Making Money Moves! (feat. Earn Your Leisure)

they call these things? Commercial? This is a commercial holiday. It is so not commercials. That's just because you have been in a relationship with the same person for five huntrees. Valentie's they should be every day, shouldn't. Yes. I like that. I feel like that's like letting them off the hook for like the other three hundred and sixty four days of the year. Okay, just treat me, Okay, treat me. Get on Valentine's Day, my birthday and Christmas nas like, nah,

bring me flowers every week? Okay, does does want to do that? I'm just I'm asking me. Okay, I get you. I understand that, and I feel that totally like men should definitely appreciate us at all times. However, don't like disregard me on Valentine's Day and not send me my flowers and my chocolate and my diamonds and my purls. You want it all, I want it all, so you like, So when you're in a relationship or even when you're dating, like you really expect to be, it's a thing. It's

a situation. Oh for sure. Even when I was married, it was a situation. Oh yeah, you're going to fly. I mean, you're going to like what it's called lavish me, give me everything. Damn yes. Okay, so do you do the same for him? No, Valentine's Day is about the woman. No, it's not. That's what That's how I feel. That's how yourself feels like a Valentine, like, oh, will you be my Valentine? Like you know, in school, first of all, okay, did they even do them little stupid cards anymore? But

they're not like will you be my Valentine? They're like, you're really cool, right because because in the end it's like, um, here's the list of all the kids in the class and no, no, no, no that too, but oh no no, it's like don't even think about peanuts. But here's a list of all the kids in the class, and you must bring one Valentine for everybody, because I remember, and which is that's so corny first of all, that you no let the kid bring a Valentine for the people

that they want to bring a Valentine too. I remember the excitement when I was in school and it was like, who's going to give me something? You know what I mean? Like, and it wasn't like you don't expect something from everyone. But now it's like everyone has to be trained it fairly, in the same and evenly, and everyone has if you're special, and if you can't do for all, you can't do for any So that's no more at those stupid hard,

nasty as heart candy. Yes, I do like candy corn, I don't like Okay, for the record, our shady moment is Robin. It is so shady with Valentine's Day. But can I tell you all that like growing up, my father always gave me chocolate for Valentine's Day. Ye until I even went to college, he failed it to me. So that taught me to make sure that the man that I'm dealing with in the moment in February needs to represent, honey, and if you don't represent, I'm gonna

break up with you the end. I love it. Okay, So I'm reasonable in your shady Okay. Fine. We have so much to get into today. This is our financial Monday with some very important people. So we're getting into it all right. We've got some heavy hitters here today. I'm so excited, Robin Tell So we got all right, y'all. I am so excited to introduce our guests today. Um, listen, these guys have so much information to bring to you.

You are going to learn so much from them, and once you start following them and listening to them, you probably already are. Anyway. We are joined today by Troy Millings and Rashad Balau of Earn Your Leisure podcasts, giving you the behind the scenes financial views into the entertainment and sports industries, as well as highlighting backstories of entrepreneurs. They also break down business models and examine the latest trends in finance. Earn Your Leisure is a college business

class mixed with pop culture. They blend the two together for a unique and exciting look into the world of business. They aim to expand the conversation of financial literacy while educating as many people as possible. Before launching earn Your Leisure in twenty nineteen, Blau and Millings, we're teaching financial literacy to public school students in the Bronx, New York.

While working as an elementary school physical education educator. Millings incorporated financial literacy into his lesson plans during summer school classes. UM Earnier Leisure has over five million downloads on the podcast. They have multiple podcasts that have stemmed from Earnier Leisure.

They have over one million Instagram followers, over five hundred thousand YouTube subscribers, and many, many, many other streams of income that I'm gonna let you'all tell tell I'm gonna let them tell us about because there's too many for me to even name. But they are doing their thing. Welcome guys to the podcast. We appreciate you for joining us. Yes, yes, yes, now um and also, uh, we forgot to mention that they are part of our Black Affect family. These are

our brothers. These are our brothers in in the space. So y'all are very important. First and foremost, are y'all married? Y'all single? Like, what's the status here? I'm married? I'll yeah, now I'm single, I'm saying, okay, alright, so we have some ice breaker questions for you guys, first and foremost, all right, now do and the reason why I asked if you married a single is when you go to dinner,

do you make your partner split the bill? Never? No? Never? Never? Okay, if you're on if you're on a date and you don't really know her that well and she's like new, do you make her split the bill? No? I mean you know me. I mean Troy too. We were old school.

So even if it's just like a friend, like if it's just a female friend, like we're not even really dating and not like somebody's just hanging out with us, like women don't pay for anything when they when they're around us, like I'm we were out with the ladies from reasonable shady. It's on us. That's you know. That's good to know because you all are so financially responsible, you don't sure if y'all be up in there, like, well, no, you know, I paid the other day, so that's your

turn to pay. And it's not in the budget this week because I've left many of dates for that reason. Okay, that will not get you date number two. I'm just here to say it. So, Okay, So specific beleiver shod Is is dating someone who has poor money habits? Is that a deal breaker? Like? Are you what happens when you see a female or whatever and and their financial habits don't really match up to yours? How do you feel about that? No, I'm not really on it like that.

I don't really look at somebody's like credit score, like you know, with the with their bank balances. Um, you know, for me, it's more so like the vibe of the person have fun, if they're a good person or not. How I look at it. Fortunately, I'm not really dependent on somebody for finances, so it doesn't really matter to me what their financial situation is. Um. Of course it's always beneficially if they have a good financial situation. But it's not a deal breaker for me because I honestly

don't even really think about it too much. But if you were thinking, like, okay, if you're getting close to someone you're like thinking about marriage, is that important in a mate a potential spouse that they are financially responsible? Like that's something that you can like teach them about. Okay, I feel like, you can definitely educate people. That's what we do for a living, is educate people. So I feel like our relationship is meant to be a form

of education. Like a woman should educate her man, a man should educate his woman, and you should learn together. So you know, if my strong point is financing and investing, then the woman that i'm what doesn't necessarily have to be strong in that area. But that's my responsibility to educate her and to you know, show her different things, and you know, hopefully she'll be able to you know,

get it. Um. So yeah, it's not something that I really put too much UM attention on as long as you're not like, you know, go and do something that's just totally you know, dangerous, like to the situation and school. Okay, I love that. Now you guys, um are all over the place, y'all on Today Show, y'all getting ridden, Good y'all on Good Morning America, getting ridded up, written up in the Wall Street journals and whatnot. How did you all get together? How did earn your leisure? Get together?

It seems like you're all are really good friends and you got y'all have a million their different entities, businesses. So tell us how how this started with the two of you guys with yourldhood friends. UM. So I met him when I was like twelve years old. Thirteen years old. Uh, he's two years younger than me. So we were We went to the same high school, grew up in the same neighborhood. UM went to the same community centers, our friends, our family, our friends, so we all grew up together. UM.

He went into a career of athletics. UM. And then when he left school, UH, chose a career in finance. And I was in school and I went to education and he always he always used to joke on me about that. He's like, yo, man, we went to school our whole lives. How you go back? Like what's wrong with you? Um? And so we were starting our careers at the same time. I was teaching. He was doing the financial financial advising and UM I had the summer program while I was interviewing kids to see about what

they wanted to do in the future. And I would go out in the community and try to match them with a prospect of like an internship, and UM, based on how they performed at the internship, I was going to pay him at the end of the program. And so it was the first time that these young teens, right they were like fourteen years old. They had aged out of the camp experience, but they were too young to work. But the first time they were going to come in contact with money, and UM knowing that, I said,

they need to learn about money. I said, we need to create something for them to learn about the money and what you can do with it, how you can save it, how you can share it, how you can invest it. And so financial literacy was one of those things like I was working in a city like that wasn't something that's talked about in schools, and I knew it, like I was great in state tests, like I've given tests. I know, like these things are not being spoken about.

And I was like, this is an opportunity to create something that's gonna last for a lifetime. And so that's why we kind of like started in the space of financial literacy. He was doing UM social media time. I let him speak about it, and UM decided why we were teaching, let's record what we're doing, because you know, we could probably use this as an asset in the future. And he had to. He had the foresight to see it and um it got us here. Okay, I love that.

And you guys have this podcast has been rocking for how long? Three years? Three years? Okay, very nice. Three years. And you all now have other podcasts that have kind of like spinoffs of Earnier Leisure. You also have multiple Screens of Income that have spun off from Earnier Leisure. Tell us all about everything y'all have going on. Just

run it down, Run it down. Yeah, I mean, we have a podcast network, so that is you know, we developed, you know, a niche in the podcast space with the finance, and you know, we kind of got good at promoting it on social media things for things of that nature. So it made sense for us to kind of help other people produce their show. So now we have a podcast network, E y O network. So we have Market Mondays that's like a huge, huge success. That's a stock show. Um,

that's every Monday. Then we have Rants and Gym's which is a real estate podcast, and we have In a Wealth, which is an entrepreneurship podcast. No in a Wealth, which is a mental health podcast, Inside the Vault which is an entrepreneurship podcast, and then we also have Dream Nation, which is another business podcast. So that's what's under the umbrella of E y O Network, and then it's fall

as the different businesses that we have. So, you know, one of the good things about doing our show is that it's a learning experience, not just for the audience before ourselves. So every time we interview our entrepreneur, it gives us some insight into what they have going on and allows us to actually brainstorm or if we want to start businesses in that type of area. So one of the things that we actually did was purchase a truck, like an eighteen wheeler, So that was a big that

was a big episode for us. So we have a truck on the road, so that's a that's a revenue stream logistics. Then we have um vending machines. Yeah saw today I'll posted about Vendom machines. Yeah, Vendom machines. That's in our old high school. So that was cool. That's something that we got from our episode. Uh. Merch is something that we didn't necessarily get from an episode, but that's become like his own stream within itself as far as like a business spin off. And then the live

events space is something that's really really big for us. So, um, you know, we had a festival last year called invest Fest, which was four thousand people in that I'm looking to scale that up even even bigger this year. And then well we did so the Apollo. We got a show in Houston coming up. Okay, Okay, it's just too much. Okay, now listen. I want to ask about stocks, Okay, because I was told like a very long time ago, and I have I have my own little portfolio with stocks.

But what I was told was buy stocks that you have something to do with, like that have that are that you use right, that you use for instance, like Lulu Limon. Like of my athletic wear is Lulu Limit. So I have like the Lulu limit stock Apple stock because I got a phone, I got my stuff. So is that true? Like is that how you should handle

purchasing stocks? Yeah? I think so for anybody that's beginning in the in the investment stage of of in stocks, you want to go from consumer to investor, right, and so you're already you are already a consumer. You bought all those products on the consumer side, but now you're on the ownership side. And so if you're already pouring money into a company and there's mill ends of people doing the same thing as you. Why not reap the

benefits of your investment? Right, So, like I'm giving money to Apple every time my iPhone comes out, or every time a Matt book comes out of Lululemon puts out a new line, I'm always investing. I'm consuming it and I'm consuming it. Why not also have investment in it as well? So now your money is actually going towards your ownership. Okay, And then I was also told like just to leave it there, like, don't fool with it,

just let it go. Yeah, But buying a hole, that's like, you know, the number one strategy for for investing, whether it's real estate stocks, don't you want to just buy a hole for a long period of time. If you have a good company like Apple or Microsoft, just buy and just hold it for as long. If something changes and you know you have to sell for whatever reason,

then you know you can sell. But a lot of time people go into things and they sell too early, just like real estate, like you know, you might have had a Brownstone and where you guys from Maryland part PG County. No, oh, I'm sorry I said that too. I said it too loud, I said it told. I'm sorry. I'm from born and raised in Baltimore. I'm from like the DC area, which is p PG County No, no, no, Ptolemaic Montgomery County, Montgomery, Montgomery County. Okay, yeah, okay, full disclaimer.

There's nothing wrong with the PG, nothing wrong with But I was about to give a real estate reference to New York. But I figure I'll do something like to marry. I used to actually go to school in Maryland, so I used to live in Maryland. But like, where'd you go? NBC? Okay, Um, I know you're a President's Dr REBELLI oh yeah, yea yeah, great man, and a bunch of my friends went to

you and be a good guy. Um, so like take like the area there, John Hopkins, right, Like you know, it is getting gentified and real estate is going up. So it's like you could have had a property there, let's say ten years ago, and let's say you got it for fifty allars and you sold it for seventy five thousand, Like that's a twenty five tho allar profit. Most people be like, all right, that's a good deal.

But what if that same property is worth eight hundred thousand dollars now right, like you would be kicking yourself, like I should have just held it instead of just trying to get like a twenty five thousand all profit. I could have got hundreds of thousand dollars of profit and then twenty years from now it might be worth

three million dollars. So that's all over the country. So like people can understand that we're real estate because they see areas getting gentified, and they see real estate that was once worthless now million dollar properties. You see that in Chicago, you see that in New York, you see that in d c l A all over. So the same thing with stocks. A lot of times people are just happy with like short term gains, like okay, I

doubled it, It's time to get out. But if it's a good quality company, you want to hold it for as long as possible because you could have like a thousand percent rate of return if you hold it for ten twenty years. Right, but give it. But right now, like the market, the stock market is going crazy, the

crypto market is going crazy. I feel like people are panicking because I mean I do like little small trading on like each aid and stuff, like that, Like, or I have a coin based account, Like, how do you if you're someone that kind of just enjoys to see you know your gains? Um, how do you stay disciplined? Or should you just pull out and then get back in? Like I don't. I'm just so all over the place and there's so many conflicting reports and people say different things,

and it's like people are panicking. I just don't know what to do at this point. Yeah, number one thing is don't panic, right, So, like we we always stressed the people. Never into a position unless you know your exit strategy, and so that might be a percentage, that might be a dollar amount. Wait a minute, wait, unless you know your exit strategy. That's like a dating rule, one on one. Unless you know how you're getting out of this thing, don't get in it. Okay, I'm sorry,

go ahead, go ahead. Yeah. But like so that's the thing, Like you want to you want to get into a position in a company that makes sense for you, right, So, like when people see you right in the market, they automatically think fair. But if you're a new investor, if you're seasoned investor, you know that there's an opportunity for me to add to the positions I already have, or

into a position that I always wanted to write. So if you look like a company like Apple in two thousand, they only had the iPod, right, But if you would have brought a thousand dollars in the past twenty two years,

it's going up ten. Right. So you might have right when the market crash of two thousand and there, you might have been like, oh my gosh, like me and sold it right, or you could just been like, all right, well it went down, let me grab some more, and now you're just adding to the games that you have long term. So that's alwalways stressed UM buying and holding.

And if there's a pull back like there is like a correction, which just means that the market or the actual sector itself has pulled back anywhere between six, there's always an opportunity to game more of ownership in that company. So never look at as a negative unless you're in a company that isn't strong UM and it's it's kind of like the balance sheets are all off, and you know they don't have a long history like companies like

Microsoft Apple they've been around for forty years. Strong company acts like there's there's a plenty of companies that are out there that have been around and have been profitable for a long time. Sick with those Before we get into the weeds. Let's get into the flowers. Okay, So give me a fourth grade answer for this crypto bitcoin, Should we get in? Should we get should we not? I'm a I'm an old school girl. I'm all about the almighty dollar. Like, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what's important. You know, two months ago everybody was like bitcoin bitcoin, Now it's all crypto crypto, like is crypto? Don't know? But also add you know what I want you to add like n f T s in the metaverse. Yeah, that's the stuff where I'm like, don't know that either. That's that's the way because someone asked me to do something and staid, um, oh, i'll pay you something, give you give you an n f T. I don't know what that also, I don't know. No

pay me in dollars. Okay, So so don't give us big words, y'all. Just walk us through like we're second grades. Which one which one you want? First? N f conversation or the crypto conversation You've come to the right place you want to talk, all right, So I mean cryptocurrency.

The word I always say the word currency is a little misleading when're talking about cryptocurrency because most of it is not really treated as a currency, like a currency usually has to be stable, whereas like if I give you a dollar today, it's still gonna be worth a

dollar tomorrow. Right, That's how I can That's how I can pay for something like you can't value a haircut at twenty dollars, but then that same haircut is fifty dollars next week because the price of the dollar went from being worth one dollar to being worth twenty cents. So that that's the volatility and cryptocurrency where you see a couple of months ago bitcoin was sixty over sixty thousand. Now it's hovering around like in the thirty thousand range,

like it's fifty lower. Imagine if the US dollar was fifty lower in value and only word fifty cents now, like that would be crazy. You really can't make transactions to do business with that. This is why but Big we'll talk about bigcoin because you asked about bitcoin. Bitcoin is more so of a store of value currency, its currency store value and store value different, so it's better comparison its goal. This is why people compare it to like digital goal, where it's like a lot of people

just hoard gold. You get gold and you hoard it because it's like hedge for inflation. So gold has withstand it the test of time. It's always been valuable for a long period of time. People value goal. You can you know, trade gold, you can wear goal different things that agent. Gold has value that people place on it. So bitcoin conda is the same way where it's a limited amount, like there's gonna be a limited amount of

bitcoins in a couple of years. It's not even gonna be any more bitcoins made, so it's a limited amount of bitcoins um. It has grown up in value because of the scarcity and because people are looking for different ways to actually park their money. Like we know that you know, fiat currency, which is the dollars that we actually use all across the world, actually gets devalue um every single day because of inflation. Right, so the value of milk is not the same as it was ten

years ago. So the value of the dollar goes down each and every day, and it's not backed by anything except for you know, the faith that the people putting it. So now you have a digital asset on the blockchain, which we can talk about that with the n f T conversation. But you have a digital asset that people put belief in, because that's the value of anything, it's what people believe in, right, people put belief in it.

It's a new way to actually move money at a much quicker pace because like, well they say, like the fastest way if I asked you right now the fastest way to get a million dollars from New York to London, what would you say? The fastest way to do that would be transfer? Well, the fastest way is to actually get on a plane with a million dollars and actually fly. But when the wire go through faster than the place, not most of the times, if you got a bank's gonna take at least a couple of days for the

I'm millions for a million dollars to clear. So that's true, that's true in this day and age in two. That's crazy that you know, you can't move that kind of money in a short period of time where it's like on the blockchain with cryptocurrency, you can do that in seconds depending on which coin you use. Okay, okay, but let me ask you this now, is this a way because I watched this uh this show on on the

Netflix that the drug deal is like had the money? Yeah, so so that that that was a way, right that and that that's kind of like one of the downfalls for it, right, you have you have coins that people can you can't track, right, so like if I make a transaction, the only thing that can say that this happened is the block train, right, so it's a transaction record,

but you never know who did it. And so it was a lot of a lot of times in the past and hopefully it doesn't happen going forward in the futures, that people would smuggle money and use it through the currency. So like there was a bunch of coins um that would being used at the time, and they've coining folding back in value. And that's why when you when you hear decentralized, decentralized meaning that there's no government or agency

back in it. That's kind of what they're saying, like, we need to have regulation because if if you can laund the money through this quote unquote currency, it could be a dangerous tool if it's putting the wrong hands. So but yeah, so just to finish up crypto. The benefits of it is that it's a way, it's a it's a currency that it doesn't matter if you're in Russia, if you're in Yugoslavia, if you're in Puerto Rico, if you're in New York, it's the same, right, so you

don't have to change. And you go to different currency, and you go to different countries, you gotta change the currency. The speed moves a lot quicker. It's an alternative to paper dollar, and um, it's a store of value where it could serve as like a digital goal where now it's it's a place where people can actually park money and have the asset grow over the course of time. And they also you think about other countries, and he brought up a bunch of them, but how many of

these countries are have errors that they're on banks? Right, where's the where's where is the next bank? Or is there a bank even in my city? Right? And so now when you have a digital quote unquote currency, you have it in the palm of your hand or you have it in front of your laptop, which makes it completely different. Now you have access to something without even having to go to a traditional uh thanking. So are

you recommending that people invest in this UM? Well, hey, you should be knowledgeable before you invest in anything because you know, well, what's good for one person might not be good for another thing. So I think, ay, you should. You should just be up to date on what's going on. But I will say this UM is here to stay. Cryptocurrency. I think it's here to stay. Big Corner think it's here to stay. And UM it's only gonna become more

and more prevalent. So for with that, with that information, you can kind of you know, make an educated decision whether you want to invest or not. But that would be like you know what I think is going to happen. I would start with education before anything, any investment, real estate, crypto stocks. Educate yourself first, right, and especially in crypto because like I said, right now, how do we regulate it? Right? Like if I lose money, who do I call? If

this transaction doesn't go through? Who do I? There isn't anybody, right, and so like that's why the education process and the learner code is very quickly because if you just jump into this space of UM investing right, you could get lost very quickly, and your money could get lost very quickly and you'll never find it. So educate yourself before before anything. So are you comfortable giving UM suggestions to people on UM crypto platforms to use and specific crypto

to buy bitcoin, etherory and whatever it is? I mean you want to you want to stay with the top tier cryptos. That's always the safest. Same thing with the stock markets. So when you look at like the top tier cryptos that already have you know, strong UM backing, institutional backing, and use cases. You're looking at ethereal if you're looking at Bitcoin, you're looking at Cardonna, looking at

stellar Um. Slana is a new one, but Silana, you're talking about the n f T conversation that those hand in hand with a lot of the n f T s. So those are some of like the top tier cryptocurrencies UM that you know if you are interested, and that's probably more than safe for play as opposed to going down the line and get in some something that you know, people have not have heard of, because that's what people do to try to earn more money is take more risk.

But what more risk could come? Re war? But it can also come with the possibility of it just vanishing away also, so like that that would be your dog going out to be coining where people are just saying, like, let's just hit this home run. It's less than eight sense, we can buy a bunch of it. But what happens

when it goes to zero sense or lesson zero? Then you ask out yeah, And I always I always get in late, like when something you know, you hear about something popping off, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get in, and then I get in. Its over. I'm like, let me just stop, Okay, But but I do want to say, like, just you, I think we can tell that crypto is here to stay when now we have sports arenas being

named after you know, crypto platforms. We got clip Crypto dot Com arena, right, and there's a coin base is it a coin base? One of them was on a coin base I saw on a court I can't remember what team it was. And then Crypto dot Com Arena that's where the Lakers are playing, right formerly Distable Santa Yea. Yeah,

Like that's that's insane that we had to say. So so I want to get into the metaverse and n f t S. But but before we do that, I want to I don't want to forget to ask you about any stock picks that you might feel comfortable recommending for for someone that's like looking to invest, you know, get into the market, where should they park their money.

I think you have the strategy correct when you said, look at what you're spending your money now, and so like, if I'm spending my money on Apple products, I probably should be invested in that, right. If I'm ordering during the pandemic, right, most people were ordering where you're ordering anything from probably Amazon, that would probably be a good idea to invest in UM. So you can invest in these individual stocks, but you could also invest in a group of stocks like indexes or et f s, where

it it's like an all star team of stocks. Right, and always use the comparison and shout to our brother Ian down Lap. Right, if you think of of E T F S as an all star team, and you think of like a player like Lebron James is probably the best player in the league, right, Like, you can intervention invest in him individually, but if he gets hurt, then your investment might hurt. Right. But if you invest in an e t F that has Lebron in it. Now, now break it down. What is TEA? You're using big

words here. You're using big words to break it down, I said second grader. Okay, and I want to say I I invested in the et F based off of one of your podcast The Vanguard's traded e t F, so it goes by sectors. So E t s are broken down into sectors. And so there's a different type of companies. So you have technology companies, you have financial companies, you have industrial companies, you have healthcare companies. And so let's say Lebron is Apple, right, the greatest company, the

greatest player. He Apple is a tech company, and so we'll be inside the e t F like XLK it would be et F. But you also have other companies inside their Microsoft is inside there, in video, which is a chip company. A m D is a chip they're inside it. Uh m D is not inside there, but

they're inside of this tech company. Right. So if Lebron doesn't perform, well, you still have uh Anthony Davis on your team, right, you still have Steph Curry on ther team, so he doesn't really have to give you twenty seven points a game, he can give you fifteen points and

you can still win. Whereas if he's invested individually, if he gets hurt and he eats the average of seven, right, then individually just much more exposure on the downside, that's something happens to him, not to say that something would happen to Apple, but we'd like to tell people like invest in solid companies and they're invest in indexes and e t s just so you don't have as musk

exposure on the downside. Right because on a day like two weeks ago, when when Apple pulls back on Microsoft pulls back, now that exposure to that company brings you down, Whereas if you're in the E T F to pull back would be not a severe because the percentage of how much is invested in that company isn't as high.

It's like a it's almost like playing like fantasy football or something, right, like everybody you gotta see where everyone on the team is doing, and the better each individual player is doing, the better eat exactly like you're gonna you're gonna pick a team with strong players and so the same thing. Yeah, okay, switching gears just a little bit. I know, we we were skipping over the NSF stuff. We're gonna come back. I want to come back to it.

But I have a have a question because you know, Robin and I are entrepreneurs, and you know, we always want to encourage especially black women to get out there and invest in yourself and and definitely like strive for your dreams. But you need money to do that. So what is the best way to like raise capital for your business, especially if you're a startup you know you're new to just this entrepreneurial game. I mean, there's a few different ways you can't go about raising capital. You can,

you know, raise capital from friends and family. Um, you can you know, leverage your credit, you can take loans from your full o one K. Everybody's situation is different. What we did personally was we just started a business that had low um startup costs, which is a podcast doesn't mean you take a lot of money to start a podcast, and we used our personal money. UM. You know, I wish I could have had more of an elaborate story to tell, but it really wasn't. Um. We just

we staved up. We have money that we have from you know, working our respective careers, and we were still working while we were being entrepreneur. That's a nothing to people. You don't necessarily have to do one or the other, Like you know, you can actually still do both at the same time. If you have a nine a five job, you can keep that not a five job and still

be an entrepreneur when you get home. And then eventually as your business takes off and now it's time to leave your nine the five, then you know it's time to leave. But in the meantime, use the money from your note a five job or whatever kind of job you have to help fund your business. So like your job is really it's the investor is the angel investing in business in that in that situation. Other than that, I mean, of course, you can try to get bank financing.

That's gonna be extremely difficult, almost impossible, especially if you're just starting out, your black entrepreneur. It's gonna be extremely difficult to get money from a bank. So, like I said, I mean, most of the time for entrepreneurs, if you're just starting now, you're gonna have to either use your own personal money, which is money that you saved up um or you know, money from like retirement accounts, money from friends and family. You can, you know, take money

from your house. I'm gonna have to stop you. I'm gonna have to stop you right there. The friends and family, that's like sure far away to cause a ruckets at Thanksgiving, Like no, okay, there's no no friends and family. But definitely I believe in investing in yourself saving money and because there's there's nobody that's gonna support you or like root for you more than yourself. Right so I'm definitely down with that. Friends and family, I say, no, I'm sorry.

It depends. I mean, if someone comes to me, I would say more family than friends. If they come to me they have a solid plan, then I'm not. I'm I don't. I'm not going to shy away from helping them out if I really believe in it, if I see they have a plan, if you know, but not someone just says I'm struggling. Can I get some money?

Like no, I want to know if how is this money going to put you in a better place permanently, Like I don't want to just give you money just to pay your bill and that's it now, Okay, do you all loan money? That's a good question. Do you all loan money to people because I have a firm stance because I didn't get burnt a couple of times. Yeah, no, I ain't loaning nothing so loan would would would imply that the money is gonna be paid back? Right, yes, but we all know it's not. Okay, I I haven't.

I haven't um with the intent of expecting it to come back. But I have UM given money UM with the intent of helping out a situation. Okay, I like that. Okay, now' gonna let you get back to the well wait, well now that right, so wait, now we're going to get back to the metaverse. And I but now that you talked about business, I want to piggyback on that conversation. I hear from a lot of people who, you know, they they're working at nine to five and they really

want to be entrepreneurs. They really want to create multiple streams of income and they don't know where to start. And you know, my advice to them is, Okay, what are you interested in? What can you, you know, find

to monetize something that you're interested in. But for people who really don't think they have some sort of tangible item to sell, what avenue would you say for like people should look into too, maybe become entrepreneurs, Like I know there's so many things, like especially with the vending machines, like how like how is that that going for you guys?

I'll just start with with education because I've had this conversation with a none of my colleagues who don't think they could be entrepreneurs, And I'm like, the first thing you have to do was what's your purpose? Right? And that thing was like to help people. I'm like, well, you have a skill set that somebody else doesn't have.

You have a skill set that I don't have. Ill use a young lady for example, she um her son UH is hearing imperient and she's advocated for for the past three years, and I told him, like, look, your level of advocacy, everybody doesn't know how to do that. You should probably write a book on this, right, And her mind was like, wait, I can't do that, And I'm like, yeah, you could, Like you're fighting for this

every single day. So the first thing I would say is look right in front of you, you're you probably possess a skill and a purpose that the other person doesn't. Write. Another one of my colleagues, she was like, I don't know, I need to create more income. I'm like, well, you're a great teacher, why don't you create a tutoring service? Right, you can do that after school. Like that's not gonna coase you anything. And you're doing what you naturally do.

You're you're great at You're a teacher. So the problem is that people will use like hey, I don't have the time for it, when I'm like, well, either you're gonna dedicate the time to doing that or you're gonna dedicate the next twenty five years to doing this. Right, you drop a knowledge, It's just what you have to choose. Right. But everybody, I believe that everybody has a purpose. They just have been tapped into it, right, or they're overlooking it.

A lot of times, it's like it's right in front of you. Right. So like people ask me now, like hey, Troy, how's it feel not to teach anymore? And I'm like, well, I'm teaching every day. You still teaching? Yeah, you're you're teaching big time. Yeah, I didn't learn about four things today. I didn't learn about four things. You can talk right, right, No, but you are teaching a lot because, like I said, I learned about I. Um, you know, I learned about

stocks from you guys. I also learned about things to do for my children. One of which, um, I believe I learned from you guys was, you know, make them your employee. I have a business. So now I've set both of my kids up as employees. I pay them, you know, just under the threshold so that they're not taxed. And you know, it's a tax start off for me. They're building, you know, they're they're they're building a little nest egg. Um. What I know a lot of people

want to create generational wealth for their kids. They want to set their kids up for success. So what is the best advice that you can give to parents to help them, um, set their kids up for financial success? Um, just start early, start early. Opening an investment account for them. You can open up a UTMA and that's like a a brokerage account and investment account, but for kids. And uh wait minute, what's that called again? An art month? U t ut M A U t M. Do you

all have kids? Yeah? I have, I have a son. Okay U t M A Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead. So, um, that's an investment account that you are like pretty much the owner that you stole here and you can put money in. You can invest in Apple, you can invest in E, T, F and H. They don't gain access to that until they turn eighteen to the to the an adult, but you know that allows money to grow into an account. So that's that's one real easy way that you can do. Or you can do any online

account like t D and marriage trade. You can do marrow Lynch, any any like online brokerage account. You can go in there, take a couple of minutes into the information, and then you have the account. You can start investing money in UM. You can have a five twenty nine plan, which that allows you to put money away for the education. So that's the way that you know, parents want to save for college, or you want to save for prep school or whatever, not just higher education, any form of

education you can UM saving. The good thing with the plans is that the money is tax free as long as you're using for education, and depending on what states you live in, if you invest in the states file twenty nine planning, you get a state tax deduction for the amount of money that you put in, so that's beneficial as well. So those are two easy ways where you can actually go about to start to build some some assets, some wealth for your for your your child

down the line. I think what you're doing now is great, right, like paying them as employees of your business. Right if you if your child is seven years old, can you imagine if you paid them ten thousand dollars a year to their sevent team, right, you're talking about you, they're already six figures by the time the eight team. And

if you invest in a custodio account. That's why we we'd like to talk about starting early, right, So right now our kids are playing roadblocks and then using their iPads, and so these are companies that were investing in and put it inside their studio accounts. Now, when we talk about whole long term, that's not even enough vision and like long term, like I'm seventeen, they're still young, right, but that's ten years of equity that they've grown inside

those companies. And so that's another way. Just look at what they're doing now right where they're invest in their time. And because kids will tell you what's trending and what's hot, right, they'll let you know, Right, that's so true. But you know what, so so my father had an UPMA for me, and of course once I turned like eighteen and I was had access to it, I blew right through it.

So good. Yeah, So so so the hard part is, yeah, we're gonna say for our kids, but we also have to teach them and create discipline for them so that they don't blow through that money and so that they you know, maybe continue to invest it. But that definitely happened to me. Like me and my brother, we blew

through our So this is what not to do. But that's why we we we And I've been saying this recently, it was like we the term generational wealth is cool, but generation generation that could be blown not to saying that that's what happened to you, but the term really should be sustainable wealth, right, so as they're growing and how do they sustain it so that they can't mess

this up? Right, Like, there's no way we're gonna put the if this was bowling, we're putting the bumpers up so that we we we've generated the wealth right this generation, and we're gonna teach them how to sustain it so that their kids and their grandkids will always have this wealth. Right, Because if we teach generation. There's no way I gave the example. My dad worked for forty two years. My son is eight years old. Since he's been alive, he's only seen my dad's on the couch. He's never seen

the hard work that he had to put in. He's never seen those things. And so like, yeah, I can teach them and you can watch me, but the more important thing is how to sustain this long term. Okay, I still want to talk about the metaverse, but so

that's gonna We're gonna close out with the metaverse. But before we before we let y'all go, are there any particular episodes that you would tell our listeners who are new to you, guys who want to learn about, you know, investing in business, Like, do you have episodes that you're like, this is the one, go listen to this one, and then they'll be hooked and then they'll start listening to much some more. UM. I think episode forty four with On Wall Street trap, but that was a good introduction

to stocks. If anybody's interested in stocks, that's something that you can listen to and learn about the stock market. UM. Episode eleven, which is probably one of my favorite episodes that was a restaurant owner from Baltimore actually, and uh, he actually gave a complete blueprint of like the ins and outs of his industry. So not just for people that's interested in running a restaurant, but anybody that's interested in business period. That's a very very detailed, transparent episode.

So those are two episodes that I would I would put I love that you know the number. I mean overy, Wait, we don't know the none none of our episode. Hold your thought, Troy, because I want you to tell us your episodes. How do you all know how many episodes do you have? And how do you know those are memorable episode me? So I kind of you know that's that's awesome. I'm I'm listening to them all right, what you guys? So we got the first answers. We got

a hundred and sixty nine episodes. Leisure Number eleven is probably my favorite as well. And number twelve, where we actually talk about real estate with our brother merg the mortgage Guy, is a very prowerful episode. Kind of changed my mindset. We recorded it in my house and when he was talking about strategies and how to invest in real estate, I'm thinking to myself, like damn, I wish I would have known this three years prior, so that

was one of them. And then episode seventy well with our brother Ian Dunlap, who's our partner our market Mondays, is another one of those investment episodes that just kind of like shook the world up a little bit. So those two are incredible, But there's a lot. There's a bunch of them. We have an Airbnb episode, we have the Vendom Machine episode, obviously the truck and the episode that we did change the game. So there's a bunch of them. There's a lot. Okay, Okay, So I love him,

I love awesome. All Right, we're gonna let you'all go, but we're gonna talk about these n f T s and the metaverse and what does all that mean? And should I do? Should I? Should I sell a picture of myself out for some money? Like that's only that's only fans, that's only fans. That ain't that we're not doing only fans. We're not doing that, right because that's naked. You get naked. You can show people your feet and stuff. Yeah, don't nobody want to see my toes because my toes

are kissable. But Anyway, let's move on. So n f t s you want to know what they are? Yeah, Like I just keep this, I just keep hearing n f t S metaverse. It's just you know, like people selling pictures and and I don't know, like old stuff and getting making a million. Oh I saw some of my thirteen year old girl made a million dollars off at n f t s. Like what what is this? Yeah, n f t s are non fungible token show its

song when you think of something that's replaceable, that's fungible. So, like Charlotte said about the nineteen Keys, he gave a really good example that all you so a dollar, a dollar is fungible. Rights, It's like if you have if you have a dollar bill and you lose it and then I give you another dollar bill, it's not a big deal. You don't really care, right, But like, let's say that if Beyonce autographed a dollar bill, right, you lose it and then I give you another dollar bill.

And that's not the same, you know what I'm saying, Because now now that autograph Beyonce, that's non fungible. You can't really replace that. So now what it is is it's the same thing with art. So like if Bosciott does a painting, right and he's no longer here, there's no way to really replicate that unless you just have forgery. There's only one of those paintings, which is why they's

so valuable. Right. So now with n f T, it's the same idea, the same concept, but it's on the blockchain, which is why art was like the first adoption to the n f T world if you think about it, because that that makes complete sense, where it's like you have artists that draw something and it's only one of one of those, so it would be the same thing in the digital world. So now they came up with like digital art where it's like apes and um monkeys

and lions and all these different things. Right, So that's one way to think about it, where it's like kind of like a digital art form that can't be replicated, can't lee, can't be duplicated, and the proof of it is on the blockchain, which to say, okay, this is number one of one. You are the owner, nobody else has it, you have all the rights to it. That's it. It's not arguable. You can't argue it, can't do anything with it, but there's other rail world you use cases

to it as well. So like Nike, it is planning on releasing n f T s with every sneaker, so now it's like the counterfeit sneaker market is huge. So now you don't have to worry about buying fake Jordan's because you know you can identify that this is a authentic Nike shoe because of the n f T that's attached to it. So yeah. So or even like NAS who just released two songs UM via n f T holders have UM, they actually have rights to the song, so now they get publishing rights every time the song

gets sold. So now they're actually owners of his catalog, like part of his catalog, the actually owners of it.

So that's an interesting way to go about it as well, where now you can actually, like a business or influencer or a musician can actually offer their fans, their supporters ownership and their music or ownership and their product ownership in their company by n f T s and it's like if you own this, it's like a stock certificate, Like if you own this n f T, you're guaranteed to two percent of the portions forever and a good thing too, is that it lasts forever, lasting perpetuity, and

every time it gets resold that the original person um gets a percentage. So you set a commission. So if it's like, let's say you set a temperacent commission on it and it's a digital artwork. Now you sell it for a thousand dollars, and then somebody else sells it for ten thousand dollars. Now when they sold it for ten thousand, you get a thousand because you have a ten percent commission on it. So it's like, imagine if Boscot, if he like, his latest painting sold for like a

hundred million dollars a couple of years ago. But I think the most he ever received for a painting while he was alive was like less than a hundred thousand. So imagine that his family, if it was an n f T, his family actually had that royalty. And now let's say it was ten percent. So now when he got sold last year, two years ago for a hundred million, his family would have got ten million dollars as opposed

to his family in anything from the hundred million. If it gets sold again for three hundred million, he his family doesn't get anything from that. So, you know, the n f T conversation, I'll let you talk about the metaverse, but the NFT conversation is something that is extremely interesting because it carries a lot of different verticals. A lot of people are just focusing on one area, which is

the art, and they don't understand it. And it's like, yeah, why is an ape selling for three hundred thousand dollars? Why is a picture of a banana? And sellings? But that's that's only one part of it. Um. It has a lot of different use cases and I think that that's gonna be interesting to see, like you know, it play out more and more in the future. So where do you go to like learn more or to purchase? You know, if I wanted to purchase ape, where do I go? If I wanted to sell them the picture

of me? Like, like, I don't know where you wanted to sell your own ed you'd have to go through what's called a minting process, um, and it there's a there's a few places you can do that. The space is so new, it's almost like when when the Internet was around, when everybody was like trying to find their dot com. That's that's what we're going through right now, and so like that n f T pieces really important, but like sites like open sea dot io is a

place you can like do some research and search the artwork. Right, So like when we're talking about board apes, so we're talking about women of color, we're talking about crypto punks. You can see actually those actual pieces and you can bid on them. Right, It's the same thing like you would been on a piece of art. UM. This has just done in the digital currencies. So Ethereum is the platform that all these are built on right now. UM and Solano is another one where that they're actually gaining

some ground UM. So that's why it's important to educate yourself, right because if you you press the wrong button or you send them wrong code and you're trying to buy a piece of art or an n f t um, you could lose it if you don't do the right thing. So that's important to UM. And then the metaverses is it's interesting, right, I felt like we've been prepared for this our whole lives, right, We're actually we're we're the

ones who like we're champion in our whole lives. If we play video games in the eighties and the nineties. Definitely two thousands you play Grant the Photo or call it Duty or any of those game roadblocks too. SIMS. I mean like the SIMS was like this virtual world where you have characters. The only difference now is that you are the character inside these spaces and the real actual companies inside. And so the metaverse is like a

virtual world. And I know it's kind of crazy because Facebook is now meta um, and so when you think matter, you think Facebook. But there's there's there's a bunch of worlds. You've got to think of it like a galaxy of places, um. And so where people are going to, uh, we'll determine the value of the land that's there. So I know, like Snoop has, everybody keeps talking about Snoops in the metaverse,

and everybody wants to buy property around him. And what that does is when he buys property right and people want to live in, it drives up the value of the actual property inside the space. So people are like, well, why would I have a digital virtual world? Well, number one, people are there right this is the way right now, and number two, there's plenty of use cases for it.

So right now, like his neighbor, right if they decided that, hey, I'm gonna have an art gallery on the bottom floor of my house, right, the people who leave Snoop's house will probably venture over to his next door neighbor, right, and then they'll see artwork that is hanging, and they can bid on that artwork. Right on the second floor of the house. They maybe decide that they're gonna have a virtual party up there, right, and they might charge

people ninety nine cents to be in that party. Right, So rather than having everybody, you can charging. Now you're not sense or now you're not whatever the equivalent is in East, and now you can actually make money for your virtual space. Is this through Facebook or no? Is this through Facebook or not? It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. They're still working on that place. Like the Central Land is a place that a lot of people who used probably the most popular we actually

went into the Central Land. Central Land. Yeah, that's probably this is Is this just for young people? I mean no, my kids. My kids are all into the same. So I'm there to be like multimillionaires about five minutes, okay, because they're about to get into this. Imagine if reasonably shady did a live show, right, and you had six which we're doing by the way you're working towards. And then we have an audience of five hundred people right now.

Imagine that's five hundred ticket buyers and they can consume it. But what if you did it in a virtual space, and now there is no limit, right, you can have five thousand people in there. And if you played the SAME's if you played any of these games, Roadblocks, Fortnite. People want to separate themselves the way they look, and so now you have now you have a space where you see Polo entering the metaverse, right, you see Gucci entering the metaverse. Why because I want to have something

that's unique. I want to look different from that person, and we all don't want to look the same. And so now you see, like, all right, well we'll charge two dollars nine cents, right, those those uh add ons that go inside games that if you're a parent you already know about. You're already doing it. And so like two nine ads up. When you have a million people doing this, Travis Scott decided to do a concert, right, Like he could have twenty people in the arena, or

he could have six million people watching more Fortnite. Yeah, you see the different There's so many different advantages that you have from being in the virtual space, and we've already prepared for it. Like I said, like our kids pay Robucks. This is nothing new to them. It feels like it's new to us. But when I thought about I'm like, wait, this feels like grand theft Auto when I was growing up. And so like the kids, they're already a very trained for very used to it. And

it's not just for young people. The wealthiest people in the world are probably already invested in the land inside of these spaces because they know that this is the next thing that's coming. Yeah for sure, all right, we we have gotten to let you I know, it's just so many questions. But honestly, people were listening. Go go to their podcast, to their YouTube. I've learned so much from you guys. I want to continue learning from you guys.

Super duper appreciate you for real. Now, Absolutely we and nothing nothing better than smart black men. Ain't nothing better than that. And y'all are clearly y'all are clearly that um and you know, Robin actually has been trying to get y'all or us to um collaborate with you guys for a while, and I'm like, I don't I don't know nothing about I was kind of hating on y'all. But I'm so happy we've had this conversation, Like our listeners are gonna be able to pick so much from

what we've talked about and and really learned. And what we've learned, what Robin I've learned is we got to know the numbers of our episodes. Okay, but now, thank you, thank you all, and congratulations on your nomination. For the end of thank you, We appreciate it. Shout out to Nicole for being Nicole said we gotta do it. You gotta get this done, and we said, all right, once we have an opportunity, we're getting done. So shout in the coal in the Black Effect team. Yes, absolutely, Yes,

we appreciate y'all. I look forward to seeing y'all continue to grow, um and I'm going to continue to be inspired. So yes, and when we see y'all in these streets, don't act like y'all don't know us, don't do that. Yes, remember that. Thank you so much, alright, thank you later. Oh my gosh, Roving I have learned so much. I've

actually I kind of felt like an idiot. I feel like I know nothing and these guys are like so super smart I know, I mean, And honestly, the thing that I like, I said, I've been following for a minute, I've learned so much from them. I've been inspired. Um, and it's like I want to do everything because they do provide you with so much information. Um, so I gotta really just prioritize, like, you know, what do I want to focus on from the lessons that I've learned.

But I also, I mean, it's just it's so like guys for real. If you're not hip to them, go check out their podcast. Um. I love learning about money and business and stuff like that. And they taught us have an excess strategy and that that applies to more than just finances. Okay, um, and um, what is your purpose when it comes to like starting a business, figure out what is your purpose? I love that it's like

golden absolutely absolutely, and get your kids started. Honestly, I feel like the vending machine idea for a kid is awesome because kids love snacks, right, so for a kid, that would be so cool for them to actually have a vending machine that they can manage, they can go check it out, they can refill it. Like that's something that you know, you can start getting your kids involved in. And so, you know, check out their vending machine episode. I don't know what number that is, but um, just

so many ways that you can get kids excited about business. Yes, so thank you all so much. This this episode is actually very reasonable. Um, let's never forget to live your life either reasonable or shady, yes or both. By Reasonably Shady is a production of the Black Affect podcast Network.

For more podcasts from our Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and you can connect with us on social media at Robin Dixon, ten, Giselle Briant, and Reasonably Shady