it's happening so you start to understand like okay this this is my environment me seeing guns me seeing drugs prostitution all right cool this okay this doesn't scare me no more i get it all right cool so now i got the i have to now walk around and understand how that feels i have to walk around knowing if i don't do the right things that could be me at a young age right so so you have to educate yourself on violence and particularly and protecting yourself and being aware of what to do and how to get out of situations and how you defend yourself conflict resolution yeah like all of those things are apparent at a young age even even when it comes down to even just like bare fits fights like you understand that if i don't handle this situation right here right now then it's certain things in this neighborhood i will not be able to do you know what i'm saying like i will not be able to go to this store if i let him take him or whoever they are take this dollar from me a 50 cent from me why i want you guys in the store because now every time they see you they take more this is going to take more yeah unless you defend yourself unless you and it's either going to be man it doesn't even worth my time going over but i'm messing with him right right yeah i don't got time to hit that he's going to let me go over there yeah right so it's like it's like the bullying in the school it's like the boy keeps beating you up until you stand up to them and then the thing about the bully is the bully never really wants a tough fight no why would i do something tough when i could go away easier right so you you just start to understand those things like you know what and then you start hitting things in the street like your people tell you stuff like if let's say you go home you you you my uncle you send me to the store and i come back and be like oh man sudden such them took it from me well don't come back in here until you either come back with what i gave you or you coming here bloody right prove me right show me that somebody and now we're gonna go out there and take care of that so now like those are the realities at a young age and it doesn't say okay you're too young for this now it's whenever it happens you got to be able and so now you develop that mindset that mentality from a little bitty to adulthood and what happens is now you see it so much it becomes you oh i know how to handle this situation right here okay boom boom boom and then you now teach that trauma yeah right you replay it you replay it you so 16 maybe like 14 i was homeless so my grand i live with my grandmother my grandmother passed away and i was homeless like literally homeless because my it wasn't that my family didn't want nothing to do with me but everybody has the issues nobody wants to take on another burden you know what i'm saying no matter what it is so i dealt with that for a minute just being homeless and then i moved my aunt who was on drugs and i started hustling out her house you know for survival purposes you know what i'm saying just being able to survive just understand like i learned this from my mom so this is how i'm gonna eat right so school becomes second nature survival becomes present you know this is what has to happen so 16 i go to prison for a tent murder um i got robbed out of some drugs and some guns some money and in the streets it's it goes back to that same mentality where if i let you get away with this now i can't hustle no more then you're gonna do this again to me over and over yeah and not only are you gonna do it but someone else everybody else i'm i'm fair game you'll hear that you have a fair game and then the streets does this there's this code of there's a difference between robbing me and jagging me what's the difference so if i jack you it's yo give me this what you gonna do about it right right right whether it's a gun or not it's mine now yeah what you gonna do about it robbing you is if i have a mask on yeah i don't know what you are right so robin you you kind of get like all right i gotta find out but jacking me it's a bold statement it's like whatever and so that has to be met with some type of consequences you know what i'm saying and not always saying it's right but in the jungle to survive exactly otherwise you gotta move you gotta you gotta move to another thing you're doing yeah yeah nobody in it you don't have time to do all that yeah that's that's why i'm trying to get to the store yeah so i went to prison for shooting him and i got 10 years for attempt murder on robbery um and that's kind of when i'm not gonna say life changed i'm like all right cool i'm in prison like because your mom was there for my mom was in prison and you would visit her so you kind of knew that this is an environment that i could potentially be in one day yeah that's like that's that's kind of understood already yeah like you already understand that at some point on your journey you're going to prison like that's it you're going to prison um you're going to at some point use a gun on several different occasions wow right like this i just understood already um and i know it'd be kind of hard for a lot of people to understand that because if you if you if you've never been introduced to that you'll never you know like if you've never seen a lion hunt then when he eat the gazelle you're like that's so ferocious but you don't understand the rules of the jungle you don't understand the rules of the safari right so it may seem grotesque but in the safari we know that's that's the ecosystem right so in the streets that's just like part of the ecosystem like obviously environment yeah it has to happen what was that like when you knew that you were sentenced to 10 years at 16 were you like was it devastating is it kind of like this is my badge of honor is it kind of like man i was only hoping for a year or two not 10. so i remember uh my great aunt came to court for me um because they wanted to give me 35 years because the dude you know he wasn't again it was a temperature so he wasn't dead um and my aunt she knew the judge wow and she kind of like just told him my story she's like look he's just been going through a lot his mom's in prison my sister passed away which was my grandmother's sister you know he just been out here he's a better kid than that you know he just you know so he actually gave me he came to me and he said you have no other option than to take these 10 years i'm not asking you do you want to take them you're going to say you're going to take anything right and the da was like upset about that right because he has an opportunity to take again you know and i'm not saying he's mad but here's the opportunity to take somebody off the streets in a city who's that's plagued with crime for shooting somebody like he has to go so in my mind i was just like because i had saw it so much i was kind of numb to it you know it was like how much they gonna give me right and i kind of to be honest with you the 10 i was like i quit it's a cakewalk wow you know think about it 16 10 years i'm like i'm already like okay 25 26 i'll be home that's cool wow but let me tell you something's crazy let me tell you something absurd in prison you will hear people say well i could do another 5 10 years oh my gosh yeah i was that person at about age 19 i was like yeah i still got another 10. i could do another 10 year bid why why because you just you don't see no other way right right you kind of have to mentally put yourself there otherwise you go crazy i guess you you kind of feel like one of the things that you don't see a lot in in those communities you got to remember we financially and um they just underdeveloped yeah education financial literacy we under develop coming up in that everybody you see is in survival mode nobody is thriving but the drug dealers the rappers and the people that play sports yeah that's it that's it maybe a couple of musicians yeah and if you can't if you can't play sports or you can't make it rapping then all the power is now in the drug dealers or in the criminals right you see them living the life they want everybody that you see going to work they barely making it right you know people with two jobs you know people with three jobs and all you see them doing is coming home whooped they still struggling so you like i'm not about to do that if i'm gonna live a life at least let me have some fun at least let me do some of the things i want to do and so in in your mind you're like if this is the if this is the alternative well hell with it that's what it is right and so you like you just accept it and so when you accept that life you know what come with it right and so you mentally preparing yourself like all right well you ain't for murder you're in for a timber you ain't for on a robber you ain't here for selling drugs man like well you messed up that what you did wrong so now y'all start swapping stories you know he telling me what he messed up at he tell me what he did wrong he's like okay well i can get better if i just don't make this mistake then don't do this so you're learning right real time from somebody who may have 99 years 240 years life which is the death penalty like you me you may be learning learning what not to do when you're well not to do where they messed up at and remember experience is the best teacher in anywhere in life right what mistakes did you make okay cool that's what you did wrong got you i'm gonna take mental note of that and you gotta think over the course of two three four five six years you sleep on the side of somebody you learning the game and in your mind you just like i'm gonna go home and be better at this than what i was before so you accept the idea of all right cool i could do another 10 years sure i did this 10. i could do another 10. it's in me what's safer for you what was safe for the streets or prison so honestly prison saved me saved you was it was it safer so i heard some stories from you it's not it's not really it's like yeah i got a stab wound right here i think it's on his arm yep i got stabbed right here i got stabbed in my back in prison um i think they both have you know their shortcomings because you got what the thing about prison is you boxed in so it can't run you can't remember that you can't escape from that and when you're in home you can move around you can do some things there's advantages and disadvantages to vote um for me i know prison saved my life because right before that situation i had gotten into somebody i was almost kidnapped like i was literally almost inside of the trunk um and i barely got out of that the skin of my teeth and i literally came to prison i really went to jail like three weeks later you know what i'm saying probably what eventually happened which was going so that charge that i went to prison for either saves me from going to prison for something more serious or getting killed yeah yeah right and that's kind of always again that's always the like prison is always the lesser of two evils that you're willing to accept right because you like at least i ain't gone yeah and you just start to accept it and what was the moment then during prison where you learned about making money so i had got into a fight with two of my homeboys it's just like a verbal fight a physical physical fight yeah yeah i got in the physical fight with two of my homeboys and i go to a solitary confinement mm-hmm and how long a week two weeks nah so i got i sent it to 90 days so it's crazy because this is where i feel like i have this thing that i say that like if you take a picture and you put it in a darkness this is where it develops it mm-hmm right and the darkness is where it develops you want you don't want to expose it too early because it'll mess up but in the darkness is where it develops and when it's time when you know just right it can be one of the most beautiful pictures you've ever seen if you let it develop in the right time prison was my development stage so i'm i'm getting to sell this white guy i'm in a full man cell and it's just bunk bed yep two on each side a little two foot walk away one little bath yeah i've been in this slow for 45 days me and him were just in the cell no one else came in a cell which is this for solitary confinement yeah yeah shared confinement yeah yeah so it's 13 sales on each side four people in each cell an hour a day out i'll win a day out so we didn't even get an hour we got 45 minutes yeah let's take a shower together come back and set up man and for those 45 days we did a lot of talking i don't know my first day in the cell though like i want to beat him up because i come into the cell and the first thing he told me was man y'all playing the wrong game i looked at him mine i just had a fight with some of my homies my bloods like what are you talking about and he was like nah like i don't mean no disrespect and it's something about his tongue that made me just like listen to it i don't know what it was i can't even describe it how are you at this point i'm 17. oh wow one year i'm still a hot here yeah i'm still a hot here you go man yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what you talking about yeah so he was like i think for him that was the first time he had seen that many black men in one spot because he had this look of like confusion like he was confused and he was like man y'all playing the wrong game bro and i was like well if you playing the right game why are you here with me right why are you in here what are you talking about he was like what are you in here for and so one of the things about in prison like you don't just tell people what you're in prison for unless you're enough for something serious because then you wed yeah so i'm like i'm in a flood temperature like don't play with me like so what you ain't here so he was enough for embezzlement he invested eight eight 2.8 million dollars he kept 2 million he paid 800 000 restitution and i was like man you lying and so one thing about prison is you can always show somebody your paperwork which you win there for so when i saw it in black and white it was a different level of respect for me because i never saw two million dollars on my piece of paper and so he said this is why i'm telling you playing the wrong game he was like how much time you got 10 years he was like have you ever seen a million dollars before he was like you'll never see it playing that game playing white game the streets the drug it's the game like you'll never see it playing that game and i kind of just like took that in for a second because up until that point in my life i never met a successful drug dealer right right you mean maybe they're for a year or two but they always get caught you get shot you get something he has still robbed everything yes i was just like that was like one of those moments that like humbled me so he said listen you got to do these three things you got to stop trading time for money i start learning how to make your money work for you you got to learn how to give value to people i didn't learn that message the value part i didn't learn that so i started my business and i was like man i have never heard nothing like that was like scripture to me hearing that right wrong straight again it was you got to learn how to make your money work for you stop trading time for money and give value to people yeah and so he kind of just i'm not even gonna lie like he don't that the way he said it was so much conviction it kind of like mesmerized me like it caught me off goal because i had never heard nothing like that before and so he just started explaining to me about how wealthy people use money and and how the streets is a game that we could never win we were only pawns in the game the house always wins yeah yeah yeah like damn so he just started me realizing that and so i think in that moment i just started looking at everybody from my mama i was like damn i don't know nobody that one everybody had moments but nobody really won yeah and so maybe before he left he told me you need to learn how to do these three things you need to learn how to go to people invest in stocks they the investor really started business and then they invest in real estate and because he stayed stocks first in my mind i wanted to do whatever he was doing yeah and so i had able to say real estate first i would probably be the real estate traveler but because he started with that it just it stuck with me so when he went upstate he went to the so he went to the federal prison he was almost done before so he did 18 months right he was in federal and that was that was another thing that caught me off guard i was like 2.8 million i think you by the time you have 30 years 40 years he had 18 months and he told he showed he shined light on something for me he said even if i was to come back the most they could give me is 36 months at this time so even if he went home kept the 2 million paid 800 the rest of tuition so he did 18 months kept 2 million dollars if he went home he did the same thing again the most they can give him was 36 months based on those federal guidelines right he still would have done less time than me had more money than me right that just blew me away he was still doing something illegal he was doing it illegal yeah but it's just like it was a it was a different level yeah of course you know i was just like i'm playing the wrong game he's like you're risking your life for uh for 30 years yeah you're trying to where i'm risking 18 yeah you're on the wrong level so that's just kind of like that was my moment and so i remember getting shipped upstate to prison so so now i'm in the penitentiary at 18 you're going yeah yeah i'm in prison so i went from the all-new parish prison to like louisiana state prison like prison maximum security and i remember stock stock stocks so i remember the first book i read was uh rich dad poor dad yeah i remember reading and i remember just being like blown away at the idea of what financial religion was and i remember thinking like why nobody never teach me this and so then i remember starting to look at cnbc in prison yeah yeah so prison is an eye please you got a little you got a little tv in there nah nah nah so we got it we ended we got a day room yeah so the day room it has like a probably like a 30 inch tv in there so sports is number one of course movies oh yeah the news is number the new sports the younger the wrestlers right victor newman they like grown men love to watch victor newman right sucker watch cnbc you know i remember watching like jim cramer i was like yo this dude is crazy yeah you know what i'm saying and i remember just telling myself why i don't see no black people up here it's a lot of rich white dudes and they not risking their life right and they was talking about numbers i had never heard of yeah numbers i knew i could never make selling though numbers i knew i could never make robbing nobody and i was just like yeah i'm playing the wrong game so i remember reading rich dad poor dad and then i remember reading about a guy named reginald white reginald reginald lewis and i was like okay because this book was a lot of white guys have all the fun he built a billion-dollar empire off private equity and i was like oh i could play this game and so i would watch cnbc and i i couldn't get it because i couldn't understand it i couldn't they were speaking in a language that was just like i ain't never heard that before and i never forget um they were talking about terrorists and what they are and terrors were simply taxes that people pay for other countries paid for coming you know hustling in the united states and in my mind i said well that's the equivalent to paying draft so a draft is like let's say you live in one hood i live in one hood you want to come hustle over here i said louis you got to pay me some money to come over here that's a terror mm-hmm i'll leave you alone as long as you're paying me long as you pay me i was like oh oh this reminds me of the streets and then a friend of mine named chris kellogg he used to get the usa today and so when i was in prison i used to run numbers i was a bookie and i remember him telling me you always get the sports section why don't you never get the business section you're always looking at um cnbc i was like man nobody looking at the business section he said well you looking at stocks this is the part you need to be looking at i was like yeah sorry him i started reading that from him so every time he would get the usa today i would pay him to give me just the business section and i would just read it and then like it just started clicking to me it reminded me literally of the streets like in order for coming to be great on the stock market they have to have a good product in order for a business to be enough for me a good hustler i gotta have a good product in order for the company to have um great they gotta have great revenues they gotta have a great profit in the streets if i can be a great hustler i have to know how to turn my revenues into profit i gotta have more than re-up money it has to be money that i can re-up with and then go get some more and pay my bills yeah you have to learn that and on the stock market if a company has a good moat a competitive advantage they can beat off their defenders well if i'm a hustler if i got a good product if i got a good price i got good packaging if i'm always out there if i'm always available yeah i gotta move you're like 7-eleven baby it's it's popping you're always open i'm open you know what i'm saying and so i was like yo this reminds me of the street it's no different and so once i was able to make that connection in my mind i said i could be the next one on buff wow like i could be the next one about it so were you teaching yourself and reading books then for the most of those years or did you have someone else in there teaching you was it all self-taught everything was self-taught in prison um kind of like nobody was really on it like everybody was like on sports real estate was the thing like everybody in prison wants to come home and get into real estate really everybody wants and that was one of the things that robert kiwasaki talks about real estate real estate real estate real estate real estate so you know that's kind of like the thing like i'm gonna come home i'm getting into real estate and in prison i learned about real estate investment trust which is reese i was like oh yeah so i can own the real estate without even you know what i'm saying none of that is this is love so everything was me just learning so studying monash for bride studying warren buffett studying bill ackman studying um just so many different people peter lynch just studying them understanding them joelle greenblatt just studying them listening to them like getting my people man send me some books getting somebody i know like yo man tell your people send me these books i'm gonna pay you for it from the comment section and so i was just re-re-re-read i had announced to do i would go to work come back to my dom read and just read and then i would get consumed in it because immediately i saw that there were two different americas there was the america that i knew and that everybody around me had the same problem there was a there was a particular thread that ran through every hood across america every hood that i went to was always the same and then we always look at another part of america and we'd be like yo how do they get that and i was like the reason why in my mind because they have access to a different type of information so is it information or is it an environment so it's a combination of both right so people like to talk about racism a lot and while it does exist i think classism is a completely different animal what is that animal so the classism is there's a group of people no matter your color that has a different information pedigree status that other people don't have it doesn't matter what race or religion or where you're from so how do people get into that class even if they don't fit the majority of the class look like the majority or come from the majority of that class so where it could look like racism yes so and that's the thing like even though racism exists but it exists on a bigger picture at a smaller scale so what this is my introduction to it is understanding that classism says this is how our family is set up look we usually for example your father says listen you need to learn how to invest you need to learn how to start a business but also i want you to meet so-and-so's son i want you to meet so-and-so's brother i want you to meet so-and-so's daughter i want you to go to this school i want you to go to this party with me and so information gets passed down life insurance get passed down wills trusts get passed down those type of things help you get access to room that me or these people over here will never see i want to be in the room wearing that and so i was like that's it yeah that's it the information is what changes everything right and so i had this saying education and information changes the conversation if you change the conversation you can change the compensation if you can change the compensation you can change the realization you feel what i'm saying is because if i can get access to information just something simple as investing when i started teaching my home is about investing i was like yo in order to be wealthy you got to own something you can't you can't be up you cannot create wealth if you don't own nothing if you don't own them you're just a consumer and if you don't own nothing and you're a consumer and you don't teach your kids how to own that then now you've let them inherited being a consumer yeah they have the same education information and repetition that you created and they're going to repeat whatever yeah and if nobody breaks it nobody is a disrupter right no one becomes the disrupter so now it's well i don't i've never seen wealth so i probably can't be wealthy let me just live my life like whatever let me live my life for me let me just keep buying things right let me let me work hard every day and the little time i do get some free cash because i work so hard for it i need some type of self gratification i need some type of reprieve from this i don't care if i can't afford it sacrifice what am i sacrificed for it's hard paying these bills i'm not about to do that and so now christmas becomes the day where we go broke buying liabilities yeah right we we have more month left than money all the time right we are again we are financially deprived because we have no relationship with money whereas this other class says let's say assets are the blood of the oxygen to this right let me teach you about taxes let me teach you the importance of life insurance let me teach you the importance of this right let me teach you the importance of you may not like this person check this out you may not like this person but just because you don't like them don't mean you can't do business with them [Music] right because they have access to such and such that you don't so well over here if you don't like them kill them you don't like them you know have let them know you don't like them let them know there's animosity right there because i wanted to like does it the way that the world is viewed is two completely different ways you feel me and so because of that this set of people until they get exposed to it until this class of people gets exposure everyone will repeat that cycle yeah whereas this class of people if you repeat if you do anything less than what we've done already like what is your problem you know what i'm saying why won't you be great right and so once i understood that i was like i get it i get it right this this is the game changer so when you when you knew you had a year left in prison did you have a game plan was there a mindset of like okay i've been studying for eight eight years plus years nine years and here's my next three moves or were you like i you know obviously if you don't have money you got to work a job for certain periods so you can invest to own something whether it be stocks your own house or real estate or equity in something you've got to make money to be invested or you could borrow it from someone and invest it but then you got to pay something off so what were the next three moves after you got out of jail so the idea was to come home [Music] i was like y'all could be warren buffett right away like i'd be warm but because you know when you're in prison like you paint this picture and you never know who you really are until you jump in the water right cause you gotta remember i went to jail at 16. i'll come home i'm 26 i'm a completely different man at this point the majority of my life has been in prison yeah my developmental years right i've been in prison so i'm amanda's like i cool i went to the halfway house which was um you know what you were six months for a year i had six months so i remember i came home with like forty five hundred dollars and i bought me a grand prix after you got out of the six months mm-hmm you came home with 400. i came calling forty-five hundred dollars and i said the first thing i gotta do is give me a card i don't even know how to drive like i gotta give me a call so i remember my cousin who was a preacher at the time he uh he came got me and i told him he had avalanche and he was like man drive i was like man i don't know how he said if you don't learn not you ain't gonna never learn so i try to avalanche and then the next day he took me to two days later he took me to the license plates so i get my license wow the lady tells me she was like you know i drive but i've been going for 10 years she was like let's give you a like oh my gosh that's crazy that's that's not good wow that's scary she said you deserve it wow i said yeah man so i remember gonna buy my car and i was broke that's how i bought the car and then you're broke now i'm broke you already bought something that's a liability that's something i said you're already losing money i'm like all right cool but i'm like i could get around i don't got an actual body that you got some accessories yeah flexibility you got to get around and so i remember um i got into school i was in baton rouge so i learned how to weld like i had my teeth as this welding trade up so i took that for six weeks took fast track welding so i got certified at that i came home and i was an iron worker so i started building schools paying some power plants schools power plants prisons i was doing all of that and i was like man i still hustling man um going back yo this is too hard this is it's working it's not worth it this is not it you know what i didn't do this for 10 hours i'm not gonna do this i'm about to do this for ten bucks an hour or whatever that's what i was making at the time i was like i'm not gonna do this man this is not gonna give me a warrant buffer fast enough right so i get back in the streets no way got back in the street come on god back mysteries man man even after all that education all that information and knowing it's the wrong thing and knowing that it could get you right back in there mike tyson said something that's amazing man he said everybody got a plan so they get punched in the face that's true you know what i'm saying i got punched in the face i was like man again i'm influenced because i come home your environment is that i see it i see the cause i'm broke i'm like man this ain't it i'm going to work every day and i'm just looking like this ain't no this ain't gonna get it so i remember taking my check it's like six hundred dollars i got me a pound of wheat i said we own oh man we'll start splitting this up it's packing it and dealing it selling weed selling weed to the people at work selling weed to the people at home so i say all right i'm going to be smart i'm not going to hustle all day i'm going to sell weed at work and at home right so i'm doing that and you know i'm making money you know i started getting more e like that was my thing so i started selling weed and ex pills right i was like all right cool like this is this i was selling on the weekends i was off i'll go to the clubs sell x pill i was like all right that's it like i see my vision and in my mind i said if i get a hundred thousand dollars 2007 in 2009 me and my one of my friends in the car together he had three strikes the police pulled us over i had just served him a quarter pounder weed you just gave him yeah so he had it on him he had it on it oh yeah and so the police pulled us over he threw it oh my gosh and the police don't find it oh man but then something made them come back and he finds under the car so not me being a friend i know that my partner can't go to jail for another time he gone so i said man that's mine so i was i was it may sound stupid but in my mind it's like i was smart enough because i knew that i could only get probation because it was my first drug challenge right i already got a temper on robbery one drug charge ain't gonna kill me right in my mind man so he like man thank you bro i'm like man it's all good i ain't tripping so about two months later did you think to yourself like okay now i need to stop this or you like no that's a little probation talk man that ain't nothing man that's probate i just didn't say yes guys that's a probation i'm i already know they can't give me number probation i'm not even mad at that so i remember like three months later they kicked my door oh no eight pounds a week oh they found it ten times ten thousand dollars oh forty 40 um with extended clip on the beam 223 and 100 x pills when the people kicked my doing i remember the man looked at my tv and the stock market was on and he said you watching the stock market and that's what you're doing and immediately in that moment i said out of effed up oh you said this out loud yeah the part about that was i was able to get found not guilty because they kicked my door and with no search warrant right right so it's called fruit of a poisonous street oh my gosh so i was able to get found my guilt on that and the children of my partner we did what's called um the crosby plea saying that i cobbed out only my best interest and then when they went to the full circuit court they was able to throw it away so i got away with a clean slate you know however they louisiana anybody looking at that go look that up so by how long was that process that energy was three months six months nah that was so i came home in 2007 that was 2009. from 2009 to 2012 i was fighting those charges oh my gosh it's a lot of energy it's a lot and it broke me yeah and i remember after that i'm broke again now you got all yeah you've got court fees you got lawyer free whatever it is i start robbing dope dead crazy man so right that's what i know 2012 yeah 2012. i start robbing the other so i'm like all right a friend of mine he used to be with it so he's robbing he's like bro what are we doing like man we robbing doughboys now oh my gosh man this is what we doing we riding dude boys you're not selling you're robbing we just robbing them what they can do here like i was successful for a while and then i almost we almost i almost got killed oh my gosh and i remember we was doing hit doing the situation and i forgot something dude put a 12 gauge to the back of my head and he said all the knockers you know and in my mind i remember this i'm about to go out but my partner was done god bless his soul he said bro look i can't stop you from killing my homie but if you kill him though you're gonna die right with the next best thing you can do is let him go and i promise i'm gonna let you go god was with me wow dude let me go i remember getting out of there and i said though i'm finished i found out guilty twice and this situation happened you're like i can't do it i'm gonna die in the next three years yeah or i'm back to jail for luckily i'm good and i committed to it so but then we go back to welding or something like that i start back doing iron work heavy but you're making 11 bucks a night i'm doing good so now i was still doing a little bit so now i was building stadiums and power plants so i'm making 2500 a week now so i had to build my craft up i hadn't got good and i was getting like 25 out of 32 okay yeah i had to build that up so now i was like man i quit like 25 an hour an hour yeah yeah now i'm bringing home two thousand all the week it's not bad good working man spring break that's good money man i still had it six figures yeah i was making like a hundred thousand dollars it's not bad yeah it's like a lot of money i was good but like i'm a hustler it's just in me but i never went back to the streets that's when i started taking this serious 2014 i said you playing the wrong game bro and i was still the crazy part was on a journey i was still teaching my home is in the street about the stock market oh my gosh i was literally telling them but you weren't doing it yourself yeah i was still investing well you weren't still investing this one made me take it serious when they kicked my door in they froze my bank account they took my truck but they didn't mess with my stocks oh my gosh and i said oh they don't think we that smart all right let me show that one cool yeah so i really just started telling my home industry like hey bro like that's what you should put your money in don't put your money in no put your money right here so they didn't get it invest in invest in something that can give value invested yeah we want nikes all the time we should own nike should on stock at night your own stock and nike all that's got apple iphones just in the beginning i'm like yo like we were at dickies and timberlands that's owned by a company called vfc corp we could own that like we wear louis vuitton moet we drink moet we drink hennessy that's lvmh on the stock market we will go to that's p-p-r-u-y on the stock market we got 18-10 like bro we can own this just like man we go to the stock market crash i'm like if it crashes you just buy more wow and so then like some of them got them some of it didn't but then i started i had to switch it i was like well what happens if you go to jail the deal tomorrow you come on with no money you got money in the stock market what happens you don't want nobody nothing you come up with some money more money and so i started preaching it to my homies and that's when financial literacy really changed my life because at this point i was dedicated to like i knew that the streets wasn't for me no more like i hadn't already been through all the phases i did the 10 years in prison i got found not guilty my life had been online several times i'm still here i was like yo like god got something different for me wow again that's why i said i was developed in the darkness it ain't nothing that nobody can say about the streets that i ain't never dead nothing so for me it's like from that okay i looked at myself like i'm the person who could teach them because just being real somebody go to the street dudes with a suit and tie they're not gonna feel that you ain't been to what i've been through so now i want to represent something different i want to represent wall street in a way that i'm gonna wear my hoodie on my team tops i want my tennis shoes but i got the same information i can i can help you change your life i could teach you the game that they playing if you want to learn it it reminds you of the game and so that's when my life shifted when i started taking this serious and i started saying i'm going to be the first person in my family to build well i'm gonna be the first person in my family to have a trust i'm gonna be the first person in my family to own land i'm gonna be like and i'm gonna teach a bunch of dope dealers how to do the same thing but then my mission got bigger because i realized it wasn't just the dope dealers it was people that was working nine or fives every day that still didn't see a way out so i'm gonna all right i'll teach them to all right let me just let me just start educating my people let me start educating these guys people you know what i'm saying because now we can get this information now we can start saying well it is possible right and when was the first big win i guess legitimate win was it like okay i invest in a stock and i saw like a five to 10x was it so you're teaching and getting paid for your service and you know educating people getting paid for that was it so for me the first i'd never forget this um a friend of mine was in a jam and at this time i had been teaching him since 2014 so maybe like 2016-2017 and one of his spots got kicked in he had no more money he was like bro i got no money i don't got nothing i said man sell the stocks selling stocks and at this time so he's investing in stocks couple years prior they had been like i had like i've always been a leader like i've are they setting up like a titty american yeah like i'm literally walking my homies through the process yeah like i'm walking them through like look we got to get a bank account yeah and then put the money in the money and then put the money in the bank account right and um i remember he was like man i need all your money because i had told him you put the money in the market just forget about it just let it go that money's gone just let it go it's gonna keep making you money it's gonna you your money now becomes your employees you know what i'm saying dollars multiplying that's working for you it's working for you a dollar that ain't moving is a dollar that's losing yeah so if a dollar that's consistently attracting more money that's your employee you're sending them out that'll go get more money they recruiters for you and so and i said something like think about a dual game like if you know this company got some good dope then you know this company gonna be around for a long time and so i remember he sold like eight thousand dollars to stock and it helped him from going to prison because he was able to hire a lawyer to get a lawyer and he hustled since then wow and so it'd be the moments for me don't be about myself it'd be moments like that but i know somebody can say because of this like this helped my life this impact impacted my life this changed my life this made me see my money different this made me feel like this was possible like that's the power of financial literacy that's the power of saying now i got the right information like information would change our whole life and so that was it now for me it was saying like first it was like here's a thought i got a thousand dollars invested i got ten thousand dollars invested i got fifteen thousand dollars invested and so for me i started using the market also as like a savings account yeah because i know that my money wasn't making no money in a sales account so i started buying like index funds yeah it's like all right i'll just buy the index fund and i want my stuff yup that'll be my that'll be my savings account and then i'll do individual stocks for my real investments so if i can get eight to ten percent on an index fund that's better than 0.101 in a savings account all right cool that's my that's my savings account then and it started it's a mind game with me if i got the money in the index fund and i'm using the index fund as a sales account as long as i see the money working for me i'm not going to touch it right and the savings account what happens is i see the money i can take it out i can take it out easy right and so it's all of those little tricks and those little nuances that make us be like why ain't never learned this and so you start to realize that the reason why the elitist can't teach financial literacy to certain peoples because then they lose customers [Music] a lot of wealthy people can't teach financial literacy to poor people because those are the biggest customers who else gonna be the consumers the lion can never tell the zebra the giraffe how to get away or the gazelle how to get what are you gonna eat if the lion tells the zebra gazelle how to get away they're gonna tell everybody else not a lion no longer the king of the jungle the king of safari it's a vegan right you know what i'm saying nothing against veganism but it's why would i teach you how to be a financial predator financial predators need financial prey so you look in my community now you see check cash in places what does the check cashing please do the check cash if i get 100 you got to get a check cash and pays 150 that's taking away money from you right and the reason why check cashing place is gonna always have be prevalent in the hood because people have no relationship with money so they said that the average person spends a dollar and 25 for every one dollar they make wow you know what i'm saying right like that's horrible so you have more people living above the means you have more people like saying i gotta get this i gotta get that and one thing i've learned like even about wealthy people what i love is that there is never um i have to have this it's about assets first saving second spin was left right and hoods the other way around is spin first bills if i save if i have enough to save then i might save until i find something else i won't buy yeah you know what i'm saying so it's always like for me and where i'm at now my journey is how do i now make financial literacy prevalent in everybody that comes from the class where i come from because i know some poor white people too absolutely yeah yeah so it's like how do i now teach them the importance of financial literacy and so now we feel like we can have leverage in the game because now you know you tell us like i get pride of somebody saying when i bought my first stop that's the power of owning that first stock is a game changer yeah because you're talking people we never owned in a day in their life so my motto is always helping the culture build well one share at a time one shirt at a time yeah one instead of being consuming everything start owning something even if it's one stock one index fund you know a piece of real estate from a real estate investment um you don't have to buy a whole house you know you can buy twenty dollars you're a stock you know and let that work for you that it worked and then over time what what i know about human nature is progress breeds like addiction absolutely you know what i'm saying like you start seeing something like what we get more of this you go to the gym you see one little muscle yeah it's funny i saw um you know i gotta i get uh dividends every month from a real real estate that i'm involved in right okay so i get a this morning right before you came in i just opened up my email and there was three notifications of different payments from three different real estate um properties i'm invested in yeah that i invested in a few years ago right and every month i get a check from money that i invested in years ago that money's not sitting in the bank just like depreciating in value with inflation i'm not blowing it on some car or something i got a car it's great right i don't need more clothes right i'm putting it in things that can bring me passive income to then pay my bills yes and then the extra cash that i have i put it into more assets to help me pay my bills hire more people my team and help serve my mission and i think that's uh you know i see that i'm like man i wish i would have put more in yeah you know you always think that's always it i should have bought more than stock i should buy more of that real estate and you can always get started now putting more in yes what should be people thinking about when it comes to investing then how do they know what to invest in and to not because you can invest in something and lose all your money yes so what approach to give to people there so i always say the first thing is and i say this and i want people to understand this invest in what you understand so if you wear nikes yeah you should be looking at apparel brands right nike lululemon because you understand that right if you a workout person then you should be looking at like planet fitness things like that like if you are a tech person if you use an apple phone you should 100 beyond looking at apple right if you're a car person like but one of the things i like now is fintech financial technology so everybody uses paypal or square right that is the way money is changing the way we're using money is completely different now so i think everybody should be investing in fintech right now 100 but i look at it as so every investor has what's called an investor identity like which you're willing to risk your risk tolerance what companies you're more familiar with if you're a doctor then you know more about medicine so you should be in biotech pharmacies healthcare you should that should be your thing if you are again a person who's in software then cyber security software that's what you're going to be strong at and that's where your strong points are i remember warren buffett said for a long time he didn't understand technology so he didn't buy technology he didn't buy apple stock until like 2017. he's like i don't understand i don't have a computer i don't use it yeah any music right so i learned that from him he says i put things in a too hard box if it's too hard for me to understand i don't i don't do it and what i love about investing is it's not an iq sport it's not about who has the biggest iq at all because it's mostly about how do i stay in my circle of confidence and what i understand because that's what gives me that advantage whatever i under like for me it's banks like i love banks jpmorgan goldman sachs love it fintech love it still dealing with like i love money i'm a hustler you know i mean i love that and so that's why i'm like heavy at sure you know what i'm saying but i'm not a i'm not a bible pharmaceutical person so i just stay away from that yeah how do i stay away from it right so the the the easiest thing is like wherever you work at like look around wherever you shop at look around every time i buy a product i'm looking at who made it so i can go look that up see if it's a public company if it's a private company right if it's public that means we can all invest into it if i can invest into it i want piece of it you know what i'm saying just to keep it simple we don't even have to make it hard right you don't have to be warren buffett out the gate right you don't have to be that like warren buffett didn't become warren buffett until 20 years 30 years in right right you know what i'm saying so you gotta figure out who you are as a person who you are as an investor that takes you to that next level do you have a strategy where every month you're automatically putting money away into investments or when you get a chunk of money then you're putting a certain percent into it what's your mindset around investing in terms of how often you do it how frequently you're putting yeah so every time i get money at least fifty percent of it goes everywhere really yeah yeah i'm heavy with it i could do a lot with less yeah like i don't live my life like that i literally and i'll say it's on camera i only have like ten thousand dollars sitting in the bank mm-hmm my life if something happens to me my life is not set up in the way well i need a lot of money on hey mm-hmm and you can always sell stock nothing you know so for me it's i do three things every time i get some money i invest with my daughter first and then i invest in myself and then i see what else got to be paid right right so even with investing for myself and i'm putting money in the market i'm sometimes just putting it in my account so it's available for me to use the right time when the time permits right so every week i'm putting money in okay let me put this money into my account then i have separate accounts because i got portfolios that are designed to do different things for me right so i have a dividend portfolio whereas everything in that portfolio is about me having businesses that pay dividends so i got costco t-ro price home depot um or real to companies like that that it's just designed for me to get dividend yeah so even if it's only 20 30 bucks a month that's something right that's it and so i look at it as okay this will this will be passive income 39 i won't need this until i'm 59 60. right it keeps reinvesting inside reinvesting so now they buy me more shares of themselves all right cool and then one portfolio i use for group stock so all right this is what my apples at my fintech company my paypal and ferns and things like that because now i'm gonna get a lot of growth there so i'm taking more risks right here right and then there's an option portfolio i have i trade that so now i got three portfolios up to do three different things when they have three different agendas and i got a raw diary yeah you know what i'm saying that that's tax you know for tax advantages so that's financial literacy and life insurance yeah yeah got whole life insurance right so understanding just understanding how the wealthy play the game i just bought 40 acres of land right i said i'm gonna create agriculture why because agriculture gets more breaks than anybody you know what i'm saying about 40 years of land free and clear it's mine i'm going to turn into a farm right grow organic food organic vegetables i got water well on it wow right all right cool let's do that tax advantages for this anything comes off that land i can i get breaks on that so it's me sitting back saying this is how the wealthy play the game of life not in survival mode but in offense the moment you can switch from survival mode to offense the game changes the more aggressive team in the game the more aggressive boxing in the game the more aggressive like that's when the game is played again class of people are used to life dictating them i'm gonna take the punches i didn't come right how are you doing man you know i'm making it yeah the responses be different man what's up how you feeling man i'm making it man well you asked somebody what's up man just closed out on the deal yeah you know got a couple business meetings like i love attacking life and it don't have to be you don't always have to be going the way you want as long as you're attacking it every day i get upset yo i got an opportunity to go attack right every i got an opportunity to change something to make sure turn my last name into an asset right turn my last name into asset that's cool like on my 24 hours that's the goal like the person who can own their 24 hours can create freedom right that's the difference between financial freedom and then financial independence what's the difference so financial independence is saying i now can make money for myself i don't have to worry about my job i don't have to worry about none of that i can create the cash flow that comes to my house financial freedom says money is no longer an issue big difference because even someone who can create money for themselves still doesn't have freedom all the time right you can be an entrepreneur and be a slave to the business you you build yourself a job you build yourself a job yeah right but financial freedom says your money is not even an issue no more right and that don't even have to be a lot right whatever you that's why i feel like some people um have this fantasy of entrepreneurship as like this ideal lifestyle where i don't think people understand the weight of being an entrepreneur and how long it actually takes i mean you hear great stories and people are like oh i built this thing and then sold it for a billion dollars i usually took 10 15 20 20 years yeah and so many punches in the face in the gut and ups and downs um but most businesses fail after a few years and the ones that succeed a lot of the entrepreneurs are just working really hard to pay themselves uh a salary and take more responsibility and pressure taxes you know insurance all these things they got to pay until they learn to break through yeah and so it's not like the sexiest thing it takes time and energy and a real persistence i remember like this before the show i asked you i said outside of consistency yeah like what was one of the things and you was like man no and i was like this nine years yeah like most people quit year one year too like nope this is too much for me i can't deal with it it's pressure right but there's this thing about getting up and let me say that i don't think there's nothing wrong with anybody working a job because i don't think entrepreneurship is for everybody i don't think it is man right but i do know that building wealth is for everyone absolutely and you can take your money or make it from your job and invest it so it's working for you should be your biggest investor and that's what you were doing that's what i did but i feel to that like i think that everybody should at least once in their life go all in on something something that you just believe in that's living to me because for me i always i don't need motivation because when i look at my life my motivation is and i'll never go back to that again my motivation is saying that i have a daughter that i never want her to experience that life right so getting up every day knowing that i can change my family knowing that we are now in a time where we've never had the opportunity like we have now and if i don't take advantage of that opportunity when it's time for me to go i'ma feel real messed up about that right you know what i'm saying absolutely because i don't it's the difference between never giving an opportunity and getting the opportunity and never taking advantage of living man absolutely how has mental health played into your life with the uh the journey of learning how to heal so much trauma pain memories experiences not only as a kid not only is in prison but six seven years ago when you were still doing a lot of things that were you know against the law and out of integrity and how do you learn to emotionally heal so much i'm still healing yeah i just told you i got to get your book man i got to get that i'm still healing mm-hmm man i just it's crazy because i just had a moment last night i was talking to my mother and we are the old kid relationship because she still got a lot of trauma and pain that she deal with and it's hard for me to [Music] attempt to heal run a business and be aware that she has healing to do right like that'd be a lot so um just last night i was like i can't take this man i can't do this this is i can't do all this you know what i'm saying it's because i was trying to deal with her situation emotionally and rationalize the logic then deal with okay i gotta do this this this i'm trying to do this and it was just a lot and i had to step back and me my me and my daughter's mother have a great relationship and i told her man healing this was my exact word last night i said man healing is a lifelong process i said man this stuff take forever should i just thought she was gonna heal overnight your daughter said this my daughter's mother gonna say right your daughter is not my daughter's mother i see my healing is a lifelong process yeah she said what you thought you just wanna heal overnight and it's it's understanding emotionally so there's three phases in my life well more than three but you gotta realize there was me before prison just seeing viewing observing seeing the violence like i'm not only telling my mom in shock but also overdose right so rationalizing that me being homeless for a couple years of my life at a young age then me going to prison adapting to a completely different lifestyle then coming home as a grown man nobody's going to give you handouts so now i have to realize who i am as a free man a free grown man right then in that process of learning who i am i'm fighting cases again right and then we go to okay well this is not it i'm just gonna you know get into robbery because the only leverage i feel like i have in life at these points is leveraging my life right the only leverage the only fighting thing i the only like i don't i don't know at the moment how to leverage information and knowledge the only thing that i knew that i had was my life so okay freedom of prison i mean prisoner of death that's the only thing i can so it's it's now breaking away from that and now i'm being a leader being an influential person influential person in my communities around the people not accepting that because no one teaches you how to be a leader you want to teach you how to do it you got to learn that on the fly you got to learn okay i can't say this i can't say that and then social media is something different and so i'm learning that yeah i'm still learning how to heal i'm still learning i'm still praying more you know i gotta just talk about like we gotta get back with the therapist right just so i can bring them yeah you know what i'm saying i got into journaling like getting these thoughts out of my head listening to stuff like atomic habits and you know just stuff like that so i'm i'm still healing and i know it's going to be a lifestyle process because you gotta remember i haven't been shot before i haven't been shot at i don't know yeah i'm shooting and honestly if you shoot somebody you deal with that all your life what does that feel like man i still have nightmares about that yeah you know what i'm saying like in the moment you feel like i did the right thing justified you justify it right you you feel like man it had to be done like you know what i'm saying and i think maybe the difference in a lion when he eats a gazelle is it's on to the next one right but human nature comes in you got to live with the consequences [Music] almost killed that man you know what i'm saying like when you deal with that and and it never goes away you know what i'm saying like it never goes away and part of you you know i'll have like right now like i don't even want to be around guns right you know i'll be like man i'm good man i'm gonna go to the gun right right like it's not worth it nah it bring me it bring me it bring me back to the place of my life where i was and i feel like the only way for me to move forward is sometimes you got to like just attach yourself from certain environments certain things so i'd be like nah man i honestly don't even like listening to music that has a lot of i talk a lot against the talk cause one i lived it and it brings in a different emotion in me like nah if i'm gonna be here i don't want to get into that emotion and i know with music most people are telling their story i don't want to relive that story right that's part of my healing trying to create a new story yeah so that's part of my healing i'm always healing man what do you think would be the uh the three big things you need to take on or let go of in order to get to a completely different level in your life one year from today so when when i see you in a year in atlanta or in l.a yeah and you're like i did these three things or i let go of these three things and it took me to another level of financial abundance another level of emotional freedom and healing what would those things be three things that i would let go uh or take on a take on um one is more mentoring mentoring more people no me getting you getting more mentorship yeah because i think that um life i think everyone should has a mentor because we should always be learning yeah right and it doesn't always have to be with finances it can just be with life experiences so i think one of the things for me is like finding like i had a mentor now i think i'll groom a little bit so i'm ready to get another one so one is mentoring um that i would love to take on um two is truly cleaning up the way i eat because you are 100 a reflection of what you eat absolutely right so i already don't drink i don't smoke but my eating habits not the best yeah and the third one would be actually just um sitting still like i move around so much in the process of doing this and doing this i think one of the things that's important for us is to sit still i pray a lot already and i think when you sit still you can get clarity and you can get instructions right i think we move around so much we don't get to get the instructions i think everybody has an assignment right everybody here has an assignment if you move around so much you can never hear the assignment people always say follow your passion follow your passion i think it should be follow your purpose because the assignment is attached to your purpose and it's not to get real spiritual or crazy on people but i just feel like the only way you get that assignment is you sit down and talk to the person who gave it to you right um your creator i said yeah you said i want to talk to a person who gave it to you and the only way you could do that the only way they can talk to you whoever it is is when you're sitting still so for me it would be getting like more mentors i want to have a mentor all the time because what it reverts back to where i came from it was ogs that taught you a lot of stuff and they only could teach you what they knew so you became a reflection of that and then if you didn't have an og to tell you something you freestyled it yeah and the freestyling it cost you a lot a lot of mistakes a lot of hard times a lot of money and some people who freestyled it cost me their life so for me i take on those same principles and said okay like not only am i a leader not only am i influential but my goal is to be a person who can change or be a vessel for change and because it's all new to me i meet somebody who's already took on that journey yeah i'm always talking about investing in coaches and mentors and uh i have a coach in pretty much every area of my life yeah and i think it's it's hard to think we can do something on our own if we've never done it before we've never done it before it's hard to think that we can do it consistently when things get challenging and hard uh without some type of you know emotional support from a friend an accountability buddy a coach a mentor whatever it is whatever you want to call it i'm a big fan of investing in it so you're accountable to that time with that mentor or finding some skin in the game with the coach or mentor and if you don't have the money right away then you could find mentors without investing that but finding other ways to add value and i think that's um such a massive massive part of my growth and my success is being around the right people yeah it changes like i understood at first i at first i saw my only child so a lot of me is always i mean i got this i could do this i don't need nobody to teach me that i can do this you know like you you know it'd be hard but as you start to put that ego to the side and something like i can learn something from that person this person can teach me something let me humble myself to learn this lesson because if i learn this lesson from them that's less hearty and pain i gotta go through it and learning from that person speeds up my process absolutely there's so many things i learned from my three older siblings that i didn't repeat you know um and i mentioned before my brother went to prison when i was eight i went to the prison with my family almost every weekend to visit in the visiting hour in the visiting room and i was like i don't want to be here you know i want to make sure that i don't go down this path i started doing things when i was 12 11 to like 12 and a half 13 where i started doing petty stuff i was stealing like candy bars and cigarettes like whatever i was just like as a high and i did it almost every day for probably a year year and a half i had to steal something and it's it's crazy to think but i remember getting caught once and i got complimented i didn't even cut my store right i remember getting caught and feeling like and i was kind of hanging out with the wrong group just doing things that i wasn't really proud of myself little stupid stuff i remember thinking like if i keep doing this here's where it could go maybe it doesn't happen the next year or two but three four five years if i keep doing these same actions i'm gonna get more of these results i'm gonna feel bad about myself i'm gonna get caught i'm gonna hurt other people along the way and who knows what consequences could come from that so i remember that moment was like i'm never stealing or doing anything like this ever again like i need to change my environment i didn't change my mindset around this and i like begged my parents to send me away to a school around kids that i um private school they sent me to a private boarding school yeah begged them to send me this place to get me out of the environment what you're talking about with your daughter like sending it to a class of an environment that speaks differently that has a different you know mindset everything behaviors all that stuff important even like that environment is so crucial like even just being around so like for me being around people that understand the importance of investing not only just not just yeah not just spending their money but investing investing the money investing in their personal development investing in their business investing in teaching them how to run businesses and that like being around them made me be like damn i got to invest in myself too right right like and it's something we take for granted and being around people who understand that a certain amount of money isn't what you may see though that's a lot of money somebody like no i may spend that on investing myself i'm just spending on buying assets like understanding that people who build businesses are different like damn like that's you build that business like okay those conversations change your life no it's environment if i mean if i'm in the hood about my community and i'm telling people about investing and doing this and now and all they want to do is party and drink then no matter how positive i am at some point i'm gonna say this ain't working man let's go party and drink right all right cool if you're around people that they complaining about the bills and the bosses and they working every day then that's not an environment that's conducive to you being successful that's not an environment that's conducive to change [Music] it's only it's only so long that you can flirt with the other side of what you want that you become that yeah and like if you want to be healthy if you want to work out you it's only so long you can work chill with people that won't go to all your buffets all the time or you'll be like you know what i'm not going to eat this too you got to change your identity in the process too evolution yeah you got to change the identity and you know say i don't do these things that's not part of my identity yeah i read this book i can't think of what it was and it said uh there were two there were two people that were uh attempting to quit smoking cigarettes one person said went off the cigarette they said yo i'm trying to quit i'm trying to quit smoking i'm good and the other person said no i don't smoke anymore the person who said i doesn't smoke i don't smoke anymore immediately change their identity the person that said i'm trying to quit smoking still associated themselves with smoking so it's only a matter of time before they say wait let me hit the cigarette one time try and turn because i'm trying to but it's not and so that is important when you decide i'm not this is not what i do anymore it's not my identity then you just have to keep saying that every time it tries to come up there that's not my identity doing that it's part of who you are you change that you evolve and the evolution and who you are should be ongoing because who i am today i won't be that person in 90 days or six months some aspects of me have changed they're going to change and i want that i i've i've never let people especially on this part of my journey hold me to one layer of who i once was man you used to do this i know i used to because i wasn't this person i'm not that no more i can't be that in the mood i have way more to lose now than to even be that or attempt to be that yeah i'm not that right and so that's what like that's what's like i look at me now and see the change i look at me now and say like i appreciate where i'm at now but more importantly i appreciate like where i'm going i appreciate the kind i appreciate the people i'm around right now i remember i was talking to a close friend of mine and he got into he didn't get into nothing something had happened i was like brother need me you know i'm here he said i would never put you in that situation i love you too much to bring you there that i wouldn't love you as a friend if i did that that showed me like i'm around the right people i'm running because i come from an era of people where the only way you prove loyalty is through i'm willing to die for you i wanted to go to jail for you crazy i'm willing to do this for you i wouldn't risk my life for you i'm willing to leave my family to show you i'm loyal to you right i'm willing to you know go to prison to show you i'm i'm willing to hold this block down and show this block that i'm loyal i'm gonna leave my same family who i say i'm protecting and providing for i'm ready to leave them the you know what i'm saying like so it's that change in me now it's like what oh i don't care about that that that that's that's that's the change i want to represent yeah you know what i'm saying that's the yo like you you really want to take care of your family are you are you willing to go to jail yeah that's not taking care of that because the same people who you are defending them from you've now left them too mm-hmm right you found them so like are you really so for me it's it's it's teaching the financial literacy but most of the evolution the mindset shift because they can look at me and say man i know trap was in the streets because he talked it the way i talking he he has the intricate details that only somebody in the streets know if he could do that man i know i could do it and then i come like yo it ain't easy right it ain't easy but if you want it and then now you know we've heard a million times like what is the why what is the purpose for me it's so much bigger than myself i feel like your purpose has nothing to do with you like you got this school of greatness school of grade is not about you it's about how many people you're going pack with this like you're nine years in right if it was about you you wouldn't have made it nine years retired man you got tired yeah personally you got burped i don't want to do this no more but you know every time you turn them cameras on that conversation you have gonna change somebody's life that's what keeps you going every time i cut on something i go do an interview i'll talk i get on instagram i know i'm gonna change somebody like no that's great i'm gonna tap into just a little bit different and if i can do that that's one person i kept out of prison there's one person that i made him look that death a little bit different there's one family i made say you know what i won't be here for my little one so let me do something different right that's bigger than me man that's powerful man that's bigger than me man what um when did you uh are you still doing welding no man i haven't or when was the last time you did that so i walked away from my job in 2019 man yeah is that because you were making you got enough saved up and invested is that because you were doing other things what mm-hmm so 2019 i was building a power plant in lake charles louisiana um it was the sass all chemical project one of the biggest projects in the southeast region now um i walked away from the job to be educated to be an educator yeah to teach to teach i walked away and i said well they wanted me to shave my beard yeah you're like nah i'm not doing it i was like i'm not doing it i had this thing for 2002 man i'm not doing that man and it was like what you mean you're not going to shave your beard i'm like man it ain't it ain't worth it and i remember that's why i said i think everybody should have one thing they go all in on so i looked at my account side we got money invested pretty good let me just focus on it and let me focus on teaching people and i said i quit i walked away from it and i said that enough saved and invested into the last what a year two years maybe probably six months six months yeah yeah probably six months yeah depending on what i did i remember calling my daughter's mama like look somebody quit this job wow so instead of me sending you five six hundred dollars a week let me just pay for a nursery because my daughter was like maybe four at the time yeah three something like that i was like let me just pay for nursery until i figured this out i said i ain't going back to the streets and i ain't going back to that job i said i'm all in on me i'm gonna create change i believe in it i know this could change the hood she was like you believe it i believe in it you know and so 2019 um i quit my job it was my last time and i've been building this from the travel to wall street i've been building a wall street traffic brand ever since came with a lot of ups and downs i never turned my back on it right and i realized i knew that it was going to change my life while changing a lot of people's life and i was i was cool with that i i bet on it right i bet on it and i i ain't never prayed as much in my life what's the biggest myth around money that you've learned about since then since kind of going in on a business and your own thing um one of the biggest things i always said is that um i've never i've never met a person working two or three jobs that actually was doing better because all you did was sell more time sleep less stress more like that i think that is one of the biggest myths is saying i got to work harder i don't think getting where you want to go at in life is not about actually working hard right and i get it i mean if you got if you're already in debt you've got bills you've got kids you've got responsibilities you've got these things because you've been choosing those behaviors consistently for years you've gotten yourself into a hole uh that is probably harder to get out of yeah so how do you switch that mentality of like i hear what you're saying trap it's not about working that extra two jobs but i got all these bills that goes i got kids i got this i got that i got my rent food i'm already taking government sup right subsidies i'm doing these things what's the next move to start getting me out of working harder and working smarter so i think now what happens is we now have to start saying okay i always say that we can um the problem is hard to identify the problem is hard identified it's the lie that's hard for us to see and it's saying that all right i don't have the money right now that's the problem why don't you have the money it's the lie i don't make enough no well you got bad money habits right you're making better decisions you're making better consuming and it compounded yeah right so and for me and just to get to that question is saying okay so now let's lay out the outline i think one of the things we fail to do is plan like what is the strategy to get us out of this situation and if we in a bad situation sacrifices got to be made right so okay cool how do we get out of this situation all right cool so maybe you do take on another way maybe you do take on another job right okay that's cool how long are we taking on that job and why are we using this other job specifically for paying off debt or getting me out of this hole because the objective is not to work the two jobs right or i would say the world we in right now that smartphone is so amazing so powerful so find a way to create some passive income from that like it is it's limitless yeah right like we are the situation that most people are in they didn't get in it overnight so the goal shouldn't be how do i get out of it overnight it should be a plan over time it should be a plan over time this is the reason why people who scam will always have a job is because it's always easy to sell somebody in a desperate situation how to get rich quick [Music] it's always easy to sell somebody on how to get rich quick when in a desperate situation the worst place you want to be in life is desperate it's the worst place you won't be at right it's desperate because you're willing to actually put yourself in the worst situation to try to get better yeah and nine times out of ten it only gets worse so for me it's saying like let's really take it back and that's one of the things i love about the stock market is i've learned how to run my life like a business not my business like my life it's ran like a business like i understand okay this how much came in this month this how much money i'm spending not in my business in my life it's how much my bills cost right this is how much full intake cost right this is how much i'm giving myself for you know miscellaneous things because i'm not i'm i think some people feel like i don't got to spend no money on no let's be realistic you're going to spend some money right that's going to happen but let's not be abusive with it because money is the tool yeah money is a tool not a goal money is a tool not a goal if we use the tool for what it's for it leverages our life right what's it for it's for to give you leverage it's for to build wealth it's for to buy back time it's for to give you access it's four it's for to give you opportunity i always say that i use my money for three things access information and assets that's the triangle man that's the phil jackson triangle huh yeah information access and access why is because the information and the access allows you to become the asset you become the asset you become not investing in assets well both so investing assets but the biggest asset you are the most valuable assets of your knowledge your experience your asset your last name your credibility your relationships biggest asset no one can never take that away from you so you use the money to put you in a situation to get information and buy access you can do those two things you become the asset mm-hmm i sit down and talk to louis i tend to talk to you every day right we build a relationship i know who you know now right right you'll be like you know what man i know i know somebody should talk to me she's talking about wall street man perfect person for you right i wouldn't have got that without building that rapport i got access what's up lou how you feeling man christmas man let's send them something man let them know it's all love man that's a little trap thing about it man how you doing man you good good cool man i like trap cool i built i built something here you got a party man i got a christmas party you should come to l.a cool now the information that i can provide is valuable when i get in the room that i got access to i'm an asset i'm an asset to you now mm-hmm travels about investing trapped me know something i don't know i mean now we swapping value so people need to learn how not to go in a situation and say how much money can i make how can i provide value to you yeah i do that all the time how can i be of value to you man you know what i do what can i do to help you out right like how can i be of assistance how can i take some of the sweat equity of you how can i make your situation a little bit better or based off what i know i become the asset we can become assets in every situation we're in that's plan offense [Music] that's plan i'm all about full court pressure what about leveraging this thing called life man because there's people out here making hundreds of millions of dollars they didn't do that on their own you know there's people living their life they could never imagine they didn't do that on their own they knew somebody at some point that plugged them with somebody that put him in a room that put him on a phone call that helped them get that role that gave some information that changed their life that's how they get done yeah and you know how you get in the room when it happens talk about it you get there by adding value to people that want you to be in that room because you've offered value in some way the value doesn't need to be you're the smartest most talented person ever the value could be i just feel good around this world this person's got a positive energy yeah good attitude like yeah let's just bring them along they make me feel better that's value it could be he's got a skill set he's got some years of experience in an industry that i want to learn about let's bring him in the room and i think when you can bring that value uh when you can learn a new skill and have that some type of value bring it to someone who doesn't have it oh yeah they're going to give you access oh yeah that access is going to give you opportunities every time you've got to be willing to move into those every time and that's why i said in the beginning when he told me stop trading time for money and start making money work for you that was like damn all right but when he said bring value to people that's it i didn't learn that part later on that's why i didn't get that till later like oh that's what this mean yeah like not going into a situation man i wonder what i can get out of this nah what can i bring that 100 that's why i always when i'm doing my show i'm always thinking how can i serve the person how can i give them a platform how can i tell their story in a better way how can i help promote whatever they have going on and i don't ask for anything in return not until i really have something like okay i've got a book out yeah something we can do together yeah but usually my goal is like how can i add 10 times the amount of value to someone up front to when then it's a no-brainer to want to add a bag a little bit to me like i don't even need 10 times back it's just like just to say of course like you gave me so much value why would i not promote this why would i not make an intro you've built so much credibility with the person by adding value that they appreciate it and if a person doesn't appreciate it and they're only a taker then maybe that's not the right person you want to be in relationship with yeah and not everyone's going to be able to pay you back something all the time but it it should be come back to you in some way the more you add value to people in general it's going to come back it's reciprocated yeah it had like i feel like so we all are cups and if i'm always pouring i want to make sure that i'm pouring into people that at some point they can pour back into you know what i'm saying because if i'm always pouring then i'm gonna be like insufficient wow right and so i'm gonna burn out i'm gonna be depleted and then i can't finish my journey so i even in bringing value you also need to be around people that see value in what you do or what you bring to them because now it's easy to be like ah man trap boom like that helps and then also too just understanding how like i take my time to one of the things prison taught me was understanding people yeah like everybody operates in their own unique way i never expect people this is one of the biggest mistake that people have expecting someone to handle a situation the way that they would right yeah i've learned that the hard way many times many times yeah you you are you yeah so for me it's always what's that person's perspective hmm that's why they handled that like that it's okay and appreciate it mm-hmm don't take it personally man i did that for too long i did that for too long man too many nights yeah being frustrated taking something personally yeah now i'm like nah it's cool because that's their way of handling yeah now you know it's information data do i want to be in partnership with this person in the future you know what do i need to do next time yeah that's it and that has that has truly helped me on the journey like learning from like i'm good at in taking information yeah and using it because i know that life is something that keeps on revolving it's gonna keep happening every day we know jim rohn one of my favorite people said we know that the sun is gonna come up and this is gonna do what it's gonna go down the ocean comes out what happens it sure comes back in life is gonna keep doing that so every situation i've been presented with it's only a matter of time before i'm presented with it again may not be to the same extreme right to the same extent there's some familiarity about that situation yeah we got to go through those lessons to create wisdom for the future you know what i mean um you've got an amazing story my man and i'm excited about everything you're creating and everything you've overcome i think it's it's easy to stay stuck in the past patterns that we're familiar with it's easy to go back to familiarity it's really hard to break the mold and create a new identity so i acknowledge you for me breaking the mold man for creating breakthroughs uh again i don't think anyone would celebrate the things you did but i acknowledge the growth the wisdom the lessons and the journey you're on to be of service to people in certain communities and cultures that maybe struggle with finding these types of breakthroughs so i really acknowledge the assignment that you're on right now and uh in the journey you've been on my man i appreciate it you've got um you know powerful social media accounts uh wall street trapper if you just google that you'll see it everywhere on twitter instagram facebook wallstreettrapper.com yeah with more resources information education on all this stuff for people yeah how else can we be of support to your mission and where can we connect with you the best yeah so right now i'm pushing um you know the wall street trap on instagram um i'm working on a show right now called a well connect man well connect the world connect wealth connect yeah wealth connect um so i'm probably dropping that first of the year um i just want to take financial literacy it's another level to for those just be a voice for those who need it who i resonate with right i want to my goal is to make financial literacy a household thing yeah like that's my goal like i i want to be the voice that says this is not over my head this is just my cup of tea right here right right right so um working on the wealth connect i'm definitely going to be dropping that soon so and that's it right now pushing that you know i'm going to drop a lot of stuff on youtube but that's my big project coming to 2022 the world connect wealth connection that'll be you just go to wall street traveler.com and you'll learn more about that yeah so i'm posting some stuff on it on the ground right now but it's definitely on um thetraveluniversity.com thetrapperuniversity.com i like it man i like it um it's a question i ask everyone towards the end of the show it's called the three truths so imagine it's your last day on earth many years away from now and you've lived out your assignment you've accomplished your goals and dreams you've created the financial freedom and helped others do that in situations that you grew up in and beyond you know you did everything you wanted to do but for whatever reason it's your last day yeah and you only get to leave behind three lessons to the world that you've learned and then i'll have access to trapper university or the wealth connector that's all that's all gone for whatever reason it's on to the next place with you but you have three lessons you get to share i call it i call it the three truths what would be those three truths i like that um one is live your life with no regrets um that's twofold because in living with no regrets i would want you to say that in every moment i'm willing to live in it i think we don't we don't appreciate the moments as we should right so living with no regrets um two it is okay to say no no is a complete sentence yeah right um and three find your purpose what happens to us when we don't find our purpose we walk around lost yeah we live a unfulfilled life i get up every day because i know that i'm walking in my purpose so i get up every day happy i go every day and i say y'all get to do something that everybody don't get to do even there's entrepreneurs who aren't in their purpose they have a business right maybe a successful business maybe they're making money but they want being fulfilled right when you find your purpose you find fulfillment i'm fulfilled i'm still healing i'm still growing but i'm fulfilled because every day i know i get up and i get to change somebody life every day teaching educating um showing humility um letting people learn from my past me learning like every day i get to walk in my purpose and for that i get the level fulfilled life and i've said this i said yo i know i got a lot of more stuff to accomplish but man i know that my day was to come i know i could say i finally got it i found it and the longer we're here the note the more i feel that you'll get more assignments added to what you got going on here's another assignment here you know there's like a teacher are you doing good here's another assignment yeah here's another assignment they know the creator knows you can have you can handle it you can take out all you can take it on the mow you you walk into that purpose man your life changes and i'm speaking this and i get emotional in the way because my life is unrecognizable from three four years ago unrecognizable because every day i was walking around just in a dark hurt painful abandoned you know all i knew was violence all i felt like i felt like i was empty to transition to saying i'm fulfilled man you can't match that with nothing that's good man final question for you what's your definition of greatness my definition of greatness is being impactful and living the life you're proud of doesn't have to do with money it doesn't have to do with accolades doesn't have to do with notoriety can i wake up every day and say i'm happy with this life like i'm like people don't really know what happiness is and how many people cannot have i impacted people before i left here impact don't have nothing to do with money either so if i can be impactful and live a life that i can truly say i'm happy with that's my definition of greatness they have imposter syndrome right am i worthy of having this much money i've experienced that myself at different times right like you've worked hard for it but you think that you don't deserve it for some reason and i think that we just have i think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money why because i think it's designed so that we have

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 876,199

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: 4DKD7t59ghQ

Length: 105min 10sec (6310 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022