More Money Podcast - 347 Building Generational Wealth in an Unequal World - Cedric Nash, Author and Founder of The Black Wealth Summit

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

I talk a lot about why learning the basics of financial literacy, like budgeting and managing your money, is an essential part of any personal finance journey. But what happens when you’ve nailed the basics? If you’re looking to level up your finance game and start to grow your money, then listen to today’s episode all about wealth literacy. I’m joined by millionaire mentor and founder of The Black Wealth Summit Cedric Nash who shares his unique perspective on wealth building in an unequal world. Cedric Nash is an entrepreneur and investor who’s passionate about educating and inspiring the African American Community about building wealth for tomorrow and for future generations. He’s also the founder of Oakland Consulting Group Inc., an information technology consulting, software, and staffing firm. His forthcoming books Why Should White Guys Have All the Wealth? How You Can Become a Millionaire Starting from the Bottom and The Millionaire Money Moves Supplemental Investment Guide are set to be released next year and are examples of his teachings about wealth literacy and the obstacles that minorities and people of colour face every day. In this episode, Cedric outlines his personal wealth strategies with practical advice and anecdotes from his own journey. He also shares how real estate investing factors into his wealth equation and what risks are involved in this form of investing. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/347 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is episode 347. And we are really getting down to the wire in terms of episodes. This is the fourth to last episode of the season before we take a break for the holidays. Gosh, it has been quite the year of amazing episodes, I've got to say. And this episode is no different. I am so thrilled to have my next guest on. I have Cedric Nash on the show. He is the founder of Oakland Consulting Group, as well as the president and founder of the Black Wealth Summit. Not only that, he is the author of the upcoming book, Why Should White Guys Have All the Wealth? How You Can Become a Millionaire Starting from the Bottom. That one comes out in January. And he also has the Millionaire Money Moves Supplemental Investment Guide that kind of

is a companion to that book, which also gets released in January. Just a few more facts about Cedric because he sure has quite the resume. He has been an entrepreneur and investor since 1995 and founded the Oakland Consulting Group, an information technology consulting software and staffing firm that is over 150 employees. Magazine 100 fastest growing inner city firms. And he's also been listed in the Inc. 500 slash 5000 fastest growing firms in the nation three times. Cedric is also an experienced real estate investor and owns residential and vacation multifamily and mixed use and commercial real estate to grow his wealth. And that's really what the focus of this episode is going to be about how to build wealth, but also how to build wealth when you aren't starting on third base, like a lot of, you know, white people like myself. Privilege has been a topic of conversation in the personal finance world for the past few years. Thank goodness should have been in the conversation

decades ago. But here we are, we're at least talking about it now. And it is important to talk about because a lot of the old personal finance advice just doesn't work for everybody, because we're not all starting at the same start line, right. And so we need to acknowledge that. And then also talk about what can we do to equalize things? What can we do if we are starting much further back because of history and things like slavery and colonization? What can we do to kind of move forward so we have a better world in the future for future generations? And I know you're going to love this episode.

And of course, I'm going to give away a copy of his book when it comes out. So let's get to it. But before I do just a few words I want to share about this season's podcast sponsor. This episode of the more money podcast is supported by Desjardins. Does your financial institution share your values? Because Desjardins is about more than just money. They are on a mission to enrich people's lives and improve the economic and social well-being of Canadians everywhere. Desjardins' main goal as a cooperative is to support its members and make a positive impact on their communities by providing exceptional customer care, offering a variety of financial services, and above all, listening to its members. They've also been at the forefront of sustainable investing as one of the first financial institutions to offer responsible investment portfolios. To learn more about

Desjardins and how they're a cooperative making a difference, visit Desjardins.com. Welcome to the Board Money Podcast, Cedric. I'm so excited to have you on the show. So happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Jessica. You're so welcome. So I am so fascinated by, you know, what you're doing. I'm very excited about your upcoming book as well. For people who aren't as familiar, you know, with you, though, I'm sure they are or will be soon. Tell me a little bit about yourself, how, you know, what kind of brought you to where you are today, you know, now the founder of the Black Wealth Summit.

Yeah, well, my name is Cedric Nash, and I'm an entrepreneur and author, and been at it for the past 25 years. Started a company that's a tech company that focuses on information technology services around enterprise resource planning systems. But I've always had a passion for personal finance. And I was mentored by four millionaire mentors in my community. Three were black millionaire mentors and one was white. And they poured into me a lot of information and knowledge that kind of shaped my mindset. And I always wanted to write my own book as a result of reading all the top personal finance books out there in the market. It just felt like there was a void there. And there's also a void of books that spoke to my black community around the things that we struggle with in terms of building wealth. So it's been a passion project of mine. It's where I am in my career is at a point where I

can focus on the things that matter most to me. And black wealth development is something that's really important to me. Absolutely. Now, I love the name of your book. It definitely stands out amongst the crowd. Why should white guys have all the wealth? How you can become a millionaire starting from the bottom and the millionaire money moves supplemental investment guide. I'm curious, since you mentioned that you have read a lot of books and similar, I've read a lot of books. When you were kind of going through all these books and thinking about a book that you wanted to write, what were some of the gaps that you saw that you thought, I need to fill this in with my own book? Well, there are two primary gaps. And I write about it in my book under chapter, why am I writing this book? One of the major gaps was that, that I find in most personal finance books is that they either almost take an assumption that people don't have

issues with compiling a certain amount of capital to do things. So they assume that you could just go ahead and buy a four unit apartment building. You can just jump and start your business. So they may brush on, they rarely go deep into how do you get the capital. As we wrote in the book, you know, a lot of books tell you what to do with money, but they don't teach you how to get money in the first place to do anything with. So I always thought there was a gap between the rubber and the road. And because I personally have filled that gap, I wanted to offer solutions for how you can get some money in your hands so that you can start doing all these neat and nifty things that people talk about to build wealth. The other thing that I thought that they were missing is that they're going to implement policies that's going to make the game fair. And the reality is they're never going to come to save us. And it's our

responsibility to fix it because, you know, they could never get anything approved, even though, you know, some of us may believe they should or they should not. The other thing is that, you know, also because of our deep Christian values and Christian upbringing, you know, we're kind of, you know, taught to kind of pray and ask God for, for him to deliver us for things. And sometimes we often are told that, you know, God is going to give us a financial blessing that's going to fix all of our, our financial woes. And the reality is it's just not going to happen. So I want to give people a roadmap and a way to basically fix it themselves. Not to, we are taking the government off the hook,

and it's not that we shouldn't rely on Jesus to be there for us. It's just that, you know, I'm trying to give people some practical ways of actually making that happen. And I think that with that additional capital, we could put even more pressure on Washington to do more for the African-American community. You know, my personal feeling is that they make a lot of promises, but by the time it trickles down, it gets so watered down that the impact is not much of anything. So, you know, we can't rely on that. I'm curious, since you

mentioned that, you know, one of the biggest issues is getting that capital, which, you know, when I was starting to learn about personal finance in my 20s, that was exactly, you know, my point of view, too. I'm like, how do I get money though? I don't have money to invest and buy a house. And there was hardly any answers for that. You are a very successful person. You were able to create your own business. How were you able to make such a big leap from where you started to that kind of, you know, huge success you were able to achieve? And is it I think that the one thing that I think lots of people get frustrated with is, I see that that's an amazing story. Can I replicate that? Or is it impossible for me? Exactly. And that's, like I said, my book is for the 98 percenters, not the one or two percent income earners who have, you know, excessive capital

or the ones that are highly connected. So mine are for the 98 percent. They're going to have to do it on their own. And so I just you know, I use kind of the old school methods that my mentors use by just saving and investing, by living below their means, by extreme frugality. Right. And so the challenges in today's society is that because of social media, because the impact of having marketers on your phone 24-7, it's hard for people to hold on to their money. At the same time, there's lots of social media influencers that are creating this vision of this incredible lifestyle by, you know, by, you know, going to champagne brunches and trips to Tulum, that people are constantly spending money thinking that they're having this luxury life. And they're like, I don't want to put

it on hold. I want to enjoy my life today. So, you know, so I have a tough sell. And my sell is that, you know, if you save and invest and you build up your capital, as I say in my community, you can either ball hard for a season or you can ball hard for a lifetime. And so I'm offering solutions where people can ball hard for a lifetime, which means they have to save and invest. When you look at African-Americans in terms of getting capital for their business, well, let's back it up. There's only three ways to get capital for their business? Well, let's back it up. There's only three ways to get capital for your business or anything. You could either save it and invest it and grow it. Number two is you can borrow it, right?

But in order to borrow it, you got to have assets or cashflow in order for the banks to loan you the money. Or the third option is that you can seek investors. You can raise it, right? However, in order to raise it, you typically have to have a decent sized business already generating income. So it's kind of like that kind of tricky kind of a situation where it goes back to the fact that you have to save and invest. And even if you raise capital in which less than 1% of African-American business owners

get capital from venture capitalists, which is really difficult you know things are trying to change a little bit with a lot of vcs that are focusing on minority-owned businesses black and latin-owned businesses due to the racial wealth gap but the whole point is you're still going to need capital to to to create the paperwork to create your llc you're still going to need capital to uh to create your LLC. You're still going to need capital to create your product or to get a patent on your product or your ideas. You're still going to need capital to kind of get that business up and running so you can create somewhat of a business model that you can then attract an investor to kind of grow that business model out. So it's going to take capital no matter what. And I just think that there's a lot of people who make people think of, they even write books. My son,

it's kind of hilarious, is reading a book titled How to Invest in Real Estate with No Money Down. You're like, how? And so I was looking at all those things. Yeah, yeah. I look at all those things because I've invested a significant amount in real estate. And every last thing that they said, it goes back to you got to have some capital to even get to that step that they're talking about. So they kind of pull people in by telling them this incredible story. And I just don't believe in that. I believe in just telling people the truth. Yeah. Yeah. And there's not a lot of that. I mean, I feel like it's exploded over the past

couple of years just since COVID and more influencers and yeah all I feel like I see on like YouTube and social media is you know people are selling the dream because people want access and they want to fix their life and they want it now because everything's instantaneous and it's difficult I read in an article that you were uh featured in and I thought this was really interesting so I took note of it that there's a difference between being wealthy and appearing wealthy. And I feel like those two concepts are always, you know, combating each other. We want both because no one, you know, even for me, I'm like, I don't want to look like I'm not wealthy. But also you kind of mentioned is you can't have both at the same time, especially when you're starting out. One will always get in the way of the other.

So I guess my question is, how can you create a balance of that? Or is it just about ignore what people think? It doesn't matter about how you appear. The most important thing is actually figuring out how to actually build that wealth. Like for me, I like the idea of like the secret, being a secret millionaire, you know, where it's like, no one knows how much money I have or the assets I have. And I kind of like that. So I could wear my sweatpants to the grocery store and no one needs to know. Yeah. It's funny that you say that. And it's really interesting. There are folks who really believe in that. They believe in having it and people not knowing it. However, if you look at

everything culturally around, or most things culturally around the African-American community, it's about showing their success, you know, from what we see in our athletes, to what we see on television, to what we see sometimes in the places that we worship. And that has basically been integrated into our culture. Right. And so, you know, the whole rip, the rap, hip hop culture, the whole it's about showing off your success and those types of things. So that has kind of impacted our self-esteem to the point where we pursue the trappings of success, whether or not we have it or not. And so I understand it. And I have experienced the same kinds of things. And that's exactly why I wrote the book. And that's the other thing that the other books don't address. They don't address that struggle and how you balance that. Because I say often in my book is that you have a choice. You can either look wealthy or be wealthy. And if you want to look wealthy and be wealthy,

you have to be willing to not look so wealthy while you're becoming wealthy and can afford to do both. So the key is, but I get the urge and I had that same urge when I was coming up. So one of the things that I talk about in my book is called, it's called my deferred gratification system. It's about how you set goals to acquire various things based on acquiring certain assets. And so I had to do that in order to keep myself from spending just because I had excess money to spend on things. So, you know, if anybody knows me, they know that I like watches, I like cars, I like these kinds of things. But I always tied them to, well,

when I buy that office building, then I'll buy that car. When my business hits this level of revenue, maybe I'll buy the watch. The reality is you can have anything, but you can't have everything. And the name of the game is once you understand that, you can set a system to kind of seek balance. And one of the things that we struggle in my community is that, like I said, it's kind of culture in our community. And I think we have to detach our self-esteem from what people see. Right. So that we can focus on building up that wealth and not be so dependent upon the validation of other folks based on how rich we're looking. And that's one of the

challenges that African-Americans have. But to be honest with you, it's become a societal problem that there's a lot of people that are into that these days. There's one, I think this kind of popped in my mind. I am a reality show junkie and I'm not proud of it, but I was watching this new one that came up on Netflix about real estate in Beverly Hills. And one of the newer agents was black. And it was so interesting because honestly, most of the people in this agency have significant privilege that like two of the agents were able to like make their first, you know, multimillion dollar sale because it was a family home or it was their aunt's house. And the newer agent, you know, obviously came from a very different

background and didn't have the same privileges. But it was interesting.'s house. And the newer agent, you know, obviously came from a very different background and didn't have the same privileges, but it was interesting. He was having a conversation with another agent being like, you know, I can't really do door knocking or if I do, I have to look like full on suit, very successful. Otherwise they won't take me seriously

or it could be the reverse. They may call the cops on me because they're like, who's this stranger? And I'm like, that is such a unique issue with the black community that a white person would never think twice. And the person he was talking to was like, I've never had that issue. Because, yeah, why would you? And that's the other thing.

I think that the other way to kind of figure out how to balance, you know, how to stay safe and do what I need to do to get that capital. Because the only way to maybe get more listings, to earn more money, to be successful in your career is to maybe do you know door knocking and finding new clients but it's not as easy as just doing it and get off the couch it's like well there's a few other things that i need to actually do and address that you don't have to deal with right you know you know you bring up a really good point i think there is a there is it's a spectrum you know you could you know you could overdo it by looking too high end. And that may not necessarily lead to new customers. That just makes people look,

that may make people look at you and say, wow, they're very sharp or they seem to like nice designer stuff. Or you could be right in the middle and say, okay, what's appropriate for my industry, right? So that I get enough credibility to be successful at what I do, or you could underdo it so

that every game is to kind of find to really find that balance and i think sometimes in my community we overdo it we have this thing that everybody pretty much everyone black knows that we call it fake it till you make it yeah so we have this thing where you know we're going to project the we want to project where we are trying to go and so i think sometimes that can go really far or go against us i mean when i think about some of the realtors i've dealt with on commercial real estate uh some of them you know they just they just dressed appropriate but they were known their reputation preceded them they were known for being really good at what they did and bringing significant value to the deal. And so I think that whenever you focus on that, whenever you focus on being really good and appropriately

dressed and appropriately marketed, you know, your work will speak for yourself. But I know it's a challenge because we want to push ourselves out there in that way. Absolutely. There's another thing that I saw that you mentioned online, which I thought was so fascinating, which is, you know, we talk a lot, you know, in the personal finance space about, oh, we need to improve everyone's financial literacy. But you said, you know, there's a big difference between financial literacy and wealth literacy. And that really spoke to me because a lot of people actually do have pretty fair financial literacy. They know what a budget is. They know, you know, how to kind of manage their cash flow just because you have to figure it out at some point

if you want to pay your bills and figure out your income and all that kind of stuff. But when it comes to the wealth portion, I think a lot of people, and I'm kind of more speaking to like, you know, as a woman, that was never part of my kind of curriculum. I was never really, I had to learn that stuff on my own. I always learned about how to balance a budget. When it came to investing, I'm like, what do I do? And then the answers I usually get is hire an advisor to help you. And you're like, well, that's not what I'm asking. Right. So do you want to kind of discuss like what why it's important to differentiate both and focus more on that wealth aspect? Right. Well, because there's been so much emphasis in the black community about

financial literacy and about knowing about compounding and knowing about how to balance your checkbooks and how to increase your credit score. And so I kept hearing it over and over again. And I was like, well, what people really need is wealth literacy. They need to know how to build wealth. How do you accumulate assets? And what I mean by that, how do you buy apartment buildings? How do you manage them? How do you manage tenants? How do you keep your costs down? Those are the kind of things, because wealth literacy makes you wealthy, and financial literacy makes you just knowledgeable. So you're knowledgeable about

these things, but it's really the implementation of these things that matter. And the funny part is it's not even the implementation of financial literacy. It's a whole new set of skills. I had a guy on social media debate me, says, oh, that's a cute concept, but you have to have financial literacy before you have wealth literacy. I said, no, they're mutually exclusive. It's not like I got to take calc one before I take calc two because there are building blocks. But what I mean by wealth literacy, if I take, for example, starting a business, I've got to know about where to get capital. I got to know about hiring employees, which is a very difficult thing.

I have to know about sales and marketing. I have to know about pivoting and growing my business and expanding my business. Right. So it's a whole different thing. I have to know about the product that I'm creating and how to create my product at the most economical cost so I can make the highest profit on it. Those types of skill sets are completely different. And those are the things that make you wealthy because you have a very successful business that makes a profit. Now, the valuation goes up and now you can sell that business. They're two mutually exclusive things. And the other reason why I said that is that, you know, the racial wealth gap is something that we constantly measure. And it's kind of interesting because I've been baffled about why do we even measure the racial wealth gap? Why are we why are we measuring the gap between, you know, colonizers that had the benefit of slavery to kind of get a 400 plus year start.

Yeah. Right. So how do you think that I am to ever close the gap? Right. Not to mention the fact that colonizers have proven to be savvy at creating wealth. They've created the wealth game. And hold on to wealth. And hold on to wealth. So in order for me to close it, that means that I'm going to have to grow wealth at a faster pace than them. That means that I'm going to have to do it with less resources, with less access to capital. So it makes no sense. It's kind of insulting to even measure black wealth against white wealth. What we should be doing is measuring the rate of wealth growth within one's community

to make sure that we're actually growing our wealth and not declining our wealth. So that's where a lot of these ideas kind of come about. Yeah, we do need to build wealth as a community. We do need to take our $1.6 trillion in spending power and convert that to their checkbook. I think that the wealth literacy is a motivation. It's an inspiration. It's an aspiration to build wealth. Right. So the whole point is all that other stuff you learn in financial literacy, it will all line itself up once you get busy and building wealth and you start seeing your wealth grow. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. It's like there's definitely a place for it. I think, I mean, financial literacy is obviously very, very important. And I feel like, you know, lots of people need to know that stuff. But there's always, I find a point where you're like, all right, I get it. What's next? And that jump to the wealth building kind of stage is a difficult one because, I mean, I'm sure you agree. And this is why you're, you know, wrote your book is it's hard to find, I think, accurate information and also information that relates to you and your experience in your own culture and community. Cause yeah, like you said,

there's a lot of people talking about, Oh, just do this. And you're like, um, but wait, how do I get, how do I get to that step? And I'm not even close to that. And they don't really acknowledge. Oh, right. Sorry. You know, I mean, I see this a lot with especially younger influencers. It's like, oh, I bought my first place at 22. I'm like, how? I had zero dollars in the bank. How did you buy a home? Exactly. Right. And where did you buy it? How much did you pay for it? And yeah, those kinds of things. It's just really interesting. And there's a lot of social media influencers on personal finance that are using this as their way to get wealthy. Exactly.

They're selling something. Right. They're not wealthy teaching people how to become wealthy. They're basically teaching. They're using wealth as a way to get wealthy themselves. I know. And then they're the proof that, hey, what I'm teaching works because now I'm wealthy. But you weren't when you started.

Like, it's kind of like, wait a minute. How did you do that? And then when you really look at it, you have to really question to what degree of wealth that they really, really have. Right? Because it's kind of hard to really look this up and kind of really know, you know, what they have and what they don't have and what they really, really know. So it's kind of interesting. It's almost like it's like they are they're just monetizing financial literacy in ways that some people monetize the Bible. Right. So there's this thing that's out there and people found a way to package it in order to make money off of it. And I just don't believe in that. My mentors gave me they

poured into me knowledge at no cost. So I like to do it, you know, pretty much for free or at cost just to get people kind of moving. So I'm now talking more specifically about how to build wealth. I know, obviously, there's kind of the traditional way, which is like invest in the stock market, and everyone should do that. But you do talk a lot about real estate. And I mean, if you look at, you know, history over the past hundreds or thousands of years, that was predominantly the way that people build wealth is by owning land, owning properties, and then passing it down, renting it out and stuff like that. Why is real estate for you, especially so important to be an equation in your kind of wealth

building journey for people? It's interesting. And just to be clear, you know, I in my book, I have this thing I call my investment ladder, the millionaire money moves investment ladder. And it basically starts with starts from the bottom. Like the first thing you got to get a thousand dollars, right? You get a thousand dollars or twenty five thousand dollars. I'm advising people to invest in index funds, ETFs, you know, mutual funds, stocks or whatever, because I like the stock market to kind of grow your money faster than potentially anything when you don't have much money. And eventually you grow your money up until you can get into real estate. And so on my investment ladder, there's actually seven levels. It goes from level one to level seven. By the time

you get to level seven, it opens you up to alternative investment, investing in alternative investments like hedge funds, angel, angel investing, venture capital and private equity. And then it has all the other stuff like real estate, entrepreneurship. And so it kind of builds up. So I try to get people to what I call level seven investor, because unlike people like Grant Cardone or Robert Kiyosaki, who are all real estate, you know, they're like, oh, forget this thing called the stock market. Well, I'm a truth guy. The reality is the stock market has grown historically faster than any investment vehicle out there. Next to entrepreneurship, right? Entrepreneurship, you can do it as well. So my philosophy is you want your machine operating off of

all cylinders. So I believe in stocks, real estate, private equity and entrepreneurship, if that's something that you're interested in. And so the first step in my mind is that you've got to get some money in your hands. The only way you can get money in your hands is you got to save it. And I believe that while you save it, you always got to keep that money invested so that it's not losing value due to depreciation. So you put in anything possible that can get your money growing so that you can then go to the next level and have real estate. I love real estate because you can always beat inflation by getting your increases at three to five percent annually on your rents. And I also think it's the gift that keeps giving because it gives you income and appreciation, but stocks do too, as well as entrepreneurship.

So my whole point is to kind of get people moving. And it really depends on what their appetite is. There's some people who are going to be 9 to 5 millionaires, people who work their job for 30, 40 years, and they're going to just put away 22% of their income, and they're going to invest. And if they invest in real estate, it's going to be through REITs or through other vehicles, but they do not want to actively be a real estate person. And that is up to them. So I'm pretty flexible because I believe that you can get there in so many different ways. The most important thing to me is what I call investment intensity and investment consistency. And what I mean by investment consistency, that's investing every single paycheck, every single month for the rest of your entire working life and beyond.

Right. You've got to be that consistent. That's what people are failing to understand. And then when I go to investment intensity, that means that you can't invest. Like I said, you can't spend a thousand dollars on Gucci and a hundred dollars in your portfolio. You got to put a thousand dollars in your portfolio and a hundred dollars on Gucci. So the name of the game is a good portion of your income has to be invested, right? If you're going to really, really have an impact. Absolutely. Now, I'm sure you've also been seeing this. I've been seeing this kind of storyline online for a while, especially when it comes to real estate investing is that if you invest in real estate, the idea of passive income, the passive nature, you can just own all these properties and live in Costa Rica or something like that.

But I know from talking to a lot of people who actually are, you know, long term real estate investors, there's no real freelance, there's no such thing as passive income, there's always some activity on your part. So I'm curious for people that, you know, like, oh, I'm, you know, looking at this, especially with the, you know, depending on where you're living, the real estate markets taking a big hit, this may be an opportunity to finally get in there. What should people, you know, have in the back of their minds or be fully aware of before diving in that it's, you know, not as easy as I think maybe it's projected? Exactly. Well, the first thing I talk about in my, under my chapter, developing a millionaire mindset is that you have to accept the fact that you're going to be willing to work your butt off. Because I don't care what industry you're in, anybody that makes a significant amount of money

is putting a significant amount of their personal time into doing so. So if you can't get past that hurdle, then, you know, becoming a millionaire or building significant amount of wealth is really off the table to you. So the whole point is, is that real estate, I bought real estate while I was running my business. So I was being pulled on both ends. And until I was able to get people that can help me manage my real estate. But I was committed to working hard. And so if you're committed, if you're okay with working hard, if you're okay with learning things new, real estate is a great thing. But it will take some time. And it will take, it doesn't take a whole lot of time. It just takes that kind of time that you don't anticipate, right? When all of a sudden somebody calls you late at night because a pipe burst or because there was a fire, which I haven't had. I had a small little fire, but it was,

it was manageable. But, you know, in my 20 years of managing my properties, I had one little fire, but it was interesting. There was a cigarette butt that somebody threw up against In my 20 years of managing my properties, I had one little fire. But it was interesting. It was through a cigarette butt that somebody threw up against the building that just was like slowly, slowly, slowly burning. But the whole point is it's going to take time and you're going to go through ups and downs. The beautiful part is if you hang in there, if you're consistent long enough, like I said, if you invest consistent long enough, your costs are going to be so far south of your revenue that you're going to make such a great profit that you can live in Costa Rica and have your properties working for you. But it takes time to get there. A lot of people read these books and these books tell them that, oh, I can just buy a unit and all of a sudden

I've got all this positive cash flow. The reality is my experience is it's going to take you five to seven years to stabilize a property because even after you do all of your inspections and you know everything about the building, there's always something out there that you don't know. And so you're going to be stabilizing it with tenants going up and down. So I try, in my book, I'm brutally honest with people because I have no reason to lie. I'm not trying to basically make money off of lies. So I'm really honest with them about how they're going to have to put work into it. But if they hang in there, if they keep fighting that they're going to have a time in their life when the income that they receive from their properties are going to be sweet and it's going

to be a great investment and they're going to be happy that they did it. But nothing happens great overnight. No, I think it's important to even have a number like that's like you're not going to find it like kind of a little bit easier, maybe a little less effort for five to seven years, because some people may hear that. They're like, oh, that's not bad. It's like that's actually a long time. You know, like, you know, it feels like when you're actually thinking back to what happened seven years ago, you're like, oh, wow, a lot has changed. So, yeah, I just see a lot of people talk about, oh, you know, I was able to do it very quickly in just a few years. It's like, you know, for anything to be good at it and to actually be able to claim success, you actually do need to give it a good several years to be able to. Because, like you said, so many things can happen beyond your control that you didn't anticipate.

With that, I'm curious, what are some specific things that, you know, if you like risks, really? I think that's the thing that they, you know, these people that are talking about their real estate investing course, you should buy whatever. They never talk about the real risks. And obviously there's like calamities like fire, burst pipes and stuff like that. But I mean, you know, what we're seeing a lot now, especially in Canada's real estate market is going down, but interest rates are going way up. And so a lot of people that bought at the peak in the real estate bubble in 2021 are having a hard time with their mortgages. And I would assume if they also bought a bunch of properties, because they're like, oh, everything's going to go up forever. They're having a hard time now. Yeah. You know, the reality is all these, you know, I believe that, um, yeah, the way in my book, I talk about these four pillars of assets

that are out there. Everything lines up to these four pillars. It's either securities, it's either, um, real estate, it's either entrepreneurship. And what I'm saying is like, if you're an entertainer and you get paid as a 10 99, or you're a freelancer, you're an entrepreneur. So it's either entrepreneurship or either alternative investments. Those are the four areas. And the reality is different times of the business cycle, some could be doing better than others. Like right now, real estate is doing well because as a real estate, as a landlord is doing well because you can kind of jack up your rents and people just have to take it. And now that interest rates are high, they're not running to go buy a house

because interest rates are so high. And we're still in that questionable part about where values are going to be and where pricing is going to be. So it's always a moving target. That's why you have to kind of be in all of it. But, you know, so but, you know, like I said, within real estate, we talked about things that potentially can go wrong. I've had issues with roofs. I've had issues with floods in my basement and I didn't know about it. And my insurance company didn't pay it because by the time I reported it, it was too late. You're going to have these things. You're going to always have to have cash around you. That's why I tell people you got to get used to mastering that first principle, which is saving and keeping cash on you because things are going to happen.

You got to have cash and you got to have credit because sometimes you're going to use your credit card to bail you out some of these situations, not to bail you out of the need to go to Essence Festival and buy some new Gucci. Right. So you got to have that credit card available. So, you know, I just want to, that's why I was so happy and excited about writing my book. I hope people read it

because it's going to be a very refreshing approach because it's honest. It's brutally honest. And it talks about my own learning lessons and the things that I had to learn that worked out for me. And I'm sharing this because I couldn't find it in other books.

I couldn't find books that were going to be honest with me and tell me how this thing really feels. Absolutely. I want to talk actually a little bit about, because I haven't, I can't believe I haven't even talked about this yet, that you did found the Black Wealth Summit, which is an annual event. I think this is such an amazing, you know, concept and event. Do you want to talk a little bit about what inspired you to start this? And what is the event kind of about? Yeah, so what inspired me to do this is that I was at one of my condos in Miami came down from the rooftop, and a large bank was setting up and registering people. And I was just joking around with one of the

ladies who was registering someone. I was probably a little tipsy. I said, hey, what do you guys have going on here? She says, oh, we have an international investment summit. I said, oh, wow. I said, yo, how come I wasn't invited? Yo, I have a little net worth. And she says, oh, well, it's primarily for our customers. I was just joking around. So then I walk towards my condo down the hall and I'm looking it up and it turns out to be an international summit for their wealthiest clients. So they had Prince Harry and Meghan coming to speak, paid them $250,000 to speak. They had billionaires there. And so I'm saying, these billionaires are coming to get an edge on how to make more money. And I thought, why isn't there a conference out there like this for African-Americans, teaching them about emerging markets and investment opportunities? And so then I reached out to some of my old clients and friends

who were African-American executives and said that, hey, you know, I want to do this conference. And they all loved it and agreed and volunteered to help me out. And so that's how I got it. So our whole concept was to get the banks to sponsor the event because historically banks have gotten in trouble for charging African-Americans and Latinos higher in bank fees and higher in interest rates, you know, when their credit situation was comparable to others. So I, you know, so, and then we had the whole George Floyd thing happened at the same time, which, you know, that was just ironic that that, that, that tragedy happened at this time. So we were able to get support from Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, uh, uh, Raymond James, UBS. Uh, uh, so, you know,

we had, you know, Kaiser Permanente, we ended up having 16 or 17 financial services and health organizations help us get involved with this. And we're hoping to make this an annual thing where we educate African-Americans on how to build wealth. So we had sessions on public storage, sessions on multifamily properties, sessions on the cannabis industry. We're investing in the cannabis industry. We had Morgan Stanley teach a class on options trading. I mean, who better to learn from options trading than one of the largest financial services firms in the world? So we brought super highly credible folks, black wealth advisors from Bank of America, Charles Schwab, came and delivered the message to African-Americans. And we did it at a very, very low cost. We even had some celebrity guests come in the name of Damon John from the Shark Tank,

Ayanna Vanzant, she's a renowned speaker and minister, as well as we had Angela Yee, David Gardner from the Motley Fool. We had a bishop come and close us out in the spirit of our true religion, which is Bishop Joel Peebles. So it was a great, great conference. We sold it out. Next year, we hope to double it in size. We hope to continue to grow it and eventually get enough sponsor support to where it's absolutely free to folks who want to come for general admission. So, you know, because we want to make this accessible. The objective is to teach people an authentic way and to not have to compete with social media's influencers that are out there trying to make money off of wealth literacy. Yeah. And I think it's really important, too. I mean, again, as someone when I started in personal finance, I was always trying to find someone that I could relate to.

And, yeah, the old white man just wasn't doing it for me. I think it's so important to talk about, you know, how to build wealth, but also for, you know, in a way you're like, you can identify with this. You've had these experiences and we're going to talk about them. We're not going to just brush over them. So I think that's amazing that you have an event for people that are like, oh my gosh, I've been waiting for something like this. And just no one ever started it. And sometimes you have to start your own event if it doesn't exist or write your own book if it doesn't exist. Right. Yeah. It's funny. At the time that I started it. And sometimes you have to start your own event if it doesn't exist or write your own book if it doesn't exist, right? Yeah, it's funny. At the time that I started it,

there was another one, another couple of events that popped up around the same time. But, you know, and so everybody, you know, there's enough room for all of us. It's just that our event is just, you know, the thing that we're doing with our event, we're making sure that the quality

financial services advisors that are certified are providing the majority of the education or practitioners that we know for a fact are very qualified. Like I had my estate planner, Frank Campbell, do estate planning. And I had various people that I knew were very credible to come. And we're not selling. We're not promoting. We're not trying to sign up accounts. We're just educating and inspiring. Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing.

Well, before I let you go, is there anything else that you'd like to kind of leave people with? Obviously, they should grab a copy of your book to see all the great tidbits. But is there anything that you'd like to leave listeners with as some little motivation? Thank you for the opportunity. I do want your listeners to understand that building wealth is possible. You just got to be consistent

and over time it will happen. And, you know, just take it nice and slow. The reality is you can get there. And regardless of where the market's going, there's always opportunities to invest. All it's going to take is extreme frugality and a very, very detailed plan and to stay motivated and consistent.

Hopefully my book will motivate you and teach you how to do it. But my book is a step-by-step guide on how to basically take yourself from the bottom to the top. Well, thank you so much, Cedric, for taking the time and coming on the show. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

And that was episode 347 of the More Money Podcast with Cedric Nash. Make sure to check him out at CedricNash.com. Also, you can find him on Instagram at Millionaire Money Moves. He's also on Facebook under Millionaire Money Moves as well. I will be linking to his book, his websites, his socials on the on my website on the podcast show notes. So just go to JessicaMorehouse.com slash 347 to find all of that good information. And of course, I'm going to give away a copy of his book and I will share some information on how to win his book or another book in just a few moments. Here's just a few words I want to share about this season's podcast sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by Desjardins. Do you feel valued at your financial institution? Because Desjardins is on a mission to enrich the lives of Canadians,

help build stronger communities, and educate its members so they can confidently reach their financial goals. Not only do they offer one-of-a-kind customer care and offer a variety of financial services to fit your needs, as a cooperative, they put their members first. So if you're looking for an institution that's making an impact, look no further than Desjardins. To learn more about Desjardins and how they're making a difference, visit Desjardins.com. Okay, first things first. And in case you don't know, I've been doing a big book giveaway all season long. And I do this every single season. It's one of my favorite things to do. Any author that is featured on the show, I give away a copy of their book. So you can enjoy and there are a ton of books that I'm currently giving away. You can find them all

at jessicamorehouse.com slash contest. Or if you just check out the show notes for any of the episodes of the season, there will also be a link to check that out as well. But as a reference point, currently, I'm giving away a copy of Becoming Superwoman by Nicole Lappin, The Vogel Effect by Eric Balchunas, Seen, Heard, and Paid by Alan Henry, and Tying the Knot by Kelly Lavallee, Dump Your Degree by Zakiya Akareli, Cashflow Cookbook by Gordon Stein, and Stacked by Joe Salsehi and Emily Guy-Burken. And now I'm giving away a copy of Cedric's upcoming book, Why Should White Guys Have All the Wealth? And there's a few more authors coming on this show, and I will be adding to that list.

And then likely in the beginning of January, that is when I'm going to be drawing names and picking some winners. So make sure to go to JessicaMorales.com slash contest to find all the details and enter to win any of those books. All right, some other things that you may be interested in knowing, and I've mentioned this on some previous episodes, I am, you know, launching my new series of budget spreadsheets slowly. So I have definitely one up. And by the time this airs, there should be two more. So if you are looking for a budget spreadsheet, and you're just an employee, you earn, you know, some steady income or salary or, you know, employment income,

then I have a budget spreadsheet for you with a full video tutorial and how it works. I've also, hopefully by this point, released two more budget spreadsheets, one for employees who have a side hustle. So if you work for a company, and then you have a little side hustle on the side that could look like gosh, you know, you sell candles on Etsy or something like that. You know, you earn some form of self-employed income in addition to your employment income, and you want a good way to organize all of that, your self-employed, you know, income, your business revenue, your business expenses, and also all of your personal stuff as well. I've got the perfect budget spreadsheet for you. This is something that I developed when I was an employee with a sideustle. So I know it works. And the other spreadsheet that I have

recently put out is for anyone who is fully self-employed. So all of your income is self-employed income. And although using accounting software, like a QuickBooks or FreshBooks or whatever, those are great. Honestly, at the start, even when I was using accounting software, I was still using my spreadsheet to keep track of my business expenses and revenue and stuff. Sometimes it's nice just to keep it tracked on a spreadsheet. Maybe that's just me, but this is a perfect spreadsheet for you. If you want to keep everything nice and organized, make sure you understand how much money you should be setting aside for taxes and things like that. So you can find all those spreadsheets on my website, JessicaMorehouse.com slash shop. And I will be releasing more. I think the other ones are more focused on if you're in a couple. So I have ones for so many different

scenarios because I've gotten so many questions about, hey, do you have a spreadsheet for I'm self-employed, but my partner is just an employee? Yes, I have a spreadsheet coming up for that. Or me and my partner both have side hustles. There's so many different scenarios and I've created a bunch of spreadsheets for pretty much everything I can think of. There's also a fun little quiz that I put on that shop page. If you're like, I don't know which budget spreadsheet is the right one for you, you can input some of your details and it will then reveal, yes, this is the right one. You should get this one. So that'll kind of help you figure out which one is the one that you should download. Well, that's it for me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'll be back here, of course, next Wednesday with a fresh new episode.

Big shout out to my podcast editor, Matt Rideout, as always, and I will see you next week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.