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All right, Gods, welcome back and your leisure podcast Special special Edition. But before we get started, we got some news. Philadelphia. We headed to your city. You know that we're on to it right now, So Philly, we're taking over the city. March fourteenth. March fifteenth to day stravaganza. We got we got a live podcast on the fourteenth and the workshop on the fifteenth, live podcast from our brother Wallow to sixty seventh, Big Business Special surprise guest, open bar catered.
And then on the workshop we got Aisha Sheldon, Alex good In andgy Vending Biz a Tea Blair Man. It's going to be crazy. It's gonna be a crazy situation. So all information is on on our website on your Legion dot com on the events tab and get your tickets. Can't wait to see you. So all right, we're gonna jump right into it. You know, we try to take requests from our listeners as much as we possibly can.
We try to facilitate it, so you know, we get a lot of different requests with different people when we try to try to make it happen. And one of the one of the top request that we've been getting especially recently is a legend in the music game and also in the tech game as well, Ryan Leslie, And so people hit us up and they're like, yo, you should get him on the podcast. And actually it's ironic because behind the scenes I was working for like months to try.
To make it happen.
September. We got the Yo, he might come on. I'm like, let's do it here now.
But you know we did it. So yes, Ryan Leslie needs no introduction by giving one. As I said, a Legend of the Game producer singer rapper worked with some of the biggest names in history, Kanye West, Diddy, Beyonce, Fabulous Banks, the list go crazy. But now he's doing his thing in check. Obviously he's a smart guy. If you know his backstory went to Harvard. Yeah, it also got a perfect score on the s A T.
I saw these things.
So yeah, So without further doing, Ryan Leslie, first and foremost, thank you for joining us.
Appreciate you coming. Man.
Yeah, so I hear y'all going to Philly. I didn't get the invite, you.
Know what I'm saying, all right, right now, you know what.
Happens Like they're like, yo, I'm coming to Philly. You just kind of gave it away.
We'll talk a little bit about the workshop.
So, so the workshop is so you know, like a lot of people through like financial seminars. Yeah, well, our
thing is different because we bring different people on. So it's really like kind of like a concert That's how we like to frame it because like each city that we build so many strong relationships with the podcast that each city that we go to we have like people in the city, and we try to switch it up so like we might do trucking one city, we might through real estate, we might do wholesaling, we might do stocks. So presenters come on and they present for about forty
five minutes. It's interactive. People ask them questions and yeah, it's about two and a half hours three hours afterwards to stay ask questions. So it's and it's it's an intimate setting. So yes, it's something that.
We try to compare like when we talk about music. We try to compare it like what cal It does when he goes onto it.
Every time we go to.
A city, So every time we go to a city, whether we're in Houston, we're gonna bring somebody from Houston to come speak, and we when go to Atlanta, we bring the people from Atlanta. And now we're in Philly, were bringing the Philly people out.
So okay, so maybe I need to do the New York.
Yeah, it's gonna be crazy tell you about that. You're going to tell you about that, So ill So we're going to talk about a few different things, but I would like to start with the music, because that's where you originally started as far as you know, your career. So we talked about music a lot, but we never covered it from a producer standpoint. I just realized that today when I was prepping for this.
Yeah, we had Derek talk about from the executive standpoint, we had Mickey Fast from.
The Dope freestyle.
We never really had somebody break it down from the person who's actually making it, curating that music.
Yeah, So, as far as you get in the game, how did how did your career path takes as a producer first, and even figuring out as far as like points on an album and negotiating royalties and things of that nature.
Yeah, I mean I think now more than ever it's important to know your math on that. I think really when I was getting started the going, I think actually in a lot of ways, when people start getting into music, they just say, look, I just want to have the biggest hits possible. And you know, it's inevitable if I have a really big hit that I'm gonna get paid.
You know.
And there's a lot of there are a great number of revenue streams, and there are a great number of revenue streams that are potentially overlooked. And so you know, for me coming up in a game, I was very fortunate to have really great mentors and folks that were working with me had signed me management all of that, and so they really helped me to sit down and understand not only just my paperwork and my contract, but
what all the actual revenue streams are. So with music, I mean, first of all, I would say, look, information is so readily available online. It's just about knowing what to search and then also knowing what's reliable and so listen, you know, for me even still today, there's your performance rights organizations, which is like your askcap you're being mine, and then you have your actual publishing, so whoever's actually
administering your publishing. So I know there's a ton of folks that are putting music up on Spotify and you know, distributing their music through an aggregator like a CD, baby, Distro kid whatever it is. Yeah, and they completely overlook the actual other side of the publishing, and so you
still need an administrator on that publishing side. And that's and so you know, I just had a great meeting with Downtown Music Holdings and they've got probably one of the leading from a technology standpoint platforms for that publishing administration.
It's called song Trust. And so you know, I.
Think nowadays everything is basically self service, and software really has been that equalizer, I would say.
And for me, I just like.
To be in control of my revenue stream. So I like to be able to look at be able to just log into my accounts and see them all, even if that means that you know, they may be delayed. I just want to be one percent on top of them. So I mean, I'm not sure if I'm even answering
your question per se. When I first got started, I would just say, look, I was very much concerned with an advance, and I think a lot of folks when they first get started, you've been living in the basement, You've been you know, living out the trap wherever you live in. You want that advance because that advance is that first way that you're going to pay for all those years of starvation, if you will.
So the advance is the money that the record labels given to you, saying like here's the money that you get to do the project.
Yeah, and I mean it's actually an advance against your royalties, right, So on the artist's side depends on the type of deal you make. And I mean, listen, business is really just business, and whatever you sign is whatever you sign. I know, there's definitely always been a lot to talk about, like, hey, you know, people are you know they got they got into slave deals, and you know, you hear these kinds
of these kinds of overtones all the time. At the end of the day, I think, you know, as long as you've got good legal counsel and you're sitting down and you're looking at your contracts, you're definitely the final arbiter of what deal you get into. And so it's important for you just to just know and be informed. So for me, my Bible level primer for the music industry, and this is an age old primer. It's a Donald Passman book all you need to know about the music business.
It's updated all the time, and you know, I always recommend Look, somebody really wants to know, they could start there. And it's updated and it was written by an attorney who definitely just understands just the nuances of the business. And then you know, no matter what's actually written in the books. It's different when you're actually sitting across a negotiation table and you're going to negotiate whatever deal is
best for you at that time. And so, you know, I find that there are a lot of folks that when they're sitting there at that negotiation table and they've never seen five thousand and ten thousan twenty thousand, one hundred thousand at one time in their bank account, much less five hundred thousand or a million dollars, and those situations, they say, oh, yeah, definitely sign me up for that, without actually looking at what the actual what the contractual
obligations are that are associated with signing those deals. The end of the day, though, you know, life just goes on. And I was just having a conversation today. Life is really like water. It's fluid, and basically the time that you have takes on the shape of whatever container that
you that you put around your life. And so if you put a container around your life where you get that upfront advance and it's a big upfront advance and you're able to do in a smart way what you should do with that, and you're keeping track of your accounting, and when that advance is recouped, et cetera, then that may be the right pathway for you as opposed to delay the gratification and waiting eighteen months to actually let the publishing or the royalties trickle in.
So let me ask you this because a lot of times, especially with producers, there's been a lot of record label won't name any recor labels, but there's a lot of record labels where producers say that they don't get paid. Right,
It's like a it happens all the time. So why is it such an epidemic with producers, specifically producers making beats and getting delayed on their payments or not getting paid because you hear about that all the time, and even like big name producers and they go on social media and they make a big deal about it.
So it's like, yo, I have a relationship with you, and you'll give me all the back end and it never happens.
That happens all the time.
Yeah, I mean listen, Like I said, all of all of those situations are directly correlated to.
What you negotiate up front.
And I would I would just say that in many cases, one of the most uncomfortable conversations to have, and unless you have an advocate or you have the wherewithal to have that conversation right there in the session, that uncomfortable conversation is Hey, what part of this record do I own?
When do we get paid?
How is it all going to be broken down? And where's the paperwork for it? It almost seems that antithetical to the creative process, right, because the creative process you want to be open. You want to be open up ideas. People want to be sharing back and forth, and the last element of that process is to be sitting back and saying, Okay, what percentage of the song line it's
but it's a I just believe you. You get what you negotiate, and you may not even get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, right, And so for me, I think that and you know, we just have to get more comfortable with the discomfort, and that just needs to be a requisite of doing business. And once you're at that level and you understand, and folks that work with you understand that a requisite of doing businesses to
just have that upfront, transparent conversation. Then once both sides agreed, then you allowed to run down on people for the money that's owed, because there is no confusion in terms of having some sort of like, you know, fugazy conversation as opposed to having whatever you need to have in writing.
And so you get what you negotiate.
Yeah, so I'm imagine you know when you walk into these tables, obviously you come from a highly educated background. I think you said your dad wanted you to study law.
Is that true, law, medicine, you know whatever. It was a guaranteed pathway that somebody was.
Going to get.
Did you feel when you sit at these tables, obviously you have a distinct advance and knowing that you know what, they're not talking to somebody who's.
Educated in this game.
Listen, I would say that Baby and Slim sitting at these tables, they also had an advantage because they were moving one hundred thousand mixtapes a week. So the education is, the education comes in whatever format that you achieve or accumulate the education, right, So it's really up to you to educate yourself.
You know you don't.
I mean, I didn't go to Harvard for music business. I read it myself, and so I think probably some of the most astute business people in the music business. They learned from being observant, they learned from having great relationships, they learned from deciding that they wanted to be mentored by the best attorneys, the best managers, and they you know,
they had the transparency into the deals. And so I think that you know, nowadays, like I said, with with the with the amount of information that's readily accessible, there's really no excuse for someone to enter into a deal blindly unless they intentionally just want to be ignorant about the deal. And so I think that you know, we live in an age of media where you could find anybody, You can connect with anyone. They may or may not respond,
but you can at least reach out. You can ask for an introduction, you can ask for a referral, you can ask for a recommendation, and you can go get the knowledge. And so you want to be great, just be around the greatest UH and UH and absorb as
much knowledge as possible. And before you sit down at the table, make sure that you you've done your homework and your research so that even in the absence of knowing what you need to discuss, you can ask the right questions so that people understand that you you know, you know slotch when you come to the new case, when you come to the negotiation table.
So what is the you said, the royalty administrative.
Company song Trust, song Trust.
Can you explain that I've never heard that before.
Yeah.
So basically, you know, you're getting whatever the streaming services are paying you.
And at the same time, you're.
Also entitled to a royalty as a publisher of the music and a writer of the music, and so those publishing and writing royalties have to be collected and administrated by For me, the beauty of song Trust is that those royalties are actually collected and administrated on your behalf in all of the countries and territories around the world.
So that includes like, okay.
You know what happens you know you yeah, you get paid for your Spotify streams. What happens when your record makes it onto the radio in some obscure country, or what happens when your record is actually being used in a video game, What happens when your record is actually being played in the night clubs in you know, some overseas country. All of that is actually being tracked, and there's a there are a massive number of artists who
completely overlook that as a revenue stream. And so I think one of the greatest takeaways from my meeting recently, like I said with with Downtown Music Holdings, was that you know, there are a number of creators who once they put their music through distroy Kid or tune Corps, they they get those checks and they think that's it, when really there's an entire other world of publishing royalties that can be connected. You just need to hire an
agency to do it. You give them a commission for doing it, and that becomes an additional income stream for you.
So when you're talking about I kind of think like when streaming, I can get how they attract the data when it's played on the radio, honestly, on how to contract the data? How does that happen in a nightclub like I'm not.
You just turned like really for me every time I every time I perform over sees there they they are keeping track of the set list. So I even get paid to perform my own music.
So like a DJ has to give the set list to the venue.
They give the set lists and and uh, you know in Europe, I think it's called GEEMA g E M A and yeah, they they track it the best that they can. You know, the bottom line is it's just an additional revenue stream, and I think with the advancements in technology that may or inevitably that will improve.
It's just going to get better.
So you can literally get booked for a nightclub, get paid to go to the nightclub, and then if the DJ starts, oh, Ryan Lesley's in the house and starts playing your record, you getting pay from that too.
Absolutely, Now obviously it's pennies on the dollar. Once you do that, Once you do that at scale, it starts to begin to become material and significant.
So as far as the new age that we're in with, because we're gonna talk about that the next segment with the director consuming all of that. But for new new musicians, artists, producers specifically where they're not going to traditional route of going to a record label, because now I've seen it from both sides where a lot of producers are mad at producers that's like selling beats for one hundred dollars like, but they're getting their music out and then you know
it's it's easier route. So what is what's your take on that for for producers specifically that might be I guess maybe devaluing there.
We sort of happened with the Old Town Road, right, like the dude sold the beat and he gave it to him for like two thousand dollars.
Or even what's the kid Bobby's Murder? Right, that was Lloyd Banks beat?
Right? Originally? Who is that Chili beat beats?
Right?
Same thing with that record one thousand dollars something like that biggest record of the year, right, it was ten twelve million times platinum.
Trust me those producers as long as they retain their copyright ownership of those beats. And you know, I also know a over at Beat Stars, those beats are actually being licensed and at least to my knowledge and licensed. The Yeah, you give the license for some low barrier to entry costs so that you know, some artists that doesn't have a lot of money, but it's very creative and could create the next Panda, the next Old Town Road,
the next you know, Bobby Schmurder smash. You license those piece, you retain the ownership though of the copyright, and that's that's where that song trust relationship comes into play, because you're definitely going to get paid based on your ownership of that intellectual property I mean. And so that's why, like I said, you just got to be astute about it.
And for for anyone that has you know, that has time to be Hayden on how someone else is getting to their bag, I always recommend, like, look, that means you got too much time on your hand. You should really just find another stream of income that you could go chase, because you know, everyone needs to make money
the way they feel is best for them. And the impact act overall that that creates in the industry is it's just creating more and more opportunity for folks that want to make a living doing what they love.
They have the right and they.
Have the latitude to price that intellectual property however they want from a licensing perspective. And you know, when I was in when I was in undergrad at Harvard, I had a business school professor and I used to say, oh, man, you know I don't want any you don't want to hold onto all my music? He said, look, Ryan, just hold on to your copyrights because the best thing that can ever happen to you is one of those songs. Just go whether someone paid you up front for it
or not. As long as you own the copyright, you're getting paid, and you're gonna get paid handsomely as long as as you've done what you're supposed to do in terms of owning that copyright.
Well, that was a lot with the music.
So now the next segment, we're gonna go into what you got going on now with the phone, and we're gonna talk about some other stuff. All right, So now we're gonna go into the deep on the tech side. And this is something that we talked about a few different times. So Derek ferguson Former Bad Boys see oh oh all right, yep, CFO. CFO shout out to Derek. Good guests, and he was the first one to actually
bring this up. And then our got Jabari from R and B only talked about the data, and we had Danish Chanelle and Prince Donelle and they both spoke about the same thing. So it's been a kind of recurrent theme on Ernalisia.
But but.
You have an actual platform in place. And so twenty thirteen I was watching a breakfast club interview. So twenty thirteen, you said you took your music off of streaming services.
Right right, why'd you do that?
Well, I needed to create an incentive for people to really want to connect with me directly. So I mean, now you can go listen to my records on streaming services. At that time, though, I felt that that the the most important I always say, most important factor or most important attractor or incentive for someone to connect with me directly would be through a conversation about music and new music.
And so in order to build the audience that I wanted to build, and in order to attract the audience that I wanted to attract, and in order to accumulate the kind of data I wanted to accumulate, I needed to make sure that that audience was communicating with me directly. Because the convenience of iTunes, the convenience of Amazon, the convenience of Spotify made it such that they really were just like, oh, okay, well you know, I can just
go listen to Runds music. Why I got to give the why I got to give them my cell phone number to listen to it, and so to take all the music off the streaming services. It gave me a way to differentiate between those that were passive interactions with
me and active interactions with me. And I knew that I could convert the active interaction into a relationship of support, and that support, you know, came to the tune of you know, a two million dollar independent album cycle at that time, with no label, no management, no music videos,
just a short documentary around the project. And so it was important to make sure that there was one exclusive hub where they could get the product, and that the gateway to that hub was for them to just simply introduce themselves, so that for the first time, instead of having an anonymous following, I could actually have a following where every single interaction had a name and email, a phone number, a city, a birthday associated with that.
Yeah, because a lot of times you hear people say we have hardcore fans, right, but they just go to shows and like maybe there's fifteen thousand people in a city.
You leave that city, you have no idea.
You don't know any of them unless they paid for a package and they met you backstage or something like that. That doesn't happen. Even if you sold records, there was no way to track like, hey Tanisa from Pennsylvania, like she bought my album when I you know what I'm saying, So like your mindset going in it was like, let me find the core, core.
Base, and then and make advantage of that.
Off of that, Yeah, I mean, that's that's the foundation of any great business. That's the foundation of any great audiences. Who is your core, your core? Not only are they going to be your greatest supporters, they will also be
your greatest evangelists. And so when you have a relationship with both your greatest supporters and greatest evangelists, then that therefore creates the kind of the kind of foundation for growth and scale that I think every single business, whether you're a personal business, whether you're in financial services, whether you're selling insurance, whether you're doing business development for a startup, when you have that core and that core is pleased
with your product or service, and that core is also evangelizing for you, they're gonna bring you referrals, and then you scale that exact flywheel. And anyone that's studied Amazon understands sort of that flywheel concept, that flywheel starts to starts to start to work, and that's where you get the kind of Amazon scale. And I believe that that should be applicable to anyone that's starting a business. And I would say the ability to manage that is even
more possible when the scale is small. So when you're first starting, you should really just be enjoying the opportunity and the luxury, if you will, of having that kind of relationship with just your first twenty customers, your first two hundred customers, your first five thousand customers.
At the scale of Jeff Bezos.
Let's be real, he actually knows what all of us are doing on Amazon, and at the same time, he only knows that when he's able to log in and actually pull up that record. Same same for let's call the Delta Airlines. Same for you know, yeah, they can definitely see your activity. The reason why I like the Delta Airlines example, is because Delta's data about you is really I will say, it's very specific to their business
relationship with you. Right Amazon and Facebook, I will say, you know, the reason why they've ended up in Congress and ended up with a lot of questions is because, you know, are they collecting more data than they.
Need to have that business relationship with you.
The reason why I love Delta is that Delta just knows, Okay, my relationship, my business relationship with Ryan Leslie is is based on him flying whether it's flying on you know, Chartered Aircraft, Delta, Private Jets, sky Access or you know Diamond Medallion member or million or whatever it is. And they keep their data really focused on the business relationship
with me and how to serve me better. Now in the in the in defense of Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, they also believe that they need to collect more data to better serve their audiences. So they need to know, Hey, Ryan doesn't like this, so I'm not going to serve him ads that look like the same with Google, or yeah, yeah, Ryan doesn't like this, so I'm not gonna recommend this
to him on Amazon. The tricky part is when you know is your Echo device listening to you, is your you know, Apple device listening.
There's gotta be a mic and the phone. I'm telling you, like, there'll be conversations and they won't even be me talking about it. I could be in the room with somebody, let's say, talking about getting a new oven, like I'm telling you, like, I go to my phone in the first will be like a best buy.
But the thing is like the topic but really not off topic. The crazy thing that happened to me when I really started to get scared about technology is that I was on the phone. I think I might have been on the phone with you, Troy, and I was talking about something like, let's say, like a vacation in Jamaica or something like that, right, but on my phone. So after the conversation I'm verbally talking about this, I go on my laptop, which is a complete it's not
an Apple device at all. It's like a Toshiba, and I go on Google and it's like a vacation for Jamaica thing that pops up. So I'm like, how did that transfer from my iPhone to a Tshiba laptop in five minutes?
It's crazy? How did that happen?
Yeah?
So I mean listen, the fact that the largest technology companies are doing this at scale. And when we talk about a scale Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram managing hundreds of millions of people, that for me is just an indicator that A the technology exists for relationship management at scale, So technology already exists, and B for someone that has any level of ingenuity, that technology can be leveraged on a personal and business level, no matter the scale of your business.
So what that means is as long as Google as long as WhatsApp, as long as Instagram, as long as Dropbox can have six seven hundred million, maybe a billion users, and it's all managed. And when you log into your Gmail account, it's not mixed in with somebody else's email, it's all your. It's all very well organized. When you long into your Google Drive, it's all well organized. The fact that the technology infrastructure exists, the fact that the
technology infrastructure is now being productized. So a lot of your favorite businesses are running on Amazon Web services. So whatever Amazon is using to run their back end, you can also just subscribe to that service.
And run your back end that way.
So my excitement for this, especially for our unity, is as long as you have the ingenuity, like I said, and you have the vision, and you have the blueprint, because the blueprint has already been laid, here's how you actually can manage six hundred million people, then there really once again, the only limitation is really you. The only limitation is how great of a team can you put together.
The only limitation is how big is your vision? The only limitation is how great are the relationships you could put.
Around you to believe in your vision. And so you know, we.
Watched Steve Stout go out to Silicon Valley and raise seventy million to make the record company of the future. We've watched you know, two kids from Brazil who built the PayPal of Brazil come and build a credit card company called Brex turn it into a one point one billion dollar business in two years.
Right, And so yeah, you know teenagers, right.
And so that's what I'm saying is for us as a community, it's important to a understand that the knowledge exists and the information is just readily available and it's abundant. Number two though, is the limitation that you place on yourself is going to be directly correlated to the kind of impact and change that you actually can make in the world. And so I believe that it is time for us. You know, people say, hey, you should dream big.
I'm saying dream bigger. I'm saying that as long as Amazon can be what it has become, then whoever is coming next, because of the speed of technology, they're going to be able to build the Amazon or the Facebook or the Google or the Instagram of the future in half the time or a quarter of the time. They just need to a have a vision that's big enough and be very intentional around the relationships that they build around the actual vision, and those people have to buy
into that vision. And that could be, you know, your vision for yourself as a music artist, vision for yourself as an entrepreneur, your vision for yourself as a software developer, as a medical doctor, as an astronaut, whatever your vision is, You've got to put great people around you, the best people around you, because the best people actually attract one another because they're all united in this concept that they want to impact the world in the same way that
you do, which is on the greatest scale.
I think that's one of the things that you kind of preach and I love it. It's like there's a bunch of people over here that have the ideas. They just need to find the people with the capital to help them get out those ideas. And relationships is something that you're big on, right, And that's what I mean pretty much super Phone is based off of that, right,
And I know you have this this pyramid of the relationships. Yeah, I'm interested because in the pyramid you start with obviously at the bottom of the social media.
Why is that, Well, I would say that social media is almost like a virtual representation of walking around the streets of New York. Right, So, anyone that you see on the streets in New York, or riding the trains or however you're walking around New York, you actually do have.
The option of speaking to them, right.
So you could be in Times Square and you know it's ten twenty thousand people in Times Square. As long as they're standing there and walking the same street with you, you have the option of speaking with them. Whether they're going to speak to you is up to them. You have the option same on the internet, right, social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever social platform you're on. As long as they're there and they're sharing, you also have the option of reaching
out and speaking to them. Whether it's through a direct message, whether it's in a comment, whether it's in a retweet or reply, whatever it is. They obviously have the option of whether they would like to respond. The connectivity is there, so I would say the expected response And that's why you just said, oh, in New York, because there's already building,
it's already built in the expected response time. So once you start on social media and you're basically and that's basically a virtual representation of what's happening in the world. If you're just walking around, the expected response time or the expectation for a response is very low. Right, Once you can move up and you actually can get an email address, that expectation for a response goes up.
Yeah, you went social media. I think you said EMS email.
Right, so you get from DMS to email. The beauty of email as well is the fact that nine times out of ten, when you get someone's email, you've been introduced by someone. So you say, like, just how I say, hey, put me in touch with your guy from the R and B and he's doing texting. I'm going to get a warm introduction, so it's not just me reaching out. Yeah, I'm getting a warm introduction on email.
Right.
That can also happen on text. What I like about text, though, is the fact that text allows you to turn up from texting to a phone conversation very quickly. And when you have that kind of rapport, you're really gonna see who wants to work with you. When you can take stock of who actually answers your phone call, especially in twenty twenty, who's actually going to answer the phone call?
Right?
And then that continues up the pyramid okay yo, we had a phone call. Hey, look, why don't you pull up at this time? You got that in person, and then you continue moving up the pyramid from me. So yeah, I.
Want to talk about super phone. But before that, I wanted to go back to that. You said you made two million dollars after off that album when you took it off, So can you detail, like how did you do that?
Was it through e merged? Was it through live shows? A combination of everything?
Live live made up the majority live shows. Yeah.
So when I put my number on Twitter and say everybody shoot me a text, there were thirty five thousand people that texted in the first response that everyone got. And whether you're texting you know you're texted me for the first time, or you see any of these other celebs, I mean they're now six seven years later, everybody finally caught on.
You know what I'm saying.
The first response is it needs to be automated right for you to be able to manage the scale. And that first response is always thanks for texting. I would love to know who you are, so please, you know, put your information in my phone right because I'm not gonna type everybody's information so here's a form you can you can actually put your information in my phone, so
I know who's even texting me at that point. The difference, I would say between my twenty thirteen campaign and the campaigns that I'm seeing now is that there was a very specific intent captured at the initiation of the conversation. So I didn't just say, hey, here's my number, shoot me a text. What's up. I said, look, shoot me a text to get my new album. So they shot me a text. I already know the reason they're texting is to give my new outdoor product. What's your information.
Once I have the information, here's a link to get the album. Once that intent is captured, then you have an incredibly high conversion rate. So one out of every two, about seventeen thousand people actually bought that record. They bought it for ten dollars. That's one hundred and seventy thousand, right. The difference, though, is that I now have a rolodex, a record, a ledger of every single person that's willing
to actually spend money with me directly. So now not only do you have names, not only to have emails, not only to have telephone numbers, I have city and state and country information. So now I'm going on tour.
Got the real goal?
You going on tour.
People go to concerts because it is a social experience. So yeah, you might go to the concert. If none of your friends want to go, you still figure out where you go by yourself. But you're still in a room with a bunch of people. You guys, are connected the fact that you appreciate the artist that's on stage. For me, in that situation, even though only seventeen thousand people in my phone actually bought my record, they all brought a friend or two or three or five to
the concerts. When I announced them, we sold forty thousand tickets at sixty euros a ticket.
You could do the math.
It's like five albums right there, you know.
And so it's really just and like I said, you know, there's obviously ancillary income that happens from that. There's publishing revenue and merchandise, et cetera. For me, you know, I really prefer digital goods because you know, there's a cost
of goods. You know, when you have merchandise and there's a cost of inventory, there's a cost of shipping, and so digital goods for me have always been my preference, just because they have unlimited scale and as long as you're delivering value, your content is going to be ever green. And so that's why I always I always remind an artist that even though you may feel like your music is is outdated to you, it's actually brand new for
the person who's hearing it for the first time. And the reality is that even if you went platinum, there is still a large number of people around the world who have yet to have even heard your record one time. So you have the ability in music, which is always why I say, look, just create the best music you possibly can, because great music is ever green, you know.
And so you know, I'm doing some real estate development and investments in Brooklyn, and so you know, sometimes you'll walk into some of the whether it's the mom and pop stores or just the bodegas or wherever, and they'll be playing some great, you know, old school music.
Never heard the record before.
I'm putting my Shazam up because for me, it's still that experience of discovering that music for the first time.
It's thirty forty years old.
You know.
I love what you said as far as like, how many people don't know you. Because that happened, I realized that, like now with the podcast has become very popular, especially in our community, and we went to an event curl Fest. I don't know if you've heard of it, but yeah, one of our guests on the podcast a friend of all,
she does it. So we had curl Fest this year and it's like twenty thousand women and not a lot of men, and like at least probably like twenty twenty people came up to us like, yoh, we love your podcast. So at first I'm like, this is dope, Like we feel like.
You know, we made it.
But then I'm thinking twenty people recognized us, which is dope, but there's twenty thousand people, Like how many people?
We still got so much more to penetrate day.
I tell them every day, like my life is so much duality. Like I go to work, most of my coworkers don't even know I do a podcast. I walk down the street, most people don't even know I'm a teacher. But like there are rare cadors, like we're in Houston, I and somebody will say, oh, your podcast is this is cool?
But no, we got so.
Much that you like made it because yeah, there's always a bunch of people that don't.
Have no clue.
Yeah, and also just to be just to keep it one hundred, you still can be ridiculously wealthy just from a niche audience. You know, I would say that you know they're they're there exists a number of gen zers that may not even.
Know who Oprah is.
Right, that's the fact the audience though that she's created. That's her niche audience, and that's a that's a loyal audience.
Ernest, what's up?
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And that audience is not just limited to the viewers, it's also limited to the television executives that love her content and want to syndicate it right. And so I think that you know the I would say the conundrum of scale, or the dilemma if you will, of scale is unless you really have the technological infrastructure to have
a direct relationship with each one of your listeners. At scale, you're better off having a manageable, a manageable audience in terms of size, so that you can actually have a depth of a relationship with those folks.
I have folks, you know.
You look at my socials, my socials compared to the biggest UH stars or influencers on Instagram. I'm sitting at three hundred and sixty thousand followers.
I know that.
In my core though, I have folks that have spent four or five, six, seven, ten thousand dollars with me, and I know every dollar they spent, I know the products they like, et cetera. And so you know that depth of relationship on it. And that's sort of any in any vertical, in any circumstance, the depth of relationship is always going to yield I would say, just a greater reward in general.
Yeah, sometimes less is more, less is more.
A lot of times less more.
And this is this is a prime example of it. Yeah, So I know you get emails and you get texts. You're so adamant about the text. Yeah, and the percentages show, like I think you go down and you said, like twenty two percent of people. You know, actually, when I get an email, open it and go to it. Whereas when people get a text message, even if you sent it and they didn't read it.
You know they got it.
Yeah, how are we tracking that data?
Yeah?
I mean for me, I track based on whatever the call to action is in the text that I send. So for me, you know, once again, I capture intent on the way in. So let's just take for example a case in point. I did a tenth anniversary concert for my debut and sophomore albums in December, right, and so the easiest way for me to track intent was, Hey, are you interested in coming to my concert? Just RSVP here there's no barrier of payment. How many tickets would
you like this? How much the tickets costs? How many VIP tickets would you like this? How much they cost? What songs do you want me to play? That creates a beautiful capture of intent right at the beginning of the converse. And so I know these are the songs that you like. I know how many VIP tickets, I know how many general mission tickets you want. And then when I deliver on that request, I know that there's going to be a very high engagement, and so I'm
I'm tracking based on link clicks. I will literally want somebody first, and foremost somebody comes through that form, I don't need to send them a link to fill out a form because they already just are SVP through a form.
So now.
Now I know that all I need to do is deliver on the request, and the request is I want to come to your concert, So send them a link. I can track whether or not they click that link, and then once they're actually in my e commerce ecosystem, I can track whether or not they actually purchase, and whether they purchase or not. I have a direct line of communication, so I can ask them what is the reason, Well, I'm going to be out of town or hey, it's
Christmas time. So I've decided like I would definitely love to come to a concert, but I need to get X as he gives, et cetera. That kind of context around even the non purchases is priceless information, and it's now all stored in my phone. In that text conversation, I would say that the nuance between email and text conversations is a very obvious and simple one. Every time you get an email from someone it's a new thread.
When you get a text from someone along as long as it's from the same number, that thread is the same and it's consistent and it's continuous until they either change their number, block you, or pass away unsubscribed.
Like that.
Now, I feel like emails, especially me, Like I get so many emails, and it's like I might check my emails like five times a day, but I'm on my phone all day. Somebody texts me odds an't gonna see it. Whereas an email, you might get an email and then you might get you know, wrapped up in some stuff, and you might not even get loose track even catching.
What happens with text too.
You know a lot of people, but it's easier to track text and it is email, so.
Right now, right now, and so that's really where that's really where superphone steps in.
At some point in time.
All of the traffic that you're having on email will eventually start to permeate and make its way into your text message feed. The challenge with today's text message feed is that we have iPhone eleven and we're still using I message one. There's no folders, there's no automation, there's no mark a messages unread. There's no Yo, remind me to respond to this message later after work.
All of that is missing.
And yet we have animojis, we got virtual reality, we got augmented reality, people running around in Central Park look of for Pokemon.
The bottom line is where.
Is the innovation in that feed which is potentially our most important form of human communication. And so that's really where I'm sitting at the helm of superphone and saying, Look, at first, we're going to enable businesses. We're going to enable you know, whether you are a whether you are an earn your leisure podcast and you have two hundred thousand people, or you're a masseuse or a yoga instructor, or you sell cupcakes, or you're a florists and you
just have you know, twenty or fifteen clients. How do we make you more efficient in this ecosystem of text, at least on your side. The folks that you're interacting with, they don't need to download an app. They just need to know that you never miss a birthday, you never miss an anniversary, and they never miss out when you have a sale of promotion an event. That's the first relationship that we're going to build and we're going to power.
Then what's going to happen is, all of a sudden, all of these consumers are going to give their numbers to all of these businesses because it's more convenient. And then at that point there will need to be inbox management for your text speed in the same way that inbox management is a necessity for email.
And so for me, I'm just.
Sitting here and like I said, look, you know what I was doing in twenty thirteen, it took seven years for folks, six seven years for folks to catch up. Now I'm sitting you know, and looking towards the future and saying, Okay, these are the problems of the future that I know are inevitable. They are impending challenges that are going to need to be solved. And how am I building a product and productizing the solutions that I envision so that they are turnkey and they're accessible and
they're affordable. Because by the time your inbox gets flooded, you won't even have recognized that you've given your number to all these people. And I know this is going to happen because this is what happened with email.
Now and it's actually I'm glad you said that, because if anybody's listening, don't take it personal. I've been getting a lot of text messages and emails, and actually I always pride myself on being like very organized, right, but now, especially with the podcast, my business my personal life, I'm becoming it's becoming overwhelming. And a lot of times you get a text and it's like you you mean to text somebody back, and then before you know it, it's
five days later it's like, oh damn. But then people take it personal, like I text you like yo, I text you.
So superphone isn't an app.
It's an app and it's it's automated. It you can automate or you can automate as much or as little as you want, so you make the messages right. So like Ryan Leslie on my birthday, you're gonna text me. You can choose to say, you know what, your Troy happy birthday. Yeah, Yo, glad to see you lastek at the concert. And I can send it as a voice not too so, you know, for somebody that writes in and says, yo, Ryan is my birthday, I could just literally press a button and it will send like YO,
happy birthday. From your boy Ryan, and it will also log that that's a birthday. So if I want to do that every year forever, I can do that every year.
Now.
People have always you know, made fun of me because they say, Okay, once you set that up, what happens when you pass away? You're still gonna be texting people happy birthday after you. You know what I'm saying in heaven beyond you know exactly. Yeah, have a great one, brother, I see you up here soon.
Can't wait to see you when you get it.
So, so superphone is a management is a management system.
Yes, it's a it's inbox management for text and it's it's it's enterprise. Right now, some of your favorite New York companies are using it, some of your favorite.
Fashion companies are using it.
Obviously, I'm sure you've seen, you know, a ton of celebrities and giving their phone numbers out, et cetera, following that pathway.
Uh.
But for us, we're really focused on, like I said, that next wave, and that next wave is every element and feature and aspect of Gmail that allows you to organize email at the scale.
That you have it.
And even if it's just a personal use of email, your scale is crazy just by nature of the services you've signed up for. Uh intro that you might have in somebody's music, interest in a podcast, interest in a product, interest in a crowdfunding, interest in whatever it is. Your email is crazy right now. My prediction is that your
text message feed is eventually going to get there. And the folks who once again are adopting technology to help them to be more efficient and manage this a scale and adopting that technology early, those are the folks who have that arbitrage opportunity.
To really profit.
And when I say profit, that means both in time, relationships and money, because you have a better handle on the most important form of human communication, which right now is that text feed.
In twenty thirteen, obviously you changed the game, right And I'm thinking now, right twenty twenty now that everybody's catching on to what you were trying to tell them, Like they probably thought, you know, he's tripping, what was he doing?
What is that feeling?
Like?
Are you just it's like so focused on the future that it's like, you know what, I'm glad you caught up, but I'm on to the next thing.
Yeah, I mean, I think you can already just hear it in my tone. I think that I think that is great for people to catch up. I think that is great for innovation to finally start reaching that sort of mass adoption, because it's important. It's required for us to be able to fix the sort of large scale
issues that we're having. I mean, we're talking about climate change, We're talking about you know, breakouts of viruses, we're talking about trade wars, and so the bottom line is that for us to be able to even live in peace with one another, we need to be able to adopt this kind of innovation. And it's important for visionaries and futurists and technologists to anticipate the problems that we're going to have, the challenges that we're going to have, and
create turn key solutions for them. I mean, as it stands right now, I could go all over the world and I never have an issue getting a car from point A to point B.
It took a group of folks who were having that issue to say, hey, we're going to.
Solve that with ride sharing, right, And so for me, I am, like I said, I'm just anticipating. I'm like, look, I'm glad you guys caught up. We're going to have a major epidemic here where people just going their phones is you're gonna get promoter text messages. I mean you probably are getting promoter text messages already, right You're in promoter text messages. You're gonna have your doctor, your dentist texting you. You're gonna have your grocery store texting you.
You have Amazon deliveries they're already texting you. Gonna have your bank texting you. You have your family texting you. If you've got a business, you have your customers texting you. I message one. That's really how you plan on efficiently managing that at scale. I'm already knowing from the seat that I'm in right now on this podcast that the
future is going to be smart inbox management system. And as long as I have that vision, I can with my team build that solution way before the problem or the challenge gets out of hand. And that's why I'm saying those that adopt the solution now are going to have the advantage of I would say, leveraging and profiting from their ingenuity because you're just gonna be that many more steps ahead of anyone else that's trying to manage it.
Manually.
There you have it.
So that was a lot of gems right there. So you're gonna head into the last segment. We're gonna take it home. We're gonna talk about wealth playing and some other stuff as well. Bet all right, So we're gonna talk about a lot of cool things. But before we start, I wanted to we was huge fans rest in peace of net before he passed away. What's his concert in New York? Guys album and all that, But I see
that you actually helped them out. As far as business, A lot of people look at him as like, you know, his business intellect, and so his his mixtape. Everybody knows about the Crenshaw mixtape. He dropped foe hundred dollars Proud to Pay campaign, But then he had another mixtape when he dropped for one thousand dollars and that was on your platform, correct, right, talk about that.
Yeah, I mean really it was just his his uh like I said, just the ingenuity of recognizing a replicable pathway to success. And so for me, I was, like I said, I was doing the director consumer uh. Nip in my opinion, has always just been one of those minds that was a sponge for knowledge and so you know, it was actually my guy Nathan McCartney that put us together. And you know, shout out Steve Carlos, I made shout out the whole all money in team, George, Benice, djb Ip, all those guys.
Man.
We had a great time.
Man.
You know, I took him out to uh, showed him around Paris and you know, just showed showed, showed him just the power of what technology could do for for the audience that he was already building at that time and the relationship that he was already building. So I
mean it was just kind of a no brainer. Once we sat down and broke bread, and you know, I remember my guy Slow, he actually put together a brunch me, Nipsey, Uh Wilson Chandler just to talk about you know, other ventures that we wanted to get into, startup investing, venture investing, technology, film and television.
Health, you know, the documentary that he was going to do.
Introduce him to bitcoin too.
Yeah, so definitely, you know that that was that was a conversation. He said, Yo, Ryan, what's the next topic? I said, Yo, Crypto. He said, Okay, I'm on it.
You know, we have a crazy story about crypto. We'll talk about that another time.
Why were we gonna talk about we lost some money?
All right? Why what happened? Come on now, you want to learn from the mistakes?
Yeah, yeah, So we was in Asia. We did a whole episode about this. But we was in Asia, me and Jamal, and we went there. We took a sabbatical for thirty days. And at that time, that was like when crypto was.
Going crazy and seventeen.
Yeah, in November, November twenty seventeen.
You left December first.
Yeah, so we was in I was in light coin, ethereum and bitcoin and I just put money in and I went to Asia. And as I'm in Asia, that's when it just starts going crazy. Every day, I'm making like a thousand dollars a day. So I'm telling them I'm the only one that invested out of all my friends, and I'm telling everybody in the group chat. I'm like I'm sending them screenshots on coin base, like look, we got much money I made today. Like it's like i feel like I'm on top of the world. I'm like,
I'm making a million dollars by summer. So they're still kind of like a little nervous about it, and I'm just I'm putting more money in and it just keeps going up, keeps going up. So then they decided to lock in Troy, like locked himself in his basement. And then he started finding all these aught coins. He's telling about this guy named Justin's son who got a coin named Tron, Like, oh, we don't know, I say, I laid man, I'm doing a nice thing with bitcoin.
You talking about this alternative stuff.
But I told him come home. I said, yo, listen, I don't care what you're doing. Get on the flight, come back. I found something nobody was talking about. All coins, okay, it was like bitcoin. Everybody thought crypto currency was bitcoin, right, And then I saw all these I'm like, yo, bro, this like nine hundred different coins, right. So then I saw Justin Son. I'm like, yeah, i'mnna follow that.
So he said Justin Son, and I never really trusted Justin Son because.
I know, you know, it was weird in the parent the parent video, I promise you. We was watching him on periscope and he he blew his nose and white people he was doing and he was like, yo, we can't trust anybody who do that I don't know about this guy.
He's like, no, no, trust me, he's a genius to the I'm like, I whatever, So I put some money in trying and then tron goes from two cents to twenty eight cents or something like.
That was crazy.
It was like four tenths of a cent.
It was going crazy. So I'm like, okay, so now it's like all money. So now we're staying up all night. Nobody's looking at all these all coins and master no. It became my cryptocurrency experts and making money handles fish. And then it started to February and then it was like all right, let me just.
Hold on, hold on life.
I'm happy we can. Then it crashed crazy. But then they said by the dip. They said by the dip, so I put more money in and then it crashed against like by the dipping, and then it's just everything that I made I lost, and then I lost more money on top of that.
And the plane is still laying but we're still on.
We're still on the plane, got money and.
Holding wait wait, holding for their h O D L right, holding for their life.
That that's the crypto.
That's yeah, yeah, I have a much different.
I mean, like you've been seeing in the future for a long time. I read you got into bigcoin in its early stages. Yeah, because it started around For me, it started around music, when when they were trying to crack down on people getting free music, they started having payments that you couldn't track and so one of the ways you could pay was bitcoin. That's the first time I ever heard about I never thought about it again, right, But you.
Were in there early twenty thirteen, so I was already had a bit pay integration with my Shopify store. And it's actually been Horwitz, who was the first investor in Superphone, introduced me to Brian and Fred who were the founders of coinbase, and Brian actually gave me. He gave me five dollars worth of bitcoin and that's that's that's all I needed.
I was like, this is it, you know what I mean? And that was it. And so I literally you.
Know that that whole that whole uh, that was a crazy season.
That whole season.
I was literally you know, people were like, I was like, yo, I'm not performing unless I'm getting paid.
What is that? I was like, look, just figure it out, man.
But here's my here's my wallet address.
Yea, yeah, you know that.
Yeah, and so you know, you know, shout out my uh literally one of my my dearest friends. You know, he really was, I would say, largely responsible for a lot of the innovation that that I've come to to appreciate and come to see early in technology, Rashid Richmond.
Uh.
And you know he has he has two currencies right now, like cash, which he's always sending me to screenshots, you know, up one hundred and thirty percent, up five hundred percent. And so you know, basically, I think that you know, you guys did what you're supposed to do in terms of being as uh as a students you possibly could be in terms of being students uh and learning as much as possible and also learning on.
Those slippery slopes on the way down right. Uh.
And so you know he he he basically taught himself and and and launched a coin. And once you could build a community of minors and you can actually get on an exchange, there's real value. I think though it's important to really understand that, uh, you know, bitcoin.
Is really like a stored value.
And I'm just sorrying about bigcoin, but really it's all crypto currents. Really it's like a stored value instrument. And it being a stored value instrument, you know at at some time, at some point, you know, people are actually more inclined to hold right because of stored value. So it's almost like gold, right they're holding, and you know,
they're varying viewpoints on cryptocurrency. I mean, you know, one of the greatest investors in the world is is you know, very vehemently and vocally and non believer of crypto and more in Buffett, and he's just like, look, man, this is what is this? You know, But at the same time, it's it's always just about understanding and recognizing, h recognizing the the upside and you know, capturing that upside before yeah before.
But you know what my personal thing, I think, if I believe anything, I believe in bitcoin, because bitcoin really hasn't forced like was like nine thousand right now, thou really like those other coins lost like ninety like Neo.
Yeah, shout the Neo because that's.
That was involved.
And I had so many coins, Bigcoin, these security coins. I became, like I'm telling you, in three weeks, I became a.
Security coins and the privacy coins.
Narrowrow really in that. Yeah, you know, I'm telling you. Yeah, but that's another thing we thought we really have master That was like a meeting at your house Sunday.
But yeah, but bigcoin is still kind of I think if anything is gonna.
Survive, bitcoin is going to be here for the future.
Yeah.
And once you start seeing regulation, Yeah, that's when you know, like, Okay, the powers that be are recognized asing the need and feel like they need to get involved. Then you know that there's enough of a mass adoption that there is some real tangible value there. And so yeah, I mean, i'm i'm you know, getting in it, like two hundred of coin at bitcoins, you know, so even to actually ride through that, you know, the height of twenty seventeen, I'm looking at my account.
Like like heroines, like, yeah, we're gonna stop all this music, Like it felt like it was a whole different game playing played out there.
Man, Yeah, we've seen.
But what comes up must come to.
Yeah.
So speaking of it, speaking of the financial topic, you have wealth plan right, right, So what is that what would encourage you to get into the financial literacy space as far as as concern.
Yeah, I'm I'm, I'm charged up about this concept that by twenty forty the majority of the United States population will be minorities, right, And at the same time, there's only, i think the last statistic really about three percent of us that are that are in technology and innovation as a career, and that's that could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe we just like singing and dancing and rapping and you know, or maybe we just like athletics and there's plenty of money to be made.
Ex So.
The issue though for me, is that at least, you know, in terms of some of the conversations I've been having, especially for minorities, we always it always seems as though we're one step behind in terms of our adoption of where the world is going. So, yeah, you know, everyone started out as farmers, then moved on to industrial and we were still farmers, right. Then industrial moved on to service and hospitality, and we were still working on the railroad, right.
And then service moved on to technology, and we're still in the service business. And when I talk about service, look around, who's cleaning the houses, who's cleaning the office buildings, who's doing the you know services?
Right?
Whereas there has already been a shift to technology and even in venture investing. You know, shout out of my guy of Richard Kirby from Equal Ventures. He just you know, raise a fifty six million dollar fun shot of my guys over at Harvard at Halem Capital. Yeah, yeah, so you know my guys over there Base Ventures, Paul Judge, you know there, you know Robert Smith.
I think you know, a really big, a really big force.
In terms of finance, uh and investing private equity, right, And so I feel like there should be more names. I feel like there should be more superstars in that world and in that pathway, in that archetype, just because I feel like, a like you said, it's about exposure.
What example do?
What example does the next generation really have in terms of that pathway? And also how do how do we frame wealth?
Right?
Is wealth a million dollars? Is wealth two million dollars? Is it five hundred million? Is is it a billion?
Is it? You know?
We got folks talking about Elon must gonna be a Triggon there. You know, Apple's got a trillion dollars worth of cash or market valuation. You know, So I think that it's just important. You know, I've had too many conversations with folks that either come into my organization that are either mentees of mine employees of mine, who literally will tell me straight to my face, Hey, I don't even look at my accounts because I don't like what
I see. You don't look at your accounts. No, I don't even look at my account because don't like what I see. And I'm I'm hoping that I get the big break, you know, I'm hoping that as a creative, you know, I get the big campaign, or I get the big record deal, or I get the big athletic contract.
And the reality, though, is that with calculated, measured moves, you really can, with the right kind of saving and budgeting and paying yourself and making sure that your assets are allocated the right way, you can guarantee as long as you start early, that you retire with a million dollars.
Right.
And So for me, you know, I didn't go to school. I don't have a you know, any series, any series at all. I just have my experience, and so I thought that it could be valuable to give people an insight into my actual portfolio. How am I How am I invested in real estate without having fifty thousand dollars there? How am I invested in stocks without knowing or being
an expert in stocks? How am I investing in alternative investments like art or or or interest bearing investments like loans that are going to give me return?
And really, you know, how do I adopt the.
Seven streams of income or how did I adopt the seven streams of income of every millionaire before I'm a millionaire? Right, so that those streams would actually grow and collectively would eventually yield me that million dollar or a million plus nest egg that I wanted to get to. And so for me, I'm looking at the next generation. I'm seeing
folks in their twenties and thirties a getting their first jobs. Yeah, they have an appetite to, you know, buy things that they don't need to impress people that they don't know, right, And for me, I'm like, look, you know, put that money to work for you now. And the earlier you put that to work for you, the earlier you will be able to make decisions about where you want to work in exchange for your money, because your money is working for you. And so that's really what wealth plan
is about. It's really easy Wealthplan dot co. You could just jump on you leave your number. I will literally every month text you an action item. How do you
get into stocks? How do you fix your credit? How do you loan money to yourself so that you can actually improve your credit score, because now, of course you're not going to default on yourself, right And so look, I feel like there's there's I went to an Ivy League school, and yeah, and I mean there were zero classes on budgeting, zero classes on credit, zero classes on real estate investing, zero classes on how to even read a chart of a security, zero classes on dividends, zero
classes on and I know people you know with large lump sums of money in their account who literally are because of just that lack of education. They're not even diversified in their investments. They just like to see the cash in in there, without understanding that you're actually losing money by just having unless yass. Unless your interest rate in your big account is beating inflation, you're losing money.
So and these are all just simple concepts. I break it down super simple in the same way that I'm just talking here, And it's just it's just the ability to lay out the with to lay it's the ability that I have to lay out with clarity exactly what I'm doing so that people can make an informed decision whether they would like to mirror those exact same financial moves. And that's the kind of transparency I deliver in Wealth Plan. So it's not this isn't a class, it's just, hey,
this is where I'm invested. The barriers to entry, you know, no matter what I've seen, you know, millions of dollars going in and out of my accounts. You could start with five hundred bucks. And you know, it comes down to discipline, It comes down to management of your finances. It comes down actually looking at your accounts every day, comes down and having a goal for where you would
like to be. And just like we talked about in a previous segment, dream as big as you want to dream, right, because once that vision is you know, I have one conversation with the legend Quincy Jones, I say, what advice do you have for me?
Say?
Hey, shoot shoot for the moon. You land in the stars.
You know, and so you know, what is that financial goal that you have for yourself?
What is that.
Amount that you would like just to leave for your next generation? I think in many ways, especially in our community, we're worried about being checked to check because we got to pay that rent. We gotta pay, you know, we started a business, we got to maybe you got some employees, et cetera.
And do you really.
Want to be in that hamster wheel, right or do you want to be able to say, look the same way I saw at Harvard, those kids got set up by their parents. I want to be in that position for my next generation, whether it's your nephews or nieces, your kids, or whether you want to you know, pay back your parents for supporting you for eighteen, you know, twenty twenty five, sometimes thirty years a year life, you know what I mean? What is it that you really
want to do in it? And that pathway? As long as you have patience, as long as you have the ability to delay some gratification, as long as you have the ability to have some discipline with your spending and and with your consumption, you could be paying yourself. And paying yourself really will pay off, you know, exponentially with compounding, you know, and so yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, then you have your time.
I think that I was having this debate actually a discussion with a lot of my colleagues about time and like how how valuable is And then I literally played on the.
Quote that you said.
You said that wealth wealth not the sense of being a monetary thing, but wealth is having the ability to.
Make decisions to have your own time.
Yeah, And they were like, I'm like, that's what I've been trying to say, that's what that's.
It right there.
Yeah, it's real, it's real.
And so look, I want everybody to have the time because we need more innovators, we need more creators. We need folks that are really that are dreamers and visionaries that are going to think about these challenges that we're
going to be facing. Because as you've seen with Uber, as you've seen with Airbnb, as you've seen with Dropbox, as you've seen with Google, Amazon, Facebooks, Guide, WhatsApp, Brex, Robinhood, whatever it is, the folks that sit down and dream up that solution because they know the challenges that we're about to face and make it easily accessible, affordable, adoptable, those are the folks that stand to reap the benefits
of creating that kind of value in the world. And so you need time to be able to just be a visionary. You need time to be able to just think. You need time to be able to just say, Okay, how can I be more efficient? You need time to have dinners and conversations and take walks with people that are going to invest not only their money but their time with you to help build that vision and make it happen.
And so I'm a.
Living, breathing example of everything that I'm talking about. And I'm also not just looking for wealth planned subscribers. I'm looking for people that want to join this movement. You want to come and work on this team and make this kind of impact so that we are actually we have the kind of man power that's necessary to power the foundational systemic change that's going to be necessary to put us in that position. This is the first time, I think, and you know we were talking about a
grarian to industrial. This is the first time where you could just have an idea, no brick, no mortar, no wood, no steal, and build a company.
Everyone talks about it. I've seen I've seen the memes.
Airbnb's the biggest hotel company, they don't have any hotels. Airbnb's the you know, Uber's the biggest travel company. They don't have any cars or trains, right, So it's a about allowing yourself the opportunity a to be surrounded by folks that are gonna inspire you and push you. They're not just gonna let you dream here. They're gonna push you to dream as big as you possibly can dream.
And also they're not just gonna push you. They actually gonna put their hands to the grinds to the grindstone and grind that wheel with you. And so that's that's what I'm looking for as well. Y'all know how to reach me is text Ryan dot com. You want specific wealth plan is wealth Planned dot co. Uh, and man, I'm available, I'm checking my phone. I'm well organized. I'm gonna make sure I get back to everybody and we here.
Because that that I mean that time is right to the last thing I was thinking of, and that was the importance of your circle of five theory. Yeah, and I mean that pretty much is like going back to the superphone, right. Yeah, you can put compartmentalize the people that are texting you.
Yeah.
Right, So like if I want to talk to just my family, I can talk to them. If I want to to investors, I could just talk to them, right. If I want to talk to my friends and entertainment, I could just talk to them, right. But that circle of five, like you, you're gonna find five people in there, right, I.
Can get you to what you need to do right, right right, and that you know that's what that's that's I actually have a masterclass on this. It's called the thirty Calls Masterclass. So you can also go to thirty calls dot com and basically what it allows you to do is just say, hey, how.
Are you really spending your time? Are you? Do you really feel like you're stuck?
And I advocate that whenever you feel like you're stuck, you're just one conversation away from all the change that you need to see in your life, one conversation away. In order to get that to that conversation, though, you have to have intent, and so the thirty Calls Masterclass at thirty calls dot Com will literally just walk you through what my process is. How did I go from having no investors in my phone to raise it five
point six million dollars for Superphone? How did I go from having no fans in my phone to doing a two million dollar album cycle? Making those phone calls is exactly what changed my feeling of being, Oh, I feel like I'm stuck to someone saying like, oh, I have this introduction for you, I have this opportunity for you. I'm top of mind when they have opportunities, or I'm top of mind when they have introductions, or on top of mind when they need help, and I can introduce
them to people. So I lay that entire process that I followed out at thirty Calls dot Com. So I mean, listen, my whole life is everything that I'm talking about. This is it's scalable, it's it's automated the way that it needs to be. So it allows me the time to interact on a personal level with the folks that matter most and need it the most. And so you know, whether it's thirty calls dot Com, it's Wealth Planned dot Co, it's text Ryan dot Com, all of them lead directly
to my text message s feed. It's all connected to superphone and whatever I can do, anyone who's listening to this podcast can do and half the time, a quarter of the time, a tenth of the time, as long as they apply that vision and ingenuity UH and apply that relationship management and relationship building to any uh, any goal that they wish to achieve. And so I'm here to help. I'm here to advocate, I invest, I make introductions, coach, I'm my mentor. I'm here to help man.
And yeah, man, it was a pleasure. Like I said, it was. It was a long time coming, but I'm glad we got a chance to do this. Definitely did not disappoint. I know that, I know the audience is going to take a lot of gyms from this. Any information you want to give the people, you gave them already.
What yeah, yeah, I mean you can text me. I'll send you my.
Yeah right, Text Ryan dot com. I'm gonna give you a phone number. That's the number of y'all.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, who's gonna remember attent? Text Ryan dot coms easy to remember. You leave your number, I'm sure. I'm sure you know that, and I'll text you right.
Back at the click of a button. One hundred and twenty two thousand people will know what you want to say.
Yep.
Very different from Instagram where you could have three album on thousand and like fifteen. People will find out what yeah, yeah, yeah, he's killing it.
Man, Troy housekeeping items.
Yeah, shout everybody on patreon dot com. That's our probably paid program. As we kind of spoke about. We got that from Nip, so our be to Nip and the whole marathon team, all money and team. You know, we have new tears there. We got more content for y'all. We're actually giving out some merch this time around, so to be on the lookout for corely merch from us on Patreon and everybody that is in the top tier.
Transcribe transcribed episodes.
Too, you know what I forgot. Shout out to Shamida. She actually is transcribing.
Episodes for us.
A lot of times people listen to us in cars and on the trucks and they can't take notes. They want to take notes, Like I'm sure when they hear this episode, they're like, y'all, I wanted to write that down. So what we're doing now is transcribing it for people so that they don't have to. They can actually go read the episodes and they have the time to do it. So shout out to Shamida. She's actually part of the
brand resumes team too, so she's doing double duty. So shout out to her and Shout out to everybody that is supporting us on Alisia University. That is our you know, our online school where we do weekly webinars Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Obviously ey L Spino is about to be rolled out to be on the lookout for that and everybody that's supporting the merch Man. Shout to everybody that has bought our Acces of a Liabilities hoodie and continue to support that.
Yeah, we gotta get you some merchant. Get you some merch. We ran out, we ran out, but we gotta get you some forget about you.
Likely story Luckily letsa shoot you to test.
Yeah, Philly, Philly, don't forget March fourteenth, March fifteenth, we coming, we bring all of our friends is going to be crazy. If you saw the video from Atlanta, you know how crazy it's going to be. So looking forward to touch in the town and shout out the brand resumes. Also that I saw a partnership that we've created with our first collaboration from a guest that we had on the podcast with Brandon and the book Tip of this Week is an Intelligent Investor. That's Warren buff It's one of
his favorite books. I've seen that he recommended. So yes, thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week.
Peace.
Peace.
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