Welcome to +Club TV

Money is a very interesting thing. I think when we look at money, it is powerful because there's no one in this world who can, at least in America where we are, who can function without it. And it doesn't mean you must aspire to be wealthy or rich or anything, but you still need money to live a life, to feed yourself, to keep the lights on, to have somewhere to go to at night safely. So, I would say to students to understand money and the concept of money. It is literally a tool just like a hammer, a nail, a screwdriver. They're all tools to get about living our life. And so what I would tell students about money is that there's two ways you can earn money. Something you do well within a job, or maybe you create a business or a company and you provide a service or a product. That's your value and that's how you earn money In exchange for your value, you'll earn some odd dollars or you can make money. And making money is the creation, what I call finding a way to take a dollar to multiply that dollar into multiple dollars. And that could be via investing or creating a really cool value proposition or startup or a business that now sells for a lot of money that is now being made and not just earned income. So, I would say money is a tool. Everyone should learn how to use it as such because that is all it is for us and it's just the means.

Living within your means is important. I've read over and over again that one of the best ways to have financial success is to save money, and the only way to save money is to spend less than you bring in. I agree with that as a general principle, but I also believe that it is important to reward yourself along the way. I do think it's important to have nice things to help you. It's a motivator. It helps motivate you to keep going, to hopefully make more money and to have a better financial balance in your life so that you can live within your means as you move forward. But I don't think that means be a pauper. I don't think that means not treating yourself. It doesn't mean not going to the movies and not having an ice cream or doing some of those things. I think those things are also important to do, but again, you have to do it with your ultimate goal in mind, and that is having financial stability, making sure that you are saving money and spending less than you bring in. But I don't think you should do so to the detriment of your own health and feeling good about yourself.

Let's just say with money, I feel like over my lifetime I haven't saved as much as I should have. But the other side of that is I've had fun with that. But you could still have fun and be a little more disciplined about it. Maybe not take three trips in a quarter, maybe take just one trip in a quarter and save. Because at the same time, while I'm recommending that people be intentional about what they want to accomplish, I have to do that myself. I have to say to myself, okay, where do I want to be financially at the end of the year? And if I'm serious about it, I have to sacrifice some things. And sometimes I haven't sacrificed because I give into peer pressure too. There may be a big event going on in Arub. Oh, I have to be there! Kim, you don't have to be there, but you've been Aruba like five times! Why are you going now? But those are the challenges that we have in life. And sometimes you have to just take a step back and have a conversation with yourself. I'm a big believer of mantras. I get up in the morning and I give myself a mantra every day. It's like, Kim, you will not waste time today, Kim, you will be productive today, Kim. You will accomplish that. I say that to myself, and when I start veering off the path, I come back to my mantra and then it's just like this little joke I have with myself that like, okay, let’s stay away from that. Let's get back on track.

I think I'm humble, so I don't necessarily say I'm successful much, but I'll say I've had success in achieving goals and one of the many reasons is because I really believe in myself, and that is key. Without having confidence in yourself, there's nothing you can do. But if you have all confidence in yourself, you may still fail at achieving goals, but you'll get back up and you'll continue to push and drive until you see those results. So confidence is key and it's everything. And I've invested a lot in making sure I stay confident and making sure I feel good mentally, spiritually, physically, just giving myself the encouragement even when no one else is around to keep pushing.

I think it's never too early to have budgets. There's an old saying, when I was coming up, pay yourself first. So whatever job you had, you would always take out some money and put it aside for you first, and then you either use it as discretionary funds or paid your bills, et cetera. But I think it's important, and it all kind of ties into being intentional about what you want to accomplish. You may want to buy a house, you may want to get a higher education, you may want to invest. There's a lot of things that you want to do, but it's not going to come automatically. Everything takes planning and it's never too early to budget. And if you don't have a lot of money, think of the saying that I said before, pay yourself first You may get $10, so you take a dollar, you put it aside. If you did that every day for a year, that's $365. You could take that and put it someplace else, but if you just pay yourself first as you go on, then you'll have money as a young person and you can take this concept and when you get a job, make sure, see what kind of retirement plans your company has, such as a 401k. I know so many people who are retiring because they got into their company investment plan or 401k and just kept pushing everything into it and it would come out of their paycheck. They didn't even miss it. And then it was time to retire. They turned around and looked and they had all this money. So budgeting is always good, but make sure you pay yourself first. You take a piece of that, you put it to the side, and then you decide how you want to invest that because you'll have it.

I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. In the south section of the city on a small street called Clinton Place in Hawthorne Avenue. And at 16, maybe 17 years old, my father got diagnosed with kidney failure and he was the primary breadwinner, as my mom spent a good chunk of her life raising her or their six children. And that was my first brush with poverty as I knew it. Up until then, we lived a good life. I had food, I had clothes, et cetera. But then the income stopped once he was diagnosed. And that was a turning point for me to recognize that there has to be a differentiated way for me to create economic opportunity for myself and for my family in the long run. And that took me down a path of being curious, not a woe is me story, not a, oh my God, look at this kid. (00:20:49): It just took me down the path of being curious around how wealth was created in this country. And so I became curious about Wall Street, about medicine, about law, and what I realized is that I really liked business. I was good at math, I was good at numbers then. And this idea of putting $1 in to something and figuring out how to extract five, it's the very basic tenant of business. There's a lot of jargon and language around business, but the reality is in our old neighborhood, we would say, how do you make a dollar out of 15 cents? So, there is this notion of how do you make a dollar out of 15 cents? And that's just the basic tenant of business. And once I realized that there was opportunity for me to learn how to extract value, whether it's investing a dollar or getting a return on my labor, that encouraged me to go down the path to figure out how to become a successful business person. And it stemmed from this idea that the money dried up in my home at 16 or 17 years old. Things got better. But that was the flip of the switch in the room for me that said, I need to become more curious about ways in which I can create real wealth for myself and my family.

I was a sophomore in high school at Weequahic High School in Newark, New Jersey. And I had this history teacher; his name was Professor Strom. Mr. Strom. And it was a history class, American history, but we would start every class with a lesson around the markets, particularly the stock market. And at that time we were learning about IBM and Coca-Cola. What drives value? The stock price is here today. The stock price is there tomorrow. And if you had some money, what companies would you invest in? Who has a great brand, who has a great product? Can you afford the stock? And if I was a bit more aggressive, a bit more entrepreneurial, as I think you each have the capabilities to be, I was working summer jobs, I had extra cash in my pocket and I would spend it on clothes and shoes and all the trappings, all the things that you would normally do as a 16-year-old. But I should have taken from Mr. Strom, my history teacher, and I should have applied some of my earnings from my summer job and tested what he was teaching by opening an account and putting some money in the market, watching it grow, watching it come down because in that would've been life lessons for me to understand how money works, how equity builds. But it was a great lesson that Mr. Strom taught us, my first introduction to Wall Street technically, but I wish at 16 I had taken some of those summer camp paychecks and put a hundred dollars, $50, into the market. If I were to compound that, it'd probably be worth a lot more today. But I'll let you figure that out for me. Had I put $500 in the market in 1996, what would it be worth today? (00:43:45): Path to Success(00:45:37): I was an average student with an above average work ethic. I was an okay reader, but I understood how to read. I was a good student, but I was not Einstein. But I would never let a person outwork me. And it sounds simple because oftentimes you look at the person who's made it and you think that that person is brilliant. You think that there was some secret sauce. I'm telling you, the reality is I just worked at it. I invested in myself. I was curious, wasn't afraid to fail. When I failed, yeah, I cried. I was angry, I was upset, but I got back up, looked myself in the mirror and tried to go through my high school days ferociously aggressive with the tenacity to compete and win. And that's not rocket science, that's just finding within yourself kind of a will to win. You've made your mind up that you're not going to quit. We go through life as a young person without completing tasks. And I think it's important that you complete tasks. It's fulfilling, it's gratifying. If you just worked at it and you complete the task, you might fail. If you do it again, you might win. What did you learn? Complete the task. And that's probably one of the things that I didn't do enough of when I was 17 years old. But what I'm telling you today is not rocket science. I wasn't a straight A student. I didn't do great on the SATs, but you will not outwork me and I will complete the task. And I think that if you work hard, you identify the problem, you identify the challenge, and you go from A to Z and just focus on completing the task, your outcomes will be more positive than not.