Dre Mudaris, Founder Of Children To Wealth

On the latest Building Black Biz podcast, Lite FM's Helen Little sits down with Dre Mudaris, Founder of Children To Wealth, a company built to tackle the challenges of financial literacy in communities head-on to find financial freedom and success. In Partnership with @DriveToyota.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Building BlackBiz podcast. My name is Helen Little,
and today I am here with DreMadaras from Children to Wealth. Welcome
to the show. Thank you,thank you, thank you. I'm happy
to be here. Thank you forhaving me. I'm so glad you're here
with us. Dre, And aswe get started, tell us a little

(00:22):
bit about Children to Wealth and yourpersonal journey that led you to start this
financial literacy company for children and parents. Okay, well, Children of Wealth
is a platform US, an elearning platform that he's his family and children
about financial literacy. Oh. Wecover topics from credit, real estate,
life, insurance, the history ofmoney, the future of money with cryptocurrency

(00:46):
and NFTs, e commerce, andjust pretty much everything that we wish as
a dose that we knew as wewere younger. So we try to bring
it from a six all the wayup to where we just introduced children to
different avenues when it comes to theworld of financial literacy, imagine that parents
embraced it. How has it beenwith kids embracing this program. It's been

(01:11):
amazing because a lot of kids arevery smart when it comes to well,
just they're just smart in general.I just feel like they're just misguided when
it comes to education as far aswhat they're learning, So they pick up
pretty quickly, and once they resonationto world world, they're they're pretty They
get pretty much excited, especially withstuff like e commerce or real estate whole

(01:36):
selling where you don't have to technicallywait to be eighteen to start generating income.
So how have your own experiences withmoney and financial education influence the way
you approach teaching financial literacy to children. Well, I grew up I want
to House University and I graduated offinance major, so I worked for I

(02:00):
want to say, four of thetop investment banks. So I'm pretty much
adverse when it comes to money froma banking and investment banking standpoint, but
from an entrepreneurial standpoint, since Iwas about fourteen years old, I've been
like cutting grass, shoveling snow,dj and cutting hair just to realize how

(02:23):
to make money work for me insteadof working for money. So I've been
doing that since fourteen, and doingit at a young age shows me that
his dude get excited with the ideaof working for money and and I just
try to make it to where it'smore structured just like when kill used to

(02:43):
do like paper routes or sell popcornwith the boy Scouts. I try to
show kids that they can start earlyto start learning about the fundamentals of how
money works. So I've got toimagine this hasn't been smooth sailing all the
way. What are some of thechallenges you face and creating and growing your
company, and you know, howhave you overcome the challenges. Well,

(03:07):
one of the challenges have been justcreating all the material, creating all the
material and just really getting it towhere it's cool. It's cool for kids
to kind of want to learn aboutmoney. So I mean all the books
interactive, virtual reality format to wherekids are actually inside at each page of

(03:30):
the book, with audio and visualworkbooks. We also have quizzes and assessments
to assess all of the learning.And the reason I did that is because
I wanted to make it more moreinteractive and fun. When you're talking about
subjects that are pretty new to children, I have to imagine some of these
subjects are pretty new to parents too. Yes, Yes, that's the beauty

(03:53):
of That's the beauty of the companybecause it becomes a bonding experience between parent
and child. So that so beingthat the parent is either reading the book
or elders reading the book to thekid, it becomes more of the bonding
experience because they both are learning atthe same time. So when you have

(04:15):
parents different levels of understanding about moneyand kids at different levels of understanding about
money, how do you make surethat you have the content and the resources
that are relevant to everybody. Sowe made it to where it's a fundamental
outlook on it. So we startfrom the we start from the round zero,

(04:40):
start with the introductor, We startfrom the introductory of just financial concepts,
and then we put it into applicationwith the stories. So around East
story. So around East story,we're able to um structure that the the
assessments behind money. So whether whetherit's different examples, different storylines, we're

(05:06):
able to actually show pay different scenarios, different storylines to where it could be
relatable to people. Okay, thatmakes a lot of sense, and tell
us about some of the success storiesthat you have from families who have benefited
from you know, your family,your company's financial literary resources. Oh wonderful.

(05:30):
Yeah, So one of the majorsuccess stories is with Leah's e commerce
store with Leah's e commerce store.We're able to have a kid show their
journey, show their journey of openinga store, um scratch outsourcing or product
finding a product and just different waysto actually get online and start selling utilizing

(05:58):
Amazon, whether its fulfillment by merchantor fulfillment by Amazon. And the success
story that happened with that is thatthere was a young lady named Mary.
Her parents bought the book and theyimplemented the different strategies around the e commerce
platform. They were able to openup Mary's store and I believe to date,

(06:21):
Mary did about four hundred and thirtytwo thousand dollars with her story utilizing
Yeah, utilizing the sourcing because oneof the things in the book we talked
about varieties and why it's important topick a product that you know you don't
have to have different varieties like aT shirt where you have different colors and

(06:44):
sizes. But I believe Mary wasable to make a lot of money through
hair brushes because we was able toshow how to source the product low in
the book and then promoted on usingAmazon's clientele. An amazing story and how

(07:09):
old is the child? Well,Mary's Mary, She just she turns twelve
in November. Wow, I lovethat story. So that's kind to be
pretty rewarding. What what what wouldwhat would you say is the most rewarding
thing? Because you've talked about thesekids learning about financial information. You also

(07:29):
talked about bonding with family, soit seems as if you have more than
one way of feeling something rewarding bywhat you do. But what would you
say is the most Well, themost rewarding I would say is just having
parents learn about different financial strategies anddifferent ways to kind of generate income outside

(07:53):
of you know, the regular nineof five are working for money. But
the joy I would say is watchingthem I would teach the next generation in
a way that's actually implementing generational wealth. So it's actually saying generational wealth in
real time through the use of education. Because you know, a lot of

(08:13):
the things that I'm put in thebooks and just stuff that's been around for
years. It's just you know,it just wasn't privy to everybody when it
came to information. But the Internethas allowed information to be so you know,
so I want to say so massive, yeah, accessible and massive that

(08:33):
you know, people have information overloads, so I get the biggest joy of
just structuring people's niche and focus ondifferent financial avenues to take to at least
start the conversation of generating passive incomeand diversifying their income to kind of give

(08:54):
their time back, because I believetom is the most valuable asset. And
when it comes to families, Ithink, if um, a father's missing
their daughter's recital because of work,if I could show them a way to
uh, you know, have alittle bit more passive income or even show

(09:15):
their daughter to create income for thehousehold, it kind of opens up a
lot of time for a family.And that's one of the biggest joys that
I see is families getting their timeback. I do truly love the idea
of this, and you know,um, I hope a lot of families

(09:35):
benefit from hearing what we're talking abouttoday. Where do they find the books?
How do you get access to yourbook? Serious? Well, you
well, we have over thirty booksand they're all on different topics and you
can get access to it at childrento Wealth dot com. Again, it's
www dot children to wealth dot comand we have all of the all of

(09:58):
the books available at that web sitealongside the different resources we have a lot
of free vsources, workbooks, UMgames and as well as played so each
book that has written is in playformat, so it's actually it's actually um
kind of written as like the firstseason, so we try to make it

(10:20):
entertaining as well as informational. Soif it's if it's the first season,
what are some of the initiatives ofprojects that you're working on the further your
mission of promoting financial literacy for childrenand parents? You got to have some
piece. Yes, yes, that'sthat's so true. So being that's the

(10:43):
first season of financial literacy, wejust want to break it down to the
fundamental at its most precious level.So we just want to let people know
where money is, where money comesfrom, how to use credit in our
credit book. When it comes toreal estate, we're just letting people know
about the terms or the different avenuesto kind of excel in the real estate
investing. And so the next seasonwill just be pure implementation of what was

(11:07):
learned. So we're I'm writing booksnow with that next season in mind,
just to implement the knowledge that waslearned in these first round of books.
And what would you say is yourlong term vision for children to wealth well,

(11:28):
my long term vision for Children ofWealth is to have more more games
out more each book. We're planningto turn each book into an actual animation
series, so we definitely see animationand movies in the near future, just
to just to kind of deepen thestory and have the antagonistic relationship between families

(11:52):
and money, because a lot offamilies aren't really privy to how money works,
and we know that whence it becomesa household initiative, it kind of
helps out and alleviates a lot ofthe burden that surrounds finances. I think
this is so amazing to hear aboutwhat you're doing. Um I do wish

(12:16):
this was around when I was becausethings like it's fun and I'm a person
who happens to be motivated by fun, and I think a lot of kids
are too. Because when you whenyou find, when you find enjoyment and
whatever it is you do, youhave a tendency to do it longer,
and you know, with more pride. And also and also it's when it's

(12:37):
tangible to real lighting. So ifa if a young boy wants to buy
Jordan's or he wants to get anew PlayStation game, it kind of makes
it a lot more enjoyable when weshow him the strategy is to do without
asking his parents. I love that. Now, if people want to connect
with you via social media and findout more, how can they reach you

(12:58):
or or have access to you socialAnd I know you said the website is
wealth dot com. Yes, thewebsite is Children to Wealth dot com.
Um. You can get me directlyat Dre mcdari's d R E m U
d A R I s um onInstagram and also at children to Wealth UM.
A lot of all of the feedbackcomes directly to me, so either

(13:22):
or I'm very accessible on social mediaand my initiative and my goal is just
to just to save families financialize,one child at a time. I love
that, Drey, Thank you somuch for being on today and for sharing
with us about Children to Wealth.I can only see wonderful and amazing things

(13:46):
and being a part of building BlackBus has been a pleasure for me to
even talk to you today. Thankyou, and I appreciate the time here
and I'm just honored to be apart of the conversation