Brief Summary (by ChatTube):
The video discusses the lies we are told about money, such as the idea that going to school and getting a job will make us wealthy. The speaker shares his personal journey of discovering the truth about money and learning about financial education and investment. He also highlights how the banking system and financial education system are designed to keep people financially uneducated and poor.
Common Misconceptions about Money:
There are several common misconceptions about money that can keep people stuck in a cycle of financial struggle. Here are a few of them:
1. The belief that a higher education degree guarantees financial success: While education is important, relying solely on a degree does not guarantee financial prosperity. It’s crucial to understand how to manage money, invest, and build wealth, which are often not taught in traditional education.
2. Believing that working harder and climbing the corporate ladder is the path to wealth: Wealthy individuals often focus on ownership and entrepreneurship rather than just working to climb the corporate ladder. Building and owning businesses, investing, and creating multiple streams of income are key components of wealth-building.
3. Thinking that saving money in the bank is the best way to grow wealth: Saving money is important, but simply keeping cash in a bank account often leads to its devaluation over time due to inflation. Wealthy individuals understand the importance of investing their money in assets that can generate income and appreciate in value.
4. Believing that debt is always bad: Not all debt is created equal. While high-interest consumer debt can be detrimental, strategic borrowing for investments or assets that have the potential to increase in value can be beneficial. It’s important to understand the difference between good debt and bad debt.
5. Assuming that only the wealthy can invest and build wealth: Anyone can learn about investing and start building wealth, regardless of their current financial status. It’s about acquiring knowledge, making informed decisions, and taking action.
Remember, these are just a few misconceptions, and it’s crucial to continuously educate yourself about money and challenge these beliefs to pave the way for financial success.
Transcript
- And the more I i learned the more. I realized. I was lied to we’re taught to go to school to get a degree to get a job. So we can then get a job and climb the corporate ladder but wealthy people don’t do that wealthy. People are not working to climb the corporate ladder they’re working to. I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness please welcome. What is the the big thing that you wish. Everyone knew about money before they started making it oh man well. It goes back to I guess just the basics because most of us myself included are never taught a thing a thing about money. We’re told go to school get a degree get a job and now you figure it out right and then what happens with the majority of people. Is you end up broke you end up struggling financially and you you can never figure out why so the first thing is what is it that you want to achieve in your life financially and then you have to go out and figure it out yourself because unfortunately school will never teach you this stuff. So you didn’t learn this in high school or university of michigan or no no law school didn’t teach you into this stuff. I went through high school. I went through college. I went through one year grad school and then I went through law school and I never once learned to think about money. Never once learned to think about budgeting never once learned to think about building. Wealth. Never once learned to think about investing my money and never once learned a thing about passive income yeah.Here. I am today with a law degree and I haven’t worked a single day as an attorney why not well it. It doesn’t make sense for me financially and it’s not my my purpose so you know. I grew up in a traditional indian house right doctor lawyer well for me. I had two options doctor or failure. Those are the two options that I had my parents are immigrants from a state uh in india called punjab and my parents came to the country with very little and so you know. I saw my parents work their butt off every single day if my dad got a saturday and a sunday off it was considered a long weekend and so I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with my parents growing up and they would always tell me that you know you have to go out and become successful and I completely agreed because I wanted to give back to my parents. I wanted to help support them and I figured okay if I want to become successful. I should follow the steps that we’re told to become successful. What are those steps go to school. Get a good degree get a good job for me. In my case it was become a doctor and along that way it was in college. I realized that something is wrong something’s not adding up and it actually happened. I was studying to get into medical school and as I was studying. I started reading other business books and financial books and I remember this. I was in the library studying and I went on to google and I searched the richest people in america and you see people like steve jobs. Warren buffett bill gates mark zuckerberg and I was like huh none of these people are doctors. None of these people went down that traditional route of you know getting a degree doing a good job am I missing something because I thought that if you go to school get a good degree you can make a lot of money and if you work harder in school get better grades you’ll make even more money. So I thought it was just directly correlated. Your grades your income and that’s when I started questioning things and I realized oh maybe. This isn’t right and as you start to go down deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole you start to realize oh my god. Everything that I’ve been told is a lie and so that that kind of pushed me into this whole painful emotional journey of learning about money learning about entrepreneurship learning about what does it mean to become wealthy and how do you actually do it right.So that was that was kind of the the initial phase for me and then. I had to go out and actually start learning it. Yeah and the first real experience of that for me was i. I had this event planning company that I started in college and the reason why I started it was because when I was in high school. I worked at indian weddings. So I got to know a lot of the dj’s right and when I was in high school. These djs were like hey man. You know a lot of people in high school how about we host a teen party for your friends in high school. I was like all right that’s fine you know why not started this little teen party party business in high school and I go to college don’t know what to expect because my parents didn’t go to university here. I think everybody goes to college to study hard and and become this big thing in college. I get to college and everybody is partying yeah. They’re blowing their money that they don’t have on alcohol they’re drinking. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m not. I’m not into that party scene. But I need something to do on friday nights. So I was like why don’t. I just take this teen party business that I had in high school bring it to college and that’s what I did my freshman year. I was 17 years old. I started knocking on the door of every club venue bar restaurant asking if I could host a party here. Some would say yeah. It’s gonna cost. You ten thousand dollars. Someone said yes. It’s gonna cost you 20 grand. I don’t have that money right but then one or two said you can do it. Here. We’re not going to charge you. A penny just give us half of the cover charge half of the money that you bring in. I said okay now.I’m in business so I started making a little bit of money doing this and I had some cash saved up and I’m starting to read these business books and every business book said wealthy people invest in real estate. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know any real estate investors. My parents aren’t investors and so I was like okay if wealthy people invest in real estate. Maybe I should invest in real estate and this was right after the 2008 crash and I’m in michigan where real estate was hit extremely hard so. I was like all right you know. I would like to invest in real estate. I’m studying for my medical college admission test. I start going to google because I’m bored while I’m studying for this exam. I’m reading about the the forbes richest people. None of them are doctors. None of them are people that work the traditional path and you know. I have this idea to start investing in real estate. So I started looking at real estate in between my study sessions and on august 22nd I took the medical college admission test the mcat. On august 23rd. I closed them up closed on my first real estate investment property wow how old were you. I was 19. Holy cow it was eight thousand. Dollars was the investment was the price of the condo. The condo was eight grand eight grand how did you get a counterfeit grant. This is right after the 2008 crash wow you got it foreign foreclosure that same condo was selling for about 150 grand. Just a few years prior come on yeah and so I came in. It was actually listed on sale for 8 400. I made an offer for 4 000. They came down to 7 000 and I was still trying to push them lower but then they said they had another offer on the table. I didn’t want to lose it so I said I’ll give you eight grand right so I bought it for eight grand put in a few thousand dollars worth of work and at least it for six hundred dollars. A month and now all of a sudden my mind was blown because I kind of had this idea of what entrepreneurship was. I had never heard that term until I came to college. But I was running this event panning company. I’m starting to learn about this thing called entrepreneurship and now. I have this condo. That’s generating me this like almost passive income. I say almost because I was making a lot of mistakes in the beginning but now. I’m like wow. This investing thing is very unique because I never learned this in school. My teachers never taught me this but why am I working so hard in school. I mean I want to become a doctor so I can ultimately make money now. I start having this you know. I talked about an emotional dilemma why am. I becoming a doctor okay. I want to make my parents happy check. I want to be successful check do. I really want to be a doctor maybe and now I’m starting to question my like my actual beliefs because if I become a doctor how do you make money you treat people. I kind of have this entrepreneurial mind. I want to become successful. How do you make more money. You treat more people. So it’s like this kind of runs into a dilemma because if I’m trying to maximize my income as a doctor. I got to maximize how many patients. I see maybe that means. I don’t get to give the best value to each individual patient but as a human. I want to provide the most value possible so. I started to kind of face this dilemma where maybe. I’m becoming a doctor for the wrong reasons. It’s interesting and then I run this idea by my parents. I don’t want to be a doctor and they’re like absolutely not my.My dad was angry. My mom was furious. It took my mom about a year and a half to believe that her son was not going to be a doctor oh man and I had. I mean when I say it was. It was it was tough like my parents would tell all their friends just oh wow you’re not becoming one. I’m not going to become one now. I’m getting calls from my family. I’m getting calls from my family across what are you doing you’re disgraced to your family exactly exactly. I heard that again and again and again. But I was like this is not for me and I started to realize that there’s more to this thing so now I’m starting to go down this financial education journey and the more I i learned the more. I realized. I was lied to like we’re taught to go to school to get a degree to get a job. So we can then get a job and climb. The corporate ladder well wealthy people don’t do that wealthy. People are not working to climb the corporate ladder they’re working to own the corporate ladder. How did anyone realize that you could do that now you can climb the corporate ladder and work to own the corporate ladder at the same time. But it’s a different mindset right right. Most of us are taught to get that degree so we can do one thing climb. The corporate letter earn a bigger salary but if you only rely on your salary. You’re just one step away from being broke because if you lose your job something happens to you you can’t work or your company goes down. You lost your salary and now you have no income coming in and now what you’re scrambling for a job. Maybe you have some savings to help take care of you or if you haven’t been saving and you just spend on on things all the time and you have no savings. Then you’re really screwed yeah you’re going into credit card debt right and now you’re trying to figure out. How do you make things work and by then it’s too late. This is where you got to be proactive and now. I’m just like this is crazy why was.I never taught this. I was never taught about wealth. I was never taught about investing. I was never taught about this sort of financial education but why aren’t we taught this and that’s when I realized. It’s very profitable to keep people financially uneducated. It’s profitable to keep people poor interesting. What is that what would you say is the main system that keeps people poor. Then it goes down to so. Many different things the bank’s profit when you’re financially uneducated because they’ll keep you saving money in the bank. They’ll keep you in consumer debt. If the banks lived by their own advice which is save money. The banks would be losing money when you go and deposit a thousand dollars in the bank. That cash that you deposited is a liability for the bank. An asset is something that puts money in your pocket. A liability is something that takes money away from your pocket so when the bank has your cash. It’s a liability for them. They want to get rid of it as fast as possible and the way they do that is by lending it out because it’s an investment for the bank. They don’t want to hold on to cash but they want you to save your money you want you to give them cash right and just leave it. There leave it there and what’s happening to your cash while it’s there. It’s losing value to inflation each and every day every day that you keep your cash in the bank you’re becoming poorer each and every day now it’s funny. I made a video on this in 2016. It was my first video to go viral. It was called you’re guaranteed to go broke if you do this and I was talking about inflation at two to three percent if you keep your cash in the bank you’re going broke every single day. Now here we are eight and a half percent and a half percent and now people are starting to realize wow. This inflation is a real problem and so now when you keep your cash in the bank. The bank is paying you point zero one percent maybe point five percent if you’re lucky and they’re turning around lending it for five percent six percent and so the bank does not want to keep the cash and savings because it’s a liability for them. They want to keep you spending money on their credit card because now they’ll get to earn 18 to 25 in interest. Every time you spend a dollar wow. Governments want you to be financially uneducated because when you’re financially uneducated guess what you are an employee and you’re a consumer who pays the highest taxes employees and consumers. Everybody knows that rich people don’t pay taxes. It makes people angry but a lot of times we don’t understand why right and we get angry at the wrong things at the wrong reasons yeah. But the more you make as a business owner until you’re like uber rich.
- I feel like you’re spending a lot of taxes. You are man and you know what there’s a lot of things that you can do right legally to pay less money in taxes and there’s different ways that you can invest your money to pay less money in taxes. So I’ll give you a couple examples. Let’s start with this tax avoidance and tax evading are two similar words with two very different outcomes. This is one of the first things that you learn in law school tax evading is illegal. Yes you go to jail. Yes tax avoiding is legal and then you get hated. We’re doing that right. But this is the way it works you’re playing within the system the rules of the system and if you learn the irs code it’s a rule book and the people who understand the rule book are the people who have the money to hire the good accountants and the good attorneys. But you’re not an accountant but have you studied. The. I have started a lot of tax law really yeah and so what happens is wealthy people will understand how this works play within that system and pay little to no money in taxes. What are three things that people who are making half a million and above should be doing to avoid taxes better. So let’s start with let me assume that you have either some sort of your own income. You’re a side hustler or you are a business owner yes so if you make half a million dollars. Let’s assume that’s profit you are taxed on income so if you take out a salary that’s going to be taxed now the question is what is a tax deduction or the better question is how can you make something a tax deduction because anything can be a tax deduction if you know how to make it a deduction. So that’s the question that you have to ask yourself because if you don’t have an income you don’t have any tax right. So this is what wealthy people are doing so.I’ll give you an example of it being done then. I’ll show you how people can do it on a potentially smaller scale. Elon musk. He’s probably the biggest example. He never got paid a salary running and owning tesla. He got paid in stock options so these stock options were even before it was public. This is uh. I think it was around the time that was public or maybe a little bit before. But he’s been getting stock options for a long time sure but the stock options that he gets or originally got were at six dollars a share so when the stock went up to a thousand dollars a share and he was given millions of these docker options. Now he has on paper a lot of money but the money isn’t in his bank account so what he does is instead of selling it and having an income. He goes to the bank and says hey. I have these stock options which are worth billions of dollars. How about you give me a loan at three four five percent interest. No bank is going to say no to that because the value of this is so much the billions of dollars. I mean you can make the number smaller but no bank is going to say no. He takes that loan pays three to four to five percent interest on it and if his company grows his stock value grows by six percent. He just made a profit on that he didn’t have to take any money out. Never took an income doesn’t pay any taxes and is able to now spend his money live free buy whatever he wants live rich and not pay a penny in tax. So he didn’t have to sell any of the stock because if you sold it he’d pay an income tax right when you sell it.Instead you get a loan out from the bank and you don’t have to pay tax on that loan when you go and get a mortgage you’re getting debt. It’s debt. It’s not taxable. It’s not an income if you’re going to refinance your home. It’s not income. It’s cash that you have in your pocket. But it’s not income your tax on income. So now your job. Now as a as a business owner is strategically how do you not have an income. Now you might say well. I need money to spend sure of course you do but how can you now strategically use your income to pay for your lifestyle. Now again. It’s got to be within the rules so talk to a tax advisor but right now after the pandemic. One of the things that the presidential administration wants to do is encourage people to eat out eat at restaurants because restaurants were hit so hard by the pandemics right. So what did they do. They created a 100 deduction on food through 2022. So if you go out to eat with your team it’s a 100 percent deduction. It’s a write-off.I’m here in san diego well. We’re in l.a. Right now. But I’m here on a two-month business trip to san diego with my business partner. Uh I have to rent a car. I actually got a ford mustang because I always wanted to play mustang when I was a kid. That was like my dream car. So I got one here with a convertible nice uh and you know we have to go to business. Meetings we have to go out and explore san diego do these things my business partner is my wife. We’re staying in airbnb in beautiful san diego guess what these things are tax deductions against my business. I’m here working when you’re an entrepreneur everything is work yeah. Now the question is how do you spend your money in a way. That’s going to give you a tax write-off. But you have to be smart here because you don’t want to just blow 500 000. So you don’t have to pay 150 grand in taxes right like my accountant. Uh called me up last year and said just breathe you need to go out and buy a g-wagon. I said what I don’t want to buy g-wag why he said you know there’s this tax reduction going on saying if you go out and buy a heavy car. It’s still going on right now. If you’re going to buy a heavy car. You can deduct up to 100 of that value of that vehicle right now really and because you’re an influencer. You can potentially claim that as an influencer you need a g wagon to help you support your lifestyle. The tax code allows this and I was like well. I don’t want to go and spend 150 grand for a car that I don’t necessarily need just so. I can save. Let’s just say 50 grand on those taxes. So you have to be smart here and know what’s right for you and not just spend your money.Uh just you know spend a dollar to save 25 cents right. So you know you just need to know the right strategies that can work for you and these things change over time which is why the best thing that you can do is go out and hire a tax accountant a tax advisor somebody that isn’t just going to file your taxes but someone that’s going to help guide you and say all right you know. Here’s some things that you could potentially spend. Your money on here are where there are more benefits coming this year next year. Things that you want to do and so there’s going to be times where it’s going to be more beneficial for you to spend money. There’s going to be times where it’s going to be more beneficial for you to take in money and you know. It’s all game yeah and this is what wealthy people understand. It’s all a game and a lot of people hate that oh this person’s not paying taxes that person is not paying taxes but at the end of the day what you have to remember is somebody else wrote the tax code yeah. All that people are doing is they’re trying to learn okay. This is what the tax code is what do. I do and you know and then you kind of get into the other philosophical questions who’s going to do better with a hundred grand the government or me. If I have 100 in my pocket. I can go hire an employee or two. The government’s gonna you know spend that money wherever they spend it and pennies will end up actually going to help people. I’m all for helping people. I think that’s very important as soon as we hit a million subscribers on youtube.What we did was. I took my team. We went out to a teacher store and essentially I asked them hey can. We buy everything in your store wow because you know the the whole aft during the pandemic people weren’t going to class in person and so a lot of these businesses were hurt and I said can. I buy everything and she said well. We need some of this stuff for our teachers. I said what can we buy so then we went out and bought a big chunk of the store. Mr b style mr beat style. It was a fun video. I took the team out kind of as a celebration. We bought. A big chunk took it out to a school in detroit gave it to them for free and then I asked the principal. There’s a friend of mine.
- I said how many teachers do you have okay and I gave every one of those teachers. A 500 check to help them help support their students giving is important but you know it goes back to the tax question of who does a better job with their money. Right entrepreneurs who are working to create more jobs. We’re working to produce more value or the government which you know may not be so good with their money absolutely yeah. So you started doing the real estate thing early are you still a massive investor in real estate well. What’s your approach on it now yeah yeah. So this is an interesting question that you asked especially right after the tax question. So real estate is one of the the best tax games for investors that’s one of the reasons why wealthy people love investing in real estate because not only can you get cash flow but you also get tax benefits. I started investing in real estate when I was 19 on accident. I went through a lot of pain. I remember when I told my dad first hey dad. I want to go invest in real estate. He was like you’re stupid go study go become a doctor so I started investing in real estate then and I continued to buy homes and I remember because remember. This is right after the 2008 crash. I was buying homes for like 30 grand in good areas. I remember home prices went up to 50 000 and I was like that’s a lot of money for a home. I didn’t know anything else right that’s all I saw and so to me. I was like that’s expensive but I continued buying and I still am buying but not as much as I was before because now. I’ve been working on a couple other businesses and so what I’m realizing is okay when I invest my money in real estate.My goal is to get a seven percent cash on cash to turn on my money meaning for every dollar I invest I wanna get seven cents back in cash flow positive cash flow every year. If I invest a hundred grand. I want seven thousand dollars of profit every single year well. I I’m an entrepreneur right so. I’m working on a couple of different companies one of which is market briefs and so now. I’m in this position where what do I do with this cash. I can take this money put it in real estate. Get is seven eight percent return on my money or I can put it in market briefs which would be a bigger tax deduction because now you know if I spend money in advertising. I spend money on marketing I hire more employees we have a smaller profit but then I can grow the company significantly faster than seven percent a year so what I’ve been doing now is investing more of my money into market briefs because it’s something that I’m super passionate about like I love real estate. I love revitalizing homes and buildings and really helping to build neighborhoods through that but market briefs had such a different value in the sense that we’re making financial news accessible because you know. I didn’t grow up learning about money right and cnbc looked cool. But I never understood anything that was happening there. They have all these confusing terms that are going on so it’s a way to make financial education and what’s going on with money more accessible to people because I’m realizing how important that is to me because the more and more. I talk to people the more the people listen to what I say the more. I hear oh my god. I wish. I would have learned this when I was younger like yeah. I know me too and so it’s like. It’s important for me to help get that message out there because it’s so needed you know we talk about especially in detroit food deserts where there’s areas people can’t get access to healthy food.But this money desert this financial education desert is it’s so widespread. It’s globally think about money and it makes me angry because if I didn’t accidentally start reading these business books if I didn’t accidentally start investing in real estate. I would be somewhere completely different. You know. I have a lot of friends who are doctors. Now they’re working their butt off. They’re also paying the highest taxes. They’re also trying to figure out how to afford my lifestyle because when you go and become a doctor you make a good salary but guess what now you have big student loans. You got to pay back yeah and now a lot of times you want to live that doctor lifestyle you want to have the g wagon you want to have the range rover you want to have the nice car you want to have the nice home. So now you graduate you’re 28 29 years old. You have half a million dollars of student loans. You got to pay back you’re making a few hundred grand a year but you’re working your butt off. It’s very stressful and now you have all these new expenses your homes your cars and how much does that 500 000 in student loan actually become after 30 years of paying it off oh man yeah over a million really yeah. So it’s really it’s not a half a million dollars on loans. It’s a million dollars on loans that you’re paying off for 30 years yeah right exactly with the interest and let me. I want to add on that point because the thing about student loans you know we talk about who do you trust where do you get your information from right. Everybody the system it says go to school get a degree if you don’t have money to get a degree. What do you do get student loans. I started looking deeper right you start asking the question why the number one liability for young people. Nowadays are student loans and the government always talks about how we have this huge student loan epidemic. This huge student loan problem but the number one asset on the united states balance sheet are student loans really. I mean this blew my mind you go to google search. This the assets on the united states balance sheet number. One asset. You’ll see student loans are their number one asset. So on one hand we have people talking about the importance of higher education the importance of going into debt to get your degree and then at the same time that’s your number one asset it’s holding so many people back from buying a home from living their lives from doing things investing their money yet at the same time. It’s keeping the government rich.Wow this is where you know that mindset you have to start thinking a little bit differently and start asking questions to the status quo to the system to the way. Things are done and you know if you’re like me you can you can get a little angry you’re going to get frustrated because you’re going to realize what the heck why are people. Not taught this. Why are we not taught how to use our money because nowadays people are paying 50 grand a year to get a good college degree but at the same time now youtube is decentralizing education free for free and you can learn from anybody. You want if you don’t like the way that I sound hit the x button go to somebody else right exactly and it doesn’t cost you a penny you can learn from anybody people who are actually doing what they teach and you can learn yeah comfortably at home. Now just you’ve been your. Channel is really inspiring and you’ve interviewed and also just done your own research individually on a lot of these different topics about money if you’ve interviewed the top people on bitcoin and cryptocurrency uh investing and gold and stock trading and real estate and starting your own business and all these different things with all the information that you’ve brought into your life. All the mistakes around money. The successes around money the wisdom you’ve learned the things you’ve tried. Maybe things you haven’t tried yeah if you could share five things you wish. We all taught when we were younger about money yeah with all this information that seems a little overwhelming and confusing especially today with the nft world and the crypto and all these different things and yeah. What do you wish. We taught everyone from the ages of 10 to 20. Five different things around money first thing would be what is money because money as we know it is fake.Our dollars are just pieces of paper. I grew up thinking that our paper dollars are like the holy grail you want to save this money because it is the most valuable thing. There is as I became older. I started to realize that that’s not the case our paper dollars are just pieces of paper. It’s fiat currency which means it’s issued by the government and the value is backed through the strength of the government. Now we’re lucky here that the united states is the world’s superpower. We have the world’s strongest military or the world’s strongest economy. But we can’t stay on top forever and you know. Inflation is when the value of a dollar goes down so these dollars which many of us think that if we hoard this will become wealthy saving money to wealth is actually keeping you poor and it’s making you poor each and every day so the first thing you have to understand is what is money. Second you got to understand is what do wealthy people work for and most of us. The majority of us are taught to work to get a job and climb that corporate ladder but wealthy people are doing something completely different. They’re working to own the corporate ladder they’re working for something called equity and this thing really blew my mind. Because wealthy people are not working for that paycheck.They’re working to own a piece of the company that way they can get a piece of the profits so the best way to understand. This is you know a lot of times people complain about how much money I’m making. I wish my boss paid me more and this is where if you start to understand the system you’ll start to ask the right questions see a big company. You have to ask the question who are they working for are. They working to take care of their employees are they working to take care of their customers. Neither they’re working to take care of one person they’re shareholders. It’s this concept called fiduciary duty right. I learned this in law school. The executives of a company have a fiduciary duty not towards the employees not towards the customers but towards the shareholders the owners of the company. Now what that means an easy example of this is you’re going out to dinner with your girlfriend or your wife and uh you’re on a date and you get a text from one of your good friends. Hey let’s go play fortnite right. Now your fiduciary duty at the moment is to be with a girlfriend to be with your wife to be with your partner to spend time with him or her. If you go out and leave you’re gonna get in trouble right. So it’s who is your alliance too and the shareholders. The the executives ceo and the executives company their fiduciary duty is to the shareholders the owners of the company so what are they trying to do they’re working to drive up the valuation of the company. So once you start to understand that you’ll realize why there’s this big discrepancy between what people are paid and what people want to be paid and when you start to understand that you’re going to change what you do with the money. That’s why I said a minute ago or a little bit ago wealthy. People are working to climb not climb the corporate ladder but own the corporate ladder. So how do you get the equity that ownership you have to own a piece of the corporate ladder now if you work for a public company that means that you can take some of your income and you can buy stock in the company. Maybe they pay you with equity. Maybe they give you some sort of revenue share that’s what we do with my companies or if your company doesn’t do that. Then you have to start taking this money that you’re earning and you have to start investing it into a place where you’re getting equity. Maybe that means stocks maybe that means real estate. It could be a number of different investments but you have to work towards that equity yeah. The third thing is that you have to think bigger.
- I know. I grew up thinking that somebody who looks like me somebody who’s brown somebody who wears a turban somebody who didn’t have entrepreneur investor parents could go out and do this because you think that somebody like me can’t do this. My parents also told me that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know anybody because I didn’t know any investors. But you have to be the one to take that first step and once you start to take that first step you’re going to learn and see the second step. Then you take the second step and you’re like oh. I can start a hundred dollar investment. Here you don’t have to start with you. Know hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars start with a hundred dollars.Apps on the internet make it so much more accessible. Right anything is possible if you live in america you speak english. You have more opportunities than really anybody else in the world. People will literally risk their lives risk their lives to come to this country because there’s opportunity here and so if you’re here you have the ability to understand what you and I are saying and you have that technology to do it. You’re blessed now what do you do. With this right you have to go and start learning. You have to go out and start doing and then the next thing you have to do number four number four is you have to understand the concept of debt because we live in this consumer culture and it’s interesting where you know we want to live this flex lifestyle right. I want to show off on instagram. I want to show off my new car my new chanel gucci purse and we kind of get caught up where I need to live a certain lifestyle. That way people can think that I’m rich but what you’re doing now. Is you’re living broke right making everybody else rich. Some people think you’re rich you’re product rich. You have a lot of nice stuff but you’re you’re broke and so when you live that type of lifestyle you are the reason why gucci louis vuitton chanel are making so much money but is keeping you broke the richest person in the world. Sometimes he’s the second sometimes he’s. The third is the ceo of louis vuitton. No what really yeah bernard arnold and why how did he get there because everybody wants to look rich. Everybody wants the louis vuitton and you know you. I saw this in this the pandemic especially we were in a recession in 2021 but luxury sales of products were breaking new cars really. They’re breaking records in 2021.Why is that stimulus checks went out. People had cash and some people use that money to save some people use their money to pay down debt. Some people invested that money but a big chunk of people took that money to places like gucci louis vuitton and now you go and spend it. You would think when the economy is well. I guess when people are losing their jobs and there’s financial uncertainty of the future. You think people will be saving or investing not spending on luxury goods especially if you can’t even go outside to flex it you can only do it on social media. You don’t need to go outside anymore you can just do it on social media and so if you don’t have the cash do it. People are going into debt to buy and it’s becoming easier and easier because of now things like buy. Now pay later it is one of the fastest growing industries in fintech. I love financial technology but it breaks my heart. I mean it just it rips my heartstrings when I see the growth of this buy now pay later because what does that mean I can go out and buy anything.I want not pay for it. Today pay it off over three months and then if I don’t. I get slapped. With 25 interest and if you are 18 or let’s just say 21 I gave you 6 500. You never invested another penny but you invested those five 6 dollars and you could get an 18 return on that money and you retire 65 and you look at this investment. Portfolio you would have over 11 million dollars wow now everyone watching this thing where the heck am I going to get 18 on my money exactly but your credit card company is doing it every single day. 6500 is what the average american household has in credit card debt right now and you’re turning around paying these companies 18 20 25 a year and they’re the ones that are getting rich. Not you so what’s happening you’re going into debt to buy liabilities which are things that lose your money and then you’re paying interest on top of that which is making everybody else rich which leaves no money in your pocket to make yourself rich and you have to break out of that mindset. So what do we need to know about debt then how do people get comfortable understanding about debt either using it in the right ways and eliminating the debts that don’t support our financial growth yeah. So the first thing is never finance anything that isn’t going to pay you okay so give me an example gucci your vacations your car stop financing. These things that aren’t paying you and people are going to get upset when I say your car because they’re going to say wait how am. I supposed to buy a car without a car. Payment don’t buy a hundred thousand dollar car unless you’ve got the money in the bank to buy it plus more buy.A used car for six grand. Exactly go buy x to use car good working. Condition car with cash ride it for 10 years exactly. The first time I made a million dollars. In a year. My car was 500 bucks. My employees had better cars than I did. I had a four thousand dollar car for the first five years living in los angeles. Four thousand dollar car used car. 1997. I love it was the car yeah when it’s when it was made and uh that thing was great yeah that was comfortable got me from a to b yeah. It didn’t break down exactly. I didn’t need to be flashy exactly. I still have my five hundred dollars that’s great you know and it’s one of those things where you know because I fell into this trip where the first time. I started making money uh you know in my culture. Cars are a big thing and the punjabi culture people really want to put money in their cars. They want to look cool right so when I was 17 16 17. I started making a little bit of money because I was doing my side hustles. The first thing I did was putting your rims in my car. Then I put tints on my car. Then. I put ideas oh. I had two 12-inch subwoofers in my trunk right. I put the tins on. I put a new sound system in there lights around glow-in-the-dark yeah. I had a toyota right and and uh then the next thing I was gonna. Do is I called on my cousin. I said guess what I got three grand in the bank. I’m about to put two uh lamborghini doors on my toyota.He’s like trust me. You’re stupid don’t do that and so he sat on the phone with me for like 20 minutes convincing me not to do it luckily. I didn’t. I’m really glad that. I didn’t but that’s where all my money was going. I looked cool. My car was cool and that’s where all my money was going. I had a thousand dollars in my bank and I went out and I bought a thousand dollar watch. I was like 18 years old right because I was like. I was in that industry the entertainment industry. I wanted to look cool and then you know. I start to read these money books and my mindset starts to shift and now all of a sudden is the comp like I went from one polar extreme to the other polar extreme. I don’t want to spend a penny on anything on anything unless it’s making me money exactly. I don’t want to spend anything unless it’s making money so now. I’m saving as much money as I can. I’m investing my money as much as I can I’m trying to build my business and and I mean I’m talking like I’m running my shoes into the ground. They have holes in them. I put a piece of tape wrap it up. I’m going to school. I got rental properties but I got my shoes that are taped up right and it’s like i. I realized that I’m going to go like. I’m not going to make those same mistakes again and you have to break out of that mindset.
- The first time I made 100 grand a year. I was in school and I was living in a apartment paying 400 a month including my my my water my electricity. My cable my gas my internet everything wow and the reason was is because I i didn’t have a room. I slept on the living room floor. I had a little mattress. I used to pull that into the living room put that down go to sleep at night wake up fold up. The sheets put them away drag that mattress back into the hallway because I’m like you know. I realized that the power of compounding your money. I realized the power of putting your money into the right assets and I’m like this is my time to build. I’ve been blowing this money that I’m earning on things that are making everybody else rich right. I’ll spend money on that stuff a little bit later right now. I want to make myself rich yeah and so you know you have to just first understand what it is.That’s worth spending money on and what’s not and then you know if you do have that debt. You’ve got to come up with a strategy to pay it down as fast as possible. First thing you can do if you have a lot of credit card debt call up the companies see if they’re going to be willing to just give you a lower amount see if they’re willing to work with you say look. I got ten thousand dollars with the debt. I’m never gonna pay this off. It’s not gonna happen how about you work with me and give me five thousand dollars and I will work to pay that off right you start to work with them see if you can do something. Then you can consider moving some of that money to a zero percent apr uh card if you have 12 to 18 months to do that that way. Now you can aggressively you got to do the smart because if you’re just going to keep doing the same things you were before don’t do it but you have to start aggressively paying it down. You stop spending money that way. Now you can pay down this debt as fast as possible and then you work to earn more money and the money has to go somewhere. As you’re earning more money. You live the same lifestyle if not smaller and you take all this extra money and you use it to pay down your debt. That way now you can start building right. You got to lay that foundation you got to start working to grow upwards but you have to get aggressive is there never a time where people should go into debt with the right type of debt. The credit card debt student loan debt you know buying a car and going in debt on that those things. I’m understanding. It’s not helping your financial future yeah. When is it the right time or is there a right time in your mind to take money out and spend interest on that money depends right if it’s something that’s going to make you income and you can manage the debt then yes. But it’s not for everybody right. Some people don’t have it in them to manage the debt. Some people don’t have it in them to manage investments. Some people don’t have it in them to run a business if you’re not the entrepreneurial investor type and you don’t like looking at numbers. You don’t like managing money you don’t like trying to grow this stay away from it. Now you go up. Maybe you can get debt to buy a home but that’s it but if you are more the entrepreneurial type you you have it in you that you want to grow now. If you’re using debt.You should only be using that to buy something. That’s paying you with income something. That’s going to make you more money. Do you have any debt out right. Now right now. I do not. I have people paying me loans. But I personally don’t have any debt right now. And uh I i kind of went through this phase where I have all this real estate. But I have no debt on it and the reason is is because I’m waiting for the right opportunity. I will I will have more debt really yeah. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity because right. Now all my real estate is paid off. You’ve paid off all the real estate. How many properties do you have uh units in the dozens a number of units but now. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity and it’s all paid off. So. Now there’s just cash coming up there’s cash coming in and you know if you still have that that’s rented for 850 a month that eight thousand dollar place eight thousand dollar place that’s just bringing in 800 bucks a month 850 a month clear and free just yeah you got to pay your expenses. Your property taxes insurance your maintenance and management fees but right now. I have no debt on it and so now what I’m waiting for is how much could you sell that for now uh probably a hundred thousand hundred twenty. I mean. I don’t know the exact same thing that range right. It’s not bad yeah. I mean it’s it’s crazy because I never I when I buy real estate. I never look at what can. I sell this property for I’m looking for one thing cash flow cash flow yeah and so this is a big mistake that leads people into a lot of problems in real estate because when you start buying real estate hoping that you’ll be able to sell it for a higher price in the future and things don’t go as planned. Then yeah you’re screwing. Now you’re screwed so you know for me.I look at uh one thing cash flow and will I be able to see more growth in this area. So I’ll look where businesses are moving. Where’s money moving to and then that’s where I want to invest because I know if property prices go up hey. It’s icing property prices go down. It’s okay that’s like I’m a rent which is which is covering my cost. So what’s your goal right with the the dozens of units for the opportunity for something bigger or what’s the plan something something yeah. It can be anything something bigger in real estate and I’m looking for the right opportunity. But again my focus now isn’t in real estate like it was before a few years ago. I was heavy in real estate. Now. I was doing everything that I can there and a lot of opportunities were there. I bought a property in 2021 haven’t bought anything in 2022 yet but my focus now is building my business because I see a bigger opportunity there for me than real estate. That’s why I’ve been kind of. I’m still involved in real estate right but not the way that it was because because you can earn more with your business if you put the attention and the energy and the money into building the team and the resources and technology and those things and it’s more it’s more fun because it’s a lot more active for me yeah and then you know once this gets bigger. Then I’ll go back to real estate but right now like for the last few years. I’ve been kind of phasing slowly away from real estate as I can transition more into the business because you know it’s. Just. This is more fun for me yeah okay so understanding that was the fourth thing what was the fifth thing you wish.People learned uh from 10 to 20 years old about money. You have to be willing to make mistakes take risks and start and this one is hard and it sounds simple but a lot of people that I know a lot of people. They are so hesitant to making that first investment because what if I do something wrong what if I make a mistake what if my investment goes down and so the simple thing that’s happened to me multiple times yeah but you learn every time right. It’s your your tuition. It’s your real tuition uh and you have to be willing to try things because if you don’t you’re gonna get stuck in the game oh what if what if I lose money what if it doesn’t work out well what if it goes up what if you learn. I have made a lot of mistakes. I made a video on my youtube channel where I went through my worst real estate deal. Ever. It was my third property that I ever bought. It was a home in the city of detroit and I made every mistake possible now. I’m still in college right. I don’t know what’s going on exactly with real estate investing and I mean. I bought the property and I bought it because my contractor at the time told me that we can make a lot of money on this deal. We’ll be able to rent it out. We could flip it if I wanted to and he was like don’t even worry about getting a home inspection now when I buy a property now the first thing. I do is. I get a property inspection where somebody walks through. The deal make sure a third party an independent person and they tell me anything wrong with the property and the foundation in the plumbing in really anything with the property. So I know what I’m getting myself into and so he told me don’t do that he said don’t worry. I already walked through. He’s a contractor.So. I figured he knows what he’s talking about. Uh all you have to do is spend 5 500 and I will make sure this property is ready to go wow so. I said okay. Let’s do it. So. I bought the home. I gave him a check for half. Maybe twenty five hundred or three something around there. Three thousand and a week goes by nothing starts. Two weeks go by nothing starts and I call him. I said hey man what’s going on like I thought we were gonna have this done in two weeks. Here we are two weeks later and you haven’t even brought your materials here. So I got caught up with something something’s going wrong and so now two more weeks go by. He brought some materials. There he started painting one wall and that was it and so you know I’m getting upset because now it’s like you know every day that this property is not leased out. It’s kind of losing money and still nothing’s getting done. Another two weeks go by and now. I’m like okay look what what’s going on. We got to get this taken care of because now we’re six weeks into this deal. You haven’t done a single thing you keep putting me off you. You took my money and nothing’s happened and so long story short on that he ran away he was having financial difficulties. That’s why he wanted me to close on this deal because he needed some cash and now he’s gone so now. I have another property that uh somebody was working on a manager and he was having some issues. At my property. He was causing some problems so. I figured he’s causing problems there how about you come work at this property and you need a home. You can live in this home for free fix. It up just fix it up yeah and so he he said okay so now. I thought all right you know. I found a good deal here. I’ve got somebody who’ll fix it up. He’ll live. There take care of it and it’s gonna cost me less money and so now he’s living in this property and he’s like how about this how about you just open up a charge account at home depot and I’ll just go buy stuff and take care of it at the home. I said okay so I go open up the charge account. He starts buying materials not to work in my home but to work on other people’s properties oh my gosh. So now. I’m like dude like you’re spending my money to go work in other people’s properties so you can make double profits over. There. You haven’t started any work on my home. You’re not paying me rent. You have a dog that you’re not taking care of who’s pooping everywhere in the property and it’s not being taken care of and so now how do. I get somebody out of this home. I got a victim out of my own property. There’s no lease in place. So now it’s regarded to all these legal issues of how do we get this person out of the home we get him out of the home. It took me months to get him out. The property now is destroyed oh man there’s crap little crap all over the home he damaged. The place did not take care of it and now it’s like we have to start all over from negative to start fixing this property up. So now we start fixing it. I got a licensed and insured contract. There were months into the deal and he wants. I don’t know like a lot more money at least 10 grand if not more to start doing the renovations and we start digging deep and we start to see problem after problem after problem. So now it you know every cost keeps adding up. Now. The home is ready to go and uh. I’m like alright fine and everybody told me just please. Don’t license. This home with the city detroit as a rental because nobody does it and this is you know again. After the 2008 crash the detroit went through his bankruptcy. They were having their own issues but I don’t like to play games. I want to play by the rules so I said. I’m going to get it rent. I’m going to get a license for rental when you get a license for rental. They’re going to send their own property inspectors out to the property and they’re going to inspect it and make sure that it’s okay so now the property inspectors come out and they say.
- I need to lift up the home. So what do you mean lift up the home. They’re like uh yeah we need to raise the home. I don’t even know that you could do that apparently you can and it’s very expensive wow so I lift up the home and then we start running the water in the property and it turns out that the water is not draining to the main city line. Apparently. Somebody previously living in this property had poured cement down the main drain now in order to get this property working we have to bust out the cement in the basement take out. This pipe put in a new pipe report the cement and then these property inspectors start disagreeing with one. Another. One person says that you need a 10 foot electrical riser so we make it 10 feet. The next one comes says why is it 10 feet. It needs to be 13 feet like your first person said 10.And now they start fighting with each other and we have to keep paying for these inspectors to come back. They keep charging me permit fees for everything. If I want to paint the window sills. It’s a 100 permit fee change. The smoke detectors 75 permanent fee so this goes on and on and on and on for months finally. Now we’re approved for rental. I was like oh my god. Like this is the biggest headache of my life. We get a tenant in the property. We get licensed tenants in the property and now we have the license and the property inspectors just decides to go back to the property. They don’t tell us they just. Go back there even though we’re fully licensed they had no reason to go. There they knock on the door and apparently we didn’t know this. The tenant was having a babysitting operation in a property. So now the inspector sees this that the tenant is running in the legal babysitting operation. He tells us he finds us tells us we need to evict the tenant and now we have to start this process all over again. So at that point. I was like you know what just sell. This property wow because this is the biggest headache and that was the only deal I ever lost money on but a lot I learned a lot. It was my tuition so you have to be able to learn be willing to make mistakes and then be willing to grow from those mistakes go on and you know keep willing to go because the thing that I kept telling myself is you know. There’s a lot of real estate investors out there that have thousands of units.There’s no way they’re dealing with this with every single one they have a team. I just got to figure out how to do it so yeah. That’s the only way that I could get through that. I think people. I don’t. I also don’t think people understand that investing can feel like a full contact sport. At times. It can feel like you get punched in the gut and the face and the ribs over and over again like you did for almost a year. It sounds like with this one property what if that was your first property you might have said screw this real estate investing thing. I’m never doing this again. I lost all my money. I’m just gonna go back into doing something that is safe and secure that. I know it’s not going to punch me in the mouth every day with another fine fee and penalty or whatever it might be.So. I think people also need to understand. This is a risky thing absolutely. I’ve lost a lot of money. I’ve made a lot of money lost a lot of money. It never feels good to lose money. It does. It’s emotionally charging. It’s psychologically can can mess with you if you’re not mentally and spiritually prepared yeah to understand okay. It doesn’t feel good to go from a few hundred thousand dollars to zero you know in in weeks like some people did with the stock market or something in the last year or real estate or whatever it might be or crypto going up and coming down. It’s a big psychological high and low if you’re not prepared for it and so what have you done psychologically mentally and emotionally to prepare for the big swings when you see oh. My money just went up 10x in the last three months oh. I’m negative hundreds of thousands in a few weeks or millions. What have you done to prepare for that nicely and spiritually and psychologically brought that up because one of the things that I say is that the psychology of investing is just as if not more important than the actual how-tos and investing yeah and that’s especially true when it comes to something like the stock market and real estate.It’s tough but the difference between real estate and the stock market is if you buy a say 200 000 home. It’s not going to go to zero next week next month or really ever. Because you have some land you have a physical property and the stock market it can happen and so there’s a couple of things that you’re investing stocks too. I invested for money in five places real estate stocks startups cryptocurrency and physical gold so that descending order of like value from the most to the least yeah. I would say so uh and then you know if you want to put my business in there then that would be number one. What is number one your business and startups yeah number one yeah. But I also invest in other startups as well but kind of I would say in that order yes but in the stock market. Particularly it is a liquid investment meaning you can easily buy you can easily sell and that’s what becomes a big psychological game. Because every day people are watching that ticker. I just made money.I just lost money ah what’s tesla doing today. Tesla’s up two dollars that’s down four dollars and it can really drain you and I think most people who start off investing their money. They get sucked into that rat race. I did too because when I first started investing my money in the stock market. I was like wow this is fun. This is exciting oh my god. It becomes like a drug. You become addicted to it because I was waking up every morning. I was like I’m gonna become a day trader. I got it and so you know. I took a summer of when I was in college and that’s all. I did. I would make up before the market and I would read these stock charts. And I would trade these penny stocks and some days I would. I would make a thousand dollars other days. I would lose a thousand dollars and by the end of the summer I don’t think. I made any money just spent all this time. I spent all my time and I realized this is not for me like. I became so addicted to it. All. You’re doing is watching. The numbers go up and down and ticker symbols and you’re reading these forms. So the first thing is you have to understand that your psychology is important. What I do is. I understand. I’m not a trader. I don’t trade. I don’t flip even when it comes to real estate really any of my investments. You invest. I invest in the long term. So what does that mean so. I have two strategies when it comes to investing my money. I have an active strategy and I have a passive strategy. I’ll start with the passive strategy because that’s easy to understand every month. I passively invest my money into stocks physical gold and cryptocurrency really and so what that means is. It’s automatic payments consistent in each one yeah all the time so doing index funds with stocks stocks.
- I do etfs low-cost etfs and I have etfs to give me exposure to the s p 500 that’s kind of your safe. Your value s p 500 are the biggest 500 companies in the stock market so that’s the kind of the safe value play. I have some etfs that gave me exposure to innovation startups growth because I like that space much more risky but you could see more potential upside. Risk means you could also see more downside and then I also have etfs to give me exposure to emerging markets. These are countries that are overseas countries like china india korea brazil countries that are are up and coming to give you some diversification not just in companies but also in dollars right diversifying out of the dollar. So accounting gives me that protection so every week. I have money that’s leaving my account and being invested into these different etfs. I don’t care whether the market’s up or down it happens every week in physical gold every month. I use an app for this. There’s apps allow you to do this. I have money that’s withdrawn out of my bank account that buys me physical gold. Now people are gonna say why gold for me. It’s it’s real money. It’s another way of saving real money because now if I have 50 grand of cash would. I rather save and bury the 50 gang of cash in my backyard or bury 50 grand of gold in my backyard. I rather bury the gold because I know that 50 grand of cash is guaranteed to lose value. Every single day. Gold is a store of value because it takes time effort and labor to mine physical gold and that time effort and labor is represented through the physical piece of gold. So that’s why I own it. It’s not a huge piece of my portfolio. But it’s kind of the insurance. That’s the way I look at it is protection. In case everything else goes wrong that. I have some physical gold so. I have that and then I have my cryptocurrencies now i. I’m mainly in bitcoin. I have some ethereum and a couple other coins but mainly bitcoin and every day I buy a little bit of cryptocurrency again. I know it’s volatile. I know you can see big swings up big swings down. I don’t care. I’m buying it every single day. So that’s my passive strategy where it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the market. I’m just going to keep buying no matter what’s going on. Then my active strategy is now where I do more of the fundamental analysis where I understand where am I actually investing my money. So this requires much more time and more effort on my end so on the real estate side.I’m looking for deals that are paying me that seven percent cash on cash return. And so I’m going to be analyzing the numbers looking for properties walk through a lot of deals and when I find something I will go out and buy it in the stock market rather similar. I’m looking for companies that I believe in that I believe are good fundamentally fundamentally means looking at the numbers right. What do the revenues look like have the revenues been growing how fast are they growing 10 a year 20 a year what about the profits. But you also have to look a little bit deeper than just the profits because you want to see what’s going on with the expenses where are they investing are. There expenses going up because the cost of business is becoming more expensive or are the expenses rising because they’re investing more in their company so you got to do a little bit of digging in there um and then in startups obviously invest in my own companies. But I also invest in startup companies I i love entrepreneurship I am a huge fan of entrepreneurs. I love supporting other entrepreneurs because I never had that support when I was getting started as an entrepreneur. So one of the ways I can provide. The support is through money through investing in some of these entrepreneurs. So uh I invest in these startups fourth uh cryptocurrency. If a big cryptocurrency crash happens well. I already know what I want to own. I’ll just come in and buy more and with gold. I don’t really actively buy gold right. But that’s the four ways that I actively invest my money sure and where where are the three biggest revenue streams coming from for you well obviously business you know and that’s across the different businesses and then the second one. I would say is real estate that gives me that passive cash flow and that those are my two real when I talk about income cash. In my pocket. It comes from my business and it comes from real estate. That’s where my cash is awesome nice yeah it’s pretty simple and what’s the number one revenue generator. In your business is it from youtube. Is it from the newsletter is it from some other course or coaching or so so the business is divided up.I have a personal brand which is minority mindset right. That’s me on youtube that’s my blog and then I have uh market briefs and market insiders. So number one would probably be my personal brand and now. I don’t think that’s going to last very long. Though my personal brand is is doing well because I built up this this big following on youtube which was completely. It’s funny. It’s accidental. I never wanted to be a celebrity. I never wanted to be famous. I never wanted to be known. I started youtube on accident. I was you know you talk about risks making mistakes. I’ve always been an entrepreneur and I went through a lot of different business ideas and one idea that I had it was in the year of my grad school. I was taking a class on public speaking and my friend my roommate. At the time he was like you got to watch this show called shark tank. I was like okay. You know whatever. I don’t watch tv but watch this show called shark tank and you know it’s all about people pitching business ideas and this class that I was taking. We had a project where I was supposed to pitch a product to the class kind of like shark tank. I was like that’s easy. I do this like with my friends all day and night long that can’t be hard so. I kept putting it off putting it off putting it off you know. I’m a procrastinator especially when it came to school because my mind was always somewhere else and so now one day. I was late to class like normal. I pick up my backpack and I start running cause. I was like oh. I’m a couple minutes late and it’s raining this day and as I’m running to my class. I stepped in a pothole filled with water. Now my foot is soaked. I sit down and I’m like I’m wet. My socks are wet and uncomfortable. The teacher goes just breathe. It’s your day your day for what is your day to present and I was like oh my god I forgot and so you know. I would say don’t tell her this but I go stand in front of the class and I’m like just pretty think of something. Anything anything think of something and so the first thing that comes to my mind were my wet socks. So I go up in front of the class. No practice no preparation and I pitched this idea of water resistant socks that way. Now you can be an athlete. You can walk around and not have to worry about stepping in puddles. I sit down. I was like nice job just but that’s actually kind of a cool idea. So I go home and I start googling. You know water resistant socks and they had these like really thick uncomfortable. Looking things that people wore when they go fishing and stuff but nothing made for like athletes people to wear in their regular life. So I was like oh maybe I’m on to something. So then. I spent a lot of time trying to develop this technology working with textile engineers working with sock manufacturers and I and I created a water resistant sock and now.I go to launch this company and I got approached by a marketing company quote unquote marketing company and they said they’re going to help me blow up my sales. They’re going to help me do all this stuff. They’re going to help me make all this money and I was really skeptical and then they said don’t worry. We have a 100 money back guarantee. If you’re not completely satisfied. If we don’t make our money back you can get all of your money back. I said okay that sounds pretty good so I gave him money. It was a few grand. I think like 3 500 which was a lot of money and the next day after I gave them the money. I had a bad feeling in my stuff. I was like you know. I’m a marketer. I like I like the way I can promote products. I just something didn’t seem right so. I call up the guy and I said hey man. I know that we haven’t started yet look. I just want to have my money back you know. I want to end this on amicable terms before you guys spend any money. Let’s just um. You know end it now and he said okay no problem what’s been hold and I was in the gym at the time and I was really frustrated because I was between sets and he puts me on hold for a long time and then all of a sudden. The phone line goes and I was like oh something’s not right so then I call up the other number. I have they don’t pick up. I start emailing them and I never hear from them again found out. I got scammed. They were a fake company so now I was irritated. I launched the company we had an amazing launch. I think I don’t remember exactly but in the first 30 days we did over if either 17 000 or 20 000 in sales right off of the gate and I was still. I had this like kind of chip on my shoulder. I was like that’s not cool like nobody supported me as an entrepreneur nobody wanted me to do this especially when it came to the sock business. I mean I there were so many jokes thrown at me because they’re like oh you left medicine to go sell socks right you know. I was just so. I just so frustrated by it and I was like you know people don’t see what I see they don’t have my vision. I want. I want to do something to help other people like me. So I put out this course on udemy seven bucks on how to launch a business without getting screwed over. I don’t really care about making money. I just wanted to help people because I was so angry and people loved it and they were like dude. Can you please start. A social media page start an instagram page and I did it under the alias minority mindset. The whole idea being just thinking differently to the majority of people because that’s what I thought. I always did from the point where I started hosting parties instead of going to the parties to then buying real estate. When everybody was out blowing their money. They didn’t have in college to now starting this company. I was like yeah. I have this thing minority mindset so I called it that and then I said okay.I’ll start an instagram page just posting the same stuff like just here and there like things that I wish. I would have learned known about starting a business and about investing and money that somebody I wish someone would have taught me and then everyone says jaspreet. I like this can you make long-form content can you create a blog. I was like well. English is my second language. You’re not going to like my writing. So no. I can’t start a blog but I don’t mind talking so. I’ll start a youtube channel. So then I started this youtube channel called minority mindset and that slowly organically started to grow. And I never started it with the intention of making money and you know it’s funny. I I tell that to people now and they’re like there’s no way. That’s true like you have to have some idea of trying to make money and I really didn’t. I was recording the videos off my phone. So I had really no expenses. I think I spent like 30 bucks on a tripod and that was it like. I had no lights. I had no fancy equipment um and then I think we were close to 10 000 subscribers and my buddy comes up to me. He says how much money are you making from a minority mindset. I’m like I’m not making any money he said from your youtube advertisements. I’m like what are you talking about. He said you know you can have advertising on your youtube channel. I said. I have no idea what you’re talking about so he he goes on to my youtube channel with me goes into the back in the settings and he’s like dude just click. One button click turn your monetization on. I don’t even know that you could do that. This is before that there was even monetization requirements. Anybody could monetize any videos no matter how many subscribers how many videos you had so. I was like oh. I didn’t know that I could do this so you know. I really started. It just kind of with that goal of. I want to put out that information that I wish somebody would have told me kind of just like that that helping hand that hey it’s okay you’re not the only one that thinks like this. It’s okay to think a little bit differently. It’s okay to try something different so that was my whole goal and then it started to grow and then it became this kind of this bigger thing and around a half a million or six hundred thousand subscribers. I was like wait. I can actually like turn this into a business so I went through this like you know. I’m an entrepreneur. I was like okay minority minds. I’m gonna turn it into a business so I started these other products under minority mindset. I started this newsletter in. The minority mindset I started you know these other educational things and it started to get really confusing to me because I was like what is minority. Mindset. I’d be walking down the street and people will come up to me and say dude your minority mindset man you really helped me out you saved my life. You helped me get out of debt and it made me feel really good. I could not believe people knew who I was.I remember one time. I was with my dad. We were in arizona and we were getting acai bowls which are absolutely delicious and we’re in line and this guy sees me walking to the store. He was riding his bicycle and he races across the street to come inside of me and he goes just breathe minority. Mice is at you and I was like yeah and my dad’s right there and he just puts his arms. Around me hugs me and he’s like dude you changed my life. You helped me out so much you got me out of this position and I was like oh my god no way like and my dad looks at me. He’s like people watch you’re not a doctor. That’s okay yeah and so it was like that was like that realization that oh my god like people are actually paying attention. You know obviously you know you see the comments. You see the subscribers until you meet people in person. You really don’t know exactly and that like it’s a crazy feeling and you know that time especially just because you know. I saw my dad light up and he was like. I can’t like he was shocked and that’s when I was you know. I can actually do something with this so.
- I was creating these products under it. But I was getting confused because what is minority mindset is it a company or is it me and you know as the entrepreneur. I’m going to build a company. I’m going to turn this into something but everybody assumed I’m a minority mindset which made it very hard to build a company out of it and so this was 2021. In december. I decided to go on a thinking trip and I never done this before and I really recommend this to anybody who can do this. I went to boca raton florida and I was there for about a week and I separated myself from technology people everything and I lived in this like really tiny a little apartment and all. I had was a bicycle and my notebook. I’ve done this before. It’s a game changer oh my god and so what I would do is. I ride my bike to the beach in the mornings. I sat there for a couple hours with my notepad and started writing down my thoughts and from everything not just business. You know my mental health. Spiritually what do. I want out of life. What’s important to me. What’s happiness just starting writing things down and you know. I would get to the business financial stuff and I start asking minority mindset question mark. What is it who is it and it was at that week. I realized I am minority myself. That’s what everybody identifies me as and it makes sense because that is who I’ve always been. But these companies they’re getting intertwined into something that’s they’re being overshadowed. I can’t give them the attention that they want so after that I came back to the office.This is the complete end of 2022 when I tell the team oh sorry 2021. I come tell the team as soon as we come back in 2022. We’re going to change some things around. So the first week of 2022. We have a all hands meeting. I was like here’s what we’re going to do. We’re changing everything. We’re going to take our newsletter turn. It into market briefs. We’re going to launch. This app market insiders. We’re going to do all this stuff and everyone’s like where did this come from right and so we implemented all that and then this is now early 2022. It took some time to implement market briefs now becomes its own company. It’s all news that we’re providing financial news that’s accessible. I talk about accessibility of financial education for me that is the biggest thing because you know. I never understood those big terms. What is the 10-year yield going up. 40 basis points means it doesn’t make any sense to somebody who’s getting started so. I want to make things accessible so that’s what we do break it down on a fun witty email that you’re actually going to want to read like you’re going to look forward to reading this email and it’s completely free and so we’re going to create this into our own company and we went through a lot of I mean it. It was a painful transition because we had issues with the email service providers. We had a company saying that yeah it’ll work. We spend months transitioning over the first week that we’re working with this company. They say oh sorry. You’re promoting financial content. We don’t allow financial education. We don’t allow stock market. We don’t like cryptocurrency. We don’t allow anything related to finance on our platform. I’m like dude you’ve been working with us for two months we’ve. I’ve talked to five people on your team. They know exactly what we’re doing and now you’re telling us this. So we had to start the whole process over so it was a big uh. You know it was a part of an entrepreneur. You should stretch them out yeah big mess. We go somewhere else and now like it was april of 2022 where things finally break all right. We got it situated. Now let’s not we’re going all in so uh you know you’d ask where is most of the revenue coming from. It was youtube uh and it is. But I i won’t be long because you know. I talk about how youtube funding my business. I take the revenue from youtube. I’m investing all of it back into my companies because I want to turn market briefs into something big man because it is needed. It is so important because if you’re an investor you need to know what’s happening and you want to be aware. What’s happening you don’t have time to go through yeah. Finance wall street journal forbes cnbc. All these different companies and then you have to parse through all these headlines see what’s important. Then you have to dissect what’s actually happening. We break it down in five minutes or less. We have really smart people working on this that and then also just making it aware to people who were never given this financial education. It’s beautiful man and so that’s you know it’s important to me in terms of the financial education side. What do you think is the difference between an abundance mindset and a poor mindset.I’ll give an example okay when I was. I bought my first real estate property when I was 19. Right after that I was like. I want to be able to look at my own deals. You have to use a real estate agent to go look at properties. So when I was right after that. I was 20 years old. I went out. I got my real estate sales. Person’s license nice. I’m in college so now. I start helping people buy and sell homes and I had this one couple that I worked with. They were looking for between a four hundred thousand five hundred thousand dollar home and so I helped them for months go from property to property to property. They were very picky so I spent months just going through this. We finally found them a property. It was somewhere between 400 and 500 000 within their budget had everything they wanted. It was facing the right direction had the right color door. The rooms were the right sizes like it was perfect so now they’re like oh just breathe you did it. You found a property let’s let’s let’s enter into a contract and I said okay and I remember this because they sat me down in one of the bedrooms and said we want to talk so we want to put an offer. On this property. We’re ready to go forward but there’s only one condition. We want you to put half of your commission in the deal. I said why they said well you’re 20 years old and you know if I get three. Typically you get three percent on the buyer side. So if it’s a fifteen thousand five hundred dollar property that’s 15 grand in commission between 12 and 15 grand and so they were like we don’t think that you should you know 12 to 15. Grand is worth it for just signing the papers to help us buy this home plus you’re only in college and I was like okay and I’m a hard head right especially 20 years old. I was like uh-huh okay so they’re like yeah. We think if we just put six grand into the deal. We’ll uh look forward to the property. I’m ready to buy it and I was like nope. I’m not doing it wow you can do it with somebody else. I walked away and a month later they weren’t. They didn’t. We’re not able to get the home because they weren’t able to do the paperwork fast enough they called me back up. The wife calls me and she says just uh. We weren’t able to make it work but we found another property would you be willing to show it to us I was like no so.That was you know what a limiting mindset is. The first thing is you’re looking at what somebody else is making instead of looking at what you could get you’re counting someone else’s money instead of seeing what you can get do yourself. So you’re you’re jumping over dollars to pick up pennies right and that’s the first idea is you’re so worried about what’s going on around you. But instead you should be focusing on you what value do you get. The second part of that is a growth mindset. So you know. I talk about living below your means which is important especially when you’re in the early phases of trying to build your wealth. Right you need to be saving your money investing your money. I you too you know we were kind of extreme right where it’s like every penny we have is going to be invested. It’s going to be put back into us because this is our time to grind yeah but you know you don’t have to be super extreme but you know. Let’s just say you’re putting aside 25 of your income so if you’re making 40 grand a year. That’s ten thousand dollars put forward to savings and your investments. Now what happens to most people is you say okay. I realize this whole financial education thing I’m learning about this investing thing I want to get more aggressive. I want to do more of this how can I do more well. That’s when you’re trying to now squeeze more pennies out of your pie. You try to go from saving and investing 25 to 30 and 35. But there’s a limited pie right so what you should be doing is thinking okay. I’m making 40 grand saving and putting inside 25 percent. Fine maybe I can do more if you know you’re into that like I’m going to do whatever it is which is fine. But the bigger thing is how do. I go from 40 grand to 400 grand and keep doing what I’m doing now because now if you’re if you get to from 40 to 400 and you save and invest 25. That’s a hundred thousand dollars a lot more than the 10 grand you had before you’re still only living off of 75. You have the same you know that same percentage but it’s so much bigger. It’s that growth mind. It’s thinking bigger and now everyone’s going to say here they’re saying how am. I supposed to go from 40 to 400. Well the first step is understanding.It’s possible. Then you start learning. Then you start doing you start making mistakes and then you learn from mistakes and you fix them but until you break through that mindset and you realize that it is possible. I can do this no matter where I come from what I look like what my background is it’s possible but I need the right education. Youtube has made it so much more accessible. Read books you know start learning and then you start taking steps. It’s not going to happen overnight but you’ll start taking steps towards that right and so it’s about building that growth mindset of understanding that there’s something that you can do. I love this man so much good information here lots of more questions. I could ask about these things but you’ve also got so many great topics uh that you cover over on youtube minority mindset over on youtube and the minoritymindset.com. Also marketingbriefs.com is the newsletter for people who want to sign up and learn more about these things making uh complex ideas interesting and accessible which is yeah something we all want. I’ve got a couple final questions for you yeah. This one is something I asked him one at the end. It’s called the three truths so imagine a hypothetical scenario. It’s your last day on earth. You’ve actually made your parents proud even though you weren’t a doctor but you’ve been you’ve been doing the thing that you love doing for the rest of your life. But eventually it’s the last day for you many years away and you’ve got to take all of your information with you all your content your newsletter your youtube anything you create. It’s got to go with you. So no one has access to your information anymore your. Uh written words your video your audio message. But you have three lessons you could share with the world and this is all we would have to remember you by three truths. What would you say would be those for you yeah. First. I want to get to that uh my my parents are very happy. Now. I’m sure my mom actually works with me not too. That’s great yeah but uh getting on today.Now they can brag about it yeah exactly um. The first thing is think bigger and the reason why. I say that is because a lot of times we hear that think big. But when you’re thinking big you’re you’re probably 99 of the time not thinking big enough you can think bigger cross yourself think even bigger when I started youtube uh. I never thought that we would hit 10 000 subscribers. That’d own a hundred thousand subscribers let alone a million subscribers. I used to joke around with my friends that if I make if we hit a hundred thousand subscribers. I made it if I hit a million subscribers. I’m gonna shut the channel down because it’s not possible that a million people are gonna watch. This weirdo on youtube talking about guacamole talking about financial education. There’s not a million people that want to do that I’m a big thinker. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve always thought big yet here. I am with these limiting beliefs of myself. And I think. I’m this person who thinks crazy who thinks big so if you’re thinking big you’re not thinking big enough because that’s going to be your own. Limiting beliefs second learn the rules to the game the reason why so many people suck with money. It’s because they don’t understand the rules to the game and this is why a lot of people get so angry. They get so angry about what other people achieve they get so angry about everything else going on. But what you need to do the best thing to do is learn the system you know. I talk about how rich people don’t pay taxes and how you can work to own the corporate ladder and it makes people angry. But the reality is. This is the opportunity for you to figure out how can you do it yourself. This is what the system is you can hate it. You can cry you can scream you can complain that’s what I used to do. I thought it was horrible. Money was a taboo topic when I was growing up and I was like. It’s unfair that people are doing this and then I realized what if I learned the rules and you can apply it to yourself and third be willing to make mistakes. Try anything is possible but you have to be willing to try and make mistakes and keep getting better each and every day. I love that man. It’s. It’s a grind but you know anything is possible. Just. I want to acknowledge you for a moment man for uh taking this mission on. I think a lot of people are scared to think about money to talk about money to save and invest. I think people are just scared of money in general and the fact that you’re diving into this making this a part of your mission to educate to entertain to inspire to inform people through many different formats again from youtube to social media to your newsletter and everything else you’ll be creating in the future. I think it’s really inspiring to see someone again from your background who maybe someone um uh who people wouldn’t think would be talking about these things and you’re diving in you’re making it accessible with your unique perspective and personality. So I want to acknowledge you for making the minority mindset really something that people can grasp and understand and start applying small steps and hopefully making it bigger over time and you know and the thing is. It’s money is a taboo topic not just my culture but a lot of cultures and the reason why I become so taboo is because we’re insecure about our own money and so we create these smoke screens don’t talk about. It don’t worry about it but at the end of the day we’re all working for a paycheck and if you don’t think that’s true tell your boss not to pay you right. But but the thing that you have to understand is how money plays a part in our lives because I’m not saying money is the most important thing or the only thing. It’s one factor of our lives you have to be physically healthy mentally healthy spiritually healthy and when you have these things that’s when being financially healthy being financially fit can have the biggest impact. I call it a quadruped triangle and it kind of goes in that order because if you are physically if you’re on your deathbed you’re morbidly obese. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 million dollars in the bank. The only thing you care about is being healthy if you are mentally depressed. You’re anxious you’re struggling with these mental issues dude. More money is going to make you more miserable. You got to do whatever it takes go into. Rehab go get a therapist go go do whatever it takes at whatever cost because more money is not going to fix that and people try to think that I’m struggling with these mental health issues. If I go make a million dollars. I’ll be happy. People will like me that’s a big lie you’re going to be more miserable. Then you have to be spiritually healthy. Spiritual health does not mean you have to be religious for me. It’s what is your purpose why are you getting up every single day. What’s the reason of getting out of the bed and that’s going to keep driving you to live a fulfilling life. Whether it’s for 10 grand or a million or 10 million. It doesn’t matter once you have those three things that’s something financially. Healthy has the biggest impact and the biggest power because now you can live a fulfilled and a happy life and the money is just the icing man. It’s just icing on the cake. The cake is everything else you can’t take good. Icing put it on a crappy cake and expect the cake to taste good right. You gotta build a good cake first and then the ice thing just makes it that much better. That’s a good principles good foundation. I love that it’s all about food. I love food okay uh final question for you. What’s your definition of greatness always striving for better always wanting to be a little bit better every single day. Just please thanks man good stuff man one. I would scrape off that you don’t know anything two. I would invest everything you can in you. It’s tax deductible. You never lose it. A person’s personal appreciation will always be bigger than any other asset class. I love that okay bitcoin can’t match it real estate can’t match it. My personal asset appreciation will always it is infinite.