S4 • EP 1 I Had to Stop. Here's What I Couldn't Tell You - Until Now

Speaker A: I did not think I would ever have the chance to sit behind the microphone and connect with you guys again. And I couldn't help but think what could have happened to our business if I didn't stop. Um, if we didn't stop. So young adults need a total portfolio view of the money. They need to be able to see their money at a snapshot. We're building a wealth intelligence tool that gives tracks if they're building wealth and if they're not, what can they be doing to be able to build wealth? All right, jwp, podcast man, I just said a prayer, but I'll say that prayer with you. You guys with me today. Lord, I thank you for this moment that I get to sit behind this microphone to connect with your people. Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to use me as a vessel to connect with someone that's listening to me right now. Lord, it is not by my might, it is not by my strength, but it's yours. And so, Lord, as I start this podcast again, Lord, use me, Lord. Use it to transform someone's world. Use it to change someone's situation. Let this podcast be the beginning of the renewal of somebody else's mind, or even my mind. In Jesus name, amen, man. Welcome back to gwp. I did not think I would ever have the chance to sit behind the microphone and connect with you guys again, but here we are. I'm connecting with you guys. If you're an avid listener of the podcast, you know, the podcast has been gone for a while and I stopped the podcast, and so let's dive right into it. Why did I stop the podcast? Well, a couple of things. Number one is fatherhood. So, you know, as you can see the smile on my face, it's probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. God has blessed me and my wife with our first son. His name is Cyrus. And, man, that's a lot. That's a lot for us. And we're so thankful. We're so grateful. So all glory belongs to God. That's one of the reasons why I had to stop the podcast. The other reason was work related. So I had a conflict of interest issue that came up with work, which was related to the GWP podcast and the GWP platform. As you know, the podcast has been growing. And as the growth continued, we started to get attention from places that we probably didn't expect to get attention from, or maybe we should have expected it anyway. And eventually we had to stop the podcast. And long story short, we Stopped the podcast for a brief moment, had to make some really, really tough decisions, and because of some of those tough decisions, were able to sit behind this microphone and continue this work. It wasn't easy, you know, building something from the ground up and coming to a crossroad where you have to make a decision whether you abandon the thing that you built, the idea that you had and built from the ground up, or to kind of go after these short term obligations. Right? And that's the kind of decision we had to make. I remember a few years ago, myself and three of my friends, we decided to start a company that was the first time I ever started a company. The company was called Jane Place Wellness, and we were in the wellness industry. It was myself with three of my really, really, really best friends. So my buddy Tom, his wife Daniela, and my friend Alex, we started this wellness industry and we went into cbd. And this is when CBD was new. People were trying to figure out what's going on with cbd. But you know, we did our research and we're so excited about the, uh, wellness capabilities of cbd. And so we got into the business, flew out to Denver, Colorado, met our suppliers, you know, sold a few products. We were really proud. And eventually we came to that point where we had to make a decision. Business ran out of money and we just couldn't raise more money. And so we, we decided to let the business go. It was a very difficult decision for me. I was the CEO of the business at the time and I really loved the business, right, because we had traction, we had customers, and I really wanted to keep the business going. But, you know, for, for the sake of our, uh, friendship and, you know, my, my moral compass, we let the business go. And I decided to figure out a new business to start eventually and GWP came along. And so when I came to this crossroads where I had to pick whether it's GWP or the short term obligations, I thought about that moment. Because when I let a, uh, CBD business go a few years ago, now fast forward maybe last year, I was in France, standing in front of a CBD shop and I couldn't help but think of what could have happened to our business if I didn't stop, if we didn't stop our CBD business, our, uh, wellness business, if we continued that business, where would it have been today? And so I didn't want the same thing to happen with the GWP podcast. So it was a very difficult decision. But I prayed about it. I went before the Lord, and I prayed and man, the revelation that I got was Nehemiah. Uh, right, if you know the story of Nehemiah, the gates of Jerusalem have been torn down, right after they've, um, the Israelites have been sent into captivity in Babylon, and some of them have come back, the city is torn down, and Nehmeiah goes to the king and prays and asks God for favor, and the king allows him to go rebuild the city. So that's kind of the revelation that I got was, if you're building something and you ask for favor from God and you're getting that favor and this thing is going on, why would you stop to chase short term obligations? And so that's kind of what's the decision. The GWP podcast has been growing. We're in 24 different countries. You know, the podcast is being listened to in 24 different countries. It's been four years since I've been doing the podcast. And to have such a reach, I'm so grateful for it because I've never spent a dime on advertising. I've never had a celebrity guest on the podcast. It's organically grown, right? And people will subscribe to the podcast. They listen to it continuously and really appreciate you guys. And so that's why we stopped the podcast. Um, and now, you know, navigating this career transition period allows me to, you know, be able to get back to the podcast and do something that I really, really, really love. And so if you missed me, I missed you too. I'm super excited to be back and I look forward to continuing to share those incredible moments that we've shared on the podcast together with you guys. So now that I'm in this career transition, what do you think I'm going to be doing? Of course I'm going to be building. So what am I building? Uh, that's something exciting for us to be able to talk about. What am I building? I think every experience that I've had throughout my life has led me to be able to do something meaningful. When I started my career in retail, for example, I started as a stock associate. So I worked at the stockroom cutting boxes and carrying boxes. That's kind of how I got myself through college. And by doing that, I worked my way up to become the stock room manager. I became an assistant manager in the stores, and then eventually I became an assistant general manager. So I learned how to manage these businesses. $15 million businesses. We were running, all of that. And that taught me a lot about running, managing, and even starting businesses. And that's what equipped me to be able to start our, uh, wellness business, which I talked about earlier. And so now the building doesn't stop. It continues. And throughout my time of doing GWP and talking to young adults like you, one thing that I realized is the opportunity that we as young adults have to be able to build wealth. There's a tremendous opportunity to build wealth. And, you know, speaking of my experiences from, you know, working retail and then now when I worked at Bloomberg, one of the roles that I had at Bloomberg was a portfolio and risk analytics specialist. And in that role, one of the things that you would do is obviously you're working with portfolios, you know, the Bloomberg Portfolio, uh, tool. And so you're working with a lot of institutional portfolio managers who are paying tons of money for this Bloomberg system that the company provides, which is called the Bloomberg Terminal. And that's how they're managing their money. That's how they're getting insights about the financial decisions they're making. That's how they're able to manage their portfolios, manage the risk in their portfolios, see the exposures in the portfolios, and so on. And so, as I've continued to do the podcast, that's something that I've thought about where I'm like, man, you know, these institutional portfolio managers or investors have, uh, this sophisticated tool that allows them to make very quality financial decisions and in turn make a lot of money. The average young adult that cares about building wealth doesn't have tools like this, right? You have Robin Hood, you have your budgeting app, maybe Mint previously or Monarch or whichever ones are out there now. Copilot, you have a budgeting app. You have Coinbase for your crypto. You have what else? Maybe Rocket Rocket Money. So there's all these apps that young adults are using. So the average young adult is using five to six applications to manage their money. So the money is very fragmented. And one of the things that I learned when I worked at Bloomberg was that portfolio managers could have multiple portfolios, right? Which means they have buckets of money in different places and it's fragmented. But when it's fragmented like that, you don't want that. It's incredibly difficult for you to be able to manage something when it's fragmented. That's the kind of problem a lot of young adults have, using these five to six applications to manage their money. No wonder they're all stressed about their money, because they don't have that total portfolio view of their money. So young adults need a Total portfolio view of their money. They need to be able to see their money at a snapshot. And it's not just being able to see your money at a snapshot. I'm not talking about budget and I'm not talking about tracking your expenses. I'm talking about being able to get a clear view of where your money is. And it doesn't stop there, right? Because if you're trying to build wealth, you need to be able to measure are you actually building wealth or are you not? And if you're not depending on, then what are you doing wrong? This Bloomberg tool that I talk about that these sophisticated portfolio managers had access to, one of the things it's able to do, for example, is it's able to do what we call an attribution analysis, where it looks at a portfolio manager's portfolio. It can explain why they performed the way they did. So did they pick better securities or did they allocate to the right buckets? Right? To did they allocate, did they put money in the right places? Right. Did they put money in the, you know, the tech sector, or did they put money in the right sectors that made money, or did they pick the right securities? It's able to explain. It's able to explain why they performed the way they did. It's able to explain their risk, right? And it's able to do all these sophisticated things. And so just tracking your net worth is not enough. It's absolutely not enough. If you want to build wealth, if you're just tracking your net worth, I think that's flawed. I've been tracking my net worth for a long time. The first time I tracked my net worth, actually, I had a negative $400 net worth at the time. Fast forward. Thank God. Now my net worth isn't negative. It's gone up. It's positive. But is that a real indicator of my wealth? I don't think so. I don't think so because things are so still fragmented. My real estate is not being accounted for. You know, some of my other portfolios, my 401ks from my previous employers, some of them are not being accounted for. All of that is in my wealth. So my wealth is fragmented and I don't have a clear view. I don't have where I'm overexposed, where I'm leaving money on the table, and where I can be taken advantage to make more money. This is a long, big problem. And so to answer the question of what I'm building, what I'm m building is a Wealth intelligence tool. What I'm building is not a budgeting app. What I'm building is not a snapshot app, uh, or net worth tracker app. We're building a wealth intelligence tool that gives young adults a, ah, total portfolio view of their money and tracks if they're building wealth and if they're not, what can they be doing to be. To be able to build wealth? That's what we're building. I think it's an incredibly big problem for all of us that care about building wealth. For us that are, you know, making between $45,000 to maybe $150,000 and we have some surplus money and we're able to put some money aside. We don't want to just save. We want to be able to build wealth. And what does that look like? That's what we're building. And so if you're listening to me on this podcast today, I know we've been talking a lot about wealth building on this podcast from the beginning. I've talked to so many founders on the podcast. I've brought them on to explore how can you build something to be able to use that to build wealth. But now we're building the tool that allows you to be able to get there. We want to close that gap. And I personally, I know I need this tool. So I hope it's a tool that helps you as well to be able to actually build wealth and not just save money. Because a lot of you are doing really, really well saving money, which is great because the average American can't come up with $400 in the case of an emergency. And so if you're doing really well being able to save money, that's good. But is that money working hard enough for you? Probably not. So this is the time as I enter into this phase of fatherhood. For me, this is the most important thing for me, the legacy, the wealth. What am I leaving behind? What am I building so that the next generation like Cyrus doesn't have to start from zero, but they get a head start. So that's the vision, right? We're building the wealth intelligence tool. And I've already told you why it matters. And I hope you're inspired by this tool. And I can't wait to get into get the tool out into your hands. We're making a lot of progress on this tool, but I truly want you guys to join me on this building journey. And so there's a wait list. I'm going to share the link with you in the bio or I'm going to share the link with you in the description. If you're watching this on YouTube and I want you to join the wait list, join the newsletter. Okay? And let's build this tool. I'm super excited. I'm going to continue to share more about this tool with you, but for now, uh, it's been a pleasure. I'm super excited to be back and to share this episode with you guys. And so peace out. Welcome to the new season of GWP podcast. Let's have a good time.