Summertime In The Winter

And we rolling.

Yes, sir. We back. Another week of you Money with yo and Ty. What's good, Ty?

I'm good money, man. You know what I'm saying? Just trying to get to the end of this year. I'm pressing to get to the end of the year. Yeah, 1,000%.

We got what, three more weeks?

Yeah, we got three more weeks. One more episode. I like, I like I'll be paying attention to Wallow, Wallow. Doing this countdown on Instagram where every day he's counting down how many days to the end of the year and just kind of like, like, you know what I'm saying? Like the damn lazy police, like, aight, niggas only got 22 more days before the end of the year. What you doing? What you doing? What you doing, right? And I think that that's significant to like, understand like the kind of sense of urgency that you should have not only for the end of the year, but for your planning. I'm so ready to get the year over with because I've planned out 75%, if not 100% of my new year. So I'm not trying to get to the end of the year because I'm like, oh my God, this year has been so hard. I'm like, yo, get this shit out of here. I'm trying to get to this new shit. I'm ready to start my plans for January, February, March, you know what I'm saying?

Did you have a chance to just sit down and really map out next year, this fourth quarter?

Well, next year's fourth quarter was mapped out in second quarter of this year from a skeleton perspective. You know, I'm saying as we get closer to the end of the year, it's more form, it's more formal. So I kind of. I already know where I'm, where I'm going to be at in December next year, you know, and those elements matter for me because it's important for me to go from start to finish and skeleton everything out so that I'm building my year around key things that I know are going to happen. And if those things change, like I applied for this course at Harvard that you got to be accepted at. You got to be accepted in. Right? I can't really plan my year around that. It's a three day course. It's a high intense course where you got to actually be on campus. And I don't even know when they're going to send out, what they. I don't know when they're going to send out. Like the exception letters, if you got the people that got accepted, right? But I ain't put that as a foundational planning thing in my year. But it's on my board, like, okay, cool, if I get accepted, that means May 31st through June 2nd, I'm off the clock. I'm off the clock and I'm in school for three days, right? And now I'm planning, okay, what are, what do I want to achieve out of these three classes? Who do I want to meet? Is there any business minds that I want to connect with and build with if this course is something that I get accepted into? Right? And so for me, I'm planning things around, like, the milestone at vantage points in my life from a traveling perspective, all of those different narratives. So for me, it's fully planned out by the end of December. Really? By December 12th. By December 12th, I already know what my year is going to be looking like for the next 12 months.

Did you imagine where you are right now last year?

This time last year, I imagined being out of the country, but the countries changed because of the work that we were supposed to be doing or not doing. So I knew that I was going to be. I knew I wasn't going to be in the United States of America, but I didn't know what I would have to be accountable for. Like, I didn't know that I would be doing fuck you, money at this time last year, because we didn't really solidify this until like February, March on, what the cadence was gonna actually be, you know what I'm saying? But as you remember, we had accounted for it being like a 12 month commitment. It ended up being more like nine months. But we still had anticipated, okay, cool, I might be doing, you know, I might have to do something here and there. Then we finally did get the deal done and started to plan out what it would look like twice a month. Then we kind of flowed into what December would look like, you know what I'm saying?

And it started a month late too, if you remember that part of it. Like, I think we were supposed to start in March. I think it ended up getting pushed to April. So again, the flexibility of these things happening and like, that makes a lot of sense, actually. But for the people listening, can you tell them where you are and how long you've been gone for?

I'm in Bali right now. I left the US December 2, so I'm in Bali. I encourage that December is. If you're going to take a heavy vacation, I always encourage everybody on my team to do it in December. Now, what I mean by heavy vacation, meaning that you literally are off the grid, only working on things that you're assigned to work on, you know, the majority of the month. So a lot of it is, you know, everybody's working remotely for the most part. And as long as you got WI fi and you got, you know, sustainable Internet data on your phone, you can be able to still get things accomplished. No way, no matter pretty much anywhere in the world. And you can plan that way. So for me, we still running business as business as usual and still having your traditional holidays, you know, more so a longer Christmas to New Year's Eve. But even at the top of the year, there's things that need to get done that's not that heavy of a lift, that don't need everybody to be in one place. But I encourage that, you know, you spend a lot of time with balance for the first 11 months. And then when the music business slow down in December, I think that's a prime time for people to really get a reset, like a real reset and not like a fake one. And that's when if anybody, you know, encouraging anybody to take day, if they do got days left on vacation or whatever the case may be, I'm a very big proponent in that if you're working in the music space, like really take your time and take advantage of December.

Now for you this particular, this trip. Tell me about the experience a little bit. Let me know what you've been seeing, what you've been eating, what you've been thinking about.

I mean, I just. The biggest thing I've been doing is writing notes and plans for 2023. But I've been reading this book called what Would the Rockefellers Do? And it's a book about financial planning, estate planning, trust funds and cash value insurance policies. And it talks about how the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers one sustained their wealth over multiple, multiple generations where the other one, their hairs scrunch like they just killed their wealth by overly spending, lavish lifestyle and people not following the codes and follow the instructions of how you should live by the trust. And it was interesting to know like today based on when that book was written. The Rockefeller Fund. The Rockefeller estate is worth like 10 billion and over 150 Rockefellers are living off of the interest of what this money has made. And it's talking about how the trust is supposed to be a family bank. And you're supposed to write, write out rules and directions that the trust is supposed to follow to give family members the Opportunities to pay for education, to have seed money for their first home, to have money for their first business that they want to start so they don't have to go outside of the family trust to secure those different things. And it talks about everybody having life insurance policies on them. That's cash value life insurance policies where it guarantees that that person that is taking the money out for the trust, that they guarantee that they're going to pay that money back either through their life insurance policy over time or through. When they pass away, that money automatically goes into the family trust to get rid of any debt that they have with the trust if they haven't paid it back. And I'm only like 15 pages in on the shit, bro. And it's one of those things where it's like I'm marking up shit, writing notes, you know what I'm saying? And it's one of those type of reads. So I got a design meeting with my trust attorney on the 14th. So that's why I'm trying to hurry up and finish reading this book before I go in with her, so I can have ideas and questions I can ask her. So that's been like my main thing.

Man. That's a lot for the first 15 pages. I'm already intrigued. I think. I think that sounds like an excellent, excellent read to kind of get your mind right going into the new year. And we talk a lot about that as far as just generational wealth and the culture playbook. And just like I remember you talking about how wealth is being able to help sustain generations of families. You know, like your kids, kids, kids, kids are wealthy. Like, that's wealth versus, you know, you can be good, but if you're not able to pass that down, you're not able to help sustain other people's lifelines through your bloodline, then are you really wealthy?

Exactly. And another thing that the book talked about that was interesting is this concept of keeping the money together. You see it all the time with people that die that don't have a will. I think it's going to something that's happening with Takeoff right now. With Takeoff didn't have a trust or he didn't have nothing in. Now what happens is pass away. And if there is not a trust or will in place, it's some type of probation court that you got to go through. It's a whole bunch of things, right? And us as black people, we're not that educated because we never had to pass down. It's always been a check to check generational Thing that was passed down, right? So now it's this concept of keeping the money together. Well, when somebody dies, the money doesn't get divided up by their closest relatives. All the money go to the trust. And the trust is meant to teach people how to fish. So instead of you inheriting, you know, $15 million and you don't know what the fuck you doing with it, that $15 million go to the trust, and it's managed by a board, a trust board. And now when you're 18, 19, 20 years old, and you have this bright idea that you want to franchise, you.

Know.

A McDonald's because it's down the street from the college that you in, you can go to the trust and say, hey, this is my plan. This is what I'm thinking. I want to get into the restaurant business. I want McDonald's. Or if they say McDonald's cost too much, but, you know, you probably can get a Subway or maybe you can get a, you know, a Popeyes Chicken or whatever the case may be. Now, you have created a learning and a business mechanism for that person where they're just not getting something and they never had to work for it. So the concept in the book is like, not creating trust fund babies. Trust fund babies has a negative connotations to it, but there is to create this world where these individuals are able to go out and be successful based off the seed funding that they got from the trust to go out and build a business.

Yeah. That's interesting. What made you pick that up? Did someone recommend it to you?

I was on Instagram and I saw a black guy talking about talking about it and how he set up his shit based on the book he read. And that's how I learned about it.

One more question about the book. Do you know the date, like, when it was published?

I tell you right now, I literally got this joint.

Did you pick it up in Bali or did you pick it up before you left?

No, I had it in my book bag for the last past two months. Well, probably not two months, but I had it for a while. It was published. It looked like 1976, but I think it was republished 2016.

Okay, okay, 2016. And it got republished. That's not bad. But you see that gap in time, like, sometimes books end up out of print, and you just kind of remind me how we can lose history, we can lose knowledge. Because all because a book was published doesn't mean it's going to actually stay in vogue or it's going to actually reach, you know, millions of people. But what you're talking about is very intriguing to me, especially as far as like building long term wealth and also learning how to pass down money. I think that's like a huge concept that I just saw. Billboard did a story with Diddy and his son and just about how Bad Boy right now is obviously an empire that Puffy has been building. But I guess to us you think about Bad Boy as being this huge concept in the 90s that really had a breakthrough in hip hop. And Diddy has been able to build Ciroc and have all these companies and really build up his wealth. But eventually he has to pass that wealth on to somebody. And knowing how to do that, I feel like is something that I haven't seen too many people talk about, like, how do you pass on wealth? How do you prepare your children, how you prepare their children's children to make sure that something like a Bad Boy does not last 50 years? How does it last 150 years? How does it last 300 years? You know, I mean, time, time is extremely short in that manner. But you know, again, the Rockefellers is a name that, it's been around lifetimes.

Yeah.

You know, how do you end up like a Rockefeller?

1000%. And the thing about it is, fuck you. Money is not supposed to be temporary. You know, I sent one of my clients this, the story on the founder of Sam Fry FTX where he was valued at $26 billion four months ago. Now he's on record saying he only has $100,000 in his bank account. Now wait, hold on.

Repeat that.

Yeah, the, the owner and founder of FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange. Five months ago, it was the number one crypto exchange in the world today. He is worth, from the last interview that he did, he has $100,000 in the bank account. Five months ago, he, he was worth $26 billion. Right. And that's crazy. And obviously crypto is volatile as a motherfucker. So still, he should still have like 2 billion.

At least 2 billion.

But you know, it's probably some money being hidden. You know, like he's probably got stuff in offshore accounts, offshore corporations. It's probably.

But, but, but, but the fall was heavy. It's a heavy fall.

Was a real fall to the point where you got to go hide that shit. It was a real fall regardless of how much money he has hidden. It's a real fall. And if he do have, if you do have that much money hitting where he got $10 million hidden, then that means that they're going to get him anyway. He gonna get, he going down because he had too many people wrapped up in that business for that to just slide under the dirt. That ain't gonna happen.

No sir.

The element of all of these things is like your money is not supposed to be temporary. It is supposed to be a mechanism and have different stages, right? And sometimes you gotta say you to your family members so that they understand, hey, you have to actually earn the access to this fund. You earned it through being educated about what you want to do. You earned it through being hardworking. You earned it by researching. You know, when you force people to go through processes in order to get what they have seen and what they have desired, you reduce the chances of creating trust fund babies. You know, ones that just get money and never really had to work for it. You know, the John I think is, I think it was John Rockefeller Jr. He doubled the company's value after his dad passed it on to him, you know, and he was the one that created all of the trust. He's the one that put insurance policy on everybody. He's the one that designed everything. So it didn't even come from John Rockefeller Sr. The strategy and the structure and the doubling, the growing and the foundation came from Junior, you know, so it's one of those things where you really truly gotta understand what you're doing for your kids. Because what you're doing for your kids can directly impact your livelihood and your family. And it's called entrusted planning. That's what the style of trust funded Rockefellers had designed. It's called entrusted planning. And so it doesn't matter if it's a million dollars or $100 million behind this strategy. It's a strategy that can grow over time, you know, and so I just, I just found this shit to be fascinating because, you know, we talk about getting money and wealth and getting rich and it's like, yeah, these things are very important, but like, what are the methods? What's the formula? This is one of them books where I'm like, okay, this might be another one of the books that like changed my life again. And I look at my life being changed whenever I learn something that not a lot of the world has information on. That's how I kind of predicate or that's how I dictate or communicate or my life change, you know what I'm saying? When I first got the job at Delta, they called me and I was, they said they wanted to do the interview. When I heard the voicemail, they Said that they was trying to get in contact with me to interview me for the job. I was like, oh, this shit gonna change my life. Whenever I experience something that I know for a fact a small majority of people have been exposed to, I automatically feel like it's gonna change my life. So I never really thought about money is what's gonna change my life. It's always been getting access to information that not everybody has access to. And that is what's going to change my life in 2010 when I got approached, really in 2007, I met the guy. In 2008 we came across each other again. And then in 2010 he approached me again and was like, man, I really want you to help me. I think that I got this plan where artists, songwriters and producers can get paid off of music that screamed for free. And I was like, what? It was like, yeah, I got an idea that you can get that artists can still get paid, songwriters and producers still get paid, but then the audience can listen to the music for free. I was like, that's crazy how. And that was me getting information about Kazoom, which was a company that never launched. But we did all the research around it and I later found that same year I found out about Spotify, which hadn't got out of Sweden yet. That small amount of information that I knew before everybody and the research around it. That's why I bet it on Screaming so heavy in 2015 because I was like, oh man, this shit is going to change my life. So let me. Because I had the information before everybody else in my community. You see what I'm saying? So when we on these, these calls and I don't know what Amazon going to do, they're going to re up the contract. But I would like to figure out how we can keep having these because I think it's beneficial because life changing things happen through information and positioning and a lot of times you can get positioned by the information that you was able to acquire and sometimes you're just positioned because it's a God thing, I've been speaking to Jesus every day thing and I don't fell into this position. But now the information that I've learned is going to help me stay here. It's going to help me show improve to people that, that I'm smart, that I know what I'm doing, that I, that I'm serious, that I work hard, you know what I'm saying? So that's what my December has been focused on thus far. And we, and you know, nah, Absolutely.

But, but to your point, I feel like having access to knowledge and having access to information is extremely crucial. But it's also, it's so interesting how you get that information, how it finds you. Because, you know, if you weren't on Instagram, you would have never seen that black man talking about this book, you know, 1,000%, man.

Let me tell you something. Social media is gift and a curse, you know what I'm saying? Social media is a gift and a curse because you don't understand how much information is on here until you're on it, right? But it's also very, very hard for some people to endure how harsh social media can be, you know what I'm saying? And when I say harsh meaning, you get to see everybody else saying what they got, what they have, what they don't got. You get to see men with like, you know, a lot of money. Women get to see, are looking at women that looks like they're, they look like they're perfect, look like they're having the time of their life every day. But really it's the highlights. But then there's so much information on there that can be beneficial, that can lead you to a book or it can lead you to a course, or it can lead you to another career, a career change. You know, all of these different things are important because it's a, it's a, it's a melting pot of information, man.

You just said something right there because you, it's, it's everything, right? Like I remember growing up and you can just. All you had was Google, right? Whatever you want to Google you could find. But social media, you don't gotta look anything up. You can just log in and it's all there for you. You know, it's a bit of a, choose your own adventure, bit of a platform like Twitter is its own adventure. TikTok is its own adventure. IG is its own adventure. And depending on what you focus on is what you're going to actually get out of it. You know, I was just watching or I was just reading something where an executive was saying that TikTok. Well, they didn't say TikTok, but they said short form video is bad for the music business and how it doesn't necessarily encourage people to engage with the artist in a long term kind of way, that it's just extremely short and that it sort of makes you watch a bunch of things at once, but it doesn't really give you the, the relationship with the artist that something long form does. And I Think this is only one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is it allows you to produce a bunch of short shorts for people, bite sides, fun size things for people to have. So it's all about how you want to look at it. I don't think it's always about a pro or a con, but it can change your life. It can give you that information. It can lead you to an artist, it can lead you to a person. You can't, you can't just look at it as a pro or a con. I think it's whatever you make it. Do you feel that overseas, do you feel that the social media usage where you are right now is different than in America? Do you feel like you see a lot of people on their phones or is the atmosphere a bit different?

I definitely don't see people. I haven't seen a lot of people walking, looking down at their phones from, from, from when I was paying attention. I, I have seen people on their phone, like taking photos, you know, their family members and things of that nature. That is, you know, what, what, what I'm thinking about from that perspective. What else? What else? What else? What else? Yeah, I think that's like the, the biggest thing from that perspective. I haven't seen them, you know, socializing as much on the phones outside of the practical use it is to take photos, things of that nature.

That makes sense. Any, any big takeaways that you might have gotten from just being in Bali versus going somewhere else. This is your first time out there, right?

Yeah, this is my first time. No, I don't really have any big takeaways. Like I said, I'm just relaxing and reading and getting prepared for the new year and figuring out ways that I can continue to come across unique information to help me continue to do what I like to do and that share information with, with individuals, a body of people that historically been boxed out of getting that type of information?

Absolutely. Anything that you were particularly looking for right now? Is there anything you're itching to learn more about that you haven't been able to find yet?

Everything I'm trying to learn about is the state building, man. Like, my whole education aspect of it is how do you, we, you know, Estate Bill, you know, I don't want to be 60, 70 years old talking about, man, but we had, but we was up and we was rolling. We was, we was this. I don't want to even think I want 70 to be my best year. I want 70 to be way better than 40. You know.

Yeah. You're seeing that the ceiling's only going to rise.

Yeah. A lot of my time is that I think as black men, I don't know if women don't do this, but I think as black men, we got to do a better job at planning to live longer. Because if we plan to live longer than we plan our wealth and our opportunity for wealth to live longer and past us, and we won't be as quick to blow money off the thing off the concept that, oh, well, you know, we don't really need it. I read somewhere, and I can't remember if it was in this book, but I was reading somewhere where if I educate you and set you up in a. In a. In a way that you need to be set up to learn, then you don't need my money. And when I read that, I'm pretty sure it was in what the Rockefellers do. It helped me understand when Warren Buffett would say, oh, I'm not leaving my kids with no money. I'm leaving all my money to charity, or Bill Gates would say these different things. And I know they have a. I know they have a strategy to keep their family and their bloodline in order through the foundation and through all these different things. Right. So when you say, I'll leave all my money to the foundation, I guarantee you the foundation is operated and ran by their family office in some dynamic. Right. And so now it makes it so much clearer when they're like. When I'm like, oh, man, I'll be like, man, they ain't leaving their family. That's crazy. Making all this money ain't leaving their kids. But now my perspective has changed on it through again, more educated. Is that. No, we've already positioned and educated them. They have the name to have the vehicles to have everything they need to be successful. I don't know if they're going to be the best steward over the money. So we're going to leave the money in the best hands possible, but we're not going to leave. We're going to continue to give opportunity.

That's an excellent point.

Yeah. If my child, if they want to start a school because they feel like this school can be something that can be beneficial for the community that's going to get funded. You know what I'm saying? And it gave me a very clear understanding on how you can grow wealth if everybody understands the plan and understands the play. Right. And it's not meant for everybody to be in music, to get wealthy. It's meant that everybody is bringing something to the table, what they're passionate about and what they willing to be the most educated about, and having the opportunity to have funding for those ideas.

Nah, that's an excellent point. I've definitely heard that from people who are known to have wealth that they weren't leaving their money to their children, or I'm giving this to charity, or I'm pitting this toward these different things. And I had a similar reaction to what you were saying about just being surprised, like, you wouldn't put that money in the hands of your next of kin. But to your point, it's not always about giving someone money or passing money down. Not if you have a vehicle that can provide yourself with, you know, an opportunity to build your own wealth or to continue building wealth just in a different manner, or maybe not from this particular pot. Yeah, that's. That's cool. That's a cool way of looking at it. It seems like you. You're still at that stage where your mind's expanding. And I think that's such an interesting point to hear from someone who has learned so much already. I think they tend to say that people stop learning at a certain age. They tend to get set in their ways, or they get set in their way of thinking and to kind of see you talk about still learning and still expanding the way you thought about things and not necessarily changing your mind, but updating your perspectives. I feel like that's a very, very important way of living out your life.

Yeah, 1,000%.

But do you find that, you know, that people who hit around, like, late 30s, early 40s tend to be pretty set in their ways and have a hard time changing their mind?

Well, you know, I think that systematically, it makes it a little bit tough for people. You know, you have to really be. You have to wake up, and that has to be something that's on your heart, that you want to keep learning, you want to keep growing. You don't want to fall short in that way. You know, if. If you like how your life is going and you. You doing all the things a certain way, somebody try to tell you you should do it better, you should. You can get a better life if you do it this way. You might not be that open to that, you know, especially if you're not seeking a better life, if you're cool with what's happening right now in your life, then you're more likely not to change or to make any adjustments, no matter how good the advice might sound. You know?

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Ty for your words. I feel like it was a lot of wisdom in this episode, so y' all have a great week.