March 26, 2025 • 61 mins
Dominic's remarkable journey from Angolan immigrant to multi-faceted entrepreneur offers a masterclass in resilience, diversification, and authentic success. After arriving in America in the late 1990s, he navigated the challenges of assimilation while carrying the weight of his family's expectations to create opportunity from their sacrifice.
While studying at Penn State, Dominic's entrepreneurial spirit emerged as he built websites for small businesses to help pay for his education. This side hustle evolved into Global Computers and Networks, expanding into cybersecurity and government contracts worth millions. But success wasn't linear – when a major client unexpectedly went bankrupt, Dominic faced a pivotal moment that would reshape his entire approach to business.
Instead of doubling down on technology, he embraced diversification. His entry into real estate began with a brilliant house-hacking strategy in Austin, living in one room while Airbnb'ing the other three for positive cash flow. This success fueled further real estate investments across multiple states, from single-family homes to apartment buildings.
Perhaps most fascinating is Dominic's unexpected venture into agriculture. A chance conversation with a struggling Texas goat farmer revealed a market opportunity – connecting farmers with underserved communities who valued their products. Starting with just four goats, his operation has grown to nearly 200 animals. This passion for agriculture led to purchasing a 400-acre farm in New Jersey, despite the regulatory challenges compared to Texas.
Throughout his entrepreneurial evolution, Dominic maintains that true success comes from aligning work with personal fulfillment. He consumes educational content voraciously, focuses on building systems that allow balance, and views his wife as both partner and best friend in his ventures. His approach reminds us that the entrepreneurial journey isn't about reaching some financial destination, but creating a life that reflects our authentic passions and values.
Follow Dominic on social media @AskDom for practical advice on financial literacy, small business strategies, and motivation without the typical entrepreneurial hype. His story proves that with resilience, strategic thinking, and willingness to explore unexpected opportunities, we can create success across multiple domains while remaining true to ourselves.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All of a sudden, one of our larger clients.
That client went bankrupt andunexpectedly.
Hindsight is clearer than 2020.
Hindsight is the most obviousthing in this world because, as
we were working on this client,they were always late on their
invoices.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right, welcome to another edition of the Journey
to Freedom podcast.
I'm Dr B, I am your host and Iam, as always, just so excited
to be talking to folks that aremaking it work.
You know, it was funny.
So Dominic and I were talkingbefore the show and he was
asking me well, what is JourneyFreedom?
(00:54):
Why is Journey Freedomimportant?
What does it have to do withthe things that I do and the
businesses that I own?
And so, dominic, just to kindof give you a glimpse of the
show and what so, about a yearand a half ago, I went to a
seminar in Minnesota and theseminar was called the Trusted
Edge and it was about how do welead with trust, how do we trust
(01:15):
each other, how do we trustourselves and how important it
is to be able to trust.
And I'm going to ask a wholebunch of business questions in a
little bit like how do youtrust in business, how do you
obtain a business and know thatthe people are selling your
writing?
So I go to there and I look inthe room.
There's 500 people in the roomand there's about 30 people that
(01:36):
are people of color and I'mgoing.
Ok, so this information isincredible.
This information is great.
How do I get this into thehands of our community, into my
community?
And so I came back and throughsome prayer and some other stuff
, you know, I realized that Iwas saying, god, do you want me
to work with people of color?
And he said, no, I want you towork with Black men.
(01:59):
I said, but I don't want towork with Black men.
God.
He's like no, this is what Iwant you to work with.
And so last year I was able to.
Because you can't argue withGod, right, you can't.
You could try, but you're notgoing to get away with it for
very long, right?
And so last year I ended upinterviewing 105 black
(02:20):
successful men from all over thecountry.
We've got another 40 this year.
You're in that mix, somewherewhere we're getting able to talk
to a mental, so other of us cansee that what it takes to be
successful.
Yesterday I went to the statecapital here in Colorado.
I'm in Denver, colorado, and wewere talking about, you know,
(02:41):
with all the crazy stuff that'shappening federally in our
country, and I'm sure you're inDC now so you can kind of
understand all the things andthe taking away of DEI and all
you know wherever you standpolitically, and you know, one
of the things I was saying is,whether it's Trump or Elon or
whatever, they're not going tosteal my joy and they're not
going to stop us.
You know, opportunity is thekey for our success and as long
(03:07):
as there's opportunity, we'regoing to find ways to be
successful.
You can take away just abouteverything, but as long as you
don't take away our opportunity,we're going to find ways to
grow and be successful.
And there are so many peoplethat I met and talked to in the
last few weeks that have thisattitude of fear, where you know
fear and lack, where there'snot enough resources and there's
(03:27):
not enough out there.
I'm sure, being from Angola,you kind of understand the
amount and the plentiful ofresources at least that we have
here, an opportunity that wehave here.
And when we approach thingswith lack, it's like the God
that I serve is a God ofabundance and a God that allows
(03:50):
us to have opportunities.
And when I see you, dominic,and I see, hey, I have a ranch
in Texas and then I have anotherranch in New Jersey and I'm
living in DC and I'm abusinessman, and I make it like
happen that tells me right there.
It's not the opportunity tosurvive, it's our connection or
access to it, or theunderstanding or the education
(04:12):
that allows it to do that.
And so you get to be on.
You know, I'm honored to haveyou on this show because I get
to glean and when I'm saying getto, that was meaning me I get
to be selfish and I get to learnmore about what it takes to be
successful from your eyes, andso I'd love for you to tell your
(04:32):
story how you got here, how youwere able to purchase and buy
businesses and become asuccessful man.
I don't believe you're 80 or 90years old.
You don't look like it.
If you do, then I want to knowwhat that secret is.
But I think you're younger, soyou've been able to do that at a
young age.
So thank you for being here,thank you for being on the show
(04:54):
today, and please go ahead andtell us your story.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Dr B, thank you, yes, very excited to be here.
Thank you for having me andyour audience.
Thank you for sharing this hourof your day with us.
So I'm excited to let you guysknow a little bit about me and
my story and hopefully I canprovide some sort of value to
whatever journey everybody elseis in.
(05:17):
What I kind of start off, whereI start off, is I'm 35, just so
that you know that's out there.
I'm not 80, but I'm 35.
But I was born in Angola, africa, and I came here early 90s or
mid-90s, I'm sorry, or late 90s,1996 or 7.
(05:39):
And that was strictly throughthe efforts of my parents,
obviously.
And my father studied hard.
He was into satellitetelecommunications engineering
and he had a skill set thatallowed us to leave a situation,
a war-torn country, and make ithere in a more prosperous
(06:01):
environment.
Albeit still had its challenges.
Obviously, the history of BlackAmericans was very prevalent
still, but everything that weknew about America was that it
had opportunity, like you said.
So throughout the 2000s it wasa little bit tough and difficult
(06:24):
being an immigrant and being anAfrican immigrant, especially
just in the form ofself-confidence and how people
interact with you and learning anew language and just learning
a new culture.
But I did.
What so many of us try to do istry to assimilate, try to blend
(06:45):
in, try not to stand out.
I wanted to not be known as theAfrican kid or the African you
know.
I wanted you to not notice meto my detriment, as I would find
out later on in life.
Where it pays to stand out,where it pays to stand out.
And so throughout high schooland everything, I just knew I
(07:07):
was different, but not strictlybecause of my upbringing or
where I was born, but alsobecause of the upbringing,
because I was reinforced in thethought that you know you are a
(07:29):
guest here.
Right, I have my opinions inpolitics and social economics
and so many things that we as acommunity can do better.
But I've always realized thatyou know nothing here.
My time here isn't a given.
I'm a guest here and I do havea community back home that I owe
the you know the tutelage ofdoing well here in some degree
(07:53):
to bring up my you know mycommunity as well, my home.
So it's like don't focus onparty while all your friends is
running around partying.
Remember, you got to keep yourhead straight.
You got.
Your journey is different, yourstory is different and while
you I grew up in Philadelphia,so you know, black kid in Philly
(08:16):
, of course was was aroundcertain things.
That that's just what I knew.
I never got in trouble, butthat was almost a struggle in
itself to stay, staying awayfrom some of the, the trials
really of growing up in the hood, to be very honest, but it it
(08:38):
was really.
I really reinforced that toyoung kids now, and people who
have young kids make sure thatthey know that life is greater
than those first 15, 16 years,right, like there's so much more
.
And sometimes we didn't seethat until I got to college,
(08:58):
penn State.
That was the first time.
Now, coming from, remember, Icame from Africa, went to philly
, I lived in in the neighborhoodwhich was 90 black, you know,
um, and everybody was juststruggling and we were all just
it was a collective struggle, um, but we were making it.
And then I went to a majoritywhite school and I'm like, wow,
(09:21):
these brads and chads are verylike, know, seems like they're
doing pretty all right.
I mean like the conversationswere different.
Now we're talking about youknow, just, I started to realize
, you know, their family'sjourney and story is not better,
it's not worse, but it'sdifferent, and I my parents had
(09:52):
instilled in me that I needed tomake my own path, that I needed
to be financially savvy andliterate, and and I came from a
system Angola is known forcorruption.
The continent is so rich withwealth, but it struggles to
maintain it, and it has it inthe hands of a select few, so
it's like nobody's going to giveyou anything right, and you may
get more from where you're atas a guest than you will from
(10:12):
your home country.
So, as I'm talking to theseguys, I'm starting to understand
how some families you can readit in books all you want, but
until you start seeing it that,oh wow, people have used this
generational wealth to advance,and how this person here now is
getting college paid for orsubsidized or helped in some way
(10:35):
by the savings of his parents,and the next generation is going
to snowball into that successsnowball into that success.
What was happening for me,though, is because I had.
You know, I was an immigrant.
I was having a hard timegetting.
I didn't qualify for federalgrants at that time, so I was
having a hard time even tryingto figure out a way to pay for
(10:57):
school.
So I was trying to find littlejobs here and there, paying for
school out of pocket, because Ijust didn't have too many other
options, and what I decided wasI was taking a web development
course and an applicationdevelopment course and that was
the start of what later wouldbecome my technology company.
(11:18):
But I started just doingwebsites for $500 for a small
business or a friend who had aproject that they needed a
website for.
So I was doing these websites$500 here, $500 there, and it
was just helping out.
Eventually I got pretty good atit and I could charge $1,000 or
$1,500.
(11:39):
I started doing that so muchthat I formed a company that
just focused on that while I wasin school.
And then all of a sudden westarted growing a little bit.
Global Computers and Networksis the name of my technology
company.
We ended up growing and doinggovernment contracts.
We not only focused on websitesbut we did cybersecurity, we do
(12:01):
network design.
And then we started gettingclout because I had a fervor and
just a passion where youcouldn't tell me no, whatever
you needed from a technologystandpoint, I was chasing it.
I was hungry.
Google, ibm, the Darden Groupwhich is the who are those Olive
Garden Red Lobster and thoseguys.
(12:31):
So we were managing their localnetwork.
Even though they have anational team, we were their on
the ground team.
And then we got into the worldof government contracting and I
was just reading incessantly,like how can I get into
government contracts?
There was a point that we weredoing just several million
dollars a year in contracts andgovernment contracts in
(12:55):
technology and logisticalengineering government get
material from one place rightOne vendor that's in one city to
another and mixing thesevendors together.
And that might be a projectthat we did.
Was you know, robotics?
We did robotics for thegovernment.
(13:16):
Obviously, our company designed, coded and built certain robots
, but really there's a lot ofcompanies involved in that.
There just wasn't me and mystaff, it was six, seven other
companies and that was part ofwhat the contract is to really
mesh all that together for afinal product.
(13:38):
So we were getting into thatand this could be a whole
podcast just about governmentcontracts, the highs and the
lows, because it's great whenit's great and it's just bad
when it's bad, as some vendorsare finding out right now.
Oh, I bet.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I bet.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah, because it costs a lot of money.
The government is such a bigconsumer that they have their
rules and unless you're a bigcompany that wants leverage,
you're not making any demands.
They're telling you we're goingto pay you this.
When we pay you and it'stypically you know it's
scheduled out.
But if you're doing amultimillion dollar project,
(14:21):
which we were so happy andelated to get these contracts
you got one, get these contracts.
You got one or two contracts.
Well now, I didn't put two andtwo together right away.
I mean, you have some sort ofnotion, but you're out millions
of dollars for a couple months.
I'm like whoa, the government'snot funding you money.
They're like, no, we're goingto pay you, whether it's a net
(14:44):
30 or after the performance, theperformance after the delivery.
It's like, wow, there's, andthen there might be one vendor
that just wants their moneyright then and there.
Or it's just so manycomplexities and large companies
, um can modify their contracts,can, can leverage, and a boeing
is always behind on their,their deliverables, and um,
(15:08):
google and and aws can alwayschange their terms of their
contracts.
Me, no, they didn't care what Ihad, what issues I would have.
So that was very telling um,where I thought I had hit a gold
mine, literally andfiguratively, and ultimately it
was like, oh man, maybe thisisn't.
(15:30):
I'm not doing something righthere.
Right, like, I know companiesare making a lot of money from
it, but we don't want to overleverage ourselves here.
So, as I'm noticing that, andnow my company is growing and
I'm having these debates on whatwe should do with our
government contracts andfiguring it out, because it's
(15:54):
just national contracts, you'reeverywhere, we're flying
everywhere, working withinternational vendors.
It was very challenging, but allof a sudden, one of our larger
clients, like I mentioned, wewere doing some larger projects
and we were the ground supportfor a lot of national brands.
That client went bankrupt, andunexpectedly, and hindsight is
(16:20):
clearer than 2020.
And hindsight is clearer than2020.
Hindsight is the most obviousthing in this world because, as
we were working with this client, they were always late on their
invoices and if you run abusiness, everybody might be
different, but when you'rerunning a business and you're
(16:41):
focused on something you're sointently I'm an engineer by
trade, so I was just focused onthe engineering aspect of
running my business, where ifsomebody's behind 15 days 20
days, it wasn't you can't focuson everything right, like okay,
we sent the invoice, they'll pay, we know they pay, they're late
, but now they're 15 days, butthey paid before.
(17:04):
Okay, now they're 30 days late,but they paid before.
You know, then they got to once.
You're like, how did we letthem get to 60 days late or 70
days late before?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
God Right, like before, because.
And then you start to realizeif you haven't been challenged
that way before you know, wewere still doing work and we
were.
You know they were payinglittle by little, but not never
the large invoice amounts.
But we didn't want to give upthe work.
And then you start gettingchallenged into realizing well,
(17:38):
what do we keep trying to workwith them or do we stop doing
the work?
Even if you stop doing work nowyou have all these outstanding
invoices.
Do you send a demand letter?
Do you get a lawyer involved?
Does that?
Will that sever your businessrelationship?
You know, like I said, this islike these questions that you're
asking.
Or is it just?
Is it just the lapse in theirbusiness Because they're such a
(17:59):
large company that you think no,maybe we're just a small
account, but for us at that timewe were.
You know every dollar helped.
And when I realized that we wereover leveraged with that client
by a couple, you know, over ahundred something thousand
dollars.
(18:19):
And I'm in my early 20s runningthe technology company, that
this company is growing but ourmargins are low and a lot lower
than they should be fortechnology.
But you know, I wanted to makesure that we were always
profitable.
But we're not seeing thisstartup success story that we
(18:40):
hear about so much in SiliconValley and all these startups
where overnight they're worthmillions and tens of millions of
dollars.
No, we're profitable, but I hadsome technology employees
making more money than I did.
I was like man, how yeah, andthat's very common for founders,
(19:04):
where you have this equity butyour cash flow is poor.
So with that hurdle and this isaround the year 2014, I was
trying to figure out all right,where could we do better?
(19:26):
We over leveraged a little bitbecause we were allowing a lot
of outstanding invoices that wecouldn't control.
So we needed to tighten upthere and I linked up with a new
accounting firm and bookkeeperin-house to make sure that all
the work that we did wasactually getting paid back to us
(19:47):
.
And then we had to understandwe didn't want to get crushed
under our own weight and in ourgrowth strategy.
So we couldn't take oncontracts that were too big and
I had to extend out too muchbecause it was just like a want
to get crushed under our ownweight and in our growth
strategy.
So we couldn't take oncontracts that were too big and
I had to extend out too muchbecause it was just like a
domino effect.
So I was really just wonderingwhat I was going to do with the
company.
It was an existential crisis forus and we were working.
(20:12):
We were working on on just theclients that we had, and I was
working day and night makingsure I was after our support
team.
I was no longer able tomaintain overnight support, so I
decided I'm going to take thosecalls at night and I slept with
my laptop open.
Right now it's for one of ouroverseas clients, or 24-7
(20:37):
clients ping me at night.
I just wake up and jumped onthat chat like yeah, we'll fix
this issue, and I knew that thatwasn't sustainable.
But it was just a life raftthat I was looking for an answer
to a problem, for an answer toa problem In that in that I was
(21:02):
working with one client of ours.
It was a law firm out ofPhiladelphia and they really
liked how we managed theirPhiladelphia office and we're
young, energetic team.
And the owner came in oneevening and they were seeing
everything that we were doingand I was working late.
It was way.
I mean, the building was closedat the time and he was just
surprised that we were just soheadstrong I mean me in
(21:26):
particular so headstrong ongetting their project done
before their deadline and theirlaunch.
And to me I it didn't matterthat it was 8, 9, 10 o'clock at
night.
I was going to get it done and Ihad a conversation with him
while he was in the office.
He says man, you've beenmanaging our Philadelphia office
(21:47):
with such zeal.
How do you think we can do thatfor our other offices in Texas?
Can you help us find whetherit's a vendor there or whatever
in Texas?
I was like, man, okay, yeah,fair enough, we can do that.
I don't have my team in Texas,but maybe I can come and help
(22:10):
for the time being and again,I'm saying this confidently and
with poise, but I know I have acash flow problem with my
company.
So I'm like yes, we'll take anycontract Send me anywhere, all
right, like we will figure outhow to get, especially when it's
in our lane, when it'ssomething that we know how to do
.
We didn't know with some of ourother contracts that we were
(22:33):
doing, there were new problems.
Every time, especially with thegovernment contracts, they were
presenting new problems and soit's hard to engineer the
solution on the spot.
But I already knew, if you justwant somebody to do the same
thing we're doing for youroffice here but for a couple
other offices, yes, we can.
So but he let me know thatthey're doing an aggressive push
(22:54):
to grow the company and thefirm and he wanted to know if I
could.
And I don't know that he reallyrealized that I owned the
company because he mentioned howsoon can you get there and how
soon do you guys need us?
And a week later I think thatday, I mean less than a week
(23:17):
later I'm on a flight to Texaswith a backpack and a carry-on
and I told my manager up herehey, you're managing the office
over here.
Let me go and check out what wecan, if we can expand into a
Texas market, because we werelooking to expand Anyway, and I
went out to California, went outto california, um went out to
(23:40):
california.
I didn't like the uh, theculture out there per se at the
time in san fran, it was justmore expensive than I would like
.
Um.
We looked at all opening ouroffice in dc um because we were
still out of philadelphia, butthe talent, the talent pool in
Philadelphia for technology andthe opportunities just weren't
there.
But DC, since we were doing alot of government contracts, was
(24:01):
something we were heavilyconsidering.
So I was already looking tomove to DC, or at least our
office and our operation to DC.
So when he said Texas, I'm likewell, we haven't signed a lease
yet.
So let me go check out what youguys got.
Well, let me.
We haven't signed a lease yet,so let me go check out what you
guys got.
And and I flew to Texas, stayedin an Airbnb, which I was very
(24:25):
used to because I traveled a lotfor work at that time, so I was
used to Airbnb.
I was like you know, okay,great, I got there and we worked
out where.
Now, fast forward, I'm thetechnology director for the law
firm.
So now I own my company and I'ma director for this law firm,
(24:46):
and I did decide to downsize thesize of my company a little bit
because we were growing, like Isaid, the money in my pocket
was not reflective, so Idownsized and became more
profitable.
We just, yeah, and we stayedfocused on just the thing that
we were really good at, and sowe were operating out of
(25:10):
Philadelphia and Texas and Istarted a team there as well and
we started now just focusing oncertain things like building
applications.
So it wasn't everywhere weweren't installing computers and
we weren't every.
You know, we weren't doing AVand cybersecurity.
We were just really focusing onbuilding applications and that
(25:31):
came into play later andbuilding applications for
companies and enterprises.
So as that, as the wheels wereturning and things were getting
smoother, I didn't want to makethe same mistake that I made
before, where I was overleveraged on one thing.
So I didn't.
And again, you know, being animmigrant, it's not the easiest
(25:55):
thing to go to the bank and geta $2 million loan.
I literally I don't know what Ithought this was going to be,
but I remember going to WellsFargo with a signed contract
from the United StatesDepartment of Defense for a
couple million dollars.
(26:16):
I said I have 60 days tocomplete this contract.
Can I get a loan for a couplemillion dollars?
I don't know, I left out ofthat thing.
No, that was going to gosmoother, but they looked at
that like I.
I, you know, had drawn withcrayon on a white piece of paper
(26:40):
saying man needs money rightyeah.
So I was like all right, let memake sure that I don't just put
all my aids in one bath.
You know technology thing, andnow we're stable.
So what do I want to do?
Well, like I mentioned, I wasstaying in Airbnbs my entire
time there and I knew I waspaying decent money, my
(27:03):
company's paying me to to stayin different places as I travel
and so forth.
Um, and what I wanted to do isI and I was listening to a lot
of investment podcasts andeverybody's talking about real
estate, getting into real estate, blah, blah blah.
And what people know me as justso your audience knows is I'm a
serial entrepreneur.
(27:23):
I'm a serial entrepreneur andit started with as many as you
start.
Yeah, exactly, and I encourageit.
I'll tell you this you'dprobably be richer just focusing
on one thing, but I think it'smore enjoyable.
I get more fulfillment inexploring multiple things that I
enjoy.
And I was reading a lot aboutreal estate and listened to a
(27:47):
lot of podcasts, and I foundthis house hacking strategy and
ultimately, I bought a propertyin Austin, texas.
I just felt that the city wasgoing to be growing.
All the indicators said thatthis is going to be a city
that's growing.
So in around 2017, I bought afour bedroom home.
(28:08):
Right, I stopped and typicallymy apartment was I was paying
$600 for an apartment at a time,or an Airbnb for a room.
I was just renting a room for$600 per month.
And now and they were surprisedthey're like Dom, don't you own
a company?
You're seemingly moresuccessful than them.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I'm like, yeah, he had a million dollar contract.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He had a million dollar contract with his
next-door neighbor and it wasreally like that I'm talking to,
you know, officials andgenerals, and you know some of
my clients were rather big andwe, you know they'll send out a
plane for us to travel just tofix some technology problems.
And it's like, wow, this guy issomething, he's growing, but
(28:55):
he's paying the $600.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Iugal frugal, please don't ever see me.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
No, um but um.
From there, I bought a, a housein austin, texas.
I felt that the city was wasgoing to to really explode and
grow, because I saw thetechnology that was coming in
from California, from otherplaces, and I was like, man, let
me set up some roots here.
And, as we have our companyhere too, I ended up buying a
(29:26):
four bedroom house and maybe thesecond month after I have it, I
painted some stuff, cleaned itup.
I just can't see myself everbuying a brand new home.
I need to add value.
Value is the number one thing,and I started Airbnb-ing the
other three rooms right away andI started making.
(29:48):
It wasn't crazy a lot, but$2,500 in cash flow every month,
just extra, and I just put thataside and from there I'm like,
wow, this is great.
I didn't even put it towards mymortgage, because when I bought
the house, I bought it with theexpectation that I could pay
(30:10):
the mortgage without anybodybeing in there.
So I put it just towards thesavings, because that year I
used that for a down payment formy second home.
And the second home that Ibought I knew that was going to
be again just a rental, becauseI saw how successful my first
one was.
And when I bought it it camewith tenants.
And now I bought this propertythat's coming with tenants.
(30:34):
I got a pretty good.
We got an aggressive dealbecause the person the previous
owner needed to leave.
So we got an aggressive dealand at that point, because of
all my research and business onhow to get credit, I understood
the down payment requirementsand all that Long story short.
(30:54):
When I came out the closing, Icame out with a check for my
first month of rent.
I said wait a minute, I justbought this house and you're
giving me money.
You're giving me money to ownthis house.
This is amazing.
And then, every month afterthat, that house has not been
(31:17):
vacant.
Um, now it's.
Now I've.
That was 2017, so eight yearslater, and it's such a hot
market and I priced the rent socompetitively that we haven't
had a vacancy in that house formore than more than five days
six days, just to turn it over.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Really, oh, it's been a great place then, oh my gosh,
oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, I like to.
I'm a stylish person, so I liketo, you know.
Yeah, we had five, six daysreally blistered painted
cabinets, did everything andtenants were super pleased.
And there's long-term tenantsin there and I made it a mission
.
Once I got that which fit bythis bug.
(32:06):
Now I'm like, okay, the first,which is good and bad, because
the first deal I did I was cashflowing.
The second deal I did was cashflowing.
Why would I I'm doing it againRoll the dice again?
(32:26):
So I got into more propertiesand I decided to just start
buying properties, and not onlysingle family homes but
multifamily homes in and aroundthe area.
The house that I bought, forexample, was they're always nuts
to strategic locations, whetherit's a large office complex.
In Texas we have the DellDiamond where all the Dell
people work now, but you have UTthat the students are some of
(32:51):
them coming from very wealthyrenting these homes.
You have a lot of hospitalsystems.
So you need to be strategicabout it.
You can't just roll the diceand wish for the best.
But I bought everything fromsingle family, multifamily and
eventually got into apartments.
I bought an apartment buildingand now I have apartment
(33:15):
buildings.
I bought an apartment buildingout in the Poconos and PA, so a
little ski area and still youknow grab, grab on with that.
But of course there is thisgoods and it's bad right like
because now I'm taking the cashflow that I'm getting from my
business.
I have technology business, Ihave real estate and I'm just
from my business, I havetechnology business, I have real
estate and I'm just reinvesting.
(33:37):
But again now I'm like I don'twant to ever get to that state.
What if the market crashes?
Now I'm holding all theseassets in the same asset class.
I may take a really big hit.
So I diversified again, got alaundromat and a restaurant.
The restaurant didn't do sowell at all.
(33:58):
I probably would have never dothat again, but it was a
learning lesson no food no food,no food at all.
No, no, no, no I learned alesson.
It is more vanity than anything, and just you know of love, I
loved the.
If I wasn't losing money on it,I would have loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Everybody who owns a restaurant, right, they all.
They do because they love thefood, they love the atmosphere
of a restaurant, they lovebringing the folks in.
But very few restaurantslong-term make a lot of money.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
And I don't know where it was, maybe just because
my upbringing.
Food is very big in a lot ofcultures, but in so many African
cultures food and organic andhaving your own garden.
So all of these things playedinto who I was growing up.
That was all the things thatI've had growing up.
(35:01):
So when I was able to see alittle glimpse of expanding on
that, I did so.
I started a garden and I wantedto do this restaurant chic blah
, blah blah, and it didn't work.
But we came out of there withsome lessons.
It wasn't terrible, but what I?
I made some connections.
I made some connections likewith understanding how to buy
(35:24):
meat and understanding, you know, like chefs and restaurant
managers were doing.
And there was once I I don'teven fully remember how I got
into this, but oh yeah, yeah, Idid One of my clients.
After that I got a client inTexas.
That was a ranch and this ranchhad these beautiful animals and
(35:47):
now I'm out there a lot of thetime and I'm seeing these
animals and they're also doing.
They have a restaurant at theranch and I'm telling them about
my experience with therestaurant and one thing that
came about is that they don'teat goat.
A lot of Texans don't eat goat.
I grew up eating goat and Isaid, man, you guys should try
it, we should try it.
(36:08):
And there's a lot of goatfarmers in Texas, a lot of goat
farmers in Texas.
There's a lot of goat farmersin Texas, a lot of goat farmers
in Texas.
And I don't remember exactly howthe conversation came about,
but I, as I was going to thisranch, I passed a goat farmer
but I noticed that he didn'thave any goats anymore and I was
(36:30):
just like but the signage wasthere.
The sign was there and I waslike, okay, and I just got out
because I was like, hey, I'minterested in buying a goat for
us to cook.
How do we buy a goat?
And I talked to him.
He didn't have any more and hewas telling me how hard that
business is in Texas, texas.
(36:55):
And it dawned on me that theproblem that so many of us have,
that he had this asset and thisresource, which was a goat, but
he didn't have the market forit, because a lot of white
Texans don't eat goat.
And this was a white farmer andhe's just like man no, we don't
need it, I don't know, excuseme.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, he's asking what am I supposed to do with
these goats?
And you just like man, no, wedon't need it, I don't know,
excuse me.
I said, yeah, you're talking,what am I supposed to do with
these goats?
And you're like, I got a wholegroup of goats.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I got a whole community that is searching for
this and you know, like man, youcan keep the goat soaps and all
that other stuff.
But yeah, so he's like allright, man, I don't.
So I said, okay, look, I don'thave the time.
I would love to get into this,but I'm not going to make the
same mistake that I did with therestaurant, which is just dive
in head first.
(37:50):
You seem to know how to takecare of goats.
I would like to maybe explorethis business a little bit.
And how would you say I getstarted.
I'm just picking his brain.
And it came to pass that he hada problem now because he had
this land.
He didn't have the market tosell this generation some of
(38:12):
these guys are generationalfarmers he didn't have the
market to sell the asset or thecommodity anymore and the prices
didn't make sense.
But he needed to figure out away to pay for the land still.
And there were so many learninglessons there, because we think
when we see somebody with a lotof land, that this is wow, this
(38:33):
is amazing, and they're likeman, well, I don't know what to
do with it.
Right, Like it's too dry tofarm.
You can't, I can't pay toirrigate it.
It costs millions of dollars tomaintain equipment, large scale
equipment, and so you want tostart in a small scale, and a
lot of these large farmersaren't even thinking about
(38:54):
starting small.
Everything they know is thesebig.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Everything's big in.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Texas.
I said man, look, I have acouple people that would
probably enjoy eating some goat.
We're not too far from Houston.
I used to frequent Houston alot, a huge African population,
a huge Islamic population outthere too.
So I'm like, look, why don't wego in this together?
(39:26):
You have the knowledge and theland, I have the market and I
can bring in the goats and wecan just partner in on this and
it won't take you any more time,or, you know, I'll buy the feed
.
So ultimately I ended up leasinghis land, starting off with
just I think we started off withfour goats and just for me to
(39:49):
really, you know, for for me,friends and family, so to speak.
That was it kind of scaling itdown from the restaurant, where
before I loved having friendsand family at the restaurant for
a while, and then I startedresenting it because I was like,
oh gosh, these are losses thatI just got to keep taking.
(40:09):
But I still wanted to createthat atmosphere.
And when we just started off,but it was like there was a stop
loss, I knew how much thesethings were going to cost me Not
not a, you know, not a crazysnowball of debt.
So we, we agreed to it, andthat was now.
I was four three years ago orsomething like that, and it went
(40:30):
from four goats Now we'regetting close to 200.
Yeah, so part of me um.
Yeah, so pardon me, yeah, butthe mark, the demand, is what
we're, and you start to realizeI was like man, these things
really multiply then the demandthat we're selling it and we're
um, so we're, and now thatthey're breeding flop because
(40:52):
they're selling it um to people.
And once you solve the problemand it almost looks like man,
how was he able to solve itwithout you know?
And I wasn't able to.
It seems so straightforward andso simple.
Once you do it Like, oh well,no, you were just looking at the
wrong demographic.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Exactly.
I mean, if you're going to havegoats, you got to go where
people want goats.
That's where it's going tocount Exactly, if you're going
to have goats, you got to gowhere people want goats.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Exactly so.
That was the thing.
So now I have, essentially, mytechnology company still.
I'm a director, I'm doingtechnology and my real estate
portfolio is growing and I havethese goats and I started just
thinking, all right, what's next?
(41:40):
I'm like, how do I expand thesegoats?
But there was one thing aboutTexas my wife and I our family
is in the Northeast and we knewthat we wanted to come back.
I was enjoying these things inTexas, but I really wanted to,
as you're starting to havenieces, nephews, kids, people
are being born, people are dying.
(42:02):
We wanted to make sure that weappreciated the time that we did
have with family.
So we made the move back to theNortheast, where I was
investing in real estate as well, and here in Washington DC,
where we moved to, investing inreal estate as well, and here in
Washington DC where we moved to.
But while we were moving back,we may have stayed in
Philadelphia and the New Jerseyarea.
(42:23):
That's where our family is.
I was always telling them aboutthese goats in Texas.
I was like, yeah, these thingsare awesome and now I have the
business for it.
Texas is really dry and arid, sothe um doing the vegetable
farming probably wasn't going towork out.
But I wanted to continue thatand I wanted to extrapolate more
(42:45):
out of what I can do with umagriculture and that's how I got
into okay, well, you know whatI think I figured out how to
work it down in texas and that'sbeen really successful for me.
I love what we're doing downthere, um, and we've actually
even increased the I said wehave, yeah, close to 200, but
(43:05):
we've added cows too.
Right, but that's been slowgrowth.
We didn't go from one to, youknow, 200 overnight.
It's been a couple years andnow it's like, oh, let's add
cows, let's add feed.
We know, you know, we kind ofunderstand that system and we
decided I decided to do the samething here in new jersey, where
I have some friends and familyand make it um the name of the
(43:27):
farm is deca farms a familyjourney, because, yes, I do look
to make a profit, but really Itell people that you, you should
, while you can enjoy thejourney, all right, of course,
there's going to be somebodythat's going to tell you how to
make a million dollars overnight.
They're going to tell you howto make 10 million dollars
(43:48):
overnight all right, they'regoing to sell you something.
But and then you start towonder, if I was in that
person's shoes, if I wasboasting about my private jets
and doing this and doing that,would I really be still flying
all over the country doingconferences and speeches and
(44:09):
going into all this?
I know they're showing they'reon vacation, but, if you've ever
, I'm a content creator myself.
I like to vlog, and I do it fora job more than anything.
So, though, don't judge me, butno, I, I would really enjoy the
fruits of my labor with thepeople that I love.
So it's certain some thingsthat these guys aren't telling
(44:30):
us, um, and a lot of investorsand successful people really
aren't as successful.
They kind of come off to beright.
So, yes, I did want to.
Of course, there was a timethat, and we all have big eyes
and want to be very successful,but I started redefining what my
(44:52):
vision and my definition ofsuccess meant, and, for me, I
really love being outside.
I love, you know, agriculture,I love horticulture and just
everything about animalhusbandry, even though and I say
this knowing that I do it froma distance, knowing that I do it
, I do it with self, I do itwith people.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
I love when y'all put your rubber.
Love when you're walking in themud.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, I mean you'll see me out there with the
compost, with the.
You know I get my hands dirty,but I do have somebody that
knows what to do and I'mlistening to them and I'm like
okay, and so I don't try topretend like I'm the smartest
guy in the room or have all theanswers, especially in things
that I don't know.
But so that's how the farm cameabout.
(45:41):
So we bought a property thatcame available to a 400 acre
farm out in New Jersey and nowjust introducing it to the
community, getting some ideas,some challenges there, a lot of
challenges, and doing businessin New Jersey.
I'd probably rethink that if Ihad to do it again but very
(46:06):
different from Texas, I'll saythat but opening up
conversations on all right, howdo we pivot?
We wanted to do this.
This is not possible right now.
What can we get?
Let's not just throw it allright.
How do we pivot?
We wanted to do this.
This is not possible right now.
What can we get?
Let's not just throw it allaway.
Right, we can't farm what wewant, or there's infrastructure
(46:26):
costs.
It costs a lot to set thesethings up and it's a lot more
than I was expecting, but westill are pushing forward Now.
That's where we are today.
I think we start off theconversation with you asking
what am I most excited about?
I'm like man we made some greatimprovements on the farm this
week, and spring is here, sowe're going to be growing and
(46:49):
all that.
So that's-.
So you and I are going to liveout by?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
do you want to live out where there's rural, or do
you still want to live in cityand then just take care of rural
?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
No, no, yeah, we're going to live in the city for
now, but I would love to maybesplit time right.
But I do know that my wife inparticular is a city girl and,
no matter what, I got gottafigure out a way to keep her
(47:20):
happy.
So she, she's been along withme and kind of allowed me to
explore these things andsupported me in it.
But, um, we're going to try tofigure out a way to split time.
However, that's where thechallenge does come in, for for
us to comfortably live there,there's a lot of infrastructure
challenges on um, on the 400acre property just to get, oh,
(47:42):
electricity out there, um, orsome pretty large checks and
water wells and, you know,sewage tank, all that.
So we're still some some timesaway from that and when that
time does come, maybe she'll be.
We got to start off with hey,we'll spend a weekend out there,
then I'll bring her back fortwo weeks, then we'll see.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I'd love to know, because you are a serial
entrepreneur, you got your handsin technology, you got your
hands in agriculture, you gotyour hands in real estate.
To me, that means that you aredoing stuff all the time.
How has that worked out in yourrelationship with your wife,
with all the time you'respending doing, doing, doing?
(48:28):
Is she okay with you being gone?
I mean, how do you guys workthat out where you're, you know,
or how do you work it out whereyou have time with your family
to to be able to do stuffanother?
Speaker 1 (48:40):
yeah, yeah, it's definitely so.
With everything in life there'sa balance, uh, and you have to
understand your priorities andyou have to make sure that you
put in systems in place.
So the, of course, if I werejust there's somebody that's
just doing one of those thingsor one thing that's putting in a
lot more time, focus and callit dedication than I am on all
(49:04):
three or four Right.
So I know what I want to put in.
Now here's a couple hard truthsand realities of life.
Most people don't work as hardas they think they do.
If you have ever reallyintensely put a good eight hours
(49:26):
of work in a day where you'rejust locked in, cutting away the
social media, you're locked in.
You're going to come out ofthat day, even though it's
behind the computer.
You're going to be tired.
You're going to say, wow, lockedin, you're gonna come out of
that day, even though it'sbehind the computer.
You're gonna be tired, right?
You're gonna say, wow, that'sand a lot of people.
And now, having had employeesand I'm like what do you do all
day?
All right, like you, yourealize that their output just
(49:47):
isn't that much.
So once you start appreciating,once you start appreciating how
much time is in a day, allright.
Start appreciating how muchtime is in a day, all right.
And understanding that this is ajourney, not a sprint, and the
destination, of course, isimportant, but that's always
(50:08):
changing.
You don't have to feel like youhave to do everything at one
time.
So I compound my prioritiesinto something that is
profitable.
I don't feel like the farmneeds to make me millions and
millions of dollars.
I'm doing it because I love todo it and I like to do it.
So even if I wasn't workinglet's say I was retired early,
(50:30):
as it might be I might stillfind myself at a farm.
I might still find myself at afarm, right, I might still find
myself walking.
We have trails out there andlike it's kind of a beautiful
place.
So I do the things.
The reason that I got my handsin these things is because these
are the things that I like todo.
I understand I'm still youngenough that I can still have and
(50:54):
I need some sort of job andincome.
So I can't just enjoy thesethings with money going out
without it returning somethingright To fill the pot.
So that's where I changed mymindset to is okay, what's the
break-even cost?
If this thing could just beself-sustaining, that would be a
great thing.
Then you start to get intoprofitability.
(51:15):
But there is a certain number Idon't care, not what most people
say and maybe look, life isdynamic.
So, as your audience hears metoday, I know this is a Journey
to Freedom podcast Maybe in ayear or two years I might say
you know, I want to retract thatstatement, but I've been a lot.
(51:36):
I've been around a lot ofwealthy individuals, and when
I'm talking wealthy, I meanwealthy private jets, $50
million homes and and plus thereis a level that you get to
financially where it justdoesn't matter anymore.
Yes, you know, we hear I wantto make six figures Great Matter
(51:59):
of fact, and I think thatnumber for a lot of people,
believe it or not, I would sayand I hate to throw out numbers
because it can be conflatedsometimes if you live in New
York versus if you live in themiddle of the world.
But $200,000, call it that.
If you're making $200,000, callit that.
If you're making $200,000,you're not at the top of the
(52:20):
food chain by any means, butyou're not at the bottom either.
You're not struggling per se,unless you want to live in New
York and in a penthouse.
Then you're going to feel likeyou're struggling, but you can
choose.
Those are choices.
There's somebody out therethat's making $20 million and
still having to hustle becausethey're choosing to fly private
everywhere instead of a businessclass.
(52:42):
So for me, I'm starting torealize, okay, do I want more?
Yes, but what I want, I want tomake sure that it aligns with
what.
If I have a limited time lefton this earth with the
enjoyments and fulfillments thatI really want to get out of it,
and not just chase the money toget to a hundred million
(53:05):
dollars and then look back like,okay, well, now what?
All right, like let's, yeah, alittle bit.
I want to live without regret.
So I say that to say, as far asthe time, yeah, I invest my
time into becoming successful inbusiness, but really also just
enjoying what I do.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Well, and then what I'm hearing in you know, as I'm
reading between the lines is youdo well with your time of
spending the time on the thingsthat matter and not spending a
whole bunch of time ondistractions.
Whenever I hear somebody who'sbeing successful in several
areas, I ask what distracts you?
(53:47):
And it's not the same thing asit distracts other people.
I don't see you going homewatching soap operas on TV or
spending time at the watercooler talking to I mean, what
is the?
I guess what are some of thedistractions that would take you
away from what you're doing andyour goals or things you're
trying to do yeah, youdefinitely need some
(54:09):
distractions every once in awhile.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I don't very much get distracted uh, very easily but
Now I do like to spend time withmy wife.
She is my best friend.
We love hanging out, so that'scrucial and pivotal because we
don't have kids, so we have thatflexibility and she gets
(54:30):
involved in the things that I do, whether she likes it or not,
or whether I like it or not,whether she likes it or not,
right, or whether I like it ornot.
Also, she bears some of thatburden and celebrates in the
success.
So she and I spend quite a bitof time together.
And what distracts us?
Yeah, if I watch a show, it'sbecause she's watching it.
(54:52):
Right, like I don't watch toomuch TV, but if she's watching
it, I listen to podcasts a lotand a lot of audio books.
Sometimes I like to do that toclear my mind, because you can't
just be so honed in onsomething all the time.
You're going to start to getdepressed, you're going to get
stressed.
You need a way to just clearyour mind.
(55:14):
Need a way to just clear yourmind.
Now, granted, I do have.
Probably, if I want, if I reallyhad to change it, I'd probably
spend more time on social mediathan I like on the Instagrams
and TikToks not really TikToks,but Facebooks and all that but
not how people think I spendmore time looking at farm stuff.
(55:38):
I spend a lot of time.
If you look at my YouTubehistory, it is all farm how to
raise goats and the next thingI'm enjoying taking in all that
farm and agriculture information, also technology information.
I listen to it when I'm on myphone.
I'm watching otherentrepreneurs or technology or
(56:03):
real estate content, so thatuses that as a distraction.
I think it serves a dualpurpose where I'm learning, but
it's also very passive learningso I can enjoy the content.
But as far as just frivoloustime spent, not so much.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Well, here's what I really see.
You know, there's a splitbetween education and what.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
No, I said I like to write.
I'm sorry, I like to write.
Oh, you like to write too, okayperfect.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, there's a split between education and
entertainment, and what you'vekind of done, where your goals
are in your process in liferight now, is you're saying my
education and entertainment arekind of together.
I'm being entertained by beingeducated, whereas a lot of
people that are distracted Ihave to be entertained, I have
(57:00):
to be entertained, I love to beentertained, but when do they
get to be educated?
Right, and then they wonder whythey're not moving forward
because they're not investing inthemselves to learn more, to be
more educated, and so, forright now, I love the fact that
you're doing it all together,which is neat, and you're doing
it with your spouse and yourwife and it's just, it's just
(57:22):
amazing.
What do you want folks to know?
I mean, you're on the podcasttoday and I'm loving you're on.
We got a few minutes left.
What did I do?
Oh, this was amazing because itwas an insight into business
and and how to be successful andhow to get unstuck and how to
take risks and all those thingsthat you've been able to do.
(57:42):
Is there anything else that youwant to share?
Websites or anything like thatyou want to have people know?
Or you're giving of yourself,which I so appreciate, but what
do you want us to know as wedepart today?
What do you want us to know aswe depart today.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah, on social media I am Ask Dom that you can
follow me there.
My platform is all aboutfinancial literacy, self-help
and motivation small businessand entrepreneurs where it's
practical business advice.
I'm not trying to overfanaticize the world of
(58:18):
entrepreneurship, so I get a lotof people asking me their
questions.
So if you have any questions,just feel free to ask Dom that
on any of the platforms.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
One thing I'd love to ask you would you be willing to
come back at some point and doa financial literacy of things
you don't know or things youweren't taught like?
I want to ask, dom, what doesit really mean to have financial
literacy instead of what?
The little bit that we don'tget in school and then even more
(58:50):
that we don't get that'spractical, on how to run our
lives?
Because it seems like youfigured this out, even when I
think of this man walked intoWells Fargo and asked for $2
million.
So there's got to be somethingin your mind that's way
different than other people'smind.
You're like, hey, give me $2million, yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
I would love to come back and talk specifically about
financial literacy and all theopportunities that you don't
even realize are out there andcertain that there's so much
contradictory information.
As somebody who consumes thisinformation and somebody who's
in these rooms learning frompeople, I can talk to one person
(59:41):
that tells me, for example,just as a way of an example, get
into these vehicles, investmentvehicles of life insurance and
annuities, and I'm like, oh okay, that guy was really convincing
.
Then the other guy says, don'tdo this, this is historically
bad.
I'm like whoa, it's almost likehow could two convergent things
(01:00:03):
work, so understanding theprinciples behind it?
And I really would love to talkto your audience without having
a stake in it, your audiencewithout having a stake in it,
right, like being a fiduciary tosome degree, because so many
(01:00:27):
people that we speak with havesome sort of incentive to, you
know, to steer us one way oranother.
And, and that's always justbothered me when I do talk to
people and all I can do is tellyou what's worked for me and
what hasn't worked for me.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, I think I would love that.
I know our audience would loveit as well, and so I'll get with
my assistant and have her makesure she talks with you.
We'll have you back on.
Thank you for sharing yourstory today.
Oh, my gosh, I'm excitedbecause, you know, my grandpa
had a farm when I was growing upand I was out there and milking
(01:01:01):
cows and doing all that stuff,and I ran away from that as far
as possible, but I like to seethat there's somebody doing it
from a distance and beingsuccessful at it.
So I love it, I love it, I loveit.
Thank you for being on today.
For those of you who subscribe,you're going to want to know
when we have this next episodethat comes out.
(01:01:22):
Hey, don't forget your God'sgreatest gift.
He loves you, if you allow himto, and we will look forward to
seeing you on the other side ofthis.
And so, again, I mean thank youfor being on.
We're going to have you backand have a wonderful, this
incredible day.
All of a sudden, one of our larger clients.
That client went bankrupt andunexpectedly.
Hindsight is clearer than 2020.
Hindsight is the most obviousthing in this world because, as
we were working on this client,they were always late on their
invoices.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
All right, welcome to another edition of the Journey
to Freedom podcast.
I'm Dr B, I am your host and Iam, as always, just so excited
to be talking to folks that aremaking it work.
You know, it was funny.
So Dominic and I were talkingbefore the show and he was
asking me well, what is JourneyFreedom?
(00:54):
Why is Journey Freedomimportant?
What does it have to do withthe things that I do and the
businesses that I own?
And so, dominic, just to kindof give you a glimpse of the
show and what so, about a yearand a half ago, I went to a
seminar in Minnesota and theseminar was called the Trusted
Edge and it was about how do welead with trust, how do we trust
(01:15):
each other, how do we trustourselves and how important it
is to be able to trust.
And I'm going to ask a wholebunch of business questions in a
little bit like how do youtrust in business, how do you
obtain a business and know thatthe people are selling your
writing?
So I go to there and I look inthe room.
There's 500 people in the roomand there's about 30 people that
(01:36):
are people of color and I'mgoing.
Ok, so this information isincredible.
This information is great.
How do I get this into thehands of our community, into my
community?
And so I came back and throughsome prayer and some other stuff
, you know, I realized that Iwas saying, god, do you want me
to work with people of color?
And he said, no, I want you towork with Black men.
(01:59):
I said, but I don't want towork with Black men.
God.
He's like no, this is what Iwant you to work with.
And so last year I was able to.
Because you can't argue withGod, right, you can't.
You could try, but you're notgoing to get away with it for
very long, right?
And so last year I ended upinterviewing 105 black
(02:20):
successful men from all over thecountry.
We've got another 40 this year.
You're in that mix, somewherewhere we're getting able to talk
to a mental, so other of us cansee that what it takes to be
successful.
Yesterday I went to the statecapital here in Colorado.
I'm in Denver, colorado, and wewere talking about, you know,
(02:41):
with all the crazy stuff that'shappening federally in our
country, and I'm sure you're inDC now so you can kind of
understand all the things andthe taking away of DEI and all
you know wherever you standpolitically, and you know, one
of the things I was saying is,whether it's Trump or Elon or
whatever, they're not going tosteal my joy and they're not
going to stop us.
You know, opportunity is thekey for our success and as long
(03:07):
as there's opportunity, we'regoing to find ways to be
successful.
You can take away just abouteverything, but as long as you
don't take away our opportunity,we're going to find ways to
grow and be successful.
And there are so many peoplethat I met and talked to in the
last few weeks that have thisattitude of fear, where you know
fear and lack, where there'snot enough resources and there's
(03:27):
not enough out there.
I'm sure, being from Angola,you kind of understand the
amount and the plentiful ofresources at least that we have
here, an opportunity that wehave here.
And when we approach thingswith lack, it's like the God
that I serve is a God ofabundance and a God that allows
(03:50):
us to have opportunities.
And when I see you, dominic,and I see, hey, I have a ranch
in Texas and then I have anotherranch in New Jersey and I'm
living in DC and I'm abusinessman, and I make it like
happen that tells me right there.
It's not the opportunity tosurvive, it's our connection or
access to it, or theunderstanding or the education
(04:12):
that allows it to do that.
And so you get to be on.
You know, I'm honored to haveyou on this show because I get
to glean and when I'm saying getto, that was meaning me I get
to be selfish and I get to learnmore about what it takes to be
successful from your eyes, andso I'd love for you to tell your
(04:32):
story how you got here, how youwere able to purchase and buy
businesses and become asuccessful man.
I don't believe you're 80 or 90years old.
You don't look like it.
If you do, then I want to knowwhat that secret is.
But I think you're younger, soyou've been able to do that at a
young age.
So thank you for being here,thank you for being on the show
(04:54):
today, and please go ahead andtell us your story.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Dr B, thank you, yes, very excited to be here.
Thank you for having me andyour audience.
Thank you for sharing this hourof your day with us.
So I'm excited to let you guysknow a little bit about me and
my story and hopefully I canprovide some sort of value to
whatever journey everybody elseis in.
(05:17):
What I kind of start off, whereI start off, is I'm 35, just so
that you know that's out there.
I'm not 80, but I'm 35.
But I was born in Angola, africa, and I came here early 90s or
mid-90s, I'm sorry, or late 90s,1996 or 7.
(05:39):
And that was strictly throughthe efforts of my parents,
obviously.
And my father studied hard.
He was into satellitetelecommunications engineering
and he had a skill set thatallowed us to leave a situation,
a war-torn country, and make ithere in a more prosperous
(06:01):
environment.
Albeit still had its challenges.
Obviously, the history of BlackAmericans was very prevalent
still, but everything that weknew about America was that it
had opportunity, like you said.
So throughout the 2000s it wasa little bit tough and difficult
(06:24):
being an immigrant and being anAfrican immigrant, especially
just in the form ofself-confidence and how people
interact with you and learning anew language and just learning
a new culture.
But I did.
What so many of us try to do istry to assimilate, try to blend
(06:45):
in, try not to stand out.
I wanted to not be known as theAfrican kid or the African you
know.
I wanted you to not notice meto my detriment, as I would find
out later on in life.
Where it pays to stand out,where it pays to stand out.
And so throughout high schooland everything, I just knew I
(07:07):
was different, but not strictlybecause of my upbringing or
where I was born, but alsobecause of the upbringing,
because I was reinforced in thethought that you know you are a
(07:29):
guest here.
Right, I have my opinions inpolitics and social economics
and so many things that we as acommunity can do better.
But I've always realized thatyou know nothing here.
My time here isn't a given.
I'm a guest here and I do havea community back home that I owe
the you know the tutelage ofdoing well here in some degree
(07:53):
to bring up my you know mycommunity as well, my home.
So it's like don't focus onparty while all your friends is
running around partying.
Remember, you got to keep yourhead straight.
You got.
Your journey is different, yourstory is different and while
you I grew up in Philadelphia,so you know, black kid in Philly
(08:16):
, of course was was aroundcertain things.
That that's just what I knew.
I never got in trouble, butthat was almost a struggle in
itself to stay, staying awayfrom some of the, the trials
really of growing up in the hood, to be very honest, but it it
(08:38):
was really.
I really reinforced that toyoung kids now, and people who
have young kids make sure thatthey know that life is greater
than those first 15, 16 years,right, like there's so much more
.
And sometimes we didn't seethat until I got to college,
(08:58):
penn State.
That was the first time.
Now, coming from, remember, Icame from Africa, went to philly
, I lived in in the neighborhoodwhich was 90 black, you know,
um, and everybody was juststruggling and we were all just
it was a collective struggle, um, but we were making it.
And then I went to a majoritywhite school and I'm like, wow,
(09:21):
these brads and chads are verylike, know, seems like they're
doing pretty all right.
I mean like the conversationswere different.
Now we're talking about youknow, just, I started to realize
, you know, their family'sjourney and story is not better,
it's not worse, but it'sdifferent, and I my parents had
(09:52):
instilled in me that I needed tomake my own path, that I needed
to be financially savvy andliterate, and and I came from a
system Angola is known forcorruption.
The continent is so rich withwealth, but it struggles to
maintain it, and it has it inthe hands of a select few, so
it's like nobody's going to giveyou anything right, and you may
get more from where you're atas a guest than you will from
(10:12):
your home country.
So, as I'm talking to theseguys, I'm starting to understand
how some families you can readit in books all you want, but
until you start seeing it that,oh wow, people have used this
generational wealth to advance,and how this person here now is
getting college paid for orsubsidized or helped in some way
(10:35):
by the savings of his parents,and the next generation is going
to snowball into that successsnowball into that success.
What was happening for me,though, is because I had.
You know, I was an immigrant.
I was having a hard timegetting.
I didn't qualify for federalgrants at that time, so I was
having a hard time even tryingto figure out a way to pay for
(10:57):
school.
So I was trying to find littlejobs here and there, paying for
school out of pocket, because Ijust didn't have too many other
options, and what I decided wasI was taking a web development
course and an applicationdevelopment course and that was
the start of what later wouldbecome my technology company.
(11:18):
But I started just doingwebsites for $500 for a small
business or a friend who had aproject that they needed a
website for.
So I was doing these websites$500 here, $500 there, and it
was just helping out.
Eventually I got pretty good atit and I could charge $1,000 or
$1,500.
(11:39):
I started doing that so muchthat I formed a company that
just focused on that while I wasin school.
And then all of a sudden westarted growing a little bit.
Global Computers and Networksis the name of my technology
company.
We ended up growing and doinggovernment contracts.
We not only focused on websitesbut we did cybersecurity, we do
(12:01):
network design.
And then we started gettingclout because I had a fervor and
just a passion where youcouldn't tell me no, whatever
you needed from a technologystandpoint, I was chasing it.
I was hungry.
Google, ibm, the Darden Groupwhich is the who are those Olive
Garden Red Lobster and thoseguys.
(12:31):
So we were managing their localnetwork.
Even though they have anational team, we were their on
the ground team.
And then we got into the worldof government contracting and I
was just reading incessantly,like how can I get into
government contracts?
There was a point that we weredoing just several million
dollars a year in contracts andgovernment contracts in
(12:55):
technology and logisticalengineering government get
material from one place rightOne vendor that's in one city to
another and mixing thesevendors together.
And that might be a projectthat we did.
Was you know, robotics?
We did robotics for thegovernment.
(13:16):
Obviously, our company designed, coded and built certain robots
, but really there's a lot ofcompanies involved in that.
There just wasn't me and mystaff, it was six, seven other
companies and that was part ofwhat the contract is to really
mesh all that together for afinal product.
(13:38):
So we were getting into thatand this could be a whole
podcast just about governmentcontracts, the highs and the
lows, because it's great whenit's great and it's just bad
when it's bad, as some vendorsare finding out right now.
Oh, I bet.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I bet.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah, because it costs a lot of money.
The government is such a bigconsumer that they have their
rules and unless you're a bigcompany that wants leverage,
you're not making any demands.
They're telling you we're goingto pay you this.
When we pay you and it'stypically you know it's
scheduled out.
But if you're doing amultimillion dollar project,
(14:21):
which we were so happy andelated to get these contracts
you got one, get these contracts.
You got one or two contracts.
Well now, I didn't put two andtwo together right away.
I mean, you have some sort ofnotion, but you're out millions
of dollars for a couple months.
I'm like whoa, the government'snot funding you money.
They're like, no, we're goingto pay you, whether it's a net
(14:44):
30 or after the performance, theperformance after the delivery.
It's like, wow, there's, andthen there might be one vendor
that just wants their moneyright then and there.
Or it's just so manycomplexities and large companies
, um can modify their contracts,can, can leverage, and a boeing
is always behind on their,their deliverables, and um,
(15:08):
google and and aws can alwayschange their terms of their
contracts.
Me, no, they didn't care what Ihad, what issues I would have.
So that was very telling um,where I thought I had hit a gold
mine, literally andfiguratively, and ultimately it
was like, oh man, maybe thisisn't.
(15:30):
I'm not doing something righthere.
Right, like, I know companiesare making a lot of money from
it, but we don't want to overleverage ourselves here.
So, as I'm noticing that, andnow my company is growing and
I'm having these debates on whatwe should do with our
government contracts andfiguring it out, because it's
(15:54):
just national contracts, you'reeverywhere, we're flying
everywhere, working withinternational vendors.
It was very challenging, but allof a sudden, one of our larger
clients, like I mentioned, wewere doing some larger projects
and we were the ground supportfor a lot of national brands.
That client went bankrupt, andunexpectedly, and hindsight is
(16:20):
clearer than 2020.
And hindsight is clearer than2020.
Hindsight is the most obviousthing in this world because, as
we were working with this client, they were always late on their
invoices and if you run abusiness, everybody might be
different, but when you'rerunning a business and you're
(16:41):
focused on something you're sointently I'm an engineer by
trade, so I was just focused onthe engineering aspect of
running my business, where ifsomebody's behind 15 days 20
days, it wasn't you can't focuson everything right, like okay,
we sent the invoice, they'll pay, we know they pay, they're late
, but now they're 15 days, butthey paid before.
(17:04):
Okay, now they're 30 days late,but they paid before.
You know, then they got to once.
You're like, how did we letthem get to 60 days late or 70
days late before?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
God Right, like before, because.
And then you start to realizeif you haven't been challenged
that way before you know, wewere still doing work and we
were.
You know they were payinglittle by little, but not never
the large invoice amounts.
But we didn't want to give upthe work.
And then you start gettingchallenged into realizing well,
(17:38):
what do we keep trying to workwith them or do we stop doing
the work?
Even if you stop doing work nowyou have all these outstanding
invoices.
Do you send a demand letter?
Do you get a lawyer involved?
Does that?
Will that sever your businessrelationship?
You know, like I said, this islike these questions that you're
asking.
Or is it just?
Is it just the lapse in theirbusiness Because they're such a
(17:59):
large company that you think no,maybe we're just a small
account, but for us at that timewe were.
You know every dollar helped.
And when I realized that we wereover leveraged with that client
by a couple, you know, over ahundred something thousand
dollars.
(18:19):
And I'm in my early 20s runningthe technology company, that
this company is growing but ourmargins are low and a lot lower
than they should be fortechnology.
But you know, I wanted to makesure that we were always
profitable.
But we're not seeing thisstartup success story that we
(18:40):
hear about so much in SiliconValley and all these startups
where overnight they're worthmillions and tens of millions of
dollars.
No, we're profitable, but I hadsome technology employees
making more money than I did.
I was like man, how yeah, andthat's very common for founders,
(19:04):
where you have this equity butyour cash flow is poor.
So with that hurdle and this isaround the year 2014, I was
trying to figure out all right,where could we do better?
(19:26):
We over leveraged a little bitbecause we were allowing a lot
of outstanding invoices that wecouldn't control.
So we needed to tighten upthere and I linked up with a new
accounting firm and bookkeeperin-house to make sure that all
the work that we did wasactually getting paid back to us
(19:47):
.
And then we had to understandwe didn't want to get crushed
under our own weight and in ourgrowth strategy.
So we couldn't take oncontracts that were too big and
I had to extend out too muchbecause it was just like a want
to get crushed under our ownweight and in our growth
strategy.
So we couldn't take oncontracts that were too big and
I had to extend out too muchbecause it was just like a
domino effect.
So I was really just wonderingwhat I was going to do with the
company.
It was an existential crisis forus and we were working.
(20:12):
We were working on on just theclients that we had, and I was
working day and night makingsure I was after our support
team.
I was no longer able tomaintain overnight support, so I
decided I'm going to take thosecalls at night and I slept with
my laptop open.
Right now it's for one of ouroverseas clients, or 24-7
(20:37):
clients ping me at night.
I just wake up and jumped onthat chat like yeah, we'll fix
this issue, and I knew that thatwasn't sustainable.
But it was just a life raftthat I was looking for an answer
to a problem, for an answer toa problem In that in that I was
(21:02):
working with one client of ours.
It was a law firm out ofPhiladelphia and they really
liked how we managed theirPhiladelphia office and we're
young, energetic team.
And the owner came in oneevening and they were seeing
everything that we were doingand I was working late.
It was way.
I mean, the building was closedat the time and he was just
surprised that we were just soheadstrong I mean me in
(21:26):
particular so headstrong ongetting their project done
before their deadline and theirlaunch.
And to me I it didn't matterthat it was 8, 9, 10 o'clock at
night.
I was going to get it done and Ihad a conversation with him
while he was in the office.
He says man, you've beenmanaging our Philadelphia office
(21:47):
with such zeal.
How do you think we can do thatfor our other offices in Texas?
Can you help us find whetherit's a vendor there or whatever
in Texas?
I was like, man, okay, yeah,fair enough, we can do that.
I don't have my team in Texas,but maybe I can come and help
(22:10):
for the time being and again,I'm saying this confidently and
with poise, but I know I have acash flow problem with my
company.
So I'm like yes, we'll take anycontract Send me anywhere, all
right, like we will figure outhow to get, especially when it's
in our lane, when it'ssomething that we know how to do
.
We didn't know with some of ourother contracts that we were
(22:33):
doing, there were new problems.
Every time, especially with thegovernment contracts, they were
presenting new problems and soit's hard to engineer the
solution on the spot.
But I already knew, if you justwant somebody to do the same
thing we're doing for youroffice here but for a couple
other offices, yes, we can.
So but he let me know thatthey're doing an aggressive push
(22:54):
to grow the company and thefirm and he wanted to know if I
could.
And I don't know that he reallyrealized that I owned the
company because he mentioned howsoon can you get there and how
soon do you guys need us?
And a week later I think thatday, I mean less than a week
(23:17):
later I'm on a flight to Texaswith a backpack and a carry-on
and I told my manager up herehey, you're managing the office
over here.
Let me go and check out what wecan, if we can expand into a
Texas market, because we werelooking to expand Anyway, and I
went out to California, went outto california, um went out to
(23:40):
california.
I didn't like the uh, theculture out there per se at the
time in san fran, it was justmore expensive than I would like
.
Um.
We looked at all opening ouroffice in dc um because we were
still out of philadelphia, butthe talent, the talent pool in
Philadelphia for technology andthe opportunities just weren't
there.
But DC, since we were doing alot of government contracts, was
(24:01):
something we were heavilyconsidering.
So I was already looking tomove to DC, or at least our
office and our operation to DC.
So when he said Texas, I'm likewell, we haven't signed a lease
yet.
So let me go check out what youguys got.
Well, let me.
We haven't signed a lease yet,so let me go check out what you
guys got.
And and I flew to Texas, stayedin an Airbnb, which I was very
(24:25):
used to because I traveled a lotfor work at that time, so I was
used to Airbnb.
I was like you know, okay,great, I got there and we worked
out where.
Now, fast forward, I'm thetechnology director for the law
firm.
So now I own my company and I'ma director for this law firm,
(24:46):
and I did decide to downsize thesize of my company a little bit
because we were growing, like Isaid, the money in my pocket
was not reflective, so Idownsized and became more
profitable.
We just, yeah, and we stayedfocused on just the thing that
we were really good at, and sowe were operating out of
(25:10):
Philadelphia and Texas and Istarted a team there as well and
we started now just focusing oncertain things like building
applications.
So it wasn't everywhere weweren't installing computers and
we weren't every.
You know, we weren't doing AVand cybersecurity.
We were just really focusing onbuilding applications and that
(25:31):
came into play later andbuilding applications for
companies and enterprises.
So as that, as the wheels wereturning and things were getting
smoother, I didn't want to makethe same mistake that I made
before, where I was overleveraged on one thing.
So I didn't.
And again, you know, being animmigrant, it's not the easiest
(25:55):
thing to go to the bank and geta $2 million loan.
I literally I don't know what Ithought this was going to be,
but I remember going to WellsFargo with a signed contract
from the United StatesDepartment of Defense for a
couple million dollars.
(26:16):
I said I have 60 days tocomplete this contract.
Can I get a loan for a couplemillion dollars?
I don't know, I left out ofthat thing.
No, that was going to gosmoother, but they looked at
that like I.
I, you know, had drawn withcrayon on a white piece of paper
(26:40):
saying man needs money rightyeah.
So I was like all right, let memake sure that I don't just put
all my aids in one bath.
You know technology thing, andnow we're stable.
So what do I want to do?
Well, like I mentioned, I wasstaying in Airbnbs my entire
time there and I knew I waspaying decent money, my
(27:03):
company's paying me to to stayin different places as I travel
and so forth.
Um, and what I wanted to do isI and I was listening to a lot
of investment podcasts andeverybody's talking about real
estate, getting into real estate, blah, blah blah.
And what people know me as justso your audience knows is I'm a
serial entrepreneur.
(27:23):
I'm a serial entrepreneur andit started with as many as you
start.
Yeah, exactly, and I encourageit.
I'll tell you this you'dprobably be richer just focusing
on one thing, but I think it'smore enjoyable.
I get more fulfillment inexploring multiple things that I
enjoy.
And I was reading a lot aboutreal estate and listened to a
(27:47):
lot of podcasts, and I foundthis house hacking strategy and
ultimately, I bought a propertyin Austin, texas.
I just felt that the city wasgoing to be growing.
All the indicators said thatthis is going to be a city
that's growing.
So in around 2017, I bought afour bedroom home.
(28:08):
Right, I stopped and typicallymy apartment was I was paying
$600 for an apartment at a time,or an Airbnb for a room.
I was just renting a room for$600 per month.
And now and they were surprisedthey're like Dom, don't you own
a company?
You're seemingly moresuccessful than them.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I'm like, yeah, he had a million dollar contract.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
He had a million dollar contract with his
next-door neighbor and it wasreally like that I'm talking to,
you know, officials andgenerals, and you know some of
my clients were rather big andwe, you know they'll send out a
plane for us to travel just tofix some technology problems.
And it's like, wow, this guy issomething, he's growing, but
(28:55):
he's paying the $600.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Iugal frugal, please don't ever see me.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
No, um but um.
From there, I bought a, a housein austin, texas.
I felt that the city was wasgoing to to really explode and
grow, because I saw thetechnology that was coming in
from California, from otherplaces, and I was like, man, let
me set up some roots here.
And, as we have our companyhere too, I ended up buying a
(29:26):
four bedroom house and maybe thesecond month after I have it, I
painted some stuff, cleaned itup.
I just can't see myself everbuying a brand new home.
I need to add value.
Value is the number one thing,and I started Airbnb-ing the
other three rooms right away andI started making.
(29:48):
It wasn't crazy a lot, but$2,500 in cash flow every month,
just extra, and I just put thataside and from there I'm like,
wow, this is great.
I didn't even put it towards mymortgage, because when I bought
the house, I bought it with theexpectation that I could pay
(30:10):
the mortgage without anybodybeing in there.
So I put it just towards thesavings, because that year I
used that for a down payment formy second home.
And the second home that Ibought I knew that was going to
be again just a rental, becauseI saw how successful my first
one was.
And when I bought it it camewith tenants.
And now I bought this propertythat's coming with tenants.
(30:34):
I got a pretty good.
We got an aggressive dealbecause the person the previous
owner needed to leave.
So we got an aggressive dealand at that point, because of
all my research and business onhow to get credit, I understood
the down payment requirementsand all that Long story short.
(30:54):
When I came out the closing, Icame out with a check for my
first month of rent.
I said wait a minute, I justbought this house and you're
giving me money.
You're giving me money to ownthis house.
This is amazing.
And then, every month afterthat, that house has not been
(31:17):
vacant.
Um, now it's.
Now I've.
That was 2017, so eight yearslater, and it's such a hot
market and I priced the rent socompetitively that we haven't
had a vacancy in that house formore than more than five days
six days, just to turn it over.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Really, oh, it's been a great place then, oh my gosh,
oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, I like to.
I'm a stylish person, so I liketo, you know.
Yeah, we had five, six daysreally blistered painted
cabinets, did everything andtenants were super pleased.
And there's long-term tenantsin there and I made it a mission
.
Once I got that which fit bythis bug.
(32:06):
Now I'm like, okay, the first,which is good and bad, because
the first deal I did I was cashflowing.
The second deal I did was cashflowing.
Why would I I'm doing it againRoll the dice again?
(32:26):
So I got into more propertiesand I decided to just start
buying properties, and not onlysingle family homes but
multifamily homes in and aroundthe area.
The house that I bought, forexample, was they're always nuts
to strategic locations, whetherit's a large office complex.
In Texas we have the DellDiamond where all the Dell
people work now, but you have UTthat the students are some of
(32:51):
them coming from very wealthyrenting these homes.
You have a lot of hospitalsystems.
So you need to be strategicabout it.
You can't just roll the diceand wish for the best.
But I bought everything fromsingle family, multifamily and
eventually got into apartments.
I bought an apartment buildingand now I have apartment
(33:15):
buildings.
I bought an apartment buildingout in the Poconos and PA, so a
little ski area and still youknow grab, grab on with that.
But of course there is thisgoods and it's bad right like
because now I'm taking the cashflow that I'm getting from my
business.
I have technology business, Ihave real estate and I'm just
from my business, I havetechnology business, I have real
estate and I'm just reinvesting.
(33:37):
But again now I'm like I don'twant to ever get to that state.
What if the market crashes?
Now I'm holding all theseassets in the same asset class.
I may take a really big hit.
So I diversified again, got alaundromat and a restaurant.
The restaurant didn't do sowell at all.
(33:58):
I probably would have never dothat again, but it was a
learning lesson no food no food,no food at all.
No, no, no, no I learned alesson.
It is more vanity than anything, and just you know of love, I
loved the.
If I wasn't losing money on it,I would have loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Everybody who owns a restaurant, right, they all.
They do because they love thefood, they love the atmosphere
of a restaurant, they lovebringing the folks in.
But very few restaurantslong-term make a lot of money.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
And I don't know where it was, maybe just because
my upbringing.
Food is very big in a lot ofcultures, but in so many African
cultures food and organic andhaving your own garden.
So all of these things playedinto who I was growing up.
That was all the things thatI've had growing up.
(35:01):
So when I was able to see alittle glimpse of expanding on
that, I did so.
I started a garden and I wantedto do this restaurant chic blah
, blah blah, and it didn't work.
But we came out of there withsome lessons.
It wasn't terrible, but what I?
I made some connections.
I made some connections likewith understanding how to buy
(35:24):
meat and understanding, you know, like chefs and restaurant
managers were doing.
And there was once I I don'teven fully remember how I got
into this, but oh yeah, yeah, Idid One of my clients.
After that I got a client inTexas.
That was a ranch and this ranchhad these beautiful animals and
(35:47):
now I'm out there a lot of thetime and I'm seeing these
animals and they're also doing.
They have a restaurant at theranch and I'm telling them about
my experience with therestaurant and one thing that
came about is that they don'teat goat.
A lot of Texans don't eat goat.
I grew up eating goat and Isaid, man, you guys should try
it, we should try it.
(36:08):
And there's a lot of goatfarmers in Texas, a lot of goat
farmers in Texas.
There's a lot of goat farmersin Texas, a lot of goat farmers
in Texas.
And I don't remember exactly howthe conversation came about,
but I, as I was going to thisranch, I passed a goat farmer
but I noticed that he didn'thave any goats anymore and I was
(36:30):
just like but the signage wasthere.
The sign was there and I waslike, okay, and I just got out
because I was like, hey, I'minterested in buying a goat for
us to cook.
How do we buy a goat?
And I talked to him.
He didn't have any more and hewas telling me how hard that
business is in Texas, texas.
(36:55):
And it dawned on me that theproblem that so many of us have,
that he had this asset and thisresource, which was a goat, but
he didn't have the market forit, because a lot of white
Texans don't eat goat.
And this was a white farmer andhe's just like man no, we don't
need it, I don't know, excuseme.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, he's asking what am I supposed to do with
these goats?
And you just like man, no, wedon't need it, I don't know,
excuse me.
I said, yeah, you're talking,what am I supposed to do with
these goats?
And you're like, I got a wholegroup of goats.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I got a whole community that is searching for
this and you know, like man, youcan keep the goat soaps and all
that other stuff.
But yeah, so he's like allright, man, I don't.
So I said, okay, look, I don'thave the time.
I would love to get into this,but I'm not going to make the
same mistake that I did with therestaurant, which is just dive
in head first.
(37:50):
You seem to know how to takecare of goats.
I would like to maybe explorethis business a little bit.
And how would you say I getstarted.
I'm just picking his brain.
And it came to pass that he hada problem now because he had
this land.
He didn't have the market tosell this generation some of
(38:12):
these guys are generationalfarmers he didn't have the
market to sell the asset or thecommodity anymore and the prices
didn't make sense.
But he needed to figure out away to pay for the land still.
And there were so many learninglessons there, because we think
when we see somebody with a lotof land, that this is wow, this
(38:33):
is amazing, and they're likeman, well, I don't know what to
do with it.
Right, Like it's too dry tofarm.
You can't, I can't pay toirrigate it.
It costs millions of dollars tomaintain equipment, large scale
equipment, and so you want tostart in a small scale, and a
lot of these large farmersaren't even thinking about
(38:54):
starting small.
Everything they know is thesebig.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Everything's big in.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Texas.
I said man, look, I have acouple people that would
probably enjoy eating some goat.
We're not too far from Houston.
I used to frequent Houston alot, a huge African population,
a huge Islamic population outthere too.
So I'm like, look, why don't wego in this together?
(39:26):
You have the knowledge and theland, I have the market and I
can bring in the goats and wecan just partner in on this and
it won't take you any more time,or, you know, I'll buy the feed
.
So ultimately I ended up leasinghis land, starting off with
just I think we started off withfour goats and just for me to
(39:49):
really, you know, for for me,friends and family, so to speak.
That was it kind of scaling itdown from the restaurant, where
before I loved having friendsand family at the restaurant for
a while, and then I startedresenting it because I was like,
oh gosh, these are losses thatI just got to keep taking.
(40:09):
But I still wanted to createthat atmosphere.
And when we just started off,but it was like there was a stop
loss, I knew how much thesethings were going to cost me Not
not a, you know, not a crazysnowball of debt.
So we, we agreed to it, andthat was now.
I was four three years ago orsomething like that, and it went
(40:30):
from four goats Now we'regetting close to 200.
Yeah, so part of me um.
Yeah, so pardon me, yeah, butthe mark, the demand, is what
we're, and you start to realizeI was like man, these things
really multiply then the demandthat we're selling it and we're
um, so we're, and now thatthey're breeding flop because
(40:52):
they're selling it um to people.
And once you solve the problemand it almost looks like man,
how was he able to solve itwithout you know?
And I wasn't able to.
It seems so straightforward andso simple.
Once you do it Like, oh well,no, you were just looking at the
wrong demographic.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Exactly.
I mean, if you're going to havegoats, you got to go where
people want goats.
That's where it's going tocount Exactly, if you're going
to have goats, you got to gowhere people want goats.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Exactly so.
That was the thing.
So now I have, essentially, mytechnology company still.
I'm a director, I'm doingtechnology and my real estate
portfolio is growing and I havethese goats and I started just
thinking, all right, what's next?
(41:40):
I'm like, how do I expand thesegoats?
But there was one thing aboutTexas my wife and I our family
is in the Northeast and we knewthat we wanted to come back.
I was enjoying these things inTexas, but I really wanted to,
as you're starting to havenieces, nephews, kids, people
are being born, people are dying.
(42:02):
We wanted to make sure that weappreciated the time that we did
have with family.
So we made the move back to theNortheast, where I was
investing in real estate as well, and here in Washington DC,
where we moved to, investing inreal estate as well, and here in
Washington DC where we moved to.
But while we were moving back,we may have stayed in
Philadelphia and the New Jerseyarea.
(42:23):
That's where our family is.
I was always telling them aboutthese goats in Texas.
I was like, yeah, these thingsare awesome and now I have the
business for it.
Texas is really dry and arid, sothe um doing the vegetable
farming probably wasn't going towork out.
But I wanted to continue thatand I wanted to extrapolate more
(42:45):
out of what I can do with umagriculture and that's how I got
into okay, well, you know whatI think I figured out how to
work it down in texas and that'sbeen really successful for me.
I love what we're doing downthere, um, and we've actually
even increased the I said wehave, yeah, close to 200, but
(43:05):
we've added cows too.
Right, but that's been slowgrowth.
We didn't go from one to, youknow, 200 overnight.
It's been a couple years andnow it's like, oh, let's add
cows, let's add feed.
We know, you know, we kind ofunderstand that system and we
decided I decided to do the samething here in new jersey, where
I have some friends and familyand make it um the name of the
(43:27):
farm is deca farms a familyjourney, because, yes, I do look
to make a profit, but really Itell people that you, you should
, while you can enjoy thejourney, all right, of course,
there's going to be somebodythat's going to tell you how to
make a million dollars overnight.
They're going to tell you howto make 10 million dollars
(43:48):
overnight all right, they'regoing to sell you something.
But and then you start towonder, if I was in that
person's shoes, if I wasboasting about my private jets
and doing this and doing that,would I really be still flying
all over the country doingconferences and speeches and
(44:09):
going into all this?
I know they're showing they'reon vacation, but, if you've ever
, I'm a content creator myself.
I like to vlog, and I do it fora job more than anything.
So, though, don't judge me, butno, I, I would really enjoy the
fruits of my labor with thepeople that I love.
So it's certain some thingsthat these guys aren't telling
(44:30):
us, um, and a lot of investorsand successful people really
aren't as successful.
They kind of come off to beright.
So, yes, I did want to.
Of course, there was a timethat, and we all have big eyes
and want to be very successful,but I started redefining what my
(44:52):
vision and my definition ofsuccess meant, and, for me, I
really love being outside.
I love, you know, agriculture,I love horticulture and just
everything about animalhusbandry, even though and I say
this knowing that I do it froma distance, knowing that I do it
, I do it with self, I do itwith people.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
I love when y'all put your rubber.
Love when you're walking in themud.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, I mean you'll see me out there with the
compost, with the.
You know I get my hands dirty,but I do have somebody that
knows what to do and I'mlistening to them and I'm like
okay, and so I don't try topretend like I'm the smartest
guy in the room or have all theanswers, especially in things
that I don't know.
But so that's how the farm cameabout.
(45:41):
So we bought a property thatcame available to a 400 acre
farm out in New Jersey and nowjust introducing it to the
community, getting some ideas,some challenges there, a lot of
challenges, and doing businessin New Jersey.
I'd probably rethink that if Ihad to do it again but very
(46:06):
different from Texas, I'll saythat but opening up
conversations on all right, howdo we pivot?
We wanted to do this.
This is not possible right now.
What can we get?
Let's not just throw it allright.
How do we pivot?
We wanted to do this.
This is not possible right now.
What can we get?
Let's not just throw it allaway.
Right, we can't farm what wewant, or there's infrastructure
(46:26):
costs.
It costs a lot to set thesethings up and it's a lot more
than I was expecting, but westill are pushing forward Now.
That's where we are today.
I think we start off theconversation with you asking
what am I most excited about?
I'm like man we made some greatimprovements on the farm this
week, and spring is here, sowe're going to be growing and
(46:49):
all that.
So that's-.
So you and I are going to liveout by?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
do you want to live out where there's rural, or do
you still want to live in cityand then just take care of rural
?
Speaker 1 (46:59):
No, no, yeah, we're going to live in the city for
now, but I would love to maybesplit time right.
But I do know that my wife inparticular is a city girl and,
no matter what, I got gottafigure out a way to keep her
(47:20):
happy.
So she, she's been along withme and kind of allowed me to
explore these things andsupported me in it.
But, um, we're going to try tofigure out a way to split time.
However, that's where thechallenge does come in, for for
us to comfortably live there,there's a lot of infrastructure
challenges on um, on the 400acre property just to get, oh,
(47:42):
electricity out there, um, orsome pretty large checks and
water wells and, you know,sewage tank, all that.
So we're still some some timesaway from that and when that
time does come, maybe she'll be.
We got to start off with hey,we'll spend a weekend out there,
then I'll bring her back fortwo weeks, then we'll see.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I'd love to know, because you are a serial
entrepreneur, you got your handsin technology, you got your
hands in agriculture, you gotyour hands in real estate.
To me, that means that you aredoing stuff all the time.
How has that worked out in yourrelationship with your wife,
with all the time you'respending doing, doing, doing?
(48:28):
Is she okay with you being gone?
I mean, how do you guys workthat out where you're, you know,
or how do you work it out whereyou have time with your family
to to be able to do stuffanother?
Speaker 1 (48:40):
yeah, yeah, it's definitely so.
With everything in life there'sa balance, uh, and you have to
understand your priorities andyou have to make sure that you
put in systems in place.
So the, of course, if I werejust there's somebody that's
just doing one of those thingsor one thing that's putting in a
lot more time, focus and callit dedication than I am on all
(49:04):
three or four Right.
So I know what I want to put in.
Now here's a couple hard truthsand realities of life.
Most people don't work as hardas they think they do.
If you have ever reallyintensely put a good eight hours
(49:26):
of work in a day where you'rejust locked in, cutting away the
social media, you're locked in.
You're going to come out ofthat day, even though it's
behind the computer.
You're going to be tired.
You're going to say, wow, lockedin, you're gonna come out of
that day, even though it'sbehind the computer.
You're gonna be tired, right?
You're gonna say, wow, that'sand a lot of people.
And now, having had employeesand I'm like what do you do all
day?
All right, like you, yourealize that their output just
(49:47):
isn't that much.
So once you start appreciating,once you start appreciating how
much time is in a day, allright.
Start appreciating how muchtime is in a day, all right.
And understanding that this is ajourney, not a sprint, and the
destination, of course, isimportant, but that's always
(50:08):
changing.
You don't have to feel like youhave to do everything at one
time.
So I compound my prioritiesinto something that is
profitable.
I don't feel like the farmneeds to make me millions and
millions of dollars.
I'm doing it because I love todo it and I like to do it.
So even if I wasn't workinglet's say I was retired early,
(50:30):
as it might be I might stillfind myself at a farm.
I might still find myself at afarm, right, I might still find
myself walking.
We have trails out there andlike it's kind of a beautiful
place.
So I do the things.
The reason that I got my handsin these things is because these
are the things that I like todo.
I understand I'm still youngenough that I can still have and
(50:54):
I need some sort of job andincome.
So I can't just enjoy thesethings with money going out
without it returning somethingright To fill the pot.
So that's where I changed mymindset to is okay, what's the
break-even cost?
If this thing could just beself-sustaining, that would be a
great thing.
Then you start to get intoprofitability.
(51:15):
But there is a certain number Idon't care, not what most people
say and maybe look, life isdynamic.
So, as your audience hears metoday, I know this is a Journey
to Freedom podcast Maybe in ayear or two years I might say
you know, I want to retract thatstatement, but I've been a lot.
(51:36):
I've been around a lot ofwealthy individuals, and when
I'm talking wealthy, I meanwealthy private jets, $50
million homes and and plus thereis a level that you get to
financially where it justdoesn't matter anymore.
Yes, you know, we hear I wantto make six figures Great Matter
(51:59):
of fact, and I think thatnumber for a lot of people,
believe it or not, I would sayand I hate to throw out numbers
because it can be conflatedsometimes if you live in New
York versus if you live in themiddle of the world.
But $200,000, call it that.
If you're making $200,000, callit that.
If you're making $200,000,you're not at the top of the
(52:20):
food chain by any means, butyou're not at the bottom either.
You're not struggling per se,unless you want to live in New
York and in a penthouse.
Then you're going to feel likeyou're struggling, but you can
choose.
Those are choices.
There's somebody out therethat's making $20 million and
still having to hustle becausethey're choosing to fly private
everywhere instead of a businessclass.
(52:42):
So for me, I'm starting torealize, okay, do I want more?
Yes, but what I want, I want tomake sure that it aligns with
what.
If I have a limited time lefton this earth with the
enjoyments and fulfillments thatI really want to get out of it,
and not just chase the money toget to a hundred million
(53:05):
dollars and then look back like,okay, well, now what?
All right, like let's, yeah, alittle bit.
I want to live without regret.
So I say that to say, as far asthe time, yeah, I invest my
time into becoming successful inbusiness, but really also just
enjoying what I do.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Well, and then what I'm hearing in you know, as I'm
reading between the lines is youdo well with your time of
spending the time on the thingsthat matter and not spending a
whole bunch of time ondistractions.
Whenever I hear somebody who'sbeing successful in several
areas, I ask what distracts you?
(53:47):
And it's not the same thing asit distracts other people.
I don't see you going homewatching soap operas on TV or
spending time at the watercooler talking to I mean, what
is the?
I guess what are some of thedistractions that would take you
away from what you're doing andyour goals or things you're
trying to do yeah, youdefinitely need some
(54:09):
distractions every once in awhile.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
I don't very much get distracted uh, very easily but
Now I do like to spend time withmy wife.
She is my best friend.
We love hanging out, so that'scrucial and pivotal because we
don't have kids, so we have thatflexibility and she gets
(54:30):
involved in the things that I do, whether she likes it or not,
or whether I like it or not,whether she likes it or not,
right, or whether I like it ornot.
Also, she bears some of thatburden and celebrates in the
success.
So she and I spend quite a bitof time together.
And what distracts us?
Yeah, if I watch a show, it'sbecause she's watching it.
(54:52):
Right, like I don't watch toomuch TV, but if she's watching
it, I listen to podcasts a lotand a lot of audio books.
Sometimes I like to do that toclear my mind, because you can't
just be so honed in onsomething all the time.
You're going to start to getdepressed, you're going to get
stressed.
You need a way to just clearyour mind.
(55:14):
Need a way to just clear yourmind.
Now, granted, I do have.
Probably, if I want, if I reallyhad to change it, I'd probably
spend more time on social mediathan I like on the Instagrams
and TikToks not really TikToks,but Facebooks and all that but
not how people think I spendmore time looking at farm stuff.
(55:38):
I spend a lot of time.
If you look at my YouTubehistory, it is all farm how to
raise goats and the next thingI'm enjoying taking in all that
farm and agriculture information, also technology information.
I listen to it when I'm on myphone.
I'm watching otherentrepreneurs or technology or
(56:03):
real estate content, so thatuses that as a distraction.
I think it serves a dualpurpose where I'm learning, but
it's also very passive learningso I can enjoy the content.
But as far as just frivoloustime spent, not so much.
Speaker 2 (56:24):
Well, here's what I really see.
You know, there's a splitbetween education and what.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
No, I said I like to write.
I'm sorry, I like to write.
Oh, you like to write too, okayperfect.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, there's a split between education and
entertainment, and what you'vekind of done, where your goals
are in your process in liferight now, is you're saying my
education and entertainment arekind of together.
I'm being entertained by beingeducated, whereas a lot of
people that are distracted Ihave to be entertained, I have
(57:00):
to be entertained, I love to beentertained, but when do they
get to be educated?
Right, and then they wonder whythey're not moving forward
because they're not investing inthemselves to learn more, to be
more educated, and so, forright now, I love the fact that
you're doing it all together,which is neat, and you're doing
it with your spouse and yourwife and it's just, it's just
(57:22):
amazing.
What do you want folks to know?
I mean, you're on the podcasttoday and I'm loving you're on.
We got a few minutes left.
What did I do?
Oh, this was amazing because itwas an insight into business
and and how to be successful andhow to get unstuck and how to
take risks and all those thingsthat you've been able to do.
(57:42):
Is there anything else that youwant to share?
Websites or anything like thatyou want to have people know?
Or you're giving of yourself,which I so appreciate, but what
do you want us to know as wedepart today?
What do you want us to know aswe depart today.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah, on social media I am Ask Dom that you can
follow me there.
My platform is all aboutfinancial literacy, self-help
and motivation small businessand entrepreneurs where it's
practical business advice.
I'm not trying to overfanaticize the world of
(58:18):
entrepreneurship, so I get a lotof people asking me their
questions.
So if you have any questions,just feel free to ask Dom that
on any of the platforms.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
One thing I'd love to ask you would you be willing to
come back at some point and doa financial literacy of things
you don't know or things youweren't taught like?
I want to ask, dom, what doesit really mean to have financial
literacy instead of what?
The little bit that we don'tget in school and then even more
(58:50):
that we don't get that'spractical, on how to run our
lives?
Because it seems like youfigured this out, even when I
think of this man walked intoWells Fargo and asked for $2
million.
So there's got to be somethingin your mind that's way
different than other people'smind.
You're like, hey, give me $2million, yeah.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
I would love to come back and talk specifically about
financial literacy and all theopportunities that you don't
even realize are out there andcertain that there's so much
contradictory information.
As somebody who consumes thisinformation and somebody who's
in these rooms learning frompeople, I can talk to one person
(59:41):
that tells me, for example,just as a way of an example, get
into these vehicles, investmentvehicles of life insurance and
annuities, and I'm like, oh okay, that guy was really convincing
.
Then the other guy says, don'tdo this, this is historically
bad.
I'm like whoa, it's almost likehow could two convergent things
(01:00:03):
work, so understanding theprinciples behind it?
And I really would love to talkto your audience without having
a stake in it, your audiencewithout having a stake in it,
right, like being a fiduciary tosome degree, because so many
(01:00:27):
people that we speak with havesome sort of incentive to, you
know, to steer us one way oranother.
And, and that's always justbothered me when I do talk to
people and all I can do is tellyou what's worked for me and
what hasn't worked for me.
Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, I think I would love that.
I know our audience would loveit as well, and so I'll get with
my assistant and have her makesure she talks with you.
We'll have you back on.
Thank you for sharing yourstory today.
Oh, my gosh, I'm excitedbecause, you know, my grandpa
had a farm when I was growing upand I was out there and milking
(01:01:01):
cows and doing all that stuff,and I ran away from that as far
as possible, but I like to seethat there's somebody doing it
from a distance and beingsuccessful at it.
So I love it, I love it, I loveit.
Thank you for being on today.
For those of you who subscribe,you're going to want to know
when we have this next episodethat comes out.
(01:01:22):
Hey, don't forget your God'sgreatest gift.
He loves you, if you allow himto, and we will look forward to
seeing you on the other side ofthis.
And so, again, I mean thank youfor being on.
We're going to have you backand have a wonderful, this
incredible day.
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