Show Me The Money Episode

For the second episode of the four-part series, iHeartRadio’s Black and Inspired HBCU Celebration presents, Show Me The Money. Finance gurus and host of the widely popular Earn Your Leisure podcast, Troy Milling and Rashad Bilal sits down with Founder and CEO of fintech company The Wealth Factory, Angel Rich and Master Investor and CEO of FUBU, Daymond John. This group of Black entrepreneurs discuss the tools that will help with financial gains and how to make your money make money

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you, Tony, a proud partner of iHeart Radio is
Black and Inspired SCU Celebration Inspires. Welcome to I Heart
Radio's Black and Inspired HBCU Celebration showed Me the Money
episode covering the basic principles about personal and business finance.

(00:20):
We are speaking with my earning Lesia brother, Troy Milling's
founder and CEO of the Wealth Factory, Angel Rich, and
the Shark himself, Damon John hosted by me for shod Black.
All right, so the first question that I want to
ask the Steam panel is how important is entrepreneurship and

(00:42):
understanding financial literacy to the youth today. I think it's
extremely important. One of the things and we've always stresses
that you can't work your way to freedom, right, You're
gonna have to invest or create your way to freedom.
And so learning the skills of what it is to
be an entrepreneurs, what it takes to have determination to
be it and on the sitting a pathway inside there
violent important. One of the things we started with was

(01:03):
the youth and I think that was violent point. We
kind of just stumble upon it, Imbian teacher obviously being
a financial visor, we started with the youth because we
knew there was no expectation on them, right, Their brains
hadn't been developed, and it wasn't a stringent thing for
them to learn new ideas and new processes or come
up with different um business opportunities. As you get older,
you become more stagnant in your ideas of saying like,

(01:25):
all right, I have to nine five, this is my career.
I went to school for all this and I'm not changing.
Whereas when you start with the youth and get their
mind thinking of different possibilities and different opportunities, the results
can be endless and it could take them in many
different directions. There's no one way to get to two freedom,
which is the ultimate going. So having those that groundwork

(01:46):
and the foundation of having the mindset of being an
entrepreneur at a young age is violally important to the
success not only our community, but communities around the world. Angel,
how do you feel about that? Yeah, I definitely completely
agree with everything that he did stated. I would say additionally,
from an entrepreneur perspective, as you are raising funds and

(02:07):
having to manage different money, it's important for you to
be able to understand financial literacy so that you are
properly managing that money. Uh. Something that my mother taught
me as I was starting to rise was understanding your
financial self image, because if you only see yourself having
four or five thousand dollars in the bank, then that's

(02:30):
all you will ever keep in the bank, and you
will continue to spend money on ancillary things that you
don't need as opposed to managing that money properly and
investing in things. And he as he just alluded to,
if you see yourself having a million dollars or a
billion dollars, then you will be tenty over every single
thing that you have. Won't throw food in the trash,

(02:52):
you will turn your lights off in the house, and
all types of other things that helped to build your
finances into accumulate wealth. Even more so that that then
transpires into how you concept your business and your operations
and continue to scale your business, so all of it
is intertwined in your personal life as well as your

(03:13):
business life to have a foundation of financial litersity. Yeah,
I just want to add to that because I think
what you said was brilliant and one of the things
we've been preaching is changing your zero. It's kind of
the strategy. Whereas you change the amount you're seeing your
bank color the time, A lot of people will wait
till they have no money to say I have no money.
If you change the mindset and change your zero right now,
a hundred of becomes you zero. I only have a

(03:34):
hundred dollars left. I'm at zero. Oh, I only have
found your dollars left. I'm at zero up until like, oh,
I only have a thousand dollars left, ten thousand dollars left,
I'm at zero. So you change that mindset, and now
you're automatically creating strategies for yourself to gain money and
so you can invest in So if you want to
become an entrepreneur, you actually have finances to fund that aspiration.

(03:56):
I couldn't agree with you more. You entrepreneurship and entrepreneural
we're thinking is not as necessity of uh, you know,
when it comes to finance, theres are two different things.
Entrepreneur Ship and entrepreneurial thinking are basically, an entrepreneur somebody
who is finding a product of service to sell to people,
and they are now in charge of the company. Entrepreneurial

(04:18):
thinking is somebody who is working within a system and
they are, you know, executing the same thing that that
entrepreneur does externally, meaning they're making their mistakes fast, they're
making them small, they are obsessed with the customer, they're
doing their homework. So that's critical in regards so I
think a career. But financial literacy is something that you

(04:39):
just cannot get around. Financial literacy is something about what
is compounding interests? What do you do with your taxes?
You know, um credit lines? You know, how do you
secure credit? How much of your credit is supposed to
be used against? How much available credit that you have,
And that is extremely important because you may be an entrepreneur,
you may be an entrepreneur. If you're an entrepreneur, maybe

(05:02):
somebody's in the company that tells you all the things
to do. If you're an entrepreneur, maybe you hire a CFO,
maybe you hire a CEO, CEO. You're always gonna need
to know finance no matter what you do in life,
whether it is your student for life, whether you're balanced
and checkbook at home, whether you're running a fortunate one company,
whether you're trying to start a company, or whether you're

(05:23):
trying to buy a house. Right and I think all
of us has some of those aspirations and the challenges
the earlier years in school were we don't have accounting classes,
we're not taught about you know, how credit works, why
is it important? What the finances? And often um, most
likely none of us have come in an African American
community have come from legacy wealth. Our parents and grandparents

(05:46):
probably were not the Fords and the Carnegies or bigger
people who had businesses who can pass down this knowledge
or at least you can call up their accountants, their
tax you know, their tax consultants and people like that.
So we have to go prior to the Internet, we
had to go up with good old mom and dad
in the community. What they say, Yo, listen, you gotta
put all your cash under the mattress. You gotta hide

(06:08):
you know you got you gotta pay up all your
bills right away. When no, there's incentives to have your
interests laid off onto your at taxes by the government. Uh.
Cash under your mattress is a depreciating asset. Uh. You know,
cash is trash. Basically, your money should be sitting away
someplace making more and working for you. So that's the

(06:28):
difference between entrepreneurial thinking and the difference would understanding finance
very profound. Um. Okay, So what are some gems for
young people that they need to understand as far as
financial literacy? Like it would be some like basic level
information that you would give somebody high school or a
freshman in college too. Always keep in mind when it

(06:50):
comes to financial literacy and you want to start that one. Yeah,
I would say pay your bills on time. Um. That
was one that I did not learn. I did not
learn that. Um. I did not know that you had
to actually pay your bills on time. I thought that
you know, if you was doing the fifth team, as
long as you like got it in during the month,

(07:12):
you know, uh, within that thirty day period that you
had paid your bills. And that's not exactly true. Paying
your bills this thirty five percent of your credit score. Um.
And that's why we created our product, credit Rich, to
help people really be able to understand that. And we
specifically named it credit Rich because a lot of people

(07:32):
just sit with a seven hundred credit score and don't
necessarily do anything with it. But you can actually leverage
your credit to be able to accumulate more wealth and
to be able to grow that even higher and to
become rich by by using your credit score. So it's
actually an investment to pay your bills on time because
it goes towards helping to rise your credit score and

(07:55):
using it in the best, most optimal facility. And it's
even better if you pay it ahead of the first
If you were to pay it uh five to eight
days and advance of when the bills do, it has
a slight leave uh more um higher impact on your
credit score. So all of these things are great to

(08:18):
take into consideration as you are just starting out. Um.
And that's something simple that you can do. You have
to pay the bill anyway, so you might as well
pay it on time on a few days an advance. Yeah.
So there's gonna be more people who are you know,
gonna be on this broadcast that have probably more understanding
of exactly what to do with credit. But I'm going
to give you the basics. Credit is extremely important because

(08:40):
if you have a little sport that means you're paying
more interest to acquire credit. You're also getting turned down
more often, so it's costing you more to own the
same thing that other people have. If you have a
high credit score, that means you are able to use
other people's money to acquire real estate and various other
things and let other people pay the bills for you.

(09:00):
That's the theory of of of using your credit and
using your financial intelligence. You see all the things that
you know, um, that I basically own, I let everybody
else pay for, and all the things that I rent
or borrow I get to write off on the government, um.
And you have to understand that. If you want to
go out and get a home which is worth two

(09:21):
hundred thousand dollars and you have a mortgage on that
thing for about whatever the case is, three thousand dollars,
you want to charge somebody thirty five hundred a month
to stay in it, and you want to use your
credit for those type of things. And credit is important.
If you have ten tho dollars available to you on
a credit card, while you're not supposed to use more
than of that, you're not supposed to use more than

(09:43):
three thousand of it because then the credit company says, well,
you're not utilizing all of this, and you're worth issuing
more credit. Now, Sometimes you want to use more money,
then hopefully if you have you're in good standing, increase
your credit score, I mean increase your credit, you know,
holding to so you can use five thousand of it, right, Um,

(10:03):
And it's all about when you pay because there's there's
three main sources of people who report your credit and
they all work within each other because their job is
to make sure you have lower credit so you pay more,
all right. So if you understand how credit works, uh
and interest works, that's important, right because they say that
you know, if you don't know about the interests, you're

(10:23):
gonna pay it. If you know about interests, you're gonna
earn it. So that's why credit is extremely important because
they will always check your credit score or anything from
a cell phone to a smartphone to a to a
car to a home, uh to even when you're trying
to get into certain communities. Yeah. I think a strategy
that we started with the youth was learning the core

(10:44):
principles of money and finance, and it was three things
we always talked them. It was how to save, how
to spend it, how to share. And so when you
calculate how much you spend, you can actually see where
your money is going. Then you allocate how much you
need to save, and then sharing and that could be
a minds everything, but also a value thing. Right, the
more value you share, the more you're gonna get back
in um in return. And so they can understand those

(11:06):
three core principles at an early age, they're gonna be
way ahead of the game, right, because that's one thing
that we don't tell our community and we don't tell
our people's like, look, you need to save a certain
amount of money. Yeah, we know we're gonna spend it
because that's what we naturally don't know what to do
when we get it. But sharing it is important, and uh,
saving is is equally important. I also would add if
they're going to create something is to have a plan

(11:27):
A through Z. A lot of times we go into
business and we just have a plan A UM. And
I was told early like, if you don't have a
plan Z, then you don't have a plan at all.
And so we want to have contendencies and the event
that Plan A doesn't work in our business, what do
we have in place if these things happen? So you
want to have contendency plans in the event that something
happens that wasn't forecasting to happen in your business, so

(11:48):
that you you don't run into situation where you don't
have a business anymore. All right, So the next one.
So when we talk about entrepreneurship, something that we all preach,
all of us are entrepreneurs. And if you think about it,
the school system on he doesn't really prepare you to
become an entrepreneur, you know, kind of prepare you to
going to the workforce. So there's no road map, but
there's no blueprint for business owners entrepreneurs, which causes people

(12:09):
to make a lot of mistakes and it also causes
people not to actually start because they just don't know
what they're doing. So, UM, as far as you know,
inspiring entrepreneurs, young people that want to be business owners
one day, UM, what are some strategies that they can apply?
And UM, you know, what are some tips for them
from the entrepreneur. It's fun journey. It's funny you say that,

(12:31):
being um a teacher for fifteen years hearing that, but
it's true. Uh, And I can't stress it enough that
education doesn't stop in the full walls of the classroom.
And I'm a living testament to it, right Like I
was in physic that teacher taught health science, but now
I teach the world about finance, and so some of
these things that I had to learn, I taught myself.

(12:52):
And so self education is very important. But the word
education in itself is the key, right, And so you
have to educate yourself in a multitude of things of interest, right.
And I'd say this all the time. We used to
discount ourselves about the things we read. Right. We would
read comic books, we would read magazines, we would read anything,
but we would we would say, hey, we didn't read
if we didn't have a book. But a lot of

(13:13):
times it doesn't have to be in The information come
from anywhere, can come from the internet and come from podcasts.
You might hear of something. But the information you can
gather and actually learn yourself. I would add to that,
when you get the education and find yourself a mentor. Right,
there's there's no better person that can give you experience
other than somebody who has actually been in the place
you want to be. And so what you're gonna gain

(13:33):
from them as the mistakes they've made on their journey,
and so that you don't have to write. So now
your steps ahead of the game, because you already have
learned what not to do. And so educating yourself, whether
it be through podcasts, whether it be UH, through literature,
whether it be through websites. Make sure that you educate
yourself and make sure it's it's a proper education. By
getting that mentor who can advise you to say, you

(13:55):
know what this information is valid, information is correct, then
also I would start executing on some of the information right.
Experience will be your best teacher. And so if you
go through trials and tripulations, whether it be in investing
in the stock market, whether it be investing in real estate.
I know, you know some of the people are gonna
become young, but all it tastes a group of people

(14:15):
to say we're gonna make something happen for its happening.
So having experienced in if in field UH is gonna
help you again learn from the lessons that you didn't
get from a mentor that you're gonna get on your
own and taking the future. Yeah, I couldn't agree with
you more. UM. I think that another thing that you
mentioned is literature, understanding and being able to read books

(14:37):
all the way going back to Plato's dialogues and Socrates
um to as recent as Bodiate Laws of power and
sort of understanding these different factions of leadership and what's
it takes to be able to develop an empire if
you will. Being able to study that on a higher

(14:57):
level UM, as opposed to just sort of the street
that you live on is critical as well. UM. But
then you need to also understand the street that you
live on. So getting involved with community service projects and
doing fundraising. UM. I remember I once raised like five
hundred dollars at at a street light. UM got all

(15:19):
of my DECCA members out and we wanted to go
to Disney World, and I remember I got it down
to a dollar per light. We made a dollar per light.
We were gonna hit our goal for today. And so UM.
Things like that are building blocks for being an entrepreneur
and can come in handy later in the future. UM.
I also worked a bunch of different jobs. UH. Started

(15:41):
working when I was ten years old as my mother's
secretary and sort of getting that mentor um experience that
you talked about. But I also learned how to type
and file and all of the administrative duties of running
a business. UM. Then from there went and worked at
Burger King and held a ton of different jobs like that.

(16:03):
Wanting to understand all the verious different business operations. I
would get all of the managerial manuals, a lot of
them I still have to this day. UM. I would
keep all of the very different menus. I would inquire
about the different universities that the managers had to go through. UM.
I it's a joke amongst my friends, like where didn't

(16:24):
you work? Um? But I purposely did that in my
youth so that I could understand all of the verious
different business UH operations. So just taking every opportunity to
sort of get these different entrepreneurials UM skills along the way. UM,
it's important. And then most importantly believing in yourselves, having

(16:45):
confidence in yourself, betting on yourself, and getting to the
point where you can jump out that window and have
the confidence that you'll be able to build a parachute. Yeah,
thats gonna have one thing because what you said was
is so important that piece about interning, right, we said
to get a mentor, but sometimes intern in your career
can be vitally important. I had the opportunity to do

(17:08):
that in a career choice that I ended up not doing.
And I said that the best thing I learned was
the well is two things I learned. Number one, this
is something I don't want to do too. What am
I gonna do now? Since this isn't it? Um, But
I wouldn't have had that experience had I not intern
for free. In that position. A lot of people will
go into careers and start studying in the careers and
then start practicing the careers and they realize that I

(17:29):
hate this. I don't I don't even know why I'm
doing this. My parents wanted me to do this, so
I'm doing it, and it's not really a passion of
something that they love. So you can get that out
the way by interning again for free, because time will
be you know, the asset that you're gonna be using,
but it's gonna help you in the future. You could
say like, this is what I was going to do,
I love it, or again, I don't know what I'm
doing here, and let me get out of as fast

(17:51):
as possible before it starts costing me in the future. Yes,
I feel triggered. Um. My whole family sells life insurance
and they're excellent at it, some of the best in
the country, and it's sort of expected in my family
for you to become a life insurance agent and every
single person has their license, and so of course I was,
you know, made to get my license. And then I

(18:11):
started working with my mother and I did not like it.
I did not like it at all. And I still
I was passionate about life insurance, and I said, you
know what, I think, I want to own a life
insurance company. And that's what made me go work for
a prudential and um, you know a ton of other stories,

(18:32):
but I totally agree. If I had not worked with her,
I would not have figured out that that's not what
I wanted to do, because not only did I do
it when I was ten as a secretary, I also
worked with her when I was eighteen, uh with my license.
So I completely agree with you. So speaking about life insurance,
you know, we talked a lot of different topics on

(18:52):
our platforms about how to build generational wealth. And it's
not really one way. You can do it through stocks,
you can do it through real estate, you can do
it the business you do with life insurance. So I
want to each of you just talk about one specific
way that you know you can build generational wealth, great
generational curses of poverty, and you know some insight on
on that. Well, that's a great question, um, because the

(19:15):
concept is it's not how much you make, is how
much you retain. And a lot of people will say, well,
you know, I, um, you know, I didn't have such
a great job. But it's about living within your meanings
and it's about knowing what an asset is and a
liability is. So an asset is something that feeds you,
when a liability is something to eat you. An asset
can be real estated, can be stocks, can be bonds,
it could be crypto or whatever whatever you're into. And

(19:38):
we probably will get into that later that you need
to really understand it, um, But you need to build
cash flow. I love the fact that Tony Robbins tells
a story about an older man who was born his
son of slaves and early nineteen hundreds and the best
job he had was a job at um A ups
getting paid thirty five thousand all of the year. When
he died at eighty years old, he left his family

(19:59):
seventy million dollars and somebody would say, why are you
how did you leave seven million dollars? Because he bought
Coca cola when Coca Cola was like the stock market,
Coca Cola was like whatever a dollar, right, or it's
like today. If you go and think about if you
would have ten or ten years or earlier, fifteen years older,
you would have bought Apple, you would have bought Facebook,
and you would have bought um, you would have bought

(20:21):
some crypto and you would have bought uh Tesla. Think
about where that would be if you let that money sit.
If you would have bought bitcoin at at twenty eight
dollars ten years ago and now it's at sixty, think
about that, right. So that's how you build generational wealth
by investing in smarter people than you. You know, you
don't always have to own a business and be the

(20:41):
entrepreneur yarself. I got people like Elon Muskin, Steve Jobs,
he's dead. They still work for me right now, right
because they are running a business and uh, it's working
for me. But you can also create cash flow. You
can also create stuff like real estate where the real
estate the value of the cash flow goes up and
you appreciate the real estate. Right. And you learn about

(21:02):
this simple and plane by talking to as many financial
experts as you can and double checking what they're saying
and what somebody else is saying, at the same time
you're spending um looking up stupid videos or checking out
hot people or great dances, is the same exact time
that you can look at at at financial instruments on
there and what's working and not. There's not this big

(21:25):
kind of conspiracy to bankrupt people. If you find that
you hear this information from one to people, go check
ten twenty other sources. If you find these other sources
who don't even know each other, all talking about this
same thing, well there's gotta be some relevance to it.
You know. When I was coming up, the Internet wasn't around,
so I had to read books by Napoleon Hill and

(21:46):
by by Brian Tracy and by you know, uh, you know,
writers on the history of Genghis Khong and whatever cases.
When I found the defining line between all of them,
I was like, are they have some big conspiracy? None
of them even know each other, right, So it's all
about acquiring information of the problem with financial intelligence. It's
not sexy, it's not cool. If somebody you know, and

(22:08):
I gotta tell you, I'm I'm a victim of it
as well. When I first when I first was able
to trade on a platform. I was like, I'm Gordon,
get go today. I just made three thousand dollars. No,
if my ass would have kept that money in there
right now, it would have been three hundred thousand dollars.
But me wanting to say I traded my bitcoin from
five thousand and ten thousand, Look who I am? Hence

(22:30):
now look who I am? Because I could have had
it at sixty. It's not sexy talking about this stuff,
but the information is there. Well, I would say, I
have to um the first being life insurance. Everybody knows
I believe life insurance, so I'm having a universal life
policy allows you to be able to accumulate cash value

(22:51):
in the policy, and it's usually at a three to
four percent interest rate, which is higher than what you
would typically get in a bank. Also, after about three
years of you over funding and over subscribing to it,
you are able to withdraw your money out and so
to almost take a loan to yourself. There is not

(23:11):
really a penalty other than the consequence being if you,
for whatever reason do not pay it back. The money
is subtracted out of the face amount um from your
death penalty at the at the end of your life span,
and so that is one of the most excellent ways
to be able to protect yourself while living, to be
able to accumulate cash as well as leave a legacy

(23:34):
um for your family. There is about a two hundred
year two hundred and twenty five year wealth gap between
us and others, and one of the main things that
other groups do is participate in life insurance, and that
is how they're able to sort of continue uh that
wealth legacy, and that's something that we need to make

(23:54):
sure that we're also doing as well. The second thing,
of course is credit. UM. Credit is such a hard
subject that has been a mixed bag of vernacular that
has been placed to almost purposely confuse people in a sense.

(24:16):
And right now there is a movement happening where people
are uh the industry is almost willing to be shell
that information and put the power back into people's hands.
So UM, we're really excited to be partnered with Experience
on Credit Rich. They have been a valued partner and
wanting to make sure that consumerants have great understanding of

(24:38):
their credit and it is essential that it is emphasized
in the home to actually be able to pay your bills,
manage your credit reduce your debt and grow your wealth.
And when you have parents that are putting different items
on their children's credit and then they're graduating with a

(24:58):
hundred and eighty thousand dollar is a debt and a
credit score of four forty four, that is creating almost
a debt legacy that then takes them ten years to
be able to climb out of that battle. So instead,
we need to have a good credit score ourselves, and
then when our children come along, we are starting to
put them on our credit at a young age. So

(25:21):
by the time they're eighteen nineteen, they already have a
seven hundred and fifty credit score. They are able to
get their student loans, you're able to buy them a
home that maybe it's a duplex or an apartment building
and near their university, and then the other housing spaces
can be runned out. So now they're graduating with a

(25:41):
great credit score, property under management, as well as wealth
that is coming in from passive income. So that is
the type of legacy that we need to be building
for our generations. So let me ask you. I'll start
with Angel, she's the credit expert. So, um, you just

(26:02):
talked about credit a little bit, but so I have
a detailed question about credit. Um, how important is it
to build and maintain a high credit score? And what
are some ways to actually repair your credit? Um? If
you have made credit mistakes. You know, a lot of
us have made credit mistakes when we were young, So
a lot of young people might take out credit cards

(26:23):
and not know, you know, that they have to pay
their bills on time or understand intertrad So how important
is it to have a good score? And what are
some tips to actually help people if they fall off
the wagon? I would say having a great credit score
is probably one of the most important things in life,
at least if you're an American. Have I would say,
having great health, believing in God and then well let

(26:45):
me reverse that, believing in God, great health and then
a great credit score. Okay, um, that's what you need
to be successful. And I graduated with you know, just
explained my journey. When I first entered college my freshman year,
my mother took me to the bank and we found

(27:07):
out that I had a six hundred and twenty credit score.
I didn't even know what that meant, and her and
the bank ladies started. The banker started slopping fives and
I was like, whoa, what is what is going on?
Why is everybody excited? And so you know, um, that
was pretty much kind of all I kind of heard

(27:28):
about it. And then you know, fast forward four years later, Um,
and I graduate in Hampton has me signed a bunch
of papers, and then now I'm an adult and I
started to go through my own credit prop out and
I have a hundred and eighty thousand dollars of debt
and a credit score for forty four. And how I
even found this out was when I went to go

(27:50):
apply for an apartment after I graduated college, and I'm
trying to move into, um, the my apartment in New
Jersey for me to go to work. And you know,
I'm trying to get a luxury apartment and this that
in the third and my credit score is worked and
I thought I had a six twenty. And it was
such a horrific incident for me because I was living

(28:14):
in New work and so there was only one luxury
building in the entire city and I was working at Predential.
So the consequence of me not having a credit score
would be for me to live in a situation that
would not have been great, especially in Newark during that time,
and um, I had to write a letter to the

(28:35):
owner of the building and explained to him my situation
and kind of what happened to my credit, and that
I had this new job with Predential and provide my
offer letter and all of these things. And you know,
I've never talked about this before, and it it it
insens me. And I guess that's what made me so

(28:56):
passionate about credit because that situation was old, horrific. So
not only was it not only did I feel the
impact for myself, but I felt that for so many
others that was then going through it. God, the grace
of God, I happen to be a statistician, and so
I sat down and I started reverse engineering to fara

(29:17):
aze of credit reporter system. And you know, it would
have taken me until I was fifty five years old
if I had just went according to how the bills
were laid out. So I started to have to figure
out all of these different methods UM to be able
to reduce my credit, which leads to your your second
part of your question. One of the first things I

(29:39):
figured out was dispute um. You know, especially when it
comes to student loans. And loans. Oftentimes they will resell
your debt um to other companies. So in my case,
I had the same loan or debt three to five
times on my credit and legally only one company and

(30:00):
represent that debt on your credit And so just being
able to put in those disputes where the onnents is
them then on the company to be able to prove
that they are the owner of your debt and you
do on this debt um and they have to respond
with them thirty days. So that is probably the number
one method right there that people should employ to be

(30:22):
able to get items um off of their credit. I've
gotten over about ninety items removed off of my credit
um through that method. My credit report used to be
twelve pages long. I am happy to say it is
now only eight items long. You know the things that
are all green, but it used to be twelve pages.

(30:43):
Twelve pages long. Um. Again, I will emphasize paying your
bills on time. That was something that I did not
understand before. That is thirty five percent of your credit
score and fifteen percent of your credit history. So just
that in itself is fifty percent of your credit score.
So being able to set your budget up where you
have these payments coming out automatically and they're coming out

(31:05):
ahead of time. That will actually help you. Then if
you're looking for like a boost or something like that, UM,
the sas credit rich UM. A great thing for you
to be able to do is maybe it's time for
you to buy a car, Maybe it's time for you
to apply for another credit card. UM. You can call
your credit card company and it asks them to increase

(31:25):
your UM, your your credit ratio, your credit availability. Sometimes
people get a ten thousand dollar credit card and then
they just sit with that, Well, we've been paying it
on time for a year or two, call and ask
them to increase the value to thousand. So all of
these different things UM go really well. And another thing
I will also say is be judicious when you're pulling

(31:48):
your credit report. UM. It can have a big impact
with different inquiries and a lot of people don't really
focus on that. But if you are going to pull
your credit you kind of want to try to do
it and a finite period of time so that the
impact is not as great, especially when you are applying
for a car, because you don't want to have a

(32:08):
bunch of scattered inquiries. Yeah, I mean that's a lot. Yeah,
I would, I would just add to that, right, like
the inquiries day, A lot of people don't realize that
that can negatively affect your credit score. And so and
I learned the value lessing. It goes back to the education.
Being on a college campus. Read the fine line, Read
the fine line, read the five print. I know they
give you a little pamphlet when they want you to

(32:28):
sign up. It's there for a reason. It's very small,
for reasons because they don't want you to read it. Right.
We always tell you that wealthy people don't usually make
wealthy people rich. Poor people make wealthy people rich. And
we become financial prey as students when we walk on
the campus because that's the target. They know that we're
gonna be responsible with money. They know we don't have
proper education with money, and they know we've never seen

(32:49):
the type of money that these credit cards can provide us.
So we have to be properly educated. And so when
we walk into the cafeteria and there's all these banks there,
if we apply for seven different cards, that's seven inquiries
which could attack your credit score. But also the utilization
is important too, right, and so if you have a
five hundred dollar credit limit. You don't want to use
five hundred dollars, right, You don't want to max out

(33:10):
your utilization because that again affects your credit score, right,
And so what will happen the first time you're doing
this is a valuable less I'm only saying it because
I went through it. Right, They give you five hundred,
you go up to five hundred, and they'll say, okay,
he paid his bill. He paid twenty dollars on that,
Let's move them up to a thousand. After four months.
Now you're like, I got a thousand of you. So
it's like, all right, bet, I'm going for the entire thousand,
and then you slowly start keeping up and now you're

(33:32):
paying a hundred dollars. And then I was like, oh wait,
he paid a hundred dollars a month for six months,
Let's give him two thousand. And as a college student
and you don't have money and you have a job
and you're working on to five, it's like, we're not
even on the five. Is a student not working on
the five? But you're making a little bit of money
and you have two thousand dollars of credit. Of course,
you're gonna use each time, and so learning the utilization

(33:52):
is very important because that affects your credit score one
of the things that you spoke about. And I was
also very privileged. Right when I tried to get my
first credit are I had credit history. I had no
idea right in. My mom became a member of American
Express right when I was seventeen years old. She made
me an authorized user. So for that time frame, ever
since nineteen till I was eighteen years old, I had

(34:16):
fifteen years of credit history before you even had a
credit card. Now, she was responsible enough to take care
of her credit card and pay those things on time.
And so now my credit score starts to have a
seven hundred seven thirty because of har responsibility. So if
you have parents, hopefully your parents are responsible. That is
another way that you don't have to open up a card.
You can become an authorized user on your parents card.
Now you've got to be responsible, and obviously your parents

(34:37):
need to be as well. But that's another way to
go about gaining credit while also helping your credit card broth. Yes,
a whole lot of game. Um, So let me ask
you guys this, what are your top tips to make
money to make your money work for you. Were always
talking about your money has to work for you. It
can't be lazy, you can't. You don't have to work

(34:58):
for money. Money has to work for you. And that's
hours good, But what does that actually mean? Like, what
is some way with money can actually work for you?
When when I hear making money work for you, I
hear invest And so I spoke about the stock market,
but also especially with this generation, crypto is a space
that they can invest money and not just take it out,
but make it work for you. Right, we'd like to
have that mindset where we want to each dollar that

(35:19):
we've made, that we've worked hard for now to go
out and work for us. And so if even if
it's ten dollars that we invest, we need that ten
dollars to go and work for us. Right. I know
we said saving, Yeah, we should have money allocated for saving,
but we should also have some money for investment, right
because we don't want it sitting the bank will will
will cupulate money and they will use your money and
when you ask for it, you're gonna have to ask

(35:39):
for permission if it's over a certain amount. And so
that means that they've applied the money that you've not
put into their system. So we want to make sure
that we use it to our benefit. We want to
make sure that we have it working for us. So
invest in crypto, uh, investing in stock, but also invest
in real estate. I mean, we hear these stories all
the time when people are coming together young men and
women and saying, look, we're gonna get our first property.
It's it's twenty thirty dollar home. Can we pull together

(36:02):
our money and now get this right? And this becomes
now an investment, and investing in yourself is too, is
another way to make your money worth you. Right, there's
no price on the knowledge you can gain from getting experienced, um,
whether it's through a course or whether it's going to
a seminar where you can learn about information that you
wouldn't be able to had you not invest in yourself.
So when we say money worked for you, there's a

(36:24):
multitle of ways. Yeah, I agree, I would say from um,
I would say from a two ways, from a practical standpoint.
One of the ways. One of the things that I
do is simply when it comes to shopping. You know, um, um,
you know I'm a kid that I used to wear
a payless shoes. My sister had every pair of Jordans

(36:46):
that ever came out, and um, she you know, had
a wall full of She got every pair of Jordan's,
every pair of Vance, all all that. And I just
didn't see the point in it. And um, I used
to way not to but pay less, and I think
I didn't understand the value of quality. Now, I think
having the extreme of having every pay of Jordan's and

(37:07):
every pay of Vance that's unnecessary, but being able to
invest in high quality clothes, high quality shoes, high quality items, uh,
you know, as opposed to just getting um cheap silverlare
or cheap china that you're gonna have to replace after
a year. It's actually better and smarter to go ahead
and invest in something that is um a good value

(37:31):
that you can then keep, pretend twenty thirty years and
maybe even passing on to your children. And that's why
you have all these rich people eating off of forks
and spoons that's like fifty years old. Um, maybe even
if the same spoon for fifty years. Okay, So it's
just it's just financial intelligence when you think about it,
you know. Um, so when you start to think about

(37:53):
stuff that way and buying you know, great furniture, um
and just things like that. That is actually making your
money work for yourself as opposed to getting a cheap
futon and every two years you out about a new
full time and so that's just silly. You know, you're
spending two hundred dollars on a full time every two years,
as opposed to going ahead and spending a thousand dollars
on the couch that's gonna last you thirty years. Like

(38:15):
you know, do the math and so um that that took.
That took me a moment to be able to figure out.
I would say the same thing with groceries. I mean,
of course people know, you know, buying, balking in different
things like that, um, but sometimes we over buy and
balk where you know you don't need too much. But
having that so to fine balance where you are planning

(38:35):
out your meals, you know what you're gonna eat, you
are pre planning what to buy, and you're being more
judicious when you're in the grocery store. One of the
biggest core ways that people waste money is on food
is on food. So if you can get that food
expense down, that's probably about a third of the money
that you're wasting, I'm willing to bet and so people

(38:57):
really need to be able to get that down. Um.
So that's on a practical level. And then I would
say on a higher level, but I have figured out
is one of the best ways, one of the best
ways to make money is through tech investments. And specifically,
I would also say black tech investments. And I'm not
saying black tech investments because I'm black or because I'm

(39:18):
pro black. Is actually nothing gonna be with that. It
is from a strictly business and financial perspective. Um. When
I'm saying this specifically with this question, and that is
because black companies tend to be undervalue, but they tend
to also outperform the market. So when you are looking
at something to invest in, you want to bo low

(39:40):
and sell high. So why wouldn't you invest in a
forthcoming genius block tech company. And another thing that I
started to do, uh, not only monetarily, but also with
my intellectual capital. So if I have intelligence about something,
I'm gonna partner with an upcoming tech company and take

(40:02):
a piece of equity in it, and then to the
three years later they're going to start to bloom. Um.
I just posted a company yesterday, brain Wrap. I've been
working with him quietly for about two or three years
now and so um, and now he's starting to he's
starting to grow and I've just been quietly helping him
and so um. That doesn't take much time, you know,
you can just say, okay, I got two hours a

(40:24):
month dedicated to this, so whatever your time, Frank is,
and being able to sort of set those boundaries. Everybody
has different skill sets that you can leverage to them.
Partner with these growing tech companies and go ahead and
get a piece of equity you know, here and there
all over the place. Don't necessarily stretch yourself out too then,
because you want to make sure you're actually fulfilling your role.
But that is a very easy way. And uh, like

(40:46):
you said earlier about learning from other people, that's something
that I've learned from older wealthy people when I asked,
how did you get all this money? And they say, well,
I just kept investing in participating in all my friends
companies you know them. One day and they started sending
me x and I was like, you know what I
want that life, well, that you that actually leads me
to The next question, how do you identify a good

(41:08):
opportunity because you know, we know all investments don't make money.
All investments aren't good. So for people are just starting out,
whether it's stock, whether it's angel invest in. How you
just talking about angrew, how do you like? What's your
your philosophy on identifying this is something I really want
to put money into. My honest answer is I need
a crazy founder with a humble heart. I need somebody

(41:32):
that is crazy enough to think they can take over
the world and just whatever industry they're trying to disrupt.
But they're not a they're not a villain. You know,
they're not trying to burn the world down necessarily, you know,
or um charge interest rate on whatever the product is
that they're creating. And that's step one. Step two. What

(41:58):
is the problem that you are trying to solve? Is
it massive? Is it a real problem? Do other people
who have this problem? Can people not sleep at night?
If you were to tell people that you had a
solution to this problem, what they run out and grab
it from your hands? Number three? Is the solution grad worthy?
You know, has somebody else tried this before? Is it innovative?

(42:20):
How do you plan to distribute it? What is your marketing?
Which I this is also number four. How do you
plan to market this? How are you going to get
it to the masses? How how are people going to
adopt it? And then um, I would say number five
is do you have a financial mindset? If somebody hands
you a million dollars? Do you know what to do
with it? Do you? I've got so many people that

(42:44):
are out raising money, and then I go, what are
you gonna do with the money? Oh? I don't know? Okay,
well why are you raising money? And how have you
not thought about what you are gonna actually do with
the money? That means you're just you're just doing this
for show, like you think this is theater you're not at.
We really try to build a business, and so you
really need to be uh strong on your financials. And then, last,

(43:07):
but not least, it's what I call a man. What
is special about you? What is what is unique about you?
What's gonna what? Why you? And why are you the
person that has figured this out? And you're going to
be the superstar in the hero at the end of
this story? Yeah? I think that was I mean, that
was a laudry list right there. I would just add
a couple of things to even the founder, because what's

(43:29):
the track record of the founder? Have they created a
business prior to this? And so if we look at
Elon Musk, we know that he's created PayPal, he has
a pretty good success rate if he's going to try
to create something new again. And what you said about
knowing yourself, do you believe in this? Right? Is this
something that you're actually pervosely wanting to be a part

(43:49):
of UM? And so what before you make any investment
again nor the financials, but is this something that you
yourself will be using UM. A lot of times people
will just say all right, that sounds like a good
idea and not have any idea of the technicals of
the financials. It sounds like a good idea he told
me as she told me, I'm gonna put some money in.
That's how we lose money very quickly. But those steps
that you gave right on and so how you should

(44:11):
be looking at investigate. So let me got I mean,
as you guys this as far as h HBCUs right,
it will be some advice that you can give to
you know, HBC presidents and leadership as far as win
a new age, as far as the crypto and digital
currencies and f t s, and a lot of times

(44:31):
institutions in general are slow to move, and they when
you're slow to move, you become outdated and you get
you know, you don't get looked at as being innovative anymore.
To what will be your advice for it's new age
technology um that HBCUs hopefully can get in front of.
And you know we looked at as innovative as opposed

(44:53):
to being lagging. I think your answer was actually in
your responses. Now get in front of it, right, don't
be rigid about the opportunity is that ahead for the future? Right?
People get stuck in their own ways and stuck in
their own mindset of how the world used to look. Right,
and then you become the grandparents of the age. Right,
it's like, well that's not how things are now. Technology changes,
people evolved, Everything evolves, right, and so this new space

(45:15):
of cryptal currency and m f t s is something
that we should be putting on our campuses and having
classes on great creating courses about having people come to
speak creating clubs. You know, you wouldn't understand how beneficial
just having a club about it and how that can
grow into something because these kids know it. They know especially,
I mean we're here in another country and that's everybody
wants to talk about cryptal currency. So getting ahead of it,

(45:37):
educating yourself so that you can educate the masses, right,
that's what colleges and universities, especially HPC use of it.
When we first found out about cryptal vote, I remember
we made about to myself that we have to tell
everybody about this because there's no way we can get
left behind, right like if this is going to the moon,
we want to be at the launching station. And so
that's what we have to do as people, but especially

(45:58):
in the fumal education that them adapt. Don't be rigid,
create courses, get people that are in the space to
have knowledge, because they might be kids on campus right
now that agree in their own points or create their
own wallets or trying to create their own platforms, and
you have no ideas being built right under your nose.
So educate yourself to educate the masses. Yeah, I agree.

(46:19):
I would love to see my beloved Hampton University as
well as the other HBCUs give us our freedom and
that is that is really what's needed, intellectual freedom. And
right now, as you alluded to, um a lot of
them a sort of stuck in the past and wanting
to hold onto the tradition, which I definitely applaud. You know,

(46:41):
I'm a traditionalist myself, but I think that we need
the legs of the youth and the wisdom of the
elders to be able to come together and merge us
forward in this new world that we are living in.
And exactly what you said. We have an organization called
Black Tech Matters and right now we are working with

(47:01):
a couple of the HP two US where we are
looking to establish organizations on the ground so they can
at least have a meeting space of people that are
like minded to be able to come together and build
these companies. They can be from all types of different disciplines.
You know, you can have somebody from the music department
and the engineering department and the marine biology department, and hey,

(47:25):
you just came up with underwater sound waves. Just make
that up. And so who knows what is able to
come out of gathering these people together in these spaces.
And most importantly, I'm a I'm a researcher and a
consultant at heart. So why aren't we branking together the
different problems that are plaguing our HP two use posting

(47:46):
these clubs and then allowing them to come up with
solutions for our campuses. I think it is a win
one situation for the students to be able to learn
and have that breeding ground to be able to go
off to other corporations as well as be us accessful
entrepreneurs as well as improved the universities and helped propel
us and move us forward. What's what's your thoughts on that? Damon?

(48:07):
You know, it's all about knowing what you really are into, Like,
you can't chase um, you know, fads, right because today
it's gonna be crypto, tomorrow is gonna be n f
T S, and the next day it's gonna be sports
card trading, and then all of a sudden, you're gonna
go into Tesla when it's at its highest point ever, right,
and then you're gonna try to buy some Airbnb s.

(48:27):
You've got to be into something that you really understand
and you like and you really want to go into
because there's so many different ways to go into it.
What type of n f T you're going about. What
type of crypto you're gonna buy. Is the crypto about
the ecosystem? Is the crypto just about a strong backing
to it? There's a crypto, you know, defining the banking system.
Who's into it? How many people are trading in the

(48:49):
n f T s. Are you getting certain special characters
and special things? So there's a lot of different orias.
It isn't a certain n f T that just gives
you access to certain things, whether it's as a guard,
as concerts, financial uh conferences, So you gotta know everything
about it. The worst thing is ever somebody telling you
I got a hot tip for you. You know, here's

(49:10):
what you should be doing because I'm doing it, or
I'm gonna make man money off it because of this.
You know, if somebody said that to you, I'm not
saying they're trying to rob you nothing that you may
be making a poor decision, But if you don't understand
what they're talking about, when things go bad, you're gonna
wonder what the hell happened. You gotta say, if somebody's
giving you a hot tip, that better be somebody that
you've been talking to for two months, ten years, twenty years.

(49:31):
You're going back and forth. You know when you're failing.
I'm failing, and you know the best way to do
it is surround yourself with a circle of friends that
are talking about investments. They're talking about uh, you know,
opportunities out there in the market. They're reading the Wall
Street Journal, They're reading the New York Times. They're not worrying.
They're not worrying about talking about gossip. They're worrying about
talking and what their channel at their homes CNN, it's MSNBC,

(49:54):
is Fox Financial. Those are the people that you want
to surround yourself because when you start surrounding yourself with
a bunch of people talk like that, this becomes second nature.
And that's what I did when I was coming up.
I love hip hop and I love fashion, but I
love more finance. I want to know how the world work.
And there's any any single time that you see a transaction,
somebody makes money. I don't care if you are your

(50:17):
house is bankrupt, well guess what guests who made the money,
the person who brought it out of bankruptcy. Right, somebody
made money during a transaction. And I and I want
to be on the knowledgeable side of a transaction. Absolutely
so for HBC students. Um you know, being a college student,
one of the hardest things is trying to figure out
what you're gonna major in, and is something that you

(50:38):
picked the wrong major and you waste four years of
your life and you waste a bunch of money and
you realize that you really can't, you know, go into
the field that you want with that major, and you
don't realize it until it's too late. So what are
your thoughts on career path majors that you know will
probably be beneficial in today's economy? Uh? Yeah, I mean

(51:01):
I would start where you know, you should find your
what your purposes. I wouldn't want to tell you to
find a major and you should be doing that because
that's what you know generations of parents did to us.
You should be doing this. I want you to be this,
I want you to this until you realize you want
to be any of those things. So I would say
you find your purpose and that is something that you're
naturally good at right now that it doesn't take you

(51:22):
much time or effort. It's a natural skill that you
have that you just need to develop. Had I gone
back in time. What I would be studdying is computer science,
no doubt. Right, if we look at the age of
growth and economics, If we look at the tech sector
over the past ten years, it's been the fastest growing sector.
And so there's plenty of things you can do inside
of technology. Um. And we talked about it a lot.

(51:46):
Semi conductors probably be would would be my main point,
my focal point, um, So computer engineering because we know
that everything that we have involves semi conductors, whether it
be this computer, or your phone or this camera. Everything
involved with movement and technology has a semi conductor in it.
So computer engineer would be my focus. Um. But like

(52:07):
I said it, it would be depending upon the person. Right.
If we're looking for the most growth potential and we
know things that are coming down the future. If we
just looked at Facebook changed their names right to Meta
because they're building a world inside the Meta first, that
tells you that computer science is here to stay and
companies are billing money billions billions of dollars. Right. We

(52:27):
said Face was gonna pay fifty billion dollars to get
this off this ground, and not just the only ones
in this Amazon will be next Apple will be creating
some Microsoft will be creating something. Every time one of
these giant corporaces create something, guess what, more opportunities, more jobs.
And so if we're looking for high paying jobs and
a place, that's going to be abundance, definitely computer science,

(52:47):
folksing and computer engineer. Yeah. I strongly agree with what
you just said. Whenever I am positioned with this question,
my response is what would you be doing for free
if you were already it, You already had a home,
you already had everything in life that you wanted. What
would you do for free? And that's what you should
focus on, and that's what you should go get your

(53:08):
degree in. An entrepreneur can be an any subject um
you can. You can start a business as a paleontologist. Uh,
you could be a missionary and create a business out
of that. Actually helped the friends start a business that
was a missionary. And she didn't know what she wanted
to do after she was a missionary. But she sort
of grew up wealthy, and she had traveled the world

(53:30):
and she knew where all the great luxurious spots were
across the world. And I was like, why don't you
do like a Christian sort of tour across the world
and in various different cities, and you take people to
these very different places that you've been UM and it's
called break by Faith and she's been quite successful with it,
and so and entrepreneur can come out of anywhere. It

(53:52):
just has to be something that, like you said, it
has to be something that you're passionate about. And once
you are a passionate and then you learn the business
skills and or the tech skills to then go along
with that, or get a partner, or take some classes
however you get there. UM. But the root of it
means to be whatever it is that you are passionate

(54:12):
about and truly understanding that subject so that you know
that subject better than anybody else. And that is why
you will have your BAM and that is where it
will create your why for why you are even starting
this company. Very profound. So the last question is, uh,
for you Angel, being an h b c U alumna,

(54:33):
how has being an h b c U alum impacted
your journey? Being an HBCU alum has blessed me greatly.
I couldn't imagine going to any other school but Hampton.
Hampton is actually the only school I even applied to,
and so I love it so much. Being able to
understand my culture on the level that I do and

(54:55):
understanding humanities has helped me be able to navigate the world. UM,
not just in America, but from all of the different
countries that I've been able to travel to. I don't
think I would have gotten that same level of cultural
understanding going to another type of school. UM. It's also
sort of a underground network, if you will, UM, not

(55:17):
only amongst my fellow Hamptonians, but amongst all sort of
h B c U alumni. We all look out for
each other. We've work with each other, and we have
sort of common values and morals that are unspoken that
we understand, and it helps to uh alleviate a lot
of things when we're looking to build businesses together. And

(55:41):
I just actually really just can't stress enough how much
I think that it has been a blessing to my journey.
I'm thankful that I made the decision to go to
Hampton as opposed to University of Maryland, which I would
have had a full scholarship to UM, graduating from Flowers
UM High School right down the street from it. UM.
But going to Hampton was a thoughtful decision and the

(56:06):
sort of grittin guts that it takes to be an entrepreneur.
You developed at an HBCU, and I wouldn't have wanted
to have it any other way. Did you have it?
You have it a reindorsement for HU with the real issue.
Of course, it's the real HU. I've been holding back

(56:27):
all day. Now. Okay, I'm getting married to a Howard man.
Now I'm constantly on the defense. Okay, all you gotta do.
Speak said. We just had a party last night. It
was it was crazy. You gonna have this split the

(56:51):
baby when it comes to the merch. Yeah, we're gonna
We're gonna let the baby choose which one they want
to go to, and you know, let the recruiting begin.
I mean, either way, their first letters are gonna be
h you. Yeah, alright, I'm rashad aloud. Thank you for
joining me, Troy Millings, Andrew Rich and Damon John for

(57:15):
this Black Inspired Show Me the Money episode. For more
of My Hearts Black and Inspired HBCU Celebration podcast series,
you can listen on the I Heart Radio, Apple Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.