316: Tyrone Ross On The Need For Financial Education In America

Tyrone Ross is a financial consultant, early-stage start-up advisor, entrepreneur, and athlete. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of financial education, how Bitcoin was built for the inner city communities, what financial advisors are missing right now, and what you can do as an average person listening at home. =============================== The Helium Hotspot is a new product that enables the people, not the telcos, to own and operate a wireless network in their city for Internet of Things devices. You can literally earn crypto for helping to build the network and providing connectivity to Internet of Things devices sending small bits of data. Join the movement and get your Helium Hotspot today with $50 off using the code POMP at helium.com. =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Tyrone Ross is a financial consultant, early-stage startup advisor, an entrepreneur, and an athlete. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of financial education, how Bitcoin was built for the inner-city communities, what financial advisors are missing right now, and what you can do as an average person listening at home. I really enjoyed this conversation with Tyrone, and I hope you do as well. But before we get into this episode, I want to talk about our sponsors. The first is a really interesting new sponsor. The world should be more connected, but it isn't. We should be living in the age of the Jetsons, yet it sometimes feels like we're living in the age of the Flintstones. The only way to connect to the internet outdoors is by using cellular technologies.

• 0:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Your Wi-Fi just doesn't work. Wouldn't it make sense if all of these things had a network that worked just for them anywhere and anytime? Well, now they do. That's what the Helium Hotspot does. The Helium Hotspot is a new product that enables the people, not the telco, to own and operate a wireless network in their city for Internet of Things devices. It democratizes the ownership of wireless networks. You can literally get paid for helping to build the network and providing connectivity to Internet of Things devices, sending small bits of data. The People's Network, which is what the Helium Hotspot builds, is now live in over 745 cities around the world and growing.

• 1:37Anthony Pompliano?

  You can join the movement and get your Helium Hotspot today with $50 off using the code Pomp at helium.com. That's H-E-L-I-U-M.com. Use the code Pomp. I've got one set up. I'm helping to build the People's Network, and I hope you join us. Also, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Tyrone. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Tyrone is back. Round two. He's got the long Bitcoin shirt, the banker shirt on. He's ready to roll.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I already know, man. About what's up. It's going up.

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, for those that didn't listen to the first episode that we did together, and don't follow you on the internet, which at this point seems impossible, maybe you just start with kind of a two minutes on your background and kind of the work that you've been doing.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, really quick. So before I start this again, thank you again for having me, man. This is incredibly dope. We about to burn the internets down, so I'm excited. So for those who don't know me, born and raised here in New Jersey. One of the things I hold my hat on is being a first generation high school graduate and obviously first generation college graduate as well. Part of the reasons why I'm super passionate about crypto was growing up in an unbaked home. Got a full scholarship to run track, went to Georgia Tech, was also the first in my family to get kicked out of college. So left Georgia Tech, ended up at Seton Hall where I finished up my bachelor's there and

• 3:51Speaker 02

  then started a graduate program where I actually learned about Wall Street. I was 26 years old before I knew anything about the stock market or anything like that. So right now, currently licensed financial advisor, director of community at Altruist and host of the Human Advisor Podcast, not as big as yours, but got my own podcast out there, trying to follow in your footsteps. So shout out to my Altruist family. Also founder of a company called 401, which is a storytelling consultancy that I launched in April of this year.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And then the other piece of that is, again, a lot of work that I do bringing light to unbanked poverty, homelessness, child hunger. And I do a lot of speaking and engagement on that as well. And again, for those who don't realize or know, at TR41, you know, on Twitter, you get, you get the whole spiel.

• 4:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a couple of people who are tweeting me asking, what is Altruist? So let's just start there. I seen the podcast.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:53Anthony Pompliano?

  It makes every other podcast look like nobody knows what they're doing because it's super high quality. I said, I've never seen a podcast where somebody walks down the street and records, but I respect the hell out of it. So what exactly is Altruist?

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, salute to that. So Altruist is a technology platform for financial advisors. They're basically trying to be the digital Schwab or the digital TD. Shout to Jason Wink, who's a genius. So his whole thing is to make it cheaper for financial advisors, for RIAs only, so registered investment advisors only, making it cheaper for them to run their practices, their tech stack, so that then they can in turn work with a different demographic. So that's hence the name Altruist. They reached out to me July of last year about hosting a podcast. And I'm like, I ain't pumped. Like I ain't, I'm not trying to host no podcast. I'm off that. I don't want no smoke with him. But Jason was like, listen, you told

• 5:48Speaker 02

  your story. We think that we could do something different here with you helping advisors tell their stories and just really getting away from the jargon and everything. And I'll keep it a buck. We changed the game. There's no way you could turn on that podcast and relate it to any other thing that's in our business, financial services. There's nothing like it. So shout to everyone at Altruist that worked on that. We completely turned the game on its ear. And I said it all the time, like, I literally have mentees that are in gangs that are like, yo, that podcast is gangster. And then I get, you know, people from all over our business, like, you know, clients and everything love it. So we definitely changed the game with that.

• 6:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I just love the human aspect of it, right? And I think that like what we're starting to understand is Legacy Media has been so focused on like, what's the story? And not so much on like, let me tell the, let me let the people of the story tell their own story. Right? It's a, it's a new way to do it. You guys are doing a great job there. And any specific story that you guys have covered there that really stands out to you is like, man, that was either one, an awesome story, or two, you kind of walked away and were just like, I'm so glad I decided to do this.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. It's funny, you front running me a bit because I got a piece coming out that details the whole season. But I will say this, the one that, that sticks out the most is probably the very first episode that we did where it was like, we literally got the first advisor, because the first true episode was, was me and Jason, the CEO, and it's Leanne and Miko. And again, I want to be, this, our podcast is not scripted, right? There's only one scripted question that we ask at the end, and that's what makes it so dope. It's like, the guests trust me, right? Because we just sit down, we turn on the cameras and we have a conversation.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  And Leanne is telling her story, and I'm literally listening to the woman version of my own life. Again, first generation high school graduate, grew up poor, like, you know, and she's a white woman who's a lesbian, but, and she's being interviewed by a black man, right? We grew up on different sides of the country, but that humanity in that story, we were almost one, right? And I'm just, I mean, we got so lost in the conversation, and when we got, we wrapped, everybody was like, oh, that was dope. Like, you know what I mean? It was just so real. So it, to me, right then, it was like, all right, we're on to something here because we got so far away from our business, but just into what made her her.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  And then I'm like, man, she had the same experience that I had. And then you start to realize that poverty and poor is not a color, right? It's not, it's a condition, you know what I mean? And even for those of us that reached the quote unquote heights of financial services, we all have a story, so it was pretty neat.

• 8:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I love that. And then you are the person or one of the people who helped me edit a piece that I recently wrote. And you and I were talking and I said to you, look, I think I've got these unique life experiences that helps me understand as a white dude, how to talk about some of these issues that most people just never see, right? And it was, I've literally still with a gun in a war zone, right? And I've also been next to a bunch of black teammates in college, who just frankly, just racist ass situations that happened. And I wrote this thing, I sent it to you, and you came back to me, and I loved it because you, the advice you gave was not the grammatical stuff, right? It was much deeper and more

• 9:16Anthony Pompliano?

  important than that, around like, hey, let's use some more kind of important quotes, right? Let's look at this type of framework. And so maybe talk a little just about, there's so many people right now who are online, who are watching, kind of, I'll call it a 2020 chaos happen. So you've got, the coronavirus occurs, then you've got the economic shock, then you've got the civil rights and kind of all the police brutality protests, and even turning into riots in some cases. And it just feels like social media makes it seem like the world's ending. We know it's not ending. We know we live in the most prosperous time in human history, but it also feels like a lot of the people who are standing up and saying things, don't come out of the finance world as much. So maybe talk a little

• 10:01Anthony Pompliano?

  bit about kind of how you see the world today, and then also, you know, kind of the interaction or intersection with finance.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Right. So I'm glad you brought that up, because I was gonna bring it up eventually. The piece that you wrote was fantastic. And again, kudos to you for using your voice at a time when so many with, that look like you and have the platform that you have want to hide. And so kudos to you for that, for reaching out and just being like, yo, man, read this over, right? And I'll be honest, I was like, man, you probably want to say black and not minority a lot, right? Like, you want to leave, this is a black issue, you know what I mean? So, you know, those are, and it sucks, we can't tell the DNP story right now, too, but whatever.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  This fits so nice right here, but but honestly, though, like, thank you for doing that because, again, it brings light to everything that is going on. And yes, we are in a time where we're still in the middle of the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen. We're in the middle now, again, which is the civil rights movement of this era. There's tremendous income inequality, financial illiteracy, so many different issues. And again, like you said, right now, those of us with a platform have a responsibility. Yes, we'll address the issue, but to be more solution oriented. And I will also say, those of us that are black, that have been in financial services, already knew that these were issues. I've been saying this forever, right? For the last 18 years, I've been saying

• 11:27Speaker 02

  this and screaming into the forest, but now it's become a thing. So let's just address some of the issues, right? Our business, right? And I say ours as a financial advisor, $17 billion, the financial services industry spends on marketing financial services, less than 1% on financial education. That's sickening, right? When you look at almost half of the population do not own stock. Let's not forget for one second, this is an economic issue. Also, financial advisors are complicit. We sell our services to the rich, don't necessarily give our time to the poor, right? And then when you look at the numbers, the Poor People's Campaign of America says there's roughly 140 million people in this country that are considered poor, right? You look at the numbers before COVID, we're 50 million quote-unquote

• 12:12Speaker 02

  "working poor," right? All of these different numbers, the almost 20% that are unbanked, all of these different things, again, which is why I've never been more bullish on crypto than I am right now. So I think what we see is civil unrest, but within it are seeds of resolution, right, of solution, and people who want to be effective in uniting, right, of bringing really core solutions to the problem. So that's what I feel like I want to do. But I don't think we get there unless there are people, again, like yourself, who address some of the, again, this is systemic and structural, right? So we got to put those together and also embracing our history. I just got done with a

• 12:53Speaker 02

  I was saying this, oh, well, financial services is very, you know, male, pale and stale as they say, okay, well, let's go all the way back to the origin of Wall Street. Slaves built Wall Street and then they turned around and sold them. And then in seventeen eleven, the United States government says, New York City is the hub for all things slavery now. You want your good old slave, go down to New York City, right? So, and then there's this whole thing about black Wall Street. No, black Wall Street has always, Wall Street has always been black. Like, we were the first commodity sold and it wasn't until coffee came and it was a big thing. And they're like, okay, well, let's move on to something that is more lucrative and or cleaner. And that's when the slave trade eventually left New York City. So I think until we start to dig into the muck here, right?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  And really start to address some of these issues, we won't progress. But again, you're starting to see some of the Confederate statues come down and some, you know, a lot of other conversations now that are being had. People are having conversations like this, the piece that you wrote. We gotta get uncomfortable a little bit and then we'll move on. Last thing I'll say is, it is incredibly funny to me that, and I think this is why you're able to stand up and take internet bullets. Cause you've taken real bullets, like literally went into field with a gun. So it's like, it's, it's super powerful when you stand up and say that. Because again, you know, people look at you and go, well, man, he has a lot more to lose than I.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  But he's standing up and taking a stand and the financial services industry has dropped the ball here. It's been, it's been sad, but again, kudos to you for what you've done and make a room for the conversation. And now it's incumbent upon those of us that are black, especially black males, to now take this and say, okay, well, what are we going to do to make it better for our communities?

• 14:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what's interesting to me about the entire situation, right? And when I say entire situation, there's a race element, there's a police brutality element, there's economic element, and they're very, very intertwined. So I'm not going to try to unpack, you know, each piece of it, but they're all very intertwined. Is really what we end up getting is it's all actually overlaid with a poverty like lens, right? And, and so what ends up happening is you can take that poverty lens and you can literally apply it to the economic situation, obviously. You can apply it to the race side, you can apply it to the police brutality side. And one of the things that I've been thinking more and more about is you can't solve a problem unless you identify that it exists, right? So, okay, so that's pretty easy. Then two is where I think I've been, um, maybe not.

• 15:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I disappointed is probably the right word, actually, is there's a lot of people who they don't want to have a realization of the truth, right? I tweeted the other day and I said that in order to actually seek the truth, right? And I'm paraphrasing what I said, it was something like, you gotta be able to have the uncomfortable conversations. You gotta explore all the options, right? And it just feels, and that, by the way, works in both directions, right? Because here's the other piece that I will say this, that I think is important to kind of keep us intellectually honest, is we get in a world where everyone's protesting police brutality. And then we see a situation where a cop shoots somebody. And I always say, okay, details really matter. Because actually, there's certain situations where like, if you're shooting at a cop and a cop shoots back

• 16:05Anthony Pompliano?

  and kills you, I'm probably not going to be up in the street, you know, protesting about police brutality. If a cop shoots an unarmed man, I'm gonna be really pissed, right? And so like, the nuances matter, and it's not so much blanket statements. But I do feel like, on the economic side, you nailed it. Financial education has been nonexistent, right? I mean, just absolutely nonexistent, across socioeconomic status. But who it really predominantly hurts is that bottom 50% that doesn't own stocks, that can't come with $400 emergency payment, like, they continue, and some of these people have actually DM'd me and literally said to me, I feel like I cannot get ahead. And I try to say, look, I can't give you financial advice, but let me just understand

• 16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  a little bit more about your situation. And almost always, they are doing things that play right into the hands of a system that has stacked the deck against them, right? They're living in all cash. They don't make investments. They spend more than they may, like, all these things. So maybe talk a little bit about, just like, we know it's a problem. How do we start to solve this? Like, what are the things that we can do as an industry, and really, it's just humans, to try to solve some of these problems?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love how, I love you asked this, because I get so fired up about it, and it's my life's mission now. So let's zoom out a little bit, right? And I know a lot of people have said, you know, they wanted to make the distinction between protesters, rioters, and looters. I want to focus on the looters for a second. Look at what, and again, it's disgusting. But again,

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Everything has its place, as my mother would say, right? But let's just look at what they're stealing. They're running after their gods. Gucci, Prada, Fendi. The idolatry in this country and what we made them believe is important to them are things. Not educating them enough to say, "A Rolex, a Gucci bag comes out of you." So we've put nothing in them. So now we're looking at the mirror of our failings. Also, that's one side. Then they go steal their needs, right? They go to a Walmart and they're stealing from there, right? Toilet paper, dog food, whatever the case may be. That is, again, a mirror of where our failings are as a country.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  No matter how you feel about it, and anybody that's staring in the mirror and honest with yourself, there's some things about yourself that may be a little uncomfortable. I've got this little patch over here I need to get rid of, right? So it's a very uncomfortable thing. Again, I think we all agree, we don't want to tear down neighborhoods. We don't want to steal. But that's how, when you look at the poverty in Detroit, that I have seen poverty all over this country. You have not seen poverty until you've seen squalor in Detroit, and then you go to Beverly Hills and you look at the difference. And there's a man that's worth $100 billion in this country, and there are people, literally, who don't have clean water. That's what you're seeing in the streets right now. Now, okay, great, Tyrone, you addressed the issue. How do we fix it?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  So now, we have to focus on solutions. Three Es. Exposure, education, empowerment. Our business likes to lead with the big E, the middle E, because CFA, CFP, Wharton, Kellogg, the whole deal. Let me prove how smart I am. No one cares, right? If I can see it, I can be it. So expose me to what it is, right, Mr. Whoever? How did you get what you got? Expose me to that. Give me the blueprint, right? Because I tell people this all the time. If all I give you is money, I robbed you. But if I give you that money and in turn give you the blueprint, on how to turn that dollar into $2, and then how I was in the position to give you that dollar, I robbed you if I just gave you money. I did you no benefit.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  So I think that's the one thing that our industry does very poorly, right? And I think that someone actually said this on a podcast, shout to Emlyn. He said, Our business has done a good job of getting the numbers right and the people wrong. And I think he nailed it with that one. And so now let's go to exposure. Now you look at 31% of African Americans in this country do not own stock, right? 31, I mean 31% do, right? So you have 60, almost 70% that don't. That's an access problem. That's an exposure problem, which is wink, wink, why I'm so fired up about Cash App. Not only can you get Bitcoin, but you can get fractional shares of stock through the app. Like that's powerful. Robin Hood, for all of the people that want to bash it, Robin Hood is access.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  I don't care what you think about whatever they're doing or people day trading and beating Warren Buffett. That's access for people that have never had access before. So now, yes, we have a responsibility. Now I've exposed you. Now I have to educate you. But there's two types of ignorance. Ignorance, I just don't know. And then ignorance, Pomp told me, and I don't give a crap, right? So I think we have to then go in, expose them, educate them. Now, the biggest part is the last E, which is empowerment. After I've done those two, I have to empower you, meaning what? I'm going to give you a network. I'm going to give you continued resources. I'm going to give your school, uh, uh, technology, probably lack Wi-Fi. You probably lack tools that you need. I'm going to give you books.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  We're going to create some type of scholarship to come back. We're going to bank black in that community or we're going to bank period in that community. So now when we need to do financial literacy or financial education in that city, you know what banks answer to? Really big deposits. So when you put really big deposits, you go, give us some resources for these kids in this school, right? Not that same school where the parents have put all the resources or whatever, this one here. So now we're getting into schools earlier. Oh, by the way, financial advisors should give up an hour of their time per day to go into these schools, support the teachers, help them with lesson plans or whatever, not to change the curriculum. But we have to be more, you know, accessible.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  And then I think the last piece of the empowerment is, think about this. If all of the Blackstone, BlackRock, Bank of America, Morgan, Merrill, all of them put in a fund. And they said, all right, take all the over for one for one year, we're going to take all the overdraft fees, put it into fund. We're going to up that, you know, 700 billion that we spend on, you know, financial education, you know, to a billion, and we're going to put that in a fund and then we're going to spend this to simply educate, you know, a particular area or city just for a test case, and then we can spread that all over America. Take 25 of the best financial advisors, all denominations, all backgrounds, all creeds, all religions,

• 22:41Speaker 02

  and have a tour, go all the way around the country, instead of us going to all these fancy conferences and drinking ourselves silly, and there's S and P palm trees in the lobby, right? And then really start to educate people and then, oh, by the way, there's some telefinance, what we call people in the most impoverished areas in this country. Is there anything that we can help you with from a budgeting standpoint? Personal finance standpoint, do you understand how your SNAP or your EBT card works, right? Are you getting social security? All these other things, are you up to date on your taxes? Are you going to a tax preparer versus an actual CPA? All of these things, granular, right? And then you go into an area like the South Bronx where half of the people in the South Bronx are unbanked, and then you start to get really proximate and go, okay,

• 23:26Speaker 02

  this is why they use payday lenders and check cashing places in the post office. And then until we get proximate to their condition, we can't help them. So then we can give them the resources that they need, and then say, okay, well, you lack identity, you lack a bank account. If you lack these things, you can't do anything else. So we have to get you these resources, build infrastructure around you, and then, oh, by the way, you'll learn that these people are severely illiterate in terms of what it means to, what is a maiden name? What is a debit? What is a credit? Who cares about your Roth conversion? We can't, like, we got to get away from that. So we have to get on people's eye level. And financial advice, and again, I'm going long-winded here, but I'm super fired up about it. We do a terrible job of giving people financial advice as snapshot, right where you are.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  College graduate, high school graduate, mother of five, whatever it is, right? Father of two and, you know, a corporate executive. Meet people right where they are and give them the advice in that moment. We do a better job of that, taking the advice to the people, as opposed to spending all this money and then just say, oh, they'll come. We have it here, right? It's like if you, if that's the case then, and I just had a conversation with Hester Pearce. So she was like, are you aware of investor.gov? I'm like, I'm not and I feel terrible because I'm a financial advisor. But she's like, check out investor.gov. There's a wealth of information there. People don't know that's there. They built it, but if it's not being brought to the people, how do they know it's going to help them?

• 24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I think that one of the things that's really interesting to me is I've always said to people,

• 25:02Anthony Pompliano?

  many of the folks that you're talking about have the skills. They don't know they have the skills. They don't know what to do, but they actually have the skills. And I'll give you a great example. So when I was in my mid twenties, there was a program in North Carolina that would go into the local high schools. Right? And they pretty much were trying to pick any public school within a certain radius, whatever. And they would try to introduce entrepreneurship classes. Right? And the class was, we're going to go for a week. It's an hour every morning. And at the end, we're going to have you quote unquote, start a business. So what most high schools that have an entrepreneurship classes, like an after school activity, whatever, they somehow got in and they got an hour of time dedicated in the morning while the students were there. And I went, I think two or three times during this program.

• 25:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And every time I would go, a lot of them were old white guys, right? They were teaching this stuff and they were trying to help. And I would always say to them, I want those three guys. And it was always, always the kids in the back of the class that were sleeping, that were doing whatever. And when I'd get back there, they would do that. And why, why do you want to work with them? They're the troublemakers of the class, whatever. I said, because I got to do the least amount of work to get them to build a business. They already know how to build a business, right? And especially in high school, as you got up into the juniors and seniors and stuff, there was literally one time when a kid was like, yeah, I deal drugs. And I was like, great, you're not a, guess what? We're going to just switch out the product. Like you already understand, you understand demand, you understand supply, you understand supply. Like, like you got it, dude.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 26:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe let's not sell something that's illegal and going to maybe get you in jail. Like we could start with a T-shirt, right? And you start to like, understand. And what I saw was he was the most interested kid out of anyone I ever saw in that program. And it was because he already had kind of entrepreneurship. A bug. Now, that's not for everybody, but at the same time, there's a lot of kids, especially today with social media. They want the things as you described, right? They want the Gucci bag. They want the car. They want the house. They want whatever.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  But nobody is there to tell them this is how you get it, right? And this is how you kind of backwards plan off of it. And then, um, you know, one of the things that cracks me up is people in tech, uh, all have the same thing. If I say to you, hey, how do you build, you know, a hundred million dollar business? You basically start doing math backwards, right? Okay. Well, if I need a hundred million dollars, how much is that a month? You know, what product can I sell? What's the margins? What? And you start doing math. Most people don't think that way, right? They literally just say, hey, I can't do that, right? Or how do you buy it? I can't do that. I couldn't afford that. It almost feels like the exposure is the thing that drives the curiosity and, and will kind of weed out the people who don't want to be there. Right? The people who want to do this and they don't know it's possible. The second you show them it's possible, then it's game on, right?

• 27:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and what it feels like, uh, and I'd love to hear your thoughts is like, once you start in a community with exposing some portion of people and they're the first to be exposed, if it works correctly, eventually that becomes the standard, the expectation.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 27:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It, it's kind of like, hey, this is what we do. And, and that's true of going to college. That's true of financial education of whatever, but you guys start with exposure, it feels like.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. 100%. It all starts with exposure. And this is what I yell about on Twitter is like, I get all the other things that you folks are talking about, but they're just not exposed. Again, I am exhibit A. I was 26 years old. I literally walked by the New York Stock Exchange and didn't know what it was. And then when I got to the office, the gentleman who ultimately ended up my mentor was like, you know, that was the New York Stock Exchange you just walked by. I had no clue. I'm 26. That's a disaster for myself and my family. Everything I've learned about money, I've learned the last 14 years on Wall Street. Like that's literally. A problem, right? And that is indicative of our education system and a lot of other things. But also, my parents had no choice because they didn't have it, right?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  So, a lot of it is making sure that it starts in the home. But people say, oh, well, you blame the parents. Well, what'd you want my parents to do? They were just trying to keep the damn lights on. They're not worried about shares of friggin' Amazon. You mean, like, they're just trying to make sure that, you know, my sister and I could eat and they could... So, financial planning and, and all that stuff is meeting people where they are. But again, now that I was exposed, my nephews now, who are one and two, have portfolios better than, you know what I mean, probably I have, right? They own a ton of Bitcoin, right? Like, so, these are things that now they're gonna benefit because I was exposed, right? So, and my niece, right, so did my great nephew. So, my niece, right, their mother, she was exposed to me going to college. So, guess what?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  She was the second college graduate. And now she has her master's degree. See how that works, right? So, if I see it now, oh, okay. And I, and it's funny, I was just telling this the other day. When I started to get recruited for, for colleges and I started getting letters in the mail. I went to my high school coach, I'm like, what are these? Like, why are they calling my house? He was like, for college. I'm like, what are you, huh? You know what I mean? Like, what is this? Why, why do they wanna come to my house? Like, my mother will beat somebody up. You don't wanna just come by my house for no reason. So, he's like, no, they wanna recruit you. Like, I had to learn that whole thing. I'd never known anybody who went to college before. So, the exposure is a very big piece. And I think that is probably the simplest and cheapest part.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Because it's just simply exposing kids to that side, to this side, right? Um, and I think, who was it? Um, can't think of his name now. But the CEO of, of Merck was just saying, the only reason he ended up doing what he was doing is because they decided to bust some kids to the other side of school, uh, town where there's a program. And then he was part of that program. And now, look, he's the CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Exposure matters, and I don't think we take that seriously enough.

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And so one of the things that I think is really important is when we talk about financial education, you're not talking about buy Amazon, buy this, sell this, short this, whatever. You're specifically talking about what I call like more structural education. This is how money works. This is why inflation works against you. Here's, here's what a certain assets can do. Even things like spend less than you make. Here's how a credit card works. Here's why you want to pay it off. Like that's the type of stuff you're talking about, right?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You'll love this. I've been, and it's so funny how this works. I literally am not sitting here without Investopedia. And I've been blessed enough to do some partnerships with Investopedia. Early this year, we're sitting down with Caleb Silver. Shout to Caleb over Investopedia. He said, Tyrone, the number one search term on Investopedia to a tune of a million page views a month is what is money? That is the number one search term on Investopedia.

• 31:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  The number one, like it's head and shoulders above everything else. What is money? Again, want to talk about a failure as a country. The people literally don't know what money is. If you don't know what money is, how in the world do you do anything? So you're just operating blind. And literally he told me that and I stared at him and I was like, are you sees it? Million page views. What is money? Like, so we have that. And then there's this big gap of just wilderness. And we expect people to get a job and then figure it out, right? Figure out a mortgage, figure out investments, figure out your retirement, figure all of these things out.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  And then, oh, by the way, we're going to dangle all of this prosperity and abundance. When you look at, you know, the, the, the numbers, right? Forty-two million unemployed, yet the billionaires continue to get richer to a tune of whatever they all made collectively. Right, it's, it's, it makes people feel, like you said, you get those DMs where people feel like they're falling farther behind, right? And again, I'm still in a situation where my life is a lot different from my families and my friends and people that I know. So I know people where $800 a month is a lot of money to them, right? Like, and they're still in the struggle. So being very close to that, you realize that the stock market's a liar. And we know that, right?

• 32:59Speaker 02

  For the people that are invested and those of us that are privileged to have investment accounts of Bitcoin and credit cards. Oh, life is grand. But the average person turning that on and going, what? I don't understand. How in the world is that happening and I'm furloughed? Or I got, right? And that is the, the stock market, stock, but uh, stock market right now is the biggest indicator of the class issue that we have in this country. You thought the race issue was bad. The class issue, which we're gonna, that's gonna come to a head too. The class issue is a bigger issue that we have to solve.

• 33:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It feels to me like, um, this whole idea of the stock market going up and the economic data getting worse ends really poorly. Right? And I don't know how it ends, when it ends, all that kind of stuff. But what I do feel is really interesting is that it is the ultimate highlighting of why financial education matters. Right? And, and it ultimately comes down to, if you understand when money gets printed, don't fight the Fed. Right? Ju- just, okay, cool, we're printing. You know that asset prices are gonna rise. Get out of cash and get into assets.

• 34:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That one piece of information, which most people in finance, it's like, you know, economics 101 type stuff. Literally is the difference between wealth and poverty in. 2020.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  100%.

• 34:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I mean, it's just crazy to me that that's what we're talking about. What? Let me ask you this. What do you see is the first foray? So somebody goes from what we'll call not well educated or not educated at all on the financial side to, okay, I start to understand this stuff. What do they look to do? They want to buy stocks? They want to save? Like, what do you see as some of the first actions that they normally go down and end up leading to being successful financially?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Really, really good question. So and I feel like I have a unique lens of this as a as an advisor. So one of the things that you constantly, and again, we realize one of the biggest issues here is debt, consumer debt, student loan debt, right? So a lot of questions that you get is, how do I manage just my financial life, right? Like, and debt leads the conversation. I have X amount in student loans. I have X amount in credit cards. And one of the things, again, whether a client comes in and they have 5 million or they have $5, I say, let's go all the way back to square one. Answer two questions for me. One, what is your first memory of money?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Is it your grandfather walking you down to the bank? Or is it scarcity like it was with me, the landlord banging on the door? Right? Big difference how you operate as an adult. The other thing is, now, what is your relationship with money? Right? What does that look like now? You get money, what do you do? Is it in one hand and out the other? Is it immediately to save? Is it immediately to look for an opportunity to flip? Like, those are habits. So I ask those two questions. The next thing is, I don't care who you are, where you're from, where you went to school, your color, your favorite, whatever, sports team, give me three months of your checking account. I'll know all I need to know about you. How much you make, where you spend it, how you spend it, how often you spend it? I'll know everything about you. Do that for yourself. And then I tell them, I have them come back to me and they're like, oh, right?

• 36:23Speaker 02

  I spend X amount of money eating out. Or I spend, right? Because you had no idea. You were just operating as if. So that's one of the things, just getting people to understand the basics and people just don't learn the basics of really what it means to budget, right? Really what it means at personal finance to make sure that I have these different buckets for different things in my life. I've addressed the behavioral part of myself when it comes to money. Those are two big buckets. The last then is, okay, and here's the, here's the other thing is people say, well, okay, well, I don't have any leftover. Like, all right, fine, right? Visualize, take a white piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. Everything that comes in, everything that goes out. Got a number over here? Let's look at that number.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  That's called discretionary income. If you have a number on the other side, we got some issues. So we could address that just to make sure people get even. But now what then do I do? If I have that number over here, I have a hundred dollars left over, right? And that's when you get to people DMing you, are you gonna buy airline stocks? Right, or whatever? So you start to get into, all right, and I was just having this conversation about savings, right? Now let's look at that. You would want savings and savings make sense and that's the ultimate goal. Six to one year of savings based on whether you're single, married, whatever. Cool. Savings is a privilege, right? From growing up in a house where savings was never a conversation, because there was nothing to be saved.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  If you could save, it's a privilege. With that said, there's conversations with people to say, well, I have savings, but I have credit card debt. I have savings, but I have, you know, a $700 car payment. I have savings. Well, why do you have savings, right? You should use some of that savings to get yourself in a better situation financially. Go all the way back to what your, let's take your credit cards. What is your debt service every month, right? It's taking, it's costing you six, $700 a month just to pay your credit card bill. So imagine if you took some of your savings or all, pay that down. Now you're paying 200 a month in credit card bills. That leaves you a $500 buffer. Now you could direct that money to something else. We still haven't gotten to investments yet. We're just literally talking about managing your financial life, right?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  And then you can start to direct that towards maybe a, a immediate savings bucket or directing that to other payments that you have, again, so, so many different things that people have. Um, looking at making sure they're maximize their work benefits, which a lot of people don't do, right? Um, so those are really the conversations that people want. To get a hold of and understand, they just don't know how to manage the finances of their life, right? Well, how do I allocate my 401K, right? What is this withholdings thing, right? Do I withhold one or 10 or zero? No one knows that, right? There's no education on that. So it's really bare bones, basic personal finance.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  But I take everybody all the way back to the beginning of memory of money, your relationship with money. And let's just go bare bones budget, keep your little app. Let's actually look at it. And then we can start to address getting to that big shiny object in the corner, which is the crypto and the stock market. I was gonna ask, how does crypto and Bitcoin fit into this? Really good question. So, and especially at the time right now, I've, I've never been more bullish for Bitcoin and crypto overall. Like I am incredibly fired up more now than I ever have for a lot of reasons, especially DeFi, but we'll get to that. But I think right now, what you're seeing is when even younger clients,

• 40:02Speaker 02

  when they look at their portfolio and they look at what's going on, you're seeing people who've never uttered the term money printing, right? Like that comes up in the conversation. Well, how is the government coming up with the money for my stimulus check? They can give everybody $1,200, right? And then do all that. So, so people are understanding that concept. And then you start to talk to them about an asset that is not tied to any of that, right? And they're, they're intrigued. They've heard about it, they read about it. So for me, it's just making sure people get a solid education and foundation on it. Again, like I said, as an advisor, I've never had to pitch Bitcoin in my life, right? Like it sells itself, it doesn't need us. So I just, once that awareness comes about and it's like a, almost like the thing with Bitcoin, I think, who was just saying this?

• 40:48Speaker 02

  He just wrote a piece and he was saying it's like, once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? But, so I feel like moving forward, the way I look at it, long dated call option or store of value right now, as we move forward in these uncertain times, and you had just tweeted, it's done everything it was supposed to do in this environment. So right now, it should be a part of a conversation that financial advisors are having with clients. Institutions, pension funds, whatever, this is what you were looking for. Because even myself, on my walking talks, I'm like, listen, y'all could have this parade. Bitcoin has never been in a recession, right? And then the world literally falls apart. And then it's up. So it's like, what, now, again, short timeframe. But this is what you wanted to see. Now, what is it going to do over the next five years?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  So I think right now, if we were ever going to pitch this or talk about it as something that's sustainable, as a cornerstone of a portfolio, a cornerstone of self sovereignty, a cornerstone of getting away from the legacy banking system, a cornerstone of what it means to accumulate wealth and be a part of the greatest wealth transfer in history. Now, we double down on the conversation about Bitcoin. And especially to those same people that we were saying were left out of the legacy system. Now, it's important to get this in front of them at this very moment.

• 42:06Anthony Pompliano?

  It's interesting because, uh, maybe, I don't know, last year or so, uh, I remember talking with a number of people about the idea that what if Bitcoin's adoption is the 180 degree opposite of how technology has previously been adopted? So if you think of most companies in the internet age, they've built products in the United States. They've penetrated the US market. They have a big board meeting and say, you know, 2020 is the year of international expansion. And they go and they open up all these other markets, right? Oh, Bitcoin on day one was global. Anyone, anywhere could use it. Uh, and the decentralized nature helped, but actually what we've seen in a lot of markets is areas that are developing or underdeveloped or not developed at all. That's where adoption occurs because people, literally, to your point, they know the problems.

• 42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't have to convince them that there's a problem. They actually know that the problem exists. Here's a solution.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What you're really describing is like, wait a minute, that's not a developed nation or developing nation thing. That's literally here in the United States, there's 20, 30% of the population, same situation. They, the second they hear about Bitcoin, they say, hey, that solves the problem that I've had. I just didn't even know that the solution existed.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  100%. This is what I've been saying forever. Crypto is missing its product market fit in the US. Like, there's, there's millions of people that could use this. I walked into a Waffle House, shout out to Waffle House, I'm a Waffle House lover. Shout out to Jason. I walked into a Waffle House in Charlotte and I had a Buy BTC shirt on. And the, the, the woman ringing up, she goes, "Buy BTC, what's that?" I said, "It's Bitcoin." She goes, "Oh, I know Bitcoin, that's in my Cash App." Right? And then I took the time to educate her on what it was. She's like, "What is it? Can you explain it to me?" Right? And I'm like, "You give me another waffle for sure."

• 43:51Speaker 02

  But, but, but I explained it to her and she got it right away because that group of people don't, they don't trust banks. Everything we're saying, crypto was supposed to be for, it's those people, we need to take it to them. They don't trust banks. They realize it's super expensive for them to bank themselves and act in, in, you know, have commerce and interact outside of the legacy banking system. And oh, by the way, I was saying this, local Bitcoins is a gift to the inner city, especially those of us that are familiar with the Sushu, which is basically the first blockchain, if you ask me. It goes all the way back, right, to Dutch slaves in the 16th century,

• 44:33Speaker 02

  where we all, there's 10 people, we all put in a quote-unquote "hand," $100, right? And then everyone takes a turn getting the pot. And then it's scheduled, "I'll get mine this week, Pump gets his next week." There's no, we trust each other. There's no third party. All we know is we're in the same community. It's trustless, because I know, you know I need to pay my rent, don't jerk me, right? And I know you need to pay your car note, I'm not going to jerk you. And that's how it works, right? And there's no, there's no credit checks, there's nothing. That's how the inner city and Caribbean folks in every community has their own, that's how they built, they bought houses, they bought cars, they sent their kids to school, like, and we're completely unaware of that. And then you add in local Bitcoins,

• 45:18Speaker 02

  anyone that is, now there are people that, let's just call them oracles, right? For the sake of this conversation, that set up and run the Sushu, they should be educated on local Bitcoins, because what it means for remittances, what it means to be able to turn that money into Bitcoin or into the local currency, is Craigslist for Bitcoin. Like, that should be pitched to the inner city and, oh, rural communities where they are in banking deserts. Why are we still on every crypto pod? Podcasts and conferences talking about Argentina and Africa. I love Africa. I love Argentina, but we have our own in this country that are sucking wind. They just don't have access to banking. Let's go help them and then we can go overseas and then take pictures and you know,

• 46:01Speaker 02

  whatever, act like we're doing this worldly good. We can't, but you take care, again, I was raised to take care of your home first, then you go somewhere else. So I just wish we would direct our focus and especially right now, because we could pull so many people up with the power of blockchain and the power of crypto, but we just need to direct our focus a bit.

• 46:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not going to make you debate the upside or downside of Waffle House, but I will tell you, I saw a tweet recently that said, you're telling me that Waffle House is better at solving conflict than the police are? And I was dying, right? They were like, Waffle House employees been solving conflict at 3am with drunk people forever. No guns, no pons, no anything. Like, they're good at it. We might need to hire some of them, right?

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Fully. You go to a Waffle House in the hood, you know better. Them employees will wear you out. You'll catch a serious beat down and they'll still make sure you get your waffle light.

• 47:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Where do financial advisors fit in all this, right? In terms of, we know financial education's a problem. We gotta go solve that. We know crypto can be a part, right? Whether it's a small part, a big part, whatever, of the solution. But where do financial advisors fit in? And are we at a position where financial advisors can go do kind of the more traditional financial education, but they're not yet up to speed on Bitcoin and crypto? Or there are more and more people getting up to speed? Like, how do you look at the financial advisor part of all this?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Great question. So, financial advisors, again, I will admit, I'm an advisor. We're complicit for the most part as an industry because we sell our services to the rich, like, like I said. But as far as crypto goes, if you look at when the year started, It was all about how do we get financial advisors in the pool? And I said, that was going to be the theme of 2020. The last conference I was at, TD Ameritrade, the whole show was there. Rick Edelman, Mike Novogratz, right? Matt Hogan and myself. And I was the last to speak on crypto. I had a 50-minute presentation and I spoke to financial advisors. I said, this is going to be way different from what you heard before. I'm not talking about no 1% allocation. I'm going to be talking about how this actually works into your practice,

• 48:11Speaker 02

  because I've built a full practice on crypto away from the traditional means, meaning I don't custody with TD. My client's custody away from me. So anyway, the issue here is that everyone now is trying to figure out, fact is, we're the gateway. We're the gateway to billions of dollars, right? In some cases, trillions of dollars of retail assets. The problem is twofold. One, the legacy, and I'll say legacy crypto folks don't realize that advisors are uninterested until, one, they know they're not going to get sued or fired, and how do I get paid? Right? So those are the things that are missing right now.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  So also, Tor de Meester, Pierre Richard, yourself, Stefan Rivera, I can keep going. I love every single one of y'all. It falls on deaf ears to advisors. They just don't, and you probably have the most cachet amongst our group, but the messenger matters here. So until financial advisors get the message from someone that they trust and the conversation around crypto is, here's how it works into your workflow. This is what custody looks like. And by the way, for financial advisors, the fidelity is a hard stop when it comes to custody. I love Gemini. I love fidelity. It stops there. Why? For no other reason than trust.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  They trust fidelity and they have probably their firm's custody with fidelity as well. And I've had great conversations with Sanayna, TD and a few others. But What then needs to happen for financial advisors to really get serious about this? And again, is the education. So advisors don't want to be educated on what the halving is. They don't want to be educated on SHA 256. Keep that. We need to be educated on, okay, give me some, right? And there was a, I can't think of her name, but Representative from Fidelity Digital Assets was just on with Nick Carter and on the Brink Podcast. She says, a couple of things that institutions care about, three biggest things. That's the thing I care about. I don't care about all the hopium. What are the concerns?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  It's the same thing financial advisors have, the volatility, market manipulation. And then the last is fundamentals. How do I value it? So again, I love coin metrics. I love Delphi, Delphi best in the game. Shout to, shout to Delphi, right? They do the best research in the game. You cannot give that to a financial advisor. They can't draft it and comprehend it and then pass that on, one through their compliance and two on to a client. So we need to create content for them that they feel comfortable learning from. And Delphi is probably best in class there, right? And we've had some conversations with them. And then being able to pass that on to a client. So I think there's a, there's an education gap here that's not happening. And again, the messenger matters, right?

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Even, you know, with the best, the best in the crypto space, if you put them in a Merrill or a Morgan or Goldman, right? The advisor is going to be like, right? But if you put someone that they trust, which is Ryan Edelman, Aron Carson, Amarty Bicknell, Peter Malou, Josh Brown, right? When those guys really start to come to the pool and to the party, like, and Josh is dancing around it, I love them, but I'm like, come on, man, just come all in, right? But until they really start to say, okay, we are literally going all in with our clients here. And I think a lot of it is. Which is why advisors want a Bitcoin ETF. But also, okay, fine, we have a Bitcoin ETF, we figured that out.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  How do I then pull that into my model so that I can create a portfolio for a client that I can show them? And I could do a financial plan and I could run through compliance and all these other things. No one are really addressing that issue and why? Because they're not financial advisors. So they don't know our individual concerns or what clients are going to say, which is why I tell advisors a couple of things. Client walks in the door, I own $50,000 of Bitcoin and you ask them where? Coinbase. Great. Best house, bad neighborhood. You should slide a hardware wallet across the table, crypto assets by Chris Bernisky and say, we're going to get to that. But for right now, how much do you own? Why do you own it? Right? Go back to your investment policy statement, your risk tolerance, go through all of that with the client. How tech savvy are they?

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Go through that whole thing, then say, okay, well, we need to work on helping you get that off of Coinbase. Right? There's a trust and estate issue here, right? That client needs to update their digital fiduciary, right? What are they doing with the crypto, cold storage, all these other things? Those are the things that not addressed for financial advisors. So the interest is there, but the conversation is not built for them. No one's building for advisors. Education is not for advisors, but again, shout to Delphi, Interaxis, a few others that are starting to come there. But until financial advisors are comfortable with that, FINRA, the SEC give more guidance around where they could dance. It's a nonstarter.

• 53:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, look, and some of this is just going to get solved by time and some of it's going to be people actually taking the effort, right, to build some of this stuff. I want to end the podcast with one question, which I think most people have. I believe it fairly open-ended because I think this applies to everything from the economic shock to the police brutality in civil rights, to the financial education we're talking about, which is what can I do? Right? And what can I do? Where I've seen people ask this question is around two things. One, how do I help? And in some form or fashion, they will also ask me, although they won't say it explicitly, what should I not do? Right? And they're very worried about.

• 53:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Kind of doing for the sake of doing, but doing the wrong thing. And so maybe you can kind of just from your seat. How do you see the we'll call it quote, quote, average person that listens to the podcast on Twitter, et cetera. What can they do to be part of the solution?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Great question. So again, we are going to come out of this with a wholehearted arm in arm effort by all people. But I think we have to start with who are you, right? If you are black, we need more people in positions of power. Right? We need people making the decision. So all of this money is raised right now. We can say, put it here. Folks like myself with a platform, we have to bring light to, you know, me, me being told at one point, if I'm going to make it on Wall Street, I need to change my name from Tyrone to Tyler, right? Being called an N word right to my face, right? Like, we need to speak truth to our situation and bring light to these things.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  So I think it's a lot of it is dependent upon who you are. But I would encourage all of us that are black Americans. One is now we need to leverage our resources, connect with one another network, but we need to get in positions of power. We need to go get our own. We need economic empowerment. We need to bank black, right? We need to really be supporting those that are in this business, right? Black advisors need to connect, black surgeons, black, you know, uh, black accountants, right? And we need to come together and build infrastructure to support our own communities. Cause if you look at the data, we all know it's there. No matter what you want to pull, right? America gets the flu. I mean, America gets sick, the black community gets the flu. We've been affected most by COVID, all these things. We need to go get our own.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  If you're not black and you want to be an advocate for this message, I think one of the things that I have been encouraging people to do is again, you are a great example of that, using your voice if you have one, right? And again, if you're my friend, you're my friend when I'm not in the room, right? And then you can say, oh, that joke was out of line, right? If that's you and you, and you have that, that voice in that room, do that. If it's simply saying like, I got DMs where like, they're like, Tyrone, look. I'm not gonna do anything publicly, but I will move a few million dollars to one United Bank, right, which is the largest black bank in America. I'm with that. Everybody don't need to be public. The other thing is, if you wanna do things in your community, do things that are gonna

• 56:19Speaker 02

  be literally proactive and immediate, right, in the community, right? So that could be an after-school program, that could be youth services, that could be going down to, you know, a homeless shelter, whatever the case may be, as just literally saying, and I tell people, just walk in and say, "What do you need? Oh, we need socks. We need this, we need that." Like, and that's how this starts to work. You just literally gotta get out of your comfort zone. And then I think the next thing is this, and I make no secret about this, and I haven't. I am only sitting here, and this is fact, because of white people, especially a white woman, who took a flyer on me when I interviewed for this job on Wall Street. At the time, I was a juvenile probation officer.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  And she sat in a chair, and she goes, "How does being a juvenile probation officer gonna help you on Wall Street?" And I was like, "That is a really good interview question." I was like, "I have no idea." But I don't remember how I answered the question, but she took a flyer on me, right? She's like, "Here's a little black boy who is literally illiterate. We're gonna help him, we're gonna undergird him, help him develop his skills," right? And I think if everyone does that, because again, like I said, this is a class issue, this is a race issue, but if people stop feeling uncomfortable going to the other side of town, patronizing some of those businesses, and going in there and transacting with them,

• 57:46Speaker 02

  and getting into the community, right, then you'll find very unique ways to help. And I'll end it like this. If I'm drowning, I don't care about the color of the life preserver, man. I'm not, don't, you throw me a yellow life preserver, and I'm drowning, I'm like, "No, no, go get a red one. I don't like yellow," right? So your color does not matter, right? White people get uncomfortable going to an all-black school and like, "Oh, I'm the only white one here." Well, guess what? It's like that for us every day. So just feel, you know, and... If you are uncomfortable going into the into the inner city or into mostly black communities, DM me, I'll go with you, right? Like, I will go with you. I've made that commitment to all of my colleagues. You reached out to me, like, listen, let me reach out to a black dude and be like, hey, what should I say here?

• 58:31Speaker 02

  I'm like, no, use a Malcolm X quote, right? So it's so it's like, just be comfortable reaching out. And, yes, so long as you are open, honest, and altruistic with your with your desire to help, I'll go to the end of the world, and so many like me will. But I just think we need to get over having these tough conversations. Again, if you're gonna donate, donate effectively, reach out, be like, hey, right, WallStreetBound.org, really good organization. Again, these are, you can ask, or DM me, or you, or whatever, and we can start to shed light. If you put your dollars here, they're gonna be effective, because there have been so many boots on the ground doing this work for a very long time.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  And those of us that are in the trenches with them, their one issue is they're underfunded. They're underfunded. So we need to make sure that all of this, you know, Goldman pledged, what, 10 million? Which is a bad day of trading for them, right? Like, that 10 million dollars, we need to say, Goldman, put it here. Here's a program in New York City that have been helping inner-city kids with financial literacy. They need 50 grand. Could you spare it? Right? So if we don't do that, and that may just be simply DMing, emailing, connecting people, you don't have to be out front, you just connect the people that can get the people that are close to the issue, and that's how we'll get this solved. And again, kudos to you for making room for this conversation.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  And I think, and again, I promise I'm done here, that's the thing, that's how this gets fixed. Your your megaphone is massive. If you don't take that seriously now and then use it to amplify a message, because the littlest things, it amazes me, the things that people pull out of your podcast that I see on Twitter. And I'm like, I'll go back to the interview, I'm like, where the hell did Travis Kling say that? You know, but people listen, and then they go act on that. So I think you make a room for this conversation is how it's fixed. Reaching out, you know, having different voices and people that look differently, different perspective is how it get fixed. But more importantly, everybody go in your community. What can I do in my community right now? And if everyone does that, we'll

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  pull each other out of this together and then we'll find that one mind that is going to lead us out of this and is going to be the leader that this country is so void of.

• 1:00:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I'm gonna leave you with with something that I can't say who it is, but it's somebody that I really respect. And somebody I did not expect to say this to me once said to me, they said, the thing that everyone forgets is that living doesn't happen in ivory towers, it happens in the streets.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 1:01:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And when they said that to me, I had to sit and think for a second. And I asked him a follow up question, which is, how do you internalize that every day? And he said, and he's literally sitting in an ivory tower, pretty much. And he said, there are things that I do to never lose the pulse of what happens on the streets. And I remember going home and thinking about it. And I knew enough about the guy's life to understand it. He wasn't talking about just philanthropic things either, right? He did plenty of that, donated money, time, all kinds of stuff. But he also understood culture comes from the street. He understood that user behavior around technology and understanding the investments

• 1:01:52Anthony Pompliano?

  he shouldn't shouldn't make came from the streets, right? And all these things. And I was recently reminded of this, because Plin and I went somewhere. And when we were there, it was a very different crowd than you would than you would expect. And it had nothing to do with race or any of that. It literally had to do with lifestyle, right? There was a small town. Every single person we saw was obese. Every single person, right? And I'm not talking about like, hey, that person should lose 10 pounds and be healthier. I'm talking about that person's 100 pounds overweight type stuff, right? We started to look around and we were like, why is that? Why is it in this small town in a pretty rural area?

• 1:02:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you see the food choices.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:02:39Anthony Pompliano?

  McDonald's, Bojangles, right? And you just go down the list and you're like, every single place here is unhealthy. Like literally, if you wanted to eat healthy, you can cook at home or that's it.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:02:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And by the way, if you want to eat cheap, the only thing that you can do is go to fast food. And so it's unhealthy and like, and you can just see, here's the lock-in, right? Here it is. But those are the same people that are spending tons of time on technology products, culture, right? All this kind of stuff. And so I think that like that one quote of living happens on the streets. It just stuck with me of, um, it is just as much valuable to the people that you are spending time with as it can be to the people who are donating the time, the money, the whatever, right? There are things to learn if that curiosity is there. And so I always remind people that like, it doesn't have to be a one-way street, right? You may actually go and extract more value than you give by accident.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:03:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, and honestly, that may be a good thing.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  100%, 100%, man.

• 1:03:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? All right. Where can, uh, where can people find you on the internet? Where do we want to send them?

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  All right. Here's where we want to send them, right off the bat, at TR401. That's where I live. That's where I chop it up with Pomp online. Also run to my website, TyroneRoss.io. Also check out, um, 401 dot run, which is my company site there. But yeah, between those three, you can get connected. And again, anybody that got feedback, uh, want help, anything to want to partner to make this happen, hello at TyroneRoss.io. You can email me for sure.

• 1:04:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You're a legend, not only one for everything you do, but two, you came out with the long Bitcoin, short the bank.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  I had to, man. If for all, again, for all you've done for me, amplifying my voice, the gratitude, the appreciation, I cannot express enough. You're doing God's work, man. He, he's gonna, he gonna hold you up. I appreciate you so much.

• 1:04:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. All right, we'll do it again soon.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  No doubt, man. I appreciate you.