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 247, The Investor Mindset. Yeah, we're gonna talk about what three key traits on the every beginner investor needs.
So hopefully you enjoy this show. I've been getting a lot of requests from people reaching out to me, someone, social media, some personally like, hey, I wanna learn a lot more about investing and I've done some videos in the past, but I'm taking a fresh new approach to this series, the Investor Mindset. This is kind of part one. I'm planning to continue to do these over the next few weeks or so.
And the goal the intention is for beginning investors out there. If you are a seasoned investor, you feel free to watch this and critique me and tell me everything you disagree with, cool, or that you agree with, I'm joking. But at the end of the day, this is intended for someone who's at the beginning of that investing journey and trying to figure things out. I come from the inner city, from impoverished areas.
And I like to talk about poverty in the mind, you know what I'm saying? Because sometimes it's our mind that's guiding us. That's why this is the Investor Mindset. So once a day show, I'm gonna give you these three key traits that you need.
And if you enjoy it, please do like, share, subscribe, comment, let me know what you think. All right, so let's jump into it. Before I get into the three traits about the Investor Mindset, I wanna set the table. Remember, this is for beginners, somebody who's just starting out.
One thing that I've learned is that we gotta get the foundation of our mind and order before we just start throwing information on top of it. And some of us may be wondering, why have I been looking at 15 second video after 15 second video about what I should invest in or people promising me riches and things? Why haven't I been able to do anything with it? It's because you haven't laid the foundation and you are mine.
And so you just throwing information on a mind that can't even handle it, doesn't even understand what investing is, why you should do it or shouldn't do it as a believer. And at the end of the day, these things don't allow you to be successful. So what I'm gonna talk about today are really things that allows you to be successful. All right, the first thing you gotta understand, this is not the three key traits, but this is something I really wanna talk about is some people are passing along generational poverty and don't even know it.
Now, it's really important for you not to be offended about some of the things I'm gonna say today. First and foremost, just understand that this is where I come from. So I tend to talk about these things a lot more directly and sometimes a little raw when it comes to financial things and poverty and stuff like that. Not because I'm talking down at people, not because I'm like some, whatever.
I'm just a normal person. But the intention is because I've gone through this myself. So all I'm doing is sharing with you openly and publicly the things that I've done for myself to get myself out of poverty on a path of some level of building towards financial goals. What this is not is a get rich quick.
I do not do get rich quick. I'm telling you right now, if you are a person that wants to believe in a bunch of fake stuff, I'm not selling you no program today. I don't have nothing. I'm not about to show you no car and all this stuff I got to prove to you that I got money or whatever.
It's not about that. This is about someone who wants to change their mind. So first things first, generational poverty. I actually did an episode a couple of years ago and then so if you search through the archives, you'll find it.
I had this idea, like we always talk about generational wealth, like people who have wealth and passing along to their children and their family and it sets people ahead and people got all these resources and things like that. And I was like, you know what? We should start thinking about the decisions that we make even in poverty as generational. And the reason I believe that is I ask myself a question and when I just look across the landscape of people that I've known throughout my life and you know, circles that I've been around, I'm like, why are multiple?
Why does this 15 year old kid already have impoverished tendencies? That's always amazed me when I look at like families or friends and people and I'm like, this kid is 14. Why are they already taking on the mindset of poverty? And I'm like, I had to step back and realize it's because it's been passed down to them in the same way that people pass down wealth.
Some of us are guilty of passing down poverty and in order to get over it, to break the cycle, you got it admitted. So I'm gonna give you an example of where I first had this idea of generational poverty and where I think it starts from. What's up, people in the comments? Yeah, this is a real time.
Appreciate you watching. So I was reading this book up from slavery by Booker T. Washington. A lot of times I like to read things about slavery as it relates to black culture in America because I believe a lot of the things, the opportunities that I see and some of the behaviors and things, some of them were shaped in slavery, some were after slavery.
And I don't wanna go down this whole crazy thing with that. I'm not trying to be controversial right now. The point I'm making is that Booker T. Washington talked about once the slaves were free, he was building this school.
And Booker T. Washington had the mindset. He had a couple key things about his mindset. I would view him as someone who was a builder and an innovator.
He was a person that wanted to progress forward. And so he was building this school. He was working with white people, alongside white people. And one of the things about his school was that he had a hands on school.
So the school that he was developing, well, imagine you're this black person and you're a kid going to college. He had a hands on school that teach you certain skill sets. Some of them, I know this is controversial. Things that he learned in slavery.
Things like labor, cleaning, agriculture. These were things he wanted to instill skill sets into young people. Because Booker T. Washington was of the belief that if you increase your skill set and you become a producer and not just a consumer, that you would as a former slave be able to grow and do well in America.
So that's a fundamental belief system of like, yo, you contribute to society, you become a good citizen, a producer in society by learning skill sets. And then you grow. Here's the key point. There were slaves, there was a group of slaves that was all for us sending their kids to his school.
And then there were a group of slaves that were against sending their kids to his school. And this is the beginning potentially. I could be stretching here, I'm not a historian. This is just when I had to start, okay?
So take it up with a grain of salt. This to me is potentially the beginning of a particular mindset that I saw all through my life and in the inner city and in the culture that I come from. And there was this group of slaves that said, I do not want my kids to go to this school because I don't want them to have to do labor like I did. So fundamentally, I believe this is how we started potentially passing down poverty from one generation of former slaves that got free and felt like I don't want my kids to do what I did.
And I believe this mindset is the mindset of how we passed down poverty from one generation to another. The idea, like you see this with rich people and celebrities that you worked hard, you overcame obstacle after obstacle to get riches. And then you think you're gonna start your kid off and you're gonna free them from the work. You're gonna free them from having to build their character and learn discipline and learn these things.
And what you end up doing is enabling them to be entitled brats that have no skill set on their own to produce in society. So once they've spent all of your money, then they don't have a skill set to produce their own. And what happens is you didn't save them from poverty, you sent them on the fast track into it. And so for those people, this mindset in the community and in the world, and this could be any community, I just use where I came from, this idea of generational poverty is you not being willing to allow your kids to develop.
You think you're doing them a favor by saving them from learning all type of values and characteristics and morals and things like that. So I digress, let's jump into the content. So here's the first key skill set that you need to have the mindset of an investor. So again, we're talking about a beginner that wants to get into that investing and wants to understand like, what's the mindset?
Here's the first thing, it's simple, but it's deep. Discipline. Discipline is about planning, right? Budgeting and resisting.
So let me talk about it. As an investor, you need to have a plan. You don't just take money and throw it at random things because somebody on YouTube said throw money at this thing, without understanding what the thing is. So you need to have a plan.
That means you need to have an idea of how much money you can afford to invest, which as a good rule of thumb, do not invest more than you can afford to lose. So don't take your entire check and throw it at some investment and think you're just gonna become rich overnight. No, you have a plan, right? Then you have a budget.
Now the plan might be simply that I wanna grow an investment account of $10,000 over the next five years, right? Okay, so that's just high level, whatever it is. And maybe you have a plan about how you're gonna get there which goes into the budget. So then you think about, hey, I can afford to invest $50 every two weeks.
So $100 a month, right? So you can afford to invest $1,200 a year, all right? That's pretty good. At the end of that five years, you will have $6,000 that you've invested and you pretty much wanna grow it about 40% or so, up to $10,000, so good.
So you went from $6,000 to $10,000 in those five years. That didn't make you rich, but the idea of having a plan, right, a budget, that allowed you to at least have the framework for it. So don't worry as much about the amount of money here. We're talking about the mindset.
We're not talking about having a certain amount of money. We're just talking about how do I shape my mind to be an investor and to grow in it? You have a plan, you have a budget and here's the hard part about discipline, is that you need to be able to resist. Now I'm telling you, this is a tough one for people in the beginning because when you have a poverty mindset, right, versus an investor mindset or a wealth mindset, then you're a person that pretty much just does whatever you wanna do with your money.
You have no plan, you have no budget, you just spend according to filling. You just walk past something like, ooh, I gotta have it. I feel like I need them cardies. Like I feel like I need some $2,000 glasses.
Okay, that's one way to go about it. But in order to be an investor, you have to have resistance. That means you have to be able to walk past things that you technically could buy. Now keep in mind, you can buy them, but I don't know if you can afford them, but you gotta be able to walk past things that you can buy, meaning you just have the money, your possession to buy and resist it.
Why are you resisting it? Because you just had a plan to invest $100 a month. Now what I'll tell you is this, as you start investing, you might wanna start increasing that amount that you invest. But that's up to you and it depends on how your plan is working up.
We're just talking about it as a beginner. So here's the first thing I want you to take away, that in order to be an investor and have the mindset of an investor, I have to have discipline. If you don't have that, you might as well turn this video off, go to another page and watch people dance around in the backyard or something, because it's not gonna work. I don't care what program people sell you or what YouTube video you saw.
If you don't have discipline, it's not gonna work. All right, second thing, consistency. Now again, this sounds like a simple concept, but how many of us are actually disciplined? How many of us are actually consistent?
So here's what I wrote down about consistency. Here's how I want you look at it. Focus, eliminate distractions, execute. All right, so let's think about this.
Why is consistency important? Well, you have this plan, this budget that you put in place, and now you gotta actually do it over a year long. You said the plan was to invest $100 a month for 12 months. Well, what happens with a lot of us is we are not consistent because we get distracted.
We're not focused on the goal. The thing is you have a goal or a target, and then you focus on it with extreme precision. That means when other things come up, like maybe you had this $100 and all of a sudden, it's your nephew's birthday, and you just wanted to buy him these $90 shoes, it's like, you know what? I have a plan that I'm working in place right now.
I love my nephew, but right now, maybe when this plan worked out, I'll buy him six pairs of shoes, I don't know. But right now, I need to be consistent to executing the plan that I wrote out. Remember, you wrote out the plan, right? You're disciplined, you're resisting, but then you can't just resist once.
Consistency is about, can you continue to make the right decision time and time again? I did it in month one. I did it in month two. Well, what happens?
We have distractions. It's somebody's birthday. And it's something I understand about poverty as well, just coming from poverty. When you come from a poverty mind, people attach love to money and gifts.
It's a weird thing. It's like we don't have money, none of us have money, but oh, we gotta get these kids a good Christmas. Like what? There's a lot of like, you're overcompensating for things like, you want your kids to go to school and you don't want them to feel left out or all this stuff.
There's all these emotional things that they're real things. I'm not trying to minimize them. But what I'm saying is you need to be consistent to execute the plan, because maybe the kids that have six bad Christmases in and on the seventh one, they'll have the best Christmas they ever had in their life because you'll actually be able to afford to give it to them. Consistency is about doing the right thing, time and time again, eliminating distractions so that you can actually execute the plan that you put in place.
Here's the third thing. I'm gonna share this third thing, and then I'm gonna give you a bonus thought around, why you should even consider having an investor's mindset. Here's the last thing, patience. Patience is a big one.
The Bible says let patience have her perfect work. Always look at patience as this ability to wait to allow something to finish. Now, you discipline, you created a plan, you're resisting. You're making these decisions time and time again, and here's where patience come.
You on month nine, and you haven't really seen the results that you wanted to see. And I've seen this with a lot of people as it comes to investing, they don't know how to have a long enough time horizon to allow the situation to play out, because in their mind, they have a scarcity mindset. That's what poverty produces a scarcity mindset, where you just need everything right now, because you acting like it's, all the money gonna go away, it's never gonna be there again. So it's a really impatient mindset.
And some people, they were disciplined for a certain amount of time, they were consistent for nimless, and then they started getting discouraged, because they're looking at the results of the nimless, and it's not producing what they thought. They've actually gone down 10% in their portfolio, and they're like, I can't keep doing this, this doesn't make sense, and so they break. They lose patience. Patience is about enduring, strengthening your faith, and producing results.
So endurance, we see this in the Bible in James, right? Like, let your faith be tested, let your endurance be tested, right, so that your faith will be increased. I'm kind of paraphrasing there, so don't quote me on that Bible scholars. My point is that you need to build endurance, right?
If you go out running, like, I hate running, but I run, and when you go out running, it's like, if you go the first day, it's gonna feel heavy. Man, if I take a few weeks off of running, and go back out there, it's like, I feel the weight, I'm carrying, but as you continue to run each day, each week, what happens is you start getting on the track, or going out, running on, I run on the track in the winter, so I'm gonna just say the track. You get on the track and you like, bro, like, I feel light. I feel like, and in, it's not just that, you feel light, but you like, you can keep going.
Like, yo, I can run a mile, I haven't even stopped for a break yet, I'm a mile in, I'm a mile and a half in, I haven't, see, that's endurance. Day one, you couldn't do that. So day one, you might feel like investing is overwhelming. I can't do this, I can't do $50 out of my check every two weeks or whatever it is, but then as you build your endurance, you like, actually I could do 200 a month, right?
And then you start strengthening your faith, because as your endurance is growing, you already been consistent, you already have discipline, but now you're building endurance, and your faith is increasing, right? Your faith in the plan. And I'm hoping that you see the interconnection between this investors mindset and just biblical principles that we should be actually executing in our life every day. So these are things we should be growing in Christ and thinking like this, this aligns with the mindset of a believer.
As you're strengthening your faith in the plan, you have discipline and you've been consistent, you have enough patience to wait for the results to come into fruition. Some of us, if I'm being real, we just quit too early. And life, the reason we're not successful is because we quit too early. This year I'm doing this business.
Next year I'm doing this. Next year I'm doing this. Have you given something the time to produce results? And I know it's tough, right?
So I'm gonna share this. Like for me as an example, I do music, I got this podcast, ministry stuff throughout my life in corporate America. And one of the things I had to do back in 2020 was I had to make a decision. It's like, all right, I got all these paths.
Like I got these hobbies and things that I love and music and podcast and stuff. But also was trying to grow in business in corporate America. And I saw opportunities to grow my career. And I'm just giving an example that I like, and I said it on this podcast.
Like for those who've been listening through the years, these are things I've said on this podcast. Like in 2020, I was extremely focused. I had a terminology of don't leave the pandemic empty-handed that I lived by that. Do not leave the pandemic empty-handed.
Meaning while everybody else is panicking, while the world is in an uproar and there's fear and all this stuff everywhere, I was intentional about developing my career and my profession and my skill set so that on the backside of that pandemic that I believed would pass this two-shell pass. I did not believe it would be forever. I wanted to step out of that thing much better than I was when it started and having produced and focused on developing my own skill sets. And what that meant was that as I grew in my career, because this was intentional, I knew that I wouldn't have time for things like a podcast or music.
And I still do these things, I'm here today. But my primary focus over the past six years has been my career because I believe that my career, at growing my career, I would actually do like Booker T. Washington was trying to do with people and increase my own skill set. Why?
Because I've taken on different jobs. I'm actually on my fifth job in six years. I started a new job in December. And what this has meant is that each role through the past six years, A, I've had to endure constant change, change management.
I have had to be very agile. I can't get comfortable because I'm always doing something new, always taking on more responsibility. But what that has done is that I'm a much different business professional than I was six years ago, just because I've taken on such big roles in managing such large businesses and dealing with running businesses and multi-million dollars, over $100 million of business that I manage. And so at the end of the day, in this process, I have been able to grow by focusing on my career.
I only said that to say that some of us haven't made a decision on what we want to do, because it's too many options. It's like going to a restaurant and you're looking at the menu and it's just too many options. And so we don't know how to choose where we choose something and we get halfway through the meal and you start looking at other people, stuff like I should have went with that. And that's how we doing our life.
And so I just want to encourage you to choose something, to focus on. When you have a plan, be disciplined with the plan, be consistent with the plan and be patient to see the plan through. And I believe that if you have the right plan to start and you have the right foundation, right? That you'll be in a better place over time.
You feel what I'm saying? Bro, good to see you on here, dog. All right, so why be an investor in general? And this is my last point.
Why invest, right? For me, it comes down to a couple of things. A, I believe investment is a biblical principle. I genuinely believe that.
Matthew 25, 14 through 30, the parable of the talents, the master gave the servants three different amounts of talents, right? Talent was a financial denomination, right? So gave them money. And in the Bible, literally said the expectation was that you were to invest the money so that the money can gain interest.
Now this is a parable, which means it clearly has a spiritual purpose to this, which I believe is about as believers, we go out and we operate in a great commission, right? We seek out the great commission to fulfill that. And by doing that and preaching the gospel to other people, then other people will be saved. And when our master, Jesus Christ comes back, you will not be standing alone.
The interest you will have gained will be the souls that you have won to the kingdom of heaven. Whether it be through your skill set, your gifts or your talents, God gave you something to go out into this world, to preach His gospel, to draw men unto Him. And when He comes back, He's expecting you to have been an investor. Because the one servant that He called evil and slothful servant and cast it into outer darkness was the one who took what God gave him and instead of investing dug a hole and did nothing with it.
Let me tell you something. God does not want you to dig a hole and do nothing with what He gave you. And we have to look at the fact that that parable is quite literally using a financial example of investing to bring the parable to life. This is what Jesus said.
And so ultimately, I believe that the first thing about the investors mindset is that it is the mindset of a believer. We are investors. We are investors in the body of Christ. You should be invested.
So what does this mean? First of all, investing is about being dedicated and having a piece of the pie, having skin in the game. It means that I'm not just here in the kingdom of God just to try to get something out of it. I have also put something in it.
And I have some skin in the game. I am invested in this thing working. It means something to me. I'm not just clocking in and clocking out and it doesn't mean anything.
This means something to me for this to work. So as a believer, this is good because like, the Bible tells us to work as unto the Lord. It means you should be invested in the things that God calls you to do. So I believe the investor mindset is a biblical one.
From a financial standpoint, also if you just look through history, most of us, what we trying to do is we're trying to hit home runs. We're trying to make money. We all want to be famous. Everybody want to be famous, right?
So you think, oh yeah, we get to the point we exploring our kids. We're looking at our kids. Hey, this person talented. Let's see what she could do.
And it's like, OK, that's good. You should invest in your kids. So don't take what I'm saying wrong. But what I'm saying is that ultimately, you're trying to hit these home runs.
It's really hard to make it and be famous. It's really hard to hit the lottery or just get this one lump sum of money. And quite frankly, if you haven't developed an investor's mind, you're going to just do nothing but blow it anyway. You have to change your mind.
The Bible says in Romans 12 and 2, I believe, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Transformation starts up here. You will never be able to invest and start developing and growing and building wealth if you don't change your mind about the fact that it's something you should even be doing, which is what I'm trying to encourage and challenge you to do today. If you look through history, most wealthy people make their money investing.
More than people in the NBA. It's only so many people in the NBA. It's only so many number one song, American idols, whatever it is, yes, the rare people make it, right? But for the normal everyday people who aren't going to the NBA and you know, it's like, look, sometimes you just gotta be where I'm not going to the league.
I'm too old now. I'm older than the people that's in the NBA. That's retired at this point. So at the end of the day, I'm not going to the NBA.
Great. Okay. I don't want to make it in the music industry. It seems quite like an evil industry that just don't vibe with it, right?
So music is still a hobby. I love sharing my music. I love doing music, but I don't want to have success. And I don't want to be famous.
I'm good on that stuff. But here's what I've learned that many people have made millions by developing the investors mindset by over time, being consistent in discipline and patient. You look up year after year because of compounding interest and I feel like things compound positively just like they can compound negatively. Some of us make bad decisions financially and they continue to compound.
So I'll tell you about me one day, so I'm not talking about nobody else. I had a money car loan when I was in college. And by the time I was out of college, that car was $5,000 underwater on the loan. And I remember I got another car and they had to roll that $5,000 out of $0 into the next car.
It was a compounding negative problem because I'm paying interest for the car. Then roll it into another car and paying interest on that. And so you just, the only way I stopped that was paying that stuff off and saying, okay, I'm not going into another car deal with negative equity, right? So you have to stop it at some point.
You have to break the cycle. The investors mindset is about developing and using the principles that you should already be having as a believer in sharpening you in your faith. It's also allowing you to be disciplined, consistent, impatient, things that are pleasing unto God. So it sharpens your spirit.
And let me just say this lastly, sometimes it humbles you. Sometimes it calls you to take a step back and say, you know, why was I making these bad decisions? Cause I'm trying to show off in front of people cause I want people to think something of me that I'm not. That's the truth.
I'm not even that. I want them to think I got money and I'm over here broke. So you got to be real with yourself and be humble. But if you focus on what God called you to do and just focus on doing the right thing in God's sight, I believe what happens is, it's just like when you plant a seed in the tree grow.
So I don't want to name a fruit cause I don't know the apple tree, whatever, they don't have one apple on it. You plant a seed and that seed produces multiple branches with a bunch of fruit, a bunch of fruit on one tree. I ain't never seen an apple tree with just one apple on it. What does that mean when you plant money seeds, right?
When you plant seeds towards something, it just doesn't produce one thing. It produces an abundance. And I believe that is why you should have the investor mindset and focus on doing the right thing over time. Cause it humbles you, it keeps you in line with the word of God and what God wants you to do.
And ultimately, over time, produces results at a much greater rate than you trying to just get rich overnight. All right. I thank y'all for watching this. If you enjoyed this show, please like, share, subscribe.
And I hope y'all have an amazing day. This was episode two, 47, the investors mindset. Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah.