Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #69 American Dreamin’ feat. Ani Sanyal

Transcript

EYL #69 American Dreamin’ feat. Ani Sanyal · Earn Your Leisure

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  Speaker 2: All right, guys, welcome back, Earn your Lisha. This is
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: an episode that could have happened five times.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Let's start this.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we finally got it done. But before we start,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: by the time you guys hear this, three days four
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: days before the Big, the Big, the Big one. We
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: come into Philadelphia March fourteenth. March fifteenth, we have a
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  Speaker 2: live podcast on the fourteenth and that's gonna be with
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  Speaker 2: our brother Wallow two six seven legend himself, Greg Parker,
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  Speaker 2: a big business Neil Maya Davis amazing and just added
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  Speaker 2: to the bill. Just added to the bill, John hen
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: reach out brother got John. Yes, and our guest today.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Somebody familiar to that flyer.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, we're gonna we're gonna give him a full introduction.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Let's do it right.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: We're gonna do it right. So Sunday, Sunday we have
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: our workshop and the workshop is going to be vending
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Biza Edwards, Alex good Energy, Yeah, the King of Trucking
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: and the tar Bla and I used to shell the
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: They're gonna with a tag team real Estate and you're
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: gonna talk about how to build a million dollar real
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: estate portfolio starting with nothing. So it's crazy. The live
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: podcast open bar caters, it's a networking event. After it's
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: a whole.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yea e y L rules man, drink responsibly, act accordingly.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So all the information is on e
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: y L Experience dot com. Like I said, you got
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: a couple of days to get tickets, don't play yourself,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: don't miss out on this. Can't wait to touch the town.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: So all right, Philadelphia, We'll see you. So without further ado,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: we got that. We gotta announce the young legend that
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: we got in the building today. Annie sanal s y'all
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: get it. I get nervous because people mess up my
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: name so much that I've become very sensitive to that.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: But yes, so this is actually a while in the making.
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  Speaker 2: As I said, we we had a schedule for a
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: few different times and we had to go out of
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: town and a lot of stuff came up. I think weeks. Yeah,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: but we here, we here, So I'll give the bad story.
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  Speaker 2: So did everything from Music started a record label when
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  Speaker 2: he was in high school, inspired by jay Z, which
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: fits right in the podcast. As we mentioned, we mentioned
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Jay all the time. He's currently a real estate investor
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: real estate in Jersey and Philly. Then he also has
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a digital marketing agency where he's worked with Hillary Clinton
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: g r C. That's pretty big, extremely big. He has
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: one of the hottest tea is it is it okay
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: to call it the tea Yeah Chai Tea Shops in Manhattan,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: which is blowing up anything I'm missing.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: We got the idea exchange idea exchane.
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  Speaker 4: People come together with ideas and find out how to
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: make them turn turn them into businesses.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's a syal serial entrepreneurs. The term gets
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: thrown around. And he's only thirty one years old, so.
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  Speaker 3: The take it put out at high sixteen, right, so.
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  Speaker 2: The term the term gets thrown around, very likely, But
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  Speaker 2: he's a serial entrepreneur. So we got a lot of
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: things that we need to talk about in this So
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  Speaker 2: first and foremo, so thank you for joining us.
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  Speaker 5: Appreciate it, Appreciate you for real. This is this is exciting,
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  Speaker 5: and we talked about this for so long.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, for sure. So all right, so let's
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  Speaker 2: jump right into it. So you start your first business
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  Speaker 2: in the music business as a record label when you're
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: in high school. But so your parents are from India, right,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: You're of Indian descent and they moved to this country
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  Speaker 2: like right when you're born. Right, Yeah, So okay, so
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  Speaker 2: you are an Indian kid growing up in Boston. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: but you fell in love with hip hop music and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: then you decided to start a record label because you're
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  Speaker 2: inspired by Jay Z and Rockefeller's that correct.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, a little bit. It's so the funny thing about
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  Speaker 5: entrepreneurship now, it's like the sexiest thing. You know, everybody's
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: trying to get into it, and for me, like my
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: origins with entrepreneurship, we're not sexy at all. And what
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: it was growing up as an immigrant kid, you know,
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: watching your parents always get laid off or always be
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: at the victim of the job market, never being in
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: control of their own scenario. I'm talking about like eight, ten,
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: twelve years old. I knew that whatever I was gonna do,
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: I was always gonna be owning that or creating a
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  Speaker 5: future for myself where I would never have to think
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: about how do I put food on my family's plate.
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you mentionined that there's a few Christmases where, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: your dad came home like job's done.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah. I talk about it a lot because it's important
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  Speaker 5: for me to contextualize my story, you know, like now,
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  Speaker 5: you know, I'm on tour with my artist or you know,
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  Speaker 5: doing a podcast with people like y'all, and it's all
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  Speaker 5: fun and games. But you know, this started from like
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: a very not I want to say, out of desperation,
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: but it started out of like that hopelessness that you
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: feel when you can't take care of your family. And
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: so growing up, you know, as a brown kid, you're
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: already feeling like an outsider because growing up in the nineties,
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: we had no reference point. It was I pull on
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: the Simpsons. We could laugh about it, but you know,
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: on the other side of it, I was like, damn,
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  Speaker 5: this can't be life. This is literally and you know,
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: I think hip hop music and hip hop culture for
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  Speaker 5: the first time I was able to see a person
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  Speaker 5: of color in a position of ownership, you know, and
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: watching Jay how he ran up the score, you know,
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: in the nineties and the two thousands, like that MTV
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  Speaker 5: diary that he did, if you remember that, and just
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  Speaker 5: watching somebody like they controlling culture and they're controlling the
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  Speaker 5: narrative and they own what they do. I was like, yeah,
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  Speaker 5: that's it.
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  Speaker 3: So at that point in high school, you're looking at
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  Speaker 3: that like I can do that.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if I was looking at it like
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  Speaker 5: I can do that. I think I was looking at
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  Speaker 5: it like I have a story to tell, and I
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: wanted to tell that story in a real way. And
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: you know, I knew from early on I wasn't that
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: school A kid like my parents, you know, respect to
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: them because they let me cook, but when they saw
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  Speaker 5: me coming home with jeans, you know, sagging below my
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  Speaker 5: waist and four fake chains on, they must.
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  Speaker 3: Have been wet.
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: Let's see if I got one. But you know, they
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: I just I was never like I could never be
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: a doctor or a lawyer or a banker because to me,
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  Speaker 5: I just always thought outside the box, you know, and
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: being a creative kid and always just having that spirit
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  Speaker 5: like how do we figure it out? And I think
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  Speaker 5: that comes from not having things, you know, like you're
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  Speaker 5: always going to figure out how to get to it.
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: And so in high school, I teamed up, you know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: with a friend of mine, and I was like, look,
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of stuff happening on digital at this time.
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  Speaker 5: So this is my Space era. So you at the
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  Speaker 5: three clicks, you could a amplify your music to everybody
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  Speaker 5: in the world, and or you could discover something you've
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: never heard before. And it just changed the way you know,
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  Speaker 5: we like digested and consume music. So I'm looking at
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  Speaker 5: that like, Okay, if I have these tools at my disposal,
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  Speaker 5: you know, how do I tell my story through music?
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  Speaker 5: How do I create a world that I want to
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  Speaker 5: live in and create financial you know, independence out of that.
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  Speaker 5: So give you all some ideas of how I think.
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  Speaker 5: Like even in high school, we used to during the lunchtime,
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  Speaker 5: we used to like hand out little flyers in the morning, Like, yo,
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  Speaker 5: we having a live show in this staircase in this
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  Speaker 5: hallway at twelve thirty pm. Pull up and we'd have
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  Speaker 5: a boombox and like I'd have a bunch of my
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  Speaker 5: friends just come through. We'd like freestyle or you know,
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  Speaker 5: perform songs or battle or whatever it was. And these
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: these stairways used to be packed.
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  Speaker 3: Out what I mean.
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  Speaker 5: And then I remember we printed up an album, so
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  Speaker 5: like I sold whatever PlayStation games I had. I think
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  Speaker 5: I was like working ten thousan an hour boxing like
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: packing boxes or something, put all that money together and
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: printed up like three hundred album copies of an album
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: that we put out, and them joints sold out in
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: like four days. Wow you Yeah, I was. I was
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  Speaker 5: executive producing, I was, I was rapping, I was managing
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: the whole process. I was, you know, using digital to
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  Speaker 5: like distribute all the stuff. So he had an album
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  Speaker 5: on iTunes when I was like seventeen years old because
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: I had figured out how to crack that code super early.
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: And I we're selling physical CDs and I'm turning, was
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: it two dollars to print the CD into seven dollars
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: when you sell it?
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  Speaker 4: So you know, on iTunes and the music is moving
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: for seven dollars an album, that's what you're.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Getting off of it.
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  Speaker 5: I'm selling seven dollars c This is like back when.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: You know you you still play in your car.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: You know, I had my pop's purple Corolla, but that's
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: you know, I would play my play my joint. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: but I'm just watching people like consume it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was like, oh nah.
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: And that's the first time I ever had like a
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: stack in my pocket, like a not and being like, oh,
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: it's a whole different thing.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I just made.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: I made money off of an idea. Yeah, that's so empowering.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: And then and then we're like, yo, let's try doing
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: some merchandise. Sold out thirty T shirts now that Knot's
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: getting bigger, and I'm like, oh, okay, you know what
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: I mean. So that was the origin and I took
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: that too. I will skip a couple steps, but I
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: took that from starting at sixteen, developing it all through
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: my early twenties, and when I was twenty two years old,
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: I got offered to go live and tour in Japan
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: for six weeks off of music, and that was a
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: moment of crystallization as an artist. As an artist, I
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: did a brand deal with Marlborough, the cigarette company. Never
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: smoked in my life, doesn't matter, but they were like, yeah,
• 10:36
  Speaker 5: we'll pay you X, Y, and Z for these three
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: tracks and I was like, yeah, run that bag. All
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: my best friends and my label partners at the time,
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: and we all twenty two years old black and brown
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: kids living in Japan in Tokyo, running up the score.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Out spiking of football.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: It's crazy.
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  Speaker 5: Now. With that moment, I was like, oh, I could
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: do whatever it is I want in my life because
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: I turned my ideas into I'm.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: Thinking even as a six year old kid, to be
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: an artist is one thing, right, but you're thinking Ceo
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: Min like I'm going to create a record label, and
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: so how how does this go from being an artist
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: and record label to now getting a deal like Marvel?
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Like are you in front of them pitching this? How
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: does this work?
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah? I was I was always talking to like the
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: decision makers at some level, right, So like the Japan
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: thing happened through somebody that saw us at the showcase,
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: and I remember I had just quit the only day
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: job I've ever worked. I worked for two weeks and
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: I had just graduated or worked the day job for
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: two weeks. I was like, no, it's not me. And
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: somebody came up to me to showcase and was like, yo,
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: you want to live in Japan and go on tour and.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: I was like, let me think about this.
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: But it was just having the wherewithal to like I
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: have a press kit ready, I have you know, an ePK,
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: I got you know videos, I have content that you
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: can consume. I got a story, and I got a
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: website and it's all packaged in a way that a
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: decision maker can be like, Okay, these guys are moving,
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: something's happened. I could give you analytics on my last
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: you know, for releases and things like that. I always
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: thought that way because I knew that I couldn't monetize
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: my craft. I wasn't about to be a broke artist
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: like struggling artist.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Wasn't it still not.
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: There's no glory in that, And so that's just how
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: my mentality was. And obviously you know when you coached
• 12:18
  Speaker 5: by Jay, Like, I joked that Rockefeller was my NBA
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: because I just studied how to make certain moves, you know,
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: from that position and yeah, turn it into turned like
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: you gotta think about it. A brown kid, you know,
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: with no context in the music game being able to
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: do that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: To me, it was just like, all right, so what
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: made you just before job and T Man?
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: This is right around after.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the music that I was making, it wasn't South
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: Asian influence.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: It was just regular rap.
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: It was like boom back, you know, Golden Age stuff.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So what what? How did you transition from? All right,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: so you're a rapper, but then at some point you
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: conditioned to be on the business side because you did
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: some stuff with Wiz Khalifa. I saw, yeah and Lupe Fiasco,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So how did that come about?
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: I was always on both sides, and I think that
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: is one reason why I was never as good of
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: an artist as I could have been, is because I
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: was always doing both sides. And you know, like the
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: best artists are the ones that are one hundred percent
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: deep in their art. I could never go there because
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: I had to do the business too. But the Wiz
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: story is funny. It's while my handle Annie Hustles, I
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: guess makes sense. I had a mutual friend and he
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: was like, yo, Wis Khalifa is trying to come to
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: New York. He needs someone to book a show, Like
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: do you know anybody. I was like, oh, yeah, I
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: got it. I was twenty years old, couldn't get into
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: the club, had no idea what to do, and I
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: was like, no, no, I got it, Like you know, connect
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: me with his manager. Long story long. I organized Wiz's
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: first show in New York City at Webster Hall, and
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: I put my group as the opening the headline, the opening.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: App So how did you? I we gotta break that down.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: So web Webster Hall is a is a yeah, it's
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: a big venue in New York just got reopened. So
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: you're twenty years old and so somebody that you have
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: a relationship. This is before whisk Cleif was big.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: This is flight school Wiz.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: This is like early how do you how do you?
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: How do you book something without knowing what to do?
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: So I had a randomly I had a friend who
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: I went to school with who was like doing something
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: at Webster Like he was working there part time, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: I knew that he was in that game, and I
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: was like, bro, give me a chance. He was like
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: Wizard Khalif and this dude now owns one of the
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: biggest venues in Brooklyn shout out to Romy like, gave
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: me my first shot. But I was like, no, I
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: got it. Like here's a social analytics. This is the
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: type of chatter that's happening on Twitter about him coming
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: to New York, Like, I guarantee that we're gonna be
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: able to do this. And I was like, worst case,
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: I'm going to bring out one hundred and fifty people
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: for myself for you, right, And he was like all right.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: I think we ended up bringing out like two hundred people.
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: I had a line outside of you know, joint, just
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: everybody from n y U and that I have been
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: building my community with. They were like, oh, now we're
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: showing up.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: How much you ba Whiz?
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: I got no NDA so I can say it fifteen
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: hundred dollars. That was Whizz's first performance at Webster Hall,
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: and I remember that night like we made a little
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: bit of bread, you know, And I was like, oh.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Nah, crazy, you know you made you made a profit.
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: Barely. Yeah, we blameed one that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Blow at the hotel didn't lose money.
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but me and my boys had a you know,
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: like a life changing moment. And the craziest thing is
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: a couple of weeks after, Whizz's team calls me when
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: I'm in like my eight a m. Accounting class and
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: they're like, yo, my phone's ringing, you know. I'm like,
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: I'm already failing this class. And I pick up the
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: phone and it's Peter Schwartz, who's one of the biggest
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: agents right now who does everybody And Peter Shorts is
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: calling my phone like, Yo, Wiz, I just talked to Wiz.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: He wants you to come on tour with him. I
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: don't know who you are. You let me know if
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: you want to make this happen. And I'm like, oh,
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: I might even drop out. But we ended up doing
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: like a little you know, standing with Whiz on the
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: road and.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Like performing, yeah, like open it up for yeah and artists.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: And that to me again is just like Okay, I
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: think I know how to take a take a little
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: thing and leverage into something bigger and then flip it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: And that's been like a constant you know, my whole life.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, we breached over that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: But the n YU player is dough too, because a
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: kid from Boston having to tell your parents like listen,
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: I need to go to New York City but using
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: education as the reason, Yeah, change your.
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: Life, man, hundred percent. And I give my parents credit
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: to be able to trust their kid with that, because
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: a lot of South Asian parents are a lot of
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: parents in general immigrant parents would be like, now you're
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: going to screw it up, you know. And and I
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: lived like the I was the brokest NYU kid anyone's
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: ever seen. I lived off campus. I had an apartment
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: where you sat down, your knees touched the wall when
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: you were sitting on a toilet, Like I paid, you know,
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: my way through how much of it I could, Like,
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: you know, my parents were supportive, but like I didn't
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: go to NYU and trick off, you know, like the
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: rich New York City kid like that. That wasn't my reality.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: Like I scrapped through the whole time. But every day
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: I would show up on campus and I would be like, yo,
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: I got new music out, or like, yo, check this out.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: I got a new CD, I got a new t shirt,
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: you know, and I built that community and that and
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: that really was like the first point you know of
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: crystallization of like, yo, this is how this is how
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: you get it popping, you know, when it comes to
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: like building a brand and interfacing across digital physical, you know, content,
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: culture and putting all that together.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: So he was always like, I guess the end, kid,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: because in high school you had a buzz. In college
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: you had a buzz, and but then you throw on
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: some hard times. You had some kidney issues.
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: Right, yeah, the sow five twenty four. Okay, So I
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: was born with a kidney condition. But the way I
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: lived my life, I was like, if I go out,
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go out the way I want to. Like,
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: I'm wanna go out the way every day I lived,
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: you know, the way I wanted to. And after the
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: Japan Tokyo thing, I came back and my phone, I
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: kid you not, I never told a story. I was
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: on a plane walking off the plane, like I was
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: still exiting. I had my backpack on getting home from
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: Tokyo and my phone rings and I was like hello,
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: and it was one of my mentors. He was like, Yo,
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: can you go to India next week? Like, I want
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: you to come and score a film with me, Bollywood film.
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: I was like, oh nah, like again when you were
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: a brown kid growing up like this validation. Yeah, that's
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: that circle, that that loop. So we go over there
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: and then we come back and he's like, yo, we
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: gotta go again. I was like, cool, I'm just gonna
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: make a little routine doctor's appointment, you know, make sure
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: I'm good. We're about to go out for like six weeks.
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: And I remember that appointment. My doctor was typical movie thing.
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: He was like coming real slow out of the room,
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: you know, shaking his head, and I was like, oh, no, what.
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: And it turns out that I had end stage kidney
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: failure at twenty four, which means my kidneys had shrunk,
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: like the function in them had almost been like at zero.
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: And it was like three months until they stopped working completely,
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: or until I have to go on dallass, which if
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: you guys know what that is my uncle, Yeah, like
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: bless him and anybody that's going through it. That's some
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: difficult thing, you know, as a twenty four year old kid,
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: forget it. Anybody is difficult. And he was like, you
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: are about to, you know, go through some real thing,
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: or you should go you should stay home and figure
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: your life out. I was like, but I'm about to
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: go on tour next week. He was like no, you know,
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: And I told my parents. I was like, this is
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: where I'm at, and They're like, what are you going
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: to do? I was like, I'm going to go on
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: tour because if I got three months to live, I'm
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: gonna do at least a month of That was that,
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: you know, And I think that moment also taught me
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: about fear, you know, as an entrepreneur, fears like this
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: thing that we always have in the back of our head.
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: But when I made that decision, I was like, oh,
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: I don't think I'm gonna be scared of anything else
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: in my life because I was just mentally, I was
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: stronger than I was physically, you know, like my mental
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: was just so focused on doing the things that I
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: wanted to do. So I went on tour, scored that
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: valuable film, had a crazy experience, came back and my
• 20:24
  Speaker 5: body was like, nah, it's over for you. And I
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: went on like this emergency Dallasis procedure. Ended up fighting
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: for my life for like six months. It was bad,
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: you know, like and I would still be in the
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: studio in the evenings. I go to dallass in the
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: morning and still go to the studio in the evening.
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: I had all these you know, like wires and things
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: attached to my chest. And you know, when you're on
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: top of the world at twenty four, it's an incredible feeling,
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: and when you're at the bottom, you know, that's also
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: a real feeling. And it taught me like as quick
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: as you can get it, you could lose it and
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: build Bilding back up from zero was probably the toughest
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: thing that I ever did, but you know it again,
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: just built that resilience to be like, well you be
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: cheated death. You know, I figured I could sell CDs now.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I remember if somebody told me that before, Like once
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: you face death, you really have no fear because the
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: worst thing that can happen is you die. And then
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: when you realize that that's really the worst thing that
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: can happen, which is inevitable, everything else is in that
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: bad right. It's like a lot of things, like you think,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: like if you really think about it, it's like me
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: trying to walk up to the celebrity to trying to
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: pitch my idea not that.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: Bad dying, And I don't want to glorify it like.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: You know, like I mean, but it's just the reality.
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: What my parents went through, when my family went through
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: like extremely difficult and it's you know, I say that
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: my parents gave me life twice because my dad donated
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: his kidney to me, right, And so that that moment
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: was also really big for me to know, like family,
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: you know, family has always been everything, especially as like
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: an immigrant kid. But at that moment, I was like, oh.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Does that does that change the dynamic between you and dad?
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, I know, immigrant family, immigrant family, right, parent
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: family is everything, but like your dad, you guys were
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: close at that time?
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Was that close?
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: We got closer?
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Got closer?
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: Sure? I think that at that time, not only did
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: we get closer, but it also flipped a switch for
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: me to know, like everything that I was going to
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: do after that in my life had to be for family,
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: you know, and I have to be a little bit
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: more selfless with what I was doing. And that kind
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: of inspired me to kind of move away from music
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: for a while. But but yeah, that that experience I
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: think gave me a cheat code because now it's like
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: fear I spent my twenty fifth birthday learning how to walk. Wow,
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: you know like what I like you said, I'm not
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: scared to pitch somebody.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the thing a lot of times you take
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: stuff for granted in life, and I think that like
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: humbling experiences and life alternate experiences, a lot of times
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: it makes people appreciate, like, you know, the little things,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: because like you said, I mean just being able to walk.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, we complain about stuff and you
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: think about the grand scheme of thing and it's like
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: it's like Instagram is down for an hour. It's like
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: it's not that we're not that bad.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to beat life because I can't cheat that.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: So facts, Yeah did it? Man?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So all right, So in the next segment, that
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: tease it up for your journey after that, going into marketing.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: That's actually something I'm really interested in talking about marketing
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: because we haven't spoken about marketing and your life after music.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: All right, So in this segment, we're going to talk
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: about a few different things, but I want to start
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: it off with marketing because you have a marketing company,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: green Room Creative, so and you know you've done work
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: with Hillary Clinton, hbo uh juice press, juice Press. So okay,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: let's let's start from the beginning marketing, right, because we
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: hit this term a lot marketing and everybody has different
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: ideas with marketing, right, but where do you see the
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: direction of marketing? Like, where do you see your company?
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And like, because it's all over the place right now,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So what's your thoughts on it?
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: I love this question because I feel like we don't
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: spend enough time talking about it. We're just so used
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: to being marketed too, right, but nowadays it's like we
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: don't even deconstruct actually what's going on. So to me,
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: marketing is storytelling, and good storytelling when you do that,
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: you don't even need to advertise. What's happened is people
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: are using advertising as a way to storytell instead of
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: the other way around. So to me, kind of all
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: of my experiences, even up until this point, with music
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: and with culture and content, all I was doing was
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: telling a really good story or the best story that
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: I felt like I could. And when we pivoted so
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: after my surgery, I realized that, you know, music wouldn't
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: allow me to take care of my family, you know,
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: the way I wanted to and so my brother and
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: I put our heads together and we're like, look, let's
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: get into the agency world. So he had a little
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: bit of agency background on like the search and digital side,
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: and I had a bunch of background on the creative side.
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: And what we realized was like nobody was effectively storytelling.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: Everyone was just buying advertising. And there's a massive difference.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: So when I think about marketing now, it's about having
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: a point of view and a perspective and then marrying
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: that with really good content to provide value to people's
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: lives so that they learn and get enriched. If you
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: do that, you never have to sell anything to anybody.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: You know what, That's crazy because that sounds so familiar.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It sounds just like earning your Ligia's blueprint. And I
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: tell people that all the time, and I'm like, earning
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: your Ligia wasn't built on ads and marketing or whatever.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: It was just to provide content, creative content that was different.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And we found our niche telling stories. That's actually how
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: it first started. It was backstories of entrepreneurs and business
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: and the people Champion did. And like you said, that's
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: word of mouth is the best form of marketing and
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: it's like people double down. It's like, oh, how much
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: money can I spend? And I look at like Mike Bloomberg,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: you spend five hundred million on ads, but it's like
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: how far is that really going to go? Like you
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: know what I mean, It's like you have to double
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: down on your content, telling your story, getting people to
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: buy into you. And that is actually a form of marketing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: That's like the best form of marketing.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah. That, and you have to have a really what
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: I say, what I call undeniable products. You know. I
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: think the biggest thing that a lot of entrepreneurs face
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: nowadays is everybody wants to get into the selling and
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: the advertising and being like yo, we're out here. Very
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: few people want to focus on creating an undeniable product
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: that could sell itself if it had to, you know.
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: And I think the Mike Bloomberg is a class example.
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: Like the product wasn't that great? You know, like you
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: could fool some people, but you can't shift you know,
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: the public altogether, because they're going to go back and
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: be like, this product is not hidden.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: For me.
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: The agency world was a way for us to be like,
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: all right, let's flip the traditional model of like just
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: pumping money into ads, and let's really try to get
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: these brands to talk about what's core to them and
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: then we'll take that, we'll create content, we'll amplify it.
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: But it can't just be you know, all advertising dollars
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: and media buys because you're gonna get stuck.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: That's like you made a mindset shift, like after you
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: know your health issue where you said, you know what,
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: I'm good at this, but I'm great at that, right,
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: and you decided I'm gonna.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: Go in this route.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: But still the principles that you use for music of
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: what you use in the marketing, building an audience, creating
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: the content, right, and you talk about segmenting the audience,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: can you get.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Into that little bit for sure?
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: Audience segmentation to me is something that is the easiest
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: way to save money and make money at the same time.
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: And what I mean by that is like, if you
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: have a message that you're delivering to your audience, but
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: that's the wrong audience, it's the wrong message for that audience,
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: you're wasting money, you know, Versus when you hone in
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: on the right audience with the right message, you could
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: probably spend half and get twice as much results because
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: it's the product market fit is undeniable. So when I
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: think about like segmenting, you know a lot of brands
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: they use one voice to speak to everybody, or they
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: did for a long time. Now you see like Puma,
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: you know, they're taking the urban voice and the urban
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: weight and they double down that on that segment by
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: investing in the influencers and the creators in that world.
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: You know, Adidas was scared to do that for so
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: long and then they found you know, easy, and you
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: saw what happened. Nike doesn't really do that, Like their
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: their audience segment is different. You know, they they do
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: it in their own way now, but it's like it's
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: not the same. You know, So each brand and each
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: each each person's understanding of segment and how you deliver
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: a product to that segment is the difference between you know,
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: having an effective strategy and being completely and effective.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually something that's really interesting because it's like
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: you can actually have different marketing strategies campaigns for different
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: people from the one company. It's like, like you said,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about that, like most of the time
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: it's just one way, Like if we're gonna go with
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: a marketing campaign. It's like, Okay, we're gonna go hip
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: hop and we're gonna have Push you T do Adidas commercial.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And it's like, but what if you're not a Pusher
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: T fan? What if you like country music? What I
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: mean like that would probably be more beneficial to be like, Okay,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: we're gonna have entertain this endorse our product, but we're
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: gonna have this campaign with a country singer, this campaign
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: with an R and B singer, this campaign with a rapper.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: It's like three different lanes for three different people as
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: opposed to saying this is like one size fit all
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: and here. But you know what, I think so many
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: companies are out of touch with culture and just reality
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and they just like, oh, this is what's hot, Okay,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: this is what we're going to do.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Like that's what they're doing.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: But that on Instagram because it's like even for me,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: like you know, I spent so much time on Instagram,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: like I kind of like have a good understanding of
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: how these things work, and I'm like it surprises me
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: how many companies I see and I'm like, y'all don't
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: even understand, Like this is so corny, but you're spending
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: so much money doing this, and your titles are all off,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: your captions are wrong, and it's like who's paying who's
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: buying it? So it's crazy.
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And the thing about segmentation is what it allows
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: you to do is test. A lot of marketers forget
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: the importance of testing because as a as a brand,
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: especially as an early stage company, which is a lot
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: of the work that we do, you don't necessarily know
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: who is your target audience. Like you might have an idea,
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: you know, eighteen to thirty, but that's super broad, you know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: metropolitan urban professionals. That's still really broad, you know. And
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: what segmentation does is you can run different messages in
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: different segments and then find the best performers and then
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: double down on that and use the insights from that
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: to inform your growth strategy. A lot of marketers feel like, oh,
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: I'm going to put this big spend into something that's
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: gonna hit and we're out of here. It rarely works
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: like that, you know. And being able to efficiently test
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: and turn things on and off, that's a lot of
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: the work that we did, you know, as an agency,
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: and I think that's where we delivered a lot of
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: value to companies that didn't have that knowledge. You know already.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: I think what you're doing is amazing in the fact
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: that you have a touch on culture and you're trying
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: to keep it as authentic as possible A lot of
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: times and shoddy and I we always talk about this
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: like they're out of touch, out the loop, and then
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: when they try to get a piece of the culture,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: it's like it's already changed. Culture has changed already. How
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: do you guys keep it so authentic?
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: The the thing about culture is you can't fake culture
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: unless you from and live the culture, you can't really
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: talk about it. And the great thing about us is
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: like we live what we do every day, you know,
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: Like I'm not I'm on that glass building on the
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: thirty fifth floor whatever, but I'm also at the show,
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: you know, in the front row, like learning and watching
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: and observing how people are using TikTok or what they're doing.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: Like you got to be on the ground. And a
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: lot of brands and a lot of like execs are
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: afraid to be on the ground because they've never lived
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: that life, you know. And the funny thing about this
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: culture thing is now we you know, we've pivoted into
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: telling stories from a cultural aspect for like big brands.
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: That's kind of the focus that we work on now.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: And I'm telling you, we used to tell all these
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: brands like, yo, this is the type of work you
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: need to do. You need to pivot into more storytelling
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: and less advertising. You need to invest in content. And
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: some people listened, a lot of them didn't. And now
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: we're like, hold on, why don't we just stop wasting
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: our time selling these things to people who are not listening,
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: and let's incubate a company that and integrates everything that
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: we've learned up to this point. And that is how
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: the chat companies started. So we incubated that within the agency,
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: using everything that we learned about storytelling, content, culture, and
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: really literally brewed that pot up. And now when people
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: are like, well, why should I work with you, I'm
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: like when we opened a cafe in Manhattan and then
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: had seven hundred people on opening night. So if you
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: look at a product a proof of concept, that's it
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: right there.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: You know what, though, I'm glad that we're in this
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: day and age now where you don't necessarily need gatekeepers
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: to get your message out because I used to it.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: I remember, so I used to play basketball growing up, right,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: And I remember like when I was in prep school
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: and like my last stages of like being recruited and
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: I was getting overlooked by a lot of schools, but
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I was killing. Like I would go to they would
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: like come to our practice and look like somebody else
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: and I would have like twenty five thirty points. And
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: it's so frustrating because it's like, how do you not
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: see what I see? Like you know what I'm saying.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And as a creative, in a lot of times, it's
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: like it's like you feel like I know this is it,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: and you're trying to convince somebody and they're like, nah,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: that's not it, and it's like I would, I would.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I could just imagine how frustrated would be for like,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: we have earn Releisure, right, and it's like we're trying
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: to pitch it to a label or like a network,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: and we're trying to tell them like, yo, this is
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: people gonna like this financial literacy? What a hip hop
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: twist on it? Two black guys talking about finances, and
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: I could see them like, nah, that's nobody's going to
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: be interested in that. And I'm like, no, I know
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: this is going to work, and they're like nah, like
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. But that's really what happens
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: with the companies. They're so out of touch and they
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: think that they know it all record music too, Like
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: it's like you have one person dictating like what the
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: whole world thinks is good.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: That's hop It's.
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: Absurd, you know. I mean, look, people didn't give Drake
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: a deal, people didn't give Jay a deal, people didn't
• 34:47
  Speaker 5: give Nip a deal, like three of the most iconic
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: artists of our generation.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Speaking of NIP, I wanted to ask a question about
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: marketing because I saw it on your on your page, Well,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: somebody tweeted vertical integration because he had that integrated vertically,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: So what's your ideas on that? Because if people talk
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: about it a lot, but I haven't really heard somebody
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: like fully articulate their opinion on it.
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, rest in peace and it, you know,
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: one of my biggest influences in somebody that just was
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: so fearless and such a radical in what he did,
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: like inspired me, you know, for the rest of my
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: life when it comes to vertical integration. This idea of like, look,
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: building a business and creating something is already so challenging, right,
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: But when you build something properly, the ability to create
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: an ecosystem out of products that are already related to
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: what you're doing, that you don't have to go outside
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: of what you are already producing or where your resources
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: are already allocated to create more products, to be able
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: to create more opportunities to profit and more revenue streams,
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: and they all relate to each other and help actually
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: build each other up. That's the idea of vertical integration.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: So for him, it was the fact that he owned
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: the Marathon Agency, which was creating work in the music space,
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: which was allowing him to get more opportunities as an artist, right,
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: and then also being able to create branding and experiences
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: for places like Destination Crenshaw or the real estate stuff
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: that he was doing. Coming down to Vector ninety and
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: he had basically built a bunch of different businesses that
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: all had a common thread through them and they were
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: sharing resources.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: So it was next that James Arden said they were
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: going to do sports agency, which is what he said
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: He's probably still.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: Going to do, right, and he should. But so when
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: I think about vertical integration. It's the ability to maximize
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: your output with the same amount of resources and the
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: same amount of infrastructure that you already have, and your
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: whole ecosystem relates to each other. So an example of
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: this is like when we built the agency, you know,
• 36:49
  Speaker 5: is two brown guys trying to play in this like
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: super tech kind of like white bro founder's world. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: I was like, nobody's even given us a chance a
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: lot of time, you know, like we didn't even know
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: where to go to, Like we didn't know who to
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: talk to, Like it was lonely. And then I realized, like,
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: I'm not the only one going through this, and so
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: what I started doing was hosting a monthly meetup for
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: minority entrepreneurs and we called it Idea Exchange, And there's
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: a way to like have people that were going through
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: similar things come and create a forum for like, yo,
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: how do we solve a lot of problems that we're
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: going through as entrepreneurs. So that's vertically integrated with what
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: I'm doing on the agency side, right, because it's a
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: byproduct of that. I host those sessions at my office.
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: I already know the topics because I'm living it every day.
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: And my audience are people that eventually actually become a
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: client or the agency because they're like, yo, we love
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: the way you think, and so now I'm using that
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: meetup as a way to build my personal brand, build
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: my agency business, and be able to give back to
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: the community.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: How often does an idea exchange happen?
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so we last year. We did them every month.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: And this episode is brought to you by P and
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• 40:45
  Speaker 5: It was, you know, as a heavy lift. This year,
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: we've pivoted to every other month to next one's coming
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: up in April, and you know, if you follow me
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: or if you know where I'm at, then I talk
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: about them pretty regularly. We expanded from New York City
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: into New Work, New Jersey, which I feel like is
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: really dope community of entrepreneurs that aren't getting a platform.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: I was just in NewYork today actually, but you were.
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: There for maybe maybe some tough reasons, but but yeah,
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: vertical integration is just like, how do you create an
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: ecosystem and maximize the output and the revenue streams based
• 41:23
  Speaker 5: off the things that you've already built.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I think Apple is like the best at that, hands down.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they're up there.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: It goes like into your theory of culture to commerce
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: or profit to purpose, Like you literally just explained it,
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: and it's like how you stayed authentic to your culture
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: and with the child restaurant and turned into something profitable.
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: And I think the biggest thing about vertical integration too,
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: is that it reinforces authenticity behind what you do. You know,
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: somebody like Nip all those things that he was touching, music, marketing,
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: real estate, with the he had a the marathon, g
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: the Stranger, it was all connected to his brand, the marathon,
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: his philosophy, and it was all authentic and the world
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: tapped in. So you know, he's I think one of
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: the most brilliant people to do it and still be him,
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: you know, and coming from where he came from. But
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: that idea of like building an ecosystem that's vertically integrated,
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: I think it's going to be the future because we're
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: moving away from like the high growth, you know, growth
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: at all costs, uber and and and Lyft and Harry's
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: and that type of that type of company, we're moving
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: away from that.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: It's lateral growth is more efficient right now than vertical growth.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: So like briefly, like vertical growth is like, like I said,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: in my opinion, that's the big corporations. That's like, you know,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: just massively pouring money into things to grow upwards. But
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: you can grow laterally a lot easier and through word
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: of mouth and through different avenues that you're licensing things
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: in that nature. So it's like even for us faring
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: your leisure, it's like we have everything started with the podcast,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: but now we have an online university. Now we have
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: merch Now we do live shows, Now we have the YouTube,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Now we have ad revenue, we have the social media
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: campaigns that we do, and so we can just continue
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: to grow like that, like your Lisia, the podcast is
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: the mothership, but from there we can spread our wings
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: at a very low cost. All these things that I
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: named a very low cost, and it allows us to
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: have multiple streams of income.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: I tell them, it's like it's one tree with some
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: branches going.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: From it, which is that's the best way to explain it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: What you're doing is you're taking market share in each
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: of those worlds a little by little.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: My philosophy at this point, at this age of my
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: life is like, if you look at all the major
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: companies and the infrastructure, it's all owned by people that
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: look the same. It's all all white men that own
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: almost everything. Right now, at this point in my life,
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: my job is like, how do I build an ecosystem
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: that captures market share away from them little by little
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: until I'm able to flip it and turn it into
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: something major. Right, So, like my cafe, you know, I'm
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: not competing with Starbucks yet, but I'm gonna eat into
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: some some middle tier coffee spots, you know, New York City,
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: and I'm gonna take that audience. I'm gonna flip it
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: and i'm gonna eat into more. And then they're gonna
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: throw me an acquisition offer, and I'm gonna say now,
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: and I'm gonna take the market share away from all
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: these things that exist. And then once we get it
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: and we bring it to minority owned businesses, you already
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: know we're gonna reinvest.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: That's like the first album when he's like nobody noticed es,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: nobody gave it. We get that's a fact. So speaking
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: about your cafe, can we talk about that, because that's
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: that's that's that's he hot in the streets right now.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: So what's going on with that?
• 44:48
  Speaker 6: Man?
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: Man, it's hard for me to talk about my cafe
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: without obviously mentioned to my brother and bigging him up.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Your blood brother, blood brother, younger brother.
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: Younger brother, his partner, head case, but death. He's the
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: head chef. You know, he is the He's the lifeblood
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: of that of that organization. And you know again, I
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: support that business the same way do everything else. I
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: merge the culture and the business together.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: I think it's dope. So we ain't say the name,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: but I'm gonna try.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: Cold Cuatta You got it colkatta chi cuta cha cold right.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: And the beauty behind it is that it is named
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: after the city in India that your parents grew up in. Man,
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: So when we talk about family meaning anything, everything, it's like,
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: you know, they can go in the city now and
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: see like their birthplace because of you.
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean to honor your parents and to give
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: a tribute to them. I felt like that was way
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: to do it. Yeah, man, honestly, like I made a
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: little bit of money in my life, you know, I
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: got a decent car.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Whatever.
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: That to me will be always my biggest accomplishment, the
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: fact that my parents were healthy and able to see that,
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: you know, at a time in our life where there's
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: a lot of unser you know, but they could pop
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: up in Manhattan. My mom was just in India and
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: she was like, thank you for making me a celebrity.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: Here everybody's asking me about my cafe. And I was like,
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: You've earned that, you know. That's that. But man, with
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: with the chai thing, it was imagine if one of
• 46:16
  Speaker 5: the biggest products consumed globally was just completely being mistold.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: What what is Can you talk about that? Because we
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: like to cultural cultural nights Atalisia. We did a bunch
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: on it on Dominican the Dominicans uptown, but we haven't
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: done Indian night yet.
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: So so chai what is chid Chai is? Chai means
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: tea literally translates to tea and across South Asia, so Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: Sri Lanka, parts of the Middle East, Chai is basically
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: a mix of spices of black tea and milk all
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: boiled together and it's like this multi dimensional labor profile.
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: So it's a little bit sweet, it's a little bit
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: spicy his body and it's hot and it cleanses the palate.
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: It kind of like keeps you from getting sick. It's
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: got a lot of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and it's like
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: the most democratic drink across South Asia. So you go
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: to any corner and there's a child stall and there's
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: what we call chaiahwala that means like a worker's he's
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: he's making it and the teachers is drinking it, the kids,
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: the businessman, the day laborer, the government official, everybody's waiting
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: to get their cup of child That's just it's just
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: a place where all of that, you know, cultural class
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: and this everything just melts and it's about the about
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: the drink. And so in India, when we go back
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: to visit our family every day in the evening, like
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: there's this concept it's more on Bengali concept, but it
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: happens across the India. It's called a d d A
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: and it literally means a time where you stop doing
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: whatever you're doing, you meet up with your family, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: you shoot the ship for like an hour and a half,
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: You drink tea, you eat food, and you just talk
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: about politics, sports, whatever's happened in music, this, that, and
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: it happens every day. So growing up, we would see
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: our parents and our family doing all this our aunties
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: and I'm like, I don't got work, Like We're just
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: gonna take this two hours to drink tea and talk.
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: And that's how strong family is out there. So we
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: realize that this thing that we have bonded around our
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: whole lives, nobody was telling that story in the US,
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: right And when you think about, you know, talking about eyl,
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: let's let's broaden our international reach. South Asians are some
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: of the most economically mobile population in the US, and
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: when it comes to I think like college educated, they
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: hold like the highest household income for college educated individuals
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: in the US minority population wise. You got all this happening,
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: and you have nobody speaking to them. You got no
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: brands that are culturally relevant for South Asians to tap
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: into and be like I feel heard, I feel seen,
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: I feel like this is a place that reflects my values.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: And we looked at Chai as being the Trojan Horse.
• 49:08
  Speaker 5: That's the food item that can coalesce an entire community.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: And so we did it in the form of opening
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: a cafe. We're getting into you know, original programming and
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: content and media and I got a whole you know,
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: list of other things that I want to do, but
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: that's the idea. It's like, how do you take something
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: that's so important for our heritage and where we come from,
• 49:30
  Speaker 5: and how do you celebrate it? Because when you go
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: to Starbucks, which you drink is not chy, it's like
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: the syrupy sweet, you know, like bastardized version of the drink.
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: There's no place that I've seen in America where you
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: can get authentic up a child that feels like it
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: does back home one place.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: But I think I think it's important too, because it's
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: important to brace who you are. Embrace who you are
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: because it's like a lot of times people try to
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: run away from who they are, especially in America, and
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: it's like you want to kind of conform and fit in, right,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: But there's power in being who you are because there's
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: always gonna be somebody that can't relate to you. And
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: I realized his first hands, like I'm in business and
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: when I first started in business, I realized, like I
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: was a little self conscious because you know, I have
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: like a heavy New York accent and you know, grow
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: up listening to hip hop and that's my culture. And
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: ninety percent of the people were not like that. Right,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: So I'm like feeling a little self conscious. But now
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: I realized that that's actually helped me because there's millions
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: of people who CNBC can't talk to Wall Street Journal,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: they have no idea what they're talking about. But when
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: they hear me, they hear choice speak, it's like, oh,
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: these guys like from my neighborhood, Like it's like I
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: could be in a barber shop. So it's actually beneficial
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: because they're getting the message from somebody that they can understand,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: as opposed to me trying to beat somebody that I'm not.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: And then I'm going to miss them and I'm going
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: to not even be able to relate to the other
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: people because they know I'm not them.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: It's like exactly what you said, right, you can't fake culture, right, Like,
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: He's gonna be exactly who he is and that's going
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: to attract people, and some people won't get it, but
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: eventually they you know they will because their partners will.
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. And I went through
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: the same thing as a marketing exact Early on, I
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: was trying to conform into like this tech bro or
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: whatever the market and I realized I was like, man,
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: code switshing is all fun and games, but that's not me.
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: And embracing culture and who you are, I think that's
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: your competitive advantage. You know, a lot of immigrant kids,
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: a lot of like black and brown kids. For us,
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: like growing up like it wasn't cool to be who
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: we were for so long, it was embarrassing. My name
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: was said wrong every day on the first day of
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: class for eighteen years of my life. You know, like
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: that it'll get to you. But once you realize that
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: that's actually what the power is and where ultimately where
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: you can create differentiation than the whole world shifts.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. Troy never had the deal with Yeah,
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: I got lucky, man. I was a Jamaican. Heah, nobody.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: First of all, nobody even thinks I'm Jamaican. But I'm
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: growing up in New York City. Patrick Gowan was popping Chapla.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Ranks was popping super Cot was popping I'm like yo,
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: it kind of was cool to be Jamaican. But you
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: know what you said about when you chased it the
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: chiy and not really realizing that this isn't authentic.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: That's sometimes how I feel about wester Indian food.
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: Like I go to these I won't say their names,
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: but I'm like they're like, oh, that food is so good.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, man, bro, that's not that's like McDonald's
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: like this this isn't it. So we got to I
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: got some visions now for for for Westerndan culture, somebody
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: has to represent.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: But your name though, I'm just talking about the culture. Nobody,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: nobody ever messes up. Your name is Troy Or.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: That's super intentional as well, like and that conforming right,
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: So like even my my grandmother, the names of my
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: my uncles and my dad are super American, like Howard
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: Victor is a dream. And even my name like you
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: can hear it, like Troy Christopher, my brother, Gregory Michael.
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: It's like there's nothing about there's no Donovan in my name.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: Was that intentional?
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: I think it was superintentional.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: I think but you know what two possibly a culture
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: tupac rest in peace, the icon or legend, and I
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: heard an interview with him one time and he was
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: saying that when he was young, he used to be embarrassed.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: His name is Tupac Shakur, Tupac a Mari Shakor, and
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: all his friends is like you know, John Smith and
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: just regular American names. And he was like he used,
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: you know, they used to make fun of him, like
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: your name is Tupac, what does that mean? And he
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: was saying that, like over the course of time, he
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: realized like it was actually a blessing because it was
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: like people anytime somebody saw him or they spoke, they
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: was like, what's your name is? Like Tupac's like what
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: does that mean? He had to explain what his name man?
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: You know he was like even one time he got
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: arrested and the cop arrested him when he was a kid,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: and he was like, what's your name? And he told
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: him his name, and the cop looked at him like
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Tupac Skor like you know your parents is black Panthers,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Like this isn't what you're supposed to be doing. And
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: he knew, like he was raised better than that, Like
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, just tho of his name,
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: So I say that to say, everybody's journey is different,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: and a lot of times what we think are actually hinders.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: It's actually our superpower is then actually, you know, you
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: gotta just embrace who you are.
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think in my life. So funny thing is,
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: my full name is Annie Ruddah. That's the name that
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: my grandfather gave me. And I hated that name growing
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: up because its butchered. I found out that name means
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: with no obstacle. And so when I think about my life,
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: you know, I think I had every reason to stop,
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: or to give up, or to find an excuse. So nah, look,
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: I'm you know, we grew up poor. I ain't got it.
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: I was sick, you know, I couldn't get past it,
• 54:37
  Speaker 5: you know. Oh, you know, couldn't recover from from what
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: I went through. And I think, you know, I had
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: every every opportunity to be like yo, I I can't
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: do it, you know. But I look at the way
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: my life went, and I look at the power of
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: my name, you know, and I'm like, oh it all
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: makes sense, you know. So yeah, culturally and all of that,
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: I mean, you nailed it.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: It's like our greatest power comes from you know.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Just where you are. That's it. So before we go
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: to the next segment, can we tell a few minutes
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: about India, because, like I said, shot out to all
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: of the Indians all over the world. India is a
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: country that has over a billion people. But what a
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people don't realize is that it's a They
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: have communities Indian descent from Jamaica, heavy present, the whole West, Indies,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: even South America, America, Africa, all over.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: His uncle was called the cool kid.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: But you said, so, you said that you actually went
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: out there, and so what's the business scene out there,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: because obviously it's booming more and more people are coming
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: into them. People talk about China a lot, but I
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: think people don't fully understand, like India is a big
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: economy as well as a billion people.
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: It's a big economy. And the greatest thing about the
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: Indian economy is that everyone has access to mobile and
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: cell service and data. Data is cheaper in India than
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: it is anywhere else in the world. So you get
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: a data plan in India the cheapest and what that
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: does is everybody becomes connected, you know, at a at
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: a scale that no other place in the world could replicated.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: Is there a top between that and have a call centers?
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: Not necessarily the call centers. What happened. The reason why
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: that is is because India was a British colony and
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: so everybody in India, when you go to school, you
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: learn in English. So everybody in India speaks English. You know,
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: whether that's at the same you know accent as American
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: English is a whole different conversation. But the reason why
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: call centers popped off in India is because everybody was
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: English educated and so when it came to onboarding, it
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: was just a whole different.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: And they get paid least high like Nigeria, same thing.
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: Correct, correct. So the Indian economy and kind of investing.
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: So what's happening is over the last like five or
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: ten years, we've started to see the same kind of
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: startup economy that exists here happen in India. So you
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: have companies like Oyo Oyo. It's like a big hotel
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: chain that actually Soft Bank invested in division fund Oios
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: is in deep trouble right now, but as a multi
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: billion dollar company that was created by I think he
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: was like eighteen or nineteen year old, like a founder
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: in India. Well, you have a company called flip Cart,
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: which was the Amazon of India that got acquired recently
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: for I think it was like a couple of bill
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: and they basically just they figured out what's called last
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: mile delivery, which is like how do you get to
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: the customer who lives kind of like off the beaten
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: path in an effective timeframe. So like you have a
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: lot of the Indian startup ecosystem is starting to resemble
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: what's happening in the West. The problem with India as
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: an outsider is that you have to know somebody or
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: you have to know the ways of the local economy
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: and kind of how things are popping to be able
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: to get involved there. What you don't have to necessarily
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: know is like, you know, I managed an artist named
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: Ani Khan. He's spawning with Beshi and we do a
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: lot of work in India, and we're using content and
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: music as a way to break down those walls and
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: create points of true action and investment. So like we
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: don't have to necessarily be in India and talk to
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: labels in India and I don't have to pitch him
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: that way, but I can have the talent buyers in
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: India be like, Oh, this guy is popping and he
• 58:12
  Speaker 5: represents you know, this audience, Let's fly him out.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: What that does now is it connects me to a
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: bunch of brands, a bunch of people who have you know,
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: invested interest in finding an artist that can bridge East
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: and West.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: So that's the type of work that I'm involved in now.
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: And I think I don't know how familiar guys are
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: with you know, Master Appeal, the label that they just
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: did a JV with Universal Music in India, and they've
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: been investing heavily in India. So NAS is executive producing, Uh,
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: this guy named Devine who's like one of the biggest
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: superstars India, and and the Mass Appeal guys are really
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: really heavily invested over there. There was a movie that
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: came out called, uh, what's it called The Gully Gully Boy.
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: A movie came out it was like the imagine this yo.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: The Indian eight mile came out last year about a
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: rapper from India. And I remember I was in India
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: on tour with a nick and we had a day
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: off and we went and watched it in the theater
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: and I called my mom. I was like, yo, I
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: just seen gully Boy. She was like, oh, we did too,
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: And I was like, I was trying to tell y'all
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: about hip hop music ten years ago. Just kicked me out, Like,
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: now y'all watching this movie about a hippo, you.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: Know, like it was just my story.
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: Mom, come on, like it was his full circle moment.
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: So I say all that to say hip hop is
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: an important cultural export, right, but you're seeing in India
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: a place of a lot of struggle. People are adopting,
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: you know, that story for people that want to do
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: business in India to kind of figure out how to
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: invest in India. I think the potential lies in solving
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: everyday problems in India. It's really difficult to do basic things.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: Threats are difficult, Getting household supplies are difficult because the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: roads aren't paved, or because you got to go to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: a market where everyone's going to haggle you and you
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: gotta like, you know, I got grandparents, I gotta go.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: They can't even go to the market anymore. They gotta
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: pay somebody to go. That person picks up the wrong item,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: you know, Like there's just a lot of friction and
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: daily tasks. So I think that somebody who invents the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: technology or the type of infrastructure that solves for those problems,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: they're gonna win big.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Salute to all of our listeners all over Asia. Oh yeah,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: we got a big presence all over the world. So India.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure how many listeners that we have an
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Indian Yeah, the one just puts us over the at
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: least once a week. Manats I love the whole non Brad.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: My mom is like real she's real big on the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: whole Indian vibe culture. And I told you I went
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: to my first Indian wedding. If you're listening, Uh, all right,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: So in the next seven we're going to talk about
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: real estate and bring it home. Let's do it's do
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: it all right. So in the last segment, we're going
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: to talk about a hot time, something that's always hot
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: for Earnalsia, something that people are always interested in. So
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: aside from all of the other stuff that we just mentioned,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: you're a real estate investor as well, but you have
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: a unique thing where I read that way, you said
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: you invest in distressed in underperforming properties, right, So what
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: does that mean? What is a distressed underperforming property? Like,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: how can you tell if a property is distressed or underperforming.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, great question. So have an investment thesis, right that
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: revolves around major centers of employment. If you are within
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: thirty to sixty minutes by public transportation to a major
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 5: center of employment, then anything around that area becomes extremely
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: valuable for investment.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: So think about New York City. You go twenty minutes
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: on one train, you end up in Jersey City. You
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: go another ten minutes on that same train, you end
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: up in Newark. Those areas have a massive advantage because
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: you can live at a third of the cost that
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: it takes to live in New York City and still
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: have fairly easy access to employment centers.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: Properties in those areas, believe it or not, are there's
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: there's massive distressed properties, meaning there's boarded up multifamilies, there's
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: abandoned homes, there's blocks which are burned down ten minutes
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: from a train station thirty minutes in New York City
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: for a third of the cost. Like to me, that's
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: just arbitrage, right, Like, there's a massive arbitrage. So when
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: I look at investment zones, I have a thesis which
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: is part proximity to major employment areas, part creative capital
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: and cultural capital and kind of what's happening with artists
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: around that area and part of financial So just kind
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: of looking at pure price for square foot, but I
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: look at properties that are distressed and not performing that
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: fit within that criteria we're talking.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: Are we're talking single family distress or multi family or
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: multi property?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't. I don't believe in single family investing,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: So I don't know, you know, I'd love to spar
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: with somebody on that, but I don't believe that that's
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: a scalable strategy. I think that when you look at
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: real estate investing, it has to be multi because that's
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: where you scale and achieve you know, growth. And for me,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: secondary markets are gold mines. Cities like Newark, cities like Philadelphia,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: cities like Dallas, cities like Oakland. These are all cities
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 5: that don't get mentioned amongst the tier one you know,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: New York and Atlantis, but that have massive ROI because
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 5: they have proximity, you know, to these centers of employment.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: And I've built my portfolio around secondary market investing.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting because, like I said, I was in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: I was in Orange, New Jersey today and my car
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: broke down so I had to get a toad towards
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: like two Union. So we're driving through all these he's different,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: Irvington and all that. And so the driver was we
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: drove through Newark and he's from Newark, so we was
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: about Newark, and you know, I had a conversation. I'm like, yeah,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: I heard a lot of real estate development is going
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: on in Nork right now. He was like, yeah, you know,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: it's getting gentified a lot. A lot of people's coming
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: in from like all different neighborhoods, and and he's like,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the train runs, but I already knew Newark
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: had a train because Lord of the Slums. Don't know
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: if you saw that episode, that's another good one. And yeah,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: my god, Fernando. So they do him in season and
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: they got a lot going on in Patterson. So when
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: I asked him about I'm like, yeah, you know, Patterson,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: is it like the same gentrification that's going on. He's like, Nah,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: it's slower because we don't have the train like Newark.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Like Newark has a train, so it's like already on
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the on the path to New York City. And that's
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: the same thing that I remember Nipsey has said about Crenshaw, Like,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Crenshaw has the train train line that they built or
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it was theod Yeah, building it
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: right now. He's like, once that gets built, Crenshaw is
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: going to be prime real estate because the proximity to
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: like downtown La, Hollywood and all that, like it's very
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: close compared to like a Compton or a Carson where
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: it's further out on South Central, was actually prime location.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: And I remember him saying that, and he was like,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: that's why we gotta start building and taking the neighborhood now,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: because like in a few years, like Crenshaw is going
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: to look a lot different.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I spent I spent a lot of time in
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 5: LA and if you go to Crenshaw right now, it
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: looks like, you know, massive development everywhere, and Crenshaw itself
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: is not necessarily the first place that developers would think of.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: But you know, Nip being from the culture and being
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: from that area, he you know, he saw it. But yeah,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: I think for us, like even in Philadelphia, they're building
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: a Amtrak high speed train between Newark and Philly. Yeah,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 5: and the station in Philly is called ten North, and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 5: that train, that high speed train, I think it's like
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: a forty five minute train when it happens. So think
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: about how that changes the entire culture of work and
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: living in New York and Philly. You could live in
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: Philly for forty percent less than New York can still
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: commute the same time it takes you to get from
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 5: Brooklyn to Manhattan. And so we have an entire real
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: estate development in Philadelphia which is like four blocks from
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: ten North, and we're anchoring it around a bunch of things,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: with that being one of them. And I think when
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: it comes to like gentrification, you know, the approach that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: we take from an equitable investing side is like, how
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: do you involve the community in what you're doing and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 5: have them have a say and be able to influence
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: the things that happen before you just go down and
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: start raising buildings and building things up. So we've had
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: community board meetings for all of our developments in Philly
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 5: so far and taken advice, you know, from the local
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: people before starting any construction.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: Right, so before you even get out to these cities,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: you're building a team from those cities.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: So in Newark, so I have two I run two
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: kind of funds that I'm a part of So the
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: Sandal Capitol Group is the one that I run kind
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: of in the north the New York metro area, and
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: that is myself. I have some investors, and I have
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: a like a GC construction team, and then I have
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: a property management team as well. So originally I was
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: doing a lot of that three sixty myself. You know,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 5: it's not necessarily the gcing, but like being on site
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 5: all the time and like you know handling you know,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: contractors and all that work, and then property managing you know,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: kind of halftime while hiring somebody to help me out
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 5: with and that burn me out. It's just really tough
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: to do that yourself, especially as you scale. You know,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: you have three tenants, you know everybody's name, and you
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: know everybody's situation, you know where they're at. They can
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 5: text you cool, you got thirty tenants. It's impossible to right.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: So what I've done is I've built out infrastructure to
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: be able to handle those things and cut into my
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: profit margin a little bit, but be able to give
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: me peace of mind so that I could focus on
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: the important things like the vision and the investor relations
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: and really being able to scale an operation instead of
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: worrying about, you know, the day to day rent collection
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 5: and repairs and maintenance and things like that.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: So you got the Northeast corridor that you obviously have
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: the team.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: Now you mentioned Dallas, you mentioned Oakland, all those cities
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: potentially that you're looking at in the future.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: So with where I'm at and I like to be
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: high touch with investing, I think that you know a
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: lot of people when you have capital and you can
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: just deploy it in different places. Like your money's gonna
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: work for you, but if you can build something with
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: your hands, kind of using the things that you're good at.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: For me, it's marketing and branding and storytelling. I know,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 5: I can't be high touched everywhere.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: It's like Nit with Crunshaw, like that's what he knew
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: and that's what he did, you know. For me, it's
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: like I want to do the things that I know
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 5: before I get into those different markets. So I invest
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: in like E reachs, you know, like ri I T's,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: and I have exposure across a lot of those secondary markets.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Investment trust, Yeah.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: Very low risk way to get exposure to real estate
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: for people that don't necessarily want a man of fix
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: and flip or you know, pick up a hammer themselves.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 5: Like you can research different ri I ts that have
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: exposure to different geographic regions or different investment thesises. And
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: that is kind of how I started, like eight years ago,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: before I put any money, and I was just like
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: playing around with ri I ts and then I was like, Okay,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: I'm ready to you know, build out an actual fund
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: and then go and actually rehab buildings and build a portfolio.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Dope dope, so you're building units in Philly or developing or.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 5: So in Philly. What we're doing is we've narrowed down
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: on like a four block radius in North Philly, which
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: is a block from Temper University, and our job there
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: is to kind of revitalize and redevelop the entire area.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 5: We want to own all four blocks. Right now, we
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: have about six sites, so multi family building is commercial
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: units and landlots across those, and we're in talks for
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: four more and we've just been accu leading assets. And
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: the idea is, how do you take what you know
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: on the marketing and branding and storytelling and community angle
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: and go redevelop an entire area in an equitable way
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: and create something that's more than just a place for
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: people to live, that's actually a place that builds community,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: that creates resources and knowledge sharing for the people that
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: live there. And then that raises the value of your
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: portfolio even more because you're not just dealing in buildings.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 5: You're dealing with human capital, You're dealing with cultural capital.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: And then in fifteen years you go to a black
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: Rock or you go to an institutional investor and you say,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: you guys are not just buying the buildings. You're buying
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: an entire ecosystem. You're buying an entire community, and that
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: multiple is going to be way larger than if they
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: were to buy a multi family unit.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, you have a portfolio now. But before, when
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: you started, it wasn't like that you talk about some
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: of the sacrifices. Because I did some research, I'm like, wait,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: you got to talk about so many sacrifices you made
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: to get to that first point. I know you have
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: a clip where you talked about you went from forty
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: thousand to two point one million. Yeah, but people like
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: you know you got to get to forty thousand, so
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: you want to talk about something the sacrifices.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 5: I love that you brought that up. That that brought
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 5: me right back to earth. I think sacrifice is the
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: that's the quality that separates entrepreneurs because there was a
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: point in my life where so the philosophy behind real
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 5: estate for me was like we were in a cash
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: rich business on the agency side, right, We're we're making cash.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 5: When you're twenty eight, twenty nine years old and you
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: see your first you know, two hundred thousand, there's a
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: lot of ways that can go, you know, especially when
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: you don't come through a lot. There's a lot of
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: ways that can go. And I knew that for me,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 5: it had to go one way, which was build something
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 5: generational for my family because we don't own too much
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 5: in this country, you know, and for my family, it's
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 5: just the four of us. So if I want to
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 5: build something that my parents can live off of and
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: eat off of, I had to make choices.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: So I'm twenty nine, I got a little bit of
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: paper and I'm like that model s that Tesla looked serious.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 5: Pull up on my friends and that joint. Nobody gonna
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: say a word. And I remember, you know, building a
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: package Tesla dot Com. I was, you know, pimping out
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 5: my Rod, and I was like, at the same time,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: I was evaluating this multi family real estate deal, and
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: I was like, I don't know, Like, it's a seventy
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: thousand dollars car, it's a seventy thousand dollars down payment.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: And I decided to click out that browser, you know,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: put that in the stash, and I went and rehabbed.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: I went into this rehab project for this multi family
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: in Jersey City, and I bought that that property for
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: one hundred and ninety thousand, and it needed seventy thousand
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: in repair. But the thing was, it went six months
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: over schedule. So for six months I had to pay
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: the mortgage out of pocket. I have to pay my
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: contractors out of pocket. And I was dating a girl
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: at the time, and she's like, Oh, you want to
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 5: go out and eat, you want to go vacation. I
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: don't want to go nowhere. I can't go nowhere because
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: all of my money is being invested into this building
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: that I gotta make sure it happened. My pops was
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: like he invested with me at the time and then
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: he lost his job, so he was like yo, and
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 5: I was like, nah, don't don't even say it, Like
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: I got it. I'm gonna figure it out. I ain't
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: buy no sneakers, I ain't buy no I don't own
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 5: no bomb main, but I definitely buy you know, no clothes,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 5: no Tesla, no nothing. I just doubled down on like
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 5: bringing that project to life. About that project for one ninety,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 5: I put in seventy, I was all in at two sixty,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 5: I ARV I refinanced out at three fifty. And so
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: that day I got a check for ninety thousand when
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 5: I when I cash out REFID and I was like, yeah,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: this makes sense now, like this is why I did it,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 5: you know. And that property now it is like it's
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: close to about half a million, you know, in terms
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: of property value. I actually gotta go check on that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: after this. That's how I spent my Saturday even But yeah, sacrifice,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 5: you know, if that's if that's the sacrifice in the nutshell,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 5: is like sublimate your urges and your wants for the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: now to be able to build and grow your wealth
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: for the future, because you know, especially as minorities like
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: we don't we don't have a lot, we don't come
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: from a lot. But when we have the opportunity to
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: make something happen. You've got to be conscious about the
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 5: decision you make.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: Sony pleasure. It's been a pleasure many thank you. How
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: can the people contact you any initiatives any Well, you're
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: coming to earn your leashes live podcasts in a few days.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, so what's the what's your information? Social media
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: handles and all that.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean my goal is to respond to every
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 5: d M that I get. I'm like, I've been behind
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 5: for six months. You can find me everywhere. Annie Hustles.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 5: That's a n I h U S, t l E
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: S Instagram. I'm big on Twitter. I'm super involved in medium.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 5: I write. I really love like writing articles about the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 5: things that I go through.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: Grote The Good One, five books that changed my life.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 5: I appreciate that I'm on I'm medium, But yeah, Annie
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: hustles across everything, and I urge people to reach out
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: to me. I try to help you know however I can,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: because I know I was once in that position where
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: a question and answer was the difference between you know,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 5: making a play and not making a play.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I appreciate that. Troy Housekeeping items.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, shout to everybody on Patreon dot com. That is
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: all proud to pay program. Big shout out to my
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: man Dave.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: He is joined in at T five, so shout out
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: at him. Man, I can't wait looking forward to his call.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: He hit me up and he's like, yo, I didn't
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: get my shout. I'm like, yeah, it's coming, man, it's coming.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: So shout out to you Dave for checking in and
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: everybody that's on Patreon and everybody that's on UH supporting
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: the Merchant on Earnie Leisure dot com and UH supporting
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: us on earn Leisure University that is our online school
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: where we give classes that are just super in depth
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: on a multitude of topics. So everybody that's tapped in
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: and that as said, thank.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: You so much. And yeah, man, we're looking forward to
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: seeing everybody in Philly.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Philadelphia, h E y L experience dot com. Let's
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: just say you got about two to three days before
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: we come to the town, and it's gonna be a
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: really dope experience. And we're bringing all of our friends
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: with us, not just the people that's going to be
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: involved and people that's just coming just to show some support.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: So but Annie's on the bill and he will be
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: tag team with John Henry, that's going crazy.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: Shout out to John. He's the reason that I'm here.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: What's a John? John's moving around all over the place? Man,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: that can't keep track of that guy. So book tip
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: of the week?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Joy, Uh, Yeah, you want to give it contagious? You
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: want to talk about that?
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 5: Why don't we do it together?
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: So I took it from your five Books That Change
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: Your Life and I saw Contagious by and the ties
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 4: to Nipsey Hustle was amazing because that's where you got
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: the one hundred dollars mixtape from.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: But it was tied to a Philly cheese steak. Yeah,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: so have it are crazy the place that we're going,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: it's tied to the books. If you want to tell
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: why to change your life?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Contagious to me was we talked about like how
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 5: word of mouth is one of the biggest marketing tools,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: and it just reinforced the fact that if you don't
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 5: give people a reason to talk about you, they have
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: no incentive to do that. And digging behind what it
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 5: takes to create a product that's worth talking about, that's
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 5: the most valuable lesson. You know a lot of marketers
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: and brand people need to understand. So that book is
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: powerful for me obviously, you know what. I got that
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 5: from NIP. Yeah, but I went and bought it the
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: next day and I was like, let me read it.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 5: So yeah, that was powerful.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: There you have it. So ladies and gentlemen, Philadelphia, we're
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: on our way. Thank you guys for rocking with us.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: We'll see you next week. Peace. Peace.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 7: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
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  Speaker 7: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
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  Speaker 7: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
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  Speaker 7: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 7: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 7: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the.
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  Speaker 6: United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 6: illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded,
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  Speaker 6: fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and deported,
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  Speaker 6: you will never return. But if you register using our
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 6: to return legally, do what's right.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 7: Leave now.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 6: Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,