Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your family. It's your girl to make a
Speaker 1: d Mallory, and it's your boy my son. In general,
Speaker 1: we're your host of street politicians the place with me.
Speaker 1: So it is Kwanza. Happy Kwanza, Mr Lennon. We are
Speaker 1: observing and celebrating Kwanza right now. It's during this great
Speaker 1: holiday season and we're getting ready for a new year
Speaker 1: in a few days, a couple more days. Man, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be in a new year. Three. You gotta be
Speaker 1: ready and I'm ready for three. Shout out to rich Life,
Speaker 1: you know, another black owned business. I'm minding my black
Speaker 1: owned business, rich Life, dope. Dope got me feeling like,
Speaker 1: you know, too ready for this new year. So you're
Speaker 1: going to the three still not supporting Nike. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm going into I'm going into thirty three not supporting naked.
Speaker 1: I ain't ad at you. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 1: I won't be buying anything else from Nike. And you
Speaker 1: know the thing about Kwanza and this holiday season, um
Speaker 1: and what quanta means and in fact today is ujima
Speaker 1: the collective work and responsibility. Wow, when you think about that,
Speaker 1: like what it takes for us to come together and
Speaker 1: work for the responsibility of our community. Tomorrow is ujima
Speaker 1: as as you've been telling me. Make sure I say
Speaker 1: it properly, um. And that one is about uh cooperative economics, right,
Speaker 1: So all of this is about us bringing our money together,
Speaker 1: focusing on on our resources, making sure that we as
Speaker 1: a people take care of our own and that's why
Speaker 1: Kwanza is so important. So whoever's out there, maybe you
Speaker 1: don't know about Kwanza. You heard about it, but you
Speaker 1: know it's not on the calendar, and they ain't talking
Speaker 1: about it. That you're a job or whatever, so you've
Speaker 1: not been exposed to it. Maybe your church doesn't really
Speaker 1: observe Quanta. Educate yourself and teach the principles to yourself
Speaker 1: and your children and your family and friends around you,
Speaker 1: because these principles that if we actually follow them, our
Speaker 1: communities would be in a total different place. Um. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So you celebrating Quanta right now?
Speaker 1: My song, I'm all into it this yip man. You know,
Speaker 1: I haven't really gotten into it other years, but this
Speaker 1: year I'm getting into it. So I love it. I
Speaker 1: just love to share and I love just the education
Speaker 1: is is you could tell that it's our heritage, right
Speaker 1: because we we love community, we love family, we love
Speaker 1: things that have us interacting and learning at the same time.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely great to be celebrating quansa this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been my family. I mean, we we've always celebrated
Speaker 1: and observed quanta um. But you're right, as we get older,
Speaker 1: you really do start honing in on what's for you,
Speaker 1: you know, or what you what's your interests, car And
Speaker 1: I love that my grand baby is being raised in
Speaker 1: a family that uh knows and that our parents now
Speaker 1: also are exposed to quanza and they're teaching it. But
Speaker 1: speaking of Tomorrow's principle around uh cooperative economics, Uh you Jama,
Speaker 1: this is critically critically important to us, and it has
Speaker 1: been important throughout this entire year. We've been focused on
Speaker 1: economic development, creating wealth, maintaining wealth, credit and all of
Speaker 1: that and so forth. Today, rather than trying to find
Speaker 1: a new expert, which there's so many, we want to
Speaker 1: go back over some of the episodes we've already done.
Speaker 1: Some of the episodes that you all have already heard
Speaker 1: throughout the year. Maybe you miss one or two. You
Speaker 1: might hear something today that triggers you to go back
Speaker 1: and listen to the episodes. UM, we are really sort
Speaker 1: of putting together a package where you can hear snippets
Speaker 1: of all the individuals and not all, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the individuals that we've had on the show UM
Speaker 1: this year throughout the year of two who talked about
Speaker 1: our financial health and wealth right, our financial wealth and
Speaker 1: what it looks like for us to be a wealthy community.
Speaker 1: So I hope that again it triggers you to say,
Speaker 1: let me go back, listen to the entire interview and
Speaker 1: share it with others, with your friends, your family. You know.
Speaker 1: Earned Alsia obviously is one of those that you will
Speaker 1: hear from. Listen, go sign up listening, go to some
Speaker 1: of their classes online, and there's so many other individuals, uh,
Speaker 1: that you should learn from. Because three, especially with inflation
Speaker 1: and everything the financial crisis that we're in, three needs
Speaker 1: to be about us one doing for ourselves, us being unified.
Speaker 1: Keep talking about it, let's actually put it in the
Speaker 1: practice and about how we turn whatever little bit we
Speaker 1: have into a whole lot so we can create generational
Speaker 1: wealth for our families. It sounds like the plan. So
Speaker 1: with no further ado, we want you to enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1: After this episode, it's going to be the new year,
Speaker 1: you know. So what are you gonna do for Make
Speaker 1: sure that we are creating generational wealth, make sure that
Speaker 1: we are educating each other. Make sure we're invest in
Speaker 1: our money and we're not just throwing our money away.
Speaker 1: This is the time for us to switch and change
Speaker 1: the paradigm. That's why I've been focusing on black owned
Speaker 1: businesses and US investing in US, because if we don't
Speaker 1: invest in us and we don't educate us to nobody will. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: That's if you have a constant downturn for a couple
Speaker 1: of cycles or a couple of quarters. They said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're in a recession. My non traditional take on that
Speaker 1: is that a we most marginalized people have been left
Speaker 1: out of the global and really the domestic wealth building conversation,
Speaker 1: and so we don't really fall into the categories of
Speaker 1: government spending, of export, of you know, big business. When
Speaker 1: I say big business, I'm talking about these trillion dollar businesses.
Speaker 1: We don't really fall into these categories, and so recession
Speaker 1: has very little effect on us personally. It's like one
Speaker 1: of the times in which we can actually just put
Speaker 1: our head down and be like, that's y'all business, because like,
Speaker 1: are y'all in a recession? Are we in a recession?
Speaker 1: Because you may not be in a recession personally, right,
Speaker 1: even though on a larger scale they're saying, oh, we're
Speaker 1: in a recession, but like you know, is eighty percent
Speaker 1: of your wealth wrapped up in government contracts or exporting
Speaker 1: goods or services or even the stock market. Probably not
Speaker 1: to the normal person, So you may not actually be
Speaker 1: experiencing a recession. The real only space that you would
Speaker 1: feel a recession, um, as kind of a marginalized person
Speaker 1: is a in job loss. So to prepare for a recession,
Speaker 1: you should have a candid conversation with your employer and
Speaker 1: find out their intentions. Are you all planning to lay off? Period? Right?
Speaker 1: And then um, if your business, if you're an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: or a small business owner, or just a business owner
Speaker 1: in general, if you have business to business contracts, or
Speaker 1: if you have you know, if your business relies on
Speaker 1: government contracts, you might you will start to feel it, right, Um,
Speaker 1: It's very unlikely that you'll feel it in a housing market.
Speaker 1: Right now, as the housing market declines, people are still
Speaker 1: doing well. Um, and so it's only like those two
Speaker 1: areas that personally people will likely feel a recession losing
Speaker 1: a job, which we don't know because it hasn't the
Speaker 1: huge layoffs has haven't happened. Right, we have the resignation,
Speaker 1: but the huge layoff situation hasn't happened, and COVID prepared
Speaker 1: us for that. We're still in survival mode. So when
Speaker 1: people got laid off during COVID, a lot of people
Speaker 1: turned the entrepreneurship and things like that, and so COVID
Speaker 1: kind of prepared us for this moment. And so it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be such a slap in the face as
Speaker 1: you know it would have been if you know, pre
Speaker 1: COVID era. When I hear main media talk about recession,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys are feeling it. You guys like,
Speaker 1: when y'all are going through it, it's a damn recession.
Speaker 1: When we're going through it is laziness, Like make it
Speaker 1: makes sense that when the math a math and for
Speaker 1: y'all is a damn global crisis. But the math have
Speaker 1: not been math and for us for a long time,
Speaker 1: and we've been stuck in the survival mode. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it do what to do regardless because we
Speaker 1: have no options. You know, we're gonna stay in that you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna stay thriving our version of riving, whatever our
Speaker 1: version of thriving is, We're going to stay there while
Speaker 1: they are up in arms and trying to push their
Speaker 1: fear on us. Let them have their fear, and we're
Speaker 1: just gonna just continue to do what we've been doing.
Speaker 1: My best friend told me, look, why don't you go
Speaker 1: get into the mortgage business and be a loan officer.
Speaker 1: I said, what the hell is that people want to
Speaker 1: buy a house, they need a loan, and the loan
Speaker 1: officers doing who gets them alan? So I looked in
Speaker 1: the paper. This is before you can go on the
Speaker 1: internet and look for jobs like I really want in
Speaker 1: the daily news. And I used to do customer service jobs.
Speaker 1: I used to do salesman jobs, and I saw all
Speaker 1: these jobs for loan officers and I'm like, damn, I
Speaker 1: never noticed this. So I just picked the first three
Speaker 1: companies that was close to my house, and I went
Speaker 1: on interviews and I got hired, and I've been doing
Speaker 1: it ever since. So I didn't know what the loan
Speaker 1: was when I first got in the business. No one
Speaker 1: took teaches us about homeownership, no one teaches us about credit.
Speaker 1: So I never thought this this was a fail that
Speaker 1: you can apply for. I thought this was something only
Speaker 1: the banker doing. You need to have a master's degreed
Speaker 1: to wor in quote unquote banking. Everybody should explore getting
Speaker 1: their real estate license or getting their loan officer license
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's not expensive, first and foremost right
Speaker 1: to get your loan officer license may cause you five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks if that UM, you have to take a
Speaker 1: twenty five hour class, you pass that class, then you
Speaker 1: pass the federal exam, and then you can submit your
Speaker 1: application UM to get up your license. But then you
Speaker 1: have to get sponsored by a bank UM. And there's
Speaker 1: plenty of banks out here, mortgage broker companies out here
Speaker 1: that will take a chance with someone who wants to
Speaker 1: learn the business, so it doesn't take too much time.
Speaker 1: And to get your real estate license, I think it's
Speaker 1: seventy hours that you have to commit to and that's
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred bucks as well. And you see
Speaker 1: there's thousands of people with real estate licenses right, Um,
Speaker 1: but anybody can get licensed, right, that's the easy part.
Speaker 1: I think To actually now perform and do well, let
Speaker 1: your job and become successful, you have to dedicate the
Speaker 1: time to educate yourself. You gotta take the time to learn.
Speaker 1: You gotta study your guidelines because you're element people's livelihood.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with their life and you don't want to
Speaker 1: mess nobody up. So once you get your license is
Speaker 1: one thing. But I think self education. You know Google,
Speaker 1: Google's your best friend, YouTube University. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of paid courses and things of that nature where
Speaker 1: you can um deepen your knowledge base of this business
Speaker 1: to go out there and be successful. So how did
Speaker 1: you also at some point realize that you needed to
Speaker 1: learn about discrimination like redlining and all of that within
Speaker 1: the industry as well, so that you could help to
Speaker 1: overcome the barriers that black and brown people face when
Speaker 1: they go for mortgages. To be honest, keep it a
Speaker 1: bunk with you guys. Know, in the beginning, again, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make money. That's all I cared about.
Speaker 1: And you know the wild cowboy days is when I
Speaker 1: came in this business to subpime crisis right, you needed
Speaker 1: a post to get alone at that time. So for
Speaker 1: me and I was taught by ex Wall Street guys
Speaker 1: gods will I kicked off a Wall Street and they
Speaker 1: could just go on the mortgage business because there was
Speaker 1: no regulation. You didn't need a license at that time.
Speaker 1: So we were taught. When I came in and I
Speaker 1: was taught by savages to be honest with you. So
Speaker 1: everybody was a dollar sign if I didn't care who
Speaker 1: you were. My thing is how much money can I
Speaker 1: make off the deal? Um. But when the market started crashing,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the education in the background to understand
Speaker 1: what I was doing was actually wrong. Right, and karma
Speaker 1: has no expiration date. I lost everything going to crash.
Speaker 1: I lost property, I lost everything. I even lost my
Speaker 1: mentor right. Um. At one point of time, I wanted
Speaker 1: to kill myself because my existence at that time was
Speaker 1: tied to its materialistic items. You know, you come from
Speaker 1: the hood, you don't have no money. Then you're making
Speaker 1: all this money buying cause you're buying bottles, you're going out,
Speaker 1: and then when you can't do it no more, it's like, damn,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell is going on? I'm a loser? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a loser now, right, So when I lost everything,
Speaker 1: that was probably the best thing that ever happened to
Speaker 1: me because it made me sit down and kind of
Speaker 1: learn the business. So when I when I got my
Speaker 1: I'm back, right, I started learning about redlawn, and I
Speaker 1: started learning about discriminating. I started learning like, damn, how
Speaker 1: could they even allow us to do these type of loans,
Speaker 1: especially to people that look like us, knowing damn, well,
Speaker 1: we don't even have the financial education. And I am
Speaker 1: a person sitting here originating these loans and I don't
Speaker 1: even have the education. I'm not even that qualified to
Speaker 1: give the loans that I was given, right, Um, So
Speaker 1: that's what really made me say, you know what, I
Speaker 1: gotta do this business different. I gotta learn how to
Speaker 1: deepen a relationship with the person. I gotta learn how
Speaker 1: to um value their needs because it's not about the
Speaker 1: money that I'm gonna make, It's about if I help
Speaker 1: you reach your goals, the money is going to come.
Speaker 1: So that's when I really started paying attention to the
Speaker 1: history and things of that nature and started realizing the
Speaker 1: wealth gap that our community has a real estate. And
Speaker 1: now that's why you guys, when I'm talking about now
Speaker 1: and stuff I was talking about ten years ago, just
Speaker 1: to my client base of people who knew me, especially
Speaker 1: to black people, because now I'm dealing with people who
Speaker 1: are affluent. Used to work for Chase, and I was
Speaker 1: on Wall Street, so I'm dealing with hedge fund guys
Speaker 1: and that's not a third And I'm seeing how they're
Speaker 1: structuring their loans and their business, and I see how
Speaker 1: when my people come in, they're not thinking about having
Speaker 1: all these different trust and things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: I started taking the information I was learning on Wall
Speaker 1: Street and just passing it down to my people, and
Speaker 1: they still couldn't really understand what I was saying, but
Speaker 1: I still was like I was talking about it. So
Speaker 1: the discrimination and in our um time that we've been
Speaker 1: on earth black people is just ridiculous, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to lending like the red line. And I mean
Speaker 1: even look at the deeds back in the day. You know,
Speaker 1: in the sixties and the fifties and the sixties, and
Speaker 1: deeds were written in that people of color couldn't buy
Speaker 1: in these areas, like and it was perfectly legal, like
Speaker 1: it It's crazy once you start doing the history. So
Speaker 1: I'm a homeownership advocate. I tell my people, look, I'm
Speaker 1: okare if you rent, but you need to have a
Speaker 1: plan to go out there and buy something, because there's
Speaker 1: people that look like us that fought for us to
Speaker 1: get to the point to where we are today to
Speaker 1: be about to go out here and own and buy.
Speaker 1: You know, in the fifties and sixties they couldn't do
Speaker 1: it as freely as we are. So why are we
Speaker 1: sitting here not pushing ourselves to go out here and
Speaker 1: on If we think about numbers, on average, the black
Speaker 1: American had, the black American who has student loans has
Speaker 1: about fifty thou dollars and student loans, whereas their white
Speaker 1: our right counterparts only have about ten thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like find our student loan forgiveness,
Speaker 1: I find the lack of empathy and a lot of
Speaker 1: people because they just don't realize the importance of what
Speaker 1: college played in the black community. For so many we
Speaker 1: were taught that that was the only way that we'll
Speaker 1: be able to advanced socially, socially, socialdio economically. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have any other choices. It was either go
Speaker 1: to college, go to the military or stay in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: which was not desirable to a lot of us. So
Speaker 1: school was you know, forced down our throat, be be
Speaker 1: down our throats. And then so many people realize that
Speaker 1: this American dream that we were promised as it pretending
Speaker 1: to go to school, you know, pay your taxes, get married,
Speaker 1: whatever it's not, it doesn't really pan out like that.
Speaker 1: So now they're stuck with mountains of debt of people
Speaker 1: who have student loans doesn't even have a degree. So
Speaker 1: what do you think of one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 1: that people make for credit, not building it and not
Speaker 1: having a credit card. I can look at a thousand
Speaker 1: credit reports or a thousand people who have under a
Speaker 1: six hundred credit score. It is ninetent of the time
Speaker 1: they either do not have a credit card or they're
Speaker 1: utilizing their current credit cards too heavily. They go by
Speaker 1: rule that we're taught to, you know, stay under for
Speaker 1: your credit cards. That can't be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: That will keep your credit score stagnant. Credit cards are
Speaker 1: so powerful to your credit profile that if you just
Speaker 1: reduce your utilization, your usage to under ten percent, your
Speaker 1: credit score will literally skyrocket. So let me break it
Speaker 1: down just for the art and say that are too important.
Speaker 1: There are new important dates for every credit card that
Speaker 1: you have, so you you need to just get a
Speaker 1: spresheet to write down these two important dates. Write down
Speaker 1: your due date, and then write down your statement date. Again,
Speaker 1: your due date is when and you have to take
Speaker 1: care of at least your minimum payments so that you
Speaker 1: can avoid in late fees or any late payments. Right.
Speaker 1: The due date is really for your bank to see
Speaker 1: how much interest that they can legally charge you, because
Speaker 1: anything that you carry over past or do date you
Speaker 1: are paid, you have to pay interest on. Right. So
Speaker 1: your statement date again is when you're building cycle closes,
Speaker 1: So any payments you make after that point, or anything
Speaker 1: that you spend after that point is on your next
Speaker 1: building cycle. Right, So what you need to do, because
Speaker 1: it takes about two or three days to post any
Speaker 1: payment for most credit cards, just to be safe, I
Speaker 1: would always recommend to lower your balance below tem per
Speaker 1: cent at least three days before your statement date, like
Speaker 1: make sure you pay that because again some banks will
Speaker 1: take about two or three days for the payments to post.
Speaker 1: Any pending charges will go on your next building cycle
Speaker 1: or any pending payments will go towards your next building cycle.
Speaker 1: So if you don't catch it at least two or
Speaker 1: three days in advance, you may miss this payment of
Speaker 1: the statement date. Statement date, and where do you find
Speaker 1: your statement? And you all you have to do is
Speaker 1: look on your credit card statement and look at the day,
Speaker 1: the cycle date, the cycle end, the date, so they'll
Speaker 1: have a span of thirty days wherever whatever month you're in,
Speaker 1: it will say like this building cycle is from July
Speaker 1: seven to August eight. August eighth will be your statement date.
Speaker 1: I'm paying on August fifth or six, right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: two business days in events to give your time to post.
Speaker 1: Just so you're safe, do not spend anything on your
Speaker 1: credit card the day before your statement date or your
Speaker 1: statement date. So there's two days and in every month
Speaker 1: that you got you you should not spend on the
Speaker 1: seventh of August and the eighth of boy, don't spend anything.
Speaker 1: Don't spend anything. Um Now, the next day you can
Speaker 1: run your credit card to the absolute limit and as
Speaker 1: long as you pay it back by the statement date,
Speaker 1: you your credit report will allays look like you are
Speaker 1: the most responsible consumer ever. That is the trick. Do
Speaker 1: that if you do that, or if you do that,
Speaker 1: if you can't trustatement dates before they post next um,
Speaker 1: you'll see that your your score, especially because it's been stagnant,
Speaker 1: you will see that you'll get a few points. You'll
Speaker 1: get a few points depending on what your utimization is.
Speaker 1: Now let's saying if it's around thirty. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: for the average person, if they lower it from thirty
Speaker 1: to ten percent. You know, of course it depends on
Speaker 1: what else they have on their credit profile, but they
Speaker 1: can be they can be up to thirty points alone,
Speaker 1: depending on, like I said, other factors of your credit report.
Speaker 1: But it's a really big difference if you don't have credit,
Speaker 1: Like if you only have maybe one or two credit cards,
Speaker 1: that's gonna make a huge difference in your credit profile.
Speaker 1: For a long time, you know, people were making bad
Speaker 1: decisions because they just wasn't fully educated. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you think that you have to you know,
Speaker 1: sell drugs or you have to you know, risk your
Speaker 1: life to make some money. But then you realize that
Speaker 1: you can actually make more money by doing something legal.
Speaker 1: It might take a little bit longer, but if you
Speaker 1: had the information beforehand, then you might still be alive
Speaker 1: or you might not be doing a twenty five year
Speaker 1: prison sentence. So I think it's like life of death
Speaker 1: financial literacy. Yeah, I agree, man, it's it's a life
Speaker 1: of death situation, right. The information can actually free you
Speaker 1: from the situation that you could put yourself in potentially
Speaker 1: if you don't have it. That's kind of what we
Speaker 1: started with it. And it's funny because you kind of said, like,
Speaker 1: it's not hip hop. For us, it was hip hop,
Speaker 1: and it was like we were hearing messages in the
Speaker 1: music and saying, like, that's a lesson right there. So
Speaker 1: it reminded me of the first lesson that we ever did.
Speaker 1: It was we used jay Z and when he said
Speaker 1: all black Scott is sports entertainment, it was like we
Speaker 1: really sat sat with that, like is that true? Like
Speaker 1: if we look at all the people we ever looked
Speaker 1: up to and if they were wealthy, it always came
Speaker 1: from sports entertainment. And so that was a mission. But
Speaker 1: there's always something inside the music that we were like,
Speaker 1: all right, that can be a gateway. We know there's
Speaker 1: something that is intense enchanted about the music because the
Speaker 1: kids listen to it, and so if they're listening to it.
Speaker 1: Let's find something that we can actually teach from. And
Speaker 1: so when we heard Beyonce, they say like pay me
Speaker 1: and equity. All right, there goes a lesson, and then
Speaker 1: let's teach about what equally is. When little Baby says
Speaker 1: like I made a miliar, I can't chill yet, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lesson here, right, he's delaying his gratification for
Speaker 1: a later time. And so we always found the music
Speaker 1: as something that would be the candy, right, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna put the medicine inside of it where we're gonna
Speaker 1: actually teach from those that positions. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: like we kind of produ octsels on like we're gonna
Speaker 1: cover so many topics that you can find something that
Speaker 1: you're gonna be interested in. Like for so long, like
Speaker 1: I said, even at J Line one, it was like sports, entertainment,
Speaker 1: it was like those are the things we're gonna be.
Speaker 1: That's it. Like we're gonna be a rapper, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be in some form of entertainment, or we're gonna play sports.
Speaker 1: And so now when we bring on experts and people
Speaker 1: who are familiar in other different fields, it's like all right, well,
Speaker 1: I never thought I could own a truck and company,
Speaker 1: but that seems interesting. Or you know what, I never
Speaker 1: thought that airbnb could be a viable business. That seems interesting.
Speaker 1: And so we become like almost a gumbled super different
Speaker 1: different opportunities, and you know, we kind of live by
Speaker 1: that thing, right, and in order to be something, you
Speaker 1: gotta see it. And so we're gonna put as many
Speaker 1: people that look like us in these positions, but tell you, like, yo,
Speaker 1: you can do this. I'm doing it. Here's the steps.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that you said,
Speaker 1: like from generation generation, we watch people do things, but
Speaker 1: we never knew how. Right, when we're talking about student
Speaker 1: loans and we're talking about debt, and we're talking about interests,
Speaker 1: we're talking about closigners. All these terms are unfamiliar to
Speaker 1: the fourteen year old here, but in three years they
Speaker 1: need to know it, and so we want to keep
Speaker 1: their their minds shop to like, Yo, if you want
Speaker 1: to go that route, here's what you need to know.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to go that route, here are
Speaker 1: like a million different options that also can be viable
Speaker 1: for you in the future. That's okay. So what is cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: What is like, what is it in the nutshell? What
Speaker 1: is cryptocurrency in the nutshep, Yeah, I mean crypto. It
Speaker 1: comes in many different forms, so I'll go through some
Speaker 1: different ones, but I think the most popular, I definitely
Speaker 1: know the most popular one is Bitcoin, and that's the
Speaker 1: that's the biggest cryptocurrency and the one that most people
Speaker 1: kind of you know, recognize and and know about or
Speaker 1: at least they've heard about to become you know, a
Speaker 1: phenomenon um. But I think the word currency is a
Speaker 1: little misleading because currency, in order it has to have
Speaker 1: some some traits, right, Where a currency is usually has
Speaker 1: some level of stability, um. And a currency is something
Speaker 1: that you actually exchange for some level of you know,
Speaker 1: value or you know, you you buy some things things
Speaker 1: that nature, just like a bartering system, where with bitcoin
Speaker 1: and a lot of other cryptocurrencies, that's not really the case.
Speaker 1: It's more so of a store of value, more comparable
Speaker 1: to like goal, but a lot more volatile, meaning, Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to use something as currency when
Speaker 1: the price fluctuates so crazy. So it's like sixty one
Speaker 1: week and then next week is forty, right, so you
Speaker 1: can't really use that kind of as currency because it's
Speaker 1: like if if my haircut is gonna be forty dollars,
Speaker 1: I gotta be able to pay forty dollars. I can't
Speaker 1: pay forty dollars and then next day to hair becuse
Speaker 1: it's gonna be sixty five dollars because the price of
Speaker 1: the value is going up and down. So and then also,
Speaker 1: you know bitcoin started at less than a dollar and
Speaker 1: has peaked at sixty dollars, right, So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: been the best return on your investment out of like
Speaker 1: any asset class in the last fifteen years. So being
Speaker 1: that most people are looking at it as an investment,
Speaker 1: so they're not really trading it for or using it
Speaker 1: as currency, like I'm not gonna give you bitcoin for
Speaker 1: a burger if I think that this is gonna quadruple
Speaker 1: in value over the next five years. So the word
Speaker 1: currency is a little misleading, I think when you start
Speaker 1: to look at it more of like digital gold. Um,
Speaker 1: that's something that you know, people can kind of wrap
Speaker 1: their heads around a little bit easier because we look
Speaker 1: at gold and gold really has and people say like, well,
Speaker 1: crypto has no value, but nothing really has value other
Speaker 1: than what we believe it has value, right, Like even gold, um, gold, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has some uses where you can actually use gold,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, most people are kind of
Speaker 1: just hoarding gold. And it's just always been something that
Speaker 1: has been valuable since you know, thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: and it has grown up in value. So we place
Speaker 1: value in gold. We wear gold, so people think that
Speaker 1: gold is valuable. But the minute that people really think
Speaker 1: that gold has no value, then goal is not gonna
Speaker 1: be valuable anymore. But it's just been valuable for so
Speaker 1: long that it's been like a staple store of value.
Speaker 1: So you put you know, you can have gold and
Speaker 1: story and then it goes up over the course of time,
Speaker 1: where bitcoin is kind of like the same thing. I
Speaker 1: was younger. You know my aunt, she's um, she's from Maryland.
Speaker 1: She had a bunch of salons. She was like that
Speaker 1: aunt that was like flying, you know, And I'm like, damn,
Speaker 1: she got a bunch of salons. She got all this money,
Speaker 1: and I knew that. She went to prison for a
Speaker 1: credit card fraud. Right. She wrote a book called Charge
Speaker 1: It to the Game. Right, I've read the book. I
Speaker 1: never said this anywhere else. She don't even know this.
Speaker 1: I've read the book and I was like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is crazy, Like she was given detail, but not too
Speaker 1: much detail. So I went on um the dark Web
Speaker 1: and I started researching. I found out all the information
Speaker 1: I needed, and I found the person who basically I
Speaker 1: could buy the tracks from. The track has your six
Speaker 1: team digit card number, your exploration, did your name, all
Speaker 1: of your information. It's like it's like it's like encoded
Speaker 1: until like these codes. So what I would do is
Speaker 1: there's a machine that you have, you connected to your computer,
Speaker 1: and you basically transferred that information onto the credit card
Speaker 1: you have to edit. Any card that has a strip
Speaker 1: on it could be transferred. Could be a hotel key,
Speaker 1: as long as it have like a black magnetic strip
Speaker 1: on the back of it, it could be transferred. That
Speaker 1: information could be transferred to the card and you could
Speaker 1: basically use it anywhere. So customs basically stopped the package
Speaker 1: that was coming to me. And when they stopped the package,
Speaker 1: they opened it and they seen what was in it.
Speaker 1: They sealed it back and sent it to me. So
Speaker 1: when they sent it to me, I didn't know it
Speaker 1: got stopped and they just started following me from there.
Speaker 1: They was following me for six months. How did credit
Speaker 1: repair become the transition? And then also have you when
Speaker 1: you went to court the first time, did you ever
Speaker 1: have to face any of the individuals that you had frauded? No, Okay,
Speaker 1: it was so many, but no, I'm so happy I
Speaker 1: have it to because you know, after knowing what this is,
Speaker 1: this is an issue that happened to me when I
Speaker 1: was in prison. I called home to my grandmother and
Speaker 1: she was about seventy at this time. Now she's like, baby,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm I'm so sad. Someone used my
Speaker 1: credit card and I've been fighting with the bank for
Speaker 1: the past six months and right now I have no money.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't have anything. You know, they took
Speaker 1: uh seventeen thousand dollars from me, and you know I
Speaker 1: don't have no money. The bank has given me a
Speaker 1: hard time returning the money. I'm like, real, yo, So
Speaker 1: that hey home, I was like, oh my god, like
Speaker 1: they're real people. Yeah. When she spoke to me and
Speaker 1: told me that, I was like, Wow, this came at
Speaker 1: the right time. This actually came during the time I
Speaker 1: said I need to do this five year plan because
Speaker 1: this is what I'm a following I got that, I
Speaker 1: called home and that's the that was the conversation, Like
Speaker 1: that was confirmation for me. So you got into credit repair? Yes,
Speaker 1: So when I came home, the transition wasn't easy, you
Speaker 1: know it was. It was hard, um, especially coming from
Speaker 1: having so much, you know, at so young, and then
Speaker 1: you coming home and you have to like rely on
Speaker 1: people and you know, so coming home, I was like,
Speaker 1: the first thing I need to do is fix my credit.
Speaker 1: I learned about credit while I was in prison. I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about credit, you know. I learned how
Speaker 1: important credit was. I got a bunch of credit for
Speaker 1: dummy books. But at that time, it wasn't for me
Speaker 1: to fix people. Credit was for me to work on
Speaker 1: my credit. Because I said, what I'll do is, you know,
Speaker 1: work on my credit and use that to start my
Speaker 1: hair company or use that to start whatever company it
Speaker 1: is that I want to do. So when I came
Speaker 1: came home, I did that, worked on my credit, got
Speaker 1: a bunch of credit cards, and how we started doing
Speaker 1: credit repair was um. I came home about I want
Speaker 1: to say, a year before Aisha, and when she came
Speaker 1: home one day, she was um. She had a bunch
Speaker 1: of Western Union papers like sheets to send out money mind,
Speaker 1: and she just came home. She didn't have no money.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, Aisha, what are you doing. She's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't have money, but I'm just sending
Speaker 1: the girls thirty dollars each because I promised that to them.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know, but you don't have it, like
Speaker 1: you gotta give yourself together first and then you could
Speaker 1: give you know, because you're taken from yourself. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I know, but I promised them. I'm like, so listen,
Speaker 1: you taught me how to fix she told me how
Speaker 1: to fix my credit. Actually, when I came home, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you told me how to fix my credit. Why don't
Speaker 1: we teach fix the girl's credit that's coming home because
Speaker 1: these girls are about to come home. It was like
Speaker 1: six of them, they're about to come home. And said,
Speaker 1: why don't we fix their credit to give them something
Speaker 1: for when they come home. Because it was extremely hard
Speaker 1: for me to come home to um, you know, adapt
Speaker 1: back into society, not having the things that I used
Speaker 1: to have. But my credit is really what helped me.
Speaker 1: Because I got that first credit card for ten thousand,
Speaker 1: I was able to use that and flip it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, maybe they could do the same thing.
Speaker 1: So this dirty dollars is cool for now, but let's
Speaker 1: give them something that's longevity, you know. So we fixed
Speaker 1: their credit. With six of them, we fixed their credit.
Speaker 1: We sent them their credit report. They was so happy.
Speaker 1: One of the girls actually came home opened up a
Speaker 1: host fall like she's doing really well. Other ones do
Speaker 1: lashes and the other one has a real estate company.
Speaker 1: So they think us even to this day because we
Speaker 1: helped them while they were in prison. But I knew
Speaker 1: how hard it was for me coming home, so I
Speaker 1: wanted to do anything to help somebody because I wish
Speaker 1: I had that, you know what I mean. So, um,
Speaker 1: the girls told their husbands, told their sisters, brothers, cousins.
Speaker 1: So everybody just started calling us. This is before we
Speaker 1: even had a credit repair company. We didn't even think
Speaker 1: to do credit repair, like, we were just doing it
Speaker 1: to help them and to help us sells and people
Speaker 1: just was calling us to fix step credit and we
Speaker 1: started like that and it just be claimed came crazy.
Speaker 1: Before we even posted it on Instagram. We were getting
Speaker 1: calls and we just use that as our money. We
Speaker 1: was like, okay, well, this is a full flash company,
Speaker 1: like let's do it. So. Content suppression is when um,
Speaker 1: you post something and it's hidden from a significant portion
Speaker 1: of people for whatever reason. One messaging might not be
Speaker 1: something that the platform wants to represent. And I explained
Speaker 1: this by by way of like people complain about content
Speaker 1: suppression on the platform like Facebook or Instagram, but that
Speaker 1: platform is be holding to the brands that pay them.
Speaker 1: So hypothetically speaking, and if I'm a very conservative brand
Speaker 1: and I want to market whatever I'm paying Facebook or
Speaker 1: Instagram for and I'm about to spend ten million dollars
Speaker 1: in ads, and I go to Facebook and say I
Speaker 1: don't want any Black Lives Matter content or any LGBTQ
Speaker 1: content showing next to my post because it's wasting my money.
Speaker 1: And what do you think Facebook and Instagram gonna do.
Speaker 1: They're gonna turn down the gay They're gonna turn down
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter. After that ad runs, they'll turn
Speaker 1: it back up. So that's the reason why they do that.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're gonna get our money and then we're
Speaker 1: just gonna hide your content for a day or two
Speaker 1: or collective collectively speaking, if there's a message that's being
Speaker 1: said that the platform, you know that most of the
Speaker 1: people that are on the platform may or may not
Speaker 1: agree with they'll hide it, they'll suppress it, they'll push
Speaker 1: it down. And that affects a lot of people's ability
Speaker 1: to get their message out and in some instances monetized
Speaker 1: based on what the platform considers appropriate. I feel that
Speaker 1: who better to actually have equity in the startup and
Speaker 1: the people that make it popular. Right. Um. I witnessed
Speaker 1: you know, Clubhouse go from a hundred million dollar evaluated
Speaker 1: company to a four billion dollar evaluated company simply by
Speaker 1: the black community and the entertainment community coming on the
Speaker 1: platform and having conversation after conversation that was you know,
Speaker 1: screen recording and we have viral and no one got
Speaker 1: to own a piece of the company that contributed to
Speaker 1: all of those conversations. Let me, let me, let me
Speaker 1: tap into something that I think is extremely in point
Speaker 1: right about black culture. Right, and this is what I
Speaker 1: say about black black people in African American people in
Speaker 1: the United States of America. We are the youngest and
Speaker 1: smallest culture group on planet Earth. Right, were about six
Speaker 1: hundred years old. We're very very small, but we're the
Speaker 1: most influential globally. And so what happens with that is
Speaker 1: we create and innovate at a speed and the pace
Speaker 1: that we don't even realize we're making like industries off
Speaker 1: of our invention. I tell everybody this, this, this, these
Speaker 1: these two examples that are very relevant. Um the moment
Speaker 1: that Grandmaster Flash DJ on two turn turntables and a
Speaker 1: mixer and luke the beat, somebody should have went to
Speaker 1: him and said, do not show a living soul what
Speaker 1: you just showed me. Let's go figure out how to
Speaker 1: make record players. Because fast forward two thousand twenty two,
Speaker 1: pioneers and techniques and and and serados of the world
Speaker 1: owned DJ culture off his invention. We we we created
Speaker 1: the culture, but we don't own the infrastructure. Right. That
Speaker 1: creates an enormous amount of revenue for a company. Right.
Speaker 1: And then the same example, but with like automobiles right
Speaker 1: to pent my Ride era, we got led lights and cars,
Speaker 1: star ceilings, TVs and the head rest, amazing sound systems, rims.
Speaker 1: Every luxury car in existence has all of those amenities now,
Speaker 1: but we don't own afford, we don't own a Chevy,
Speaker 1: we don't own any of those. And then use that
Speaker 1: in an example with social media. We give our clap
Speaker 1: backs to Twitter, our dances to TikTok, our conversation to Clubhouse,
Speaker 1: our skits, and all our comedy to Instagram. And we
Speaker 1: don't own Facebook. We don't own Clubhouse, we don't own Twitter,
Speaker 1: we don't own any of these platforms. So with fan
Speaker 1: base collectively, any person that's on social media should have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to own a part of a social media
Speaker 1: platform that they use, especially the black community, because when
Speaker 1: this whole Black Lives Matter era came upon us, a
Speaker 1: lot of corporations promised to do a lot of great things. Right,
Speaker 1: So think about the eighties six billion dollars and Facebook
Speaker 1: made an ad revenue off a lot of the culture
Speaker 1: and content that African American people contributed to that to
Speaker 1: that platform. Now go to Facebook and ask them to
Speaker 1: take six billion dollars and put it directly in the hood.
Speaker 1: Tell them to tell them to put six billion dollars
Speaker 1: in Chicago right or in Atlanta, right in the hood
Speaker 1: with these young kids. They're gonna say, get out of here.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you miss any
Speaker 1: of those episodes, make sure you go back and watch
Speaker 1: before the New Year. Comes in. Make sure that you
Speaker 1: binge watch all of the Street Politicians. We had so
Speaker 1: many great guests throughout the years, and some of you
Speaker 1: just got here fans, some of you've been here from
Speaker 1: the beginning. Go go listen to your old favorite episode.
Speaker 1: So go catch up on an episode that you've never
Speaker 1: seen before. But we appreciate you. Hope you have a
Speaker 1: beautiful year. We are the number one podcast on my
Speaker 1: son This is Ingals Goals. I keep telling you we
Speaker 1: already there. I don't know what would you listen to me?
Speaker 1: We're the number one podcast. I'm not gonna always be
Speaker 1: right to me. It's not gonna always be on, but
Speaker 1: we will both always and I mean always be authentic.
Speaker 1: Here we come. Happy New Year. Peace. Listen to Street
Speaker 1: Politicians on the Black Effect Network on I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and catch us every single Wednesday for the video version
Speaker 1: of Street Politicians or I Women Dot Tv.