“Lamar Tyler: From Blog to 7-Figure Empire—Faith, Marriage $ Profit”

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Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show. In association with Believe Network, we're sitting down with a man who has built more than businesses. He's built movements. Lamar Tyler is the CEO and co-founder of Tyler New Media and the mastermind behind Traffic Sales and Profit, helping tens of thousands of Black entrepreneurs scale it to 6 and 7 figures. Hey, with no longer ado, welcome my man Lamar. To the show. How you doing, Lamar? I'm doing good.

Thanks for having me on, CJ.

Ah, man, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. So let me ask you, man, like I said, man, you got pretty impressive resume, man. Things that you and your wife doing, man, for the culture, I think is real cool. So let me ask you, on top of that legacy and media marriage, you and your wife Ronnie took Marriage While Black and turned it into a cultural rallying cry through films and Married with Kids. Looking back How do you feel those projects prepared you for building Traffic Sales and Profit?

You know, a great question. They definitely did, because at the time, we didn't know what in the world we were doing. So from, you know, building a website, blackandmarriedwithkids.com, to building social platforms for— we had a Facebook page over 540,000 people on it— to then we were working with brands, right? And the brands were paying us. And then all of a sudden, one day I thought about it. And I told my wife, I said, hold up, If they paying us, that means we got something of value. And we'd be crazy to not use it ourselves. Because we just, we must have influence because they pay us for influence, but we're not using the influence ourselves. Then we start creating our products, documentary films, ebooks, audiobooks, courses, retreats. And through all of that, we wasted a lot of time because we could have success faster, right? The reason I say we wasted is because you just didn't know what to do. But we also didn't go find people who knew what to do. Like we were just you know, figuring out everything on our own, reinventing the wheel over and over and over again. But during that process, it showed us how to market, it showed us how to build community, it showed us the importance of being profitable, not just popular, because a lot of people online, you know, focus too much on being popular, not enough on being profitable and actually making money around it, right, monetizing what they do. But it's a lot of those lessons that we learned then, that now we still incorporate now, over and over again, really, what we do now is born out of that, because as we did it, We started in the corner of our bedroom in the suburbs of DC, right? Small town called Waldorf, Maryland. And then, you know, as we grew, people saw us get an office, then we, you know, got the editor, then we got a team, we got all these writers. So since they saw it, they started asking us, can you teach me how to do what y'all are doing? And literally just was birthed out of that. So really, the foundation of everything we do is in that first brand, which allowed us to get started.

I like it, man, because that's me starting in the corner, you know what I'm saying? I wanna, I wanna build my thing like you, man. But let me ask you I had a reality TV couple on a couple of weeks ago. And so, you know, listening to you talk about you and your wife, then listening to them, how important, man, or how much more of a benefit is it that when you have a spouse that, you know, y'all on the same thing, you know what I'm saying? You thinking about the same thing and working together opposed to like somebody that's an entrepreneur in the family, opposed to somebody just working a 9 to 5. It's like two different mindsets, you know what I'm saying? So how cool is it to be able to do all these things, man, with your wife?

It's great. One of the things we always say is, if you can get together with your spouse, it's not like 1 1 2. It's like 1 1 11. And it is like exponential. One of the greatest things is what you should have— you working with a spouse is 2 of y'all is not just working together in the business, but your business goals, your life goals should be the same. They move towards each other. And that's not always the case. Because, because even though We always talk about the fact that like what makes a great business partner makes a great spouse. If me and you go into business today, we gotta be able to communicate, we gotta trust each other, we gotta believe that if CJ say he gonna do what he do, he gonna do it. Lamar say he gonna do what he do, he gonna do it. Like all these things are just working with people, work in business and in relationships. But the difference is you might say, hey, you know what? You know, I wanna work another 30 more years. I might be like, hey, my last kid in high school next year. Like, that's the next year I'm out. We just want to travel the world. Like, we can have these external conflicts that don't match up what we're doing internally, but with your spouse, hopefully everything going the same direction. And if I could just say one more thing, like, my wife was not— she still says she's not an entrepreneur, like, by heart. Like, me, always knew from like 6th grade, I want to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know how to be one. I had to figure it out. But with her, she's the opposite. I'm a risk taker, she conservative. So when we met, even though I wasn't fully in entrepreneurship, now she didn't really understand, understand the reason why I did a lot of things I did. But what I did do to eventually got her over is that I showed up and I was consistent. And I think a lot of times that's what couples don't do, right? We looking like, man, but you know, women tell us, my husband won't get on board. You know, he down on what I'm doing, or, you know, my wife won't listen. She tried to hold me down, try to do this and that. We forget that your spouse see everything. So the time you paid the house money to go to the conference and you didn't implement anything, spouse saw that. When you got the gym membership and said you bought to transform your body, but you ain't never go to the gym, right? The spouse saw that. Like, like you got the Peloton bike and now it's just clothes sitting on in the corner. Like your spouse has seen all those things. So it's easy for you to tell your friends and your family these stories. And they believe you. But your spouse has seen the behind the scenes all the times you said you would do something, you didn't do it. So we say it's like, hey, just be consistent, follow through. If they see you being consistent, they'll get on board. And what I always tell the ladies about— because dude, you know, dudes, let me be honest, like, dudes are funny. This is what I tell the ladies. I tell the ladies, ladies, you watching this, I say, if you want to get a dude on board, make money and get to the money fast. 'Cause I didn't see many a dude where like if the woman make money, the business start moving, the dude ain't have no interest. Now he want to be all involved. Yeah, he want business cards, CJ. He the COO, he want to do business cards. Listen, so we just got to get that thing moving, get some success, be consistent with it.

And I totally agree with you, bro. You know what I'm saying? Just doing what I do, you know, although I got a 9-to-5 job, don't— that's not— get that twisted. But my wife seeing me be consistent in what I'm doing, I'm 187 episodes in right now, you know what I'm saying? 2 years next month. And so she see what I'm doing, what I'm doing. And plus, like you say, with men, they see the women. And she saw a little money coming in, like, okay, yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, although I don't go through all the particulars with her, whatever, sometimes you don't, you know, she's like, yeah, okay. But I'd be like, oh, you know, I just interviewed, uh, A matter of fact, I just put it into a situation. I interviewed a young lady the other day, got a show called Bail Collective on my work. Yeah, Latisha Pierce, just interviewed her the other day, real sweet lady. You know, she got this thing called Woman's Brunch Mississippi. And so I was like, I say, uh, I say, uh, man, we need to bring that to Gary, you know, have something like that. She's like, CJ, let's do it. So I'm like, cool. So, you know, we talked about it or whatever, so I took it to my wife. I'm like, you know, I'm thinking about doing this, you know, whatever, whatever. So I need you to participate, you know what I'm saying? Because, you know, my wife like to cook and host and stuff like that, but I wanted to bring her in, you know, that bring her into it. And so now it's like, she's like, wait a minute, he really, you know what I'm saying? So I'm like, I've been doing something, I just don't say, you know, tell it all because sometimes it's just going one end out the other. But like you say, when they see you consistently, they get on board with it.

That's it. Like, what you—

you—

I want to make sure they catch what you said. You in episode 2 or 3, she may have heard it, may not have heard it, whatever, right? But now, like, you know, once you're doing hundreds of episodes, for one, it just shows that, like, you in this thing for real. Because a lot of times, you know, our spouse may say something, you kind of think like, yeah, okay, like, we'll see, right? But like, after day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you like, all right, they dedicated to this thing.. And then the way they eventually start to shape around it is different. But then the other part I want to get to, to my wife and I, we used to speak up most times, she'll speak as much because I told she like, I'll be in the background, I'll come out, you know, when I want to. But when we used to have to speak together a lot, we did the marriage stuff because they want to see both of us. We'd always get somebody stand up and say, hey, I want my spouse to support, you know, me like y'all support each other and do that. And a lot of times we got a vision of what support look like. So they might think, you know, it could be somebody with a podcast and think, yo, like, like, my wife, my wife, my husband supporting me, they got to be the co-host of the podcast. But one of the things we used to always talk about is, if you had a conference, and you got kids, and your spouse is holding down the kids at home, guess what they support? If you take your money out the household money, and you put into the business, guess what they support you? I mean, support look like a whole lot of different things. And oftentimes, we're only looking at it through one lens. They're like, hey, we want them to do the thing I want them to do. But a lot of times they actually are supporting us. It just shows up different.

And space. I'm glad you brought that up because that's one thing, you know, I know New Year's Eve we were sitting out here, whatever, and I told my wife too, I say, I thank you for giving me the space that I need to do what I'm doing. You know what I'm saying? Because if they nagging, you know, you not doing this, you not spending no time here. So, you know, I try to balance it out. But you know, yeah, with all the stuff that you and your wife do, it's good. You need space because we gotta be creative. There's so much stuff that you gotta do, you know what I'm saying, to, you know, doing this, doing that, or whatever, whatever. So I just thank her for giving me my space to allow me to do what I'm doing, you know what I'm saying? Because I enjoy— I love this, man. I love talking to brothers like you and sisters, you know what I'm saying? Because y'all got the know-how. I love bringing y'all on the show, man, to inspire others, man, because you inspire me. So let me ask you, Lamar Mathews, what's the biggest lesson producing film taught you about storytelling? And how do you apply that lesson in business scaling today?

Oh, that's so good. Oh, that's a good one. Probably, it's probably a few things. Probably number one, what I would say is it taught me to keep going and get better, right? One of the things, our very first film, we did a movie called Happily Ever After, positive image of Black marriage. And I normally only say the name because I don't want nobody to look at it. It's like it was that bad. I don't know how your Podcast One was compared to that.

Terrible Podcast One, 10, 20.

It's like it was bad. But as we kept going, we got a lot better at telling the stories and figuring out what the audience reacted and didn't react to. So even in the visual format, we might have a couple And they sitting down, and to me, I'm saying like, yo, they just sitting on the couch. But then somebody see the movie, and they will pick it all apart. You know, look how far she is away from him. Like, look, they not touching. They not comfortable. What that mean is he done something in the past that she ain't recovered from. And we like, yo, they just sitting at a table, and the chairs don't sit next to each other, right? So we really got good at storytelling and being able to connect what the audience want, what the audience need, and then be able to tell that throughout the story. Another one is just transparency, because people really relate to transparency. So we talk about, you know, in the films we did, like having people be as authentic as they can translates to what we do in business now, even as it relates to around entrepreneurship, right? We tell business owners, when they talk to customers, they talk to clients, like if they can get buy-in with the client, that they understand where that person was, or where that person is, what the person going through, it automatically draws that person closer to you. And it gets them close to being able to want to buy from you because they know, like, and trust you. If we get, you know, in a situation where something go wrong in the business, that same transparency that we can share with just not hiding that something went wrong, but just being upfront that, hey, this is what happened. And this is how we're gonna fix it. This is what we're gonna do about it. Most people are cool with that. They just want you to communicate. So, like, being able to tell stories and communicate, like, translated to us being able to talk to customers now, But then also, as we talk to our internal team, because the time when things happen inside the business where maybe a key person may leave the business, it could be, you know, something goes right, something goes wrong. We have a great revenue year, we have a bad revenue year. And I got to get in front of the team and explain that, hey, you know what, revenue slipped a little bit this year. We won't get it back. But this is what we got to do. And I got to tell a story around. So that storytelling, transparency, being able to communicate it, being able to get everything to you and get people excited about the things you want to get excited about, it benefits every day.

I like it, man. Story, you know what, because I talked to a lot of CEOs and things of that nature on here. And one thing they do talk about is storytelling. You got to be able to present, you know, saying what you said, what people can be interested in, like, you know, because I've been in meetings where it'd be like, oh man, where the M&M's or where my toothpicks at? You know, like Tom and Jerry back in the day, I put toothpicks in his ass. Hey, and too, like, I like reading the word. I read the word. But everybody don't. And so I have to be able to tell a story about the word, and you won't even know that it's the word, but I'm presenting a real life story that's including the word in it, you know what I'm saying? So that's the way that I built my storytelling around being able to take things out of what it is, you know what I'm saying, or whatever, and bring it and bring that element to where we are today or where you are right now, you know, where we can relate like you say, being authentic, because people can relate to people that's authentic. If they know that you have been through something, if they know that you been through these trials and tribulations. So if I can explain to you and give you me, then sometimes, especially me, especially us men, we can open up to each other, you know what I'm saying? Because a lot of time we be like, I ain't telling that dude nothing, you know what I'm saying? But when you real about it, people, you know what I'm saying, men can talk, because there's a lot of things that we can't talk to our women about, you know what I'm saying? A lot of things that we don't want to talk to them about. But we don't have that true brother in our corner that we can talk to, you know what I'm saying? So whenever I talk to young men or talk to me or my peers or whatever, man, I just try to be straight up with them because I've been through enough myself, you know what I'm saying? And so I can't criticize or down or judge nobody. But you said something about the owners. When you can talk to people and have empathy, you know what I'm saying, you can relate to people much more because now if you know what people have been through, you know what I'm saying, now you can relate. And that's what we need more in the world today, a little more empathy and being sympathetic, you know what I'm saying? Hey, so let me ask you, Lamar, man, when you challenge negative portrayals of Black love, did you realize at the time you were actually laying the foundation for how to challenge economic narratives as well?

You know, at the time we didn't. It's probably like a lot of times in life, we just do the thing, and then later on we like, oh, like people always ask me like, hey, do you realize you're doing this, doing that? And I'm like, nah, I'm just doing the work. Right. So as we did it, we started out with that original brand. And just thinking was like, yo, it got to be other Black couples. This happened because at the time, there was so much negativity in the press. And always say like, one of the greatest threats to the Black community is the way they pit Black men and Black women against each other. Right? Like, like, it's all these narratives that they, you know, teach Black women about Black men. They want to control you, they gonna cheat on you. You can't trust them, you know, this, that. And then at the same time, it's all these things they tell Black men about Black women, that they gold diggers, they only want to use you for your money, they gonna try to run over you, all these things. So again, we got like a lack of trust, lack of empathy, like you said, for each other. So during that original piece, we said, it gotta be other couples out here. We started, you know, doing the site, doing the movies. And at the time, we'd only been married for like, you know, less than 5 years, but we found a lot of people in the community saying, my parents have been married for 20, 30 years. And I never see it represented. We start seeing couples pop up and say, we've been married for 40, 50 years, and we never see ourselves represented in the press. And then we realize, like, hey, we need more positive propaganda to go out because we only see one side of the equation. Like, yeah, this exists in the community, but this exists also, but we don't ever see it. And CJ, the crazy thing is I dealt with the same thing a week ago. Over the last, you know, few years, I've been going to Africa more, right? It's like getting on the ground, trying to find out what's going on, you know, exploring it. So now we've been to 3 countries, been to Ghana twice, and then me and my wife celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. So we went to Zanzibar, which is in Tanzania. We spent a day, we had a layover, so we spent a day in Ethiopia on the way back. I put like a little reel together, I put it on Instagram last Monday. And from Monday, like late Monday to Friday, that one little video got over 3 million views. I think now it's up to like 3.2, 3.3 million views. And all it is, is beautiful beaches, is amazing properties, right? It's like, I'm on a boat going down the lake, Lake Volta in Ghana. And I'm seeing like properties on the beach that look like— I mean, properties on the side of the lake that look like Miami, right? I'm showing like these amazing images of Africa. And all I'm saying in each shot is, this is Africa. I'm like, this is Africa. I'm on a day with a safari with Dran. This is Africa. It's like, just like a minute of me saying this Africa, showing their videos. Why are people mad at me? They mad at you. And they like, what about the other part? This ain't all love. And I said, you've been seeing the other part for 40, 50 years. Yeah, you know the other part exists. This is the part you don't know exists, you know what I mean?

So they want you to show the negative side of it and not the beautiful side of it. Man, that's crazy, man.

You just seen so much of the negative side. You ain't ever got to see it again. It's already etched in your brain. Like, it's— they didn't fry it in your brain, right? You know, you know, you expecting somebody in the hut, you expecting kids with big bellies, you expecting flies on their face. But what you not expect is me to show you this 5-star hotel look like. Yeah. What you're not expecting is to get there, and in some of the vacation destinations, it's a lot of people there, but none of them are Black. It's people from Europe, and this is where they coming to vacation. So Again, like, we just need to say, all right, like, what's things that we need to shine light on, right, that people may not be aware of? And then know that when you do shine it, it's still gonna be people coming at you, fighting you over it, saying it ain't true, saying that, you know, you doing wrong or you ain't doing right, all this other stuff. But you just gotta, you know, keep pushing ahead and do what you got to do for you, for yourself and the community, man.

Look here, Lamar, man, you said it from the beginning, you know, people are so negative about our, you know, he would never change, he a cheater, gonna— once a cheater, always a cheater. And so we so used to being in the negative space. And even if you watching social media or things of that nature, we love all the negative stuff, stuff that, you know, you look at Scoop or whatever, the fighting, the killings, the shooting, you know what I'm saying, that, that type of stuff It makes us happy. But when you bring something positive, or like you said earlier, if I— hey, congratulations, by the way, too, on 20. I'm at 16 in December myself. But when you say like, man, you know, I've been married for 16 years and I'm happy, you know, me and my wife happy, people don't want to believe that. Like, it had to be something, you know what? Hey, look here, and that's exactly it, you know. Like, look, I don't know And then again too, you know, I heard you say like when y'all go to different places, like, oh, my mom's been married for 23 years, and you know, this one married for 49 years. And a lot of times when a lot of people get into marriage, especially, you know, a lot of times women too, they say, well, my mother and father been married for 20 years. Well, that don't mean that you're gonna be married for 20 years because you're not your mama and he's not your daddy, you know what I'm saying? It all depends on what you make of it, and you got to keep people out of your business, you know what I'm saying? You can't be bringing Mommy in your business every time something go wrong or this and that. And you can't have a strong marriage— go to Lamar and Ronnie, man, they'll teach you on how to build a strong marriage because he been in it 20 years and so he real about it. I appreciate you, bro. So let me ask you, man, let's get to the scaling part of it. Your scale systems, man, most people know TSP as a machine for scaling. What's the system you built that didn't work? And how did you flip it into something better?

You know, this is good, right? And actually, this happens all the time. I had somebody ask me before, like, do you fail? I said, I fail all the time. But I don't process this failure because it's only failure if you quit. If you don't quit, it's just a lesson, right? It's part of it. And if you can learn to not let the failure stop you, it's good. So most of the time when I, when I start anything, right, be— I give y'all a conference, we do 2 conferences a year. Our next one is in January. In Atlanta, then we do one in June. So TSP Scales in January, TSP Live is in June. And the very first conference we did, 2016, for Traffic, Sales, and Profit, I wanted 200 people, 200 weren't coming. I said, alright, maybe we do 100, 100 weren't coming. We ended up with 47 people, and only 20 of those people bought tickets. So more than half of them got in for free. Now, the thing is, people say, Lamar, how did you grow from that to like now most events we do like 1,000 people? $100,000 plus. When we did it, the only reason we able to keep going is we were consistent. And we didn't stop. And we didn't lose so much money on that first one that we couldn't bounce back. Like we make money, but we really lose a lot of money. It was able to kind of keep going. Because we have a lot of money at the time, like be playing with. So how can you like minimize what your losses are? So when you lose, you ain't just totally out of the game. And just know you're gonna be consistent, had a mindset that Hey, everything may not work on the first time. It may take the fifth time, it may take the 12th time. But the only thing I can control is how fast I get there. I can't control when it's gonna work, but I control how many steps I take, as fast as I take those steps to get there. So for us, year one was 47 people. Next June, we got back together, we had 172, then we grew to like 250, 300, to boom, like it just kept growing, but only because we remained consistent. Only because we kept showing up and primarily only because we didn't quit the first time when we didn't hit the goal.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, because like you said, that could knock a little wind out yourself, like, oh man, you know, I don't want to be just losing money. Ain't people standing up. But if you got a vision and you stick to it regardless of what other people see, you got a vision, man. God just put the wind behind you and it's gonna go, you know. And a lot of times we get tested to see how we gonna react. Yes, to certain situations, you know what I'm saying? And once you Make that step forward. He gonna put that wind behind you. Now, like you say, now we got thousands of people in that 47. That's it, you know what I'm saying? That's way in the back burner now because we moved past that, man. So let me ask you, man, on top of that question, you've worked with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. What's the single biggest mindset trap holding Black entrepreneurs at 6 figures instead of 7?

Oh, that's a good one. One of the ones I'll say is around the multiple streams of income. And I say a lot of times, because people, you know, they just think like, I need to do all the things to make all the money. And for a lot of people, when they finally figure out how to build a six-figure business, right, it's hard getting there for a lot of them. But then once they figure it out, I got it figured out, so I can build another. But the problem, CJ, is now they got like two or three different six-figure businesses that don't serve each other. What I always say is, What stops a lot of people getting to 7 figures is that they got too many 6-figure businesses. So I got 2 or 3 different businesses, but that means it's 2 or 3 things pulling me in 2 or 3 different directions, taking up my time, and I'm not focused. And when I ask somebody, "Why they not focused?" they always mention, you know, multiple streams of income. What I tell them is, if your multiple streams are not making money, those are not multiple streams of income, they multiple streams of struggle. Because it's like they really holding you down from reaching the next level. So when we talk about getting to 6 figures, 6 figures is about product-market fit. What do I sell? Who do I sell it to? And how do I sell it, right? What do I sell? Who do I sell it to? How do I sell? Once we get beyond 6 figures, we try to get to 7. And then we start getting around, you know, $300,000, $500,000, $700,000, we start getting to a new set of problems. And those problems start to look like this. Number 1, now I got it, you know, good product or service, I know what I sell, who I sell it to, how I sell it, but I need to get more people in front of it so I can sell to more people., right? A lot of times I got people with great product or service. Whenever somebody get in front of them, they can make money, but they just ain't in front of enough people. So I got to get in front of more people. Also, they got to expand, and they got to do internal and external expansion. External expansion, like I said, is getting more traffic, there's more leads, more people in front of them. But internally, at that point, 500, 600, 700, they got to start building team, because they get beyond where they can do all the work themselves.. And that's probably the hardest part for a lot of entrepreneurs. Because for a lot of people making money, that's really hard. It's a lot of people is great at the hustle, and they can hustle up money, they can make it happen. But when it's less about you hustling and more about you picking the right people, making sure you managing those people, making sure you teaching them how to go out and be able to do the things that you did, then it gets a lot more difficult for a lot of folks. And that actually is a barrier, I call it a friction point.. It causes many of them to say, you know what, I don't really want to grow to the next level, cool here. Because also what happens around that $500,000 to $700,000 range, I always say they land into the biggest enemy of success, which is comfort. Because when they first start, now I need to feed myself, I got to feed my family, right? So I'm out there hustling. But when they get around, you know, $300,000, $500,000, $700,000, they don't have their dream house. But they got a nice crib, you know what I'm saying? Like, they might not have had a dream. I might have had a Bentley, but I got a nice Mercedes-Benz, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm comfortable. And it's hard for a lot of people.

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Mm, I get it, I get it. I ain't as hungry as I was, you know what I'm saying, in the beginning. I got a little meat on the table now. And so, you know, like you said earlier, I could take some trips, trips and go to Ghana a couple of times and do this and that, you know, I'm good. But so that will keep you back, man. I like it, man. Keep dropping these nuggets on us, Lamar, man. So let me ask you, man, wealth and community impact. When you say closing the racial wealth gap, what's the uncomfortable truth behind that gap still exists?

Yeah, you know, one of them, I'll say this always kind of to my people in the community, Travis says profit, you gotta build bigger and faster. It's data that shows most Black businesses start because they want to serve people, right? At the highest level, that is Black women. More Black women start businesses because they want to serve other people than anybody. At the lowest is white men, right? Most of them start their business because they just want money, right? Boom, greatness, I want business, I want money. Nothing wrong with either one. But if we really want to serve people, we need to make more money. Because too many of us trying to like— there's too many people trying to make their mission and their heart work into a business and that ain't it, right? I want them to build a business, make a lot of money, and then serve people out of the overflow. Another uncomfortable truth about it is that we don't employ enough people. So when we look in the Black communities and we look at areas like, you know, maybe Gary or Chicago, Atlanta, right, DC, and we see large numbers of people in our community that are unemployed, most people hire people that looks like them. 9 out of 10 Black businesses don't hire anybody. So when you look across the communities, like, if we could just get more Black businesses to actually grow to a level where they had to hire employees, it would automatically impact unemployment rates in our communities. And then you know what that means? I'm lifting up as an entrepreneur, if I'm hiring other people, I'm not just feeding my family now, I'm feeding their families too. And I'm not just impacting them, I'm impacting the neighborhoods we live in. I'm impacting, you know, the children I see, I'm impacting the children that play with my children. And it lifts us all up at the same time.

I like it, man. Good dude right here. Good dude, right? Because that's just the bottom line, man. You know, we gotta lift each other up. But then a lot of times, you know, you can get to that level and then now everybody else down on this level, I really ain't got, you know what I'm saying, whatever, whatever, man. But as long as you stay true to yourself, like you say, man, we started for— so you know the ins and outs, you know. That's like the CJ Moneyway, you know, like my tagline, stories behind the success. You know, because people, we can see Lamar and your wife where you are now. But like you explained in the beginning, that nobody know that you started in the corner of your, you know what I'm saying, bedroom in DC, you know what I'm saying, to where you grew at now. But it took some, it took some stuff, you know, that brick by brick we had to build this thing brick by brick. And we built it brick by brick, man. So like you said, so we can help our community and help others. That, you know, saying pass it down from generation to generation so that they can build brick by brick as well. Because I'm telling you, the way things going right now, Lamar, man, we need our communities to start building brick by brick, man. Because we ain't gonna even go there, but, um, I ain't gonna even go there. I want to get canceled, man. So, uh, so let me ask you, man, If tomorrow every TSP business owner hit 7 figures, what would the next level of Black wealth building be like?

Oh, that's a good one. Nobody ever asked me that. I'd say if all of those businesses did that, I think, you know, I think a lot of them— so a couple things, right? If they did that, like I said, most of them would have to hire employees. So that just would boom, change the game, change a lot. Besides that, I think I would encourage them to invest in educating other people. Educating themselves, educating other people outside of that. I think that's the big missing link. We've shown that like, hey, when we get access to the information, we gonna be killing it. Like we gonna be vital with it, we gonna make stuff happen. You know, we gonna grow. It's just not enough people in our community got access to the information. So what I would love to see is then people say, hey, you know what, I'm going to invest some of the money I got, and I'm gonna create my own scholarships. You know what I'm saying? So scholarship in my family's name, that other people can benefit from. Because again, like, we know situations that people are in, in our own communities, where other people in other communities may look down on us, or think this or think that we know what's up. CJ, one of the things I'm most proud about is that on our team, I got team members who I know they would hit a ceiling working other places. I know somebody would say, I don't like your hair, right? Or they would— they wouldn't say it to their face. But they might think like, hey, I don't like that person's hair. Or I don't like the person's tattoo, I don't like their piercings. I don't like, you know, I can't think of a young Black male in this role in that position, like different things that go through people's mind. But in our company, like, hey, if they bout it, like the sky's the limit, they can do anything. So what I would say is those businesses grew like that, then they start creating opportunities for other people. And I think like, that's the real thing. Like, how can we get beyond what we just doing for ourselves and our family and start looking outside to create opportunities for other people? As well.

So let me ask you, man, on a different note, I was thinking as you were saying it, you know, like a lot of times what we say is that, you know, we don't have the finances or resources to build, you know, wealth or build a business or anything. So is there anything that you all teach, you know what I'm saying, to show people how to actually go get that money to actually start a business or seed money or things of that nature?

Yeah, we do. And what we also do is one of the things we really focus on a lot 'Cause most businesses, right, like you hit on the head, most businesses do not start with seed money. It ain't like, hey, you know what, my parents left me $100,000 to start this business. The banks definitely ain't trying to give you the money most of the time, right? They running you through the loops and through the wringer. So when we built that business we built, it was our paychecks. It was like, hey, I work 9 to 5, and like the first films, like me taking my check and investing the money like into myself. So number one, like everybody listening knowing it, you are a good investment. For a lot of people listening, you think it's better to invest in Tesla, better to invest in Apple, better to invest in IBM, and those are better return than you investing in yourself. So like, you always gonna be the best investment, because when I invest in me, I can control the return. Right? It's based on like what I put in, what I get out, what I'm doing to make it happen. The other thing is like, we're really focused on getting people every dollar they supposed to get. Like we did a tour last year, went to 13 different cities. One of the things we found is that most of the small businesses were not making all the money they should. So they probably only made 70 cents on the dollar. So for every $10,000 they made, they left $3,000 on the table. So think about a 6-figure business, if I make $100,000, that's $30,000. If I make a million, that's $300,000 I'm leaving behind. And what it broke down to is they weren't pulling these levers. And we created something called Leveraging Growth system. And we, you know, figured out like it's 20 different levers that they can pull in the business, where it provides minimum effort, maximum output. The first 4, we call it Core 4, are proposals, right? People issue proposals. And think about like, as a consumer, I want something fixed at the house, I'll get online and find somebody. It's only one thing I want to know, CJ, how much does it cost? That's all I want to know, right? They make me get on the phone. When I get on the phone, they don't give me a price. Then they like, I gotta get you a proposal. Then they don't send a proposal on time. Then when they send it, they don't follow up. It's just like a process, right? So we teach them how to get that together, they gonna make more money. Then we talk about how they need to implement upsells. If I go to McDonald's right now after this, I say I want a Big Mac. First thing they gonna say is, do you want fries and a drink? Do you want a meal? Do you want a combo? If I go to Best Buy, first thing I'm gonna do when I get to the register at Best Buy, I'm gonna say, yeah, let me get this you know, it's all I got. They will say, hey, do you want a protection plan with that?

Right?

Amazon will say, hey, people that bought this also bought that. Ask that one question. One question saying, hey, you buy this, would you like these things to go with it? Those companies make billions of extra dollars a year. I don't even know I'm thirsty until somebody asked me that at McDonald's. Then I'm like, yeah, you know what? I ain't thirsty now. But once I eat the sandwich, I probably will be. So let me just go get it, right? So we're doing upsell, right? Our referrals. Most business owners I talk to, 9 out of 10 say, Lamar, most of my clients come through word of mouth. When I ask them if they got a system, they don't have a system. So that means they just hoping somebody talk about their business, hoping somebody refer them. So we help put a referral system in place. And then experience. What I tell folks is, if you can wrap around, wrap an experience around what it is that you do, you can charge people 2 times, 3 times 20 times as much just because they want that experience. It's a place called Poppy Steak down in Miami where they charge $1,000 for one steak. Only— and believe me, when people buying it, they not spending $1,000 for it. I talked to people from Texas, I said, how much that steak worth? They say somewhere between $30 to $50. They not buying it for the steak. They buying it because when it come out, they bring it out like it's bottle service. It's like the waiter's coming out, The DJ changed the music, they cheering, it come in a suitcase they call a beef case. It looked like it's on a bed of diamonds, right? It's lit up like they chatting for you. So how can you wrap an experience around what you do, right? So if we help them just with those 4 levels, they can instantly make more money. We call it like the hidden revenue formula because it's literally money hidden in their businesses. We need to help them get that money out.

Nah, I like it, man. What's the name of that restaurant again?

Papi's, Papi's Steakhouse, P-A-P-I.

I'm gonna get my weight up and I'm gonna take my wife to Poppy's, man. We gonna go get the experience. Don't worry about that. And I worry about the thousand dollar steak, but we gonna get that experience, man. You know, it was a couple things you said too, and you know, you say go from a million dollars, you leaving $300,000 on the table. Yeah, man, like Sarah, that's that Maybach that I'm talking about. That's that Maybach that I need. You know, that's that extra $300,000 there. And I gotta say, man, I love the artwork back there, man. It's really groovy, man. Really groovy. I like the vibe. So let me ask you, uh, Lamar, man, the man behind the movement, you know, let's talk about the man. 15 years being IT, you know, being in IT before entrepreneurship, what did that chapter teach you that still guides how you move today?

You know, what it taught me was to strive to be excellent in everything. I always tell people that you can't expect that you're gonna be a C player at work and then be an A player in business. It don't work. Like, people always try to game the system and try to figure it out. But what I found out was that people are C players at work, or C players in their own companies too, right? They used to slack, and you used to slack. Yeah. What I also found out is that people who's great strive for greatness in everything. If they work like people, as great A players don't like being D or C players, like nowhere in nothing that they do, right? You know, so I'm at work, like I was a great employee at work. It's like I'm a great person in business, right? I tell my wife all the time, and I just, you know about me, I'm like, whatever we doing, I'm gonna strive for the top. We could run— I ain't never ran a marathon in my life, CJ, we ran one tomorrow. I ain't gonna come in first, but I tell my wife, you know what, I ain't gonna come in last. Because that ain't in my DNA. I don't care what we do, I ain't never coming in last. Yeah, something I ain't never done before, because it just ain't in me. Yeah. So what it taught me is how to strive. And the other thing, too many people when they start businesses, try to leave whatever they did in their previous career behind, right? And I say that's a a missed opportunity. Because so much of what I learned about organization, about leadership, about how to run meetings, I learned from working in a company and just watching what happened. Like, too many people in a company, and it's almost like this your training ground, but you ain't paying attention. So when I look at the meetings I run with my team, it got the fingerprints of my old boss all over it. Because I used to look and be like, man, I like the way you run these meetings. Because he was serious. He wasn't mean, but he was serious. He ain't playing. Everybody knew, like, look, they like, when I show up tomorrow morning, yeah, I better have my stuff together. And if I don't, it's gonna be some questions. And I don't want to look like no fool. So they showed up. So it's all these lessons that we got in front of us, making sure we pay attention. And I pulled a lot of those lessons, you know, from working, I was able to actually implement my business with my teams and what we do today.

I like it, man. You got me on a biblical thing again. It's just like Joseph, man, when he went in the dungeon. And went in the dungeon. He learned some stuff, you know what I'm saying? Like you say, organizational skills. Even sometimes when you don't want to be somewhere or you feel like you don't deserve to be here, that you better than this, there's lessons where you are, you know what I'm saying? And if you ignore the lessons or fail the lessons where you are, you're not gonna make it when you get to wherever you supposed to be. Because like you say, you didn't take what you needed there to where you are now, then you wondering why you still leaving $300,000, $500,000— forget it, the whole million on the, on the table, you know what I'm saying? I want to make a million dollars. What you doing to make a million dollars? Hey, so, uh, I only got a couple more questions for you, Lamar, man. I appreciate you coming up. But before we go there, man, tell us where can we find you at on social media? Where can we find these great business plans or topics and things that you're talking about, man? Where can we find you at?

Short, easiest way, I'm on social everywhere, just @LamarTyler, L-A-M-A-R-T-Y-L-E-R. So on Facebook, on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, everywhere, YouTube, just @LamarTyler, you'll find me. The brand is Traffic, Sales, and Profit. That's just @TrafficSalesAndProfit everywhere. And we actually do free trainings every month. So if you listen to this and say, hey, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, I wanna learn how to get my last 30 cents, don't leave my Maybach behind, like CJ Moneyway Johnson was talking about. Come to www.hiddenrevenueformula.com, hiddenrevenueformula.com. And we do free trainings, normally about 2 or 3 times a month, probably once a week, where we show you how to make sure and recognize like the biggest mistakes people make that cause you to leave that money on the table. And then what you can do about it to make sure you pick up everything without having to pay for new clients. And without having to spend a lot of money, like really just getting and making the most of what you already have.

I like it, man. So do me a favor, Lamar. Hire your people to send my people, which is me, that information, man, so I can get into this free training myself, man, and check it out myself. I want to learn how to scale and get my money back and go eat that $1,000 steak, man, and have this experience, bro. I am dead serious about that, man. So let me ask you, man, if you could go back to the days of launching if I'm saying this right, BMWK. Yeah. With your wife Ronnie, what's one piece of advice you whisper to that version of Lamar?

Get a coach. That's the number one thing I say. Like, it took us 7 years to gross our first million. It's not even a million. It's like from the first dollar to the million dollar. And we probably wasted the first 4 because we literally were trying to figure out, like, what do we sell? How do we sell it? You know, what's— we need an email list. It's like everything in the business was new to us. So everything we learned one by one, it wasn't till like a year around year 4, we started going to conferences, we started getting coaches, started hiring consultants. And then we realized there's people that already knew what we didn't know. So then they shortcut the gap. And when we finally got like, like over 850,000 of that million came in the last 3 years. And it's just because like, we could have made it early. We just didn't know how to or what to do. So when I, you know, after it happened, I thought about it. I said, business is one of the only things where we don't, you know, act like we need a coach. There's no way you would be like, hey, I want to be a professional basketball player, but I ain't never gonna be coached by nobody.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, it's like, hey, you know what, I want to be a boxer, but I ain't never gonna, you know, have nobody telling me what to do in the ring. Like, you know, it's Crazy. So we just waste so much time not getting with people that already know, you know what they want. It would be if, you know, a person wanted to launch a podcast today. The craziest thing they could ever do is just start podcasting without looking and getting no information from what's already out there. Right? They can have somebody like you who's done 180-something episodes, you could just probably like, and what you learn in doing almost 200 episodes, you could probably jump them in one month, what probably took you the first year to do or something. You know what I mean? Just like, just because you learn so many lessons. So like that part, without a doubt, just getting with people that already have been like where you want to go and just get the shortcut to success.

That's it. I like it, man. I'm gonna let you go, man. Give me one more question. One more. You often talk about passion, purpose, and profit. If you can only leave one of those words for future generations, which one and why?

Oh, that's tough. That's tough. I always say you need all three, right? Because it's a lot of people are focused on, you know, passion and purpose when they don't have profit, then they doing 50, 11 things trying to, you know, make ends meet, right? Because they can't do it all. So what you do, I can't get down to one, I get down to two, right? But I tell people they need to do I feel like you should be passionate about your purpose. Like, I feel like those two can be one. Because if I'm passionate about it, and the money's not coming in yet, I'll keep doing it, right? If you want to create a— somebody, let's say, I want to create a podcast. If they're not passionate about whatever they talk about, they think they're gonna be making money in episode 5. Yeah, they're gonna have a—

for episode 100.

Oh, right, right. It's like I mean, like you said, you like doing it, like it got to be something in you. Yeah. Where you feel like, yo, I'm passionate about this. Oh, this is my purpose. I'm supposed to be doing this. Because that's the only thing that drives you. That it's been plenty of time. If we did a podcast or the video or something, and we like, oh, this is gonna kill them. And it don't, you know what I'm saying? But we get back up because we love doing it. So like, alright, well, the next one, right? What can we learn? How can we do it? So you need that, but then you still do need that profit piece. Because again, if I'm doing something I love, but I'm not making money with it, I'm just gonna be doing too much stuff, like trying to make ends meet, it's gonna stress me out. Now, on the other hand, if I'm doing something I make money in, but I'm not, you know, my purpose or passion about it, eventually I'm gonna get burnt out. Because the money is cool in the beginning. But then after a while, after like the newness of it wears off, it's gonna be unfulfilling. You like, yo, I don't like showing up every day. Like, once I bought the initial stuff I want to buy, you like, then what? So like, I think you need at least two of them, right? That passion, purpose on one side, the profit on the other. And then that's the perfect mix if you can make those two come together.

Nah, I like the whole thing, man. You know what I'm saying? Put it all together because that's what make it work. When you said that, you made me think of my father when he say, he say, man, go to school and get you an education so that you can get a career, something that you like waking up doing every day to do instead of just having a job. Something that you gotta do every day. So like you say, when you do see the money, when you doing something that you're passionate about, it gives you like, wow, you know what I'm saying? Okay, I can do this, whatever, and I would enjoy doing that. But I don't, you know, like, I can't say I, you know, like Joe Rogan or something like that, but it's just getting on here, man, talking to, like I said earlier, talking to people like you, people that's already doing this and doing that. Because believe me, I like the audience, my man. I'm soaking it up, you know what I'm saying? I'm listening, you know, like I'm listening. That's why I asked some of the questions that I asked, because I want to know myself. And this is the entertaining part, not just for those in the audience to be inspired, man, but hey, I'm a fan myself, man. So I really appreciate you coming on, Lamar, man. Before we get out of here, bro, give us one last thing, man. One thing that's on your heart that you would like to share with the audience.

You know what I would say if anybody that's out there that's thinking about starting a business or got a business and like how to get to the next level, what I'm gonna tell you is just get started. Like you have what you need today to get to where you need to get to tomorrow. And too many times we just overthinking the process. We trying to get everything perfect. We like, we can't start until we got this thing, that thing, and the other thing. And what I'm telling you is like, just get going. No matter where you are, like you equipped, you in the right place, it's the right time, you doing the right things. Probably one of the best times ever to be an entrepreneur. Because of technology, because of the opportunities we got now, because of social media. So just get started, man.

You heard it from my man Lamar. He say just get started. He didn't use the Nike slogan, but in other words, he said, man, just do it. Hey Lamar, man, Lamar, you living proof that media and money go hand in hand when it comes to building legacy, from Married While Black to scaling 7-figure businesses. His work has changed narratives, closed gaps, and inspired entrepreneurs worldwide. If this conversation gave you value, make sure you share it, subscribe to the CJ Moneyway Show, and lock in with us every week as we bring the voices shaping culture, business, and the future. And don't forget, believe in yourself and keep building brick by brick. This your boy CJ Moneyway with my man Lamar Tyler. And he's going to let us know where we can find that happily ever after. And I want to check it out. I don't care how bad it is. Hey, until the next time, we outta here. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys.

Who knows?

Your story might be next.

Mm-hmm.