Breaking the Chains of Poverty | EP 248

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Yo, what's up people, I'm your host Jay Wheel, and I would like to welcome you to Inspire Guys, people where we balance faith and business to guide you to your purpose. This is episode 248, breaking the chains of poverty. Yeah, we gonna get into a real dope conversation about breaking the chains of poverty, and let me make sure my sound is good. Yeah, all right, we good.

I should have checked that before we started, but I figured better late than never. All right, I wanna talk to you all about breaking the chains of poverty. This is important to me because of where I'm from. You know what I'm saying?

Where my journey started in life, I've always had a heart for the people who could relate to where I come from. Maybe you come from somewhere different, you know, as far as proximity neighborhood wise, but you might still be able to relate to the idea of having really bad financial habits. Maybe you just didn't learn, you don't know what you don't know. You know what I'm saying?

I'm not here to look down and you were blaming you. I had my own journey and learning how to manage finances and how to become educated. And so, because I come from poverty, I understand really in-depth the details of poverty. And today we gonna start breaking some of those chains.

Now what's my motivation? Let me just first say this, I'm a Christian. I'm a Bible believer. I am not a person that thinks money is everything or the world revolves around money or once you get a couple dollars, your life is gonna just magically be perfect.

No, this ain't a salvation episode because making money ain't gonna get you into heaven. But here's a stinger, neither is being broke. So here's something that I've learned, growing up in the Black Christian community as I did from the inner city. We only like to talk about money in toxic and unhealthy ways.

So it's cool to show up with your new car or your dress like a Gucci man again and show off and talk about what you got. That's cool, we don't frown upon that. Let's just be real, this episode is gonna sting because I'm trying to challenge our thinking. You feel what I'm saying?

It's okay to do that. It's okay to stun on each other. I post the picture of my material things that I have. Never teach you how to get it.

Never actually share any strategic or educational tools and resources and like how you can get it. Like it's so cool. Even in church, it's okay. I can talk.

It's okay, even in church for me to show up and stunt on you. But for some reason, in this community, it is frowned upon if you actually try to educate people because oh, who do you think you are? You think you better than me? You think that like, you know, I hear every night and certain things people say about you get back to you, right?

So I'm aware of some of the things that people might say or think about me. I try to be a self-aware person in general. And sometimes it's interesting to me because it's like, well, all right, would it be better if I just went and worked to try to get my own level of success, whatever level that is, I'm not claiming to be the most successful person ever. This ain't about that.

But it's about saying that, yo, if I walk 25 feet and I look back at my brothers and my sisters and my family and my friends and my community, it's still 25 feet behind me. No, I'm not saying I'm a thousand feet ahead. I'm not saying I'm whatever, but would it be better for me to leave you than to reach back and share with you how I made it to 25 feet? So that's my thing.

That's what this episode is about. It's about saying like, yo, we're gonna break the chains of poverty because we have to learn and talk about finances from a healthy perspective. So here's point number one. This is gonna say, rapper, celebrities and athletes have literally corrupted the way we think about finances.

So we have uplifted these people who, and let me just say this, I'm not saying rappers, athletes and celebrities are all evil or bad, where that is their fault. So listen to me, hear me out. What I'm saying is that in the community where I come from, it begins to be sold to you at a young age that you need to play a sport or you need to be an entertainer, like kids can dance like crazy before they know how to do math. So I remember hearing people say, oh, you don't need math.

When you don't need that. But you're teaching them five of the latest dances. Like when you don't need that. And what happens is, is this allure of the things that get fed to us of like these rappers that we wanna be like and that we admire and they dress like, you know, Louis Vuitton, Mannequins, and they pull up in the community in nice cars and chains and all these things and it's like, okay, cool.

No shade, nothing against that. But here's my problem. First and foremost, the chances of us successfully making it in these areas of life is love. I know nobody wanna hear it.

This is not about me telling you, don't go after your dreams. This is not about telling me, don't me telling you that you can't be successful or give up on everything. It's about being real. Like, man, can we just be real?

This is my whole thing with everybody. And this is from somebody, trust me. I've tried it all. I've wrapped, hooked, failed at all of it.

You know what I'm saying? I've done all of the things that we chase doing that is really hard. And I'm gonna tell you like with basketball as an example. With athletics, and I know y'all know the numbers.

I know y'all are aware. Like it's like 450 people in the NBA. So any given year in LeBron, they're in between the years you got stepped in in for 15, 16, so that means job openings aren't happening every year. There's about 100 and something job openings and you got 10,000 kids trying to get 100 jobs.

That means 9,900 of y'all ain't getting it. And I'm not gonna call those people failures, right? Because they made it somewhere in life. This ain't about talking down on nobody.

This is about being realistic and saying, we have grown up with the idea that the only way you can make it in life is to be a rapper, an entertainer or an athlete. And we only tell the success story. We never tell the failure stories. So here's the problem.

We hear the success stories again and again. Steve Harvey slept in a car and said he had no plan B. Tyler Perry was homeless. And listen, listen, that amazing.

From the standpoint of talking about finances and overcoming obstacles, simply amazing. But here's the thing. Nobody tells the story of the 9,000 Tyler Perrys that slept in their car and put all their money into their play and it didn't work out. And what's my point?

It's not to talk down on those people. It's to say that they have something to share in their story that we're not exploring. Because we are ignoring the failure stories, we keep producing more failures. And so by continuing to perpetuate this success story, not only use the rapper, right?

When you think about this rapper success story, you'll have the same story again and again. Person grows up in the hood. They were into violence. They were maybe doing some criminal activity.

Maybe even got shot, maybe even with the jail. Get out. And all of a sudden, Ben, their music career takes off. So here's the problem with the story.

Hey, shout out to the people who made it. Always love to see people make it and overcome obstacles that they were facing. And I'm not saying those are not real stories. What I'm saying is we can't market this as the way to go.

Because guess what? Most of y'all gonna go to jail and just stay there. Like we not telling the story of the dude, that was rapping, selling dope and just stayed in jail for the next 20 years. Don't know his kids.

We're not selling enough of the real story that is affecting most people. And so what's happening is there are these ideas that we are adopting relating to finances. So let me bring it home to finances. First, what is one of the things that we're doing?

This causes us to overspeed it. So what do I mean? If you looking at celebrities, right? And you watching the Met Gala, or you looking at your favorite celebrities Instagram page and you're trying to aware what they're wearing.

Okay. You trying to wear the Gucci jacket that 50 Cent has on. 50 Cent got 300 million dollars. You don't have $35 in the bank.

What am I trying to say? We keep perpetuating these images. It's causing us to adopt a mindset to overspend. So what does that mean?

A lot of people from poverty like to show their money versus save their money. Wealthy people. I'm not talking about people who won the lottery and the rap athletic entertainment. Like these are rare people.

Let's just talk about that. Like I'm not about to be busy in Washington. Like that is one in a million person right there. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, one in a million people.

So someone will become that. But my point is we have to stop telling a lot of, you know, everybody in the school is gonna be that. No, you got a much better chance of becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a business person, a nurse. Like there's a bunch of other ways to make money and to grow and live a good life.

It doesn't just have to be recreational. And that's the thing. We are selling recreation to our community and to our children as the only way that they can make it in life. And here's one of the problems.

Recreation does teach you some things. Sport does teach you some things. But it also skews reality in a lot of ways. All right, so let me get back to my point.

You overspend. You got nothing in the storehouse. So what does this mean? You don't got no money, nothing saved up, no resources.

Because why? You trying to keep up with the Jonesers. You trying to keep up with these people who make way more money than you. All right, cool.

It's an all or nothing mentality. Like so it's almost like if all I try to do is make it to the NBA and the chances are slim, it's like, well, I'm either gonna make it to the NBA or just do nothing. Like, like, like I'm not gonna do nothing or I'm gonna struggle. And I'm not listening to what I'm saying.

I know it's some very successful people out there. I know people who win and play ball overseas, people who do coaching. Like I'm not trying to, I'm trying to bring a sense of reality without talking bad when the people that actually do it and make it. This isn't about that.

So please separate this from that. It's a low success rate, values popularity over everything. So what I'm trying to say is as a foundational approach, you know, our communities from poverty have to find other things to market to our children as ways to make it out of poverty. And I believe we should start with things that give them a better probability of success, right?

So it's like, at the end of the day, if somebody told you, hey, you got a one in a million chance to make a hundred million dollars or you got a one in a thousand chance to make one million dollars or you got one in a 250 chance to make $250,000. Like what I'm saying is that like, it's okay to shoot for the stars, but you got to realize that what do you do if you don't hit it? What if you do if you don't make it? And I don't think we were building enough foundational tools starting at a young age because we worship celebrities.

And some of this is about as Christian's, right? Should we be doing this? As a Christian, should you be worshiping the celebrity? Should you be valuing someone simply based on their popularity, looks, amount of money or success or wars they have, and completely ignoring character, completely ignoring godliness and righteousness, completely ignoring any of that and just saying, hey, this person is popular, so they're successful, you should wanna be like them.

Or should we be having people in our local churches, in our family and communities and teaching our kids, like, yo, you wanna be like that, right? You wanna learn, you don't wanna just have recreation and rest of your life and think life is a joke. Now I'm gonna say this about athletes, because I don't think a lot of people think about this. This is something that I've observed about athletes from being close to athletes and growing up and then playing sports and stuff myself, although I never made it nowhere close to something important.

Chris, what up, fam? How you feeling, man? I appreciate y'all in the comments, much love, and hopefully y'all enjoyed this episode. Please like, share, subscribe, and all that good stuff.

One of the things about athletes and entertainers that happens that we don't address enough as a Christian is that athletes live a life that is largely about self, so do entertainers. And I'm not saying it's their fault. I'm saying as Christian as we gotta be aware of lifestyles that are about us and us, it can make you arrogant and puffed up and prideful. What do I mean about that?

You watch athletes at a very young age. If you can jump high, if you go to sports, people will be lenient with you in other areas. So whether it's classroom attendance, whether it's grades, a lot of things, well, people will give you the benefit of the doubt. They will look over your thoughts.

And that's how you get people like P Diddy. That's how you get people like, what's the other do name, R Kelly? And you know, no offense to them. I'm not into the gossip and all that.

Like that's not the point. The point I'm making is that eventually the decisions that they were making that were being overlooked because of their talent ended up catching up with them and putting them in a place that you would never wanna be. So what's my point? If your children are playing sports or athletics, we have to also be careful in putting them in positions where they're not having a realistic awareness and mindset around character development and productivity and godliness and righteousness.

Like, yo, you should be still learning these foundational traits. We shouldn't be teaching kids, hey, as long as you're good at this, you can take advantage of people over here. Again, I know we don't wanna talk about that kind of stuff, but it happens. My fam, Johnny, whatever.

All right, so let me move to the second part of this episode. So first, foundational to your understanding, hopefully, that this mindset that we have around rappers, athletes and celebrities and like, we are allowing it to corrupt our minds and how we think about building wealth. And like, we just have a completely mispron screw, like way of thinking about it, where we are trying to act like celebrities. I'm a regular person.

I don't need to be trying to, you know, walk around with material things to try to prove to you that I'm some rapper that you saw, that I can keep up with some rapper. Like at the Pistons game, I went to the Pistons game last week from up way killing his sons. And, you know, my nephews, we had a good time. One of the funniest things is it's called the Swag Ham and Little Caesar Arena.

I go to a lot of Pistons game, not a lot here and there. No, if you never been to a Pistons game, Detroit, you know, flashy place, we got this Swag Ham where they go around the stadium and everybody got their ice on. I mean, you're gonna see, it's a lot of rappers in Detroit, number one. So that's probably part of it.

But I mean, like it's, I see over here, right? And it get icy in Detroit. And it's like, it's so cold in the deep. It really is icy in Detroit.

And I'm looking on the cam and I'm like, no disrespect to people because I see some nice chains out there. It's so ignorant. Like, it's so ignorant. I'm like, why is this the image we want to portray in Detroit?

And look, no offense to the marketing team there. It works. It does a good job. I'm not hating on it.

But it's also ignorant because of just the ideology and the way that it causes people to be like, why would you want to take your money and spend 20, these chains, 20, 30,000, gotta be. I mean, I know some fake stuff out there and I know about these lab diamonds as well, that's cheap. So, you know, maybe these are the clone lab diamonds, but they look good. You know what I'm saying?

They look real good. My point is it also is a mindset that perpetuates of like, you got a, you a regular person and working a regular job like me. And you walking around with a $30,000 chain on and you don't even have a life insurance policy. You don't have any assets saved up.

If you lose your job tomorrow, you're gonna be broke. And you walk around with a $30,000 chain. That is the mindset that I'm talking about that's messing us up. I feel that, Tonya, NIL.

Yeah, that's a good point as well. That's a really good, good point. And it is a mind frame. All right, so let's move to the next part of this.

So what I say, I'll let that have to say that, a lot of us are chasing wealth and we need to slow down. Before we chase wealth, we need to chase stability. Hold on, pump the brakes. It's a good one.

Before you chase wealth, you need to chase stability. So again, this is just me talking, I'm nobody. I'm just a person on the internet kicking it with you. But what I've seen is that everybody's only hitting, trying to hit home runs.

And we're, you know, again, I'm off wear ambition and going after your dreams if they align with the Lord and what your purpose isn't what he called you to do. I'm a very ambitious person. I've succeeded. I have failed more than I've succeeded.

Trust me, I could share 100 failure stories with you. And maybe one or two successes. But here's what I know at the end of the day. And I had to learn this for myself.

Yo, stop trying to hit home runs. What are home runs? They look good. You see somebody hit a home run.

They can take their time running the bases. They get the cheer, everybody cheer for them. You get the strut and show everything. And here's the problem with it though, is you don't hit that many home runs.

You know, baseball players play 140 games. And the best ones hit 60 home runs. They mean most games you're not hitting a home run. But you need base hits to win the game.

You just need to hit the ball. You don't have to go out the park. But the problem with us is we're trying to hit home runs because we want to show off. And we're not content with the Lord just working on us behind the scenes.

We're not content with being low-key. We want to be celebrities. We want wealth. But we don't want stability.

What I believe that believer should be seeking is stability. Stability is more aligned to me with a biblical mindset of doing the right thing over time. Not just trying to hit a home run, but trying to make every swing count. Trying to make all your effort into taking small steps.

Like the Bible says, don't despise small beginnings, right? A lot of us despise small beginnings. You look down on people who start small and just trying to get somewhere. We think we're better than them because they're starting small.

When we don't realize like, get all the home runs you swinging at, bro. Yeah, you ain't gonna hit all the home runs. And you might hit a couple, but then you got a front and fake. And act like you hitting them all the time when in reality you're not.

So stop chasing wealth and let's talk about stability. So now I'm gonna kick it with you real quick before we get out of here about how you can build financial stability. We're gonna do this by way of looking at this article on what is this Investopedia? I believe it is.

This is the article I came across today on Investopedia. It actually has a lot of the concepts that I like to talk about. So we're gonna use this article as a reference point to talk about some of these things that I believe people need to build stability. And then once you have stability, okay, yeah cool.

Then you can try to build wealth. Before I get into that article, let me say this. I'm gonna talk to you, I'm gonna give an example about the importance of building your credit. And I have this conversation with people a lot of times.

And I've sat down and had consultations with people in my family and poured my heart out. And I realized like, man, people ain't trying to hear it. I can't really figure out why people not trying to hear it yet, but they're not trying to hear it. Here's the thing.

I watch people like as an example, go and get cars. And cars are one of the things that keep us the most broke because we don't know how to shop for cars. And dealerships are very shady, grindy places. There's no offense if you own or work at a dealership, but you'll have some really grindy practices to take advantage of people purposely.

I only noticed because I've shopped for several cars and negotiated several deals for myself and my wife. And at the end of the day, it takes a lot of effort to be successful, but also a lot of education. And I can see where we're wouted. The kind of everyday person is coming here and getting taken advantage of.

But here's the thing. As an example, I watch people with bad credit who shop for cars based on a car they want. It's like, yo, I want this. It's like, this one, this draw to material things is so dangerous in our community.

Where it's like, it's no substance. It's just, I just want something material. Like, even if I can't afford it. So what do people do?

They go and take out loans with high interest rates because they don't have good credit. And they don't have the financial literacy to even be able to know what their budget should be or how to navigate the negotiation. Cause it is a negotiation regardless of how nice the sales person is. And so what happens is people go and get high interest, rate car loans, and then before the car's even paid off is breaking down.

And now you need money to fix a car that you steal a loan. And then so you try to go and get another car and then they're gonna roll the price cause you're under water on your own. They're gonna roll that money to your underwater and into another loan. And then you just keep rinsing, washing, rinsing, and repeating the same process.

And it's all because you never stop just to go build stability what does stability look like? First, let's think about how you manage and pay off debt, right? Manage pay off debt. Okay, cool.

Save a little money. Okay, cool. Maybe invest. Okay, cool.

At this point, you have a 750 credit score, which means you can go and get the best interest rate. You have money saved up, which means you can actually afford to go and get the car. And now because you've learned these qualities and principles and build discipline, you're not going to get the car based on, oh, I want to BMW, you're just gonna go over spam for a BMW without looking at the maintenance costs, the true cost of own over however many years you're gonna have it. And without looking at the fact that like, is there a Toyota that will last 250,000 miles and actually has some of the same technology and maybe a better option for me and more affordable for me?

Or am I trying to get the BMW going back to the rapper's celebrities and athletes? Because I want to keep up with what I saw on Instagram. I'm trying to break the chains of poverty by trying to convince you in your mind because you know this is real, that we need to stop trying to compete with each other, stop trying to live up to a completely fake, completely fake profile, like nothing real about it. You're just trying to live up to the idea of success versus building stability in real success in the background and be in consent with whatever level guy allows you to reach and then reaching it, living it out, let everybody think whatever.

Listen, I made up my mind a long time ago. Whatever you want to think, you want to think I'm broke, I'm broke. You want to think I'm rich, I'm rich. Whatever you want to think, it's your freedom.

I cannot control your thoughts. For me personally, the more I begin to free myself from what people think and focus on what is real, because you do realize that, regardless of which I think about me right now, let's say you think I am just the most successful, I just, I got super great and whatever. If I don't, then I'm not, like regardless of what you think, if I don't have it, then it's not real. And I think sometimes we treat people thoughts like reality and we treat reality like they're just thoughts.

At the end of the day, dog, I'm back at you, sorry, you know, you listen and I heard a scratch, we got to stop trying to live up to this fake idea of success. And so what I want to try to encourage and challenge you to do is free yourself from the chains of poverty that says you have to drive this, that you got to wear Gucci or whatever, man, listen, bro, y'all can have it. I don't, you got to understand something. Even if I have $2,000, I can't afford a $2,000 bill.

In my mind, I watch people, I watch some of the cars, people drive, I watch some of the clothes people wear it. And I'm like, bro, like you know what, buddy? You've made it. I don't know how you're doing it, but congratulations to you.

And guess what, some people really are out here doing it and I have no problem with you doing it. My problem is with the people in our community who know good and well, you don't have $65 in the bank and you're spending all your money every week, every month, trying to impress people that might not like you anyway. You might not like me. This is what I realized.

So the people out there who don't like me, and the people who like me, let's focus on the people who like me, if you truly like me, if you truly love me, like it, do you care what brand this jacket is? You don't care if it's furberry or myrberry. And more than likely, if I got it on this myrberry. No, I'm not wearing no fake.

Let me just, one thing I'm not doing, because I'm not wearing no fake stuff to impress y'all either. Not doing it, not doing it, not gonna happen. Let's go to Target, go to, oh my God, we can't go to Target. Oh my God, I'm going to Target.

I don't care what y'all talking about. All right, let's keep it moving. So what up though, I'm on a peggy, how you feeling? All right, so let's jump into this Investopedia article because I wanna show y'all that there are some ways to build wealth, all right?

Let's get this off the screen. Can we see this? How is this? How am I showing up on here?

I wanna show up differently. There we go, let's do that. All right, so there's seven ways to build wealth. All right, so first things first, seven steps to start building a personal wealth by Adam Hayes on March 19th, reviewed by Pamela Rodriguez, in fact, checked by Suzanne Kivohog, I believe.

No offense if I mispronounce any of those names. I wanna just read a couple of things in this article because I think it's dope. So first things first, the key takeaway is that this article, and these are gonna be things that are gonna help you on your journey to build instability, right? They're calling it wealth here, which it is, but we need stability first.

Building wealth involves earning, saving, investing, and managing debt. Okay, not just making it to the NBA because even if you make it to the NBA, you need these things. Not just being an actor or a dancer or son because you need these things. Repeat after me, I need these things.

Regardless of how much money I make, I need to earn, save, invest, and manage. This literally will change your life. If you can just turn this podcast off, you don't have to listen to nothing else I say at all. This will change your life.

Earning, saving, investing, and managing debt. Hold on, we gonna pause here. Like, look, I'm gonna take the slow road to this. Earning, right?

Saving, investing, manage. I like to give life changing tips. In this case, Adam Hayes has given life engine chips from Investopedia. Earning, all right, earning money.

There's two ways to earn money. It's the labor, right? Like going to work with most of us, no clocking in, and then there's the passive income, right? So some level of an investment or something that you have where you don't have to actually work labor, manual labor, or physical time, it's building in the background for you.

So if you own a rental park property and you rent every month, that's passive income, okay. So those are the two ways that you earn. Now, in my opinion, what we should be doing as it relates to building stability, and this goes back to thinking beyond being a rapper, a celebrity or an athlete, you need to maximize your earning potential. Yes, maximize earning potential.

What does that mean? You're 27 years old, you're 32 years old, whatever it is. What level of education do you have? What are you qualified to do?

And so you're either already have a degree, already qualified for something, and you need to go after that career, and you need to build yourself in it, or you need to look and be real with yourself and say, okay, I'm 32 years old. What can I do? What trade can I take on? What, I would look at jobs that pay good amounts of money, maybe it's a plumber, right?

Let's use a plumber, right? Something like that I feel is regular, but needed and not going anywhere anytime soon. So if you go and go to trade school to become a plumber, and then you master that, there is money to be made as a plumber. But if you got this, twist it mindset to think that the only thing that is valuable or achievable or something worth being proud of in life is to be a rapper, a celebrity or an athlete, then you will look down on opportunities that are there to bring stability to your life.

I promise you, it's a plumber out here, making crazy money. Because maybe they learned plumbing, the skill set, and then they learned and worked for someone and learned the business, and then maybe they started their own plumbing business, right? And then they became really prominent in a community, in a region, in a district or across the country. They're plumbing companies everywhere.

And I'm sure painting another one. Let me tell you something, my painter, did I hire? First of all, I hired him in like two years, but I hired this dude a few times. Man, this dude, they do a great job.

I mean, they gonna paint your house, it's gonna look beautiful. When I tell you, I'm like, paint cost that much? Hey, hey, paint cost that much. I would say his name, but I don't wanna put him out there.

Good guy, good guy. Really good guy, respectful does good business, but very, very expensive. I'm looking at him like, oh, you get, you get bread, huh? Cause I just paid you, I ain't gonna say that much.

I just paid you some money to paint. And you know, you out here getting money, you know what I'm saying? What's my point? We can build our skill set, maximize our earning, which means we need to teach our kids, oh, I gotta tell y'all, get these kids some jobs.

Get these children, some jobs. Why am I focusing on the kids? Because we're talking about breaking the chains of poverty. Guess what, if you want to break chains, you need to break generational chains.

Get those chains off your kids. Maybe you just decided, how much is be a broke overspender for the rest of my life? Who knows to you, congratulations, or even Archie, nice to meet you. At the end of the day, don't do it to your children though.

Don't do that to your grandchildren or your great-grant, whatever generation you own. I would, if the babies in your family, you need to be making up your mind right now, we breaking those chains. You, we are not just selling you. They could play sports.

Don't give me wrong, maybe you got them like with your new family. I'm not hating on that. They get learned things from sports, but we need to diversify our education and learn more. And at the end of the day, when you learn more and expand your thinking beyond these simple things, then you will appreciate more.

And you will realize like, oh wait, oh wait, you could be a millionaire as a plumber? You can own a plumbing company? Wait a minute, I didn't know there was a 500,000-air electricians out here, or 200,000-air, or whatever it is, different numbers. I'm just making up numbers, but my point is this.

There's more to life than just being a rapper or an athlete, there's 100 ways to be successful. But when you get these kids some jobs, instead of only thinking they're gonna play a sport, then they develop skill sets outside of the sport. Maybe working in McDonald's is a simple communication skill set building. Like I've been working since I was 13.

And I know now I sound like the old person that's going, my grandma's sales, I don't tell these stories about how she walked the school, 20 miles in Alabama. I just started believing her last year. I had a serious conversation with her last year in her kitchen and she like, what's she, ADA? I'm like, the more I think about it, I'm like, they probably be a walker.

They probably be a walker good 10 miles in school. You know what I'm saying? In the 1940s. I'm actually starting to believe in 1936, 1946.

They might have been walking 10 miles in school, right? My point is I've had a job since I was 13. Every year since I was 13. Maybe I missed one year, but I've been working since I was 13 years old.

13 years old, I was working as a janitor's assistant. I worked at Wayne State University in the summer program and they was pairing me every day with one of the janitors and I would be his assistant for the day, washing windows, mop and floors, all those type of things, right? I worked at McDonald's when I was 15. I worked at McDonald's when I was 18.

At the end of the day, when I was 15 years old, working at McDonald's, I was standing at the front cashier. I was counting money and communicating with people for their orders, right? That's taught me how to count money, how to deal with the pressure of the line being along and how to communicate with the public. By the time I was in my 20s, I was working in banking and I'm just making a correlation.

When I worked in banking, I was a teller and a loan processor and a marketing liaison at the branch that I worked at. And guess what? I'm communicating with the public, dealing with money, larger scales of money. That's the job I have where I learned, like, oh, people get really sensitive about their money.

You get people coming here to got million dollars in a bank, 500,000 in a bank. That's also where I learned, because when you work in banking, you can see who has the money and see who just has the aura. And so I would see the people walking in with the aura and they got a, and it's gonna be like, oh, that's how they talking. When they, you got the aura and you talking like aura.

Let me get five or 10 dollars, okay? Then I watched the person coming here with a biscuit so they feet looking toe up and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna take out 10,000. I'm like, okay, Mr. Dirty Ditas.

I mean, I'm a Ditas was dirty, but the boy had money. What's my point? You know, it's that, yeah, that's why, that's facts. That's why I got that hustle.

I've been working since I was a kid. My point is we need to put our kids out there so they can be able to skill set and learn how to do things. So you got earning, saving. Oh man, saving is really tough for us because the reason some of us will never have money is because we can't save money.

If you can't save money, you can't have money. No matter how much money you have, some of us money burns a whole new pocket. As soon as you got it, you spend it. But you have to have the discipline and the ability to put up money for the future.

Like Joseph did when he took the resources and saved them during the seven years of famine or the seven good years and put them up for the seven years of famine and then they had extra. He saved 20% of the resources and food that they were bringing in and in that way, seven years later when things went bad, they had money to lean on. But in order to save that 20%, you have to have the discipline, not suspended on unnecessary things. Some of us do so much unnecessary spending.

It's not that we're broke because we don't have money. It's broke because we can't keep it. All right, cool. Investing.

We're gonna talk about that in a second and then debt management, money management. We have to know how to pay off debt. At the end of the day, you should not have on a pair of car here $3,000 frames and you owe $1,500 to the light company for some build that's on your credit, bring your credit down. You got poor money management skills, all right?

And I'm not saying that to talk down on you, I'm just telling the truth. All right, let's go back to this article that we were looking at with Investopedia, all right? Let's keep it moving. Set financial goals like retirement, home buying or education funding.

Retirement, home buying, education funding, goals. Listen people, we have to set goals. At the end of the day, if you wanna break poverty, you're not just gonna break it by mistake. You're not gonna break the chains of poverty by not having a plan.

If you have not set down, had a conversation with yourself or your spouse or your children, your family, we should be normally having conversations about finances, what moves are we making? What's working, what's not working? Where can I improve efficiencies? The problem with us is this.

We don't like having conversation. We don't like talking. Oh, just let me do what I've got, let me do. Hold on, bro.

If God lets you to do it, why are you six, seven years in? Wait a minute, and still not managing it properly. You buying watches and gold chains and diamond chains with the money you were supposed to be reinvesting. If God told you to do it, then that's more of a reason to sit down and have goals and have benchmarks in mind and keep score.

We don't wanna keep score, cause we know we lose it. And at the end of the day, if you don't keep score, you're never gonna be motivated enough to turn it around. This is about motivating you, convincing you that the chains of poverty have been holding you back and it's time to break them. I'm trying to change your thinking.

Thinking, only you could really change your mind. I'm just trying to get you new things to think about. All right, I know people don't like this. This is not good.

This is a horrible show. This is not good. This is not good content at all. Do not share this.

Do not tell anyone about it. It's horrible. All right. The VersaFine Vestmus and Mitigate, Mitigay Ritz.

So let's look at some of the things in this article. I'm just gonna talk about a couple of things. Building wealth takes time, effort, and discipline. The good news is that anyone can follow proven strategies to grow and preserve wealth over the long term.

The earlier you begin, the better your chances of success. All right, I know people don't like this kind of stuff. Cause we wanna think that, oh, that's you. Oh, did you work here?

You make this amount of money. Oh, you lucky. Yeah, you did. No, no, no, no, no.

Invest in Pedia. You know what I'm saying? They said anybody could build wealth. I've read a lot of wealth books.

The thing, the common thread, and every piece of wealth related material that I continue to read is unlike the NBA. Anybody can do it. See, anybody can't make it to the NBA. Anybody can't be the next American Idol.

It can only be one. Anybody cannot be the next Denzel Washington. Not gonna happen. Not anybody.

You can even be a successful actor. You're not gonna be that. So what's my point? Why we keep trying to put all our effort into the thing that it's like 99% of us ain't gonna be able to do it.

And the thing that anybody can do, build wealth, anybody can build wealth in America. And when I say anybody, I understand, don't hit me with all of the extreme circumstances. I'm not even gonna get no examples because I don't wanna make fun of extreme circumstances. What's my point?

No, no, we talking about you. Don't give me no excuses. Don't give me no excuses. If you walking around with Gucci, Louis, Prada, Nike, Jordan, whatever else, all these name brands, if you wearing that, don't tell me you can't build wealth.

It said anybody can do it, but it takes time, effort and discipline. At the end of the day, a lot of us don't wanna have time, effort and discipline. We don't wanna put in time. We wanna have it quick.

We're impatient. Even though the Bible says, let patience have a perfect work. That means patience brings a completeness to a situation. But we don't wanna believe the Bible.

We don't wanna think that it applies to other stuff. Maybe I can't be inspired about the Bible, it finances and somebody gonna think, oh, that means you chasing money or whatever. No, I'm just trying to tell you that there's a more patient and complete way to go about building your wealth. And that the Bible can inspire you in different areas of your life.

And then maybe if I stop trying to hit home runs and keep up with the Jones, is improved everybody and I'm fake successful. And just actually be developed in the background and build something real. Maybe I'll never have 100 million or 200 million or one million or whatever, but I will have more than enough if I'm doing what God told me to do. It's similar to the parable of the talents where he gave you one talent, he gave you two, he gave you five, but he gave you one.

And that was enough for you to survive cause that was according to your own gifts, abilities, resources and things of such. But we don't want that. You know the last part, Investipedia just said on that, I appreciate the love. They said the earlier you start, the greater your chance of success.

So why am I talking about breaking the chains of poverty for your children? It's because maybe you feel like it's too late for you. No problem. I want to convince you, I don't want to argue with you cause you two set of your ways.

I've learned to deal with the dots. In many cases, feels like a waste of time. I'm not saying it's a waste of time. I love you.

Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you. But the kids are impressionable.

What if you taught your children right now, instead of buying them every PlayStation 5, every pair of Jordans, every pair of headphones, that they all walk around and headphones are they? Why do the kids walk around like this? I don't, I don't have children. Y'all gotta educate me.

I just, my nephews and niece is walking the room and I don't know if I can talk or not cause I don't know if you actually listen to something. And that's probably the point. They don't want to talk. You need a job at McDonald's to force you to talk to people cause you act like you can't talk.

All of them walk around here. I ain't talking about no one of them. I'm talking about all of them. So some of my family watching this don't think it's your kid and other kids too.

Everybody's sensitive. I ain't talking about nobody. I'm talking about everybody. So at the end of the day, I got 20 meters of nephews.

So look, it's about six or seven of y'all that do that. And I still love you, but you still do that. And you act like you can't talk and you need to learn how to talk. Like the kids need to communicate.

They need to actually be able to speak up and talk. Like in my whole point with all of this is that the earlier you start the more chance that you have to be successful. So if us as adults and leaders and parents and uncles and aunts, if we cultivate these children, we will start breaking the chains of poverty in our life. If we stop teaching our kids that Jordan's and PS5's is the greatest things in life.

And tell them about mutual funds or ETF's or stocks. But you know the problem is we haven't taken a time to learn it. So we can't teach them anything. So guess what that means?

We're going to keep producing poverty. The Bible says that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children and his children's children. Now maybe you're inheritance. Maybe you don't got the money.

Maybe you got the education to break them chains. Because you're a good man. You're a good woman, right? That's what the Bible says.

I didn't say that. I think we ignore stuff. We don't want to read that. We don't want to know that.

So we act like it's not there. But it's there. It says a good man. I don't know what to tell you.

At the end of the day, we need to break the chains of poverty with these children. But it starts with you. I can't get to some of the kids because the parents, y'all letting them listen to the ignorant rap. Y'all letting them watch ignorance.

I walk in people house sometimes. I'm like, man, you got your kids. You watch that. I'm not here to judge you.

But I'm here to tell the truth. All right. Let's go back to this article real quick. And I'm about to wrap this up like a Christmas gift.

Wrap it up, bro. This ain't good. Y'all don't like this kind of stuff. I know that people don't like it.

You probably hate me after listening to this. All right. All right. So number one from the importance of investing PV about how to build wealth, maximize your income.

We talked about that already. Earned income, impassive income. Maximize your income. Start early.

All right. Let's keep it moving. Go to this yourself. We're setting in planning.

We talked about it. You have to have clear financial goals are essential for wealth building, whether you aim to retire early by a home or pay for your children's college setting specific, measurable and time bound goals will help guide your financial plan. Come on, people. Define your goals.

Create a plan and review regularly. I like the part that says review regularly. Some of us said ago, have a vision party, have a whole conference and event. Oh, look, I put a piece of, I put a house on a piece of construction paper.

That's my vision. And we never revisit it. You put that house on that piece of construction paper six and eight years ago, don't go to the house. I forgot what color the house was.

Didn't read a book about a house. And you still got the vision board in the basement. Go and rip the vision board in half tonight, rip in half and start over because you got to be real yourself. That wasn't your real vision.

That was just some stuff you saw somebody else say, you need to go and have your own real vision, your own real goals, according to where God is leading you, according to being inspired by his work, his purpose in your life. And then hold yourself accountable to those goals. See the thing? The reason a lot of us don't want to say goals is because we don't want to have accountability.

If I don't set a goal, then I don't have to track a goal. That's how we think it. But if you set a goal, you know in the back of your own mind, like, ooh, I said I was going to do that. I ain't doing that.

I ain't going to do it. I ain't going to do it. Y'all know if you set a goal, you got to hold yourself accountable. You have to go and review those goals.

So I'm going to give you an example, right? Let's say you said I wanted to say $10,000 in 2026. That's a very achievable goal for most people. But then you get to June and you only got $3,000.

Now here's the good thing. You are better than zero. You did start along the way, but you didn't keep going. And now I'm going to review it.

You're like, ooh, I still need $7,000, but it's only six months left. Well, that means that you might have to repurpose how you were saving and save even more to reach your goal. But it's about having measurable and attainable, attainable goals because some of us just throw goals in the air out of nowhere. Right?

I just, we just say the most extreme thing. I'm going to add three yachts. You think? Well, right now, um, um, I'm not going to say it, but you don't got three yachts.

I'm going to keep it nice. And so we throw out these extreme goals that we never actually plan to meet because we're lazy and we don't want accountability. All right. But when you plan to work the goals that God put in front of you, this is how you start breaking poverty.

You start having goals and then tracking those goals and revisiting those goals and having some accountability. And you might fall like me, like, man, I try, I write goals down. I have goals and then I get busy and then somehow and guess what? I revisit it.

I refresh and I start again. The thing is just keep doing it until you get there. None of us are perfect. None of us have some extremely perfect life.

I'm not some perfect individual on the internet. It just seems like, oh, isn't he just great? Oh my gosh. That's what we want.

Stop doing that. I'm not here to lie. Like it's stupid. I'm just going to tell you the truth is stupid.

None of us are just just this amazing. You just really did wake up in the morning looking like that. Some of y'all, you just look good, I guess. And that's okay.

Cause some people do look good. Some of us got to work for look decent. You know what I'm saying? Like we didn't just wake up looking like this.

It took some extra work. All right. All right. So let's keep it going and I'm about to be out of here.

Y'all don't like this. I'm gonna stop. We're here, here. Cut unnecessary expenses.

That's the one that's it. This is where I'm going to end it. This is how we wrap it up. If you want to build stability, it's a very easy way to start.

Cut unnecessary spending. I'm going to be honest with you. What was it now? 2012 when I started on my path of financial literacy?