Marriage, Money & Mistakes: How We Rebuilt Our Wealth from the Ground Up | Abundance Conversations

As an adult, you don't know Ash Cash if it's not for Miss Amina. You know, she's been my man, my guardian angel, right? My person who's been really just helping me through this journey called life for, um, over 20 years now, right? We are happily married. Well, he laughed. Not happily.

No, no, that laugh was off.

Okay.

That one kind of hit me a little different because I ran through so many instances where we've been through a lot of different phases, stages, people. And, you know, as a wife— and I, I never even knew, I wasn't, I wasn't brought up to be somebody's wife, to be 100% transparent. I wasn't groomed. You know, you have cultures that groom their daughters to become a wife. I kind of learned a lot of things along the way, but the one thing I was room for is commitment and loyalty to family. So that's what I bought for you.

Thank you. To live in abundance.

All right, so welcome to Abundance Conversations, uh, which is a show, uh, that you— we, we've been talking about, uh, for a long time. And not necessarily a show, but just, um, really having the conversations that we have behind the scenes. Um, and really, uh, we've always said, man, I wish we've you know, had a camera rolling so we could talk about certain things. But I think most importantly, what Abundance Conversations is, is really going to take you through a journey of a family journey, a building wealth journey, a journey of what does it look like to be let into what our personal mission is, and then also our mission Um, for the community. And so, uh, if you're watching this for the first time and you don't know who I am, my name is Ash Cash. I am called the Hip-Hop Financial Advisor, the Financial Motivator. I am an author. I am a, um, you know, book coach. I am a podcaster. I am an entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur. Um, I've been, uh, seen millions of times throughout the internet, television, radio, just someone that really cares about our community and wants to help people change their mindset in order to really live in abundance, right. I have this saying that says abundance is your birthright, and I really truly believe that. I have a deep love for God, deep love for my family, deep love for my community. But none of this, right, is not possible— first, you know, all praises due to the Most High God. None of this is possible without God.

Amen.

And, you know, obviously my parents who birthed me and things of that nature, but as an adult, you don't know Ash Cash if it's not for Miss Amina. And so, you know, she's been my, man, my guardian angel, right? My person who's been really just helping me through this journey called life for, over 20 years now, right? So we, you know, we started dating in 2003, um, and so that's 21 years. Um, we are happily married. Well, you laugh. Not happily?

No, no, that laugh was off— okay, off target, because I was, I was like trying to contain myself when you use the term guardian angel. Like, you, you always tend to use words Or descriptives that I've never heard before. And that one kind of hit me a little different because I ran through so many instances where I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's pretty accurate. You know, we've been through a lot of different phases, stages, people, and, you know, as a wife, and I, I never even knew, I wasn't I wasn't brought up to be somebody's wife, to be 100% transparent. I wasn't groomed. You know, you have cultures that groom their daughters to become a wife. I kind of learned a lot of things along the way, but the one thing I was groomed for is commitment and loyalty to family. So that's what I brought for you, right? That guardian angel, when you said that, I immediately just thought about my grandmother and it just made me smile on the inside. So that's what the laugh was about.

It wasn't about the— She was like, happily married.

Happily married.

I got a story to tell.

No.

But, um, but no, but, but, but, you know, uh, uh, married for, uh, 17 years, um, 2 genius, uh, babies, um, daughter, son, who, um, I mean, they're not genius because they're mine or ours, but they're just the best human beings that I've ever, uh, ran across. Um, but in, but in the same time, in the same breath, um, You know, we've had a lot of ups and downs, you know what I'm saying? I, um, you know, we've, uh, we've struggled together. We've done everything together. We've struggled together. We've done— we've been, uh, abundant together. Like, we, we've been through, um, everything, everything, everything together, right? Um, and so I want to start this off and just kind of giving the audience a, um, you know, sort of like a premise of what this show is really about. We're calling it the Abundance Conversations because Uh, you know, we are writing a book together called The Abundance Formula, um, and The Abundance Formula is really about, um, helping people live in abundance, right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, I— you're together, right? Like, we've, uh, separately, um, have made a lot of money in our lives, but together we've, uh, generated millions of dollars, um, as entrepreneurs. But we've also blown a lot of money too, right? Like, we've, we've We've messed up a lot of money. And honestly, now that I know— and we'll talk about that along the lines about brain patterns and all that stuff. But now that I know how my brain works, I'll actually take the full— don't shake your head yes, yes. Don't shake it yes. But I'll take the full responsibility for a lot of the mishaps and the impulsiveness and the things, the decisions.

Especially financially.

Yeah.

But we'll be getting into those different scenarios.

Yeah, we'll get into it.

Y'all will see.

Yeah, yeah.

Y'all will see who's who.

Yeah.

As the show goes along, but go ahead.

Yeah, so, what they say, those who know do, and those who don't teach. I was playing. I'm just playing. I know what I'm talking about. But to that, I'll just be 100% transparent and frank, is that I'm very good at coaching. I'm very good at coaching, I'm very good. I know what to do and why to do it and how to do it. And I've advised many people, I've made countless people millions of dollars and things of that nature. I do what I— I know what to do for myself as well, but ultimately because the way my brain works, I jump around.

Mm-hmm.

And in order to get the results that I teach, You can't jump around, you got to focus, right. And so, and we'll dive deep into that too because a lot of it I think is survivor's guilt. I think a lot of it is impulsiveness. I think there's a lot that needs to be unpacked, right. But either way, either way, either way, I do want to talk or— so, I want you to introduce yourself as well.

Mm-hmm.

But I want to talk about our meeting with Dr. Claude Anderson, because I, I believe that, um, our meeting with Dr. Claude Anderson, his wife, the family, um, is what sparked—

Right, this is what really helped us to execute on this.

Correct, correct, correct, correct. So if you could introduce yourself for the folks, um, and then, and then we could talk about our meeting with Dr. Claude.

Okay, so my introduction will be really short and brief. Um, my name is Amina. I am an author. I've written 9 children's books and recently I don't wanna call it a memoir. It's part of, and this is probably some of the things we'll talk about as well, part of a self-discovery process that I went through. I'm an HR consultant by profession and a serial entrepreneur. You know, I dibble and dabble in investing and real estate a little bit. I'm a serial hustler, right?

From Brooklyn. You ain't mention Brooklyn. That's how y'all say it?

No, that's not how we say it. Brooklyn, New York. We are very classy. I hate that stereotype.

Yo, it's crazy because there's this meme going around that's showing like the different Timbs and all that stuff.

Oh, I saw that.

It is so— somebody from Brooklyn did that.

No, that's very accurate.

Yo, how is Brooklyn the one with the clean butters?

Absolutely. Because we started that.

Y'all started it?

Absolutely.

How did you start it? What are you talking about? That sounds crazy to me. Like, like, like, like Puff Daddy. No, Diddy. Nah, but Puff Daddy introduced it to Biggie in '92. Can you believe that? And then y'all saw it on video.

So I'mma take you back.

And y'all thought, oh.

I'mma take you back. I'mma take you back very inaccurate.

Wait, Diddy got it from the guys in Harlem hustling.

I grew up with uncles.

Yeah.

And they was wearing them before me.

And they had Butters.

Absolutely.

So you're telling me—

One of them almost got robbed for a pair of Timbs.

So you're telling me that your uncles were wearing Timbs.

Absolutely. In '92.

With 8-ball jackets before '92.

Before '92?

Yes.

I'm not buying it. Um, but either which way, I'm sorry because it was a tangent, but because you talking about old be classy, because I know people from Brooklyn, uh, as stick-up kids. Like, y'all was grimy.

Yes, that is, that is accurate.

And Harlem was the hustlers, and, and y'all wore 40 Belows. What are those? The, the, the, uh, high-top black boots. With the army fatigues on. Nah, but either which way, we got—

I know what you're talking about now.

With your jeans tucked in, that was the Brooklyn look. And now all of a sudden, y'all, y'all the one with clean butters. But, uh, either way, either way, we're watching— we're writing a book called The Abundance Formula, uh, 9 Proven Steps to Build Black Family Wealth, Protect Your Legacy, and Empower Generations. And Um, one of the things that, um, you know, we do in the Abundance, uh, Formula is we have a 9-step program or a 9-step process, if you will, um, that, that we're gonna, we're gonna take ourselves on and we're also gonna help, um, the community, uh, do the same thing. And so we—

And correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of it is gonna be through sharing our past stories as well as our future stories.

Correct.

That way they can get a real—

Correct, correct.

Idea of—

Absolutely.

How we've transitioned, grown, and evolved and are now putting these things into place.

1,000%. Yeah, and, and we'll bring on guests, right? We'll bring on, uh, friends, right? We will bring on, uh, like our mentors, people who are teaching us, um, in real time. So whether it's life insurance, whether it's, uh, a trust, whether it's, um, you know, uh, using credit to build wealth, whether it's, um, you know, stock market trade, whatever, like anything that we're, we're implementing, um, we, you know, we're— we want to make sure, um, that we're sharing where we're getting the information from, um, whose model we're using and how we, you know, how we're gonna do it. Um, one of the, the models that we're gonna be using, and, and that's in the book as well, is that this is going to— this is inspired, right? The abundance formula is inspired by Powernomics and the Rockefeller Family Trust, right? And so what we decided— so we had a conversation, and I'll give you—

Did you bring the book?

Which one?

The Powernomics.

I couldn't find it.

Okay.

Right, but—

No, is it the box? Is it in the car? Remember he gave us every book that he had?

I'm sure we took it out. I'm sure I took it out, but you know, Powernomics. So, I'll start off with the story of how we came about, you know, this journey of Powernomics. And if you haven't read Powernomics, you should read Powernomics. It's one of the most powerful books specifically, you know, for Black people, right?

Yeah.

Because it talks about how to build Black wealth. And, you know, so I'm a book coach, right? So, I have, you know, I've written Uh, over, uh, I've written over 40 books, but I've published only 17 of them. Um, and I've sold, you know, close to a quarter of a million, um, books as an independent, um, author. Um, you know, I've made— like I said, we've generated— and when I say I, always know she's involved. I don't think there's anything I've ever done that she wasn't a part of. So when I say I, um, you know, we've done it together. But, you know, we, we've been able to, to generate millions of dollars, um, you know, from personally cash collected, but then also from a perspective of helping others do the same thing. We have a program, we have 2 programs. We have One Brick Publishing. One Brick Publishing is our publishing company where we coach people from beginning to end how to write and publish their books. So we've ghostwritten books for people. We have a lot of big name clientele that we've helped.

Wow.

Some we publicly talk about, some we don't publicly talk about just because of the nature of the agreement. Um, but then we also have a book marketing company called Book Rich. Um, and Book Rich comes, you know, we have a software, all-in-one marketing software. Um, and, you know, through our Book Rich program, we have a group of people that, you know, we teach on a weekly basis. I'm helping them build a 6, 7-figure business. And through that, um, you know, you know, shout out to Professor English, Donna English, who one day she just hit me and she said, hey, you know, I might have a client for you, right? She was like, do you know Dr. Claude Anderson? I'm like, do you know— do I know Dr. Claude Anderson? Of course I do. And what she was saying was that, you know, Dr. Claude Anderson had written all these books and he hadn't been able to have any audiobooks yet, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so wanted to create an audiobook. Um, and wanted us to, you know, because it's, you know, it's what we do on Rick Publishing, we, you know, coach and help, uh, wanted us to help, uh, develop the audiobook. And so we, um, were the, you know, the, the team behind, um, helping, um, Powernomics become an audiobook. Um, in that process, um, you know, um, we, you know, did all of the recordings and editing and all that stuff, and we were delivering the book to the family. And we could have done it, you know, through email or whatever, but we were heading, um, for, you know, to go see our family. Um, and we were like, yo, we would love, love to meet you.

Mm-hmm.

We had a great conversation with Dr. Claude and his wife, and, um, you know, there's other projects that we may be working on together as well, uh, God's will. Um, and in that process, we were like, yo, let's go meet them. And so we, you know, we went to go meet them. And for me, there was a life-changing meeting. Talk a little bit about that meeting.

Man, where do we start, right? Because like you said, we've been very familiar with Dr. Claude Anderson and his work many years before getting this project, right? I believe. And the irony is that we had planned to use his work 5 years ago, right? I wrote a whole outline, plan, and structure that we could follow to present it like a program or something like that. But it kind of fell by the wayside because we, as per usual, we have so many other things going on. But, um, meeting him, for me, seeing how— how old is Dr. Claude?

He gotta be—

He's in his late 80s.

Late 80s, yeah. Late 80s, yeah.

Seeing how much passion that he has for the Black community, for the work that he does. And to see, even to this day, see his vision still come alive was game-changing for me.

Yeah.

Because, and, you know, I don't wanna sound discriminatory, because of his age, you think you're in a state where you're ready to relax and, you know, but no, he still has that fire and that fight to say, we need to make these changes now. It's so important. the community, families follow these strategies in order to propel ourselves from a wealth perspective. So it was, it was, it was phenomenal.

And I think, and I think that, um, it was in that, right, to see someone, one of our elders, to be in a space of like the level of his passion, right? Like to, to see one of our elders so passionate, uh, and he's given his whole entire life For this work. For this work, to the building of Black wealth.

Education, educating.

Everything.

And he not only teaches it, but he's done it.

He's done it.

If you've read the book, he talks about what needs to be done, and then he shows you how he did it.

Right.

So it's like—

Yeah. And so for me, it was almost— I feel like it was almost a moment of shame, to be honest with you, for me. It was almost like a moment of shame because—

I understand.

I, you know, as somebody who was like, hey, uh, I'm a financial educator and I help people do this, and I'm like, nah. Like, once you, once you, once you see the, the, you're the level that he operates in.

Yeah.

And how serious he is, I'm like, Ash, you're not taking this thing serious. I think, I think for me, um, and when I say a level of shame, I think it's, it was a level of, um, I'm not taking this as serious.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Especially when I think about where we are as a community.

Yeah.

What needs to be done as a community. I think I'm— I was— I think I was a little too lackadaisical, you know, in my mission. And so that was the first spark that was like, all right, now you got— you stop playing, you know what I'm saying? Like, you gotta get at— you gotta do it at another level. And the truth of the matter too is, like you said, I've read Power Nomics God knows how many times, but to actually listen to it and to hear it, it just does something else to you. It does something to you.

There's no way you can read that book and it not change how you think about money, wealth, business, politics, because he combines everything and makes it all make sense.

Look, everybody has a story and everybody wants to tell their story, but do you know how to monetize your story and create income and impact. I am Ash Cash, the financial motivator, author of over 20 books. I've sold over a quarter of a million books independently, and I have created a foolproof step-by-step process on how you can monetize your story. So listen, go to bookrichmastery.com, join my free masterclass where I'll teach you how to master being a storyteller but also creating that income. Again, bookrichmastery.com, and I'll see you on the inside.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, but yeah, and so, and so, and so for us, after that meeting, you know, we had a conversation and we was like, all right, we gotta, we gotta do stuff different even, right? Because the truth of the matter is, um, you know, like, I'm a hustler, you know what I mean? I know how to get money. Um, I get a lot of money. Um, but at the same time, Um, you know, the decisions that, that, that I have made— nah, we made that.

We made what?

The decisions.

No, we didn't make the decisions.

The decisions that we made. Everything is we. The decisions that we've made, um, you know, have not, um, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, obviously we're still part of the 1%, right? But There are some things that we could have done differently financially.

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of things.

A lot of things, yeah.

A lot of missteps.

Yeah.

A lot of missteps.

And so this is our transparent moment of sort of fixing a lot of those things.

Right.

Doing things that—

Honestly, I wouldn't even say fixing.

Yeah, yeah.

Right? Because at the space that we're in now, it's almost as if we get the opportunity opportunity to start over.

Yeah.

Right? And, and it's weird, that's how life has been for us for the 20-plus years we've been together. We mess up a lot, then we get, we get saved. We mess up a lot, then we always get saved. And our saves are— yeah, our saves are really, really good.

Yeah.

It allows us to, you know—

Which, which is a blessing, right? Because again, there are people who who hit rock bottom, and that's it, it's over.

Yeah, yeah.

But, I mean, and that's— and this is gonna take the conversation a little left, but, you know, I can't not have this conversation and not mention that that's attached to being clear about the source.

Oh, for sure, 1,000%.

Because if you're unclear about your source, your save might be a little bit harder, right? Say that again. But, I'm very clear about where My gifts come from God.

Absolutely, absolutely.

My lessons come from God.

Absolutely, same, right, which is true though, right, which is why to that point a lot of people who will think about like you said, like our saves have been—

Yeah, it's almost un—

Yeah, like I think that our saves are so financially lucrative but then spiritually too because the thing— and it's hard to put it in words, right, because it's almost like It's almost like, again, it doesn't matter what decisions we make.

Right. And that's why I said that. I mean, it does matter, 'cause I don't wanna downplay that. It does matter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But because, like I said, we're clear about where the source comes from. Correct. And what I wanted to say is that, you know, life, the universe just has a way of making you keep doing it over and over again.

Right, until you get it right. Until you get it right.

And our intention is to make sure we document this so y'all can keep us accountable. To make sure that we get it right.

Correct, correct. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so, um, yeah, so, so that's what the Abundance Conversations are about. You know, again, we're gonna be, you know, um, you know, talking to different experts, different people, um, who are gonna help us on our journey as well, right? From, you know, again, from, uh, from life insurance to trust to, uh, credit to real estate to all the different, you know, wealth vehicles.

And I, I think that part is very important. Um, because we as a couple tend to work in silos.

Correct.

Yeah.

Throughout that entire— out the majority of our experience, we didn't really allow a lot of people in.

I agree.

And this is a great opportunity to allow people in, share it, and again, for them to hold us accountable as well.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So that, that's an element that I feel like we've missed, and I, I'll take a little bit of blame for that because I'm very protective of my Yeah. And I'm not letting just anybody in.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. And I— yeah, and I— and again, I think that ultimately, um, I mean, so if I— if again, if we could just continue to be frank, um, the other piece of it that we didn't talk about was, um, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And what I mean by that is Um, right around the same time we met Dr. Claude Anderson, uh, to talk about Poweronomics, um, you know, you know, Donald Trump had just won his second, um, term as president. Um, and the, the, the level of energy that was passing through our community to me was disappointing, right?

Okay.

And when I say that, I mean that Um, people were like acting as if it was the end of the world.

Yeah.

Right? That, that, you know, uh, you know, Kamala lost, um, and Donald Trump won. And to me, and this is just— I mean, this is just— I don't care who would have won, right? Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, we as a Black community still don't have any power for real.

Right.

And—

No economic power.

No economic power. And honestly, I don't think we have political power either, even.

Right.

Because the truth is, when you look at—

But you can't have one without the other.

I agree.

You can't have political power if you don't have any economic power.

I agree. I agree 1,000%. And so for me, it was an example, or it was just like literally telling me like, oh, this is another reason why you have to make sure that you're doing this work at a high level, because I just believe we could demand more for our community if we understand how to build true wealth. And then as we're building that wealth, we create that power source. And the other thing though too, because we said this earlier, is again, where are we putting Like, where are we putting the, the power, right? Do we really think politicians control everything, or do, do we control it first? Do we— do the— is there— does God control it first? You know what I'm saying?

Right.

Um, and so I— and so I think that, um, you know, seeing that, seeing how people were saying, oh my God, it's gonna be the worst 4 years, and, you know, especially collectively as a community Um, I said, nah, we gotta— we, we have to, uh, or I— or we have to do a better job educating. Um, because I think that if we unders— if we did a better job educating, we could, um— a lot of those fears would not even exist.

Wouldn't even exist.

Wouldn't even exist.

Right.

Um, especially because a lot of the, the power that they're putting in the government's hand, um, is not even the government that has the power. It's mostly local that has the power. And, and local, you could, you could actually control local with dollars, right? Right. So, so when you think about your, your, your, your, your state, you think about your city, you think about your, your county, like a lot of that stuff you could control that directly. And those are the, the ones that make the laws that directly impact you.

Absolutely. You got to learn how to— and I, I say this frankly, you got to learn how to pimp the politicians.

Yeah, yeah.

Because that's really what it is, if we want to be really, really frank.

Yeah, yeah.

But I'm gonna tread lightly.

No, no, I mean, no, we— I mean, I mean, this, this is, again, this is supposed to be a, uh, you know, a candid conversation. Yeah, uh, you know, a candid conversation of, you know, around wealth, around, you know, building wealth. And so, um, you know, we're excited to take you on this journey. We're excited to, um, you know, have the conversations that, um, are all about abundance. I want to pull up you know, what abundance— so, you know, we love to talk in acronyms. And so, I do want to pull up the abundance formula.

And each—

these are like the 9 steps, if you will, that we're going to be focusing on. And so, these 9 steps— let me see if I can find it. These are the 9 steps that— and they all— it spells out abundance, right. And so, step number 1 is to align your savings and spending. And so, that's A. And so, in step number 1, we're talking about creating SMART goals and really setting SMART goals— specific, measurable, achievable, relatable, timely. These are— all right, so how do you create, you know, the life that you desire, right. You have to first start with a plan. Number 2 is about broadening your earnings. And so, how do you develop multiple streams of income to secure your wealth? And so, in number 2, you know, and we learned this from Powernomics, and, you know, Nipsey Hussle talks about vertical integration as well. But in Powernomics, you know, Dr. Claude is talking about vertical integration, right? And a lot of people, when they hear multiple streams of income, they think start different businesses along different, you know, start different types of businesses. But what Dr. Claude advises is vertical integration, right. So, whatever your main business is, how can you create other businesses that align vertically, right. And so, when you think why a rapper who, you know, who talks about, you know, clothes and, you know, and all the things that they talk about, you know, why they would, you know, why a rapper would get in the car business, why would they get in the clothes business, why would they have a jewelry line, like all the things that they talk about is because it's vertically integrated, right. And so, we're going to talk about creating 7 streams of income, but do it in an integrated model. Number 3 is underwrite your financial freedom, right. You know, words have power. We don't call it an emergency fund, we call it a financial freedom fund. And so, we want to make sure you have at least 6 to 8 months of expenses in an account. Number 4 is N, nurturing creditworthiness. And so, how to build and maintain a credit score of 700 or higher. You know, shout out to one of my mentors, John Hope Bryant, and Operation HOPE. They did this whole study on credit scores and how, you know, neighborhoods that have low credit scores tend to have higher crime rates, right.

Mm-hmm.

And so, there is a direct correlation to, you the credit score and the community. And so the higher the credit score, the better the community. But even from a perspective of wealth building, right, that there are ways to build wealth using credit, right? And so there's a philosophy called buy, borrow, die, which we'll talk about at some point. But it's really about how do you leverage debt, right? How do you buy assets?

Mm-hmm.

leverage the debt, um, to live off of. And then how do you protect, right, how do you protect that asset, uh, once you die through a life insurance policy that allows you to live without having to pay taxes? It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful concept, uh, that, that, that we will talk about, but you have to have the credit in order to do that. Um, uh, uh, number 5, diminishing your liabilities, which is D. Eliminate bad debt while strategically managing good debt. Number 6 is amplifying investments, so leveraging stock, real estate, and cryptocurrency to grow wealth. You're going to talk about that a lot because I know we've been making some financial decisions that we'll talk about as well on the show that has helped us build wealth fast.

Yeah.

Which, you know, and again, at a later time, We'll talk about how, um, we've recently liquidated an asset, you know, in terms of real estate, to be able to, um, put more money into the markets.

Yeah.

Um, and through, you know, the history of, um, you know, what, you know, you know, how we've been performing on the markets, it makes just the most sense. Um, and just to kind of give you a, um, you know, a, a quick tidbit is like, um, what it took for us to build a certain percentage of wealth through real estate in 6 years, you were able to do that in 6 months.

Yeah.

That same percentage.

Yeah.

You were able to do it. So, we'll talk about that. Um, 7, navigating a life insurance strategy, right. So, how do you protect your family and become your own bank? I hear that a lot, um, you know, how to become your own bank and I mean, we haven't done it. I've been around many people who talk about it, and we haven't done it yet. So, I want to leverage that and teach people how to do it, but want to learn about that too. Number 8, which is C, create a tax wealth strategy. So, how do you minimize your taxes to maximize your financial opportunities? And then lastly, number 9 is establish a legacy, right. So, how do you build a trust and safeguard and pass down your wealth? And I think that's a really— that might just be our next episode to talk about the trust because I feel like— I think that's going to be one of the most important parts, I think, because—

Absolutely.

You know, we see so many celebrities, you know, I think Prince died, you know, had a will, that will contested. Um, they, they spent years in probate court. A lot of his wishes didn't get fulfilled the way it needed to be fulfilled. And, you know, a lot of us in our, in our community don't have a will, don't have a trust, right, um, at all, right?

Right, right. Because it extends beyond celebrities. In my own family right now, they're dealing with something like that. My aunt— I don't want to put too much of the business out there, but, you know, our father had wealth.

Yeah.

And now the kids are like, Yeah, looking like you're not getting a piece of it, right?

Right.

He had a will. Yeah, he didn't have the trust.

Yeah.

And people don't understand that the trust is more ironclad than the will.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so those are the 9 steps, right? Those are the 9 steps. Uh, throughout this series, we're going to be getting, um, you know, talking about those, you know, you know, again, bringing on experts that will, um, you know, have the you know, have the conversations about, um, you know, these different aspects. Um, you know, we're gonna be, you know, showing y'all in real time doing certain things, um, and, and, and taking, taking you on our journey. Um, I mean, so for us it's a 5-year journey, right?

Yeah.

So our goal is for this to be a 5-year journey. Um, and so, you know, as we make mistakes, as we, um, you know, do, do things, uh, we'll inform you and Um, and yeah, and just have, have the, uh, the abundant conversation.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so yeah, that, that's, that's, that's what you— that's what you're gonna be, you know, tuned into. Um, I'm excited about this. This is new for me, right? Because, uh, for me, I've always been— I've always been a teacher. I've always been the one teaching. Um, but now, uh, it's time to let others who are the masters of what they do to teach.

I'll follow.

And even from a perspective, again, like I said, like, I, you know, realized that my brain, like, I'm a— I've, you know, so you wrote a book called Hidden in Plain Sight, and we'll, you know, we'll talk about that.

Mmhmm.

And, you know, learning about You know how your brain works. You know, I decided to kind of— I was looking at all the different neurodivergence that exists— ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, all that stuff. And I'm reading about ADHD, and I'm like, that sound like me. I'm like, man, that sound like a lot of stuff that I got going on. Um, and I realized that I had— I mean, have, right? Because it's just the way your brain works.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, I took a test, and then I scored high, and I'm like, oh my God, I got ADHD.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, thank God though that— I mean, and we could talk about that too because we have a different view on when someone should know. I think that it was a blessing that I didn't find out till I was an adult because of the environment in which I grew up in. Had I known, I would have made excuses as to why I wasn't pushing myself. And the fact that I didn't know it pushed me to a— it got me to a certain level. And that's just because I didn't— that's the other thing, I didn't have like the streets raise me, you know what I'm saying. So, but I say all that to say is that now that I realize how my brain works, again, that's why I need to listen to you more, right. Because the way your brain works and just even your guidance, you are more equipped to manage certain different aspects, um, of, of the family that I am. Um, and, and now I don't have to, you know, try to force something or whatever. And then, um, and then again, also just allowing others who, who are experts, uh, you know, let them drive the wheel.

Yep.

Yeah. So, um, all right, y'all, so we— any, any, any, any other last words or—

Um, no, no, I think this was a good, good intro.

All right, bet.

More to come.

Yeah, so, um, so yeah, so, you know, just make sure, uh, you, you know, follow the show. Um, you know, I need y'all to like, I need you to subscribe, uh, I need you to share this. Uh, this is going to be candid. I think also the other piece of it too, um, you know, um, I don't want— I don't, I don't like— so I know the more you complain about something, the more you're bringing that stuff to you.

you. Mm-hmm.

And I realized that, um, we are seeing a lot of, um, content online that is counter to Black family, Black love. Um, and instead of complaining about it, uh, let's do something about it. Let's put out more content that is more focused on, um, what we want to see. And this is prob— you know, this is one of the reasons why we decided to do this, because Again, we've been together, you know, 21 years. We want to bring other, you know, couples who are also, you know, doing great things. And I think that that's what's going to, you know, help, you know, change the narrative, if you will.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I'm excited. Again, share this with your friends, your family, you know, make sure you subscribe, Abundance Conversations. Um, on the Abundance Content Studios. Um, and yeah, we'll see, you know, we'll see you next time. Um, you know, again, uh, this is gonna— this is, this is a journey, um, and this journey is about, um, helping you get to that next level.

So, yep.

All right, y'all, right, we'll see y'all next time.

Thank you.

I've been putting in the time, had to make a sacrifice to get it. I'm living in abundance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hard work got me living in abundance. You gotta grind if you want it. To live in abundance. Abundance.