KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Hustle Behind Wallstreet Trapper's Financial Success

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Summary:This episode is a philosophical and motivational conversation with Wallstreet Trapper, a financial literacy influencer. He shares his personal story of overcoming adversity and building a successful brand by focusing on financial education and investing. While the episode lacks specific, tactical real estate advice, it offers a powerful framework for thinking about long-term wealth building, the importance of financial discipline, and the value of educating yourself. The content is more about mindset and motivation than it is about an actionable real estate business plan.

This is Wake Up to Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brittingham. What's up, everybody? I am here today. I'm super excited because I happen to be in your studio today. Come on, man. I'm here with Trap, Wall Street Trapper. And, man, I'm excited.

I'm excited because, you know, all the stuff you've been doing. but I'm super excited to have you on the show today, and I thank you for taking your time with me. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. I just, you know, when I first met you, man, you was opening, just sharing information with me, seeing what you could do to help.

So, you know, anytime I can bring any value to whatever you got going on, man, I'm here, man. So I appreciate you for having me, for sure. Thank you, man. Yeah. So I don't want to talk about success right away. Ah, okay. I want to, just because, like,

what I always kind of go to is like people will see some might see you on social media they'll see me on social media and they think you know it happened we woke up and we were successful yeah and I also I've just seen over the years some of the most successful people I've ever met it was because of the adversity they had gone through right so if you wouldn't mind because what you've done is remarkable but I really want people to hear like what happened to get you to this point. So I always say that you can't negotiate, like, the necessary, right? The adversity is needed to add seasoning to your life. You know what I'm saying? So just born and raised in New Orleans. I saw my mama get shot when I was about nine. She survived.

At 13, my mom went to prison. My grandmother passed away. So I was homeless for a couple years. At 16, I went to prison for a tent murder. And that's when I learned about the stock market while I was in prison. This guy I met him that he told me, he was just like, man, y'all, y'all playing a wrong game, bro. You know what I'm saying? And then from there, it wasn't that he told me about the stock market.

He just said, wealthy people do three things. They know how to stop working for money, learn how to let their money work for them so they can buy back their time and give value to people. And then he said the number three ways to build well was invest in stocks, create a business by real estate. And I was about maybe 18 when he told me that. And then so the rest of my time in prison, I really spent a lot of time just learning about the stock market. Because I felt like, you know, just being a dude from the hood, man, black. Like, I ain't see success. Right.

You know, the only successful people I saw was really like the hustlers. You know what I'm saying? So that's kind of what I looked up to. I was too short to play football, basketball. Right. So I was like, all right, this is my way out. And I think during that time, man, you really don't put too much value on your life. You know, you just won't survive.

And, you know, we get equipped with the tools to survive, but not the tools to be successful. And so in prison, I just had time to study the game. And it made sense to me. The market literally was a reflection of the streets. Same thing. Product, service, marketing, branding, branding, supply demand. And I was like, oh, that I get that. Right.

It's the same thing. Yeah. And so my idea was initially, I could use my street money, cleaning in a stock market, and I'll be all right. Sure. You know, you always try to think about

how you can outsmart the game. You never think about getting out the game. It's just how can I outsmart the game. And so I came home and I was, you know, telling my homies about it. Like, bro, like, you know, we went polo and we went Timberlands. Like, that's owned by a company called VFCC court. We went Fendi that's owned by Louisville-Toram away at Henness. We went Nike.

Like, we drink, you know, Hennessy. So all that's owned by certain companies. And I was like, bro, like, you know, we can really own this. And then the idea of ownership started, like, clicking in my head. You're the only way to be wealthy is you gotta own some shit. And so that was it. It just clicked for me. But then around 2014, I had caught another charge in 2012.

And they kicked my door, and they got 10 pounds of weed, $10,000, a 223, a 40, extended clip, and 100 X-pills. And so I was just like, all right, this over with from me. Yeah, yeah. I got blessed. They kicked in the door with no search warrant. and I got found out guilty because of the fruit of a poisonous tree. And that means anything, you come in my house and you don't have a legal right to be there, everything is null and void.

Sure. So that was like, but I still didn't want to give up the street. So I was like, I'm broke, so I went to just robbing dope dealers. That was the new lick. That was the new, because, again, it may sound weird, but you never think of getting out the street. Because it's all you really know is what you feel comfortable with. Right. And it's hard to tell somebody who's from the street from that magnitude of where I was to go get a job.

Because I felt like that was the next thing in the prison to me. You know what I'm saying? Of course. And so me and my homie got in a situation and I almost got killed. And then I told my homie like, bro, that's a rap. I ain't doing this no more. I don't already did time. I don't know.

I got shot. I almost got killed. I got found out guilty ain't nothing else for me to do in the streets but go back to prison or get killed and you know I was like nah bro I want to do that so I

gave him whatever we made from that and I just started working and I just said at least I could just go in on the stock market right so that was about 2014 so from 2014 to maybe 2018 I just took it really really serious started talking about it on

Instagram from a friend of mine was like, now you need to teach people on Instagram. I'm like, I didn't think nobody wanted to hear about it. Right. I don't want to hear about no damn stocks. You know, that ain't when we're doing Instagram, man. We show off and we, yeah. So got on the gram, started talking about it,

and people started gravitating to a pandemic hit. Everybody was inside. Everybody wanted to learn how to make money. And people had been rocking with me, and then it just got, it just started growing from that, man. wound up doing the Ellen show, wound up doing a breakfast club, wound up doing a sway in the morning.

All of that came from me just consistently putting in work. And then this year I had my first million dollar trade. And so, you know, it kind of just consistently just taking over the market, but also just being transparent, like really showing people the wins and the losses and not a lifestyle. But that was a byproduct of where I was from. Like where I was from, you hesitant about showing lifestyle style in New Orleans because you become, dinner. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You become the thing that everybody won't eat because so many people starving. Yeah. And so the lifestyle thing never was for me. It was just showing people that.

And so, bro, here we are now, bro. You know, some years in the game. And, man, it's just I find so much joy in not and seeing people make money because that's the goal. Like, this could be the ticket to your freedom for me. So that's why I'm just all in on it, bro. So, um, You prompted two questions. I'm going to ask you the first one. Yep. So a lot of people, when it comes to social media, and I tell people all the time, how powerful it is.

But a lot of people, we're so manipulated by instant gratification from social media, right? So you started and, you know, were you posting once a day? What were you doing? And, like, when did you see traction? Because it wasn't the first fucking day you went on social media, right? And now, I mean, now you're sure. shit is crazy. Yeah.

But there was a gap in between, and how long was that gap? So one of the things I did was, and the streets taught me this was always, before you go in anybodyhood and hustle, you got to pay attention to, like, who the hustlers are, who the rappers are, who the jackets are, excuse me, who hustling what. And so what I saw on Instagram was there was a bunch of pages that had information, but nobody was show their face. No face, yeah. Nobody was talking.

nobody was going live. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to go live every day. Yeah. I had a friend of mine that knew how to work Canva. And so I would tell her what I wanted to put on it. Right. Right.

So she would go make the Canva little things for me. I'll give her like five or six ideas. And she'll make them for me. And it wasn't the best. Yeah. But I would use them and then I would write down what I wanted them to be in them. And then I would go live and talk about it. And so probably that first year, again, you start the page with no followers.

Right, yeah. So that first year, I think I gained about maybe 15,000 followers. Which that's still. Yeah, that was rapid. That's still a lot. That was a lot. I think that first year I gained about 15,000 followers. But I was going live like in the morning.

So I would do stuff like when the opening bell come on for the market, I would go live. So you were consistent. You're super consistent. That was it. Every day. I would post. and then I will go live with the market open it will be called opening bail with trap

and then I would use like what they use on CNBC it would be at lunchtime I'll go lunch money with trap It was more than once a day Yeah it was lunch money with trap Yeah and then at the end of the day It'll be closing bail with trap Yeah

And then sometimes 2 o'clock in the morning I show people me researching the company Yeah So I just was doing what none of the other pages was doing Right they had information And the graphics look amazing But it was a faceless page. But it was a faceless page.

So now people asking questions. And another thing I would do is I would go to people's pages that had all the followers. And I would go answer every question in the comments. That's smart. All day. That's all I did. Yeah. I had acquit the job.

Yeah. So I was like, this is what I'm doing. Yeah. So I would just answer all the questions in the comments. I had a list of like 15 pages from CNBC on down. Bloomberg, you know, the faceless pages. Yeah. I'm in everybody comments all day.

And then the name was Wall Street Trapp. So it kind of was like a good name. Yeah, it stuck out. Yeah, it stuck out. So that was, that was, at least that first year was just grind work. Yeah. All grind work. And still, to this day, I follow the same method.

Because people still don't go live. So you just, one thing you just said that a lot of people in the journey of being an entrepreneur, where I think people fuck up is they get away. Like what you just said is such a valuable piece of advice. you didn't stop what worked. No. You found that at work, you kept doing it.

For some fucking reason, most entrepreneurs, including myself, I've done it, you do something that works really well, and then we feel that we've got to change it, and you didn't, and that's worked really well.

But one of the things that you said, for everybody listening to this, is like you put in the grind, you put in the work, you were consistent. The hardest thing for any human being to be is consistent. Yeah.

And I wonder why that is, because if you really want something, you know, always to always just outwork everybody. Right. Right. But in your consistencies, you got to be paying attention.

Yeah. Because you can consistently be doing the wrong shit. Facts. You know what I'm saying? That's why you ain't getting no movement, right? If I'm consistently working out the wrong way, you know, not eating, and I ain't going to see no results.

Right. So for me, and I think my greatest advantage is because I'm from the streets, right. I'm not going to lie. Because the streets always make you pay attention. like you're always on alert, you always on guard, and you know somebody is always going to take you out, somebody coming on a block trying to outgrind you,

I outwork you up. So for me, it was like, I'm not going to let nobody go live more than me. Like, I would do stuff like a company would have an earnings call. I would go live listening to the earnings call and break down what's being said in the call because I knew that the average person, they don't understand that.

Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So I would do it with CNBC. I'm watching CNBC. I know the average person to understand what's going on. But guess what? If I get on that

and I start breaking down what's going on, it's like, oh, that makes sense to me. Yeah. So, I mean, another key, you know, serious gem you gave is, you know, you, so when did you start, like, offering something to your audience to buy? Was that right away?

Nah, I waited a year. So for everybody listening to this, that's why I asked that question. Yeah. So you gave value away for a year. For a year. A year straight just gave value. Yep.

So you just, I'm just going to deposit a buck ton of education to the market. Then I'm going to come back and ask for the sale. It's like the streets. Yeah. Sample packs. Yeah. Well, most people would not be willing to do that for that long. Yeah.

A year. A year. And then when I did drop something, it was an e-book. The shit went crazy. It went crazy. And I still didn't understand. Again, I didn't even understand how the internet thing worked. Right.

You know what I'm saying? So I had an e-book with a PayPal link attached to it. I had an e-book with a PayPal a link attached to it. But I did that for a year straight. But she sold a rack of them. I sold a lot of them. And then before I even dropped the course, I dropped four e-books.

Right. And then I, here's the crazy part. There's evolution. I had dropped four e-books, Walsh-Trap 101, Walsh Trap 101, Walsh Trap 102, while she trapped 103, and then pay me in equity. And then I was like, all right, now let me take it to another level. I still didn't have the course idea in my mind.

It was get all four ebooks and a phone call with me for $297. Damn. Back in the day, did people get that? What? Did you give that away? I was doing 10 calls a day. Bro. I promise you.

You gave away a lot of value. I promise you. I was doing 10 calls a day. So if you're listening and you got one of those calls, you got to be a day. a fucking deal. What? And by his thing, I still have people with me. They'll tell me they're like, rob him with you since the phone calls.

Right. Yeah, because they stay with you. Because you gave him so much value. Yeah. They're like, Robbie with you. I'm talking about real phone number. Yeah. That's crazy. Real phone number.

And then Zoom jumped off. So it was, okay, phone number and a Zoom call. You put you on the Zoom. So you had, you had all. That's wild. So that was my, that was it. Like, that was, and I was doing eight, mind you, I had stopped working. Because in my heart, I'm a husband.

You still had another job. Yeah, I was doing, I was on working well then. Got it. Got it. So I stopped doing that. I said, I ain't doing this no more. Right. I do this right here.

And to me, in my mind, man, just talking on the phone with people is that ain't hard as going to work 12. I was looking 10, 12 hours a day. No doubt about it. Seven days a week. You're doing something you love. Oh, man, I understand. I was excited. So now I was going live saying DM me the word phone call.

and I'll send you a PayPal link. Mind you, I didn't know how this was working. I'm sending you a PayPal link. You paid a $297. I didn't get on fun with me. I've seen you the full e-books. It's me manually. And then I don't know nothing about how this thing go,

but all I know was I'm doing $1,000 a day. The thing that's remarkable about that is most people would eat, would so overthink that whole process that they would never get started. And I think that what's crazy about that is you just said, fuck it, I'm going to do it. I'm going on. And then so that just built this, just, you know, you built this ground solve an audience and gave away so much value. Then it's like, they'll buy anything you put out because you've already overdelivered on so much value. On everything.

And that was the whole, for me, and here's the crazy part. It's supposed to be a one-hour phone call. You was going over an average. Probably going two hours. I got another call. Let me. Don't talk about you catch me. I got two hours between a call.

You might get a three-hour phone call out of me for $2.97. You got full e-books, and you're like, brun. Yeah. When you're dropping this. And so I met a friend of mine that said, he was like, you need to stop doing the phone calls. He said the next, like, 20 phone calls you do, write down the questions that they have in you.

He's on a Zoom, and then you create your course behind that. And then that becomes what you do. And if you still want to do the phone call, now you charge $1,000. You know, the number is different. So I was like, all right, cool. And so I did that for a while, and I didn't do the phone call.

I wanted to over-deliver. Right. So I started charging $2,500 for one day with me. Jesus. So I would fly out to you. That's cheap. All I know was I ain't working and I ain't hustling no more. Right.

So it was $2,500. It was $2,500. It was. called meet the plug. Right. It was called Meet the Plug. And I was doing like three of those a month. Right.

Man, I felt like I was winning. Right, of course, yeah. I'm winning. So I was, it would cost, it would be $2,500 plus the hotel fee. Right. I would book my own flight. And so I would.

So you weren't even netting $2,500. Nope. Right. Nope. So it probably was netting, depending on a flight, depending like the first I went, it was California. Yeah. That shit wasn't cheap.

That was not a cheap. And I was standing, I wasn't standing no big dog hotel. Right. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it was like, all right, but you were getting a whole eight-hour day out of me. We would start at like, we would start at 9-30 when the market came on. And we would leave when the market go off.

That was my day. That was the day predicated. Yeah. 9-30 to 4-30, 4 o'clock when the market go off. That was the day. That was the session. Yeah. We would do a little lunch, but we would go eat lunch together.

Yeah. And I would treat the lunch. Jesus. But in my mind, man, I'm winning. Yeah. Well, the following you built by doing that, money can't buy it. Yeah. Marketing can't buy it.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yep. And people would, and I would go live, I would ask the person, like, could I go live for a little bit? Yeah. And I will go live while I'm doing a one-on-one for like maybe 30 minutes. Right. That's content of gold.

Yeah. That's right. Man, look, y'all want to get one of these. Deem me the word. Right. And get signed up. The plug. Yep. And at the end of the day, I'll send them a PayPal link.

Yeah. With a calendar invite. PayPal loved you. It was loving me. That's all I knew. Right. But I tell people all the time, what you don't know is not a reason for you not to do something. Facts.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I didn't know how to maneuver around, but I knew if I kept it simple, eventually I'll grow into it. I'll bring somebody in that can show me, okay, no, let's do this. I mean, you went out and did it. I just went, did it. You didn't overthink it. Nope. And that's, that's, that's probably a good part of your genius.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I think people always overthank stuff. Yeah. Something you, just listening to you. I'm going to go off script a little bit.

Come on, man. I just want to ask this question because this is, this is something that I'm a huge believer in. So at any time in your journey of what you went through, did you ever feel somebody, a higher power, whatever you believe in, was trying to tell you, bro, you're meant for something else. Yeah. That's why I'm putting this shit in front of you to stop, right? Yeah. So I believe in God.

Did you have a turning point where you found that? Yeah. So I always believe in God because a lot of stuff that I've been through, I felt like if it was just me, I would have been messed up. Sure. Right. And the ability, and I'll be honest, I don't, I didn't think that I was small. enough to connect the two.

Sure. Like the stock market and like the streets. Like who does that? And so I always, I was like- Which is genius, by the way. Yeah. Marketing. And if I was to say I did it by myself, I'll be like, nah, bro, I ain't had that. Right.

But I know that when I think when I look back and look at all the stuff I overcame, I was like, nah, I didn't. I had to go through all that to get here. In fact, like, this is what makes it relatable. And so when I look at the market, I always say there's no. nobody that makes it relatable to that class of people that still wants to be wealthy, that that wants to retire right, right? And the market is, the market is just not designed to speak to those people.

Right. It's designed to sell them a 401k. It's designed to give them an annuity plan. No doubt. It's designed to, hey, get on this social security. That's the way the market is designed. And so I was like, no, I can, I just got to keep learning. but I can also put it in a way that they can understand.

And I just think that was the gift God gave me. The ability to navigate through the minutia of, you know, the jargon and be like, nope, here's just what you need. So what's crazy about that is when you think about it like this, right? So this is what I believe, this is, I say this on stage almost every time I speak, is that I believe there's certain people in this world that are chosen ones. You're one of them, I'm one of them. Right.

Thank you, brother. So we and you get put through more shit. Yeah. Because for us, it's the classroom to teach other people how to get through it. So if you think about it, because you came from the streets and you were exposed to stocks, that's how you were able to parallel it. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

And think about it if you hadn't going through that, you wouldn't have been able to make the connection. Oh, for sure. And that's why you've for sure been chosen. Yeah. I know for a fact that that is the relatability factor. Facts, for sure. And so I always tell my team, like, yo, this is who we are. Yeah.

Like, authenticity is our superpower. Yep. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. It's our superpower. We don't have to be, we don't have to do. And I think the thing about that, too, is now I go against everything that traditional finance teaches. Yeah, Walsh for sure.

I go. Yeah. which is great. Yeah, I go against everything that because it just started making me understand, like, all right, wealth doesn't care, like, what color you are. That's correct.

Right, but poverty they don't care either. What were we just talking about before we got on here, money's the equalized. And it's the equalize, and I was like, you know what, let me take away, let me show you for a fact, and it's seeing my mom get shot, not finishing school, not knowing my father, going to prison,

but yet here I am, you can still be successful. In fact, 100%, right? And I was like, all right. And so something came to my mind, and I looked at it and they said, when I started looking at the most successful people in the world,

they all broke the blueprint. They don't follow the blueprint that is set for people. Right? And you got to be an outlier. Right? You got to be willing to say, nope, I'm going out the line.

And I'm going to go over here. I'm going to go down this path that not many people go down, but it's going to be some adversity, but if I can get past that, it's some gangs and shit on the other side of the. For real. You know what I'm saying? And so for me, I'm like,

nah, I won't just, I won't go meet the adversity because if I play a safe, if I stay here, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep allowing them to feed me and giving them permission to starve me. 100%.

Right? And I never wanted that. So it was now, how do I get people to adapt to that belief system? So someone who's listening to this and the stock market scares them. Yeah. They're like, fuck, I don't know what to do. Yeah.

Give them a piece of advice. You know, they're starting out. Obviously, they need to come learn from you. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But how about the person that's like, shit, man, I'm scared to even buy the course from you or any education because I'm just scared of it in general. The market, yep.

What would you say about it? So one of the things is, so we do a show every Tuesday called Trappin Tuesday. and I think that show is free. It's like three hours. Three hours. Every two. We just hit our 100 episodes. Congratulations.

Man, that was big, right? But just to get in the game, I want you to have some type of education on it. And the reason why is because the game don't got no feelings. Sure. It don't care if it's your rent money. It don't care if it's your education money. It's not going to give it back to you.

Right. Right. So I never want to. I want nobody to just jump in. I want you to go listen to something or somebody, perfectly me, that can, I always say anybody that listens to me, I let

them borrow my confidence. Sure. Because confidence, like just how we say, money is the great equalizer, confidence will be second to that. Yeah. Because when you're confident about something, you disregard the option of losing. Right? And there's so many,

there's so much data inside of the loss. Your confidence makes you say, what did I learn from that? Right. Oh, I'm about to get, that's how I am. Like, I lost $120,000 that put me in position to go make a million dollars. So for anybody that's- Hold on.

Say that again. There's that and a loss. I had to lose $120,000 to go make a million. Facts. You cannot expect to gain without embracing the loss. Absolutely. You can't negotiate the necessary. Yep.

Right? And what happens is the losses allow you to build that capacity up. to go to the next level. Yeah. Right? So for me, anybody, like, I'm not going to tell nobody just jump straight in. I need you to get educated. Because once you get educated, there's not a move you cannot make.

Right. Absolutely. It's not a move you cannot make. Like, I can tell you, yeah, go buy Apple, go buy Microsoft, go, but you wouldn't know why you're buying it. Right. And I'm not a believer in buy what you use because you can buy, I use AT&T. I wouldn't dare buy that stuff.

Right. I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. You know what I'm saying? I wear Nike's, but I wouldn't buy Nike stock. Right. Right. Stock just plummeted the day, 18%. Why?

Because the company said, we are losing our customer base, verbatim. Yeah. Right? So I'm not a person that's going to tell you, yeah, just buy what you use. No, go get educated. And you'll understand that what you use is where your understanding level is. And it doesn't have to be the company you use, but it can be that industry. So, like, I don't like Nike, but I understand, like, deckers.

I understand Lulu Lemon. I understand these new up-income that's outperforming Nike. Right. Right? I don't eat McDonald's, but I understand the fast food area. But guess what?

I like Chipotle. I like Kava. They outperforming McDonald's and all these other fath... So it's not so much of investing in which you use, investing what you understand. That's the pivot. Got it.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, that's the pivot. So I end the show every time the same way. I ask everybody the same question. So I named the show waking up to wealth. You've already learned it. You've been taught about money wrong.

That's why I named it waking up to wealth because I bring smart people on here like you to teach people about money better. Come on. So your answer can be whatever it is to you. Okay. But what does waking up to wealth mean to you? Waking up to freedom. Because it was a time of my life where every day I woke up in a cell and I wasn't always in prison. Damn, that's powerful.

You feel me? Yes, I do. Yeah, you feel me? And so I was confined to whatever construct based on my ignorance. Right. You know what I'm saying? You can only go as far as you have the wisdom to move. And so waking up to wealth means, man, waking up to freedom.

And that means I've acquired a certain type of wisdom that allows me to have full control of my life. Facts. So that's for me, waking up to well, would be straight up waking up to freedom. Well, man, I cannot thank you enough. I mean, the amount of wisdom and shit, you dropped. Oh, man. Thank you, brother. This one might hit 100,000 down.

Come on, man. I really appreciate you taking the time with me. I know you're a busy man. Anytime, bro. A lot of people get a lot of value out of what you dropped today. Thank you, brother. I appreciate y'all, man. Thank you, brother.

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