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AI-Powered Real Estate & Impact Investing: Transform Capitalism & End Poverty w/ Sam Sells · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

0:00
My next question for you actually is critics Mark say
0:03
that affordable housing and investor returns cannot coexist.
0:07
How does your AI powered system defy that myth?
0:12
You know, by increasing profitability and resident
0:16
success. Yeah.
0:17
So what one of the things I like to say in in private equity
0:22
world is concessionary. So are the returns
0:25
concessionary? Meaning if I do a regular
0:28
project I'm going to make a 20% annualised return, but if I do
0:32
an impact project I'm making a 10% annualised return?
0:40
Welcome to the King Dems Podcast, where we share the
0:43
stories of extraordinary people and dissect hot, relevant topics
0:46
that shape our world. From visionary leaders to
0:49
trailblazing creatives, we uncover the mindset, strategy,
0:52
and grit behind greatness. Whether it's business, culture,
0:56
or personal growth, we ask the real questions.
0:58
This isn't just conversation, it's transformation.
1:01
The Kingdom's podcast, Your next breakthrough starts here.
1:06
Music licencing reimagined. Ladies and gentlemen, we're live
1:13
you once again welcome to the kingdom's broadcast.
1:15
And today I've got with me fighting out of Texas, United
1:20
States of America. Mick.
1:22
Welcome, Samuel, the disruptive capitalist.
1:28
Sal, how old are you, Sabo? I'm doing well.
1:32
Thank you so much. Whoa, I guess you were thinking,
1:37
yeah, now you're a fighter. You know, we spoke briefly about
1:40
the UFC or started the part. Whoa, how are you doing today?
1:46
How's Texas, my man? Man, it's weather is good.
1:50
We've had rain this year. Yeah, I hate.
1:55
Texas is typically warm all year round and there are a lot of my
2:00
people there in Texas, a lot of Nigerians there in Texas.
2:04
And they say it reminds them of the weather back home.
2:07
You know, it's summer all year round in Nigeria.
2:11
So tell me about the weather in Texas.
2:14
So I mean, it's hot in the summer.
2:16
We occasionally might get a little bit of snow in the
2:19
winter, but most of the time we get no snow in the winter unless
2:22
you're up north in Dallas. Wow.
2:25
But yeah, Texas is a good place. It's a really good place.
2:28
I think I would love Texas already.
2:33
Yeah. Wow.
2:33
You know you have always described yourself as a
2:37
disruptive capitalist, someone who believes profit and social
2:42
impact aren't just compatible but essential partners.
2:47
So can you kick us off with a story that epitomises these
2:52
philosophy in action? Yeah.
2:54
So I started a company 7 years ago and you know, our objective
3:01
from the very, very beginning was to find a way to help
3:04
investors make money helping people.
3:07
Because I, I had learned, you know, a decade before that when
3:10
you align incentives where people make money, helping other
3:13
people like, it becomes sustainable, it becomes
3:16
repeatable and. Repetition breeds mastery.
3:20
Right. Repetition breeds mastery,
3:21
right? And, and look, you know,
3:23
nonprofits help a lot of people, but nonprofits spend a lot of
3:26
their time and money seeking more money to fund the
3:29
nonprofit. So they spend a lot of money
3:31
going after more money. Looking for money.
3:34
I've actually worked with a nonprofit before, so I can very
3:37
much relate. Yeah, it's, it's very expensive.
3:40
They'll, they'll spend millions of dollars a year just trying to
3:43
get millions of dollars a year and it's not sustainable.
3:46
It's never a sustainable model. It only works when you have a
3:49
very, very wealthy benefactor. Who?
3:53
Can cover it, but so I wanted to do stuff that nonprofits do, but
3:56
I wanted to do it under a capitalistic paradigm.
3:59
And so to me, that was how do I disrupt the capitalism where
4:04
it's only about the money and make it about money and purpose
4:10
or impact making it different? Yeah, that that was what was in
4:13
my mind. I love that word impact, you
4:15
know? Yeah, about the money and the
4:17
impact. That resonates with me.
4:18
Yeah. And so we set out, Michael, how
4:21
can I make a lot of money helping a lot of people.
4:23
And I think I was in probably, I was in probably in Jamina, Chad
4:27
or West Africa. Maybe it was when I was in
4:29
Afghanistan one of those times, or maybe all those times I just
4:33
kept looking at people and in these villages and thinking, you
4:36
know, at the end of the day, it's all about our home.
4:38
Where we grow up determines our it doesn't determine our
4:42
destiny, but it determines where we start for sure.
4:45
And it determines a lot of what our, our philosophies, our
4:49
mindsets are based on the people we grow up around.
4:53
And, you know, so I started thinking, well, real estate is a
4:57
place to make a lot of money. What if we start doing real
5:00
estate where we go after very distressed assets, take them
5:05
over, rehabilitate, rehabilitate them, turn them into clean, safe
5:10
places for people to live, and we get a big upside with
5:14
repositioning the asset and making money off of it.
5:16
So that's what we set out to do. We started a mobile home parks.
5:19
We did that for a few years. It worked out really well in the
5:23
beginning. I learned some hard lessons on a
5:25
few of them and then we got into apartment complexes, buying very
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distressed apartment communities 20, forty, 50% occupied,
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rehabilitating those and make it turn those into clean, safe
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places that were naturally affordable.
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And we did that probably for six of the past seven years.
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And the and the process we learned that you can absolutely
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make money helping people, but what we needed was a nonprofit
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portion that would come in and take care of our residents.
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So a resident in in the US, somebody loses their job.
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That's on the lower social economic scale.
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They lose their hourly job, they can't pay rent.
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And so by law in the US, you have the Fair Housing Act, which
6:07
says that you have to give the same thing to everybody, meaning
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you can't get free rent to somebody if they lose your job.
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You have to, you have to kick them out.
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That's the law. And so people get mad at
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landlords, but it's the US it's the law.
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Like I have to be by by the law. So rather than kick people out,
6:25
what we started doing was reaching out to nonprofits,
6:28
local nonprofits, charities, churches and say, Hey, can you
6:32
help this lady? She lost her job or this young
6:35
man that these guys lost their job.
6:37
They need help getting a new job.
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They need help covering their rent.
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And so we started working a lot with nonprofits to help support
6:44
our residents. And in exchange, that actually
6:46
made our deals more profitable because now their rents were
6:50
getting covered, we were having less evictions, people get less
6:53
mad, don't tear up the units. And so that was really, really
6:57
helpful. But we also discovered that
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small towns don't have access to nonprofits, just cities do.
7:03
And we just, we just kept learning all these these lessons
7:07
in the process. And eventually it LED us to
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where we are today and our current strategy.
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You know, your journey has been quite adventurous.
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It would, I say, as an understatement.
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Yeah, adventurous is an understatement for the tweets
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and turns that your journey is actually gone through, you know,
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firefighting, military strategy, global health and now real
7:32
estate innovation. So how do these seemingly
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disconnected brawls connect? You know, under your mission to
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create launch pads of human potential?
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Yeah, all those roles are all about service.
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I've, I've been like this since I've been a young man.
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We absolutely, we, absolutely we me.
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I've been focused on serving others since I've been a young
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man. And so firefighting, I enlisted
8:00
in the Air Force as a firefighter.
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That's just a service role, right?
8:04
Helping people in need. I became a healthcare executive
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and got into global health that global health for over a decade
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focused on working focus on working with foreign militaries,
8:15
foreign governments, helping them create sustainable
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healthcare systems primarily focus around patient movement
8:21
era medical patient movement did I worked at USAID.
8:25
You could did a fellowship with them for a year.
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Ebola response. Just a lot of the all that stuff
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all ties back to, you know, how do you serve your fellow man?
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And, and just that passion that I've, you know, I grew up in
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Oklahoma, rural Oklahoma down the dirt Rd from a Indian
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Reservation or Native American reservation.
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And just, you know, I, I've had a relationship with poverty,
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American poverty, and then spending time in Afghanistan,
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which was the poorest country on the planet, and a lot of the
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other ones in sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa and Asia.
8:58
I just grew a passion for helping people get out of
9:02
poverty. Like how do we do that?
9:04
You know, you talk about USEIDI. Do remember that the not
9:09
not-for-profit that I did work with, they did get grants from
9:13
USAID. They're usually involved in
9:15
quite interesting, what I say projects.
9:19
Yeah, especially when it comes to healthcare.
9:21
Another thing that yourself and myself have in common is the
9:25
fact that you were a Scout, a Boy Scout and of course, you
9:29
know, Eagle Scout and now a veteran.
9:33
There is something they always say, you know, always be
9:36
prepared. And that has always followed me,
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even now in my life. You know, I think it's a
9:41
lifelong thing. So how has that philosophy of
9:46
always be prepared And, you know, the military strategies,
9:49
military leadership, you know, has that shaped your approach to
9:53
tackling systemic poverty? Yeah, So a great question.
9:58
You know, I, I was an Eagle Scout.
9:59
It's really hard to find Eagle Scouts these days.
10:02
And Boy Scouts of America used to mean something.
10:04
Yeah. They lost a lot of that meaning
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when they got ransacked by public opinion.
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We, we all budget an honour, you know, Like I'm always proud that
10:14
I was a Boy Scout, you know? Yeah, yeah, somehow they got
10:18
villainized, attacked and like. Destroyed culture.
10:23
Castle Culture. Cancel culture, right?
10:25
Yeah, how, how dare we teach little boys to be grown men so
10:31
and good fathers and husbands and all those things.
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But yeah, how dare we do that? Yeah.
10:40
Yeah, I, I question reality sometimes like what's happening
10:44
right now. So anyhow, so, so that in the
10:46
military again, it's and then where it came from, you know,
10:49
the military is a great experiment in poverty, right?
10:52
The most, the majority of people who join the, the US military
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are coming out of the lower socioeconomic rungs of society.
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So we, we based a lot of what we do now off of that model.
11:06
So in the military model, you come in, you get housing, you
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get healthcare, you get food, but you also get somebody that's
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going to kick you in the butt and keep hold you accountable to
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do the work you need to do, the education, the job, skill
11:19
training and etcetera, so that you can become a a functioning
11:22
member of society and not on welfare all your life.
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And you look at people who grow up in welfare and projects in
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poverty and what do they not have?
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Well, they don't have the housing they have is terrible.
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Public housing in the US is terrible, like it is most
11:38
places, and then they're surrounded by a whole bunch of
11:41
poor people and then they don't have access.
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So in the military you get access to job training.
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If you grow up in, let's say, Gary, IN, or in New York City,
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in the slums, you don't have access to job training.
11:54
And the Housing and Urban Development, Department of
11:57
Housing and Urban Development, they have some programmes for
12:00
job training, but it's really up to the cities, the states to
12:04
deploy those programmes. And they're very haphazard.
12:07
They're not standardised. Reporting is not required for
12:11
all the programmes. And so it's just not very well
12:14
executed. And then, but in the military,
12:18
you, you got this training programme and then you got this
12:20
mechanism to hold people accountable.
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And then you have a mechanism to cover people's rents and, and
12:26
everything else. And so we, we've taken that and
12:29
we've applied it to regular housing and we found that a lot
12:34
of that stuff still works. It just needs to be done in a
12:36
little bit different way, more streamlined, more efficient.
12:40
So now we're trying to work with public housing authorities in
12:43
the United States and the government housing and saying
12:47
like, let's bring the same system that we use in the
12:50
military to help millions of people climb the social economic
12:54
ladder and get job skills, get training, go out and be
12:57
functioning members of society without being on welfare.
13:00
And that our system works. It's been proven.
13:04
We're just are working now to scale it because my, you know,
13:07
my goal is to help millions of people get out of poverty.
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That's what I want to do. But it has to be in a way that
13:12
makes investors money so that they do it over and over and
13:16
over again. And so that's what we're done.
13:18
So you actually talk about something that sounds like the
13:24
title of my 100th episode. I think you should go watch my
13:29
milestone episode. You argue that government
13:32
systems are broken and private sector efficiency is key.
13:37
So can you break down how your model with impact worth capital
13:43
this especially when working with entities like public
13:46
housing authorities? Yeah, when you so there's 3300
13:52
housing authorities across the country, all right.
13:56
And then when you take on private owners, there's
13:59
thousands of and if we're just talking about housing, so
14:03
apartment complexes, mobile home parks maybe built to rent
14:05
communities as well. So the, the question is, is, you
14:11
know, how does, how is our model better than the broken model?
14:15
The current broken model is here's these HUD programmes,
14:20
housing authorities, 3300 of you guys pick which ones you want to
14:24
use. These are the models.
14:25
Good luck. All those models, they are all
14:30
focused on allocation of capital.
14:34
All right, we have $70 billion of HUD funding to go out to 3300
14:40
people and they need to fight for it.
14:42
All right, what if instead of focusing on how much money we
14:47
have to give out to everybody, what if we focused on how many
14:53
people are we helping get out of poverty?
14:55
Right? So it's not just the, it's not
14:58
the money, it's the focus. What are we focused on?
15:01
And, and the focus is on, you know, taking care of people who
15:04
are in poverty, which is great. The government should do that.
15:07
But the government needs to work on getting people out of the
15:10
system, right? You have 40 million able adults
15:16
who have access to Medicaid in the US, and they complain all
15:20
the time that Medicaid is spending trillions of dollars.
15:23
They need to reduce how much we're spending on Medicaid.
15:26
And so then they go and negotiate prices with
15:29
pharmaceutical companies, which they should.
15:31
Pharmaceutical companies are raping and pillaging America, so
15:36
the which is great, but that's not going to solve Medicaid.
15:39
You want to solve Medicaid, create a system which our system
15:45
does, that takes every single human in that system and
15:49
provides them a, a, a personalised road map to get
15:54
from where they are to making 60 grand a year in U.S. dollars.
15:59
If they're making 60 grand a year, they're no longer on
16:01
Medicaid and you just solve Medicaid.
16:05
You want it, you want to reduce, you want to save $1.2 trillion a
16:09
year, deploy our system across 40 million people.
16:14
And even if we're at like a 15% efficacy rate, in two years,
16:18
you're going to start saving trillions because the system, it
16:22
has to have a system, it's got to be a system, and the system
16:26
has to be a system that works. We already know what the
16:28
military system works, so we just streamlined that system and
16:32
added an AI powered element that gives people a personalised road
16:36
map. And then they can, they can
16:39
move, they can go. But you want to save Medicaid,
16:42
you want to save tax dollars, you want to boost the economy,
16:46
Focus on getting people out of poverty.
16:48
That's it. And the only way you get out of
16:49
poverty is making money. You're actually, it feels like
16:55
you saw my next question for you.
17:00
My next question for you actually is critics Mark say
17:03
that affordable housing and investor returns cannot coexist.
17:08
How does your AI powered system defy that myth?
17:12
You know, by increasing profitability and resident
17:16
success. Yeah.
17:17
So what one of the things I like to say in in private equity
17:22
world is concessionary. So are the returns
17:26
concessionary? Meaning if I do a regular
17:30
project, I'm going to make a 20% annualised return, but if I do
17:33
an impact project, I'm making a 10% annualised return.
17:37
And so that problem is real. When we first started, we did
17:42
way better than a regular project we do, and then we got
17:47
to focus on impact and then they became concessionary returns.
17:51
And so we learned that lesson hard that you have to structure
17:55
the deal so that the returns are fantastic.
17:58
Now when we partner with public housing authorities, we get
18:01
government backed capital stacks, meaning that we can get
18:05
bonds and grants that are at low interest, they're low risk.
18:09
There's guarantees on the rents. They'll rent 60% of the units or
18:14
50% of the units will go to public housing.
18:17
Guaranteed they'll be on a 99 year land lease because we want
18:22
the public Housing Authority to always own the land and always
18:26
have a right because if not Blackstone or one of these other
18:30
big groups they're they'll take those properties out of the
18:33
housing and rent right into market rate to maximise their
18:37
profits. You can have a very healthy
18:39
profit, non concessionary profit by building a capital stack
18:45
that's 80 percent, 90% funded by the government, 70% funded by
18:49
the government, and then come in and you have guarantees from the
18:53
government on rents and everything else.
18:54
It becomes a very good, very healthy return for investors.
19:00
I'm looking at your educational background right now.
19:03
You do have a Bachelor of Science in visa strategy and of
19:09
course you do have a master's degree in healthcare
19:11
administration and policy, you know, global health emphasis.
19:16
With this background, I I think you would very much relate to
19:22
what I am thinking right now due to my background in economics.
19:26
My first degrees in economics and capitalism and socialism are
19:33
very separate philosophies. But you have done an excellent
19:39
job my friend in achieving a hybrid of these two concepts.
19:46
And not just a hybrid, an optimal hybrid of these two
19:52
concepts. One of the past guests on this
19:55
podcast gave me a title that is on my LinkedIn.
20:00
She calls me a modern day business philosopher think you
20:04
you are somebody who could also pass for, you know, a
20:09
confirmation of that title as well.
20:11
You know, as as as modern day business philosophers.
20:15
Let's let's try to break this down.
20:17
What are your thoughts on pure capitalism and what are your
20:20
thoughts on socialism? And why do you think even a
20:26
hybrid, an optimal hybrid, is the answer to society's problem
20:31
today? I guess it depends on how we
20:33
define pure capitalism. In my mind, the simple root of
20:38
capitalism is we act in our own best interest to maximise
20:42
profits. You know when you add in their
20:49
power disparities, when you add in their the realities of life,
20:53
when you add in their fraud, deceit, capitalism can get
20:56
pretty rough, right? Dog eat dog.
20:58
So the there's a reason there's a government, right?
21:02
Once you get over, there's a, a theory of 500 people.
21:04
Once you get over 500 people, you need a government because
21:06
then people start attacking each other, clans, tribes, etcetera.
21:11
Anarchy. Anarchy, right?
21:12
Yeah, like in what we see it right The when a government is
21:17
focused on taking care of the people, the most vulnerable of
21:21
society, that's what our government is for.
21:24
Take care of the most vulnerable society.
21:26
Also provide the infrastructure so that every single person who
21:30
wants to achieve and grow can right.
21:33
There will always be problems. Humans are not perfect, right?
21:37
And they aren't. The government is obviously not
21:40
perfect. And we live in a crazy world
21:42
right now where news agencies have turned into click bait and
21:45
they've learned that the more crazy, salacious, ridiculous the
21:48
story is, truth does not matter anymore.
21:52
Like, there's just you can turn on the news and I'm like, I have
21:54
no idea what's true. Whatever that is, it sounds
21:57
crazy and I don't even know if it's real.
21:59
It's so. Sad.
22:00
It's so sad. I don't even want to do any
22:03
longer. Right.
22:04
Yeah. Like CNNNBC, Fox, they've all
22:07
turned into like TikTok. It's like TikTok.
22:11
We all feel like rumour mongers right now.
22:14
Rumour mongers, right? Yeah.
22:15
It's sad to see. It's sad.
22:18
Like I've been, I've been, you know, in Afghanistan watching
22:22
things, been part of things that happened and then watch it get
22:26
posted on the news and it was completely different than what
22:29
the reality was. I was like, I'm there.
22:31
I'm a part of this. Exactly.
22:33
I haven't. You know, like growing up in
22:38
Africa, I grew up in Nigeria, 1st 30 years of my life, you
22:41
know, and going out and seeing what the Western media paints of
22:47
my country and I'm like, excuse me, I come from there man.
22:50
Like whatever whatever you said is absolutely BS.
22:55
It's absolutely BS and then everybody eats it and drinks it
22:58
and I'm like, Oh my goodness, you know?
22:59
Hook, line and sinker. Yeah, Trump just announced
23:02
himself. He's king of America, right?
23:06
And then on the other side like. Please invite him on the King
23:10
Dave's podcast, The King of America on the King Days
23:15
podcast. Yeah, it's good of a fun.
23:18
It's crazy, right? Like like, like him anyhow.
23:21
So somebody's got to focus on how do we help the poorest of
23:24
the poor? How do we help people get out of
23:26
poverty? Because nobody cares, right?
23:28
If the government cared about getting people out of poverty,
23:31
they would do stuff for that. And instead right now we just
23:33
live in a world where everyone's just trying to get re elected so
23:37
they can make more money. And so they will say whatever
23:40
they need to say to their constituents to get votes.
23:44
And what gets votes is radicalising your constituents.
23:48
That's what that's the path when we are on right now in the US is
23:51
radicalising constituents to get them to get out of their butts,
23:55
get their butts out of the chairs and go do a vote.
23:58
So right now we're, we're trying to work with public housing
24:01
authorities. We are trying to implement a
24:04
system that we have created and have been implementing and
24:07
working. But we're just trying to do it
24:08
at scale because we know we help people get out of poverty.
24:12
We want to do this at a massive scale because that's what I care
24:15
about. If I could help millions of
24:16
people get out of poverty, may not die super heavy man.
24:20
You know, let's geek out on tech for for for a minute.
24:23
How do do you know who you're speaking to?
24:27
Do you know that I have AI? Yeah, let's do it.
24:32
Let's talk to AI. OK so so my name is Ademolar and
24:36
my middle name is Isima. So my initials are AI.
24:41
I don't know why my parents set me up this way.
24:44
And I am a very, very big AI enthusiast, AI evangelist.
24:49
You know, I have literally used AI to scale up my business,
24:53
accelerate, you know, everything that I do in my life.
24:57
And some people call me AI because that's literally my
25:00
initials. How does AI specifically help
25:03
our residents transition out of poverty faster?
25:06
So the system that we've almost ready to launch essentially
25:09
gives people a personalised road map to success and then access
25:15
to the, the resources necessary. And then we have the nonprofit
25:20
team that coaches and mentors people because you still need a
25:24
human interaction. And so right now we're calling
25:27
it Percy that your personal success companion.
25:31
And I'll, I'll keep a lot of that under wraps, but it should,
25:34
we're launching a pilot with it and testing it on people in
25:38
public housing, not testing it on them, but testing it with the
25:42
people in public housing who already struggle.
25:45
So we're doing the most difficult challenges to make
25:48
sure that we work out all the iterations, the kinks, all the,
25:51
all the possibilities are already there.
25:54
AI already does all this stuff. We've already designed and
25:56
implemented probably 2/3 of the of the system.
26:00
But now we're just finalising wrapping it up and setting out
26:03
to deploy the whole objective. Here is when you're let me back
26:07
up. Let's say your name's Maria.
26:09
You're 28 years old, you're fleeing a domestic violence
26:12
situation and you have a three-year old at home and a
26:15
five year old at home. All right, you come into public
26:19
housing, you have $0.00 of income, you have two little kids
26:23
at home. How are you going to go get a
26:26
job? So the current system says you
26:28
need to go get a job. And Maria's thinking I've got a
26:31
a three-year old and A and a four year old at home or five
26:34
year old at home. How am I supposed to go get a
26:36
job? I need child care.
26:38
I have $0.00. I can't afford child care right.
26:40
Period. Stop.
26:41
She's done right. And so the welfare system is
26:45
going to provide her a house, food, utilities, phone
26:50
exportation, they're going to spend and healthcare.
26:54
They're going to spend between 40 to 60,000 a year on Maria.
26:58
So what we do is with our public housing, with support services
27:04
on site, she now can log in to Percy.
27:08
Percy's going to figure out who she is, talk to her, understand
27:11
her situation and and it's going to say, Maria, it sounds like
27:14
you really like to help people. How would you like to do
27:17
healthcare and become an LPN? Maria has no idea what an LPN
27:21
is. Most people down there don't.
27:23
So LPN licenced practical nurse, There's programmes out there
27:27
that will pay for her training, $0.00 out of her pocket.
27:30
But she doesn't have a GED. She didn't graduate high school,
27:33
so it needs to take stock of that, understand.
27:35
OK, You didn't graduate high school.
27:37
First we need to get you into a GED programme.
27:39
And 1st we're going to put you with your counsellor here at the
27:42
Halo of Hope site that we're at. So she can go meet with her
27:46
counsellor and she'll they'll set her up with child care, get
27:49
her transportation, help her finish the programme to help her
27:52
finish her GED, apply for the LPN position for the training
27:58
programme that's about a year long, a year later here, a year
28:02
and a half later, she graduates that programme and she's gets a
28:05
job offer today for about 5055 grand a year.
28:09
She has child care. She just went through the
28:12
programme in a year and a half and now she's making 55 grand a
28:15
year on her own. And the programme is going to
28:18
help her continue to elevate. Maybe she wants to be a doctor,
28:22
maybe she wants to be a full nurse, whatever it is.
28:26
And so that's the system. Like that's how you get people
28:30
out of poverty. Maybe it's Tommy.
28:32
Tommy wants to make money. Well, let's help you get into a
28:36
internship or, you know, go apprentice as an electrician or
28:41
a welder or something else. Two years, three years later,
28:45
Tommy's making 6070 grand a year working on his journeyman
28:51
licence. So that's, I mean, that's the
28:53
system. And healthcare workers are like
28:55
in super high demand. Always.
29:03
Electricians, welders, you know, dirt guys, all those people,
29:08
they're in super high demand. Construction workers, like we
29:11
can't find them. And yet we have millions of
29:14
Americans sitting in poverty doing nothing and they don't
29:18
know how to get jobs. Those kind of jobs, they don't
29:22
have access. And you may say, well, they
29:25
should just walk down to the the place and ask for a job.
29:29
I'm like, they're going to walk down there looking like a
29:31
homeless person, ask the the foreman for a job and then
29:35
foreman's going to say no, right?
29:36
They need a system that helps them prepare and then go ask or
29:43
get connected to the right people that can then ask.
29:46
And some cities do have some things that work.
29:50
It's just so fractionalized across the states that, you
29:54
know, it's like, OK, this system in Indiana, Indianapolis works
29:58
pretty good, but you drive to Gary, IN, they got nothing.
30:02
You got to go to Chicago. And, you know, if you can get
30:06
into the unions, you're good. But if you can't get into the
30:08
unions, you're screwed. And then they're going to look
30:12
at your background check and you had a felony because you were 18
30:17
years old trying to provide for your family and you sold some
30:19
drugs. So you're not going to get
30:21
hired. So you might as well just die in
30:24
poverty. I mean, that's kind of like how
30:26
the system is set up, super CD. And so we're disrupting it.
30:32
Poverty is not a good thing. I can.
30:35
I can very, very much, you know, relate to it, especially if you
30:40
grew up in Africa, you, you would see poverty face to face,
30:44
you know, and poverty is not a not, it's not pleasant.
30:49
It's not beautiful. It's the opposite of that.
30:52
And I know it's something that you can very much relate to.
30:56
You worked in war zones, you know, in the slums, the
31:00
trenches, you know. What was the most unexpected
31:04
lesson about human resilience you know and human existence
31:09
that you picked up and still these with you till today?
31:14
I've met a lot of happy people in poverty.
31:18
Happiness is free. I met a lot of miserable people
31:20
who Dr Lambos so the the thing that people and I met very angry
31:27
people in poverty too. Well, that's kind of inspiring
31:29
anger, trust me. Yeah, yeah, it can inspire
31:32
anger, right? Especially young men.
31:35
Especially in young men. With a lot of tests to run.
31:39
A lot of tests mosterone who feel entitled to have something
31:44
better, right? And so then they want to take it
31:48
because they they don't have a path.
31:53
They don't have a path. They don't know what to do and
31:56
it bothers them. So as a man, I know this like if
32:01
I don't know how to provide for my family, you want to wreck a
32:06
man So you know, you end up turning to crime because that's
32:09
what you have access to. Messes with you mentally.
32:14
It messes with you mentally and, and everyone you around you, you
32:18
know, like look like you join a gang because you you need some
32:23
kind of camaraderie, you need some kind of coaching, you need
32:25
some type of type of mentorship and you're not getting it
32:28
anywhere else. And you need some kind of path
32:30
to make money and and that's it. So that's the path.
32:34
So what you have to do is you have to disrupt that whole
32:36
machine by creating a different path, a different Ave.
32:41
And so that's what we're advocating for is like, there's
32:44
a different way we have it. You know, it's not rocket
32:48
scientists a rocket science. It is complicated.
32:51
Yeah, you know, you can't just go to slums and get people free
32:55
stuff. So now they're super poor and
32:57
have 75 shirts. That's.
33:00
Nice. Give them out of fish.
33:01
You fed them for a day. Teach them how to fish.
33:03
You fed them for a lifetime. That's it, right?
33:06
That's it. And So what we're doing is
33:08
providing them a path and we're using real estate to make money
33:12
doing it so that our investors can make a lot of money tearing
33:16
down and rebuilding these nasty old slums into launch pads,
33:20
brand new communities that are launch pads with a child care on
33:24
site, an education centre on site and a business centre on
33:27
site. And it's like, hey, you're in,
33:30
you're in poverty, you're here with us, we're going to help you
33:33
get out as fast as possible. And my goal is 2 years.
33:37
Like we can get people out in two years from zero to 50 KA
33:40
year in two years and then have a path made for them that they
33:45
can continue to follow forever. It's up to them.
33:48
You know, you can't force people to do stuff.
33:50
And we've learned that we've had people, we still evict people
33:54
from our apartment complexes because some of them refuse to
33:57
accept help from a nonprofit, refuse it.
34:01
And some of them, just like they can't let go of being criminals.
34:04
So right, you have to be safe If if the kids here can't can't be
34:10
safe then. Oh, give me for laughing.
34:12
You sounded like a comedian. For a minute.
34:16
I felt like I had Juro get on my show.
34:18
That's. That's the world, right?
34:25
I'm quite curious. So, so what's the logistic was
34:28
the range band, you know between that time where in the the
34:33
structure is being torn down and the review process.
34:37
So where do these people, where are these people located to in
34:41
the meantime? Yeah, great question.
34:43
So we'd like to have swing facilities.
34:45
So we build a facility or take over a facility that we can
34:49
fill, fill it with those folks. Otherwise they go on to project
34:52
based vouchers or tenant based vouchers and, and they get
34:57
relocated and the HUD authorities have that the local
35:00
authorities know where to do. Where do people go?
35:03
And then we redevelop in phases. Normally we'll leave one side of
35:06
the complex intact. We'll tear down one side, build
35:09
up a new side, move people into there, then tear down the next
35:13
side and do it in two or three phases.
35:14
And sometimes four or five phases is larger 600 unit
35:18
complex or something like that. We want mixed income.
35:21
You don't want a brand new facility full of poor people
35:24
because then you just have a new facility full of poor people.
35:27
And we want poor people to be around other people that are not
35:30
poor. So we like mixed income market
35:32
rate people who already have jobs, make it 50607080 grand a
35:36
year that can casually interact with folks who are poor and they
35:41
can see in the nice cars, they can see the dinners, the clothes
35:45
and they, you know, they, they want to level up so that they
35:49
can do the same thing. And then we have on site
35:51
services where they can go in and be like, all right,
35:53
somebody's wearing Lululemon. I really want Lululemon.
35:55
Great, you make $0.00, you better not be buying a Lululemon
35:59
right now. You need to get a job.
36:02
And the way you get a job is you need to go through this training
36:03
programme. And I'm not talking about a 15
36:05
bucks an hour job or a $20.00 an hour job. 30 grand a year, 40
36:09
grand a year. No, we need 5060 grand a year.
36:11
Something self sustainable for real.
36:15
Not Taco Bell or Pizza Hut, no fast food jobs.
36:21
We got to get people to where they can really live.
36:24
That's, that's it. That's where you know.
36:29
No slander against Pizza Hut is is allowed now that's like you
36:33
can talk about Domino's. Yeah, like that's those jobs are
36:37
for kids in high school, you know, They're not for grown
36:41
adults. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
36:45
Yeah, unless you're like a manager, I guess there.
36:48
I don't know what they make now, but ground adults need to
36:52
provide for their for families. And we can do better as a
36:56
nation, but we're not going to do better as a nation if we just
37:00
keep doing the same thing or we only count how much we're giving
37:03
to the housing authorities. It's not about that.
37:06
It's about the humans, people in the buildings and the
37:10
communities. Like how many of those people
37:12
are we helping? So that's one of our big things
37:14
with AI, with our tracking mechanism is OK, you start at 0
37:18
and in two years you have $80,000 a year in salary because
37:22
you did whatever like that needs to get tracked.
37:25
And in that system that creates, that gets rewarded.
37:28
Go on any government website and tell me where it says that they
37:33
produced an outcome for a human that mattered.
37:37
They don't. They only calculate their
37:39
spending. That's dumb.
37:42
Think Elon Musk is going to have a word with you regarding this
37:51
expert Elon Musk in your inbox very soon?
37:55
Do you have a Twitter account? Sorry Ellen, you have an X
38:00
account. I do not I need to start talking
38:03
about this crap on on. XK OK, you better not get an X
38:07
because you might just get axed on X.
38:09
But on a more serious note, I did have a guest, Alan Lazarus,
38:15
you know, from your neck of the weeds.
38:17
He's going to have a second appearance on the on the
38:20
podcast, I think later on this week.
38:24
If so. And then, you know, he says
38:25
something. He says America is suffering
38:27
from an entitlement, our epidemic entitlement mentality
38:34
epidemic. Like do you want to speak about
38:37
that? Because you actually touched,
38:38
you know, on that when you talked about, you know, people
38:42
refusing help and people not, you know, wanting to take that
38:48
conscious effort, that active effort to level up even when
38:53
they're given a helping hand. You know, there's a proverb
38:56
react come from in Nigeria, they say it's it's a child that, you
39:01
know, opens their arms that the that the parents can lift up.
39:05
You know, if you don't open your arms right, you cannot be lifted
39:10
up. So how do you cope with that
39:14
entitlement, you know, mentality pandemic that is ongoing and
39:18
what efforts do you guys do to achieve a change of orientation?
39:23
Yeah, great. Great question.
39:25
So I think it and the US is taught in high school.
39:29
We have an educational system that is pretty broken.
39:33
We teach people. The idea is to teach people how
39:35
to learn, but we spend, I don't know, six months on trapezoids,
39:41
which is cool. Like I like trapezoids just as
39:43
much as you like trapezoids, right?
39:45
So I don't like. Trapezoids.
39:47
Like how does that help me provide for my family?
39:52
Well, what was the last time? I was walking down the street
39:54
and I say, hey, trapezoid, what's up man?
39:56
What's up? Yeah.
39:58
How do you monetize that thing? Right.
40:02
And so they're just taught, like you learn all this stuff and
40:05
then you just go out and you're going to get, you know, the cars
40:09
you want and the house you want, and you're going to get a great
40:12
job. You know, we don't work.
40:15
We don't discipline and you know.
40:18
Hard times make great, you know, great men and women who went
40:22
through those hard times, right? You know the saying?
40:24
And we live in a time where our parents work themselves to death
40:29
to overcome poverty and create something.
40:32
And some of us are still in there, the work in that.
40:35
And then the new generation is just like, I get all this stuff
40:39
and I deserve it. And then they go to high school
40:41
and middle school and they're taught that you deserve all this
40:45
stuff and you shouldn't be working and chores are bad and
40:50
how life is nothing. Yeah.
40:53
How dare your parent discipline. Yeah.
40:57
I hate to bring a spoiler alert. You know, life owes you nothing.
41:00
And you know, I, I really love what my father used to tell
41:03
myself and my brothers growing up.
41:05
He told us something I said, education is the best legacy.
41:09
That is what that's the only thing I owe you.
41:11
The only thing I owe you is a good education.
41:13
I'm going to give you a good education.
41:15
Make do with you. Whatever you can't do with it,
41:17
you know, But do not expect to get anything off me, you know?
41:23
And he used to tell us that Chinese proverb, teach a man,
41:27
give a manifest, you fed him for a day and teach a man to fish,
41:29
you fed him for a lifetime. And that pretty much made us
41:32
appreciate education and critical thinking.
41:36
Apply your mind. Your greatest asset is your
41:38
mind. You can lose all your physical
41:40
assets about as long as you do not lose your mind, you've not
41:43
lost anything in life. It's so sad to see this pandemic
41:47
that is going on. You know, it's a mindset disease
41:53
that is spreading like wildfire. And there are two major types of
41:58
mindsets you have the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.
42:01
And what I set out to to to to promote by way of this podcast
42:07
is the growth mindset. So how can modern day business
42:12
philosophers like yourself and myself, you know, spread the
42:16
word and would I say push out this if evangelism of work that
42:22
we're doing, you know, you know, that's your chief greater
42:25
impact. Yeah, so the only way anyone
42:29
ever hears your voice is if you share your voice.
42:32
And so I can complain all I want, but until I share that
42:36
voice with the world of like, hey, maybe we're focused on the
42:38
wrong things. Maybe we should focus on humans
42:41
and outcomes and then measure those.
42:44
You know, nobody's going to listen to me because they have
42:46
to hear. You have to hear somebody's
42:47
voice to listen to them and. And so.
42:50
Exactly. LinkedIn, all the social media
42:52
places. We live in a world now where
42:54
where somebody who grows up in rural Oklahoma or in Nigeria can
42:58
get their voice heard. Shout out to Nigeria.
43:01
Yeah. Shout out to Nigeria.
43:04
I'm currently #28 on the education podcast rankings,
43:09
Apple podcasts in Nigeria. I'm grateful to my people.
43:13
Yeah, wow. It's good to see that Nigerian
43:18
Nigerians appreciate education. We we live in an incredible
43:22
time. So if you have something you're
43:25
passionate about, like raise your voice and and make it heard
43:28
been known. And no, I'm tired.
43:31
I'm tired of the media just spending everything crazy.
43:34
Like why can't we just if it's hard?
43:39
You know what? Speaking of media, right, you
43:42
talked about the foxes, the CNNS of this world.
43:46
Do you know the interesting thing?
43:48
They are no longer the traditional media.
43:50
I think traditional media right now is podcasting.
43:53
But yeah, it's very much worn that way because people are
43:57
finally waking up. The CNN and Fox News and CNBC or
44:02
MSNBC, they're all political tick tocks, that's what they
44:06
are. Political.
44:08
Tick tocks like click bait. They're just political.
44:11
Click. Good, that's gracious.
44:14
Yeah, yeah. That's it.
44:20
You know, I know you have 8 minutes left on this show and I
44:24
would like to maximise that. So real quick, you know, you're
44:29
actually rebuilding the 19, the 1950s era public housing into
44:33
mixed income hubs, right? And of course, what's 1 policy
44:37
change that you would love to see that would help supercharge
44:41
the work that you're doing across the United States?
44:45
Yeah, I would love to see what we're asking for right now is to
44:49
let us take the software system across all of public housing and
44:53
then mandate that those folks in there have to use it to create a
44:59
personalised pathway. It's free.
45:00
It's free to them. It cost them nothing, cost the
45:04
US government nothing. It's free to them, but it'll
45:08
help people get out of poverty. Like that's the whole objective.
45:11
So help them get out of poverty. Look, I'm a capitalism, I will
45:14
make money off that deal. So a lot of other people, but
45:16
it'll be free to users, free to the government, and it will save
45:19
them trillions of dollars. So that's a policy change is to
45:23
one, start focusing on the stinking, not the stinking, the
45:27
humans that are involved, like the the thing that really
45:29
matters, which is humans and start reporting on it.
45:32
And our system does it focus on human and reports on them.
45:36
OK. So that leads me to my final
45:39
question before the quick fly around.
45:41
What's that optimal or would I say North Star metric for you?
45:46
Is it return on investment? Is it life's changed?
45:49
Is it impact achieved or what exactly is that optimal metric
45:54
for you? Yeah.
45:56
So I have three different verticals that we track metrics
46:01
in. So the first one is our real
46:03
estate and that's return on investment or return on invested
46:07
capital. And we really try and target 20%
46:11
plus IR, Rs internal rates of return.
46:15
We really trying to hit 8% cash on cash or better equity
46:19
multiples, trying to hit 2, two and a quarter X in five years.
46:23
That's our targets with government subsidies that can
46:25
get much better than that, but that's where we're at.
46:29
Foundation is lives impacted, hours of education, so forth.
46:36
And then the software system, there's seven pillars that we
46:41
have. And some of that is like how
46:43
much money is in savings from zero, how much monetary change
46:47
in their savings accounts from $0.00 to, you know, we want six
46:51
months of reserves in their savings account.
46:53
I know it's crazy. Americans live on death.
46:55
But like we can teach something better.
46:58
Credit score rating changes, you know, education milestones,
47:01
educational hours, job skill training, a job skill training
47:05
hours and then change in base pace.
47:07
Or are they making $0.00 and now they make a 50 grand a year.
47:11
Like that's those are things that we track.
47:13
And how much time they have in housing.
47:16
So how much time have they been on welfare or subsidies?
47:18
And comparing that to the outcomes of others who aren't in
47:21
the system, who are spending on average 10 years in the system.
47:24
And our goal is to keep people, on average about two years
47:28
before they exit poverty and are on their own.
47:32
What a long shot, what a tall goal, but then impossible is
47:36
nothing. That is my philosophy.
47:38
We have 4 minutes left. It takes 4 minutes to save a
47:41
life. And let us see if life's here on
47:44
the podcast, I'm going to give you 5 quick fire Brown
47:47
questions. Just tell me the first thing
47:49
that comes to your mind. Number one, what's your best
47:52
stress relief tactic from your firefighting days?
47:56
Morning, morning time and scriptures and prayer, and then
48:01
spending an hour or so with my son in the morning every
48:04
morning. That's a great stress reliever.
48:08
That I love me a man of faith that just shall leave my faith
48:11
at #2 Eagle Scout badge, a skill that you still used to today.
48:16
Being prepared like that still resonated.
48:22
Yeah, it still resonates with me till today.
48:24
And I'm always very grateful to be very honest.
48:27
You know, back home in Nigeria, they say if you if you fail to
48:31
plan, you plan to fail. And yeah, it's it's very true.
48:35
Until the end of time, one book every disruptor should read.
48:39
Last one I just read that was really really good was Buy Back
48:42
Your Time by Dan Martell. OK, I'm going to seal that off
48:46
your bookshelf. If you do not see tomorrow, know
48:49
that it is in London, England. OK.
48:52
OK, so the next one is AIS next big leap in social impact.
48:57
Ours Percy personal success campaign.
48:59
That's the next one. OK, fantastic, fantastic.
49:04
And of course, finish the sentence.
49:05
The future of poverty alleviation is.
49:08
What the future of? Poverty alleviation is.
49:12
The future of poverty alleviation is Percy personal
49:16
success. Mercy through Percy, I love that
49:21
from me to you, it's a very, very, very big thank you.
49:24
I always say this on the podcast, an attitude of
49:26
gratitude is good attitude. And anytime a person shares
49:30
their time with you, they share their life with you because the
49:33
SI unit for measuring life is time.
49:36
I do not take your time for granted.
49:38
From me to you it's love and respect from the other side of
49:42
the pond. God bless you and of course, I
49:44
wish you the very, very best in all of your endeavours.
49:47
And of course, you know, I'm always an e-mail away and
49:50
another book when I say Parker session away as well.
49:53
You know, I'm happy to collaborate with you on on your
49:56
projects and see how we can bring our expertise, you know,
50:00
from our company to to ensure that you guys achieve your
50:03
goals. And do you want to leave a shout
50:06
out to anybody before you leave? And of course, please help me,
50:11
help me beg the audience to do the needful.
50:13
You know, they need to show us more love.
50:16
Thank you very much for the love you guys have been sharing.
50:18
You know, we've been on the top 200 chats in five different
50:23
countries in the last one week. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot
50:26
of love. Thank you very much.
50:27
But of course, we can do better. My Nigerian brothers, we are
50:30
going for #1 sports. We are #28 today.
50:33
But come on #1 or nothing. Yeah, Samuel sells.
50:38
What do you want to sell before we leave?
50:41
Yeah. Hey, you know, if hopefully you
50:44
felt a little bit of inspiration from this, reach out to me on on
50:48
LinkedIn, Samuel Sells. I love connecting with people.
50:51
I think we can roll this thing out across the entire planet and
50:54
help people all over the world find ways to create income on
50:57
their own using the incredible power of artificial intelligence
51:02
that is coming. So we're, we're excited about
51:05
that. I'm excited about making a
51:07
difference. And then with public housing,
51:09
same thing. Like if you're if you want to
51:11
make a real difference and invest in a way that improves
51:13
people's lives, that we're always looking for values,
51:16
mission aligned investors and we really appreciate all the ones
51:21
that we have so far. Interested.
51:24
Guess what? I just, I just formed a new
51:27
tongue twister. Sam Sells seashells at the
51:30
seashore. If you could do that five times
51:33
without fail, you're gonna get, you're gonna get $20 from me and
51:38
Sam Sells. Yeah, absolutely.
51:41
That's a social media. Of course I'll meet you guys.
51:46
I want to get is love or respect till I come your way again,
51:49
please, you know, keep showing love, support and of course,
51:52
keep winning in life. For me, it says goodbye guys.
51:56
And of course, you know, salute to the to the Soulja Boy.
51:59
Yeah. Thank you, ma'am.
52:01
Appreciate it.