Financial Discipline Is the Key To A Soft Life |The FYM Show

There was an episode of Diary of a CEO. On, on YouTube. And I'm going to tell you the name of the guy that, um, what's the name of the guy that was— we gotta find that episode. I got it here. But basically he was talking about the stock market and, um, His name is, um, what is his name? His name is Jeremy Grantham. And it was interesting because he was talking about like investing and the stock market. And one of the things that was super, super, super interesting is that he talked about buying stocks that have basically international companies. He was— his conversation was that the United States stock market has been going up over the last past 50 years. He said, do you think it's going to keep going up? And he said that he believes that the international exposure markets over the last past 2 years have already uh, had 65% in gains. And so his whole thought process is, why not continue to build on those gains and buy into, uh, companies that have exposure? Then they asked him about Bitcoin, and he was like, do you think Bitcoin is going to go to zero? And he was like, you know, yes. Maybe not to all the way to zero, but it's zero. He's like, do you like Bitcoin? He's like, no. Did you— do you have— do you have any cryptocurrency? He's like, no. He's like, why? He said it's a useless tool that has no real life, you know, activation. He said it's just used for criminals to move money, right? And it was so interesting just hearing him talk about this financial peace of like investing and what is like safe. So he was like, you need to get some shares into international companies, so you need to, uh, some, some bonds. So you need to get some real estate, um, precious, precious stones like silver, uh, gold. He said in a percentage, in a percentage just in cash. And he did not talk about buying American companies. He felt like StockX, uh, was not going to be a successful company. Say he feel like it's overvalued. Um, he's like, bro, he talked about the concept of going to try to start and build a civilization on Mars is so far-fetched and unrealistic because of the amount of— he said, first of all, you gotta, you gotta live underground. You gotta go on Mars, you gotta dig on the ground because of the way that the gravity, the gravity pull is. He said then you have to go and build a machine that can actually control gravity so that you can actually live on Mars. He was like, the smart thing would do to kind of build up something here on the Earth that can resemble Mars and like see, can you plant stuff? And he said, but this selling— he said, he said Elon Musk did a great job doing that with Tesla. Yeah, that he would go and he would just talk around and convince people and it would keep raising the stock of Tesla. He would cash out, buy more warehouses, cash out, buy more warehouses. He said, but he don't think he's going to be able to do that with SpaceX. He says too huge. He says too huge of evaluation. And how realistic it is to, to put people on Mars in a safe way, it's just so far-fetched. It's not going to be possible without, like, it's without it, without great financial exposure. So he didn't recommend buying stock yet. He said it would have to go down tremendously price value-wise for him to purchase it. But I just felt, I just felt like the interview was very, very, very interesting.

Yeah, it sounds interesting. Well, this is not Diary of the CEO, this is the FYM Show. That's my man Ty, I'm Yo, and we are going to have a very ignorant conversation about wellness. Now, Ty, you kind of set us up for a really interesting conversation I want to ask you, what was your major takeaway though from that, from his observation about stocks?

Did you, did you, did you—

did it make you change the way you view the type of stocks you want to invest in? Or like, how did it make you feel?

It made me change how I looked at investing. So he said he's— because he runs a billion-dollar investment firm, by the way. Okay, so he's not talking out his, out his butt, right? One of the things that he talked about, he said, if I was to tell my clients the thing that I'm telling you all, I would lose clients. He said, so financial advisors and wealth managers not going to tell you this because that you will probably take away your business because you're trying to find the thing, right? He said that, you know, one of the things that stood out to me said I already had been buying stocks in, um, like international exposure index funds. So I bought index funds, they got international companies in them, right? And when he said— I was like, hmm, interesting. I need to go and look up more low-cost index funds that have more international exposure, right? Because I do believe that the value in the market is overpriced. Um, you have to like figure out how to justify some of the spins on some of the stocks. Um, but I also still believe in the United States as an overall ecosystem in the marketplace, uh, even if it's a little bit, uh, overpriced right now. But my, my current, my most impactful value in the marketplace from a stock portfolio perspective, and come to U.S. companies, is private equity. You know, my private equity position is way larger than my public equities position. So my public equities position, I'm trying to focus on low-cost index funds that I don't have to like hire anybody to kind of oversee that business and have to pay them a half a point or 1% or whatever the number might be, because my private equity portfolio is, is pretty— it's pretty— it's pretty large for me.

Okay.

Right. Um, over, over the years of investing into private equity, so if 50% of those companies hit, you know, I see a— I see a tremendous windfall. Right, that I can put into, you know, low, low-income index funds. Because now I, I've had enough money and I can let that compound 5 to 6% year over year, and it'll beat inflation by like 4% or 3.5%. So really, you know, I'm really looking at a profit of 3.5%, you know, off of— let's say if it's $10 million in there, you know, that's, you know, 3.5% on $10 million. Because of the, the, um, exits from the different startup companies, you know.

Got you. Now, when did you start investing in index funds?

Um, I mean, I started investing into index funds personally probably about 2 years ago, but I was— I, I don't think I was doing it from a knowledge-based perspective, you know. With the boom of AI over the last, like, really like year, how fast AI has progressed from last summer to this summer. I have been using a lot about questions about investments and what's this, what's the low-cost index fund, what does that look like, give me the, give me the characteristics so I can go find one, I can go study them, what should I be looking for, right? It gives you so many details down to the T that a year and a half ago it wasn't the same.

You know, got you. So that's partially how you've been kind of like acquiring more knowledge about stocks is through your studies in AI.

Yeah, 1000%.

Well, man, that sounds really cool in terms of just like seeing different perspectives and then applying that to how you're building your portfolio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a— and it's a definitely a wellness approach because what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to set myself up to have a, the softest of the softest lives after I'm 50. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I'm trying to have the softest of the softest, you know. And the market is getting— the market is going up and down, up and down, up and down, you know. But you know, the truth of the matter is, you know, it is, it's, it's the American way on building wealth. Through stock, the stock market. Yeah, real estate. Yes, to build into building businesses. Building business is a lot more risky. Real estate is not as— it's not as risky, but it has risk, but it's expensive. The stock markets, it has risk, but it's, it's— it has enough data to kind of show you what's a volatile— like penny stocks are volatile, but like Pepsi-Cola is not as volatile as a penny stock, right? And Pepsi-Cola pays dividends. So when I'm thinking about my allotment and my, my, my pie chart of how much time I need to spend, you know, investment, my personal day-to-day building of a business is the riskiest thing because I'm risking time and I'm risking money, you know, to try to build a business, right? Where in actuality I could have put that time somewhere more meaningful Ideally, then I can put the money into the market or put the money into like acquiring real estate. That's something that's like, we know that that works in the United States of America. But, you know, we're building this entertainment business, we're talking about independent, you know, uh, films and all of those different aspects of things. And so it is, um, you know, it's, it's a, it's a diversified— I'm, I, I am diversified But a certain part of that diversity, it is risk, and some of it is not risk.

I hear you. Something that I came across recently is that people are unretiring, like, as a means of kind of keeping their living or their lifestyle, uh, comfortable, is that they retired maybe like 2020, as post-pandemic inflation, all a lot of things have brought people who were retired out of retirement. And then I, when I was, I was thinking about you when I was kind of reading about it, because how can you kind of forecast what you need to live a really, really soft life if so much is changing constantly? That sort of is kind of requiring people to work longer, almost to the extent where it's— I think the article was pretty much saying that people should kind of stop thinking about retirement and thinking about like, how can you just kind of manage your way into a long life that kind of keeps you working without kind of burning yourself out completely, but kind of taking retirement further and further off the table?

So I don't think about retirement in the traditional sense. I think about realignment, right? And with realignment, it takes planning, right? So I have a realignment strategy that is when I turn 50 years old— so I'm 42 So in 8 years, I'll have my realignment strategy executed when I turn— it'll be ready to execute my realignment strategy when I turn 50. Part of my realignment strategy is securing housing that is paid for, wherever that is. That's in Georgia, that's in— that's— if that's in Atlanta, that's in Miami, securing one property that is paid for. All you're doing is you're paying property taxes. That's it, right? Then you want to eliminate as much debt as possible, if not all of it, good and bad debt, right? Then you want to have a portfolio in the market that's at least earning you about $50,000 to $60,000 in interest and dividends annually. Now that's just one of your portfolios, right? And then you want to own everything outright, and you want to be able to have another thing that, you know, portfolio— really, you want your portfolio to really be earning about $100,000, right? But everybody is different, right? At 50 years old, most people don't— are not in that position. Now when I get 50 and I got a portfolio to own me $50,000, I have the choice now to continue to work for the next 5 years because one, I got a house, I got housing that's paid for. I might— more than likely I'm gonna have a farm that's going to be— I'm gonna be able to produce food, so I'll be able to have food that I can actually utilize myself, right, without having to go out and shop and things. And they sort of limit my amount of shopping, right? So housing is covered, supplementing my food, it will be covered, right?

Okay.

And I would be positioned to say, okay, I can work for 5 more years because my portfolio is not earning $100,000 a year yet. It's really only earning $75,000. So I need to put another 5 years of, of work man labor into the portfolio building process. And hopefully we, we good, we good to go by the time I'm 55. Now everything is paid off that you need to be paid off. You live a very low, low, low-cost life, uh, rather that's in the United States of America, preferably, you know, wherever you got that housing that's paid for. You want— that's where you want your main headquarters to be, right? You know, you can, you can build off of that. But, but I'm not thinking about retirement from a traditional sense. I'm just like, I just want to realign, man. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not— I don't have the, the gas in me to try to be in the music business till I'm 60, until I'm 70. Like, that's not, that's not my calling. I have no interest on doing it. I'd rather, you know, spend time and in different youth ministries. I'd rather spend time in mentorship. I would like to still represent talent from a, from a sports perspective, but not, not musicians. Um, and I would still like to add value to younger, younger generation and provide opportunities for them if I have the means to. But for the most part, I'm going for— like I said, I'm going for broke. I'm going for realignment. That is my North Star. That's what I talked to the Lord about. On whatever has been built right now is 2026, so that is— that would be 2034 when I am fully realigned out of this thing. Whoever ain't got whatever they need out of me by then, boy, it's a wrap. Boy, I'm 55, man. I mean, 50 years old, man. And I'm so serious about it. It's— and don't let me hit no super lick. It might be 5 years. You might be looking at this thing 2031, baby. I'll be 47 years old, Lord willing. I have a child, you know, the child might be one, I might be 4, I don't know. But the moment I have a child, I'm definitely gonna speed up my realignment.

Okay, at what point did you decide that you would have realignment in your future? Like, when did you know, like, all right, I've got to work toward realigning my life?

Um, really being as a talent manager, man, it really do— it really do shed a lot of light on human behavior, and it really shows you, like, you know, a person— you can watch people make a whole bunch of money and then turn around and be messed up. I mean, I, I, I don't like talking about people on this show, but as a case study conversation, um, Adrian Broner, like, at one point he was getting paid $20, $30 million to box, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know what Adrian's financial situation is, but I think that it was— I think that he didn't do the best managing his money. You know, same with Floyd Mayweather, right? These are called— these are caution tales. These are not— these are not— I'm not gossiping about him. Like, these are things that are like, are scary, right? That you— that, that we think as Black people, Black and brown people, who, who has— if it took us 10 years or 15 years to generate wealth, we think that it can't go away. Yes, and they can go away. Yeah, if it's not properly set up, you know.

I mean, I think because getting to the point where you're perceived as being rich— when I say perceived as being rich, like when people know the income of your fights, right? Like you say, oh, this fight you're gonna earn $15 million, right? And a lot of people's mind, you rich. We, we have a hard time imagining someone that can fight and get $15 million and they do 10 fights, we don't think you're gonna be rich forever, you know what I'm saying?

Like, you can be, you can be, you could be, right? All right, same discipline it takes for you to become a great fighter takes the same discipline to be a great saver and a great investor and a great reserver of your, of your revenue.

But I think that we don't really think about it like that because especially if it's someone that works in entertainment particularly sports, right? When we see you on the field, we see you on the court, we don't really think about the life outside of that. When we look at LeBron, we think about him on the basketball court, and we think about the amount of money he makes on the basketball court. I don't think about how LeBron has to manage his money, or how any NBA player, or any NFL player, any MLB player. But yeah, like, all because you make a lot of money in the sport does not mean you're gonna maintain that money, uh, throughout your lifetime.

So it is, it is very alarming to me. Like, I was having a conversation today with someone and it was talking about an NBA player who is renegotiating their contract, and they, they got offered 35— well, right, more like $30 million a year versus $60 million a year, right? And it was like, I can understand that's a, that's a 50% drop-off. What, $30 million a year, bro? Like, I don't— like, $30 million a year. Now mind you, you're gonna get taxed. You're only gonna walk away with about 60% of that. Yes. So now we're talking about like $16 million a year, $17 million a year, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We're talking about a lot of paper, bro, when you didn't come for money.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's your family. If we doing the math and you know that you're getting marketing dollars and you're getting $15 million, and that $15 million goes into these different accounts and it's making 5%, that's $750,000 a year. If I'm any athlete, I'm telling my family, we living— we gonna live off of a million dollars a year. Yeah, that means that ain't everybody gonna have a house. Can't be. No, we're gonna get a nice big house, might get two. We're gonna buy some land, we're gonna build some cottages, we're gonna build some little tiny homes. But everybody can know how— if you want to, you get a tiny house, get you a nice tiny house, you know, have the whole corner set, buy some land, build 3 different houses. 6, 5 bedrooms each that we all stand there.

But she only need 4 12-room mansions in various parts of the country.

No, you don't. You, you say if y'all want to benefit from my success, you're moving to Mississippi or you're moving to Georgia, you're moving to Louisiana, you're moving to where the money is gonna stretch the longest, okay?

Yeah, yeah.

And then during the season, I'm gonna go and work. Then I'm gonna come back and live a low-cost life.

You can't, you can't make—

yes, great, great low-cost life.

Yes, but you can't, you can't ball on the court and off the court off a million dollars a year. Can't do both. Can't do both. But, but why do you think it's kind of hard, not just for athletes, just like for people in general, to think about how to save their money?

We didn't come from money, bro. Saving money takes a lot of discipline. I'm working through it right now in my real life, man. Like, I have to save— I have to slow my cost down on trying to build businesses. I have to be like, dang, man, I can't hire this person. Dang, man, should I let this person go? And say, like, I have to really think about these things because I can't go in and just spend a bunch of money trying to scale a business. I have to really be smart about these things. If not, so wash, it'll go away, man. It'll go away. Ain't gonna be no realignment. Dang, you should not make it.

You should not make it there.

My realignment includes everybody that live in my house. If you don't live in my house You ain't a part of this realignment. I can't take care of all these people. It ain't, it ain't like that. Like, I can build out long-term investment vehicles that over time it can build and become bigger and bigger, and when I pass away it can become bigger. But then somebody else got to be smart enough to oversee it so they don't burn through the money, you know what I'm saying? But it takes a lot of discipline, man. So when you hear people talking about $100 million ain't a lot of money, like, y'all crazy. Y'all are absolutely crazy. You ain't came from money to be talking about $100 million ain't enough money, ain't a lot of money. Yes, you're gonna get taxed 50% of it. That's still 50 M's. Yeah, in a calendar year. It don't matter if it's 50 years over a 5-year period, that's tax-free money. Yeah. That's tax-free money. So if you made $50 million in 6 years, that's already been taxed, and you're living, you're living off of a million dollars a year, that's $6 million. Let's say that's 10, you got $40 million that you can put away. What are we talking about? What's the math on that? Hold on, let's do good math. $40 million, you put $40 million in the stock market and you just letting that thing sit in whatever, T-bills, whatever, and you get 4% on that. You get 4% on that, man.

That's—

hold on, people crazy, man. You get 4% on that, that's $1.6 million a year.

That shit is waiting on you, man.

That's just sitting there. That's, that's something that you don't even touch. Like, when you finish playing basketball, you say, oh, I'm gonna go coach. I'm still young. I was in the league for 10 years. I made $75 million. I put $40 million of it away. I invested the other amount into like small businesses, business here, that there, boom boom. I put myself on a budget, and now out of that $75 million that I've made, that was already taxed, $35 million I got I divided it by 10. I can live off $3.5 million for the next 10 years of my life. Now I can go and take that $3.5 million a year to see how I can go and build businesses, I can go acquire assets. And then I got $40 million sitting away that I don't gotta touch. So when I turn 50, 60 years old, that thing don't compound over the years. Nah, man, what we talking about?

Talk about some fuck you money.

Ain't no, ain't no reason for you to be going broke. You don't have that much paper, man. You want this?

I mean, when it comes down to it, that's, that'd be the case most of the time, right?

Yeah, I'm just— but man, you have this and no other way to put it. Undisciplined. But yeah, I hear you, I hear you, I hear you.

Now that's a good math though. That's, that's a good math lesson. If you're thinking about your future, you're thinking about your realignment, you're thinking about it retirement, whatever are you thinking about, um, I think this conversation is helpful for you to consider the way you want your money to work for you long term and the way you want to live your, you know, time. Tell me though, before we get out of here, what is this soft life that you're imagining for yourself?

Waking up in the morning, okay, right, tending to my wife and my kids and my family Letting them figure out whatever they're going to be doing in life, right? I want to go out, pick some fresh fruit, get some— get some eggs from the hens. I think I'm allergic to eggs, but hopefully by then I'm not allergic to them because they'll be organic, you know. Oh, get some gardening again, you know, finish the garden and go do some golfing. You know, um, probably do some fishing, you know, do as least— do at least as possible, you know. I'll take some calls, I'll be still actively investing. I'll take some calls, a couple calls a week. But I think 8 years, man, whoever with me, whoever been with me trying to build these businesses, man, 8 years, man, I'm out, man. Rap, you know, you know, you fancy bus about it, man. There ain't gonna be too much more that's gonna excite me after 50, because you gotta realize, 50— I think my grandfather passed away when he was like 53 or something, 54. Oh wow, he was young. Yeah, my— one of my uncle, my uncle, my mom's youngest brother, he passed away at like 44, you know what I'm saying? So we've had like people just passing away, like my Like, I just had like my aunt, my aunt passed away recently. I think she was like 65 or something like that. So, man, I had a younger, a younger, like a cousin around my age, just probably like in her late 30s, early 40s, passed away. Didn't wake up out of her sleep last year.

Oh my God.

So for me, man, I'm like, I get to 50, I'm doing the least as possible. So if I live for 40 more years and I'm 90, I'm gonna do 40 years of least as possible, letting that money stack, you know what I'm saying? Eating some good fruit, going to kick it on the Cayman Islands, you know what I'm saying? Not gonna be many flights, it's gonna be limited flights, short flights. For sure.

This, this sound like a real realignment.

Real, really, we're gonna realign. Well, I'm gonna be on the— I'm gonna be out there in the land, be out there in nature in South Georgia when it's— when that's September, when it's like, it ain't as hot, you know what I'm saying? But that's, that's take discipline though. I gotta have 8 years of discipline to be able to live like that though. 8 years of discipline. You know what I'm saying? And I, like I said, I stopped gambling, I stopped going to strip clubs. I'm really not trying to be doing anything when it comes down, when it gets, when that, when that clock strikes, I'm, oh yeah baby, I'm out, I'm out, retire, retire your jersey and let the young man realize.

Well, Ty, that's, that's all I got for you. Thank you for sharing your, your realignment strategy with us. Uh, think it'll be incredibly helpful for people thinking about their futures, thinking about their 40s, their 50s, and their 60s, and just how they should be strategizing their plans for the future. So that is another episode of the FYM Show. That's my man Ty. Um, yo, please, if you haven't got that Culture Playbook Volume 2, get that. You need that. And, uh, We'll be having way more coming for y'all real soon. Until next time, peace.