How To Stay Grounded While Building Wealth | FYM

And we're back with another episode of FYM with Ty. Yo, it's my man Ty. I'm yo, this is F You Money the show, and, uh, you know, we're gonna have an incredible conversation about wellness That's what our— this is what our show is about. Um, Ty, we got a book release too, right? Wow, The Culture Playbook Volume 2 is out now. It's been a long time coming. Congratulations, Ty, on your second book. You know, you back again, baby. Yes sir, thank you, thank you. It's good to have a— have the third one out there now.

Um, We had like over 100 pre-orders, I think.

Yeah.

And everybody that pre-ordered, you know what I'm saying, we really appreciate that, you know what I mean?

And they should be at your doors, uh, real soon. I can't wait for people to read it. Uh, Ty, how do you feel compared to when you put out Volume 1? Like, how, how do you feel about where you are right now?

Um, with the book or just in life?

Ah, well, I like— tell me about where— how was your life when Volume 1 came out? Yeah, because I mean, it feels like it's been a little bit of a gap between the two.

So Volume 1 came out the summer of 2022. Um, there's a lot of— it was a lot of movement around, around, you know, the first volume because it was the middle of rollout. And I've always— not always, there's been moments that when an artist is rolling things out, I'll use myself as additional promotion from a media perspective to just keep elongating, elongating the process of like the rollout. Um, so this kind of felt like a little part of that because, you know, I had did like— exactly, I got like Executive of the Week on the Billboard stuff. And then we did like, uh, we did a bunch of storytelling through like the executive side around Wasteland. That's the album that we was focused on that summer. Um, and yeah, I mean, life definitely is different. Um, I'll say life is actually drastically different, you know, from Volume 1 to Volume 2. So like Volume 3, I'm gonna be writing from this drastic life difference. And I'm not even talking about financially, I'm just talking about like from a spiritual perspective, from like, you know, I stopped gambling. Like there's so many different changes that happen, you know, when I finish this book. And then as I'm preparing to write Volume 3, so, so life definitely, definitely has changed, all for, all for the good though.

I hear that, man, and I love that, Ty. Now for someone that's picking up the Volume 2 book hoping to change their life, right, um, can you give some advice to how you changed yours? Like, what in Ty Bazin's life was instrumental in changing your life as you, you know, got on this journey?

Um, really the first 3 chapters is so interesting because I, I'm always gonna speak about, you know, I think there's a certain level of discipline and there's a certain level of work ethic that you got to have in multiple aspects of your life. And so I'll start with like the spiritual, the spiritual side of it. Like, you got to have discipline, which is being obedience. And then you have to have work ethic, which is doing the work that's supposed to bear the fruit, right? So anything you do in life, you are supposed to work hard and have discipline. And then the third chapter in the book is on Don't Drink the Kool-Aid, which is really just about being humble and like giving each other grace and not really, you know, being an idol, not subscribing to idolatry. Right? And that's really what drinking the Kool-Aid is, when you start replacing, you know, the God and like Jesus with like, you know, your job or how much money you make. And now you're treating people differently because of you being famous or whatever those different things are. It's just, it's just weird. And so for me, going through the growth that I've been doing just personally, it's like discipline, work ethic. Ty, don't drink the Kool-Aid, you know what I'm saying? Don't drink the Kool-Aid. You don't want high blood pressure or like low integrity. That's what— that's what they— high blood pressure, low integrity, you know what I'm saying?

You kind of talk about LA as like the land of drinking the Kool-Aid. I feel like there's a— there's a certain line in the book that I can't recall at this moment, but Do you feel like— because you don't live in LA no more, but when you were there and as things were moving kind of fast, were you worried about the Kool-Aid? Well, like, was it being served to you? Did people bring you Kool-Aid to drink?

I think that it's funny that you say that. I think that the thought process of the Kool-Aid in LA is really, really, really based off of this concept that LA is built off of, like, like these imaginary worlds, right? So being that LA is built off these imaginary worlds, naturally people that are gonna come there, they're like pursuing this quote-unquote dream. And so people say, oh, in order for you to get into this room, you need to, you need to wear this. You need to drive that, you know, you need to talk like this, you need to position yourself like that, right? Where, you know, there's a certain difference between understanding the, like, business etiquette versus drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Business etiquette is, hey man, when people want to give you opportunity, take it serious, show up on time. Be thankful. Drinking the Kool-Aid is, you know, you're late because of who you are, not, not because, you know, hey man, LA traffic was crazy, I really apologize, it's not the way I operate. No, nothing starts until I show up, you know what I'm saying? Like that type of drinking the Kool-Aid. Or, you know, making a mistake that money is more important to humans So you treat people differently because you make more money than them, right? All of those different type of things is kind of like this baseline of like, you know, drinking the Kool-Aid. And I'm like, I'm 41, I'm about to turn 42 literally tomorrow, and my principles on this drink the Kool-Aid thing has always been the same. So I had, I had a lot of fun, I had a lot of fun collaborating with you writing that chapter because it's a real thing and it can be, it can have people fall into depression. You can have people mismanage their money. You can have people, you know, worshiping things that they shouldn't even be worshiping. And so it's an interesting concept, bro, to say the least. But I would say those three things: discipline, work ethic, don't drink the Kool-Aid.

You have— I can't think of which chapter it is, but you talk about how Brent did not like buy any like huge gifts before, um, things got really— start moving along really well. And, uh, I think you guys both bought somebody a Rolex. Like, he bought his father a Rolex, he bought your brother a Rolex. Yeah, talk about that a little bit. Talk about that chapter and just how you kind of stay grounded in yourself, because that was a big part too, of just like not losing who Ty was in the midst of things changing, right, man?

Um, It was one of those moments where, like, and we, and we did this, we did this for a while. When I say me, me and Brent, where we kind of like paid ourselves last, you know, in that, in that sense. And so when he bought his dad, we literally went to the Rolex place and got him at the same time, but he wanted to do something nice for his father. For Christmas, and I want to do something nice for my brother. And at the time, neither one of us had Rolexes, you know what I'm saying? I don't even know— I can't even remember how we end up at the Rolex store. I think it was definitely something that, you know, Brent wanted to do for his dad, and we were just trying to figure out like what was the best price point that we could afford, you know, to be able to do that and, and kind of like give those type of gifts. But, uh, it was a very, you know, you know, eye-opening thing. And, and then the— I think it was on his birthday or one of the days, we, um, the, you know, the company bought him a Rolex as a gift, right? So, you know, there was 3 Rolex, 3 Rolex purchased, you know what I'm saying, before, before myself, you know, even probably more than 3, but I can definitely count 3, um, but But it was just like one of those things where it was just providing and like servicing people that kind of help you along this journey, trying to find like nice things to do for them, you know what I mean?

Can you tell me a little bit about getting paid last? Like, why is that something that's significant in your journey?

Well, I mean, it's really not significant in my journey. It's the entrepreneurship. Right. Uh, you know, people promote entrepreneurship as like it's this freeing thing and give you a lot, give you, give you your life to Jesus Christ is freeing. W-2 got pros and cons and, and owning a business got pros and cons, right? And, and that's just what it is. And so when you work for a W-2, you have Even though that company go out of business, you have an agreement with that company that they're supposed to pay you this amount of time, this amount of money for this amount of years. And as a business owner, you don't have that same agreement. You're the one issuing the agreements that you're supposed to pay this person at this time, at this. And then, you know, depending on how ambitious you are, that can even be more of a strenuous process. right? So, you know, from a, from a, a business owner's perspective, you're, you're gonna get the last of whatever is left. And nothing is wrong with that because you got the most upside. And what I mean by the most upside is you might spend 5 years, 6 years, 7 years, you know, getting whatever's left. And then when you sell that business, you catch that landslide. That kind of catapults you into this new part of like your financial journey, right? So it's this overall concept. And I used to always say this to the calendar, um, the booking agent we work with the most. I would tell him, I'm like, hey, look, listen, man, like, do you want— you know, Brit don't like touring, you know, and most artists like touring, but you know, he, he don't have to do that because of the way that the business is set up. I said, but Let's say he did Love Tour. Do we want to make $5 million doing 3 shows or $5 million doing 20 shows? Oh, like, we should be thinking about these shows like this. So if it takes us— it's 7 years and you do 5 shows and you make $5 million or $20 million, right? And you do— versus doing 20 shows and making $20 million. Over a 7-year period. We want to do 5 shows and make $20M. We don't want to do 20 shows and make $20M. So that takes a certain level of strategy and a thought process and thinking on it. And it's the same thing as an entrepreneur. You're just looking at, if I can make this influx of money once or twice a year, or once every 2 years, And then in between that, I'm just managing. I'm just managing whatever is left over for me to be able to operate, live my life, manage my overhead, all of those different things. You know what I'm saying?

Not how— that makes a lot of sense. I think it's interesting, and I wanted to ask you, when you were working at Target, right, while you were working for Delta and you had a job, did you think that when I transitioned to entrepreneurship I'm not going to mind the way I get paid changing, or was that like a big adjustment for you?

No, I mean, it wasn't a big adjustment because it was so much blind. It was so many blind spots, you know. I was just like any other person that wanted to start a business. Like, oh man, start a business, you can make a whole bunch of money, you know what I'm saying? And then, and then you get it in, you know, and it be, and it feels like And they say start a business, you know what I'm saying? You start to realize in real time that like, wait a minute, they didn't sell me these different things. It's like, it's like these, uh, it's not a get rich quick scheme, right? Because, because, because building a business is historically how you build wealth, right? But the way that people promoted and communicated kind of comes off as a get-rich-quick scheme, right? Where it's like, when you on Instagram, you be like, yeah, man, so this what you gonna do, right? You gonna get you a credit line, right? Then your credit line, you gonna get $100,000, no documents, right? And then when you get that $100,000, you gonna go put 10% down on a million-dollar home. Then you gonna get that million-dollar home. Then next thing you know, you gonna flip that home. You gonna sell it for 1.5 But they don't give you none of these different pieces of these puzzles that's so, so, so, so, so, so important.

Mm-hmm.

So what ends up happening is that you get into this thing and you have to figure it out. And it's not like, you know, going to school, being a doctor, and now you got to go and get your undergrad. Now you got to go get your master's, then you got to go to the— then you got to get your PhD. But there's so many things that are told to you on paper That when you go out in the real world, you just got to actually do the operation, right? But there's so much documentation that kind of show you that, and entrepreneurship is not that way. One is that you're figuring it out as you're going because you got different products and different things. But like, there are so many different things that it wasn't told to me that I didn't have to worry about when I'm at Delta.

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Yeah, I feel you. You know, it's interesting. I was on YouTube the other day because I needed to get a clip off the Rap Portraits YouTube page, right? Instead of going to my Google Drive, I just searched Rap Portraits. Well, I found a whole other YouTube page making rap portraits. Like, the guy was making documentaries and calling them Rap Portraits, Ty. And I was like, I was stunned. I said, I know, I know this man ain't stealing no shit. Ty, I didn't think no one would steal from you till you was like making millions and millions of dollars, right?

Like, oh no, no, no, don't worry about that, buddy.

That's not how it happens.

The best stealing happens when you right at the beginning, buddy. The best thievery.

I had no idea, but I was so glad we did our trademark, right? Because we set up our business You know what I'm saying? So we did our LLC, we got our trademark, we did all those things early on, and it cost, all right? I didn't necessarily want to do it because I didn't know how much it was going to cost. And that's the thing, people say, I'll start an LLC, get a trademark, until you start paying for things and you're just like, the business ain't start making no money yet. I was so glad that I was like, I gotta call my lawyer, like, I gotta hit my lawyer. And I hit my lawyer and those videos got taken down. And I was like, well, that's how business works. You just can't steal somebody's name or make documentaries in kind of like— my boy called it the imposter. He said, "Rap Portraits imposter" in the subject line. You know what I'm saying? So I'm just— that's something I learned. I never would have thought when we started the business that I was gonna look on YouTube one day and somebody was gonna be making rap portraits. Like, that was my—

I literally BS you not, I trademark everything I could with Culture. I trademarked Culture with talent management, music production, financial management, like everything that— like I got like 7 marks.

Like, but why?

Just cause it ain't gonna be no confusion with nothing. I want to launch Culture Finance in 3 years. That thing is already there first.

Wow.

As long as I keep them trademarks up. But then on top of it, I'm in the middle of trademarking, uh, looking for the right name for Mirror Studio down here in Miami because we launching the Pilates and functional fitness gym. But I have to change how mirrors is spelled because mirror spelled normally It's trademarked by, uh, Lululemon because they bought the company called Mirrors. So I literally just got off of my trademark lawyer like an hour, 2 hours ago about that. Mirror Studio didn't get— wouldn't get trademarked. So I went through and like find different ways to kind of spell it so it can pronunciate as Mirrors, but the branding can still be dope. But that's something that I had to kind of like revamp from that aspect of it. So when I, when I do that, now I gotta look at, uh, Mirror's Wellness Club differently, and we— I gotta revamp that. But being that we're going into brick and mortar and we're gonna have logos and stuff like that, and we want to expand over the years, I have to start with a, with a mark that I can trademark and protect globally. Because if not, they can shut my whole shop down. Somebody pull up on me one day and be like, hey, you're doing fitness and you're using this brand, you You can't do this. And I have to, like— so that's what we're getting ahead of as we speak, that I have to go and spend the money to get that stuff done.

Who taught you about trademarks?

Just studying. Just studying. It was interesting because we would— we had this— we was doing this Reebok campaign, and it was a global Reebok campaign. And at the time, uh, Kirby, that, that, uh, founded Pierre Moss. He was the creative director for Reebok, and he had really pushed for, uh, Brit to be in this campaign. And it wasn't paying a lot of money because he had just got paid more money to do something else, but we was like, we'll do it for this number if we can wear— if you can wear Nuvo. Because Brent was launching Nuvo and I was just helping him. Um, I don't, I don't have no equity in Nuvo, but as a partner, I'm always gonna try to help my partners. But But I did go through the trademark process for Nuvo, right? So I was on the phone with the lady from Reebok, the lawyer. She was just like, well, we would love for you all to be able to use your— wear your jacket in this campaign, but it's a global campaign and it needs to be copyrighted, um, or we can't really— you know, it has to be trademarked or we can't use it. I said, oh, we trademarked. She was like, oh. I was like, yeah, it's trademarked globally. I started naming off all the marks. She was like, oh, oh, okay, well, that's great to hear that you guys got this stuff in order because, you know, I'm not playing them kind of games, you know what I'm saying? And so it was one of those things where in a moment I realized like, wow, this woman really interact with people that don't have their business in order, that she basically wrote us off without asking. A-Team is the— is Newell Trademark. She was like, well, usually, you know, we can't do this because the trademark is not, you know, I was like, yeah, we trademark, we good, that's, that ain't a barrier. And it kind of took her back, took her back a little. And from that experience, oh, I started trademarking everything that I could trademark if I felt like I wanted to build it long term, you know what I'm saying?

But man, that's real, that's so real that she kind of made an opinion on you guys' business based off of other people's businesses, that keeping a trademark isn't something that normally happens. Dang, Ty, that's crazy. Um, is there anything else business-wise that you kind of learned in the midst of like a meeting or something like that where you're like, man, I'm glad I did that, or I'm gonna do more of this now after having this experience?

Man, when COVID hit and they was doing them PPP loans, Yeah, right. Although we didn't qualify for one, but I had my 941, you know what I'm saying? I had paid all my payroll taxes. I had that documentation that I could have just shown, but I would have never even thought about that. I wouldn't even known that if I didn't set up, you know, with ADP super early. I was doing ADP when I only had 3, I had 3, 3, 4 employees at 3. It was so expensive. I couldn't even just, I had to shut it down after like a year. I was like, bro, we gotta do something different. This ADP cost too much money. We didn't got enough employees.

But why'd you set up ADP?

Um, I really set up ADP because, uh, I was trying to figure out how to pay, like, how to pay people, pay us, and be able to, like, organize it, have the, the books and the data from it. I can't even remember what directed me to ADP. I just knew that I had ADP set up, paying payroll directly to Brent, paying it directly to Sunder on the— through the Sunder side, Sunder Global LLC. But I was just like, man, I gotta have this payroll. But through the payroll, they set up our insurance, they paid all our local taxes. And through the payroll getting set up, I learned that you have to have a foreign entity in whatever state that you're paying out payroll taxes for. So although Lost Kids was incorporated in Delaware, we had to open up a foreign entity in California in order to do payroll as a W-2.

Why? Why?

Because you gotta pay state taxes for the W-2.

Ah, okay.

In order to pay state taxes, you got to have a state entity. Set up so you can get registered properly in that state.

Got you.

Yeah, but we'll never, never know that. I would have never known that you can even get insurance through your business. I would have never known you can get 401(k) through your business or, you know, retirement plan set up through your businesses. I would have never known all that if I didn't go through the ADP payroll process and systems and all that type of stuff. It was a very, very interesting, um, procedures and protocols. So like now today, you know, I've learned so much about it. I just kind of, you know, I'm not, I'm not a master expert in it, but I know the base levels of it to be able to make sure you're set up and make sure your business is in order, you know what I'm saying? Probably better than most people, you know.

And some of that information is in the Culture Playbook Volume 2. Yes, it is out now, you know. Um, you know, so we always appreciate your wealth of knowledge and just your dedication to sharing, because obviously I think a lot of people are like you where you're learning as you go along, and there's not a lot of guides, there's not a lot of books that kind of give it to you straight, especially from the perspective of someone that's gone through it, you know. I think a lot of— you see a lot of opinionated stories about the ideas of a business, right? Versus did you do it? Did you go through it? Did you go through it? I think that's right. Says the— that's, that's a different kind of book.

And I think that's the type of book that information I'm gonna give you, the information I'm gonna give you is information that I, like, I went through it, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not giving you the information that I heard from somebody else. Like, I'm giving you the information. If I say, yo, this is how you build your credit up, you get your secured credit card is going to be about $500. Boom, boom, you do this, you pay this amount of time, you're gonna— I know it because I went through it. Same thing with like tax strategies or, you know, trademarking and all those different aspects of things, right? So that was the biggest thing when I'm talking to an artist, because I know when I'm starting a brand, I'm going to invest money into it. Depending on how much money I'm gonna invest into it, that's going to depend on how much I'm gonna put into the trademarks out things, you know what I'm saying?

Yes.

So if you're putting millions and millions of dollars into something, or you are, you will put that amount of money, you should definitely make sure that your business is just properly set up. And, and the playbook always going to talk about this business now. Yeah, yeah, because it is the— even when you're a W-2 employee, having an entrepreneurship spirit and business mind will help you excel better at your W-2 role and it'll help you understand how to shift your taxes and help you with your taxes because they're taking it out of your check automatically. It ain't no, oh, I'm gonna pay them quarterly or I'm gonna pay them at the end of the year when you're W-2. It ain't, it ain't happening like that.

Right. And I think it's important to just understand how business operates. Right. Because I think it's very easy to say I'm just at this job to get to where I'm going. but you know, you might not be thinking about how this job operates. Like, how does this job pay you, right? Then like, what are the protocols and practices that allows it to pay you? And taking that knowledge and applying it for where you really want to go, I think goes a long way.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I've dove into the businesses so much, especially in the music side. I almost can tell when a company about to go out of business, for real, just based on like how their procedures change, how their protocols change. Or even if they're not going out of business, or if they're, if they're going through a restructure and they're not saying it, but you can feel it as a, as a consumer, as a client of theirs. It's just like, that's just this natural thing that's just been developed over the years, you know what I mean?

You can kind of eyeball it.

Eyeball the work.

All right, the work right here. Eyeball the work.

Yeah, I gotta make sure, get that branding right.

Yes, sir. Ty, you got any birthday plans, man?

I'm doing this dinner in Atlanta, um, with all of my close friends, peers, putting together a room of eclectic people across music, tech, investment, sports, and just having a good, good old nice clean dinner.

Is this your first birthday back in Atlanta? Because I know 40 you was in Vegas.

Yeah, you know, this is the first time I'm actually doing something for myself from a birthday perspective in Atlanta. Hey, I've done Miami, I've done LA, I've done Vegas. Now it's like, you know, doing something proper in the city.

Love that. Were you, were you big on birthdays when you were growing up?

Uh, really wasn't, you know what I'm saying? Like, I just was always working, you know. Um, I remember growing up a little bit, having some birthday cakes and stuff. My mom would always try to find like— give us some like cupcakes. She loved buying cupcakes, bro. She'll give you a cupcake for Valentine's Day. She'll get you a cupcake for you, you know what I'm saying? And that started a little later in her life, but she was just— I guess cupcakes is real— you can go get some cupcakes real quickly. But, um, but yeah, but now, man, I'm just trying to enjoy life. And celebrate with everybody, man. I got peers that didn't make it to 42. I got, you know, family members that didn't make it to 42. So I look at these things as like super beneficial and like, like, man, it's a blessing. So, so I'm looking forward to it, you know, and I'm gonna gift everybody— I'm gonna gift everybody something at the joint as well, you know what I mean?

All right, well, happy birthday, Ty. And, uh, do you have anything else you want to add before we get off this episode?

No, man, this, this is, you know, we are— it was in our— this is season 4.

Yep, sir.

That's why I am— you know, we want to talk about wellness as a, a body of work and not just like these, these individual things, where it's mental, physical, financial, spiritually. And we hope that everybody can take a lot from not only the show but also from, you know, the book. You know, we just working to get on Netflix, baby. You know what I'm saying?

Yes sir, yes sir.

I mean, but yeah, that's all I got.

That is another episode of FYM with Ty and Yo. We'll see you guys next time. Make sure you pick up that Culture Playbook Volume 2 out everywhere.