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Speaker 2: All right, guys, welcome back, Earn your Lisha. This is
Speaker 2: an episode that could have happened five times.
Speaker 3: Let's start this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we finally got it done. But before we start,
Speaker 2: by the time you guys hear this, three days four
Speaker 2: days before the Big, the Big, the Big one. We
Speaker 2: come into Philadelphia March fourteenth. March fifteenth, we have a
Speaker 2: live podcast on the fourteenth and that's gonna be with
Speaker 2: our brother Wallow two six seven legend himself, Greg Parker,
Speaker 2: a big business Neil Maya Davis amazing and just added
Speaker 2: to the bill. Just added to the bill, John hen
Speaker 2: reach out brother got John. Yes, and our guest today.
Speaker 3: Somebody familiar to that flyer.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, we're gonna we're gonna give him a full introduction.
Speaker 3: Let's do it right.
Speaker 2: We're gonna do it right. So Sunday, Sunday we have
Speaker 2: our workshop and the workshop is going to be vending
Speaker 2: Biza Edwards, Alex good Energy, Yeah, the King of Trucking
Speaker 2: and the tar Bla and I used to shell the
Speaker 2: They're gonna with a tag team real Estate and you're
Speaker 2: gonna talk about how to build a million dollar real
Speaker 2: estate portfolio starting with nothing. So it's crazy. The live
Speaker 2: podcast open bar caters, it's a networking event. After it's
Speaker 2: a whole.
Speaker 3: Yea e y L rules man, drink responsibly, act accordingly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So all the information is on e
Speaker 2: y L Experience dot com. Like I said, you got
Speaker 2: a couple of days to get tickets, don't play yourself,
Speaker 2: don't miss out on this. Can't wait to touch the town.
Speaker 2: So all right, Philadelphia, We'll see you. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: we got that. We gotta announce the young legend that
Speaker 2: we got in the building today. Annie sanal s y'all
Speaker 2: get it. I get nervous because people mess up my
Speaker 2: name so much that I've become very sensitive to that.
Speaker 2: But yes, so this is actually a while in the making.
Speaker 2: As I said, we we had a schedule for a
Speaker 2: few different times and we had to go out of
Speaker 2: town and a lot of stuff came up. I think weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but we here, we here, So I'll give the bad story.
Speaker 2: So did everything from Music started a record label when
Speaker 2: he was in high school, inspired by jay Z, which
Speaker 2: fits right in the podcast. As we mentioned, we mentioned
Speaker 2: Jay all the time. He's currently a real estate investor
Speaker 2: real estate in Jersey and Philly. Then he also has
Speaker 2: a digital marketing agency where he's worked with Hillary Clinton
Speaker 2: g r C. That's pretty big, extremely big. He has
Speaker 2: one of the hottest tea is it is it okay
Speaker 2: to call it the tea Yeah Chai Tea Shops in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: which is blowing up anything I'm missing.
Speaker 3: We got the idea exchange idea exchane.
Speaker 4: People come together with ideas and find out how to
Speaker 4: make them turn turn them into businesses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's a syal serial entrepreneurs. The term gets
Speaker 2: thrown around. And he's only thirty one years old, so.
Speaker 3: The take it put out at high sixteen, right, so.
Speaker 2: The term the term gets thrown around, very likely, But
Speaker 2: he's a serial entrepreneur. So we got a lot of
Speaker 2: things that we need to talk about in this So
Speaker 2: first and foremo, so thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: Appreciate it, Appreciate you for real. This is this is exciting,
Speaker 5: and we talked about this for so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, for sure. So all right, so let's
Speaker 2: jump right into it. So you start your first business
Speaker 2: in the music business as a record label when you're
Speaker 2: in high school. But so your parents are from India, right,
Speaker 2: You're of Indian descent and they moved to this country
Speaker 2: like right when you're born. Right, Yeah, So okay, so
Speaker 2: you are an Indian kid growing up in Boston. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you fell in love with hip hop music and
Speaker 2: then you decided to start a record label because you're
Speaker 2: inspired by Jay Z and Rockefeller's that correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a little bit. It's so the funny thing about
Speaker 5: entrepreneurship now, it's like the sexiest thing. You know, everybody's
Speaker 5: trying to get into it, and for me, like my
Speaker 5: origins with entrepreneurship, we're not sexy at all. And what
Speaker 5: it was growing up as an immigrant kid, you know,
Speaker 5: watching your parents always get laid off or always be
Speaker 5: at the victim of the job market, never being in
Speaker 5: control of their own scenario. I'm talking about like eight, ten,
Speaker 5: twelve years old. I knew that whatever I was gonna do,
Speaker 5: I was always gonna be owning that or creating a
Speaker 5: future for myself where I would never have to think
Speaker 5: about how do I put food on my family's plate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you mentionined that there's a few Christmases where, yeah,
Speaker 4: your dad came home like job's done.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I talk about it a lot because it's important
Speaker 5: for me to contextualize my story, you know, like now,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm on tour with my artist or you know,
Speaker 5: doing a podcast with people like y'all, and it's all
Speaker 5: fun and games. But you know, this started from like
Speaker 5: a very not I want to say, out of desperation,
Speaker 5: but it started out of like that hopelessness that you
Speaker 5: feel when you can't take care of your family. And
Speaker 5: so growing up, you know, as a brown kid, you're
Speaker 5: already feeling like an outsider because growing up in the nineties,
Speaker 5: we had no reference point. It was I pull on
Speaker 5: the Simpsons. We could laugh about it, but you know,
Speaker 5: on the other side of it, I was like, damn,
Speaker 5: this can't be life. This is literally and you know,
Speaker 5: I think hip hop music and hip hop culture for
Speaker 5: the first time I was able to see a person
Speaker 5: of color in a position of ownership, you know, and
Speaker 5: watching Jay how he ran up the score, you know,
Speaker 5: in the nineties and the two thousands, like that MTV
Speaker 5: diary that he did, if you remember that, and just
Speaker 5: watching somebody like they controlling culture and they're controlling the
Speaker 5: narrative and they own what they do. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's it.
Speaker 3: So at that point in high school, you're looking at
Speaker 3: that like I can do that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I was looking at it like
Speaker 5: I can do that. I think I was looking at
Speaker 5: it like I have a story to tell, and I
Speaker 5: wanted to tell that story in a real way. And
Speaker 5: you know, I knew from early on I wasn't that
Speaker 5: school A kid like my parents, you know, respect to
Speaker 5: them because they let me cook, but when they saw
Speaker 5: me coming home with jeans, you know, sagging below my
Speaker 5: waist and four fake chains on, they must.
Speaker 3: Have been wet.
Speaker 5: Let's see if I got one. But you know, they
Speaker 5: I just I was never like I could never be
Speaker 5: a doctor or a lawyer or a banker because to me,
Speaker 5: I just always thought outside the box, you know, and
Speaker 5: being a creative kid and always just having that spirit
Speaker 5: like how do we figure it out? And I think
Speaker 5: that comes from not having things, you know, like you're
Speaker 5: always going to figure out how to get to it.
Speaker 5: And so in high school, I teamed up, you know,
Speaker 5: with a friend of mine, and I was like, look,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of stuff happening on digital at this time.
Speaker 5: So this is my Space era. So you at the
Speaker 5: three clicks, you could a amplify your music to everybody
Speaker 5: in the world, and or you could discover something you've
Speaker 5: never heard before. And it just changed the way you know,
Speaker 5: we like digested and consume music. So I'm looking at
Speaker 5: that like, Okay, if I have these tools at my disposal,
Speaker 5: you know, how do I tell my story through music?
Speaker 5: How do I create a world that I want to
Speaker 5: live in and create financial you know, independence out of that.
Speaker 5: So give you all some ideas of how I think.
Speaker 5: Like even in high school, we used to during the lunchtime,
Speaker 5: we used to like hand out little flyers in the morning, Like, yo,
Speaker 5: we having a live show in this staircase in this
Speaker 5: hallway at twelve thirty pm. Pull up and we'd have
Speaker 5: a boombox and like I'd have a bunch of my
Speaker 5: friends just come through. We'd like freestyle or you know,
Speaker 5: perform songs or battle or whatever it was. And these
Speaker 5: these stairways used to be packed.
Speaker 3: Out what I mean.
Speaker 5: And then I remember we printed up an album, so
Speaker 5: like I sold whatever PlayStation games I had. I think
Speaker 5: I was like working ten thousan an hour boxing like
Speaker 5: packing boxes or something, put all that money together and
Speaker 5: printed up like three hundred album copies of an album
Speaker 5: that we put out, and them joints sold out in
Speaker 5: like four days. Wow you Yeah, I was. I was
Speaker 5: executive producing, I was, I was rapping, I was managing
Speaker 5: the whole process. I was, you know, using digital to
Speaker 5: like distribute all the stuff. So he had an album
Speaker 5: on iTunes when I was like seventeen years old because
Speaker 5: I had figured out how to crack that code super early.
Speaker 5: And I we're selling physical CDs and I'm turning, was
Speaker 5: it two dollars to print the CD into seven dollars
Speaker 5: when you sell it?
Speaker 4: So you know, on iTunes and the music is moving
Speaker 4: for seven dollars an album, that's what you're.
Speaker 3: Getting off of it.
Speaker 5: I'm selling seven dollars c This is like back when.
Speaker 3: You know you you still play in your car.
Speaker 5: You know, I had my pop's purple Corolla, but that's
Speaker 5: you know, I would play my play my joint. And
Speaker 5: but I'm just watching people like consume it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was like, oh nah.
Speaker 5: And that's the first time I ever had like a
Speaker 5: stack in my pocket, like a not and being like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2: I just made.
Speaker 5: I made money off of an idea. Yeah, that's so empowering.
Speaker 5: And then and then we're like, yo, let's try doing
Speaker 5: some merchandise. Sold out thirty T shirts now that Knot's
Speaker 5: getting bigger, and I'm like, oh, okay, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. So that was the origin and I took
Speaker 5: that too. I will skip a couple steps, but I
Speaker 5: took that from starting at sixteen, developing it all through
Speaker 5: my early twenties, and when I was twenty two years old,
Speaker 5: I got offered to go live and tour in Japan
Speaker 5: for six weeks off of music, and that was a
Speaker 5: moment of crystallization as an artist. As an artist, I
Speaker 5: did a brand deal with Marlborough, the cigarette company. Never
Speaker 5: smoked in my life, doesn't matter, but they were like, yeah,
Speaker 5: we'll pay you X, Y, and Z for these three
Speaker 5: tracks and I was like, yeah, run that bag. All
Speaker 5: my best friends and my label partners at the time,
Speaker 5: and we all twenty two years old black and brown
Speaker 5: kids living in Japan in Tokyo, running up the score.
Speaker 2: Out spiking of football.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 5: Now. With that moment, I was like, oh, I could
Speaker 5: do whatever it is I want in my life because
Speaker 5: I turned my ideas into I'm.
Speaker 4: Thinking even as a six year old kid, to be
Speaker 4: an artist is one thing, right, but you're thinking Ceo
Speaker 4: Min like I'm going to create a record label, and
Speaker 4: so how how does this go from being an artist
Speaker 4: and record label to now getting a deal like Marvel?
Speaker 3: Like are you in front of them pitching this? How
Speaker 3: does this work?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I was I was always talking to like the
Speaker 5: decision makers at some level, right, So like the Japan
Speaker 5: thing happened through somebody that saw us at the showcase,
Speaker 5: and I remember I had just quit the only day
Speaker 5: job I've ever worked. I worked for two weeks and
Speaker 5: I had just graduated or worked the day job for
Speaker 5: two weeks. I was like, no, it's not me. And
Speaker 5: somebody came up to me to showcase and was like, yo,
Speaker 5: you want to live in Japan and go on tour and.
Speaker 3: I was like, let me think about this.
Speaker 5: But it was just having the wherewithal to like I
Speaker 5: have a press kit ready, I have you know, an ePK,
Speaker 5: I got you know videos, I have content that you
Speaker 5: can consume. I got a story, and I got a
Speaker 5: website and it's all packaged in a way that a
Speaker 5: decision maker can be like, Okay, these guys are moving,
Speaker 5: something's happened. I could give you analytics on my last
Speaker 5: you know, for releases and things like that. I always
Speaker 5: thought that way because I knew that I couldn't monetize
Speaker 5: my craft. I wasn't about to be a broke artist
Speaker 5: like struggling artist.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it still not.
Speaker 5: There's no glory in that, And so that's just how
Speaker 5: my mentality was. And obviously you know when you coached
Speaker 5: by Jay, Like, I joked that Rockefeller was my NBA
Speaker 5: because I just studied how to make certain moves, you know,
Speaker 5: from that position and yeah, turn it into turned like
Speaker 5: you gotta think about it. A brown kid, you know,
Speaker 5: with no context in the music game being able to
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 2: To me, it was just like, all right, so what
Speaker 2: made you just before job and T Man?
Speaker 3: This is right around after.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the music that I was making, it wasn't South
Speaker 5: Asian influence.
Speaker 2: It was just regular rap.
Speaker 5: It was like boom back, you know, Golden Age stuff.
Speaker 2: So what what? How did you transition from? All right,
Speaker 2: so you're a rapper, but then at some point you
Speaker 2: conditioned to be on the business side because you did
Speaker 2: some stuff with Wiz Khalifa. I saw, yeah and Lupe Fiasco,
Speaker 2: So how did that come about?
Speaker 5: I was always on both sides, and I think that
Speaker 5: is one reason why I was never as good of
Speaker 5: an artist as I could have been, is because I
Speaker 5: was always doing both sides. And you know, like the
Speaker 5: best artists are the ones that are one hundred percent
Speaker 5: deep in their art. I could never go there because
Speaker 5: I had to do the business too. But the Wiz
Speaker 5: story is funny. It's while my handle Annie Hustles, I
Speaker 5: guess makes sense. I had a mutual friend and he
Speaker 5: was like, yo, Wis Khalifa is trying to come to
Speaker 5: New York. He needs someone to book a show, Like
Speaker 5: do you know anybody. I was like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 5: got it. I was twenty years old, couldn't get into
Speaker 5: the club, had no idea what to do, and I
Speaker 5: was like, no, no, I got it, Like you know, connect
Speaker 5: me with his manager. Long story long. I organized Wiz's
Speaker 5: first show in New York City at Webster Hall, and
Speaker 5: I put my group as the opening the headline, the opening.
Speaker 2: App So how did you? I we gotta break that down.
Speaker 2: So web Webster Hall is a is a yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a big venue in New York just got reopened. So
Speaker 2: you're twenty years old and so somebody that you have
Speaker 2: a relationship. This is before whisk Cleif was big.
Speaker 5: This is flight school Wiz.
Speaker 2: This is like early how do you how do you?
Speaker 2: How do you book something without knowing what to do?
Speaker 5: So I had a randomly I had a friend who
Speaker 5: I went to school with who was like doing something
Speaker 5: at Webster Like he was working there part time, and
Speaker 5: I knew that he was in that game, and I
Speaker 5: was like, bro, give me a chance. He was like
Speaker 5: Wizard Khalif and this dude now owns one of the
Speaker 5: biggest venues in Brooklyn shout out to Romy like, gave
Speaker 5: me my first shot. But I was like, no, I
Speaker 5: got it. Like here's a social analytics. This is the
Speaker 5: type of chatter that's happening on Twitter about him coming
Speaker 5: to New York, Like, I guarantee that we're gonna be
Speaker 5: able to do this. And I was like, worst case,
Speaker 5: I'm going to bring out one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 5: for myself for you, right, And he was like all right.
Speaker 5: I think we ended up bringing out like two hundred people.
Speaker 5: I had a line outside of you know, joint, just
Speaker 5: everybody from n y U and that I have been
Speaker 5: building my community with. They were like, oh, now we're
Speaker 5: showing up.
Speaker 2: How much you ba Whiz?
Speaker 5: I got no NDA so I can say it fifteen
Speaker 5: hundred dollars. That was Whizz's first performance at Webster Hall,
Speaker 5: and I remember that night like we made a little
Speaker 5: bit of bread, you know, And I was like, oh.
Speaker 2: Nah, crazy, you know you made you made a profit.
Speaker 5: Barely. Yeah, we blameed one that.
Speaker 2: Blow at the hotel didn't lose money.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but me and my boys had a you know,
Speaker 5: like a life changing moment. And the craziest thing is
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks after, Whizz's team calls me when
Speaker 5: I'm in like my eight a m. Accounting class and
Speaker 5: they're like, yo, my phone's ringing, you know. I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm already failing this class. And I pick up the
Speaker 5: phone and it's Peter Schwartz, who's one of the biggest
Speaker 5: agents right now who does everybody And Peter Shorts is
Speaker 5: calling my phone like, Yo, Wiz, I just talked to Wiz.
Speaker 5: He wants you to come on tour with him. I
Speaker 5: don't know who you are. You let me know if
Speaker 5: you want to make this happen. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: I might even drop out. But we ended up doing
Speaker 5: like a little you know, standing with Whiz on the
Speaker 5: road and.
Speaker 2: Like performing, yeah, like open it up for yeah and artists.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: And that to me again is just like Okay, I
Speaker 5: think I know how to take a take a little
Speaker 5: thing and leverage into something bigger and then flip it.
Speaker 5: And that's been like a constant you know, my whole life.
Speaker 3: I mean, we breached over that.
Speaker 4: But the n YU player is dough too, because a
Speaker 4: kid from Boston having to tell your parents like listen,
Speaker 4: I need to go to New York City but using
Speaker 4: education as the reason, Yeah, change your.
Speaker 5: Life, man, hundred percent. And I give my parents credit
Speaker 5: to be able to trust their kid with that, because
Speaker 5: a lot of South Asian parents are a lot of
Speaker 5: parents in general immigrant parents would be like, now you're
Speaker 5: going to screw it up, you know. And and I
Speaker 5: lived like the I was the brokest NYU kid anyone's
Speaker 5: ever seen. I lived off campus. I had an apartment
Speaker 5: where you sat down, your knees touched the wall when
Speaker 5: you were sitting on a toilet, Like I paid, you know,
Speaker 5: my way through how much of it I could, Like,
Speaker 5: you know, my parents were supportive, but like I didn't
Speaker 5: go to NYU and trick off, you know, like the
Speaker 5: rich New York City kid like that. That wasn't my reality.
Speaker 5: Like I scrapped through the whole time. But every day
Speaker 5: I would show up on campus and I would be like, yo,
Speaker 5: I got new music out, or like, yo, check this out.
Speaker 5: I got a new CD, I got a new t shirt,
Speaker 5: you know, and I built that community and that and
Speaker 5: that really was like the first point you know of
Speaker 5: crystallization of like, yo, this is how this is how
Speaker 5: you get it popping, you know, when it comes to
Speaker 5: like building a brand and interfacing across digital physical, you know, content,
Speaker 5: culture and putting all that together.
Speaker 2: So he was always like, I guess the end, kid,
Speaker 2: because in high school you had a buzz. In college
Speaker 2: you had a buzz, and but then you throw on
Speaker 2: some hard times. You had some kidney issues.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, the sow five twenty four. Okay, So I
Speaker 5: was born with a kidney condition. But the way I
Speaker 5: lived my life, I was like, if I go out,
Speaker 5: I'm going to go out the way I want to. Like,
Speaker 5: I'm wanna go out the way every day I lived,
Speaker 5: you know, the way I wanted to. And after the
Speaker 5: Japan Tokyo thing, I came back and my phone, I
Speaker 5: kid you not, I never told a story. I was
Speaker 5: on a plane walking off the plane, like I was
Speaker 5: still exiting. I had my backpack on getting home from
Speaker 5: Tokyo and my phone rings and I was like hello,
Speaker 5: and it was one of my mentors. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 5: can you go to India next week? Like, I want
Speaker 5: you to come and score a film with me, Bollywood film.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh nah, like again when you were
Speaker 5: a brown kid growing up like this validation. Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: that circle, that that loop. So we go over there
Speaker 5: and then we come back and he's like, yo, we
Speaker 5: gotta go again. I was like, cool, I'm just gonna
Speaker 5: make a little routine doctor's appointment, you know, make sure
Speaker 5: I'm good. We're about to go out for like six weeks.
Speaker 5: And I remember that appointment. My doctor was typical movie thing.
Speaker 5: He was like coming real slow out of the room,
Speaker 5: you know, shaking his head, and I was like, oh, no, what.
Speaker 5: And it turns out that I had end stage kidney
Speaker 5: failure at twenty four, which means my kidneys had shrunk,
Speaker 5: like the function in them had almost been like at zero.
Speaker 5: And it was like three months until they stopped working completely,
Speaker 5: or until I have to go on dallass, which if
Speaker 5: you guys know what that is my uncle, Yeah, like
Speaker 5: bless him and anybody that's going through it. That's some
Speaker 5: difficult thing, you know, as a twenty four year old kid,
Speaker 5: forget it. Anybody is difficult. And he was like, you
Speaker 5: are about to, you know, go through some real thing,
Speaker 5: or you should go you should stay home and figure
Speaker 5: your life out. I was like, but I'm about to
Speaker 5: go on tour next week. He was like no, you know,
Speaker 5: And I told my parents. I was like, this is
Speaker 5: where I'm at, and They're like, what are you going
Speaker 5: to do? I was like, I'm going to go on
Speaker 5: tour because if I got three months to live, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna do at least a month of That was that,
Speaker 5: you know, And I think that moment also taught me
Speaker 5: about fear, you know, as an entrepreneur, fears like this
Speaker 5: thing that we always have in the back of our head.
Speaker 5: But when I made that decision, I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: I don't think I'm gonna be scared of anything else
Speaker 5: in my life because I was just mentally, I was
Speaker 5: stronger than I was physically, you know, like my mental
Speaker 5: was just so focused on doing the things that I
Speaker 5: wanted to do. So I went on tour, scored that
Speaker 5: valuable film, had a crazy experience, came back and my
Speaker 5: body was like, nah, it's over for you. And I
Speaker 5: went on like this emergency Dallasis procedure. Ended up fighting
Speaker 5: for my life for like six months. It was bad,
Speaker 5: you know, like and I would still be in the
Speaker 5: studio in the evenings. I go to dallass in the
Speaker 5: morning and still go to the studio in the evening.
Speaker 5: I had all these you know, like wires and things
Speaker 5: attached to my chest. And you know, when you're on
Speaker 5: top of the world at twenty four, it's an incredible feeling,
Speaker 5: and when you're at the bottom, you know, that's also
Speaker 5: a real feeling. And it taught me like as quick
Speaker 5: as you can get it, you could lose it and
Speaker 5: build Bilding back up from zero was probably the toughest
Speaker 5: thing that I ever did, but you know it again,
Speaker 5: just built that resilience to be like, well you be
Speaker 5: cheated death. You know, I figured I could sell CDs now.
Speaker 2: I remember if somebody told me that before, Like once
Speaker 2: you face death, you really have no fear because the
Speaker 2: worst thing that can happen is you die. And then
Speaker 2: when you realize that that's really the worst thing that
Speaker 2: can happen, which is inevitable, everything else is in that
Speaker 2: bad right. It's like a lot of things, like you think,
Speaker 2: like if you really think about it, it's like me
Speaker 2: trying to walk up to the celebrity to trying to
Speaker 2: pitch my idea not that.
Speaker 5: Bad dying, And I don't want to glorify it like.
Speaker 2: You know, like I mean, but it's just the reality.
Speaker 5: What my parents went through, when my family went through
Speaker 5: like extremely difficult and it's you know, I say that
Speaker 5: my parents gave me life twice because my dad donated
Speaker 5: his kidney to me, right, And so that that moment
Speaker 5: was also really big for me to know, like family,
Speaker 5: you know, family has always been everything, especially as like
Speaker 5: an immigrant kid. But at that moment, I was like, oh.
Speaker 3: Does that does that change the dynamic between you and dad?
Speaker 4: I mean, I know, immigrant family, immigrant family, right, parent
Speaker 4: family is everything, but like your dad, you guys were
Speaker 4: close at that time?
Speaker 3: Was that close?
Speaker 5: We got closer?
Speaker 3: Got closer?
Speaker 5: Sure? I think that at that time, not only did
Speaker 5: we get closer, but it also flipped a switch for
Speaker 5: me to know, like everything that I was going to
Speaker 5: do after that in my life had to be for family,
Speaker 5: you know, and I have to be a little bit
Speaker 5: more selfless with what I was doing. And that kind
Speaker 5: of inspired me to kind of move away from music
Speaker 5: for a while. But but yeah, that that experience I
Speaker 5: think gave me a cheat code because now it's like
Speaker 5: fear I spent my twenty fifth birthday learning how to walk. Wow,
Speaker 5: you know like what I like you said, I'm not
Speaker 5: scared to pitch somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the thing a lot of times you take
Speaker 2: stuff for granted in life, and I think that like
Speaker 2: humbling experiences and life alternate experiences, a lot of times
Speaker 2: it makes people appreciate, like, you know, the little things,
Speaker 2: because like you said, I mean just being able to walk.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, we complain about stuff and you
Speaker 2: think about the grand scheme of thing and it's like
Speaker 2: it's like Instagram is down for an hour. It's like
Speaker 2: it's not that we're not that bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to beat life because I can't cheat that.
Speaker 3: So facts, Yeah did it? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So all right, So in the next segment, that
Speaker 2: tease it up for your journey after that, going into marketing.
Speaker 2: That's actually something I'm really interested in talking about marketing
Speaker 2: because we haven't spoken about marketing and your life after music.
Speaker 2: All right, So in this segment, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about a few different things, but I want to start
Speaker 2: it off with marketing because you have a marketing company,
Speaker 2: green Room Creative, so and you know you've done work
Speaker 2: with Hillary Clinton, hbo uh juice press, juice Press. So okay,
Speaker 2: let's let's start from the beginning marketing, right, because we
Speaker 2: hit this term a lot marketing and everybody has different
Speaker 2: ideas with marketing, right, but where do you see the
Speaker 2: direction of marketing? Like, where do you see your company?
Speaker 2: And like, because it's all over the place right now,
Speaker 2: So what's your thoughts on it?
Speaker 5: I love this question because I feel like we don't
Speaker 5: spend enough time talking about it. We're just so used
Speaker 5: to being marketed too, right, but nowadays it's like we
Speaker 5: don't even deconstruct actually what's going on. So to me,
Speaker 5: marketing is storytelling, and good storytelling when you do that,
Speaker 5: you don't even need to advertise. What's happened is people
Speaker 5: are using advertising as a way to storytell instead of
Speaker 5: the other way around. So to me, kind of all
Speaker 5: of my experiences, even up until this point, with music
Speaker 5: and with culture and content, all I was doing was
Speaker 5: telling a really good story or the best story that
Speaker 5: I felt like I could. And when we pivoted so
Speaker 5: after my surgery, I realized that, you know, music wouldn't
Speaker 5: allow me to take care of my family, you know,
Speaker 5: the way I wanted to and so my brother and
Speaker 5: I put our heads together and we're like, look, let's
Speaker 5: get into the agency world. So he had a little
Speaker 5: bit of agency background on like the search and digital side,
Speaker 5: and I had a bunch of background on the creative side.
Speaker 5: And what we realized was like nobody was effectively storytelling.
Speaker 5: Everyone was just buying advertising. And there's a massive difference.
Speaker 5: So when I think about marketing now, it's about having
Speaker 5: a point of view and a perspective and then marrying
Speaker 5: that with really good content to provide value to people's
Speaker 5: lives so that they learn and get enriched. If you
Speaker 5: do that, you never have to sell anything to anybody.
Speaker 2: You know what, That's crazy because that sounds so familiar.
Speaker 2: It sounds just like earning your Ligia's blueprint. And I
Speaker 2: tell people that all the time, and I'm like, earning
Speaker 2: your Ligia wasn't built on ads and marketing or whatever.
Speaker 2: It was just to provide content, creative content that was different.
Speaker 2: And we found our niche telling stories. That's actually how
Speaker 2: it first started. It was backstories of entrepreneurs and business
Speaker 2: and the people Champion did. And like you said, that's
Speaker 2: word of mouth is the best form of marketing and
Speaker 2: it's like people double down. It's like, oh, how much
Speaker 2: money can I spend? And I look at like Mike Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: you spend five hundred million on ads, but it's like
Speaker 2: how far is that really going to go? Like you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, It's like you have to double
Speaker 2: down on your content, telling your story, getting people to
Speaker 2: buy into you. And that is actually a form of marketing.
Speaker 2: That's like the best form of marketing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. That, and you have to have a really what
Speaker 5: I say, what I call undeniable products. You know. I
Speaker 5: think the biggest thing that a lot of entrepreneurs face
Speaker 5: nowadays is everybody wants to get into the selling and
Speaker 5: the advertising and being like yo, we're out here. Very
Speaker 5: few people want to focus on creating an undeniable product
Speaker 5: that could sell itself if it had to, you know.
Speaker 5: And I think the Mike Bloomberg is a class example.
Speaker 5: Like the product wasn't that great? You know, like you
Speaker 5: could fool some people, but you can't shift you know,
Speaker 5: the public altogether, because they're going to go back and
Speaker 5: be like, this product is not hidden.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 5: The agency world was a way for us to be like,
Speaker 5: all right, let's flip the traditional model of like just
Speaker 5: pumping money into ads, and let's really try to get
Speaker 5: these brands to talk about what's core to them and
Speaker 5: then we'll take that, we'll create content, we'll amplify it.
Speaker 5: But it can't just be you know, all advertising dollars
Speaker 5: and media buys because you're gonna get stuck.
Speaker 4: That's like you made a mindset shift, like after you
Speaker 4: know your health issue where you said, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm good at this, but I'm great at that, right,
Speaker 4: and you decided I'm gonna.
Speaker 3: Go in this route.
Speaker 4: But still the principles that you use for music of
Speaker 4: what you use in the marketing, building an audience, creating
Speaker 4: the content, right, and you talk about segmenting the audience,
Speaker 4: can you get.
Speaker 3: Into that little bit for sure?
Speaker 5: Audience segmentation to me is something that is the easiest
Speaker 5: way to save money and make money at the same time.
Speaker 5: And what I mean by that is like, if you
Speaker 5: have a message that you're delivering to your audience, but
Speaker 5: that's the wrong audience, it's the wrong message for that audience,
Speaker 5: you're wasting money, you know, Versus when you hone in
Speaker 5: on the right audience with the right message, you could
Speaker 5: probably spend half and get twice as much results because
Speaker 5: it's the product market fit is undeniable. So when I
Speaker 5: think about like segmenting, you know a lot of brands
Speaker 5: they use one voice to speak to everybody, or they
Speaker 5: did for a long time. Now you see like Puma,
Speaker 5: you know, they're taking the urban voice and the urban
Speaker 5: weight and they double down that on that segment by
Speaker 5: investing in the influencers and the creators in that world.
Speaker 5: You know, Adidas was scared to do that for so
Speaker 5: long and then they found you know, easy, and you
Speaker 5: saw what happened. Nike doesn't really do that, Like their
Speaker 5: their audience segment is different. You know, they they do
Speaker 5: it in their own way now, but it's like it's
Speaker 5: not the same. You know, So each brand and each
Speaker 5: each each person's understanding of segment and how you deliver
Speaker 5: a product to that segment is the difference between you know,
Speaker 5: having an effective strategy and being completely and effective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually something that's really interesting because it's like
Speaker 2: you can actually have different marketing strategies campaigns for different
Speaker 2: people from the one company. It's like, like you said,
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about that, like most of the time
Speaker 2: it's just one way, Like if we're gonna go with
Speaker 2: a marketing campaign. It's like, Okay, we're gonna go hip
Speaker 2: hop and we're gonna have Push you T do Adidas commercial.
Speaker 2: And it's like, but what if you're not a Pusher
Speaker 2: T fan? What if you like country music? What I
Speaker 2: mean like that would probably be more beneficial to be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have entertain this endorse our product, but we're
Speaker 2: gonna have this campaign with a country singer, this campaign
Speaker 2: with an R and B singer, this campaign with a rapper.
Speaker 2: It's like three different lanes for three different people as
Speaker 2: opposed to saying this is like one size fit all
Speaker 2: and here. But you know what, I think so many
Speaker 2: companies are out of touch with culture and just reality
Speaker 2: and they just like, oh, this is what's hot, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: Like that's what they're doing.
Speaker 2: But that on Instagram because it's like even for me,
Speaker 2: like you know, I spent so much time on Instagram,
Speaker 2: like I kind of like have a good understanding of
Speaker 2: how these things work, and I'm like it surprises me
Speaker 2: how many companies I see and I'm like, y'all don't
Speaker 2: even understand, Like this is so corny, but you're spending
Speaker 2: so much money doing this, and your titles are all off,
Speaker 2: your captions are wrong, and it's like who's paying who's
Speaker 2: buying it? So it's crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the thing about segmentation is what it allows
Speaker 5: you to do is test. A lot of marketers forget
Speaker 5: the importance of testing because as a as a brand,
Speaker 5: especially as an early stage company, which is a lot
Speaker 5: of the work that we do, you don't necessarily know
Speaker 5: who is your target audience. Like you might have an idea,
Speaker 5: you know, eighteen to thirty, but that's super broad, you know,
Speaker 5: metropolitan urban professionals. That's still really broad, you know. And
Speaker 5: what segmentation does is you can run different messages in
Speaker 5: different segments and then find the best performers and then
Speaker 5: double down on that and use the insights from that
Speaker 5: to inform your growth strategy. A lot of marketers feel like, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm going to put this big spend into something that's
Speaker 5: gonna hit and we're out of here. It rarely works
Speaker 5: like that, you know. And being able to efficiently test
Speaker 5: and turn things on and off, that's a lot of
Speaker 5: the work that we did, you know, as an agency,
Speaker 5: and I think that's where we delivered a lot of
Speaker 5: value to companies that didn't have that knowledge. You know already.
Speaker 4: I think what you're doing is amazing in the fact
Speaker 4: that you have a touch on culture and you're trying
Speaker 4: to keep it as authentic as possible A lot of
Speaker 4: times and shoddy and I we always talk about this
Speaker 4: like they're out of touch, out the loop, and then
Speaker 4: when they try to get a piece of the culture,
Speaker 4: it's like it's already changed. Culture has changed already. How
Speaker 4: do you guys keep it so authentic?
Speaker 5: The the thing about culture is you can't fake culture
Speaker 5: unless you from and live the culture, you can't really
Speaker 5: talk about it. And the great thing about us is
Speaker 5: like we live what we do every day, you know,
Speaker 5: Like I'm not I'm on that glass building on the
Speaker 5: thirty fifth floor whatever, but I'm also at the show,
Speaker 5: you know, in the front row, like learning and watching
Speaker 5: and observing how people are using TikTok or what they're doing.
Speaker 5: Like you got to be on the ground. And a
Speaker 5: lot of brands and a lot of like execs are
Speaker 5: afraid to be on the ground because they've never lived
Speaker 5: that life, you know. And the funny thing about this
Speaker 5: culture thing is now we you know, we've pivoted into
Speaker 5: telling stories from a cultural aspect for like big brands.
Speaker 5: That's kind of the focus that we work on now.
Speaker 5: And I'm telling you, we used to tell all these
Speaker 5: brands like, yo, this is the type of work you
Speaker 5: need to do. You need to pivot into more storytelling
Speaker 5: and less advertising. You need to invest in content. And
Speaker 5: some people listened, a lot of them didn't. And now
Speaker 5: we're like, hold on, why don't we just stop wasting
Speaker 5: our time selling these things to people who are not listening,
Speaker 5: and let's incubate a company that and integrates everything that
Speaker 5: we've learned up to this point. And that is how
Speaker 5: the chat companies started. So we incubated that within the agency,
Speaker 5: using everything that we learned about storytelling, content, culture, and
Speaker 5: really literally brewed that pot up. And now when people
Speaker 5: are like, well, why should I work with you, I'm
Speaker 5: like when we opened a cafe in Manhattan and then
Speaker 5: had seven hundred people on opening night. So if you
Speaker 5: look at a product a proof of concept, that's it
Speaker 5: right there.
Speaker 2: You know what, though, I'm glad that we're in this
Speaker 2: day and age now where you don't necessarily need gatekeepers
Speaker 2: to get your message out because I used to it.
Speaker 2: I remember, so I used to play basketball growing up, right,
Speaker 2: And I remember like when I was in prep school
Speaker 2: and like my last stages of like being recruited and
Speaker 2: I was getting overlooked by a lot of schools, but
Speaker 2: I was killing. Like I would go to they would
Speaker 2: like come to our practice and look like somebody else
Speaker 2: and I would have like twenty five thirty points. And
Speaker 2: it's so frustrating because it's like, how do you not
Speaker 2: see what I see? Like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And as a creative, in a lot of times, it's
Speaker 2: like it's like you feel like I know this is it,
Speaker 2: and you're trying to convince somebody and they're like, nah,
Speaker 2: that's not it, and it's like I would, I would.
Speaker 2: I could just imagine how frustrated would be for like,
Speaker 2: we have earn Releisure, right, and it's like we're trying
Speaker 2: to pitch it to a label or like a network,
Speaker 2: and we're trying to tell them like, yo, this is
Speaker 2: people gonna like this financial literacy? What a hip hop
Speaker 2: twist on it? Two black guys talking about finances, and
Speaker 2: I could see them like, nah, that's nobody's going to
Speaker 2: be interested in that. And I'm like, no, I know
Speaker 2: this is going to work, and they're like nah, like
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. But that's really what happens
Speaker 2: with the companies. They're so out of touch and they
Speaker 2: think that they know it all record music too, Like
Speaker 2: it's like you have one person dictating like what the
Speaker 2: whole world thinks is good.
Speaker 3: That's hop It's.
Speaker 5: Absurd, you know. I mean, look, people didn't give Drake
Speaker 5: a deal, people didn't give Jay a deal, people didn't
Speaker 5: give Nip a deal, like three of the most iconic
Speaker 5: artists of our generation.
Speaker 2: Speaking of NIP, I wanted to ask a question about
Speaker 2: marketing because I saw it on your on your page, Well,
Speaker 2: somebody tweeted vertical integration because he had that integrated vertically,
Speaker 2: So what's your ideas on that? Because if people talk
Speaker 2: about it a lot, but I haven't really heard somebody
Speaker 2: like fully articulate their opinion on it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, rest in peace and it, you know,
Speaker 5: one of my biggest influences in somebody that just was
Speaker 5: so fearless and such a radical in what he did,
Speaker 5: like inspired me, you know, for the rest of my
Speaker 5: life when it comes to vertical integration. This idea of like, look,
Speaker 5: building a business and creating something is already so challenging, right,
Speaker 5: But when you build something properly, the ability to create
Speaker 5: an ecosystem out of products that are already related to
Speaker 5: what you're doing, that you don't have to go outside
Speaker 5: of what you are already producing or where your resources
Speaker 5: are already allocated to create more products, to be able
Speaker 5: to create more opportunities to profit and more revenue streams,
Speaker 5: and they all relate to each other and help actually
Speaker 5: build each other up. That's the idea of vertical integration.
Speaker 5: So for him, it was the fact that he owned
Speaker 5: the Marathon Agency, which was creating work in the music space,
Speaker 5: which was allowing him to get more opportunities as an artist, right,
Speaker 5: and then also being able to create branding and experiences
Speaker 5: for places like Destination Crenshaw or the real estate stuff
Speaker 5: that he was doing. Coming down to Vector ninety and
Speaker 5: he had basically built a bunch of different businesses that
Speaker 5: all had a common thread through them and they were
Speaker 5: sharing resources.
Speaker 4: So it was next that James Arden said they were
Speaker 4: going to do sports agency, which is what he said
Speaker 4: He's probably still.
Speaker 5: Going to do, right, and he should. But so when
Speaker 5: I think about vertical integration. It's the ability to maximize
Speaker 5: your output with the same amount of resources and the
Speaker 5: same amount of infrastructure that you already have, and your
Speaker 5: whole ecosystem relates to each other. So an example of
Speaker 5: this is like when we built the agency, you know,
Speaker 5: is two brown guys trying to play in this like
Speaker 5: super tech kind of like white bro founder's world. And
Speaker 5: I was like, nobody's even given us a chance a
Speaker 5: lot of time, you know, like we didn't even know
Speaker 5: where to go to, Like we didn't know who to
Speaker 5: talk to, Like it was lonely. And then I realized, like,
Speaker 5: I'm not the only one going through this, and so
Speaker 5: what I started doing was hosting a monthly meetup for
Speaker 5: minority entrepreneurs and we called it Idea Exchange, And there's
Speaker 5: a way to like have people that were going through
Speaker 5: similar things come and create a forum for like, yo,
Speaker 5: how do we solve a lot of problems that we're
Speaker 5: going through as entrepreneurs. So that's vertically integrated with what
Speaker 5: I'm doing on the agency side, right, because it's a
Speaker 5: byproduct of that. I host those sessions at my office.
Speaker 5: I already know the topics because I'm living it every day.
Speaker 5: And my audience are people that eventually actually become a
Speaker 5: client or the agency because they're like, yo, we love
Speaker 5: the way you think, and so now I'm using that
Speaker 5: meetup as a way to build my personal brand, build
Speaker 5: my agency business, and be able to give back to
Speaker 5: the community.
Speaker 3: How often does an idea exchange happen?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we last year. We did them every month.
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Speaker 5: It was, you know, as a heavy lift. This year,
Speaker 5: we've pivoted to every other month to next one's coming
Speaker 5: up in April, and you know, if you follow me
Speaker 5: or if you know where I'm at, then I talk
Speaker 5: about them pretty regularly. We expanded from New York City
Speaker 5: into New Work, New Jersey, which I feel like is
Speaker 5: really dope community of entrepreneurs that aren't getting a platform.
Speaker 2: I was just in NewYork today actually, but you were.
Speaker 5: There for maybe maybe some tough reasons, but but yeah,
Speaker 5: vertical integration is just like, how do you create an
Speaker 5: ecosystem and maximize the output and the revenue streams based
Speaker 5: off the things that you've already built.
Speaker 2: I think Apple is like the best at that, hands down.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're up there.
Speaker 4: It goes like into your theory of culture to commerce
Speaker 4: or profit to purpose, Like you literally just explained it,
Speaker 4: and it's like how you stayed authentic to your culture
Speaker 4: and with the child restaurant and turned into something profitable.
Speaker 5: And I think the biggest thing about vertical integration too,
Speaker 5: is that it reinforces authenticity behind what you do. You know,
Speaker 5: somebody like Nip all those things that he was touching, music, marketing,
Speaker 5: real estate, with the he had a the marathon, g
Speaker 5: the Stranger, it was all connected to his brand, the marathon,
Speaker 5: his philosophy, and it was all authentic and the world
Speaker 5: tapped in. So you know, he's I think one of
Speaker 5: the most brilliant people to do it and still be him,
Speaker 5: you know, and coming from where he came from. But
Speaker 5: that idea of like building an ecosystem that's vertically integrated,
Speaker 5: I think it's going to be the future because we're
Speaker 5: moving away from like the high growth, you know, growth
Speaker 5: at all costs, uber and and and Lyft and Harry's
Speaker 5: and that type of that type of company, we're moving
Speaker 5: away from that.
Speaker 2: It's lateral growth is more efficient right now than vertical growth.
Speaker 2: So like briefly, like vertical growth is like, like I said,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, that's the big corporations. That's like, you know,
Speaker 2: just massively pouring money into things to grow upwards. But
Speaker 2: you can grow laterally a lot easier and through word
Speaker 2: of mouth and through different avenues that you're licensing things
Speaker 2: in that nature. So it's like even for us faring
Speaker 2: your leisure, it's like we have everything started with the podcast,
Speaker 2: but now we have an online university. Now we have
Speaker 2: merch Now we do live shows, Now we have the YouTube,
Speaker 2: Now we have ad revenue, we have the social media
Speaker 2: campaigns that we do, and so we can just continue
Speaker 2: to grow like that, like your Lisia, the podcast is
Speaker 2: the mothership, but from there we can spread our wings
Speaker 2: at a very low cost. All these things that I
Speaker 2: named a very low cost, and it allows us to
Speaker 2: have multiple streams of income.
Speaker 3: I tell them, it's like it's one tree with some
Speaker 3: branches going.
Speaker 5: From it, which is that's the best way to explain it.
Speaker 5: What you're doing is you're taking market share in each
Speaker 5: of those worlds a little by little.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: My philosophy at this point, at this age of my
Speaker 5: life is like, if you look at all the major
Speaker 5: companies and the infrastructure, it's all owned by people that
Speaker 5: look the same. It's all all white men that own
Speaker 5: almost everything. Right now, at this point in my life,
Speaker 5: my job is like, how do I build an ecosystem
Speaker 5: that captures market share away from them little by little
Speaker 5: until I'm able to flip it and turn it into
Speaker 5: something major. Right, So, like my cafe, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: not competing with Starbucks yet, but I'm gonna eat into
Speaker 5: some some middle tier coffee spots, you know, New York City,
Speaker 5: and I'm gonna take that audience. I'm gonna flip it
Speaker 5: and i'm gonna eat into more. And then they're gonna
Speaker 5: throw me an acquisition offer, and I'm gonna say now,
Speaker 5: and I'm gonna take the market share away from all
Speaker 5: these things that exist. And then once we get it
Speaker 5: and we bring it to minority owned businesses, you already
Speaker 5: know we're gonna reinvest.
Speaker 2: That's like the first album when he's like nobody noticed es,
Speaker 2: nobody gave it. We get that's a fact. So speaking
Speaker 2: about your cafe, can we talk about that, because that's
Speaker 2: that's that's that's he hot in the streets right now.
Speaker 2: So what's going on with that?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 5: Man, it's hard for me to talk about my cafe
Speaker 5: without obviously mentioned to my brother and bigging him up.
Speaker 2: Your blood brother, blood brother, younger brother.
Speaker 5: Younger brother, his partner, head case, but death. He's the
Speaker 5: head chef. You know, he is the He's the lifeblood
Speaker 5: of that of that organization. And you know again, I
Speaker 5: support that business the same way do everything else. I
Speaker 5: merge the culture and the business together.
Speaker 3: I think it's dope. So we ain't say the name,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna try.
Speaker 4: Cold Cuatta You got it colkatta chi cuta cha cold right.
Speaker 4: And the beauty behind it is that it is named
Speaker 4: after the city in India that your parents grew up in. Man,
Speaker 4: So when we talk about family meaning anything, everything, it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, they can go in the city now and
Speaker 4: see like their birthplace because of you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean to honor your parents and to give
Speaker 5: a tribute to them. I felt like that was way
Speaker 5: to do it. Yeah, man, honestly, like I made a
Speaker 5: little bit of money in my life, you know, I
Speaker 5: got a decent car.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 5: That to me will be always my biggest accomplishment, the
Speaker 5: fact that my parents were healthy and able to see that,
Speaker 5: you know, at a time in our life where there's
Speaker 5: a lot of unser you know, but they could pop
Speaker 5: up in Manhattan. My mom was just in India and
Speaker 5: she was like, thank you for making me a celebrity.
Speaker 5: Here everybody's asking me about my cafe. And I was like,
Speaker 5: You've earned that, you know. That's that. But man, with
Speaker 5: with the chai thing, it was imagine if one of
Speaker 5: the biggest products consumed globally was just completely being mistold.
Speaker 2: What what is Can you talk about that? Because we
Speaker 2: like to cultural cultural nights Atalisia. We did a bunch
Speaker 2: on it on Dominican the Dominicans uptown, but we haven't
Speaker 2: done Indian night yet.
Speaker 5: So so chai what is chid Chai is? Chai means
Speaker 5: tea literally translates to tea and across South Asia, so Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
Speaker 5: Sri Lanka, parts of the Middle East, Chai is basically
Speaker 5: a mix of spices of black tea and milk all
Speaker 5: boiled together and it's like this multi dimensional labor profile.
Speaker 5: So it's a little bit sweet, it's a little bit
Speaker 5: spicy his body and it's hot and it cleanses the palate.
Speaker 5: It kind of like keeps you from getting sick. It's
Speaker 5: got a lot of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and it's like
Speaker 5: the most democratic drink across South Asia. So you go
Speaker 5: to any corner and there's a child stall and there's
Speaker 5: what we call chaiahwala that means like a worker's he's
Speaker 5: he's making it and the teachers is drinking it, the kids,
Speaker 5: the businessman, the day laborer, the government official, everybody's waiting
Speaker 5: to get their cup of child That's just it's just
Speaker 5: a place where all of that, you know, cultural class
Speaker 5: and this everything just melts and it's about the about
Speaker 5: the drink. And so in India, when we go back
Speaker 5: to visit our family every day in the evening, like
Speaker 5: there's this concept it's more on Bengali concept, but it
Speaker 5: happens across the India. It's called a d d A
Speaker 5: and it literally means a time where you stop doing
Speaker 5: whatever you're doing, you meet up with your family, and
Speaker 5: you shoot the ship for like an hour and a half,
Speaker 5: You drink tea, you eat food, and you just talk
Speaker 5: about politics, sports, whatever's happened in music, this, that, and
Speaker 5: it happens every day. So growing up, we would see
Speaker 5: our parents and our family doing all this our aunties
Speaker 5: and I'm like, I don't got work, Like We're just
Speaker 5: gonna take this two hours to drink tea and talk.
Speaker 5: And that's how strong family is out there. So we
Speaker 5: realize that this thing that we have bonded around our
Speaker 5: whole lives, nobody was telling that story in the US,
Speaker 5: right And when you think about, you know, talking about eyl,
Speaker 5: let's let's broaden our international reach. South Asians are some
Speaker 5: of the most economically mobile population in the US, and
Speaker 5: when it comes to I think like college educated, they
Speaker 5: hold like the highest household income for college educated individuals
Speaker 5: in the US minority population wise. You got all this happening,
Speaker 5: and you have nobody speaking to them. You got no
Speaker 5: brands that are culturally relevant for South Asians to tap
Speaker 5: into and be like I feel heard, I feel seen,
Speaker 5: I feel like this is a place that reflects my values.
Speaker 5: And we looked at Chai as being the Trojan Horse.
Speaker 5: That's the food item that can coalesce an entire community.
Speaker 5: And so we did it in the form of opening
Speaker 5: a cafe. We're getting into you know, original programming and
Speaker 5: content and media and I got a whole you know,
Speaker 5: list of other things that I want to do, but
Speaker 5: that's the idea. It's like, how do you take something
Speaker 5: that's so important for our heritage and where we come from,
Speaker 5: and how do you celebrate it? Because when you go
Speaker 5: to Starbucks, which you drink is not chy, it's like
Speaker 5: the syrupy sweet, you know, like bastardized version of the drink.
Speaker 5: There's no place that I've seen in America where you
Speaker 5: can get authentic up a child that feels like it
Speaker 5: does back home one place.
Speaker 2: But I think I think it's important too, because it's
Speaker 2: important to brace who you are. Embrace who you are
Speaker 2: because it's like a lot of times people try to
Speaker 2: run away from who they are, especially in America, and
Speaker 2: it's like you want to kind of conform and fit in, right,
Speaker 2: But there's power in being who you are because there's
Speaker 2: always gonna be somebody that can't relate to you. And
Speaker 2: I realized his first hands, like I'm in business and
Speaker 2: when I first started in business, I realized, like I
Speaker 2: was a little self conscious because you know, I have
Speaker 2: like a heavy New York accent and you know, grow
Speaker 2: up listening to hip hop and that's my culture. And
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the people were not like that. Right,
Speaker 2: So I'm like feeling a little self conscious. But now
Speaker 2: I realized that that's actually helped me because there's millions
Speaker 2: of people who CNBC can't talk to Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 2: they have no idea what they're talking about. But when
Speaker 2: they hear me, they hear choice speak, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: these guys like from my neighborhood, Like it's like I
Speaker 2: could be in a barber shop. So it's actually beneficial
Speaker 2: because they're getting the message from somebody that they can understand,
Speaker 2: as opposed to me trying to beat somebody that I'm not.
Speaker 2: And then I'm going to miss them and I'm going
Speaker 2: to not even be able to relate to the other
Speaker 2: people because they know I'm not them.
Speaker 4: It's like exactly what you said, right, you can't fake culture, right, Like,
Speaker 4: He's gonna be exactly who he is and that's going
Speaker 4: to attract people, and some people won't get it, but
Speaker 4: eventually they you know they will because their partners will.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. And I went through
Speaker 5: the same thing as a marketing exact Early on, I
Speaker 5: was trying to conform into like this tech bro or
Speaker 5: whatever the market and I realized I was like, man,
Speaker 5: code switshing is all fun and games, but that's not me.
Speaker 5: And embracing culture and who you are, I think that's
Speaker 5: your competitive advantage. You know, a lot of immigrant kids,
Speaker 5: a lot of like black and brown kids. For us,
Speaker 5: like growing up like it wasn't cool to be who
Speaker 5: we were for so long, it was embarrassing. My name
Speaker 5: was said wrong every day on the first day of
Speaker 5: class for eighteen years of my life. You know, like
Speaker 5: that it'll get to you. But once you realize that
Speaker 5: that's actually what the power is and where ultimately where
Speaker 5: you can create differentiation than the whole world shifts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. Troy never had the deal with Yeah,
Speaker 3: I got lucky, man. I was a Jamaican. Heah, nobody.
Speaker 4: First of all, nobody even thinks I'm Jamaican. But I'm
Speaker 4: growing up in New York City. Patrick Gowan was popping Chapla.
Speaker 4: Ranks was popping super Cot was popping I'm like yo,
Speaker 4: it kind of was cool to be Jamaican. But you
Speaker 4: know what you said about when you chased it the
Speaker 4: chiy and not really realizing that this isn't authentic.
Speaker 3: That's sometimes how I feel about wester Indian food.
Speaker 4: Like I go to these I won't say their names,
Speaker 4: but I'm like they're like, oh, that food is so good.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, man, bro, that's not that's like McDonald's
Speaker 4: like this this isn't it. So we got to I
Speaker 4: got some visions now for for for Westerndan culture, somebody
Speaker 4: has to represent.
Speaker 2: But your name though, I'm just talking about the culture. Nobody,
Speaker 2: nobody ever messes up. Your name is Troy Or.
Speaker 4: That's super intentional as well, like and that conforming right,
Speaker 4: So like even my my grandmother, the names of my
Speaker 4: my uncles and my dad are super American, like Howard
Speaker 4: Victor is a dream. And even my name like you
Speaker 4: can hear it, like Troy Christopher, my brother, Gregory Michael.
Speaker 4: It's like there's nothing about there's no Donovan in my name.
Speaker 5: Was that intentional?
Speaker 3: I think it was superintentional.
Speaker 2: I think but you know what two possibly a culture
Speaker 2: tupac rest in peace, the icon or legend, and I
Speaker 2: heard an interview with him one time and he was
Speaker 2: saying that when he was young, he used to be embarrassed.
Speaker 2: His name is Tupac Shakur, Tupac a Mari Shakor, and
Speaker 2: all his friends is like you know, John Smith and
Speaker 2: just regular American names. And he was like he used,
Speaker 2: you know, they used to make fun of him, like
Speaker 2: your name is Tupac, what does that mean? And he
Speaker 2: was saying that, like over the course of time, he
Speaker 2: realized like it was actually a blessing because it was
Speaker 2: like people anytime somebody saw him or they spoke, they
Speaker 2: was like, what's your name is? Like Tupac's like what
Speaker 2: does that mean? He had to explain what his name man?
Speaker 2: You know he was like even one time he got
Speaker 2: arrested and the cop arrested him when he was a kid,
Speaker 2: and he was like, what's your name? And he told
Speaker 2: him his name, and the cop looked at him like
Speaker 2: Tupac Skor like you know your parents is black Panthers,
Speaker 2: Like this isn't what you're supposed to be doing. And
Speaker 2: he knew, like he was raised better than that, Like
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, just tho of his name,
Speaker 2: So I say that to say, everybody's journey is different,
Speaker 2: and a lot of times what we think are actually hinders.
Speaker 2: It's actually our superpower is then actually, you know, you
Speaker 2: gotta just embrace who you are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think in my life. So funny thing is,
Speaker 5: my full name is Annie Ruddah. That's the name that
Speaker 5: my grandfather gave me. And I hated that name growing
Speaker 5: up because its butchered. I found out that name means
Speaker 5: with no obstacle. And so when I think about my life,
Speaker 5: you know, I think I had every reason to stop,
Speaker 5: or to give up, or to find an excuse. So nah, look,
Speaker 5: I'm you know, we grew up poor. I ain't got it.
Speaker 5: I was sick, you know, I couldn't get past it,
Speaker 5: you know. Oh, you know, couldn't recover from from what
Speaker 5: I went through. And I think, you know, I had
Speaker 5: every every opportunity to be like yo, I I can't
Speaker 5: do it, you know. But I look at the way
Speaker 5: my life went, and I look at the power of
Speaker 5: my name, you know, and I'm like, oh it all
Speaker 5: makes sense, you know. So yeah, culturally and all of that,
Speaker 5: I mean, you nailed it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like our greatest power comes from you know.
Speaker 2: Just where you are. That's it. So before we go
Speaker 2: to the next segment, can we tell a few minutes
Speaker 2: about India, because, like I said, shot out to all
Speaker 2: of the Indians all over the world. India is a
Speaker 2: country that has over a billion people. But what a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't realize is that it's a They
Speaker 2: have communities Indian descent from Jamaica, heavy present, the whole West, Indies,
Speaker 2: even South America, America, Africa, all over.
Speaker 3: His uncle was called the cool kid.
Speaker 2: But you said, so, you said that you actually went
Speaker 2: out there, and so what's the business scene out there,
Speaker 2: because obviously it's booming more and more people are coming
Speaker 2: into them. People talk about China a lot, but I
Speaker 2: think people don't fully understand, like India is a big
Speaker 2: economy as well as a billion people.
Speaker 5: It's a big economy. And the greatest thing about the
Speaker 5: Indian economy is that everyone has access to mobile and
Speaker 5: cell service and data. Data is cheaper in India than
Speaker 5: it is anywhere else in the world. So you get
Speaker 5: a data plan in India the cheapest and what that
Speaker 5: does is everybody becomes connected, you know, at a at
Speaker 5: a scale that no other place in the world could replicated.
Speaker 3: Is there a top between that and have a call centers?
Speaker 5: Not necessarily the call centers. What happened. The reason why
Speaker 5: that is is because India was a British colony and
Speaker 5: so everybody in India, when you go to school, you
Speaker 5: learn in English. So everybody in India speaks English. You know,
Speaker 5: whether that's at the same you know accent as American
Speaker 5: English is a whole different conversation. But the reason why
Speaker 5: call centers popped off in India is because everybody was
Speaker 5: English educated and so when it came to onboarding, it
Speaker 5: was just a whole different.
Speaker 2: And they get paid least high like Nigeria, same thing.
Speaker 5: Correct, correct. So the Indian economy and kind of investing.
Speaker 5: So what's happening is over the last like five or
Speaker 5: ten years, we've started to see the same kind of
Speaker 5: startup economy that exists here happen in India. So you
Speaker 5: have companies like Oyo Oyo. It's like a big hotel
Speaker 5: chain that actually Soft Bank invested in division fund Oios
Speaker 5: is in deep trouble right now, but as a multi
Speaker 5: billion dollar company that was created by I think he
Speaker 5: was like eighteen or nineteen year old, like a founder
Speaker 5: in India. Well, you have a company called flip Cart,
Speaker 5: which was the Amazon of India that got acquired recently
Speaker 5: for I think it was like a couple of bill
Speaker 5: and they basically just they figured out what's called last
Speaker 5: mile delivery, which is like how do you get to
Speaker 5: the customer who lives kind of like off the beaten
Speaker 5: path in an effective timeframe. So like you have a
Speaker 5: lot of the Indian startup ecosystem is starting to resemble
Speaker 5: what's happening in the West. The problem with India as
Speaker 5: an outsider is that you have to know somebody or
Speaker 5: you have to know the ways of the local economy
Speaker 5: and kind of how things are popping to be able
Speaker 5: to get involved there. What you don't have to necessarily
Speaker 5: know is like, you know, I managed an artist named
Speaker 5: Ani Khan. He's spawning with Beshi and we do a
Speaker 5: lot of work in India, and we're using content and
Speaker 5: music as a way to break down those walls and
Speaker 5: create points of true action and investment. So like we
Speaker 5: don't have to necessarily be in India and talk to
Speaker 5: labels in India and I don't have to pitch him
Speaker 5: that way, but I can have the talent buyers in
Speaker 5: India be like, Oh, this guy is popping and he
Speaker 5: represents you know, this audience, Let's fly him out.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: What that does now is it connects me to a
Speaker 5: bunch of brands, a bunch of people who have you know,
Speaker 5: invested interest in finding an artist that can bridge East
Speaker 5: and West.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 5: So that's the type of work that I'm involved in now.
Speaker 5: And I think I don't know how familiar guys are
Speaker 5: with you know, Master Appeal, the label that they just
Speaker 5: did a JV with Universal Music in India, and they've
Speaker 5: been investing heavily in India. So NAS is executive producing, Uh,
Speaker 5: this guy named Devine who's like one of the biggest
Speaker 5: superstars India, and and the Mass Appeal guys are really
Speaker 5: really heavily invested over there. There was a movie that
Speaker 5: came out called, uh, what's it called The Gully Gully Boy.
Speaker 5: A movie came out it was like the imagine this yo.
Speaker 5: The Indian eight mile came out last year about a
Speaker 5: rapper from India. And I remember I was in India
Speaker 5: on tour with a nick and we had a day
Speaker 5: off and we went and watched it in the theater
Speaker 5: and I called my mom. I was like, yo, I
Speaker 5: just seen gully Boy. She was like, oh, we did too,
Speaker 5: And I was like, I was trying to tell y'all
Speaker 5: about hip hop music ten years ago. Just kicked me out, Like,
Speaker 5: now y'all watching this movie about a hippo, you.
Speaker 3: Know, like it was just my story.
Speaker 5: Mom, come on, like it was his full circle moment.
Speaker 5: So I say all that to say hip hop is
Speaker 5: an important cultural export, right, but you're seeing in India
Speaker 5: a place of a lot of struggle. People are adopting,
Speaker 5: you know, that story for people that want to do
Speaker 5: business in India to kind of figure out how to
Speaker 5: invest in India. I think the potential lies in solving
Speaker 5: everyday problems in India. It's really difficult to do basic things.
Speaker 5: Threats are difficult, Getting household supplies are difficult because the
Speaker 5: roads aren't paved, or because you got to go to
Speaker 5: a market where everyone's going to haggle you and you
Speaker 5: gotta like, you know, I got grandparents, I gotta go.
Speaker 5: They can't even go to the market anymore. They gotta
Speaker 5: pay somebody to go. That person picks up the wrong item,
Speaker 5: you know, Like there's just a lot of friction and
Speaker 5: daily tasks. So I think that somebody who invents the
Speaker 5: technology or the type of infrastructure that solves for those problems,
Speaker 5: they're gonna win big.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Salute to all of our listeners all over Asia. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we got a big presence all over the world. So India.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how many listeners that we have an
Speaker 2: Indian Yeah, the one just puts us over the at
Speaker 2: least once a week. Manats I love the whole non Brad.
Speaker 2: My mom is like real she's real big on the
Speaker 2: whole Indian vibe culture. And I told you I went
Speaker 2: to my first Indian wedding. If you're listening, Uh, all right,
Speaker 2: So in the next seven we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: real estate and bring it home. Let's do it's do
Speaker 2: it all right. So in the last segment, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a hot time, something that's always hot
Speaker 2: for Earnalsia, something that people are always interested in. So
Speaker 2: aside from all of the other stuff that we just mentioned,
Speaker 2: you're a real estate investor as well, but you have
Speaker 2: a unique thing where I read that way, you said
Speaker 2: you invest in distressed in underperforming properties, right, So what
Speaker 2: does that mean? What is a distressed underperforming property? Like,
Speaker 2: how can you tell if a property is distressed or underperforming.
Speaker 5: Yeah, great question. So have an investment thesis, right that
Speaker 5: revolves around major centers of employment. If you are within
Speaker 5: thirty to sixty minutes by public transportation to a major
Speaker 5: center of employment, then anything around that area becomes extremely
Speaker 5: valuable for investment.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So think about New York City. You go twenty minutes
Speaker 5: on one train, you end up in Jersey City. You
Speaker 5: go another ten minutes on that same train, you end
Speaker 5: up in Newark. Those areas have a massive advantage because
Speaker 5: you can live at a third of the cost that
Speaker 5: it takes to live in New York City and still
Speaker 5: have fairly easy access to employment centers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: Properties in those areas, believe it or not, are there's
Speaker 5: there's massive distressed properties, meaning there's boarded up multifamilies, there's
Speaker 5: abandoned homes, there's blocks which are burned down ten minutes
Speaker 5: from a train station thirty minutes in New York City
Speaker 5: for a third of the cost. Like to me, that's
Speaker 5: just arbitrage, right, Like, there's a massive arbitrage. So when
Speaker 5: I look at investment zones, I have a thesis which
Speaker 5: is part proximity to major employment areas, part creative capital
Speaker 5: and cultural capital and kind of what's happening with artists
Speaker 5: around that area and part of financial So just kind
Speaker 5: of looking at pure price for square foot, but I
Speaker 5: look at properties that are distressed and not performing that
Speaker 5: fit within that criteria we're talking.
Speaker 4: Are we're talking single family distress or multi family or
Speaker 4: multi property?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't. I don't believe in single family investing,
Speaker 5: So I don't know, you know, I'd love to spar
Speaker 5: with somebody on that, but I don't believe that that's
Speaker 5: a scalable strategy. I think that when you look at
Speaker 5: real estate investing, it has to be multi because that's
Speaker 5: where you scale and achieve you know, growth. And for me,
Speaker 5: secondary markets are gold mines. Cities like Newark, cities like Philadelphia,
Speaker 5: cities like Dallas, cities like Oakland. These are all cities
Speaker 5: that don't get mentioned amongst the tier one you know,
Speaker 5: New York and Atlantis, but that have massive ROI because
Speaker 5: they have proximity, you know, to these centers of employment.
Speaker 5: And I've built my portfolio around secondary market investing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting because, like I said, I was in
Speaker 2: I was in Orange, New Jersey today and my car
Speaker 2: broke down so I had to get a toad towards
Speaker 2: like two Union. So we're driving through all these he's different,
Speaker 2: Irvington and all that. And so the driver was we
Speaker 2: drove through Newark and he's from Newark, so we was
Speaker 2: about Newark, and you know, I had a conversation. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I heard a lot of real estate development is going
Speaker 2: on in Nork right now. He was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's getting gentified a lot. A lot of people's coming
Speaker 2: in from like all different neighborhoods, and and he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, the train runs, but I already knew Newark
Speaker 2: had a train because Lord of the Slums. Don't know
Speaker 2: if you saw that episode, that's another good one. And yeah,
Speaker 2: my god, Fernando. So they do him in season and
Speaker 2: they got a lot going on in Patterson. So when
Speaker 2: I asked him about I'm like, yeah, you know, Patterson,
Speaker 2: is it like the same gentrification that's going on. He's like, Nah,
Speaker 2: it's slower because we don't have the train like Newark.
Speaker 2: Like Newark has a train, so it's like already on
Speaker 2: the on the path to New York City. And that's
Speaker 2: the same thing that I remember Nipsey has said about Crenshaw, Like,
Speaker 2: Crenshaw has the train train line that they built or
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was theod Yeah, building it
Speaker 2: right now. He's like, once that gets built, Crenshaw is
Speaker 2: going to be prime real estate because the proximity to
Speaker 2: like downtown La, Hollywood and all that, like it's very
Speaker 2: close compared to like a Compton or a Carson where
Speaker 2: it's further out on South Central, was actually prime location.
Speaker 2: And I remember him saying that, and he was like,
Speaker 2: that's why we gotta start building and taking the neighborhood now,
Speaker 2: because like in a few years, like Crenshaw is going
Speaker 2: to look a lot different.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I spent I spent a lot of time in
Speaker 5: LA and if you go to Crenshaw right now, it
Speaker 5: looks like, you know, massive development everywhere, and Crenshaw itself
Speaker 5: is not necessarily the first place that developers would think of.
Speaker 5: But you know, Nip being from the culture and being
Speaker 5: from that area, he you know, he saw it. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I think for us, like even in Philadelphia, they're building
Speaker 5: a Amtrak high speed train between Newark and Philly. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and the station in Philly is called ten North, and
Speaker 5: that train, that high speed train, I think it's like
Speaker 5: a forty five minute train when it happens. So think
Speaker 5: about how that changes the entire culture of work and
Speaker 5: living in New York and Philly. You could live in
Speaker 5: Philly for forty percent less than New York can still
Speaker 5: commute the same time it takes you to get from
Speaker 5: Brooklyn to Manhattan. And so we have an entire real
Speaker 5: estate development in Philadelphia which is like four blocks from
Speaker 5: ten North, and we're anchoring it around a bunch of things,
Speaker 5: with that being one of them. And I think when
Speaker 5: it comes to like gentrification, you know, the approach that
Speaker 5: we take from an equitable investing side is like, how
Speaker 5: do you involve the community in what you're doing and
Speaker 5: have them have a say and be able to influence
Speaker 5: the things that happen before you just go down and
Speaker 5: start raising buildings and building things up. So we've had
Speaker 5: community board meetings for all of our developments in Philly
Speaker 5: so far and taken advice, you know, from the local
Speaker 5: people before starting any construction.
Speaker 4: Right, so before you even get out to these cities,
Speaker 4: you're building a team from those cities.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So in Newark, so I have two I run two
Speaker 5: kind of funds that I'm a part of So the
Speaker 5: Sandal Capitol Group is the one that I run kind
Speaker 5: of in the north the New York metro area, and
Speaker 5: that is myself. I have some investors, and I have
Speaker 5: a like a GC construction team, and then I have
Speaker 5: a property management team as well. So originally I was
Speaker 5: doing a lot of that three sixty myself. You know,
Speaker 5: it's not necessarily the gcing, but like being on site
Speaker 5: all the time and like you know handling you know,
Speaker 5: contractors and all that work, and then property managing you know,
Speaker 5: kind of halftime while hiring somebody to help me out
Speaker 5: with and that burn me out. It's just really tough
Speaker 5: to do that yourself, especially as you scale. You know,
Speaker 5: you have three tenants, you know everybody's name, and you
Speaker 5: know everybody's situation, you know where they're at. They can
Speaker 5: text you cool, you got thirty tenants. It's impossible to right.
Speaker 5: So what I've done is I've built out infrastructure to
Speaker 5: be able to handle those things and cut into my
Speaker 5: profit margin a little bit, but be able to give
Speaker 5: me peace of mind so that I could focus on
Speaker 5: the important things like the vision and the investor relations
Speaker 5: and really being able to scale an operation instead of
Speaker 5: worrying about, you know, the day to day rent collection
Speaker 5: and repairs and maintenance and things like that.
Speaker 3: So you got the Northeast corridor that you obviously have
Speaker 3: the team.
Speaker 4: Now you mentioned Dallas, you mentioned Oakland, all those cities
Speaker 4: potentially that you're looking at in the future.
Speaker 5: So with where I'm at and I like to be
Speaker 5: high touch with investing, I think that you know a
Speaker 5: lot of people when you have capital and you can
Speaker 5: just deploy it in different places. Like your money's gonna
Speaker 5: work for you, but if you can build something with
Speaker 5: your hands, kind of using the things that you're good at.
Speaker 5: For me, it's marketing and branding and storytelling. I know,
Speaker 5: I can't be high touched everywhere.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like Nit with Crunshaw, like that's what he knew
Speaker 5: and that's what he did, you know. For me, it's
Speaker 5: like I want to do the things that I know
Speaker 5: before I get into those different markets. So I invest
Speaker 5: in like E reachs, you know, like ri I T's,
Speaker 5: and I have exposure across a lot of those secondary markets.
Speaker 2: Investment trust, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Very low risk way to get exposure to real estate
Speaker 5: for people that don't necessarily want a man of fix
Speaker 5: and flip or you know, pick up a hammer themselves.
Speaker 5: Like you can research different ri I ts that have
Speaker 5: exposure to different geographic regions or different investment thesises. And
Speaker 5: that is kind of how I started, like eight years ago,
Speaker 5: before I put any money, and I was just like
Speaker 5: playing around with ri I ts and then I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I'm ready to you know, build out an actual fund
Speaker 5: and then go and actually rehab buildings and build a portfolio.
Speaker 2: Dope dope, so you're building units in Philly or developing or.
Speaker 5: So in Philly. What we're doing is we've narrowed down
Speaker 5: on like a four block radius in North Philly, which
Speaker 5: is a block from Temper University, and our job there
Speaker 5: is to kind of revitalize and redevelop the entire area.
Speaker 5: We want to own all four blocks. Right now, we
Speaker 5: have about six sites, so multi family building is commercial
Speaker 5: units and landlots across those, and we're in talks for
Speaker 5: four more and we've just been accu leading assets. And
Speaker 5: the idea is, how do you take what you know
Speaker 5: on the marketing and branding and storytelling and community angle
Speaker 5: and go redevelop an entire area in an equitable way
Speaker 5: and create something that's more than just a place for
Speaker 5: people to live, that's actually a place that builds community,
Speaker 5: that creates resources and knowledge sharing for the people that
Speaker 5: live there. And then that raises the value of your
Speaker 5: portfolio even more because you're not just dealing in buildings.
Speaker 5: You're dealing with human capital, You're dealing with cultural capital.
Speaker 5: And then in fifteen years you go to a black
Speaker 5: Rock or you go to an institutional investor and you say,
Speaker 5: you guys are not just buying the buildings. You're buying
Speaker 5: an entire ecosystem. You're buying an entire community, and that
Speaker 5: multiple is going to be way larger than if they
Speaker 5: were to buy a multi family unit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, you have a portfolio now. But before, when
Speaker 4: you started, it wasn't like that you talk about some
Speaker 4: of the sacrifices. Because I did some research, I'm like, wait,
Speaker 4: you got to talk about so many sacrifices you made
Speaker 4: to get to that first point. I know you have
Speaker 4: a clip where you talked about you went from forty
Speaker 4: thousand to two point one million. Yeah, but people like
Speaker 4: you know you got to get to forty thousand, so
Speaker 4: you want to talk about something the sacrifices.
Speaker 5: I love that you brought that up. That that brought
Speaker 5: me right back to earth. I think sacrifice is the
Speaker 5: that's the quality that separates entrepreneurs because there was a
Speaker 5: point in my life where so the philosophy behind real
Speaker 5: estate for me was like we were in a cash
Speaker 5: rich business on the agency side, right, We're we're making cash.
Speaker 5: When you're twenty eight, twenty nine years old and you
Speaker 5: see your first you know, two hundred thousand, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of ways that can go, you know, especially when
Speaker 5: you don't come through a lot. There's a lot of
Speaker 5: ways that can go. And I knew that for me,
Speaker 5: it had to go one way, which was build something
Speaker 5: generational for my family because we don't own too much
Speaker 5: in this country, you know, and for my family, it's
Speaker 5: just the four of us. So if I want to
Speaker 5: build something that my parents can live off of and
Speaker 5: eat off of, I had to make choices.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So I'm twenty nine, I got a little bit of
Speaker 5: paper and I'm like that model s that Tesla looked serious.
Speaker 5: Pull up on my friends and that joint. Nobody gonna
Speaker 5: say a word. And I remember, you know, building a
Speaker 5: package Tesla dot Com. I was, you know, pimping out
Speaker 5: my Rod, and I was like, at the same time,
Speaker 5: I was evaluating this multi family real estate deal, and
Speaker 5: I was like, I don't know, Like, it's a seventy
Speaker 5: thousand dollars car, it's a seventy thousand dollars down payment.
Speaker 5: And I decided to click out that browser, you know,
Speaker 5: put that in the stash, and I went and rehabbed.
Speaker 5: I went into this rehab project for this multi family
Speaker 5: in Jersey City, and I bought that that property for
Speaker 5: one hundred and ninety thousand, and it needed seventy thousand
Speaker 5: in repair. But the thing was, it went six months
Speaker 5: over schedule. So for six months I had to pay
Speaker 5: the mortgage out of pocket. I have to pay my
Speaker 5: contractors out of pocket. And I was dating a girl
Speaker 5: at the time, and she's like, Oh, you want to
Speaker 5: go out and eat, you want to go vacation. I
Speaker 5: don't want to go nowhere. I can't go nowhere because
Speaker 5: all of my money is being invested into this building
Speaker 5: that I gotta make sure it happened. My pops was
Speaker 5: like he invested with me at the time and then
Speaker 5: he lost his job, so he was like yo, and
Speaker 5: I was like, nah, don't don't even say it, Like
Speaker 5: I got it. I'm gonna figure it out. I ain't
Speaker 5: buy no sneakers, I ain't buy no I don't own
Speaker 5: no bomb main, but I definitely buy you know, no clothes,
Speaker 5: no Tesla, no nothing. I just doubled down on like
Speaker 5: bringing that project to life. About that project for one ninety,
Speaker 5: I put in seventy, I was all in at two sixty,
Speaker 5: I ARV I refinanced out at three fifty. And so
Speaker 5: that day I got a check for ninety thousand when
Speaker 5: I when I cash out REFID and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this makes sense now, like this is why I did it,
Speaker 5: you know. And that property now it is like it's
Speaker 5: close to about half a million, you know, in terms
Speaker 5: of property value. I actually gotta go check on that
Speaker 5: after this. That's how I spent my Saturday even But yeah, sacrifice,
Speaker 5: you know, if that's if that's the sacrifice in the nutshell,
Speaker 5: is like sublimate your urges and your wants for the
Speaker 5: now to be able to build and grow your wealth
Speaker 5: for the future, because you know, especially as minorities like
Speaker 5: we don't we don't have a lot, we don't come
Speaker 5: from a lot. But when we have the opportunity to
Speaker 5: make something happen. You've got to be conscious about the
Speaker 5: decision you make.
Speaker 2: Sony pleasure. It's been a pleasure many thank you. How
Speaker 2: can the people contact you any initiatives any Well, you're
Speaker 2: coming to earn your leashes live podcasts in a few days.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so what's the what's your information? Social media
Speaker 2: handles and all that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean my goal is to respond to every
Speaker 5: d M that I get. I'm like, I've been behind
Speaker 5: for six months. You can find me everywhere. Annie Hustles.
Speaker 5: That's a n I h U S, t l E
Speaker 5: S Instagram. I'm big on Twitter. I'm super involved in medium.
Speaker 5: I write. I really love like writing articles about the
Speaker 5: things that I go through.
Speaker 3: Grote The Good One, five books that changed my life.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that I'm on I'm medium, But yeah, Annie
Speaker 5: hustles across everything, and I urge people to reach out
Speaker 5: to me. I try to help you know however I can,
Speaker 5: because I know I was once in that position where
Speaker 5: a question and answer was the difference between you know,
Speaker 5: making a play and not making a play.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I appreciate that. Troy Housekeeping items.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shout to everybody on Patreon dot com. That is
Speaker 4: all proud to pay program. Big shout out to my
Speaker 4: man Dave.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: He is joined in at T five, so shout out
Speaker 4: at him. Man, I can't wait looking forward to his call.
Speaker 3: He hit me up and he's like, yo, I didn't
Speaker 3: get my shout. I'm like, yeah, it's coming, man, it's coming.
Speaker 4: So shout out to you Dave for checking in and
Speaker 4: everybody that's on Patreon and everybody that's on UH supporting
Speaker 4: the Merchant on Earnie Leisure dot com and UH supporting
Speaker 4: us on earn Leisure University that is our online school
Speaker 4: where we give classes that are just super in depth
Speaker 4: on a multitude of topics. So everybody that's tapped in
Speaker 4: and that as said, thank.
Speaker 3: You so much. And yeah, man, we're looking forward to
Speaker 3: seeing everybody in Philly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Philadelphia, h E y L experience dot com. Let's
Speaker 2: just say you got about two to three days before
Speaker 2: we come to the town, and it's gonna be a
Speaker 2: really dope experience. And we're bringing all of our friends
Speaker 2: with us, not just the people that's going to be
Speaker 2: involved and people that's just coming just to show some support.
Speaker 2: So but Annie's on the bill and he will be
Speaker 2: tag team with John Henry, that's going crazy.
Speaker 5: Shout out to John. He's the reason that I'm here.
Speaker 2: What's a John? John's moving around all over the place? Man,
Speaker 2: that can't keep track of that guy. So book tip
Speaker 2: of the week?
Speaker 3: Joy, Uh, Yeah, you want to give it contagious? You
Speaker 3: want to talk about that?
Speaker 5: Why don't we do it together?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 4: So I took it from your five Books That Change
Speaker 4: Your Life and I saw Contagious by and the ties
Speaker 4: to Nipsey Hustle was amazing because that's where you got
Speaker 4: the one hundred dollars mixtape from.
Speaker 3: But it was tied to a Philly cheese steak. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so have it are crazy the place that we're going,
Speaker 3: it's tied to the books. If you want to tell
Speaker 3: why to change your life?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Contagious to me was we talked about like how
Speaker 5: word of mouth is one of the biggest marketing tools,
Speaker 5: and it just reinforced the fact that if you don't
Speaker 5: give people a reason to talk about you, they have
Speaker 5: no incentive to do that. And digging behind what it
Speaker 5: takes to create a product that's worth talking about, that's
Speaker 5: the most valuable lesson. You know a lot of marketers
Speaker 5: and brand people need to understand. So that book is
Speaker 5: powerful for me obviously, you know what. I got that
Speaker 5: from NIP. Yeah, but I went and bought it the
Speaker 5: next day and I was like, let me read it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, that was powerful.
Speaker 2: There you have it. So ladies and gentlemen, Philadelphia, we're
Speaker 2: on our way. Thank you guys for rocking with us.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next week. Peace. Peace.
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