S3 E323: Mom & Pop Businesses Are The Backbone Of Our Economy | FYM

I believe that when you empower other people that are passionate about something, you get more from it than you could ever imagine, especially in business.

And we're back with another episode of FYM with TYO from that tyo. And today we're talking about mom and Pop stores.

Yeah.

So yeah, Todd, break down this concept for our viewers because you, you, it's been on your mind. I think this is the way you.

Kind of like, yeah, like I think we grew up in a black neighborhood. Like mom and Pop Shops. Like and mom and Pop Shops. To me it feels like those black owned businesses that are ran by the family and it doesn't appear like they ever grow. It's like same corner store from the same time period, same faces and then you don't see them pop up other.

Places like a franchise, right?

So the thought process of it is what does that really mean for entrepreneurs, right? Because we tell like when you tell somebody fuck you money, they automatically think about starting a business and that's not necessarily true, right. You don't have that run a company or own a company to get fuck you with. So when we're talking about the difference between mom and Pops versus a boutique business, right, we're talking about the conversation of what is the degrees of scalability, right? And a boutique company will probably have one person that's running it and then they hire somebody else that's run to help them build it out. And then they see, they test it out and once it gets to a certain point, that person that started it might go and go start another one, another area, another city or whatever, right? On the pop shop, a family owned, you see a auntie, the uncle, the kid, they working it, they running it. And most of the time you don't see them the stand. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I don't know. That's what the conversation's really about. I'm giving my insight on it from a standpoint of like growth and me being a part of businesses that have sold or that will sell. That wasn't mom and Pops, right? And I think there's a certain money revenue driver that's attached to mom and Pops.

Well, before we get too far ahead, when did you first hear about boutique businesses, man?

Years and years after hearing about mom and Pop, right?

I mean, because mom and Pop is like your first encounter with on locally, you're going to see something ran by other people who are often related. Like you said, it's probably stationed in one spot, doesn't move, doesn't change, but you are accustomed to it because it's a part of your community.

Part of your community.

Mom and Pops homes are communal spaces. Right. But the boutique business, it's a difficult encounter, I would say.

I remember the first time me identifying boutique business. It was like in passing. And then I reflected. I was in Howard University of Howard, Washington, D.C. 2006, around. Around their home country. And I was in Five Guys at the time. I was dating a woman who we had got, you know, I had broke up with her, but I was like, I made a mistake. And she really wasn't hearing that. So we got into a disagreement, and she ended up kicking me out at Dawnle. So I was at five guys just trying to, like, you know, getting a.

Burger and like, you know, get your life together.

Get my life together. And this black guy was sitting down talking to me. He was like, yeah, man, we finna open up a few five Guys in Georgia, in Atlanta. I'm like, word, that's what's up. And that was in 2006. Now I seen them five guys shit popping up everywhere in Georgia. So that was my first time seeing it, like, experiencing the shop that I had only heard about in D.C. i don't know how many more it was than the one that I was in, but I absolutely remember the guy being like, okay, let's spend this thing to Atlanta. And it happened.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. There are mom and pop shops that I grew up around that end up not making it for whatever reason. Right. And so not scaling your business is not necessarily a bad thing. But I do think it is a. It's a combination of being comfortable, and it's a combination of, like, the lack of infrastructure and lacking of the infrastructure is just a lack of knowledge. Because if you tell anybody that's running a business, if you got one location that's doing exceptionally well, the natural progression is to say, I think we should start a second. Open a second location. The reasons on why you might not be able to open a second location, maybe you don't have the financial backing. Maybe you don't have the help. Right. My grandfather had a bunch of mom and pop shops. That was my first experience of it. Dean Disco.

Dean Disco.

That was the name of the nightclub.

Okay.

Then he had tmb. TMB Snack Bar, which was named after me and my brother.

Tnb.

Right.

Okay.

And then he had. I feel like it was one other business venture that he had, but these are all mom and pop dad. He was running. He didn't get off work, go run the nightclub, try to convince my mama to quit her job so she could run while he was at work. And there just wasn't enough workforce around it, people to strategize and to figure out how to expand and things of that niche. You know what I'm saying? And so those are the different thought processes on those mom and pops versus Boutique. You know, from your experience, how have you, you know, experienced mom and pop shops and you know the thought process when you hear the name versus Boutique.

Well, I, I don't, I don't know if I thought my parents business was a mom and pop store at 13.

No.

Because it was like a scenery.

No.

Right. So I'm thinking. And it wasn't their first ring. My, my parents first started as managers of a skater rink called the Kidder Family Skate Center. All of you remember that? It was in Atlanta. It was considered, it had the biggest skateboard in the city. A bunch of investors had got together, had got the rink and my dad was hired to manage the rink. So after I think four, it's like four years, the investors decided to flip the business. And the money that my parents got from the sale is what they went and got to get skates on. So they went from one skatering as a manager, a part of a pool of investors to do this one by themselves. So the first time like venturing off into like, we don't do this, we don't get this. At the time the rig was closed. So I remember being 12 and cleaning top to bottom entire thing. Right. Opening in November of 2004. So it's 20 years now we've been in. There is an interesting business to watch because in 2011 my parents got a wing franchise. It was called those two go.

Okay. Yeah. You remember the Wings ago.

We had the Wings ago in Jonesboro. So that was my first time seeing my parents expand into another again mom and pop store. But it was food.

Right? Right.

So I'm getting here flipping wounds, selling fries. And if y' all remember 2011 though, we're getting ready to get hit in this recession. So recession comes I think within the second year. They kind of like business and the rink got slow and we used to go was not picking up fast enough. They end up closing the wing business and just focusing solely on the rink. And that's been like their primary business ever since.

Right, right.

But there hasn't been like no skates on two.

There was SK Zone two is crazy.

You know what I'm saying? Never had like a. I Wouldn't say they didn't have the ambition, because we definitely talked about various different ways of expanding, but I think it's always just about prioritizing what has been working, what has been making money, what has been kind of maintaining the business. Now, as far as boutique business.

I'm.

Trying to remember to your point, though, raising tapes. I was in New Orleans in 2022, 2021, and I never seen raising cans before I went in there. I thought it was cool. And they was like, oh, you know, Atlanta got Zaxby's, right. We got raising canes, right? Yo, they got raised in canes in Atlanta now. So I. I always thought that that was kind of like I'd be like a mom and a pop situation where I was like, oh, this is like a homegrown thing that's in their specific areas. To watch them expand to Atlanta made me feel like, oh, this is a franchise that's going, like, global to some degree.

Right.

It's expanding itself in a way that I didn't anticipate that I was in the orange because it felt like it was only for their particular areas. So in my mind, it's interesting to watch something you thought would not grow beyond a certain place be on your backyard now.

Right.

But to your point, yeah, I think it's really interesting watching my parents run a business that's very communal because the community shows up to skate. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Those are the days we open. Nine times out of 10, most black people, black kids, black mamas, black daddies, black uncles, we're going to come bring their kids. Most kids grow up, they bring their kids. So as you're watching, like, the place doesn't change, but the people who come and participate changes. But they're always like, they're, you know, the regulars are reoccurring through, like, almost like generational lines at this point. Once you hit 20 years, you're starting to watch kids that were 10 turn 30, bring their kids who are 5 now. So that, to me, is something where, although I haven't seen the business expand, I watch the people evolve, change, and kind of continue supporting who has been there.

It's interesting because it's a pretty simple business. It's very simple. You know. You know, you got a building, right? You know, you got somewhere. You got a nice smooth floor.

Y got to keep the floor smooth.

Throw some concessions in there.

Yep.

You know, maybe a DJ booth.

Gotta have DJ care, some insurance. Yes, sir.

And then you offer races, means you got confident staff that you're confident in.

Definitely got. Yeah, you got to have somebody running session. You got to have some people in the skate rental. You got to have some skate for some type of traffic. Right. But security, you tend to have to hire.

Yeah.

We have police officers now as well. So you got security officers. Other than that, that's pretty much what kind of neat.

Now, what you just described is all of the different setups that you're going to probably have for any live event. 100%, right?

Yeah.

The methodology around the business is that you come and escape with your family, simple as that. Right. AI AI is not going to get rid of that business.

No.

You know what I'm saying? Like, there's always going to be people that are going to actually scale. Right? And so that business is a prime business that you can scale. Right. But it's a brick and mortar business. Right. And then you gotta find, like, the right areas where it's gonna make sense. Right. Then you gotta find the right people that know how to, like, promote it. Like, they know how to run it, operate.

That's a long ways to go. Not private. Like, we were like a area where there wasn't like, there was a lot of car traffic, there was a lot of foot traffic.

Right.

And there was no other, like, businesses around it where people are coming for food.

Right.

So we were just kind of like in this, like, marketplace that was, again, we're not going to do them Jonesboro. So there's a lot of traffic, but people, like, are regular to be regular. But outside of that, it wasn't a lot of, like, people just popping up like, oh, I saw this, I want to stop by, like, blah. So that is incredibly important.

Yeah. And so I think that although there hasn't been an expansion in the business of meeting another location, I think your parents came from the fruits, the fruits of a boutique business. Because boutique business is usually you build it up and you flip it.

Yeah.

Right. So they was able to benefit from that financially and experience wise enough that they was like, you know what? This business is a business that can work. We're going to go and buy one ourselves. Right. And so those things are very unique to me because you don't really hear about the reverse engineering of it. Usually hear somebody like, you know, we got a soul food restaurant. We started selling plates. Then we got the food truck. Now we got. Now we got a building that we kind of going out of, that we're doing it, you know, and it didn't come from getting a windfall from another business being sold. And then you go into the same business, but now you're got more control, more ownership, more identity around it. Right.

It's interesting because none of the other investors went back to skateboards. Right. They all kind of went out like real estate or like some other type of realtor. We were the only ones that stayed in the skating business. But my parents time part of the rink, they kind of got. I handle how the business operates and saw opportunity to like, consume that expertise. So. Yeah, I guess I never thought about it like that. It was like a reverse.

Yeah, yeah. Because like I said, my grandfather, he had a nightclub, and he didn't get that money from being a nightclub manager. And then that nightclub selling and whatever his deal was, he. He got some money, then he went and started the night. No, he like, use whatever money he, you know, allegedly, you know, to build that. To open that place up and like, run it. And like, they gave him a hard time to get liquor license. Like, it's all those different things. You're not serving liquor at a no experience. So you don't even got to worry about liquor license. You just gotta get your fruit drinks. Yeah, yeah. Soda machine, your vending machine water.

Yeah.

Pool tables or video games. But you, you know, it's fun. It's Disneyland. It's really. It's a true family of friendly business.

Yeah. But when Covid happened, that was probably the second time since the recession. Recession was the first time where it was just like business drop. Covid was the second time where business dropped. And I knew my parents were concerned because they did not know how to navigate if people could not be in a room together having fun, like with social distancing.

Social distancing at a scale.

So that was a wrench that was concerning for a while. For like the first couple months of Serious Covid, maybe because of Atlanta, how we just kind of opened up, we benefited from that. But I'll tell you this too. So you know Val Sinai Boulevard is by the AMC 24th.

Yep.

When in 2005, when world bounce was out, people will leave the movie theater and come skate.

That's crazy.

When ATL came out, people leave the movie theater like the spikes you can see. Just because there's a movie about skating, it made people want to skate. Like, people just showing up. It's like, yeah, man, I just saw the movie. I'm trying to be like that. So you're watching, like, people catch it even if they weren't even thinking about it. Because it's an activity. That's a culture the culture is skating. We have skater thaws. We have, you know, all these different types of skating events. So I've always saw the communal element to it as like really beneficial versus in the food business. It's like you gotta eat, right? Like you're hungry. But if there's, if you don't see wings to go, you can see Wendy's, you can see McDonald's, you can see there's a lot of different food options.

Ain't a bunch of skating rains in the area.

You can do Cascade. But again, if you're on the south side of the city, you are south of metro Atlanta, you're probably going to come down to us. Maybe you'll go to skate town, but for the most part, like where you're, where your home is, your proximity, you're going to the closest skater into 20, 30 minutes tops. So I mean we kind of just benefited from a lot of these different things. But I think we were having a conversation earlier about retirement. I don't know what retirement was like on my parents.

Right.

Because they've had like I always come to. I feel like people don't want to be 30 now looking at scared. So they tend to work with younger people, right. In high school, going to college, but they tend to lose their seniors who go away because now you got a turnaround. Turnaround is pretty high.

Same as the movie theaters, 100%.

Right. So that's the thing where you're kind of every two or three years training a different staff of young adults. And then you have maybe like upper management people you can kind of train. But again, even at a certain age, people will kind of go expand and find other career paths themselves. So then train like really competent, great people. And at times they'll come back and work in my parents home way. They'll have people sitting, you know that they've been training for years, but they're not consistently appearing at the ring as much as they were when they were 22. By the time 34, 35, obviously you see different life. So yeah, I mean it's not something we ever really talked about.

Right, right.

But it's something that you brought up. And first I was like, you know, my parents are getting older and we never really talked about passing it down like what that looks like if it's time for someone else to step up and run the business.

So I think that that's another mom and pop struggle.

Right.

Where I think you could find really great workers, you would have to do some vetting. Ever ex felons Ex felons? Yeah, ex felons. Probably the same ones that drive trucks, you know, young, just some of the younger ones that really like in their late early 30s who hasn't had crimes against children that haven't had crimes against unlike like, like robbery, you know what I'm saying? Violent crimes, things of that nature. And you know, a lot of people don't want to give them no shot and you might find your next general manager to be able to really buy into it because somebody gave them a shot and they don't have to go out and work in harsh conditions. You know, it's a certain lifestyle about it. You will probably have to like, you know, have a true vetting system and have a really great 90 day probation system. But I think you will be able to find some young, late 20s, early 30s that will come in and be super serious about it because you know, that's kind of like, you know, their second chance, right. And there might be a real opportunity to be able to retire, to be able to oversee and look at what that, what expansion might look like if you can get a system. Because staffing is hard for, for family like Chuck E. Cheese is like all those type of places because you staffing high school kids, college kids and then that ain't really a career for them, not at all. Right. So you gotta like really, really, really find those individuals that's looking to be rehabilitated and that have, you know, they just made bad decisions throughout their 20s and now they're trying to get their life together in their 30s. And you're gonna find a few like, you know, apples. That's rotten steel, right? But then I do truly think you're gonna find someone who's gonna be able to like, yo, I' ma buy into this, you know, making a decent living and being able to, to grow from there.

You know, that's actually a good idea. I feel like because our security guards have stayed with us so long, that's something that's that turnover there is not that high.

Right.

But I also feel like that's a role people play when they're trying to like either A, make money on side or B, can't really. They don't have a lot of other options like working security and they tend to be very, very loyal. So I feel, I really feel that and I think my parents are looking for that person now. They've been, they've been doing it in house as far as like we some loan security guards that have started to take more general manager roles. Right. As far as like how they close and how they open, have access to certain things that they didn't have early on. But again, that becomes only possible if they're ready to be there long term versus it's like, you know, once people start looking for other opportunities, then you got to style over. So looking for somebody can stay consistent, I do believe. Yeah, that's a. That's.

And somebody that's like a. Probably like a younger party promoter.

Yeah.

That's looking for. That's looking for a. A career in entertainment and kind of can use this as like, you know, hey, one of the nights that will give you a night that you can promote that in trade off. Right. To be able to be very present with the, with the facility seven days a week.

You know, that's what they've been doing with young DJs. They've been getting little DJs to come in. Giving them a night to be able to like bring people in stuff. Like, it's really interesting watching the turnover and then how when they bring new people in. Establishing yourself within the system and being able to kind of have, you know, every. Everybody had the chance to have a run. But you having a boutique business, did you think that you are going. When you started building culture, did you think about that as a boutique business?

Absolutely, I thought about it as a boutique business, yes. I never thought about selling more. So I did think about expanding because I had it set up in my mind like, okay, it's gonna be the publishing side, it's gonna be the music management and the labor services side. This is gonna be the TV and film side, this is gonna be the sports side. And all these are different businesses. Right. And so. And it put me into this whirlwind of like thinking about it from a standpoint of a boutique enterprise. Right. Where. Where I'm like, I'm the type of individual where I would like to have an umbrella of businesses that are boutique. Right. Versus having one. Instead of me having a McDonald's, having 35 McDonald's, I rather have 35 businesses that actually are across all these different sectors. Right. Because I feel like as a holding company, I'm trying to like hold assets. When I look at my pie chart, I want to be able to say real estate, I want to be able to say music. I want to be able to say publishing, TV and film and know how that. How I fare. Right, Right. I recently. The reason why the skating ring is so interesting to me is because I recently started with. With my golf instructor, one of the Investments into a golf simulator business. Okay. In Miami. Okay. And, I mean, it's been. We'll make. We're gonna make our money back in year one.

Wow.

Already we're gonna make our. Our money back in year one. We're doing about. We're operating at about a 50 net profit, sometimes more than that, where it only takes. Well, our overhead is about, give or take, 12,000 just to run it a month. And then you got probably another 5 to 7,000 for staffing for the month. I mean, but we're generating like 48, 50 grand a month. So we're sitting about 20 to 30, and profit is a month. And we're only in our third. This is our third month. Like, May is our third full month. We opened May, February 17th, as a soft launch. And then March was our first month, April's our second month, and May is our third month. And these are slow times because this one people golfing outside.

Right.

Our business is designed for Miami, when it's so hot, so rainy, so muggy, and you still want to get good at golf. And our whole thing is get off the range. You don't get better at blade. You get better in the simulators because it tells you your arch, it tells you your swing, it tells you your speed, where the ball is hitting it off and the club. It tracks all of those different things. So now we're already in the conversation of like, okay, what about, what do our second location look like already? Because. Because it is a. The founder, who is the golf instructor. He's like, going out already, doing the work while there's a team of people that can run it because it's so turnkey. See, the thing we don't need. We don't need security, right? If we do, it's like one guy that's like, you know, that might be there. We don't have no concessions. It's bring your own food.

You can bring your own food.

You bring your own food. Our business is nothing but 60 an hour for golf, for go hit some golf balls. 60 an hour.

What's the capacity?

We got four simulators. So four simulators you probably can have. You can have 10 people, you know, 10 people rotating max in those four simulators. And we have a pudding, but we just charge about an hour. What is he open Monday? We open seven days a week. Seven days a week? Yeah. 10 to 10am to 7pm and we're working to make it to be turnkey, so it can be 24 hours. So you just have a far. You pay for the, you pay this only life for members, right. You become like fully blown member that you can golf half an hour. So after 7pm for until we open it, we're designing it so it can be turnkey, but we charge $60 an hour. And on average people are buying two. Nobody's just buying one hour. They're bringing their family, they're bringing their kids, women, young girls are golfing called a golf spot.

How did you guys go about marketing through.

So being at the founder as a golf instructor.

Right.

He was, you know, spreading, spreading the, the actual gospel, doing open sessions and just started spreading word of mouth in that area. And then in April, I started running digital marketing campaigns around it locally. So I'm running, I'm doing all of the digital marketing and making sure like you know, we're driving traffic to the sign up links so that you can purchase your domestic or your golf, you know, town.

Now the guy that came up with the idea, he's planning out of citizen already, right?

We are, we are.

Right. My bad. But I'm saying y' all question it. But as far as like, is it something where you feel like he sells it down the line?

We definitely, it's definitely one of those things. You can set it up. Because the thing about selling a business, you have to prove to your investors, whoever going to buy it, that it can run without you being a part of it.

Yeah.

The moment that they identify like this business don't work unless you're involved, then they make you sign up to be like an employee for three to five years until they find somebody they can replace you and that you can teach how to run the business. But we're building something that's automated. Right. So the thought process of it is if we do this right, it's 20, 25 now. In five years we'll have 10 locations. So you got 10 locations doing 20 grand in profits a month. You know what I'm saying?

Right. But that same overhead, with that same.

Overhead, because we're just going to try to keep the business. There's no need to expand. If you can't identically make a location a second location, we're not going to go in. We got 4,000 square feet right now that we're leasing. We're not going to go and try to open a spot with 20,000 square feet exactly. We're going to go try to find the exact type of makeup so that we can keep our overhead the same for the first three, four locations, if not the first five.

You just want to Duplicate.

Duplicate it. No duplicate.

I guess that's what mom and pop businesses are able to do as east. They just duplicate their businesses on their. I guess I can read us.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's. And it's hard because similar to the standard, you know, we got a sublease that's attached to a gym. Yeah. That. The gym sublease to us. 4,000 square feet. We went in, we gutted everything out, built the simulator, put the simulators in there, ordered everything. And we don't lease. Yeah, right. We don't. We don't own that space. Right. Our next location, it might be something where we have more control on the ownership of the overall property. Right, right. But as we keep growing by time we get to our field for six business that's not in a lease type of thing where we actually own the problem. We own the building. That property might be the property that got 10 simulators. Right. And it's now because you've had five successful businesses that might be in year five.

Right.

You know what I'm saying? And you just keep scaling it. Once you say, I want to start doing instruction instructor lessons now we can have a slate of instructors that can come in and use the facilities to teach people golf. We're going to do golf tournaments, amateur, amateur, virtual tournaments, amateur golfing. All of those things we can do virtually. And it's the new way of technology. And so it's a turnkey business. So it's like, for me, it is something that if properly set up from the beginning with a simple game plan. Right. We're not. We're not a social club. We're not a fun center. Right, Right. We're literally. You're trying to get better golfing and come here.

Right.

It's the golf spot.

It's just so happy to be enticed into all these.

It just so happened to be enticing. The kids can come, bring in a family. Guys can come after hours, after setting, get off work. Boom, boom, boom.

It might feel like it's fun sending this song, but it's really for golfers from the Lord to get out the residue.

It's a simple. It's a simple concept of that aspect that's not even mine. The man come through.

I will.

But when did you get involved in the beginning?

He just told me about it.

He was telling me about it for two years. For two years. He started training me in golf the summer of 2023. And probably about like all like fourth or fifth or fifth lesson, he talked about this idea all of 2023.

Yeah.

And pretty much all of 2024 until he said, I found the location, Ty. I said, I'm in. Tell me what I gotta pay. Yeah, I want all the way in. You too. You. You too excited about this. Yeah. I've seen this move before. That's another thing that comes with, like, boutique businesses versus mom and pops. Yeah. As a boutique owner of a business, you're expanding. You're looking at different things. And you can wing lyre pains a seed, other things that work. You're like, man, I wish I got in on that.

Right.

But as mom and pops, you're so consumed because you got to learn everything. You got to figure out the. The hiring process because it's your kids or your family. And a lot of the times, family don't get it right on what it means to, like, really build a empire of a business and start expanding. You almost got to have strangers there. That's going to bring better ideas than your family at times. And it is what it is. That's not absolute, but it's a little thing.

And so it's like, everyone has that, like, way of thinking.

No. Even though, for me, I don't have any kids now. Right. But I've always heard of these stories where it's a plumbing business. The family been in the plumbing business for 20 years. The new wave of kids, they don't.

Want to be plumbers.

So that family business starting to lose the family origin of it. At some point, I have to get sold. But that's a safe space. That's what a family owns out. And do you know what I'm saying? So an era, like the AI Era, plumbers are going to be booming. Let me find a plumbing company, a family that got a plumbing business. I'm all the way in right now. I'm like, yo, y' all can stay here. I'll help fund it, find the people that's going to be the plumbers, because that business is going to be valuable in five months.

Incredible.

Way more valuable than it was today. So we start breaking all these things down, man, with technology. Technology is supposed to take a mom and pop shop, convert it to a boutique shop. You can get infrastructure faster. You can hire, you can find people to work faster. So easy to find people. You know how easy it is to find staff to interview through LinkedIn? Yeah. You can run 500 ads, and that thing will be booming. Now, how many people are qualified, That's a whole new different story.

Right?

But you can run that for the skating ring, they can say, yo, we're going to put this on LinkedIn.

Facts.

We're just looking for seasonal workers. You know what I'm saying? We can just get seasonal workers. We can scale out our seasons.

That's true.

You know what I'm saying? Delta does it. They got full time, part time, season. Right. And over that time, you can identify Delta, they identify their seasonal workers or who to bring up to be part time. But a lot of times you have to find people that do have some deficiencies in their work history. That might be the gym.

That might be the gym, right?

Yep.

But you feel like when it comes to cheap hiring, you're looking for like the most efficient person to do the job.

Yeah. 1006.

Yeah. Yeah.

You gotta get the job done.

You gotta get the job done, man. This simulation, I wish you would have brought it up doing an episode about hobbies because it feels like your golf hobby led you to be a part of this business. Although it was out of the hobby, right?

Definitely was out of a hobby. I mean, it's. And another thing about it is the instincts. I'm sitting down, I'm listening to my instructor talk about it. He was just so passionate. Yeah. It's like, man, I know it's gonna work. I'm like, yeah, I know it's gonna work too. Yeah.

Cause you can care like that.

I'm in it. I'm with you today.

He saw within three months of it already.

Yeah. And he called me, we're talking. I'm like, yo, I have ideas. I'm like, I'm thinking about this. What you think? He's like, oh, man, that could work. And so for me, I believe that when you empower other people that are passionate about something, you get more from it than you could ever imagine, especially in business. So it's like, I'm already an investor. I've been an investor. Rather I move or not. That's probably what I am more than anything else, you know, is investing.

Last question. How'd you meet your instructor?

Funny. I was getting. I was talking to Speedster, he was like, let's meet at this place. Cause I'm gonna go get me my gut, my clubs, custom. And he said, you should get some custom clubs. So I'm like, word, I should get some custom clubs. So I take my clubs. I go down there and meet him. Wait, I just started playing. I don't even. I can't even consider. I just started playing. I never took any lessons at all. Now I'm trying to get custom Clubs, right? Because real industry, music industry shit, but not knowing nothing but trying to get all cute, right? Check it out. Cute. So his instructor was helping him and. And Style was like, yo, see, you know, he wanted. She want to get some custom clubs. Yeah, let me get some clubs. The guy was like, well, let me see a swing. So I get that started swinging. And he was like, well, first of all, we need to work on your swing before you start getting clubs, right? I was like, I guess. I guess you got a point there. So he introduced me to the instructor while he ended up being Justice. That's how I got into the.

The trying to get some custom clubs. Sometimes it's just showing up.

And the thing about it was the custom clubs. I thought I would take my clubs and get my clubs pimped out or something. Yeah, no, no, no. You actually can get brand new clubs. I'm thinking you can take my clubs and pimp them out. Like, you know what I'm saying? Customize it. Nah, that ain't how it works.

I appreciate all your insight today about mom and pop and see the businesses. Do you have any advice out there for any mom and pop businesses that are thinking about we need to expand.

I would say figure out how to turn your. How to really make sure your business is a very strong asset on your balance sheet. If that is going to the bank, asking the bank, hey, this is the business I have. This is what I'm trying to do. Would you be. Would you mind giving me an equity loan? I own this property. It has value in it. Or just simply making sure you got KPIs, SOPs, operation systems. Just think about how to automate your business. Because us as black people, what we got sold when we got sold. The fucking dream is the American dream. Yes. American dream is not for black people. And I'm gonna walk you why it's not for black people. Instead of us trying to get a house, right, we should be cohabitating, investing into businesses, growing those businesses, selling them them within the first five years, growing them, selling them. Once you sell the business, you go buy a house. Then more we all living it together, pay it out together, put the money together. We invested into the stock market, invested into, you know, the businesses that we're growing. Grow that business. Five years, selling it again. We got sold. American dream. That was a fucking like, think about this. This is gonna be my rant for the day.

Go ahead.

Systematically. That was a, I guess you would say a systematic roadblock created for black people trying to get housing loans in the 60s. Yes, sir. Right. Where if you was black, they would. No bank would give you a loan. Right? So now, in order. If you own a house, you had to pretty much save up all your money and put it in the house. Well, a house does not appreciate the same way if you'd have put that money into Coca Cola in the 60s. Yeah. Right. So we said, it's an American dream on a house. So us as black people being slave for so long, we never had the opportunity to own. So we're hungry for that because we're chasing what white people have said. This is the American dream at that time. Right. Because it ain't Mexicans or natives or black people said, American dream. Right. So now we're trying to have our own part of the American, American dream in a system that has basically was like, we won't even loan you money. Now you can't loan me money, so that means I gotta save up money and put more money into the house. Something that appreciates slower than, say, the stock market or going out and building a business and selling. Right. So we basically got sold the American dream, which is a fucking dream, Right. Because we couldn't even really participate the same way that the individuals that was also participating in American Dream that would actually be able to finance a house. So now they can own the house, and they still got enough money to put in the stock market. And the stock market is. Has grown a lot of more millionaires than in real estate historically. Right. It's a really great thing. So today we get a business and we hold onto it for too long. Right? We hold onto it for too long. We should hold on to our family offices for a long time. We should hold on to our. Our nonprofit organizations for a long time. But businesses, you build them, you sell them, and you put the money away to grow generational wealth. We never was really talking that we're learning this shit late. So we've got. We got so many skills. We got. We got what they call it, the damn. What's the terminology? When you.

When you.

Basically, it's not a placebo pill. It's almost like we got. We got sent on a dummy route. Yeah, Right. It's like the real route is here, but the dummy route was there. So they sent us on the dummy route. Yeah. And now it took us so long to turn that curb to come around this corner to get back to the route that they'd been on. So people say, oh, it was enslaved for 400 years or 300 years. However, the time. But Then you got to realize, like, as. How much time was sharecroppers, how much time of the Sims, you know, the civil rights movement. Then way before this D. The.

The segregation.

Not the segregation. After the segregation. When you had to be the emancipation is when side. Yeah. When. When basically they basically saying, you got to have a certain amount of black people to work here. You got to let a certain amount of black people.

Like a diversity hire.

Yeah. All that type of stuff.

Right.

Or just people of color. And so it took us all the way, really, truly into 20.

2020.

Yeah. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like Covid. Covid changed my life. Yeah. I'll be hesitant to say that Covid literally changed my life. Right. And the reason why Covid changed my life is because it showed everybody that was around me in the music business why I was doing what I was doing, including myself. Because when the shit shut down and only people was getting paid was the people that owned the music. I look like a motherfucking genius. And so when I start talking about the mom and pops and boutique, we can't get sold these dreams no more. If you got. If you're gonna start a grocery store, your grocery store need to be like earworld's Scale that bitch. Don't let it be no bullshit. You know what I'm saying? If you're gonna start a. You know what I'm saying? A wing shop. That's what you need to be Dave's. Dave's hot chicken. Yeah. Scare that bitch. Do not do the bullshit. Just. Just to have some shit. And it does not grow. Because now it's so much information to be able to know. We, man, we can't keep getting sold these dreams. I just told my business partner, I said, instead of you getting a second house, whatever that is, put that into the market. Let that money make money, right? Then go take a loan out against that money that's in your investment and then go and put a down payment on the second home that you want to get. But make sure that second home is a. Is a multifamily investment property so that you got four units that's making money, right? So now you got your house, then you. Now you got a healthy investment portfolio. You take a loan out against that so you don't gotta pay taxes on it. And you take that money and you put a down payment on your multi family, right? Or if you want to put a mo to put it down on a corn laundromat, whatever the fuck it is, you pulled it from a Loan and now, you know, build this. I'm gonna sell this. I'm gonna put my house in the trust. My portfolio is in the trust. So all of these things is building up the actual, you know, I'm saying the landscape of your generation of wealth so that for the next 200, 400 years, niggas ain't still struggling. So that's why mom and Pops is important. You can't let them fool you with the dreams no more. You gotta use the technology to scan your shit, use the information that you're getting to leverage the business you're building while you are alive. Because you don't know if your kid's gonna understand it.

You don't know because education is important, but you're not here to teach them.

I don't know what my kid might turn into. I can't think that they're just gonna naturally get the same damn genes and bright ideas. They're definitely not gonna live in the time that I'm living. We're living in AIs now. We're living in it. We didn't get to live in the dot com boom. No AI. Renewable energy, cryptocurrency. Marijuana still ain't been fully, fully legalized. We're living in an era where we're going to experience. We experience a global pandemic, we experience a black president. We're going to experience. We're experiencing global warming with triggers. Other businesses. We're experiencing a change of format of currency, such as crypto. We're experiencing a format change with technology. Right. And marijuana still ain't legalized. So we're going to live through things that our kids are going to get the benefit to be able to be into, to make. To make. To make wealth so that they can figure out how to go out and be better in what they do. So go and go.

That was a rant. That might be the best rant of this season.

Tyler.

I can't lie.

You did the big one.

On another episode of fym. We tired, yo. Yeah, man. I hope y' all received that because I feel like this is a very important conversation to have. You know, drop a comment about your mom and pop business that you saw growing up or the boutique business that was. Inspired you to maybe get into businesses.

Yep.

Just, you know, get in the comments, talk to us, let us know how you feel about this conversation and we'll be back next time.