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All right, guys, welcome back, Earn your Lisha. This is an episode that could have happened five times.
Let's start this.
Yeah, but we finally got it done. But before we start, by the time you guys hear this, three days four days before the Big, the Big, the Big one. We come into Philadelphia March fourteenth. March fifteenth, we have a live podcast on the fourteenth and that's gonna be with our brother Wallow two six seven legend himself, Greg Parker, a big business Neil Maya Davis amazing and just added to the bill. Just added to the bill, John hen reach out brother got John. Yes, and our guest today.
Somebody familiar to that flyer.
Yes, Yes, we're gonna we're gonna give him a full introduction.
Let's do it right.
We're gonna do it right. So Sunday, Sunday we have our workshop and the workshop is going to be vending Biza Edwards, Alex good Energy, Yeah, the King of Trucking and the tar Bla and I used to shell the They're gonna with a tag team real Estate and you're gonna talk about how to build a million dollar real estate portfolio starting with nothing. So it's crazy. The live podcast open bar caters, it's a networking event. After it's a whole.
Yea e y L rules man, drink responsibly, act accordingly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So all the information is on e y L Experience dot com. Like I said, you got a couple of days to get tickets, don't play yourself, don't miss out on this. Can't wait to touch the town. So all right, Philadelphia, We'll see you. So without further ado, we got that. We gotta announce the young legend that we got in the building today. Annie sanal s y'all get it. I get nervous because people mess up my name so much that I've become very sensitive to that.
But yes, so this is actually a while in the making. As I said, we we had a schedule for a few different times and we had to go out of town and a lot of stuff came up. I think weeks. Yeah, but we here, we here, So I'll give the bad story. So did everything from Music started a record label when he was in high school, inspired by jay Z, which fits right in the podcast. As we mentioned, we mentioned Jay all the time. He's currently a real estate investor
real estate in Jersey and Philly. Then he also has a digital marketing agency where he's worked with Hillary Clinton g r C. That's pretty big, extremely big. He has one of the hottest tea is it is it okay to call it the tea Yeah Chai Tea Shops in Manhattan, which is blowing up anything I'm missing.
We got the idea exchange idea exchane.
People come together with ideas and find out how to make them turn turn them into businesses.
Yeah, so he's a syal serial entrepreneurs. The term gets thrown around. And he's only thirty one years old, so.
The take it put out at high sixteen, right, so.
The term the term gets thrown around, very likely, But he's a serial entrepreneur. So we got a lot of things that we need to talk about in this So first and foremo, so thank you for joining us.
Appreciate it, Appreciate you for real. This is this is exciting, and we talked about this for so long.
Yeah for sure, for sure. So all right, so let's jump right into it. So you start your first business in the music business as a record label when you're in high school. But so your parents are from India, right, You're of Indian descent and they moved to this country like right when you're born. Right, Yeah, So okay, so
you are an Indian kid growing up in Boston. Yeah, but you fell in love with hip hop music and then you decided to start a record label because you're inspired by Jay Z and Rockefeller's that correct.
Yeah, a little bit. It's so the funny thing about entrepreneurship now, it's like the sexiest thing. You know, everybody's trying to get into it, and for me, like my origins with entrepreneurship, we're not sexy at all. And what it was growing up as an immigrant kid, you know, watching your parents always get laid off or always be at the victim of the job market, never being in control of their own scenario. I'm talking about like eight, ten,
twelve years old. I knew that whatever I was gonna do, I was always gonna be owning that or creating a future for myself where I would never have to think about how do I put food on my family's plate.
Yeah, I think you mentionined that there's a few Christmases where, yeah, your dad came home like job's done.
Yeah. I talk about it a lot because it's important for me to contextualize my story, you know, like now, you know, I'm on tour with my artist or you know, doing a podcast with people like y'all, and it's all fun and games. But you know, this started from like a very not I want to say, out of desperation, but it started out of like that hopelessness that you
feel when you can't take care of your family. And so growing up, you know, as a brown kid, you're already feeling like an outsider because growing up in the nineties, we had no reference point. It was I pull on the Simpsons. We could laugh about it, but you know, on the other side of it, I was like, damn,
this can't be life. This is literally and you know, I think hip hop music and hip hop culture for the first time I was able to see a person of color in a position of ownership, you know, and watching Jay how he ran up the score, you know, in the nineties and the two thousands, like that MTV diary that he did, if you remember that, and just watching somebody like they controlling culture and they're controlling the narrative and they own what they do. I was like, yeah, that's it.
So at that point in high school, you're looking at that like I can do that.
I don't know if I was looking at it like I can do that. I think I was looking at it like I have a story to tell, and I wanted to tell that story in a real way. And you know, I knew from early on I wasn't that school A kid like my parents, you know, respect to them because they let me cook, but when they saw me coming home with jeans, you know, sagging below my waist and four fake chains on, they must.
Have been wet.
Let's see if I got one. But you know, they I just I was never like I could never be a doctor or a lawyer or a banker because to me, I just always thought outside the box, you know, and being a creative kid and always just having that spirit like how do we figure it out? And I think that comes from not having things, you know, like you're always going to figure out how to get to it.
And so in high school, I teamed up, you know, with a friend of mine, and I was like, look, there's a lot of stuff happening on digital at this time. So this is my Space era. So you at the three clicks, you could a amplify your music to everybody in the world, and or you could discover something you've never heard before. And it just changed the way you know,
we like digested and consume music. So I'm looking at that like, Okay, if I have these tools at my disposal, you know, how do I tell my story through music? How do I create a world that I want to live in and create financial you know, independence out of that. So give you all some ideas of how I think. Like even in high school, we used to during the lunchtime, we used to like hand out little flyers in the morning, Like, yo, we having a live show in this staircase in this
hallway at twelve thirty pm. Pull up and we'd have a boombox and like I'd have a bunch of my friends just come through. We'd like freestyle or you know, perform songs or battle or whatever it was. And these these stairways used to be packed.
Out what I mean.
And then I remember we printed up an album, so like I sold whatever PlayStation games I had. I think I was like working ten thousan an hour boxing like packing boxes or something, put all that money together and printed up like three hundred album copies of an album that we put out, and them joints sold out in like four days. Wow you Yeah, I was. I was executive producing, I was, I was rapping, I was managing the whole process. I was, you know, using digital to
like distribute all the stuff. So he had an album on iTunes when I was like seventeen years old because I had figured out how to crack that code super early. And I we're selling physical CDs and I'm turning, was it two dollars to print the CD into seven dollars when you sell it?
So you know, on iTunes and the music is moving for seven dollars an album, that's what you're.
Getting off of it.
I'm selling seven dollars c This is like back when.
You know you you still play in your car.
You know, I had my pop's purple Corolla, but that's you know, I would play my play my joint. And but I'm just watching people like consume it.
Yeah, And I was like, oh nah.
And that's the first time I ever had like a stack in my pocket, like a not and being like, oh, it's a whole different thing.
I just made.
I made money off of an idea. Yeah, that's so empowering. And then and then we're like, yo, let's try doing some merchandise. Sold out thirty T shirts now that Knot's getting bigger, and I'm like, oh, okay, you know what I mean. So that was the origin and I took
that too. I will skip a couple steps, but I took that from starting at sixteen, developing it all through my early twenties, and when I was twenty two years old, I got offered to go live and tour in Japan for six weeks off of music, and that was a moment of crystallization as an artist. As an artist, I did a brand deal with Marlborough, the cigarette company. Never smoked in my life, doesn't matter, but they were like, yeah, we'll pay you X, Y, and Z for these three
tracks and I was like, yeah, run that bag. All my best friends and my label partners at the time, and we all twenty two years old black and brown kids living in Japan in Tokyo, running up the score.
Out spiking of football.
It's crazy.
Now. With that moment, I was like, oh, I could do whatever it is I want in my life because I turned my ideas into I'm.
Thinking even as a six year old kid, to be an artist is one thing, right, but you're thinking Ceo Min like I'm going to create a record label, and so how how does this go from being an artist and record label to now getting a deal like Marvel?
Like are you in front of them pitching this? How does this work?
Yeah? I was I was always talking to like the decision makers at some level, right, So like the Japan thing happened through somebody that saw us at the showcase, and I remember I had just quit the only day job I've ever worked. I worked for two weeks and I had just graduated or worked the day job for two weeks. I was like, no, it's not me. And somebody came up to me to showcase and was like, yo, you want to live in Japan and go on tour and.
I was like, let me think about this.
But it was just having the wherewithal to like I have a press kit ready, I have you know, an ePK, I got you know videos, I have content that you can consume. I got a story, and I got a website and it's all packaged in a way that a decision maker can be like, Okay, these guys are moving, something's happened. I could give you analytics on my last you know, for releases and things like that. I always thought that way because I knew that I couldn't monetize
my craft. I wasn't about to be a broke artist like struggling artist.
Wasn't it still not.
There's no glory in that, And so that's just how my mentality was. And obviously you know when you coached by Jay, Like, I joked that Rockefeller was my NBA because I just studied how to make certain moves, you know, from that position and yeah, turn it into turned like you gotta think about it. A brown kid, you know, with no context in the music game being able to do that.
To me, it was just like, all right, so what made you just before job and T Man?
This is right around after.
Yeah, the music that I was making, it wasn't South Asian influence.
It was just regular rap.
It was like boom back, you know, Golden Age stuff.
So what what? How did you transition from? All right, so you're a rapper, but then at some point you conditioned to be on the business side because you did some stuff with Wiz Khalifa. I saw, yeah and Lupe Fiasco, So how did that come about?
I was always on both sides, and I think that is one reason why I was never as good of an artist as I could have been, is because I was always doing both sides. And you know, like the best artists are the ones that are one hundred percent deep in their art. I could never go there because I had to do the business too. But the Wiz story is funny. It's while my handle Annie Hustles, I guess makes sense. I had a mutual friend and he was like, yo, Wis Khalifa is trying to come to
New York. He needs someone to book a show, Like do you know anybody. I was like, oh, yeah, I got it. I was twenty years old, couldn't get into the club, had no idea what to do, and I was like, no, no, I got it, Like you know, connect me with his manager. Long story long. I organized Wiz's first show in New York City at Webster Hall, and I put my group as the opening the headline, the opening.
App So how did you? I we gotta break that down. So web Webster Hall is a is a yeah, it's a big venue in New York just got reopened. So you're twenty years old and so somebody that you have a relationship. This is before whisk Cleif was big.
This is flight school Wiz.
This is like early how do you how do you? How do you book something without knowing what to do?
So I had a randomly I had a friend who I went to school with who was like doing something at Webster Like he was working there part time, and I knew that he was in that game, and I was like, bro, give me a chance. He was like Wizard Khalif and this dude now owns one of the biggest venues in Brooklyn shout out to Romy like, gave me my first shot. But I was like, no, I
got it. Like here's a social analytics. This is the type of chatter that's happening on Twitter about him coming to New York, Like, I guarantee that we're gonna be able to do this. And I was like, worst case, I'm going to bring out one hundred and fifty people for myself for you, right, And he was like all right. I think we ended up bringing out like two hundred people. I had a line outside of you know, joint, just everybody from n y U and that I have been
building my community with. They were like, oh, now we're showing up.
How much you ba Whiz?
I got no NDA so I can say it fifteen hundred dollars. That was Whizz's first performance at Webster Hall, and I remember that night like we made a little bit of bread, you know, And I was like, oh.
Nah, crazy, you know you made you made a profit.
Barely. Yeah, we blameed one that.
Blow at the hotel didn't lose money.
Yeah, but me and my boys had a you know, like a life changing moment. And the craziest thing is a couple of weeks after, Whizz's team calls me when I'm in like my eight a m. Accounting class and they're like, yo, my phone's ringing, you know. I'm like, I'm already failing this class. And I pick up the phone and it's Peter Schwartz, who's one of the biggest agents right now who does everybody And Peter Shorts is calling my phone like, Yo, Wiz, I just talked to Wiz.
He wants you to come on tour with him. I don't know who you are. You let me know if you want to make this happen. And I'm like, oh, I might even drop out. But we ended up doing like a little you know, standing with Whiz on the road and.
Like performing, yeah, like open it up for yeah and artists.
You know.
And that to me again is just like Okay, I think I know how to take a take a little thing and leverage into something bigger and then flip it. And that's been like a constant you know, my whole life.
I mean, we breached over that.
But the n YU player is dough too, because a kid from Boston having to tell your parents like listen, I need to go to New York City but using education as the reason, Yeah, change your.
Life, man, hundred percent. And I give my parents credit to be able to trust their kid with that, because a lot of South Asian parents are a lot of parents in general immigrant parents would be like, now you're going to screw it up, you know. And and I lived like the I was the brokest NYU kid anyone's
ever seen. I lived off campus. I had an apartment where you sat down, your knees touched the wall when you were sitting on a toilet, Like I paid, you know, my way through how much of it I could, Like, you know, my parents were supportive, but like I didn't go to NYU and trick off, you know, like the rich New York City kid like that. That wasn't my reality.
Like I scrapped through the whole time. But every day I would show up on campus and I would be like, yo, I got new music out, or like, yo, check this out.
I got a new CD, I got a new t shirt, you know, and I built that community and that and that really was like the first point you know of crystallization of like, yo, this is how this is how you get it popping, you know, when it comes to like building a brand and interfacing across digital physical, you know, content, culture and putting all that together.
So he was always like, I guess the end, kid, because in high school you had a buzz. In college you had a buzz, and but then you throw on some hard times. You had some kidney issues.
Right, yeah, the sow five twenty four. Okay, So I was born with a kidney condition. But the way I lived my life, I was like, if I go out, I'm going to go out the way I want to. Like, I'm wanna go out the way every day I lived, you know, the way I wanted to. And after the Japan Tokyo thing, I came back and my phone, I kid you not, I never told a story. I was on a plane walking off the plane, like I was
still exiting. I had my backpack on getting home from Tokyo and my phone rings and I was like hello, and it was one of my mentors. He was like, Yo, can you go to India next week? Like, I want you to come and score a film with me, Bollywood film. I was like, oh nah, like again when you were a brown kid growing up like this validation. Yeah, that's that circle, that that loop. So we go over there and then we come back and he's like, yo, we
gotta go again. I was like, cool, I'm just gonna make a little routine doctor's appointment, you know, make sure I'm good. We're about to go out for like six weeks. And I remember that appointment. My doctor was typical movie thing. He was like coming real slow out of the room, you know, shaking his head, and I was like, oh, no, what. And it turns out that I had end stage kidney failure at twenty four, which means my kidneys had shrunk, like the function in them had almost been like at zero.
And it was like three months until they stopped working completely, or until I have to go on dallass, which if you guys know what that is my uncle, Yeah, like bless him and anybody that's going through it. That's some difficult thing, you know, as a twenty four year old kid, forget it. Anybody is difficult. And he was like, you are about to, you know, go through some real thing, or you should go you should stay home and figure your life out. I was like, but I'm about to
go on tour next week. He was like no, you know, And I told my parents. I was like, this is where I'm at, and They're like, what are you going to do? I was like, I'm going to go on tour because if I got three months to live, I'm gonna do at least a month of That was that, you know, And I think that moment also taught me about fear, you know, as an entrepreneur, fears like this thing that we always have in the back of our head.
But when I made that decision, I was like, oh, I don't think I'm gonna be scared of anything else in my life because I was just mentally, I was stronger than I was physically, you know, like my mental was just so focused on doing the things that I wanted to do. So I went on tour, scored that valuable film, had a crazy experience, came back and my body was like, nah, it's over for you. And I went on like this emergency Dallasis procedure. Ended up fighting
for my life for like six months. It was bad, you know, like and I would still be in the studio in the evenings. I go to dallass in the morning and still go to the studio in the evening. I had all these you know, like wires and things attached to my chest. And you know, when you're on top of the world at twenty four, it's an incredible feeling, and when you're at the bottom, you know, that's also
a real feeling. And it taught me like as quick as you can get it, you could lose it and build Bilding back up from zero was probably the toughest thing that I ever did, but you know it again, just built that resilience to be like, well you be cheated death. You know, I figured I could sell CDs now.
I remember if somebody told me that before, Like once you face death, you really have no fear because the worst thing that can happen is you die. And then when you realize that that's really the worst thing that can happen, which is inevitable, everything else is in that bad right. It's like a lot of things, like you think, like if you really think about it, it's like me trying to walk up to the celebrity to trying to pitch my idea not that.
Bad dying, And I don't want to glorify it like.
You know, like I mean, but it's just the reality.
What my parents went through, when my family went through like extremely difficult and it's you know, I say that my parents gave me life twice because my dad donated his kidney to me, right, And so that that moment was also really big for me to know, like family, you know, family has always been everything, especially as like an immigrant kid. But at that moment, I was like, oh.
Does that does that change the dynamic between you and dad?
I mean, I know, immigrant family, immigrant family, right, parent family is everything, but like your dad, you guys were close at that time?
Was that close?
We got closer?
Got closer?
Sure? I think that at that time, not only did we get closer, but it also flipped a switch for me to know, like everything that I was going to do after that in my life had to be for family, you know, and I have to be a little bit more selfless with what I was doing. And that kind of inspired me to kind of move away from music for a while. But but yeah, that that experience I think gave me a cheat code because now it's like
fear I spent my twenty fifth birthday learning how to walk. Wow, you know like what I like you said, I'm not scared to pitch somebody.
Yeah, And the thing a lot of times you take stuff for granted in life, and I think that like humbling experiences and life alternate experiences, a lot of times it makes people appreciate, like, you know, the little things, because like you said, I mean just being able to walk. It's like, you know, we complain about stuff and you think about the grand scheme of thing and it's like it's like Instagram is down for an hour. It's like it's not that we're not that bad.
Yeah, I'm trying to beat life because I can't cheat that. So facts, Yeah did it? Man?
Yeah? So all right, So in the next segment, that tease it up for your journey after that, going into marketing. That's actually something I'm really interested in talking about marketing because we haven't spoken about marketing and your life after music. All right, So in this segment, we're going to talk about a few different things, but I want to start it off with marketing because you have a marketing company, green Room Creative, so and you know you've done work
with Hillary Clinton, hbo uh juice press, juice Press. So okay, let's let's start from the beginning marketing, right, because we hit this term a lot marketing and everybody has different ideas with marketing, right, but where do you see the direction of marketing? Like, where do you see your company? And like, because it's all over the place right now, So what's your thoughts on it?
I love this question because I feel like we don't spend enough time talking about it. We're just so used to being marketed too, right, but nowadays it's like we don't even deconstruct actually what's going on. So to me, marketing is storytelling, and good storytelling when you do that, you don't even need to advertise. What's happened is people are using advertising as a way to storytell instead of
the other way around. So to me, kind of all of my experiences, even up until this point, with music and with culture and content, all I was doing was telling a really good story or the best story that I felt like I could. And when we pivoted so after my surgery, I realized that, you know, music wouldn't allow me to take care of my family, you know, the way I wanted to and so my brother and I put our heads together and we're like, look, let's
get into the agency world. So he had a little bit of agency background on like the search and digital side, and I had a bunch of background on the creative side. And what we realized was like nobody was effectively storytelling. Everyone was just buying advertising. And there's a massive difference. So when I think about marketing now, it's about having a point of view and a perspective and then marrying that with really good content to provide value to people's
lives so that they learn and get enriched. If you do that, you never have to sell anything to anybody.
You know what, That's crazy because that sounds so familiar. It sounds just like earning your Ligia's blueprint. And I tell people that all the time, and I'm like, earning your Ligia wasn't built on ads and marketing or whatever. It was just to provide content, creative content that was different. And we found our niche telling stories. That's actually how it first started. It was backstories of entrepreneurs and business
and the people Champion did. And like you said, that's word of mouth is the best form of marketing and it's like people double down. It's like, oh, how much money can I spend? And I look at like Mike Bloomberg, you spend five hundred million on ads, but it's like how far is that really going to go? Like you know what I mean, It's like you have to double down on your content, telling your story, getting people to buy into you. And that is actually a form of marketing.
That's like the best form of marketing.
Yeah. That, and you have to have a really what I say, what I call undeniable products. You know. I think the biggest thing that a lot of entrepreneurs face nowadays is everybody wants to get into the selling and the advertising and being like yo, we're out here. Very few people want to focus on creating an undeniable product that could sell itself if it had to, you know. And I think the Mike Bloomberg is a class example.
Like the product wasn't that great? You know, like you could fool some people, but you can't shift you know, the public altogether, because they're going to go back and be like, this product is not hidden.
For me.
The agency world was a way for us to be like, all right, let's flip the traditional model of like just pumping money into ads, and let's really try to get these brands to talk about what's core to them and then we'll take that, we'll create content, we'll amplify it. But it can't just be you know, all advertising dollars and media buys because you're gonna get stuck.
That's like you made a mindset shift, like after you know your health issue where you said, you know what, I'm good at this, but I'm great at that, right, and you decided I'm gonna.
Go in this route.
But still the principles that you use for music of what you use in the marketing, building an audience, creating the content, right, and you talk about segmenting the audience, can you get.
Into that little bit for sure?
Audience segmentation to me is something that is the easiest way to save money and make money at the same time. And what I mean by that is like, if you have a message that you're delivering to your audience, but that's the wrong audience, it's the wrong message for that audience, you're wasting money, you know, Versus when you hone in on the right audience with the right message, you could probably spend half and get twice as much results because
it's the product market fit is undeniable. So when I think about like segmenting, you know a lot of brands they use one voice to speak to everybody, or they did for a long time. Now you see like Puma, you know, they're taking the urban voice and the urban weight and they double down that on that segment by investing in the influencers and the creators in that world. You know, Adidas was scared to do that for so long and then they found you know, easy, and you
saw what happened. Nike doesn't really do that, Like their their audience segment is different. You know, they they do it in their own way now, but it's like it's not the same. You know, So each brand and each each each person's understanding of segment and how you deliver a product to that segment is the difference between you know, having an effective strategy and being completely and effective.
Yeah, that's actually something that's really interesting because it's like you can actually have different marketing strategies campaigns for different people from the one company. It's like, like you said, I'm just thinking about that, like most of the time it's just one way, Like if we're gonna go with a marketing campaign. It's like, Okay, we're gonna go hip hop and we're gonna have Push you T do Adidas commercial. And it's like, but what if you're not a Pusher
T fan? What if you like country music? What I mean like that would probably be more beneficial to be like, Okay, we're gonna have entertain this endorse our product, but we're gonna have this campaign with a country singer, this campaign with an R and B singer, this campaign with a rapper. It's like three different lanes for three different people as opposed to saying this is like one size fit all
and here. But you know what, I think so many companies are out of touch with culture and just reality and they just like, oh, this is what's hot, Okay, this is what we're going to do.
Like that's what they're doing.
But that on Instagram because it's like even for me, like you know, I spent so much time on Instagram, like I kind of like have a good understanding of how these things work, and I'm like it surprises me how many companies I see and I'm like, y'all don't even understand, Like this is so corny, but you're spending so much money doing this, and your titles are all off, your captions are wrong, and it's like who's paying who's buying it? So it's crazy.
Yeah, And the thing about segmentation is what it allows you to do is test. A lot of marketers forget the importance of testing because as a as a brand, especially as an early stage company, which is a lot of the work that we do, you don't necessarily know who is your target audience. Like you might have an idea, you know, eighteen to thirty, but that's super broad, you know,
metropolitan urban professionals. That's still really broad, you know. And what segmentation does is you can run different messages in different segments and then find the best performers and then double down on that and use the insights from that to inform your growth strategy. A lot of marketers feel like, oh, I'm going to put this big spend into something that's gonna hit and we're out of here. It rarely works
like that, you know. And being able to efficiently test and turn things on and off, that's a lot of the work that we did, you know, as an agency, and I think that's where we delivered a lot of value to companies that didn't have that knowledge. You know already.
I think what you're doing is amazing in the fact that you have a touch on culture and you're trying to keep it as authentic as possible A lot of times and shoddy and I we always talk about this like they're out of touch, out the loop, and then when they try to get a piece of the culture, it's like it's already changed. Culture has changed already. How do you guys keep it so authentic?
The the thing about culture is you can't fake culture unless you from and live the culture, you can't really talk about it. And the great thing about us is like we live what we do every day, you know, Like I'm not I'm on that glass building on the thirty fifth floor whatever, but I'm also at the show, you know, in the front row, like learning and watching and observing how people are using TikTok or what they're doing.
Like you got to be on the ground. And a lot of brands and a lot of like execs are afraid to be on the ground because they've never lived that life, you know. And the funny thing about this culture thing is now we you know, we've pivoted into telling stories from a cultural aspect for like big brands. That's kind of the focus that we work on now. And I'm telling you, we used to tell all these brands like, yo, this is the type of work you need to do. You need to pivot into more storytelling
and less advertising. You need to invest in content. And some people listened, a lot of them didn't. And now we're like, hold on, why don't we just stop wasting our time selling these things to people who are not listening, and let's incubate a company that and integrates everything that we've learned up to this point. And that is how the chat companies started. So we incubated that within the agency, using everything that we learned about storytelling, content, culture, and
really literally brewed that pot up. And now when people are like, well, why should I work with you, I'm like when we opened a cafe in Manhattan and then had seven hundred people on opening night. So if you look at a product a proof of concept, that's it right there.
You know what, though, I'm glad that we're in this day and age now where you don't necessarily need gatekeepers to get your message out because I used to it. I remember, so I used to play basketball growing up, right, And I remember like when I was in prep school and like my last stages of like being recruited and I was getting overlooked by a lot of schools, but I was killing. Like I would go to they would like come to our practice and look like somebody else
and I would have like twenty five thirty points. And it's so frustrating because it's like, how do you not see what I see? Like you know what I'm saying. And as a creative, in a lot of times, it's like it's like you feel like I know this is it, and you're trying to convince somebody and they're like, nah, that's not it, and it's like I would, I would.
I could just imagine how frustrated would be for like, we have earn Releisure, right, and it's like we're trying to pitch it to a label or like a network, and we're trying to tell them like, yo, this is people gonna like this financial literacy? What a hip hop twist on it? Two black guys talking about finances, and I could see them like, nah, that's nobody's going to be interested in that. And I'm like, no, I know this is going to work, and they're like nah, like
you know what I'm saying. But that's really what happens with the companies. They're so out of touch and they think that they know it all record music too, Like it's like you have one person dictating like what the whole world thinks is good.
That's hop It's.
Absurd, you know. I mean, look, people didn't give Drake a deal, people didn't give Jay a deal, people didn't give Nip a deal, like three of the most iconic artists of our generation.
Speaking of NIP, I wanted to ask a question about marketing because I saw it on your on your page, Well, somebody tweeted vertical integration because he had that integrated vertically, So what's your ideas on that? Because if people talk about it a lot, but I haven't really heard somebody like fully articulate their opinion on it.
Yeah, I mean, rest in peace and it, you know, one of my biggest influences in somebody that just was so fearless and such a radical in what he did, like inspired me, you know, for the rest of my
life when it comes to vertical integration. This idea of like, look, building a business and creating something is already so challenging, right, But when you build something properly, the ability to create an ecosystem out of products that are already related to what you're doing, that you don't have to go outside of what you are already producing or where your resources are already allocated to create more products, to be able to create more opportunities to profit and more revenue streams,
and they all relate to each other and help actually build each other up. That's the idea of vertical integration. So for him, it was the fact that he owned the Marathon Agency, which was creating work in the music space, which was allowing him to get more opportunities as an artist, right, and then also being able to create branding and experiences for places like Destination Crenshaw or the real estate stuff
that he was doing. Coming down to Vector ninety and he had basically built a bunch of different businesses that all had a common thread through them and they were sharing resources.
So it was next that James Arden said they were going to do sports agency, which is what he said He's probably still.
Going to do, right, and he should. But so when I think about vertical integration. It's the ability to maximize your output with the same amount of resources and the same amount of infrastructure that you already have, and your whole ecosystem relates to each other. So an example of this is like when we built the agency, you know, is two brown guys trying to play in this like
super tech kind of like white bro founder's world. And I was like, nobody's even given us a chance a lot of time, you know, like we didn't even know where to go to, Like we didn't know who to
talk to, Like it was lonely. And then I realized, like, I'm not the only one going through this, and so what I started doing was hosting a monthly meetup for minority entrepreneurs and we called it Idea Exchange, And there's a way to like have people that were going through similar things come and create a forum for like, yo, how do we solve a lot of problems that we're going through as entrepreneurs. So that's vertically integrated with what I'm doing on the agency side, right, because it's a
byproduct of that. I host those sessions at my office. I already know the topics because I'm living it every day. And my audience are people that eventually actually become a client or the agency because they're like, yo, we love the way you think, and so now I'm using that meetup as a way to build my personal brand, build my agency business, and be able to give back to the community.
How often does an idea exchange happen?
Yeah, so we last year. We did them every month.
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It was, you know, as a heavy lift. This year, we've pivoted to every other month to next one's coming up in April, and you know, if you follow me or if you know where I'm at, then I talk about them pretty regularly. We expanded from New York City into New Work, New Jersey, which I feel like is really dope community of entrepreneurs that aren't getting a platform.
I was just in NewYork today actually, but you were.
There for maybe maybe some tough reasons, but but yeah, vertical integration is just like, how do you create an ecosystem and maximize the output and the revenue streams based off the things that you've already built.
I think Apple is like the best at that, hands down.
Yeah, they're up there.
It goes like into your theory of culture to commerce or profit to purpose, Like you literally just explained it, and it's like how you stayed authentic to your culture and with the child restaurant and turned into something profitable.
And I think the biggest thing about vertical integration too, is that it reinforces authenticity behind what you do. You know, somebody like Nip all those things that he was touching, music, marketing, real estate, with the he had a the marathon, g the Stranger, it was all connected to his brand, the marathon, his philosophy, and it was all authentic and the world tapped in. So you know, he's I think one of the most brilliant people to do it and still be him,
you know, and coming from where he came from. But that idea of like building an ecosystem that's vertically integrated, I think it's going to be the future because we're moving away from like the high growth, you know, growth at all costs, uber and and and Lyft and Harry's and that type of that type of company, we're moving away from that.
It's lateral growth is more efficient right now than vertical growth. So like briefly, like vertical growth is like, like I said, in my opinion, that's the big corporations. That's like, you know, just massively pouring money into things to grow upwards. But you can grow laterally a lot easier and through word of mouth and through different avenues that you're licensing things in that nature. So it's like even for us faring your leisure, it's like we have everything started with the podcast,
but now we have an online university. Now we have merch Now we do live shows, Now we have the YouTube, Now we have ad revenue, we have the social media campaigns that we do, and so we can just continue to grow like that, like your Lisia, the podcast is the mothership, but from there we can spread our wings at a very low cost. All these things that I named a very low cost, and it allows us to have multiple streams of income.
I tell them, it's like it's one tree with some branches going.
From it, which is that's the best way to explain it. What you're doing is you're taking market share in each of those worlds a little by little.
You know.
My philosophy at this point, at this age of my life is like, if you look at all the major companies and the infrastructure, it's all owned by people that look the same. It's all all white men that own almost everything. Right now, at this point in my life, my job is like, how do I build an ecosystem that captures market share away from them little by little until I'm able to flip it and turn it into
something major. Right, So, like my cafe, you know, I'm not competing with Starbucks yet, but I'm gonna eat into some some middle tier coffee spots, you know, New York City, and I'm gonna take that audience. I'm gonna flip it and i'm gonna eat into more. And then they're gonna throw me an acquisition offer, and I'm gonna say now, and I'm gonna take the market share away from all
these things that exist. And then once we get it and we bring it to minority owned businesses, you already know we're gonna reinvest.
That's like the first album when he's like nobody noticed es, nobody gave it. We get that's a fact. So speaking about your cafe, can we talk about that, because that's that's that's that's he hot in the streets right now. So what's going on with that?
Man?
Man, it's hard for me to talk about my cafe without obviously mentioned to my brother and bigging him up.
Your blood brother, blood brother, younger brother.
Younger brother, his partner, head case, but death. He's the head chef. You know, he is the He's the lifeblood of that of that organization. And you know again, I support that business the same way do everything else. I merge the culture and the business together.
I think it's dope. So we ain't say the name, but I'm gonna try.
Cold Cuatta You got it colkatta chi cuta cha cold right. And the beauty behind it is that it is named after the city in India that your parents grew up in. Man, So when we talk about family meaning anything, everything, it's like, you know, they can go in the city now and see like their birthplace because of you.
Yeah, I mean to honor your parents and to give a tribute to them. I felt like that was way to do it. Yeah, man, honestly, like I made a little bit of money in my life, you know, I got a decent car.
Whatever.
That to me will be always my biggest accomplishment, the fact that my parents were healthy and able to see that, you know, at a time in our life where there's a lot of unser you know, but they could pop up in Manhattan. My mom was just in India and she was like, thank you for making me a celebrity. Here everybody's asking me about my cafe. And I was like,
You've earned that, you know. That's that. But man, with with the chai thing, it was imagine if one of the biggest products consumed globally was just completely being mistold.
What what is Can you talk about that? Because we like to cultural cultural nights Atalisia. We did a bunch on it on Dominican the Dominicans uptown, but we haven't done Indian night yet.
So so chai what is chid Chai is? Chai means tea literally translates to tea and across South Asia, so Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, parts of the Middle East, Chai is basically a mix of spices of black tea and milk all boiled together and it's like this multi dimensional labor profile. So it's a little bit sweet, it's a little bit spicy his body and it's hot and it cleanses the palate.
It kind of like keeps you from getting sick. It's got a lot of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and it's like
the most democratic drink across South Asia. So you go to any corner and there's a child stall and there's what we call chaiahwala that means like a worker's he's he's making it and the teachers is drinking it, the kids, the businessman, the day laborer, the government official, everybody's waiting to get their cup of child That's just it's just a place where all of that, you know, cultural class and this everything just melts and it's about the about
the drink. And so in India, when we go back to visit our family every day in the evening, like there's this concept it's more on Bengali concept, but it happens across the India. It's called a d d A and it literally means a time where you stop doing whatever you're doing, you meet up with your family, and you shoot the ship for like an hour and a half, You drink tea, you eat food, and you just talk about politics, sports, whatever's happened in music, this, that, and
it happens every day. So growing up, we would see our parents and our family doing all this our aunties and I'm like, I don't got work, Like We're just gonna take this two hours to drink tea and talk. And that's how strong family is out there. So we realize that this thing that we have bonded around our whole lives, nobody was telling that story in the US, right And when you think about, you know, talking about eyl,
let's let's broaden our international reach. South Asians are some of the most economically mobile population in the US, and when it comes to I think like college educated, they hold like the highest household income for college educated individuals in the US minority population wise. You got all this happening,
and you have nobody speaking to them. You got no brands that are culturally relevant for South Asians to tap into and be like I feel heard, I feel seen, I feel like this is a place that reflects my values. And we looked at Chai as being the Trojan Horse. That's the food item that can coalesce an entire community. And so we did it in the form of opening
a cafe. We're getting into you know, original programming and content and media and I got a whole you know, list of other things that I want to do, but that's the idea. It's like, how do you take something that's so important for our heritage and where we come from, and how do you celebrate it? Because when you go to Starbucks, which you drink is not chy, it's like the syrupy sweet, you know, like bastardized version of the drink.
There's no place that I've seen in America where you can get authentic up a child that feels like it does back home one place.
But I think I think it's important too, because it's important to brace who you are. Embrace who you are because it's like a lot of times people try to run away from who they are, especially in America, and it's like you want to kind of conform and fit in, right, But there's power in being who you are because there's
always gonna be somebody that can't relate to you. And I realized his first hands, like I'm in business and when I first started in business, I realized, like I was a little self conscious because you know, I have like a heavy New York accent and you know, grow up listening to hip hop and that's my culture. And ninety percent of the people were not like that. Right,
So I'm like feeling a little self conscious. But now I realized that that's actually helped me because there's millions of people who CNBC can't talk to Wall Street Journal, they have no idea what they're talking about. But when they hear me, they hear choice speak, it's like, oh, these guys like from my neighborhood, Like it's like I
could be in a barber shop. So it's actually beneficial because they're getting the message from somebody that they can understand, as opposed to me trying to beat somebody that I'm not. And then I'm going to miss them and I'm going to not even be able to relate to the other people because they know I'm not them.
It's like exactly what you said, right, you can't fake culture, right, Like, He's gonna be exactly who he is and that's going to attract people, and some people won't get it, but eventually they you know they will because their partners will.
Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. And I went through the same thing as a marketing exact Early on, I was trying to conform into like this tech bro or whatever the market and I realized I was like, man, code switshing is all fun and games, but that's not me. And embracing culture and who you are, I think that's your competitive advantage. You know, a lot of immigrant kids, a lot of like black and brown kids. For us, like growing up like it wasn't cool to be who
we were for so long, it was embarrassing. My name was said wrong every day on the first day of class for eighteen years of my life. You know, like that it'll get to you. But once you realize that that's actually what the power is and where ultimately where you can create differentiation than the whole world shifts.
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. Troy never had the deal with Yeah, I got lucky, man. I was a Jamaican. Heah, nobody.
First of all, nobody even thinks I'm Jamaican. But I'm growing up in New York City. Patrick Gowan was popping Chapla. Ranks was popping super Cot was popping I'm like yo, it kind of was cool to be Jamaican. But you know what you said about when you chased it the chiy and not really realizing that this isn't authentic.
That's sometimes how I feel about wester Indian food.
Like I go to these I won't say their names, but I'm like they're like, oh, that food is so good. I'm like, oh, man, bro, that's not that's like McDonald's like this this isn't it. So we got to I got some visions now for for for Westerndan culture, somebody has to represent.
But your name though, I'm just talking about the culture. Nobody, nobody ever messes up. Your name is Troy Or.
That's super intentional as well, like and that conforming right, So like even my my grandmother, the names of my my uncles and my dad are super American, like Howard Victor is a dream. And even my name like you can hear it, like Troy Christopher, my brother, Gregory Michael. It's like there's nothing about there's no Donovan in my name.
Was that intentional?
I think it was superintentional.
I think but you know what two possibly a culture tupac rest in peace, the icon or legend, and I heard an interview with him one time and he was saying that when he was young, he used to be embarrassed. His name is Tupac Shakur, Tupac a Mari Shakor, and all his friends is like you know, John Smith and just regular American names. And he was like he used, you know, they used to make fun of him, like
your name is Tupac, what does that mean? And he was saying that, like over the course of time, he realized like it was actually a blessing because it was like people anytime somebody saw him or they spoke, they was like, what's your name is? Like Tupac's like what does that mean? He had to explain what his name man? You know he was like even one time he got arrested and the cop arrested him when he was a kid,
and he was like, what's your name? And he told him his name, and the cop looked at him like Tupac Skor like you know your parents is black Panthers, Like this isn't what you're supposed to be doing. And he knew, like he was raised better than that, Like you know what I mean, just tho of his name, So I say that to say, everybody's journey is different, and a lot of times what we think are actually hinders.
It's actually our superpower is then actually, you know, you gotta just embrace who you are.
Yeah, I think in my life. So funny thing is, my full name is Annie Ruddah. That's the name that my grandfather gave me. And I hated that name growing up because its butchered. I found out that name means with no obstacle. And so when I think about my life, you know, I think I had every reason to stop, or to give up, or to find an excuse. So nah, look, I'm you know, we grew up poor. I ain't got it. I was sick, you know, I couldn't get past it,
you know. Oh, you know, couldn't recover from from what I went through. And I think, you know, I had every every opportunity to be like yo, I I can't do it, you know. But I look at the way my life went, and I look at the power of my name, you know, and I'm like, oh it all makes sense, you know. So yeah, culturally and all of that, I mean, you nailed it.
You know.
It's like our greatest power comes from you know.
Just where you are. That's it. So before we go to the next segment, can we tell a few minutes about India, because, like I said, shot out to all of the Indians all over the world. India is a country that has over a billion people. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it's a They have communities Indian descent from Jamaica, heavy present, the whole West, Indies, even South America, America, Africa, all over.
His uncle was called the cool kid.
But you said, so, you said that you actually went out there, and so what's the business scene out there, because obviously it's booming more and more people are coming into them. People talk about China a lot, but I think people don't fully understand, like India is a big economy as well as a billion people.
It's a big economy. And the greatest thing about the Indian economy is that everyone has access to mobile and cell service and data. Data is cheaper in India than it is anywhere else in the world. So you get a data plan in India the cheapest and what that does is everybody becomes connected, you know, at a at a scale that no other place in the world could replicated.
Is there a top between that and have a call centers?
Not necessarily the call centers. What happened. The reason why that is is because India was a British colony and so everybody in India, when you go to school, you learn in English. So everybody in India speaks English. You know, whether that's at the same you know accent as American English is a whole different conversation. But the reason why call centers popped off in India is because everybody was English educated and so when it came to onboarding, it was just a whole different.
And they get paid least high like Nigeria, same thing.
Correct, correct. So the Indian economy and kind of investing. So what's happening is over the last like five or ten years, we've started to see the same kind of startup economy that exists here happen in India. So you have companies like Oyo Oyo. It's like a big hotel chain that actually Soft Bank invested in division fund Oios is in deep trouble right now, but as a multi billion dollar company that was created by I think he was like eighteen or nineteen year old, like a founder
in India. Well, you have a company called flip Cart, which was the Amazon of India that got acquired recently for I think it was like a couple of bill and they basically just they figured out what's called last mile delivery, which is like how do you get to the customer who lives kind of like off the beaten path in an effective timeframe. So like you have a lot of the Indian startup ecosystem is starting to resemble
what's happening in the West. The problem with India as an outsider is that you have to know somebody or you have to know the ways of the local economy and kind of how things are popping to be able to get involved there. What you don't have to necessarily know is like, you know, I managed an artist named Ani Khan. He's spawning with Beshi and we do a lot of work in India, and we're using content and music as a way to break down those walls and
create points of true action and investment. So like we don't have to necessarily be in India and talk to labels in India and I don't have to pitch him that way, but I can have the talent buyers in India be like, Oh, this guy is popping and he represents you know, this audience, Let's fly him out.
Now.
What that does now is it connects me to a bunch of brands, a bunch of people who have you know, invested interest in finding an artist that can bridge East and West.
Correct.
So that's the type of work that I'm involved in now. And I think I don't know how familiar guys are with you know, Master Appeal, the label that they just did a JV with Universal Music in India, and they've been investing heavily in India. So NAS is executive producing, Uh, this guy named Devine who's like one of the biggest superstars India, and and the Mass Appeal guys are really
really heavily invested over there. There was a movie that came out called, uh, what's it called The Gully Gully Boy. A movie came out it was like the imagine this yo. The Indian eight mile came out last year about a rapper from India. And I remember I was in India on tour with a nick and we had a day off and we went and watched it in the theater and I called my mom. I was like, yo, I just seen gully Boy. She was like, oh, we did too, And I was like, I was trying to tell y'all
about hip hop music ten years ago. Just kicked me out, Like, now y'all watching this movie about a hippo, you.
Know, like it was just my story.
Mom, come on, like it was his full circle moment. So I say all that to say hip hop is an important cultural export, right, but you're seeing in India a place of a lot of struggle. People are adopting, you know, that story for people that want to do business in India to kind of figure out how to invest in India. I think the potential lies in solving everyday problems in India. It's really difficult to do basic things.
Threats are difficult, Getting household supplies are difficult because the roads aren't paved, or because you got to go to a market where everyone's going to haggle you and you gotta like, you know, I got grandparents, I gotta go. They can't even go to the market anymore. They gotta pay somebody to go. That person picks up the wrong item, you know, Like there's just a lot of friction and
daily tasks. So I think that somebody who invents the technology or the type of infrastructure that solves for those problems, they're gonna win big.
Yeah.
Salute to all of our listeners all over Asia. Oh yeah, we got a big presence all over the world. So India. I'm not sure how many listeners that we have an Indian Yeah, the one just puts us over the at least once a week. Manats I love the whole non Brad. My mom is like real she's real big on the whole Indian vibe culture. And I told you I went to my first Indian wedding. If you're listening, Uh, all right, So in the next seven we're going to talk about
real estate and bring it home. Let's do it's do it all right. So in the last segment, we're going to talk about a hot time, something that's always hot for Earnalsia, something that people are always interested in. So aside from all of the other stuff that we just mentioned, you're a real estate investor as well, but you have a unique thing where I read that way, you said you invest in distressed in underperforming properties, right, So what
does that mean? What is a distressed underperforming property? Like, how can you tell if a property is distressed or underperforming.
Yeah, great question. So have an investment thesis, right that revolves around major centers of employment. If you are within thirty to sixty minutes by public transportation to a major center of employment, then anything around that area becomes extremely valuable for investment.
Right.
So think about New York City. You go twenty minutes on one train, you end up in Jersey City. You go another ten minutes on that same train, you end up in Newark. Those areas have a massive advantage because you can live at a third of the cost that it takes to live in New York City and still have fairly easy access to employment centers.
Right.
Properties in those areas, believe it or not, are there's there's massive distressed properties, meaning there's boarded up multifamilies, there's abandoned homes, there's blocks which are burned down ten minutes from a train station thirty minutes in New York City for a third of the cost. Like to me, that's
just arbitrage, right, Like, there's a massive arbitrage. So when I look at investment zones, I have a thesis which is part proximity to major employment areas, part creative capital and cultural capital and kind of what's happening with artists around that area and part of financial So just kind of looking at pure price for square foot, but I look at properties that are distressed and not performing that fit within that criteria we're talking.
Are we're talking single family distress or multi family or multi property?
Yeah, I don't. I don't believe in single family investing, So I don't know, you know, I'd love to spar with somebody on that, but I don't believe that that's a scalable strategy. I think that when you look at real estate investing, it has to be multi because that's where you scale and achieve you know, growth. And for me, secondary markets are gold mines. Cities like Newark, cities like Philadelphia,
cities like Dallas, cities like Oakland. These are all cities that don't get mentioned amongst the tier one you know, New York and Atlantis, but that have massive ROI because they have proximity, you know, to these centers of employment. And I've built my portfolio around secondary market investing.
Yeah, that's interesting because, like I said, I was in I was in Orange, New Jersey today and my car broke down so I had to get a toad towards like two Union. So we're driving through all these he's different, Irvington and all that. And so the driver was we drove through Newark and he's from Newark, so we was about Newark, and you know, I had a conversation. I'm like, yeah, I heard a lot of real estate development is going on in Nork right now. He was like, yeah, you know,
it's getting gentified a lot. A lot of people's coming in from like all different neighborhoods, and and he's like, you know, the train runs, but I already knew Newark had a train because Lord of the Slums. Don't know if you saw that episode, that's another good one. And yeah, my god, Fernando. So they do him in season and they got a lot going on in Patterson. So when I asked him about I'm like, yeah, you know, Patterson,
is it like the same gentrification that's going on. He's like, Nah, it's slower because we don't have the train like Newark. Like Newark has a train, so it's like already on the on the path to New York City. And that's the same thing that I remember Nipsey has said about Crenshaw, Like, Crenshaw has the train train line that they built or I don't know if it was theod Yeah, building it
right now. He's like, once that gets built, Crenshaw is going to be prime real estate because the proximity to like downtown La, Hollywood and all that, like it's very close compared to like a Compton or a Carson where it's further out on South Central, was actually prime location. And I remember him saying that, and he was like, that's why we gotta start building and taking the neighborhood now, because like in a few years, like Crenshaw is going to look a lot different.
Yeah, I spent I spent a lot of time in LA and if you go to Crenshaw right now, it looks like, you know, massive development everywhere, and Crenshaw itself is not necessarily the first place that developers would think of. But you know, Nip being from the culture and being from that area, he you know, he saw it. But yeah, I think for us, like even in Philadelphia, they're building
a Amtrak high speed train between Newark and Philly. Yeah, and the station in Philly is called ten North, and that train, that high speed train, I think it's like a forty five minute train when it happens. So think about how that changes the entire culture of work and living in New York and Philly. You could live in Philly for forty percent less than New York can still commute the same time it takes you to get from
Brooklyn to Manhattan. And so we have an entire real estate development in Philadelphia which is like four blocks from ten North, and we're anchoring it around a bunch of things, with that being one of them. And I think when it comes to like gentrification, you know, the approach that we take from an equitable investing side is like, how do you involve the community in what you're doing and have them have a say and be able to influence the things that happen before you just go down and
start raising buildings and building things up. So we've had community board meetings for all of our developments in Philly so far and taken advice, you know, from the local people before starting any construction.
Right, so before you even get out to these cities, you're building a team from those cities.
Yeah.
So in Newark, so I have two I run two kind of funds that I'm a part of So the Sandal Capitol Group is the one that I run kind of in the north the New York metro area, and that is myself. I have some investors, and I have a like a GC construction team, and then I have a property management team as well. So originally I was
doing a lot of that three sixty myself. You know, it's not necessarily the gcing, but like being on site all the time and like you know handling you know, contractors and all that work, and then property managing you know, kind of halftime while hiring somebody to help me out with and that burn me out. It's just really tough to do that yourself, especially as you scale. You know, you have three tenants, you know everybody's name, and you
know everybody's situation, you know where they're at. They can text you cool, you got thirty tenants. It's impossible to right.
So what I've done is I've built out infrastructure to be able to handle those things and cut into my profit margin a little bit, but be able to give me peace of mind so that I could focus on the important things like the vision and the investor relations and really being able to scale an operation instead of worrying about, you know, the day to day rent collection and repairs and maintenance and things like that.
So you got the Northeast corridor that you obviously have the team.
Now you mentioned Dallas, you mentioned Oakland, all those cities potentially that you're looking at in the future.
So with where I'm at and I like to be high touch with investing, I think that you know a lot of people when you have capital and you can just deploy it in different places. Like your money's gonna work for you, but if you can build something with your hands, kind of using the things that you're good at. For me, it's marketing and branding and storytelling. I know, I can't be high touched everywhere.
You know.
It's like Nit with Crunshaw, like that's what he knew and that's what he did, you know. For me, it's like I want to do the things that I know before I get into those different markets. So I invest in like E reachs, you know, like ri I T's, and I have exposure across a lot of those secondary markets.
Investment trust, Yeah.
Very low risk way to get exposure to real estate for people that don't necessarily want a man of fix and flip or you know, pick up a hammer themselves. Like you can research different ri I ts that have
exposure to different geographic regions or different investment thesises. And that is kind of how I started, like eight years ago, before I put any money, and I was just like playing around with ri I ts and then I was like, Okay, I'm ready to you know, build out an actual fund and then go and actually rehab buildings and build a portfolio.
Dope dope, so you're building units in Philly or developing or.
So in Philly. What we're doing is we've narrowed down on like a four block radius in North Philly, which is a block from Temper University, and our job there is to kind of revitalize and redevelop the entire area. We want to own all four blocks. Right now, we have about six sites, so multi family building is commercial units and landlots across those, and we're in talks for
four more and we've just been accu leading assets. And the idea is, how do you take what you know on the marketing and branding and storytelling and community angle and go redevelop an entire area in an equitable way and create something that's more than just a place for people to live, that's actually a place that builds community, that creates resources and knowledge sharing for the people that
live there. And then that raises the value of your portfolio even more because you're not just dealing in buildings. You're dealing with human capital, You're dealing with cultural capital. And then in fifteen years you go to a black Rock or you go to an institutional investor and you say, you guys are not just buying the buildings. You're buying an entire ecosystem. You're buying an entire community, and that multiple is going to be way larger than if they were to buy a multi family unit.
Yeah.
I mean, you have a portfolio now. But before, when you started, it wasn't like that you talk about some of the sacrifices. Because I did some research, I'm like, wait, you got to talk about so many sacrifices you made to get to that first point. I know you have a clip where you talked about you went from forty thousand to two point one million. Yeah, but people like you know you got to get to forty thousand, so you want to talk about something the sacrifices.
I love that you brought that up. That that brought me right back to earth. I think sacrifice is the that's the quality that separates entrepreneurs because there was a point in my life where so the philosophy behind real estate for me was like we were in a cash rich business on the agency side, right, We're we're making cash. When you're twenty eight, twenty nine years old and you see your first you know, two hundred thousand, there's a lot of ways that can go, you know, especially when
you don't come through a lot. There's a lot of ways that can go. And I knew that for me, it had to go one way, which was build something generational for my family because we don't own too much in this country, you know, and for my family, it's just the four of us. So if I want to build something that my parents can live off of and eat off of, I had to make choices.
Right.
So I'm twenty nine, I got a little bit of paper and I'm like that model s that Tesla looked serious. Pull up on my friends and that joint. Nobody gonna say a word. And I remember, you know, building a package Tesla dot Com. I was, you know, pimping out my Rod, and I was like, at the same time, I was evaluating this multi family real estate deal, and I was like, I don't know, Like, it's a seventy thousand dollars car, it's a seventy thousand dollars down payment.
And I decided to click out that browser, you know, put that in the stash, and I went and rehabbed. I went into this rehab project for this multi family in Jersey City, and I bought that that property for one hundred and ninety thousand, and it needed seventy thousand in repair. But the thing was, it went six months over schedule. So for six months I had to pay the mortgage out of pocket. I have to pay my
contractors out of pocket. And I was dating a girl at the time, and she's like, Oh, you want to go out and eat, you want to go vacation. I don't want to go nowhere. I can't go nowhere because all of my money is being invested into this building that I gotta make sure it happened. My pops was like he invested with me at the time and then he lost his job, so he was like yo, and I was like, nah, don't don't even say it, Like
I got it. I'm gonna figure it out. I ain't buy no sneakers, I ain't buy no I don't own no bomb main, but I definitely buy you know, no clothes, no Tesla, no nothing. I just doubled down on like bringing that project to life. About that project for one ninety, I put in seventy, I was all in at two sixty, I ARV I refinanced out at three fifty. And so that day I got a check for ninety thousand when I when I cash out REFID and I was like, yeah, this makes sense now, like this is why I did it,
you know. And that property now it is like it's close to about half a million, you know, in terms of property value. I actually gotta go check on that after this. That's how I spent my Saturday even But yeah, sacrifice, you know, if that's if that's the sacrifice in the nutshell, is like sublimate your urges and your wants for the now to be able to build and grow your wealth for the future, because you know, especially as minorities like we don't we don't have a lot, we don't come
from a lot. But when we have the opportunity to make something happen. You've got to be conscious about the decision you make.
Sony pleasure. It's been a pleasure many thank you. How can the people contact you any initiatives any Well, you're coming to earn your leashes live podcasts in a few days. But yeah, so what's the what's your information? Social media handles and all that.
Yeah, I mean my goal is to respond to every d M that I get. I'm like, I've been behind for six months. You can find me everywhere. Annie Hustles. That's a n I h U S, t l E S Instagram. I'm big on Twitter. I'm super involved in medium. I write. I really love like writing articles about the things that I go through.
Grote The Good One, five books that changed my life.
I appreciate that I'm on I'm medium, But yeah, Annie hustles across everything, and I urge people to reach out to me. I try to help you know however I can, because I know I was once in that position where a question and answer was the difference between you know, making a play and not making a play.
So yeah, I appreciate that. Troy Housekeeping items.
Yeah, shout to everybody on Patreon dot com. That is all proud to pay program. Big shout out to my man Dave.
Uh.
He is joined in at T five, so shout out at him. Man, I can't wait looking forward to his call.
He hit me up and he's like, yo, I didn't get my shout. I'm like, yeah, it's coming, man, it's coming.
So shout out to you Dave for checking in and everybody that's on Patreon and everybody that's on UH supporting the Merchant on Earnie Leisure dot com and UH supporting us on earn Leisure University that is our online school where we give classes that are just super in depth on a multitude of topics. So everybody that's tapped in and that as said, thank.
You so much. And yeah, man, we're looking forward to seeing everybody in Philly.
Yeah, Philadelphia, h E y L experience dot com. Let's just say you got about two to three days before we come to the town, and it's gonna be a really dope experience. And we're bringing all of our friends with us, not just the people that's going to be involved and people that's just coming just to show some support. So but Annie's on the bill and he will be tag team with John Henry, that's going crazy.
Shout out to John. He's the reason that I'm here.
What's a John? John's moving around all over the place? Man, that can't keep track of that guy. So book tip of the week?
Joy, Uh, Yeah, you want to give it contagious? You want to talk about that?
Why don't we do it together?
Man?
So I took it from your five Books That Change Your Life and I saw Contagious by and the ties to Nipsey Hustle was amazing because that's where you got the one hundred dollars mixtape from.
But it was tied to a Philly cheese steak. Yeah, so have it are crazy the place that we're going, it's tied to the books. If you want to tell why to change your life?
Yeah, Contagious to me was we talked about like how word of mouth is one of the biggest marketing tools, and it just reinforced the fact that if you don't give people a reason to talk about you, they have no incentive to do that. And digging behind what it takes to create a product that's worth talking about, that's the most valuable lesson. You know a lot of marketers and brand people need to understand. So that book is powerful for me obviously, you know what. I got that
from NIP. Yeah, but I went and bought it the next day and I was like, let me read it. So yeah, that was powerful.
There you have it. So ladies and gentlemen, Philadelphia, we're on our way. Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week. Peace. Peace.
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