The 1% DO THIS To Get Rich! (The Easy Steps To BUILD WEALTH) | Wallstreet Trapper | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

Some people actually fear success. Success comes with a lot, right? But until you can overcome that average reality that actually living in it, no matter what you're on, once you become comfortable there, it becomes average. Anyone can live an average. Everyone can live in mediocrity, right? Then there's those outlines who consistently pushed themselves to go to the next level. And the thing about the human mind and the human body, it will go as far as you push it. - Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory.

From Struggle To Financial Freedom

Welcome (00:30)

Today we are going to melt your brain. We are here with the one and only the Wall Street Trapper. - What's goin' with go, man? - I'm good, man. I appreciate you letting me come, man. - I could not be more excited. So we were talking before we started rolling.

WallStreet Trappers Road from the Streets to Wall Street Traps (00:46)

So you are not a financial advisor. Nobody should take this as advice. I don't want you to have to caveat that if you're never. But you understand the stock market and you are bringing sound investment principles to people that typically thought that this shit was either beyond them, uninteresting and cool, whatever. And I think you are changing lives in a way that few people are. And throughout the course of this interview, I have no doubt I'm going to heap you with praise because I am so blown away by what you're doing and how good you are at it. And I think that's really the important part. But let's first go into the story so that people understand you're bona fides, how you came up, start with prison, how it changed your life, what you learned that would be surrounding. - So even before prison at about nine or 10, I saw my mom's get shot in front of my face. So immediately my mindset on violence was it's a necessary evil, right? 'Cause I was surrounded around it, right? So my early years were surrounded with violence. I saw my mom selling drugs, I saw my mom arriving, I saw my mom's get robbed, I saw her get shot. And then she later on went to prison, right? So I saw that early at 14, my mom was in prison and I lost my grandmother, which was who I was living with at the time. And my mom's and my grandmother always had this conflict where my grandmother was like, "Listen, "he doesn't need to be exposed to that." My grandmother was an entrepreneur. So I saw entrepreneurship from two different spectrums. My momma as a hustler and the streets teach you so much about investing in business, right? And we never can connect the two because we aren't exposed to that yet. This is all we know. So we live in this dome and then what happens is we start to adjust our house around us. Just like an investing in entrepreneurship, you have to understand your competitors. In the street, you gotta not only understand your competitors, which is the people who are hustling against you, you also gotta understand the predators, right? And so you understand all of that. So, mom's goes to jail, grandmother's an entrepreneur. She has a fruit company. And so she's telling my mom, like, "Yo, you can't just expose him to this." And so my mom is like rogue. But she's like, "Listen, the streets is all around us. "We talking like 1989, 1992, New Orleans, "murder capital a year, back to back to back. "Like, that's all it's known for at this time." And my mom says, "Listen, he has to know this. "It's the only way he's gonna survive in the world." So if anybody has to teach a ton, I'm a teacher ton. I'm not gonna hide it. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Some people were like, "She was a tyrant, "but I understood it because it helped me survive "in those tough years of my life." 14, I'm homeless because my mom's in prison. My grandmother's dies. I go to Delaware for about 60 days. - At 14? - Yeah, I go to, 'cause my uncle lives out there and nobody wanted to take me in. It's kinda like taking, and I don't wanna use it bad, like taking a wild animal and trying to domesticate him. It's extremely hard and nobody has the patience for it. Right? - Yeah. - So I go to Delaware and I just get in trouble. Like back to back to the point where the police comes to my uncle's house like three times. My uncle is just like, "Bruh, I can't do it. "You affected my family right now." I'm like, "I get it, I go home." So now I'm homeless for a minute, sleeping in a band of houses, sleeping in a band of cars, but it don't bother me. Like I'm like, "Cool, that's what we doing." I move in my aunt who at the time was on drugs. So I'm like, "Okay, I got a roof over my head, "but we live in a duplex." So that's two houses. And I turned, the landlord was on drugs. So I created a deal with her to let me get this side on a crib and I would pay her in drugs every month. And let me just make this my trap house at the time. So I'm 14 years old, I got my own crack house. I'm living on this side, I'm paying my 18 in crack. She's taking all of my clothes and my shoes and cracking, whatever the case may be, but at 14, this is what I'm doing. I'm only really going to school at this time to just like, frat-n-ize. Wasn't really tripping on learning, but I was kind of smart. Like I'm still passing, but school was just a way for me to not be on the street all the everything. I wound up saying, "You know what?

Survival Mode (05:12)

"This makes no sense for me." What did you think about learning at that point? - Survival. That was the only thing for me. - You're not reading yet though. - No, I'm not. I'm just on survival mode. Like the world, I just want to get to the next day. I want to make as much money as I can so I can crack. I got to send my mama money in jail, right? I got to go to jail, I got to switch shoes out with her so she can still be fly. Like I'm going through that process. So survival is the only thing that makes sense at this time. The game is the only thing that makes sense at this time. It's no, what do you want to be in the future? I don't know, I'll be the biggest dope deal I can be. I don't know. Right, that's it. So I go to prison at 16 for a temperate on - Try this as an adult. - Yep, try this as adult. So I got robbed, I got set up. The female I was dealing with at the time and that's part of the game. So I was just too open with her in a situation and it happened. So I wound up getting set up. A dude kicks in the door, put a Mac 11 on my face and he was like, "Yo, give it here." So me, I'm like, "Man, I don't got nothing." She was like, "You playing me sweet, cock it back." And I guess she don't want to see me get killed 'cause in my mind, I'm like, "Yo, I ain't gonna let you "just rob me like this 'cause there's no mass on him. "The streets is the difference between robbing me "and jacking me." Robbing me is when you still have a mass on. Jacking me is when you have no mass on and you know who I am, get it in the bud, come see me. - He had no mass? - No, that's a bold statement in the streets, right? So I'm like, "Man, I don't got nothing, bro." So she went, I'm like, "You know, "get into him, he's right here." So she tell him where his at or whatever. And so I figure out who he is. The streets always tell you who he is. So I'm with the president for shooting him six times. - Oh God. - Yes, so I would have prison for a 10-merter arm. - So not in that moment, you basically find him. - Not find him. - Yeah, maybe like three days later, three, four days later. So at 16, I go to prison for a 10-merter arm rivalry. I could have got more of my auntie at the time than the judge. And you know, she kind of like told him my story. It's crazy thing as I met him about two, three years ago. And I told him, "Thank you." - The judge. - Yes. - Whoa. - I told him, "Thank you." I got presented with a award in New Orleans for being an outstanding father. - Whoa. - And I had no speech. - God, fuck it, I'm jealous. - Yeah, I had no speech. I got a picture of my phone, I'll show it to you. And he wound up passing like two years ago. But I got that moment because in that moment when he gave me the 10 years, he said, "I'm saving your life, young man." By getting off the street. By giving you these 10 years. Because they could have given me 25, 30, again, a 10-merter arm rivalry with the dude coming to court. Doesn't matter that we was in the streets or not. All they know is he got shot, right? So I can even say, "He robbed me out of some drugs "and like the hell." - It's not gonna go far. - It's not gonna go far, right? So I saw him and he was like maybe 2020, right before the pandemic matter fact. And I told, "Thank you." 'Cause that changed my life. But in prison, I had to fight with two of my homies. In prison, we fight for like four hours. - Jay is back to back.

Playing the wrong game (08:20)

I'm just fighting one after another one. Like we just fighting. And I go to South American Fymen. And at this time, all these partners, prisoners considered like one of the worst parish prisons in the United States for America, right? And I go to the cell and I meet this white guy. That was the turning point in my life. I give him a cell with him and I'm frustrated. Like I'm kind of bust up. And he sees me and I guess he's in awe of the idea of so many black people are in this position. He says something to me. He says, "Man, y'all playing a wrong game." And so in my mind, like I'm fresh, I'm like, "Man, what the fuck are you talking about?" Like, don't make me whip your ass in here right now. Like he's like, "No, no, no." He's like, "Listen, I don't mean no harmo disrespect, but y'all like, why?" So I guess he's like perplexed by this whole dynamic of all of these black men in here. And I'm like, man, what are you talking about, man? Like, this ain't no game, like it's real. And so he says something, he said, "That's the problem. Y'all don't even know it's a game." And so when he told me that I'm like, like it's something about when you mad and you in the moment, but like something when it makes sense, it hit you like a ton of bricks. So I'm like, what? He was like, "Man, listen, man, there's a game that's being played in your planet game that you can't win. For a minute, I just thought thinking about the people who I knew that was in the streets, everybody lost, everybody suffered the same fate. There was nobody in the street that I knew at 16 at one. Everybody I knew had either been to prison, been shot, got killed, they're father, like everybody suffered the same fate. So my rebuttal to him is this, well, if it's such a game, you know the rules while you're here with me. - That's a good question. - Right? He said, "I ain't in here, $2.8 million in bezel man. I paid $800,000 restitution. I kept $2 million. Have you ever seen $2 million?" I'm like, "Man, get the fuck outta here." You're fucking lying. So one thing about prison and jail, you can show your paperwork, like you can lie all you want, but your paperwork tells me. So I said, "Let me see your paperwork then." So in the lawless, I had a red band, so a red band means a 10-minute on a robbery, kidnap and call Jack and violent offense. He has on a red and white band at the time. The red and white band means you're in federal custody. And it's crazy because in prison or in jail, if you get a federal band, it's like a hierarchy. It's like, you know something that we don't know, you next level, right? So he showed me his paperwork and his right, damn black and white. And immediately he got my attention. Because the red and white man makes me respect you a different level at 16, but then when I see him, I had never seen $2.8 million written down nowhere. Right? So that changes my idea like, damn. So tell me how do I do what you do? So how do I do that? He was like, nah, he's sniping about that. So he tells me these first three things, what he said, listen man, wealthy people do three things, man.

The Wealthy Playbook (11:32)

They stop trading time for money. They make the money work for them, and they give as much value to people as they can. I wanna stop you there for a second. I know when you're going with this one, you gotta go there. But one thing I love about your fucking story dude, you don't say one thing that white people do is, one thing that wealthy people, getting people to see that, to me, that's the game, is recognizing that this isn't, it doesn't break along racial lines the way people think it does. And my time working in the inner city showed me, this is not about that. But this is about class for sure, and getting people to understand that they can move between classes. That's the fucking game. Sorry, I just had to say that's important to me. - No, you can't shift. There is a shift, but there's the exposure part. So just coming up in the streets, you only see the game from the lowest level. And you look at everybody else in part admiration, and part jealousy, 'cause you see it, and you're like, damn, I'll never get there. And so the only way that I think I can get that is through sports, or hustling. That's it, that's the only a rap. And those are the only three options that you have. And so you make a decision on what's where you wanna go. Right, and so you look at it from like, damn, and so me, I'm at the time like, man, I can't rap. I think I'm sure I can't play sports. So hustling is what I got. You limit yourself, and nobody comes along and teaches you anything different. - So giving us three things, again, that wealthy people. - So you say wealthy people stop trading time for money, they start making their money work for them, and they give value to as much value to people as they can. The caveat, we got a little deeper into that, he said, the reason why you give people so much value is because if you give them so much value, they'll never leave you, they'll always be fit up, they'll feel you, and you will never need for anything as long as you get well to evaluate the people. And so I learned that as I got older, that part of me didn't make sense to me at the time, but the money working for you part, and I was like, how do you make your money work for you? Again, all I know is how to go get money.

Magician Advice 6 Breakdown (13:35)

That's all I know. So later on in that, he says, "Welty people do three things," so we in a self about 45 days. So all of his conversations, not as you said, is never was black or white. Every conversation with him about money and transition was always wealthy people do. It wasn't white people do, it wasn't black people, it was always wealthy people do this. Welty people do this, and I was like, "Damn, and not that you said that this now "makes sense to me again." So he says, wealthy people, first they get into stocks, and then they start a business, and then they get real estate. So when people ask me, "How do I get into stocks?" It's because I follow that rule. Or like, first if you would say real estate business, I would have been the real estate trap. But he said, "Stop first," and I was like, "Damn." And so I just, my rest of my time in prison, I wanted to be that. I wanted to be a part of that wealthy conversation. So in prison, it's easy to get, I took my time, I researched the war and buffets, and Peter Lynch's, and I'm not gonna lie, and to be getting that shit was like Chinese to me. This is a foreign language. And so what happened to me was, it started reminding me of being in the streets. Everything about it. And I heard this term one time that said, the real gains is on Wall Street, the real gains are in the government. And I was like, "Damn." And so once I started getting into the stock market, I wanna fuck with that idea for a second. - Yeah, I'm thinking through this in real times, forgive me if I'm super clumsy. But this is one of the things about you that I think is so interesting. When I hear, so I'm good at making money. I'm not good at investing money. So when I hear you talk about stocks, you make it sound fucking edgy and cool, and makes me want to learn about it and get into it. And there is this idea of making something cool that I think people try to wash it away. But when you think about the phrase, the real gangsters are in Wall Street, it hopefully it helps people break through some idea of like, "Oh, well, they were born into that, and that's why they have it." That isn't true. They were taught something, which they happen to be taught because they were born into it. But once you latch onto it, they were born into it, you think, then it's not for me. Once you realize, no, no, no, no. It doesn't matter how or why they got taught. They got taught. And that's what allows them to move like a gangster, to give that word a, you know, there is definitely some negativity in there. People in the financial system that really are like fucking gangsters in their fucking sinister. But if people can let go of that idea, not everybody with money is sinister, and getting money doesn't make you sinister. And that's why one thing that I think is important, and I know we talked about before, we started rolling, you're a little bit conflicted. How much do I show my growing wealth? And I think that I normally hate when people flex, and I won't say that I never flex, but I never go out of my way to flex. But it's important for people to see that you, by living the way that you live, you don't just get a taught cool, you actually live in a different way, which is really fucking interesting. Anyway, so the real gangsters are on Wall Street. - Yes, yes. - I love that. - And so, and what happens is, and just let me say this very quick, the reason why people think wealthy people, people will money a sinister, is because that's what you kind of taught in the hood. Like you kind of taught like, the people who really have money, like they did some wicked shit to get it.

The(Bottom to the Top) ambitious (17:03)

They did some backstabbing, cut those shit to get it, and you'll never get that. Right? And so, that same mentality now happens on a lower level. Right? The hustle and the dope dinner. So now you think, like, you ought to just do sinister shit to get money. And then the people who are successful in the drug game, they're looking at the people at the top like, "Damn, I want to be that." But the people at the bottom will never get a taste of that. And so now we just kind of live in all of ambition. And so now the people who are in the middle who work in, they're like, "Oh, then people will money." They all crooks. They all, because being at the bottom teaches you to envy people at the top. It just happens. It's something that grooves down there, right? It's kind of like you cook, I don't know if you had gumbo before, right? But it's kind of when you cook through, right? The base goes to the bottom. And so most people live in that bottom, never knowing how they'll get up there. Right? - I remember, so when I was working in the inner cities, I remember having this moment where I was like, "Wait a second, this is not an intelligence problem." Intelligence is evenly distributed. Like in, I remember saying to my wife, the next fucking Elon Musk is gonna be found somewhere in Compton. The problem is, he doesn't believe in himself. And so he's not gonna do anything. And so I became obsessed with this idea that generational poverty is not about money, it's about mindset. Now, it will manifest as money, but it is that, so I remember I had one kid come to me, and I was the first person that told him, "You can be successful." Like, "What the fuck? "Why do you not think you can be successful?" It didn't even make sense to me. And he was like, "Well, my mom always told me "that the world didn't wanna see people "that look like me succeed." And I was like, "I'm sorry, what?" I'm like, even if your mom had good intentions, that is the worst fucking advice ever. Because if you think you can't be successful, that will govern the way that you move. Right? So Kobe Bryant, people that have listened to me for a while have heard this quote a thousand times, but booze don't block dunks. The world can hate you all they want. But if you're good enough, think about this, the best basketball players in the world were paid millions of dollars to stop Kobe Bryant from scoring, and the mother fucker scored 81 points in the single game. 81 points, when you've got five people paid millions of dollars actively trying to stop you, and they can't because you've gotten that good. That to me is the game of money. People can not want you to succeed all they want, but if you out invest them, they can't stop you. They can't stop you. They can't stop you. And so getting people to break through that, so that was the first time I realized, whoa, wait a second, we've got people thinking in a way that governs their behavior, such that, and now I'm gonna quote you, which I had never heard this before, but this scares the shit out of me. If you wanna hide something from a black person, put it in a book, fuck!

Put it in the book (19:35)

So that's heinous in ways I can't even explain. And I'll say that it really, again, doesn't break along racial lines, it breaks along economic lines. So if people are not encouraging you to read, you're not going to read, it's fucking hard in the beginning. It feels like you're learning Chinese. How did you break through that? - So there's a few things where we can get into that. So there's this economic thread that weaves itself through the hood. And one of the things we do gotta understand is that there has been intentionality when it comes to preventing black culture from thriving economic. So we look at Black Wall Street, we look at Durham, North Carolina, we look at Rosewood. Every time a fluent black neighborhood gets in that level, well, like, yo, we about to do it and they set the tone for the rest of them, that get bombed, it get pillaged, it get, that happens. And so now that becomes discouraging, right? It's like, yo, like every time we try, yo, like, fuck, man, right? And so now what happens with that is that mindset, that mindset gets impregnated in the next generation for fear of survival, right? Like, yo, don't try to become this as a collective because they're going to bomb this. And I don't want to see dead, so we'll low level think. Now that is intentional. What happens is now, no one now believes that it's possible. Once you keep passing that down, you start accepting the lower level. And then there's a few of us or a few people who say, nah, I'm out of there, yo, like, I'm about to go for it. And then whenever it happens, I'm with that shit. You feel me? So for me, again, one of the greatest things that happened to me was my mother telling me, like, the world is wrong and you got to get this shit how you live. But I also saw my grandmother be a legal entrepreneur. So I saw it from both worlds. The greatest thing that ever happened to me was going to prison because I was able to sit down and mature in that environment. Whereas had I been in the world, I'm not saying I wouldn't still be this, but the path would have been completely different. Did you do all 10 years? I did eight years and nine months. God damn, 85% of it. And so had I still been on the street, I would have now been struggling with survival. One of the things that happens often in the culture of black people is survival mode. You never get a chance to play offense. You're always on defense. One, because of mindset, because you don't see it. Again, the Duke Dilla and the rapper, everybody who's working is struggling. And so you never want to be that. You never want to be that. You're like, damn, why have everybody struggling?

Breaking Free (22:43)

I need to do something different. So while I'm in prison, I pick up a habit of reading. That was the game changer for me. On the streets, I never had an opportunity to just sit on and read, 'cause I'm always trying to survive. In prison, there was no longer a survival mode there. When we look at it from, when we break everything down, we break everything down and we look at it from a skeleton. I have a roof over my head. I have a bed. It's not the most comfortable bed. I have a bed. I get three meals a day. Whether I like it or not, I have the essentials. I started hustling in prison. So I was working in a laundry. And so your clothes don't really get cleaned. So I found a hustle like, yo, I wash your clothes when we do it, but it's $5 or $25 a month. So that gave me a whole number set of money. And then I started being like a numbers dude. How big is that? The numbers the betting? I became a numbers guy. So I had-- - You know what I'm talking about? - That's it. I'm talking about getting the USA today. I said, look at this guy, Danny Sherrod. And he used to put out the line. And then I would take his numbers and put those numbers on my ticket. And my ticket was called Braveheart. So now I did college football, NFL football, and laundry. I had a whole thing going. Now check this out. There's five units in prison. I had people in each unit selling tickets for me as in distributors. So the streets was the same in there. And so in each unit, there's six, eight domes. So one person was responding. He had runners and everybody worked for me. And so that's how I survived. But I had time now to just sit down and read. And I would re-womp. My first book ever reading was "Sister Soldier Colders Went to Ever." Changed. I was like, "Dang, this is dope." So I went through the reading of hood classics. And then I jumped into like-- - Let me understand. - "Sister Soldier" like that. Hip-hop artist? - Yeah. - She had a book, "The Colders Went to Ever." - Sure. - "Fonamaloo Book." I read it. And I was like, "Damn, this shit is dope." So I went through a phase where I was reading like the hood books. And then I was like, man, I've lived this shit already. No matter how many times you tell a hood story, it's still the same. I've lived this shit for real. I don't keep needing to read this. And so I used to get up in the mornings and watch CNBC. So my people in prison, they love to watch the younger than the rest of them. And so I would have to get up before them to watch like "Squawk Box," Jim Kramer. I'd be like, "Damn, these motherfuckers making all this money and they not risking their life. Some gotta change for me. Like, something gotta change." And so I just started listening to them every day. And I started comparing it to the streets. A good business is just like a good hustler. A good business has great product. They have great clientele. A great hustler has a great product. He has consistent clientele. A good business on the stock market has what's called a moat, a competitive edge that keeps his competitors awake. A good hustler on the streets is gonna have that competitive edge where they be like, "Nah, yo, I ain't rockin' you. I'ma just wait to trap, come back." Right? And so, the competitive edge, a good business has a good brandy moat. Me, my name is good. Right? So a good hustler on the street, yo, trap got that blue magic. I'm good on you. Like, if I can't get trapped, I'ma just go trap. But trap got that blue magic. That's what I'm rockin' with.

Lessons Learned to the Streets (26:05)

Brandy moat. Right? That's it. A great business on the stock market has more assets, more liquidity than debt. A good hustler on the street is if you don't learn how to fund your business, if you're operating what all you have is re-up money, you're not gonna last long. So those components reminded me the same in the stock market or in the world if a company's paying tariffs, that's equivalent to a dude on the street going paid draft to go hustlin' somebody hood. Like, you can't hustle over here unless you pay me draft. It's the same as a tariff. It's the same thing. So once I under-- Literally. I broke the game down to a way that I can understand it. It wasn't about me just being brilliant. It was like, yo, how do I make the game winnable for me? This is a really important idea. This is what I talk about with business and mindset. I always tell people you have to understand how the game works. And what I mean by that is there's a physics to everything. So there's a physics of business. So thinking from first principles, how these things are actually structured. And I think the big breakthrough, and I've heard you say this, and I think this is really smart, there's a difference between the basics and the fundamentals. The basics is just one on one. So here are the sort of words and phrases that you're gonna need. The fundamentals are the physics. This is how it works. And once you know how something works, then you can get good at it. And I really think the vast majority of humanity, and I don't care what class you're in, the vast majority of humanity does not understand how the world works. Therefore, they are at the mercy of the world, and the people that figure out how it works can change things. I mean, we'd use a negative word, say manipulate, but it really isn't that. Like, this is power. Close your eyes. Imagine a world better than this one. Open your eyes, get the skills to make that world come true, and go actually make it come true. That's fucking power. Imagine being able to close your eyes. Imagine something, open your eyes, and actually be able to create it. That's fucking power. So to, whether that's to change people growing up in the inner cities, whether that's to create generational wealth in your own family, whether that's to learn architecture and build a bridge, or a house, whatever. Like, that is the point. But to be able to do that, you have to understand how things work. And like, yeah, that is to me what is so powerful about you. You understand a game that a lot of people that are disenfranchised understand the streets. And you're saying, "Motherfuckers, this is just physics. Let me show you the correlate over here." It's all the same shift. - It's the same.

Fundamentals & Understanding (28:31)

That's it. And so that's important for me, the understanding, the basics and the fundamentals. Like, once you start understanding the fundamentals, you give yourself power. 'Cause you now understand, like you said, you see how the machine works. Right? And so most people look at the machine in Marvel and say either, I'm like, most people look at the stock market. Most, 98% of the people who I know look at the stock market and say, "Yo, that's not a game I can play." I'm standing away from it. And so the way it's set up is, the world is set up well, listen, cool. I don't even want you to play it. Just give me your money. I'll play it for you. So when we look at like banks, like we understand that banks don't necessarily work in our favor. Right? So banks only give us 0.05% interest on the money we have there. Well, we can get 8% just by putting our money in the index fund. So why would I just set my money in the bank and let the bank make all the money? 'Cause all they gonna do is invest the money in for you. So they now operate as the plug. They operate now as the man who, I'm a front you this, I'm gonna make my money. I'm gonna take the cut. I'm gonna give you just enough to keep coming back. I'm gonna go to the plug. Who is the plug? The stock market. Right? So I understood the fundamentals of like the most important thing too is we don't understand how money works. That's a whole different language in its own. The relationship with money in my community is you make money just enough to pay bills. And so once you get tired of paying bills, you say, you know what? I need to treat myself to something. Right? No matter if I gotta go in debt, no matter if I got, I need to treat myself to something to take this misery away. So you treat yourself to something that you can't afford at the time, right? But it makes you feel good in the moment. And so because it makes you feel good, you say, you know what? Ah, I'm living. This is a reprieve from everyday struggle. Let me get back on the hamster wheel. And so the sacrifice now becomes hard because now you're saying, I gotta work, work, work and never get that reprieve. I'm not willing to do that. Right? And so that's the mindset comes in and say, everybody around me had the same problem. No one represented the solution. So if I don't change something, I'm only gonna end up like everybody else I know. Somebody has the solution somewhere. There's too many people out here living the life of their dreams that I'm watching. They know something I don't know. And the only thing that they had was access to a different type of information. So once I went back to information, I now want to sing from the mountains. I was like, you know, look at this dope thing I found. Everybody gonna be a part of it. And then when I showed it to people, they was like, that ain't it, bro. Mm. I'm not about to do that. And so I realized how powerful it was for me to one become economically powerful in my mind. Because the thing about investing, especially in stocks, is that piece of ownership of everything that I use, now makes me say, well, if I own that apple, God, I don't care about buying an apple from them. If I'm gonna wear Levi's and I'm gonna wear a Timberlands, if I can own VFC Corp, then I own the stuff that I'm buying. I'm okay with that. Like that subtle shift in my mindset changed everything for me. Because now I was after just owning everything that I consumed in the beginning. That was my introduction to the game. Let me just own everything I consumed and then I'll feel okay. And then one dope thing happened to me. In 2010, this is after I'm home from prison now. I'm home from prison. I'm back in the streets hustling. Because even though I have the information, I don't have the money. Right? And I'm like, well, shit, I gotta get the money. My door gets kicked in. In 2010, they get eight pounds a week, - By 10 pounds. - 10 pounds. Yeah, about a cost. Eight pounds a week, 10 thousand dollars. A 223 afforded with extended clip and a beam. And a hundred X pills. So a cop tells me, you ain't heard your lesson. Or you ain't learned your lesson. And I was like, damn, that was some dumb shit. Right? Like I got knowledge, I got information. But I still felt victim to the same shit that everybody around me knew. So therefore, the knowledge that I had wasn't powerful because it wasn't applied. So I was fortunate, God bless me. I wound up getting found out guilty because it's called food of a poisonous treat. So they kicked in my door, but they didn't have probable cause because they stopped me in my truck, didn't find that normally. So they went to my house, kicked the door and went no surgery on. So now everything you find is null and void. That's purpose, man.

First Taste of Money & Losing It (33:20)

'Cause that's not supposed to happen, right? I'm thinking for that all the time. And then, but that put me in a situation because now even though it cost me $60, I don't have to beat that choice. I don't have no money. So now I get into the robbing game. So now I start robbing dope dealers, right? Because an OG told me that a person who works a job every day, they not a part of this game. So they not fair game. They, you don't mess with them. But somebody who sells a nickel bag, you feel a game. A shock don't cavist a tuna or whatever. If you're in an ocean swimming, you feel a game. And so I started robbing dope dealers at the time 'cause I was like, yo, if you want, you can't call a police. If you want to see me, see me, I'm with it. And I got in a situation where I was good at it. And then my partner, God bless us. So, and then one day I almost got killed. And I go to my partner and I say, bro, I'm like I said, done deal. But when they kicked my door in, something happened. So they took my truck, they took my money. But they didn't mess with my stock account. It didn't freeze. It didn't, I said, hold up. They don't think I'm smart enough for this. In the book 40 Laws of Power, it says never underestimate your opponent. And at that point, I realized that America underestimates us. And it's not, it's from a class issue because we've never said we're capable of doing this. It's a game we just didn't play. So I say, okay, God, what do you want me to do?

The Importance Of Owning Stocks

Playing the Right Game (34:55)

All I know how to do is be a hustler. And the voice from 1999 comes to my head and says you're just playing the wrong game. I say, okay. Start working as an iron worker, building stadiums, building power plants. It's crazy because I was making good money, $2,000 a week. That's good money that's not like, it was $2,000 a week. Yo, that's it. $2,500, like it was amazing. I started saving and investing 70% of my money. God damn. I was living bare minimum. I was like, if I'm a change, I gotta make like the hard choices. It's hard for people to make sacrifice 'cause you gotta now go against and do it out some of the things that gives you that momentary gratification, that simple, that, ah, that's what keeps you alive. That's what keeps you going. Just to go on vacation one time a year to get these pair of shoes that may cost me $1,000. No, I can't afford them. But I've worked so hard, I need that just to keep giving me something. And so I was like, okay. And once I started doing it, man, and I started showing my home is in the street that it was a game changer. It changed my life. - You're showing them your portfolio? - No, I was showing them. Yeah, I was like, yo, look, I'm about to end this before Robinhood even existed. Right, so I'm on E-Tree at the time. And I'm like, right, check this out. And we go get, we go to the club, bruv. And we buy bottles, Hennessy. We buy wet. We buy Louis Vuitton. We buy Fendi. Yo, we can own that. It was like, what? It's a stock called LVMH, Louis Vuitton, we wear Hennessy. But you can get it on the market. It's LVMUI because it's in France. And it was like, what the? I'm like, man, look, I'm like, listen, bro, we upgrade our iPhones every year. We can own Apple. And so now we own Apple, we own iPod. Bro, we wear Timo-Lins every day. And so that was like, they got it, but it was like, I see it, but I don't know. And I was like, aight. And so then I had an idea. I said, check this out. We know the end result of being in prison. I've been shot, you've been shot, you've been shot. We've did some shooting. We've all been a jail. Who suffers? Like your kids, your moms, your girl. I said, at least what we gotta do is, if we gonna play the game, we gotta at least reward them for us playing the game. I was like, so what we gotta do is invest our money for them. So we making $10,000 a week. If we can do that, if we can make $20,000 a month, we gotta give them something. If it ain't cash, we gotta at least put something up for them. Because if we going for 10 years, what they gonna do, we can at least have that for them. And then I was talking to him, one of our partners, I was like, listen, bro, you need to invest the money, 'cause he was making more money than me. I said, what happens when you get knocked off? Because one thing, you know, your time is coming. So you live the game until it's your time. You understand that. What happens when you go do a five, 10 year bed and you come home and nobody can't give you money? At least if you got it in a stock market, when you come home, you up. Your money been working for you for 10 years, five years. You gotta ask nobody for nothing. You go up to the rear, man, what you got? He was like, damn, that's smart, right? And so my idea was like, how do we get, how do we start changing the mindset? And some people are like, but why would you tell them that? Because what happens is you gotta start somewhere. You gotta make the game winnable in the lanes that we can understand. And so once you learn English, now you say, you know what I wanna learn Spanish, I wanna learn French, I wanna learn that, because now you understand the power of words. And so once they started understanding the power of the game, it was like, okay, I can play this game. And so it was powerful for me when my home is in the street, started investing in money. That was a game changer for me. When my home is in the street, who didn't finish school, who didn't go to college, started telling me, man, I bought some Apple, bro. I bought some Microsoft, bro. I bought some Nike, bro, 'cause I'm about to get the new J's. So I'm like, that was powerful for me. - Yeah. - We made the game winnable.

Ownership (39:00)

- Dude, you have a phrase, Wall Street looks like us now. - Wall Street looks like us now. - There's another phrase you say, but you should like put that same like fucking stamp on it, is I own that. - I own that. - Because you talk about stocks in a way that sounds so rad, where it's like, you refer to yourself as an owner of the companies, and the thing is, it actually is true. Like you're not playing a linguistic game.

Why you have to take stock ownership seriously (39:24)

It is true, but people don't think about it like that, but it's so much more powerful than having a cool pair of kicks, is to say I own the company that makes those kicks, or I own the company that makes that phone, or Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, works for me. I'm a shareholder, right? It's really, really powerful. Explain that basic idea of ownership for people that might not quite put it together, that stocks really are owning that company. - So I actually got that term from Warren Buffett, and one of his meetings, one of sales in the 1995 shell, who would have made it, and he said that he owned the stock is like, is owning a percentage of a great business. And so once I understood that concept, I understood that the key to wealth is through ownership. Like that was one of the things that made it click, because I studied the wealthy people. Like I studied them, and I was like, damn, even you go back to Black Wall Street, old W. Girly. The reason why he bought, he has the 40 acres, and those acreages, one of the things he did was he said, I'm going to sell these pieces to my people so they can have ownership. I was like, damn, when you study Reginald White, one of the first Black men to make a billion dollars on Wall Street, it was about, he wanted it to have ownership. So I said, the key to building wealth is not how much you can work. You can't work your way to wealth. You got to invest your way to an old wealthy people, Black, White, Asian, Chinese, they own a whole bunch of shit. The people who aren't wealthy is because they don't own nothing. You only have your money sitting in cash. If your money is just sitting in cash, realistically, you're becoming poorer every day, or they own depreciating assets. And that's what cash is. It's a depreciating asset because the more money they print, the more money they have money loses value. So if it's just sitting in, it's the reason why the bank wants you to have your money there so they can take it and use it and invest it so much. And be like, hey, it's just sitting, I'm going to give you 50 cents on whatever you add in. And so the idea of ownership was, you know what, we can just start owning everything that we, no matter if it's just a stock, like that's powerful. Because if you can start owning the businesses that you now consume every day, you turn a one-time transaction to a lifetime of profit. And that was major for me. Because if I go to a store and buy a pair of Nike's, that's a one-time transaction. In order for me to get something from them again, I gotta come back and buy another pair of Nike's. But if I own the Nike stock, long as I own it, it's a profitable vehicle for me. So that one-time transaction can become a lifetime of profit if I own that business. If I'm a buyer, if I know I'm an Apple user, if I know I got the phone, I got the AirPods, I got the MacBook, I got the PC, I got excited when Apple's about to drop something. Why wouldn't I own it? As much of it as I can, right? Like if I understand that concept, if I know people gonna, America has one of the biggest trash problems in the world. Right? So if I know that waste management is a company, it's gonna be here forever, 'cause we aren't gonna stop throwing things away. Why don't I own that company? Because I don't want everybody to throw things away. And so now instead of me getting excited about Apple line being around the corner because it's a new phone, I'm like, yo, you don't have to make me some money. Right? So when I hear something like waste management has bought 40 acres of disposable land for another landfill, I'm excited about that. And another great thing about the stock market is, for me, it now makes me pay attention to the world. And so now I understand what's going on in the world. I started learning business cycles, market cycles. You know what I'm saying? Because now I can understand, yo, this is okay. Things are going out of business. Okay, we're in this cycle. Okay, people are hiring, okay, we in expansion cycle. And so now I started taking, I took an economic class on my own without just understanding the world. And so you start understanding when something is happening in China, okay, something happening in China. So I own Apple. Apple has 20% of that revenue in China. Okay, they might take a little hit right now. You know what I'm saying? So the stock market helped me start understanding how the world moves the fundamentals. Right? Right? And so that's important. I really hope people, I don't know. I really hope people pay close attention to you because even in this interview, they're not gonna understand how much you know. And I've listened to hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of your footage. And I'm just like, fuck. So one thing I wanna be on record is saying, and you can play this on a loop on your fucking website, whatever, is that I can afford any money manager I want. And you are as knowledgeable as the money manager that I have. I'm very impressed with your ability to explain these concepts. And so that's important to me for a couple of reasons. One, there are certain people that are only gonna listen to you. So it's great. So they now have access to, I'm telling you world class information. And then number two is the journey that you've been on, you started on the streets, were homeless, in prison, like really caught up in the lifestyle. And through knowledge, you have transformed your life and your family's life. And if they can believe that you can do it, they have what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is this. If you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will actually get better at that. And that is true for every human. Now, why is that the only belief that matters? Because your behaviors follow your beliefs and only behaviors matter. So if you invest in the stock market, even if you don't believe in it, your investment could still go up.

What behaviors matter the most (45:14)

If you believe in the stock market and know it's the surest path to wealth, but don't invest in the stock market, you'll never reap the games. So getting people to believe that they can get better, 'cause what you've done is just read and study and research and spend time watching CNBC. And then you look, like I heard you once explained, "Oh, I'll see a ticker symbol go by that I don't know it." I don't sit there and waste time that I don't know it. I just go look it up. And so now that's another ticker symbol. And for anybody that just heard ticker symbols, like what the fuck is a ticker symbol? No, look it up. Right? So you're such a powerful example of the power of knowledge. I think that's really, really interesting. So yeah, I hope that this is, for people that didn't know you before coming into this interview, hopefully they'll spend more time because they'll see just how much you know. - Man, thank you for that. And I understand that knowledge just gives us leverage in life. It's not about how strong you are. It's about what you can learn and then how can you actively apply that? I have this acronym called fear. Finally, exiting average reality. Right? And what happens is, until we can overcome fear, some people actually fear success. Success comes with a lot, right? But until you can overcome that average reality that you're living in, no matter what you're on, once you become comfortable there, it becomes average. Anyone can live in average. Everyone can live in mediocrity.

LEVEL OF MEDITATION (46:49)

Right? Then there's those outliers who consistently pushed themselves to go to the next level. LeBron spends $1 million on his body. Working out, eating right, agility, mobility. 'Cause he will never be average. And the thing about the human mind and the human body, it will go as far as you push it. Right? There's science that says that Gandhi levitated before the power of mind. So you may look at it like, "Man, nobody can't levitate." "You gotta get mine." But there's a level of meditation, concentration that you can lock into that can take you there. As long as you believe in it, like you said, the only belief that matters is, what do you believe you can do? I personally believe that there is nothing I cannot do. And for me, it's all about impact, purpose, fulfillment. Like the money is a byproduct of everything else that isn't my focus.

FOCUS ON THE MONEY (47:40)

My focus is I have a knowledge and information that I know that can change lives. Not just one life, not just like lives. And so the way that you change lives is by consistently learning, finding new ways to put that information out there, being able to open up, being able to be vulnerable because people need to connect. People connect to knowledge in the way that they can see, two things that help people, imagery and vocabulary. What they see and what they hear. Right? So most people won't connect to a certain knowledge because the people who speak it, don't relate and to can't speak the knowledge in the way that they can eat it. So for me, it's always about, how do I attain it's always a challenge for me? How can I attain it as much knowledge as I can because I love learning? Like I love learning, but then how do I take that and be able to, nonreciprocate it or give it to somebody who may not understand calculus or trigonometry? But if I can give it to them in this way, they can say, oh yeah, I got it. And there's more people that struggled in the world that has become successful. So struggle has to become a language that I struggle. So that's the language I'm great at. So if I can break down things into a struggle language, now I make it the game winnable for everybody. And that's the goal, to make the game winnable for everybody who's bold enough to step into the batting cage. If you bold enough to do that, I was bold enough to jump in the goddamn 152 foot tank with sharks and Dubai. If you bold enough to do it, there's an experience that comes from that. And that experience is so exhilarating, it will take you to the next level. Because now you keep chasing the next level of you. And that is when you start understanding life at a whole 'nother concept when you start understanding that, yo, for the longest, I was just low level living. I was low level thinking. Now that I've been exposed to something, and I say this often, whatever you haven't been exposed to isn't your fault. Once you get exposed to it, you now are accountable for it. And so once I've become exposed to so much knowledge and information, once I expose you to it, you accountable, 'cause now you can no longer say I didn't know. - What do you say to people that don't think they have enough money to invest? - So the important thing for me to tell them is start where you are. You build a house brick by brick. I mean, of course you can get a house put together all at once. If we live in that world, - I get the idea. - But you build a mansion, you build an empire, you build it brick by brick. Like you start with $25. And we have to understand, think R.I.P. and Nip, man, a great, he says, something that's phenomenal, he said, we own a marathon. We didn't get into the Iowa situation overnight. We looked back at our situations, you see that was, you inherited that, whatever it is, that poverty, you inherited that, that mindset, that idea of scarcity, that idea that you don't have enough money. You inherited that. Building wealth becomes a revolutionary act, because now you start saying, I ain't gonna go against what I was taught. Right? And so I say, if I start with $25, if you can do $25 a month, that's cool. If you can do $25 a week, that's cool, but what happens is, once you start understanding the power of how your money works, you start saying, "Yo, I don't need to do that, because that's taking away from this." Let me, that $25 will now become $50. Guaranteed, that 50 will now become 100 because you're gonna start doing more with less. The person who works out and sees that they drop 10 pounds in two weeks says, "You know what, I'm gonna go a little harder, because I know if I can drop 10, I can drop 20." Right? I know if I can get, if I see one muscle shape up, I know it's possible. The word possible is so powerful. Possible changes the game. Instead of it being impossible, we now say, "I am possible," or "I'm possible." That changes the dynamic. So the first mindset is saying, investing in a first stop.

Steps To Start Investing

Get Started (51:40)

It don't have to be a winner. It doesn't have to be a home run. It can be an AT&T stock that costs $26 right now. It may not be the best investment in the world, but you started. Right? And the great thing about anything is, you can't be great if you never go to practice. You can't hit 81 if you never get in the gym. - Yeah. - So just get in the gym, and then find somebody who can teach you, be dedicated to understanding the process. Warren Buffett said he reached 500 pages a day. That lets me know I got a whole lot more reading than doing. I'm an audible bull junkie right now, because I'm trying to, because if he's the greatest investor, and if he's reading 500 pages a day, I don't know how he does it, but in my mind, if he's still learning, I got a whole lot of learning to do. If somebody like Monet Shka-Bryd and Guy Spivy can pay Warren Buffett a million dollars to have lunch with him, and these are already great investors who I look up to, if they can pay him a million dollars to go have lunch with him, that means they're trying to learn. Their learning has to go to the next level. So if learning is the catalyst to everybody who's wealthy and successful, I can never be sufficient with what I know. And I think that has to happen too. We have to understand the power and learning and being educated, man. - No doubt. - Yeah. - Where can people find out more, because I intentionally did not spend a lot of time on the actual financial part of it, but you have so much good information. Where can people connect with you and learn more? - So on Instagram is wall, underscore, street, underscore, trapper. And on YouTube is just Wall Street, trapper. On Twitter, it's Wall Street, 504. All right, 'cause somebody stole my Wall Street trapper, man. But that's why I'm at right now. - What about your classes?

Wall Street Trapper (53:22)

- I'll have those. - Yeah, so I have those on the Trapper University, man. I have a vision, man. I talk to you about it. So the Trapper University is where you can get all the courses, all the e-books. I appreciate that, man, for sure. I mean, we, and I teach just investing on so many different levels for us. And I also have a group called Trapper's Anonymous. Well, we teach a lot of stuff. I'm a lot engaged in that. So definitely, man, but just check me out on our social media. You don't even have to get nothing from me. Just check me out on the, and then that information will change your life for sure, man. Thank you for that. - Yeah, for sure, for sure. - Boys and girls. - This one was important. I knew that this was gonna be a lot of fun, and I didn't know just how meaningful it was gonna be. I'm meeting him today for the first time, obviously, like anybody I researched, the life out of them. But yeah, I would be very surprised if we don't do more. - Man. - I think what you're doing is the tip of a revolutionary spear. So I hope that you guys follow him. What you can find for free will already change your life. And I'm telling you right now that I have access to anybody about money, and I found his information really useful. And usability is the highest stamp I can put on something. So I hope you guys will dive in, make use of the information that he has. It really is the ability to build wealth is available for anybody that can avoid eating marshmallow for today, and can play the long game. As he said, I think that's very wise. Speaking of things that are very wise, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. - And until next time, my friends, be legendary.

Subscription

Subscrib (54:55)

Take care. - Salute, salute. - Now I always cut losses quickly. I only invest small amounts that I'm willing to lose if the stock starts to go against me for whatever reason. I don't care how good my analysis was, if it goes against me by 5%, I'm out.