April 23, 2024 • 17 mins
The BluePrint Connect Podcast LIVE serves as an extension of last year's 7th annual 2023 Waymaker Men's Summit. Dive into the world of success, ambition, and inspiration! Join us for a special podcast episode featuring Ross Mac, CEO/Creator of Maconomics, and Xavier Miller, Co-Host of the award-winning Millionaire Mindsets Podcast. Mac and Miller reflect on the importance of financial literacy and building generational wealth within the Black community. They share their personal journeys and emphasize the need for collaboration, investment, and entrepreneurship to overcome the wealth gap. Welcome to this special podcast episode featured at the #1 Men's Empowerment Conference in the country. Enjoy the show!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm thewist Car, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast.
The blue Print Connect podcast is an extension of the
Waymaker Men sit where we consistently give men a prescription
for growth, not just for themselves, but also for their
families and their community. During these podcasts, we will educate
and motivate our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finance, health and relationships.
(00:31):
We're at the seventh annual Waymaker's Men Summit in Chicago,
so welcome to this special podcast episode featured at the
number one men's in Parmit conference in the country, Waymaker
Men Summit.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to the Waymaker Studio. We're doing the podcast here
here at the Waymaker Summit. I'm joined by none other
than Ross Mack and Xavier Miller. Welcome, gentlemen, Thanks thanks
for handling. This is the financial conversation because that's what
you guys are about.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Ross, talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What you're doing and your brand and what's important.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The brand for me is economics and the one thing
I always find to be important is how do we
help bridge the information gap and the exposure gap in
our community? Because I think that is the one true
testament to helping us right, defy and ensure that our
community does it have zero network by twenty fifty three.
(01:31):
And so with economics, is is trying to help make
financial literacy more digestible and actually exposing our community to
different ways of attaining wealth and managing our money and
our finances and building generational wealth.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Isabah.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You spend time a lot of time talking to people
about the same thing.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
TALKO get serve you do.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So I'm the host and creative of a platform called
The Millionaire Moss's Podcast. It's a business podcast on the
biggest business podcast in the country, and pretty much the
same concept of making the conversation around wealth. Like World's Max,
they had more digestible and just for the showing people
that you don't have to be a ball player, a
rapper singer to really make money. You can be in
any job in any field and still be financially successful.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So I still have a chance.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So I gave up my rap career, my bass.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You still have a chance. You still have a chance.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So how did you become the biggest financial podcast in
the country.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
How did that app God.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
I can't even so, I can't even really give you
an answer that will probably will even make sense.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It's really just do our work.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
And God, I was in the military when I started,
and like I shared earlier, when I was in the military,
I'm gonna make a long story short. I had to
get my wheel done because I got tasked with the deployment.
And when I made my wheel, it took me like
a minute to finish it. So I'm pretty sure you
familiar you make a wheel, it take you sixty seconds.
You know what that? You right know what that means.
I don't have to say it. So, uh, that woke
(02:52):
me up and it told me like I need to
change my life and do some things. And then that's
when I started saving my money. I went on deployment
and saying all my money came home about twenty five thousand,
and I started investing and then it grew. It grew
over the next twelve months to six figures. And then
on that journey I was documented and I had so
many people from here, this where I'm from. They was
all asking me, like, yo, how you do this, how
(03:13):
you invest how you do getting to real estate? All
these things. So my girl was my wife, and now
she was like, how about we just started podcast. We
got aessential location whe everybody could listen to like the
stuff that we're doing. And then it just after that.
I had no expectations. I didn't know anything about podcasts.
I didn't know nothing about the media industry. And then
it just it went much larger than I ever could imagine,
(03:35):
and it just took over my life.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So your life didn't begin at military. So let's go
back a little bit of certain to tell us more
about who you are and how you came to do this.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I'm the son of Joel and Lois Miller. They was
raised on the West Side, and they raised me on
the West Side as well. I went to high school
Provides the West on the West West Suburbs, grow up
like any other kid in Chicago, thinking, trying to think,
we're gonna go to the league, play a ball.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I'm going to the NBA. I just knew I was
going to the NBA.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
And that guy when I hit my I've been his
height since I was about a sophomore. I said, maybe
I ain't going to the NBA, that maybe that's not
gonna happen. No more so I still didn't. I wasn't
really sure what I wanted to do, but I had
the older brother. I was bussed that he was in
the Navy, and that's how I got exposed to the
military afought. I graduated high school, I moved down to
Florida with him, and I wasn't really sure of what
I wanted to do with my life. And he was
(04:23):
just like, man, you should go to the military. But
if you do it, don't do what I do. Did
go to the Air Force. So that's the smartest branch.
That's the best branch they're gonna treat you.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I took I took he to that I waited for. Like,
I came back to Chicago for another year, works some jobs,
just kicking it out and for being young. And then
I'm like, I'm tired of being here. And that's where
I left for the military.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's amazing how many NBA dreams have died right here.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Man, Man going to the NBA.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Man, somewhere in reality it that it ain't happening for
one reason.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
You have to say, Man, I just knew I was going,
But that's what I'm saying. Going. You couldn't chill me.
I wasn't doing.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Man, go back, man and tell us your story as well. Yeah,
I'm from Chicago, from the South Side of Chicago. I
too thought I was going to some type of league,
whether NFL or NBA, and I ended up going to
Whitney Young. And from Whinney Young, I went to UPenn
Warden School in Philadelphia. From there, I worked and left
(05:20):
and went to work on Wall Street. And so my
my kind of my pathway to getting to economics was
I realized, you know, I was in a great seat,
great job. But when I came back home, I worked
at Morgan Stanley in New York City. And when I
came back to Chicago, I worked at a hedge fund
called Grosvenor Capital. And I realized by being back in
(05:42):
my hometown, I was surrounded by a lot of friends
who didn't have the same levels of exposure as me.
And that's that was something that was important, because I realized,
like man, just by being exposed to certain things, oh,
I'm you know, I'm already planning for my retirement in
my twenties. I already have LLC, I'm thinking about tax strategies,
and I'm investing, and I'm even talking about crypto. What
(06:07):
I realized is that exposure is the greatest teacher. And
I realized that people that I grew up with didn't
have that same level of exposure. So I wanted to
find a way to now bring Wall Street to Main Street,
and so I started making content and Economics ended up
having a ton of, you know, partnerships, whether it's we're Revote, TV,
b T, Complex, the Street, you know, Netflix, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
So I love it.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Every time I talk to you, it's grown a bit
more and it just didn't full disclosure. I've known Brosston s.
He was in high school at Whitney Young. Yeah, we're friends. Yeah,
going back there. And so when we think about where
you both are at this point, when you started out Ross,
well you did you start out thinking that it would
it would be this economics and you start out thinking
it would be this podcast. You start out with this
(06:53):
kind of perspective on how big it could be or whatever.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
No, I and you, Savier said it perfect right. It's
just God's timing right and God's plan. But the one
thing that I will say, I started out saying, so
I just want to change lives, and by doing that,
you know, other blessings were able to just come right.
Because every day I set out to say how can
I ensure our community finds a better way to make
(07:19):
more money, finds a way to start planning for life
after death, whether it's a state planning, insurance, retirement planning, investing,
buying a.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Home, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And so for me, I just started out saying, I
want to find a better way to educate our community.
You know, I was the Wall Street rapper, and then
a lot of people know what Wall Street aspect of
that was, and being a person in what I started
working on World Street. I was the only on my
desk the first and this is twenty twelve, the only
in the first. So I'm like, all right, I'm in
(07:50):
some rooms and it's not the Illuminati, but it's some
rooms that don't look like us. I need to be
able to bring that perspective back to the South Side
of Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
We'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Look, I love watching young folks go and grow and
become successful. And I love it more because you guys
just get older and I don't. I'm not accepting or
recognizing any of that. But when we think about this,
you and I talked about but examer you and I
didn't you mentioned rossis where we are as a community
getting to zero wellth by twenty fifty three, which is
(08:35):
what the reports recently showed. They also talked about the
trillions of dollars that we come into the black community
every year that did obviously go out. The real challenge
that we have is how do we stop that from happening?
And so I'd like to talk to both of you
about where we are today, recognizing we're not at zero now,
it's something like seventy eight eighteen thousand dollars, but how
(08:57):
do we stop from one from eighteen to zero going
the proper direction, which is what you both are doing
and working towards.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
That's a great question.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I actually just had a really really long conversation with
a elder gentleman just last week about this because I
was I was asking them, I'm like, the expenses they're
going to keep increasing, and they say the average black
male female make around forty to forty five thousand years.
So I'm like, how is it possible? How do we
make it possible in this day and time for people
to really build ends me right, like it ain't adding up,
(09:27):
And we came to like was he was gave me
some explanations. I was like that it was real good insight.
He said, it's going to boil down to collaboration. He's
like at this point where like we have to collaborate.
And I think, how I see it is you. If
you all lie, you probably see like the gender wars
going out all the time, man saying women ain't nothing,
women saying guys ain't nothing. But I think it's a
(09:49):
trick and one of the biggest traps of this era
because at the end of the day, like I said,
the average man and women make around forty to forty
five thousand and expenses. So how we know that's you.
You really can't get bad on forty grand in twenty
twenty three. But if you can always talk about collaboration
and teaming up with somebody, if you teamed up with
somebody that's already off the top almost a six figure household,
(10:12):
how much difference is that from making forty thousand to
ninety one hundred K.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That's a huge that change that changed your entire life.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
So I think in this time, it kind of boils
down to collaborating with one another on the on the
general level, for the everyday person, that's like the easiest
way I can kind of put it. It's gonna be
kind of hard to get by on that income these
days and bridge that wealth gap if everybody has an
individual lism mindset.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Bro, that's so amazing you said that.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I put out two forms of content, and literally it
was about saying, do you want to be in a relationship?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Because the average in order to make ends meet on
the average income, whether you black or white or anything, right,
you can really only live in thirty in like thirty states.
That's crazy, Like the actual in order to make ends
meet it in like obviously Hawaii is the most expensive,
and it goes from like Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, California,
(11:08):
and I might miss one of like maybe Florida or something.
But like, if you make the you know, the average income,
you could only live in you know, like twenty thirty states.
And it's kind of crazy. But to your point, but
if you married, if you you know, collaboration and that
that's something that when we started thinking about build a
generational wealth and rectify and ensuring that we by twenty
(11:30):
fifty three don't have zero median income, collaboration, right, we
got to not only you know, maybe have two pair
of households, et cetera. But we also got to start investing.
We got to change our relationship with money, right, We
got to become life insured yep, right, because from now
and over the next thirty years, a ton of people
go to pass away unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
But that's the reality. That's thirty years that you know,
half a million million dollar.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Life insurance policies could one rectify that too, Right, we're
talking over to thirty years that the average return over
the stock market is going to be ten percent annually,
so right, in addition to the cost of living increasing,
our money needs to be growing during that time. And
obviously real estate, right, real estate market is that it's
all time highs and who knows, it's probably going to
(12:14):
keep going. So I think that over this time we
got to trend. We have to transform our mindsets to
becoming owners rather than just consumers. And we got to
just find ways to collaborate as well as continue to
share the information to give our community to bootprint once.
You want to address this as well, I would spend
some time at a bank. This week, we did a
remote podcast with my WVO and Choufe Bank, and there
(12:37):
they talked about what banks do, and they had the
conversation about capital, and I stepped back and said, let's
be clear, banks don't give capital.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Banks give loans. Depending on where you are and how
you get to whatever that point is, maybe you need
to borrow at this point to hang on to more capital,
on to more equity as you grow your business, versus
just take you a loan and always having to pay
that back and never really owning it. Love for you
to address the aspect of entrepreneurship, what that means, and
(13:08):
what it means to get capital and growing businesses in
order to build wealth with an argument.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, well, I think you know there's a saying, right
that most wealth is built by ohpm, other people's money, right,
And so you know there's nothing wrong with leveraging capital
to build a business, right. I think at the end
of the day, you know, twenty percent of when we're
(13:34):
talking about entrepreneurship, twenty percent of small businesses are going
to fail in the first year and within the first
five years half of them will fail. And how do
we rectify that? One we got to have a great
business plan. But two, right, if you have the ability
to leverage other people's money to have a dream and
make it come true. I think it's a great I
(13:55):
think it's great.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I think you know we're taught often, Oh, you know,
debt is bad. There's two forms of debt. There's good debt,
there's bad debt. Debt in order to make money is
a good form of debt. Debt to go to Macy's
is terrible debt. Right, credit card capital one debt is
terrible debt. However, if we're talking about borrowing money, having
(14:18):
capital to then reinvest into your business. Right, if I'm
having a podcast and now right I'm starting off my
business plan with just beer bowls, and I'm recording my
podcast on the cell phone, and now I'm starting to
get traction. Well, now I could go out to a bank,
right to get that loan, to get that capital, and say, hey,
I got a business plan, this is my audience, and
(14:38):
now I want to actually get MIC's, I want to
get cameras, I'm want to get lights. Now I'm reinvesting
into my business. And I think you know, all of
the greatest corporations, you know, they reinvest into their business
to make it grow.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
So you're suggesting that that's a better idea to use
your money doing that than to line up outside of
the product and Gucci store pandemic.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
With the PPP more.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Money and absolutely, look, I need to ask you both
this question as we wind up our discussion today. In
this this summit has been centered on uncomfortability and how
do you grow from uncomfortable place? Can you each give
us a quick one on of time in which you
(15:21):
were uncomfortable and what they had to do to grow
to get out of that.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That's what I like that question, And so the easiest
one for me is just to think back on my
military experience because that was the biggest transformation in my life.
You know, growing up in Chicago, I was kind of
like a one, one minded person, just growing up a
certain way growing up here, and I didn't really know
how to maneuver through certain environments, certain rooms. And then
join in the join in the military, that's a that's
(15:48):
a one eighty everything changed, you know what I'm saying.
They trying to they trying to program immntally all these
different things. But it taught me how to maneuver through
different environments, and that's so important as an entrepreneur, as
a business, Like my first was in the military. I
really struggle because it was like, really my first time
being ingratiated around white people. So going to Chicago, real
segregated city for real life. You grow you around black people,
(16:09):
you're around black people, so this is my first time
around white people, and I really struggle.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I didn't know how to adapt.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I'm thinking, like, man, do I gotta be somebody Else's
like no, I could be me so but always extremely uncomfortable.
But that uncomfortable moments and those lessons I learned, it
told me. It's priceless. All the things that told me.
I think that really will helped me propelled when it
comes to business and what do they how about you, Rob?
I think fatherhood is one of the things that makes
(16:37):
you have those uncomfortable conversations and you got to just
hit it head on, right. Fatherhood is like, Okay, I'm
here to be a provider. I'm here to be a
great man, a father figure. But guess what, I'm not
gonna be here all the time, So that one of
uncomfortable conversations. Oh yeah, let me get my life insurance
written right, Okay, Well, okay, what's the state planning looking like?
(16:58):
What's life like you have to have those conversations. I
think too often we had a conversation when it's too late, right,
And I think, you know, far too often in our
community we see go fund these as a form of
life insurance when it's not right. And I think that
you know, at some point, you know we're gonna pass away.
But I want to be able to have that. I
(17:20):
want to ensure that I'm giving my kids information as
well as capital and a legacy to give them the
freedom so that they can, you know, live life the
way they need.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
To love it. ZAVIEH.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Miller, Ross Mack, Sir, thank you both for joining me
here on the Acre Podcast.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Thank you much success to both of them, Thank you, sir.
Appreciate to the animal the sponse, thank you
Hi, I'm thewist Car, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast.
The blue Print Connect podcast is an extension of the
Waymaker Men sit where we consistently give men a prescription
for growth, not just for themselves, but also for their
families and their community. During these podcasts, we will educate
and motivate our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finance, health and relationships.
(00:31):
We're at the seventh annual Waymaker's Men Summit in Chicago,
so welcome to this special podcast episode featured at the
number one men's in Parmit conference in the country, Waymaker
Men Summit.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Welcome to the Waymaker Studio. We're doing the podcast here
here at the Waymaker Summit. I'm joined by none other
than Ross Mack and Xavier Miller. Welcome, gentlemen, Thanks thanks
for handling. This is the financial conversation because that's what
you guys are about.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Ross, talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What you're doing and your brand and what's important.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The brand for me is economics and the one thing
I always find to be important is how do we
help bridge the information gap and the exposure gap in
our community? Because I think that is the one true
testament to helping us right, defy and ensure that our
community does it have zero network by twenty fifty three.
(01:31):
And so with economics, is is trying to help make
financial literacy more digestible and actually exposing our community to
different ways of attaining wealth and managing our money and
our finances and building generational wealth.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Isabah.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You spend time a lot of time talking to people
about the same thing.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
TALKO get serve you do.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So I'm the host and creative of a platform called
The Millionaire Moss's Podcast. It's a business podcast on the
biggest business podcast in the country, and pretty much the
same concept of making the conversation around wealth. Like World's Max,
they had more digestible and just for the showing people
that you don't have to be a ball player, a
rapper singer to really make money. You can be in
any job in any field and still be financially successful.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So I still have a chance.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So I gave up my rap career, my bass.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You still have a chance. You still have a chance.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So how did you become the biggest financial podcast in
the country.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
How did that app God.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
I can't even so, I can't even really give you
an answer that will probably will even make sense.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It's really just do our work.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
And God, I was in the military when I started,
and like I shared earlier, when I was in the military,
I'm gonna make a long story short. I had to
get my wheel done because I got tasked with the deployment.
And when I made my wheel, it took me like
a minute to finish it. So I'm pretty sure you
familiar you make a wheel, it take you sixty seconds.
You know what that? You right know what that means.
I don't have to say it. So, uh, that woke
(02:52):
me up and it told me like I need to
change my life and do some things. And then that's
when I started saving my money. I went on deployment
and saying all my money came home about twenty five thousand,
and I started investing and then it grew. It grew
over the next twelve months to six figures. And then
on that journey I was documented and I had so
many people from here, this where I'm from. They was
all asking me, like, yo, how you do this, how
(03:13):
you invest how you do getting to real estate? All
these things. So my girl was my wife, and now
she was like, how about we just started podcast. We
got aessential location whe everybody could listen to like the
stuff that we're doing. And then it just after that.
I had no expectations. I didn't know anything about podcasts.
I didn't know nothing about the media industry. And then
it just it went much larger than I ever could imagine,
(03:35):
and it just took over my life.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So your life didn't begin at military. So let's go
back a little bit of certain to tell us more
about who you are and how you came to do this.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I'm the son of Joel and Lois Miller. They was
raised on the West Side, and they raised me on
the West Side as well. I went to high school
Provides the West on the West West Suburbs, grow up
like any other kid in Chicago, thinking, trying to think,
we're gonna go to the league, play a ball.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I'm going to the NBA. I just knew I was
going to the NBA.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
And that guy when I hit my I've been his
height since I was about a sophomore. I said, maybe
I ain't going to the NBA, that maybe that's not
gonna happen. No more so I still didn't. I wasn't
really sure what I wanted to do, but I had
the older brother. I was bussed that he was in
the Navy, and that's how I got exposed to the
military afought. I graduated high school, I moved down to
Florida with him, and I wasn't really sure of what
I wanted to do with my life. And he was
(04:23):
just like, man, you should go to the military. But
if you do it, don't do what I do. Did
go to the Air Force. So that's the smartest branch.
That's the best branch they're gonna treat you.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I took I took he to that I waited for. Like,
I came back to Chicago for another year, works some jobs,
just kicking it out and for being young. And then
I'm like, I'm tired of being here. And that's where
I left for the military.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's amazing how many NBA dreams have died right here.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Man, Man going to the NBA.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Man, somewhere in reality it that it ain't happening for
one reason.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
You have to say, Man, I just knew I was going,
But that's what I'm saying. Going. You couldn't chill me.
I wasn't doing.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Man, go back, man and tell us your story as well. Yeah,
I'm from Chicago, from the South Side of Chicago. I
too thought I was going to some type of league,
whether NFL or NBA, and I ended up going to
Whitney Young. And from Whinney Young, I went to UPenn
Warden School in Philadelphia. From there, I worked and left
(05:20):
and went to work on Wall Street. And so my
my kind of my pathway to getting to economics was
I realized, you know, I was in a great seat,
great job. But when I came back home, I worked
at Morgan Stanley in New York City. And when I
came back to Chicago, I worked at a hedge fund
called Grosvenor Capital. And I realized by being back in
(05:42):
my hometown, I was surrounded by a lot of friends
who didn't have the same levels of exposure as me.
And that's that was something that was important, because I realized,
like man, just by being exposed to certain things, oh,
I'm you know, I'm already planning for my retirement in
my twenties. I already have LLC, I'm thinking about tax strategies,
and I'm investing, and I'm even talking about crypto. What
(06:07):
I realized is that exposure is the greatest teacher. And
I realized that people that I grew up with didn't
have that same level of exposure. So I wanted to
find a way to now bring Wall Street to Main Street,
and so I started making content and Economics ended up
having a ton of, you know, partnerships, whether it's we're Revote, TV,
b T, Complex, the Street, you know, Netflix, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
So I love it.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Every time I talk to you, it's grown a bit
more and it just didn't full disclosure. I've known Brosston s.
He was in high school at Whitney Young. Yeah, we're friends. Yeah,
going back there. And so when we think about where
you both are at this point, when you started out Ross,
well you did you start out thinking that it would
it would be this economics and you start out thinking
it would be this podcast. You start out with this
(06:53):
kind of perspective on how big it could be or whatever.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
No, I and you, Savier said it perfect right. It's
just God's timing right and God's plan. But the one
thing that I will say, I started out saying, so
I just want to change lives, and by doing that,
you know, other blessings were able to just come right.
Because every day I set out to say how can
I ensure our community finds a better way to make
(07:19):
more money, finds a way to start planning for life
after death, whether it's a state planning, insurance, retirement planning, investing,
buying a.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Home, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And so for me, I just started out saying, I
want to find a better way to educate our community.
You know, I was the Wall Street rapper, and then
a lot of people know what Wall Street aspect of
that was, and being a person in what I started
working on World Street. I was the only on my
desk the first and this is twenty twelve, the only
in the first. So I'm like, all right, I'm in
(07:50):
some rooms and it's not the Illuminati, but it's some
rooms that don't look like us. I need to be
able to bring that perspective back to the South Side
of Chicago.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
We'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Look, I love watching young folks go and grow and
become successful. And I love it more because you guys
just get older and I don't. I'm not accepting or
recognizing any of that. But when we think about this,
you and I talked about but examer you and I
didn't you mentioned rossis where we are as a community
getting to zero wellth by twenty fifty three, which is
(08:35):
what the reports recently showed. They also talked about the
trillions of dollars that we come into the black community
every year that did obviously go out. The real challenge
that we have is how do we stop that from happening?
And so I'd like to talk to both of you
about where we are today, recognizing we're not at zero now,
it's something like seventy eight eighteen thousand dollars, but how
(08:57):
do we stop from one from eighteen to zero going
the proper direction, which is what you both are doing
and working towards.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
That's a great question.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I actually just had a really really long conversation with
a elder gentleman just last week about this because I
was I was asking them, I'm like, the expenses they're
going to keep increasing, and they say the average black
male female make around forty to forty five thousand years.
So I'm like, how is it possible? How do we
make it possible in this day and time for people
to really build ends me right, like it ain't adding up,
(09:27):
And we came to like was he was gave me
some explanations. I was like that it was real good insight.
He said, it's going to boil down to collaboration. He's
like at this point where like we have to collaborate.
And I think, how I see it is you. If
you all lie, you probably see like the gender wars
going out all the time, man saying women ain't nothing,
women saying guys ain't nothing. But I think it's a
(09:49):
trick and one of the biggest traps of this era
because at the end of the day, like I said,
the average man and women make around forty to forty
five thousand and expenses. So how we know that's you.
You really can't get bad on forty grand in twenty
twenty three. But if you can always talk about collaboration
and teaming up with somebody, if you teamed up with
somebody that's already off the top almost a six figure household,
(10:12):
how much difference is that from making forty thousand to
ninety one hundred K.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
That's a huge that change that changed your entire life.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
So I think in this time, it kind of boils
down to collaborating with one another on the on the
general level, for the everyday person, that's like the easiest
way I can kind of put it. It's gonna be
kind of hard to get by on that income these
days and bridge that wealth gap if everybody has an
individual lism mindset.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Bro, that's so amazing you said that.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
I put out two forms of content, and literally it
was about saying, do you want to be in a relationship?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Because the average in order to make ends meet on
the average income, whether you black or white or anything, right,
you can really only live in thirty in like thirty states.
That's crazy, Like the actual in order to make ends
meet it in like obviously Hawaii is the most expensive,
and it goes from like Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, California,
(11:08):
and I might miss one of like maybe Florida or something.
But like, if you make the you know, the average income,
you could only live in you know, like twenty thirty states.
And it's kind of crazy. But to your point, but
if you married, if you you know, collaboration and that
that's something that when we started thinking about build a
generational wealth and rectify and ensuring that we by twenty
(11:30):
fifty three don't have zero median income, collaboration, right, we
got to not only you know, maybe have two pair
of households, et cetera. But we also got to start investing.
We got to change our relationship with money, right, We
got to become life insured yep, right, because from now
and over the next thirty years, a ton of people
go to pass away unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
But that's the reality. That's thirty years that you know,
half a million million dollar.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Life insurance policies could one rectify that too, Right, we're
talking over to thirty years that the average return over
the stock market is going to be ten percent annually,
so right, in addition to the cost of living increasing,
our money needs to be growing during that time. And
obviously real estate, right, real estate market is that it's
all time highs and who knows, it's probably going to
(12:14):
keep going. So I think that over this time we
got to trend. We have to transform our mindsets to
becoming owners rather than just consumers. And we got to
just find ways to collaborate as well as continue to
share the information to give our community to bootprint once.
You want to address this as well, I would spend
some time at a bank. This week, we did a
remote podcast with my WVO and Choufe Bank, and there
(12:37):
they talked about what banks do, and they had the
conversation about capital, and I stepped back and said, let's
be clear, banks don't give capital.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Banks give loans. Depending on where you are and how
you get to whatever that point is, maybe you need
to borrow at this point to hang on to more capital,
on to more equity as you grow your business, versus
just take you a loan and always having to pay
that back and never really owning it. Love for you
to address the aspect of entrepreneurship, what that means, and
(13:08):
what it means to get capital and growing businesses in
order to build wealth with an argument.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, well, I think you know there's a saying, right
that most wealth is built by ohpm, other people's money, right,
And so you know there's nothing wrong with leveraging capital
to build a business, right. I think at the end
of the day, you know, twenty percent of when we're
(13:34):
talking about entrepreneurship, twenty percent of small businesses are going
to fail in the first year and within the first
five years half of them will fail. And how do
we rectify that? One we got to have a great
business plan. But two, right, if you have the ability
to leverage other people's money to have a dream and
make it come true. I think it's a great I
(13:55):
think it's great.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
I think you know we're taught often, Oh, you know,
debt is bad. There's two forms of debt. There's good debt,
there's bad debt. Debt in order to make money is
a good form of debt. Debt to go to Macy's
is terrible debt. Right, credit card capital one debt is
terrible debt. However, if we're talking about borrowing money, having
(14:18):
capital to then reinvest into your business. Right, if I'm
having a podcast and now right I'm starting off my
business plan with just beer bowls, and I'm recording my
podcast on the cell phone, and now I'm starting to
get traction. Well, now I could go out to a bank,
right to get that loan, to get that capital, and say, hey,
I got a business plan, this is my audience, and
(14:38):
now I want to actually get MIC's, I want to
get cameras, I'm want to get lights. Now I'm reinvesting
into my business. And I think you know, all of
the greatest corporations, you know, they reinvest into their business
to make it grow.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
So you're suggesting that that's a better idea to use
your money doing that than to line up outside of
the product and Gucci store pandemic.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
With the PPP more.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Money and absolutely, look, I need to ask you both
this question as we wind up our discussion today. In
this this summit has been centered on uncomfortability and how
do you grow from uncomfortable place? Can you each give
us a quick one on of time in which you
(15:21):
were uncomfortable and what they had to do to grow
to get out of that.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
That's what I like that question, And so the easiest
one for me is just to think back on my
military experience because that was the biggest transformation in my life.
You know, growing up in Chicago, I was kind of
like a one, one minded person, just growing up a
certain way growing up here, and I didn't really know
how to maneuver through certain environments, certain rooms. And then
join in the join in the military, that's a that's
(15:48):
a one eighty everything changed, you know what I'm saying.
They trying to they trying to program immntally all these
different things. But it taught me how to maneuver through
different environments, and that's so important as an entrepreneur, as
a business, Like my first was in the military. I
really struggle because it was like, really my first time
being ingratiated around white people. So going to Chicago, real
segregated city for real life. You grow you around black people,
(16:09):
you're around black people, so this is my first time
around white people, and I really struggle.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I didn't know how to adapt.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I'm thinking, like, man, do I gotta be somebody Else's
like no, I could be me so but always extremely uncomfortable.
But that uncomfortable moments and those lessons I learned, it
told me. It's priceless. All the things that told me.
I think that really will helped me propelled when it
comes to business and what do they how about you, Rob?
I think fatherhood is one of the things that makes
(16:37):
you have those uncomfortable conversations and you got to just
hit it head on, right. Fatherhood is like, Okay, I'm
here to be a provider. I'm here to be a
great man, a father figure. But guess what, I'm not
gonna be here all the time, So that one of
uncomfortable conversations. Oh yeah, let me get my life insurance
written right, Okay, Well, okay, what's the state planning looking like?
(16:58):
What's life like you have to have those conversations. I
think too often we had a conversation when it's too late, right,
And I think, you know, far too often in our
community we see go fund these as a form of
life insurance when it's not right. And I think that
you know, at some point, you know we're gonna pass away.
But I want to be able to have that. I
(17:20):
want to ensure that I'm giving my kids information as
well as capital and a legacy to give them the
freedom so that they can, you know, live life the
way they need.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
To love it. ZAVIEH.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Miller, Ross Mack, Sir, thank you both for joining me
here on the Acre Podcast.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Thank you much success to both of them, Thank you, sir.
Appreciate to the animal the sponse, thank you
Host
Louis Carr
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