Generational wealth is a topic that very well needs to be discussed in the black community. We sat down with serial entrepreneur, CEO, and Author Dr. Sean J Harris for an in-depth discussion on the topic.
INTERVIEWER Rashad Thirlkill:
I want to thank you for stopping in and doing my show, man. I really appreciate it.
GUEST Dr. Sean J Harris:
Thank you, brother, for having me, man.
RT: No problem. I noticed, man, that I do follow you on social media. And I noticed that you have a lot to offer for up and coming generations, generational wealth and people that don’t have the knowledge of how to attain it and even how to form the habits to get ready to attain it. So I really appreciate you. That’s why I reached out for you. Well, that’s why I reached out for you to be on this show so you could talk to our listeners, and hopefully they’ll gain some knowledge from what it is that you have say- this makes an impact.
So I will start with the introduction. And today we have Mr. Doctor Sean J. Harris here with us, and he has experience or knowledge on things as far as generational wealth, financial literacy, business development and coaching, and developing kid entrepreneurs.
A brief biography about him is that he is a former non-commissioned officer in the United States Air Force. He served in the Persian Gulf War. Doctor Harris has an extensive and diverse background in aerospace propulsion, law enforcement and real estate. Dr. Harris and his wife own an aviation company, a capital investment firm, two real estate companies, as well as a home health care company. Dr. Harris is a 33 time author. He also feels that it is important to create financial literacy and to create a firm foundation for business ownership at an early age. He currently lives in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
It is our honor to introduce Dr. Sean J. Harris, a 33 times best-selling author and CEO of multiple corporations to the Millionaire By Morning podcast. Thank you, brother.
Sean Harris: Thank you for having me.
RT: Yes, sir. Man, that is an extensive list of accomplishments.
I know that you have a book called From C Student to CEO. Are you talking about yourself in that book?
“FROM C STUDENT TO CEO”
Sean Harris: That’s me. I was definitely a C student, man. I just wanted to see my way out, never to return. We always talk, go to school, get good grades, go get a good job, happily ever after. And I realized at a young age that paradigm wasn’t going to work for most people at that time. I just didn’t see it working. And I was a C student, and I remember specifically, I had a high school guidance counselor who told me, based on your grades, Sean, the most you amount to is a warehouse worker. Now I knew that wasn’t the recipe for my life or whatever.
So that was the initial concept of that book, just to show the journey that I took from being a C student going beyond what the guidance counselor told me with the school system puts you in this indoctrate thought process of what you’re supposed to do and based on your grades, because one thing I found out, man in school, our report card is our grade on our report card. But once we get out here in the real world, your financial statement becomes your report card.
RT: Definitely. I watch a Netflix show. I can’t think of the name of it right now, but just a few years ago, I heard a statement that was so profound and it said that money is the measurement of man, which when people say money don’t make you happy, when people are looking at money as; money don’t grow on trees. And all of these cliches about money at the end of the day, your knowledge and what you do and can earn from it, is the measure of how much you’ve been taught in this life.
Sean Harris: Exactly.
RT: So with that being said, what do you think is the psychology or how can people change their psychology of how they think about money?
MONEY MINDSET to Build Generational Weaklth
Sean Harris: That’s an important thing, because that’s one of the first questions I ask everybody is.. who taught you about money? It makes you have to stop and think, Well, Jeez, how did I learn about money? Like you said, people say, close that door, you letting out all the good heat, all those different colloquialisms that talks about money being a shortage.
If you ever flew on an airplane, you’ll notice going from- especially if you going overseas or just going from here to California. We just look out the window and just travel for hours and look out there and see there’s nothing but trees and desert land and just dry land. That should let you know that there’s an abundance of everything, there’s never a scarcity, because when people stop and look and it’s like I asked, people, have you ever considered taking the amount that you make a year and making it in a month, in a week, in a day and an hour? Because whatever it is you make, there is someone who makes that in an hour or less. But we have to make that mental paradigm shift to be able to see that.
It’s kind of like… I’m a country boy, the little red rubber band that used to come on a Collard rings right when you stretch that thing you can shoot it all the way across the room almost, but when you let it go, it shrinks back to an expanded dimension. It never goes back to its original dimension. It’s always stretched. So the same thing with our mind, once you stretch your mind, it can never go back. So that’s why exposure is everything, you have to expose people to understanding that, what you consider a lot of money is relative.
RT: Definitely. It definitely is. And what you just explained is my entire reason for, basically everything I do. I have a brand about it. I’m writing a book about it. I’m doing interviews about it, the podcast Millionaire by morning. And the reason is because we wake up to so many things. But mostly we wake up to blessings. We wake up to a new day. We expect those things. It’s just automation. And most people are waking up going to a job, right? That they hate or that they’re making a minimal amount of income at. But here’s the thing about that. They asked for that job, right? They manifested that job, right. So why couldn’t they manifest a job that will pay them a million dollars?
Sean Harris: Exactly. That puts people in this situation- what I call a 40-40 plan. So many people subscribe to that program. That’s where you work 40 hours a week for 40 years to retire on 40% of which you already can live on in the first place. Unfortunately, that’s moving to the 50-50-50 plan as we speak, because people working even longer and they get on this program. They are like, man, when I retire, I’m gonna, hey, man, I’m going to be able to travel.
Listen, when you travel at 50 and 60 years old, it’s not the same as traveling in your 20s and your 30s. Not when you’re parasailing and bungee jumping and all this adventuresome stuff in your 50s and 60s when you put in our 20s and 30s. Right. So it’s like you work a whole lifetime, they say the life expectancy after you retire is, like, eleven years. It’s like what was all that about? You work all this time just to try to enjoy eleven years of the decline of your life. You know what I’m saying?
RT: Eleven years! And I’m starting to understand why that’s even a thing over. Like you say, 40-40-40, you basically just became automatic, you’re a robot. So your body is just looking at it as, okay, we’re not getting up going to work today. That’s what I was used to brushing my teeth, taking a shower, doing 8 hours, 10 hours coming home. So it’s a decline, like you say from that point, when you stop doing that, I guess people think they’re going to live a whole different life. But you really automated at that point, right?
I’m reading a book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. I don’t know if you’ve read it. Oh, man, it’s by Dr. Joe Dispenza. And it’s an awesome book, and it really touches on everything that we just mentioned. And as far as breaking the habit of your, mindset got you because we all have God given talents. Right? You can go out there and sell a few bottles of water or knit or whatever it is. But you teach kid entrepreneurs and you say that kids minds are a blank slate. Can you expand on that a little?
“RAISING KID ENTREPRENEURS”
Sean Harris: Yeah. The analogy of a kid’s mind. A kid forms his self-image between the ages of three and five. So we got to look at little kids like an empty canvas. Now, whatever we do and say to that kid is a swipe with a brush on that canvas. Whether we say derogatory things, you’re not going to amount anything. You’re just a C student the most that you’re going to amount to is a warehouse worker. You just like your Daddy, just like your mom or whatever.
So these negative connotations get, they’re still swipes everything we do and say is a swipe. But at the same time, if we say, hey, man, you’re a winner. You’re so smart, you’re brilliant, you’re beautiful, you’re handsome. We’re putting these seeds because seeds, whatever you grow is going to grow. If you plant an Apple seed, it’s going to grow in time. But think about it. When have you ever had to plant weeds? You never had to plant weeds, but they will grow at an exorbitant rate well beyond the Apple seed. And the goal is to strangle the fruitful plants.
So with kids, we have to put that image in them. So by time they’re three to five years old, they have a strong self-image. You and I, we probably came up kind of the same where you hear, people always say children are to be seen and not heard. I think that’s the worst thing you can do to a child, because if you treat kids like kids, you’re going to get kid-like behavior. If you treat kids like adults, you’ll get adult like behavior while still maintaining the kids.
So, my daughter, she’s twelve. My son is eleven. We take them places. I take them to Chamber commerce meetings. I take them to regular business meetings. I’ve been doing that since they came out the womb. So all they understand is business and how to conduct with adults. They understand that, hey, this is my senior. I always show respect, reverence come in when I come in and the conversation, but not to butt they way in. But we don’t exclude them from conversations, so they can be in the know, because as soon as the kid can speak, a kid can learn.
These little kids, they know the songs, all the videos they know real dance out of here. Well, they should be able to tell me what a dividend is. They should be able to tell what the ROI is, what a rate of return is. This is stuff that they can know. So when people look at Tara and I and they’re like, Man, your kids are so sharp. Maybe. But shouldn’t your kids be the same way if they all go to kindergarten and learn the ABCs at the same time? Well, if I would have taught your kid about finance at the same age, I taught mine, they’d know it just as well. So it doesn’t make mine anything more special.
RT: You definitely have a point there. I’ve heard a lot of people say that school actually dumb kids down more. so then advance them. And that makes a lot of sense. I’ve also been told that the amount of penitentiaries that are built is based on, like, fifth grade test scores.
Sean Harris:Exactly.
RT: So that kind of gives you a picture of what you’re facing out there, because now the warehouse workers are probably doing five to ten years. And it’s a sad situation when we could have went a different direction.
Sean Harris: My son, he asked, Why does it take all day to go to school? He said, it doesn’t take that long to learn anything. That’s why we let him home school. And it’s like when you think about this, you are expected to know six subjects and excel and get an A in every class is what you were expected. But how come your math teacher only specializes in math? Your math teacher don’t teach all six subjects but you’re expected. And what that does [my son] says, dad, that just makes a box. Like you said earlier, just make you a robot. And the school system is designed to produce workers, not independent free thinkers.
Because if you ever notice, in your elementary school, your walls were yellow, beige, something of that color. Colors do a lot to the psyche and the speed of the brain and how it performs. So it’s made to come down. They don’t have extravagant colors, bright colors that make us energized. It makes us just want to sit in class and learn the lessons in a boring, monotone manner. So if you ever go to, like, a charter school or high excel school, you notice they have different color rates throughout the school, just to make the brain work differently. You’re not supposed to have independent thinking abilities, not in mass, not in the masses.
RT: That is crazy, man. So you were a law enforcement officer. Here’s my thing. That is, reality based. The people that were the C students, the people that acted out in class that didn’t go to school. Those are the ones that end up kind of with an entrepreneurial mindset, and they are being held back in school. It’s amazing, because if you look back on it, I use myself, for example, the stuff I used to get in trouble for in school was stuff that I knew about.
I wasn’t really big into school. I wasn’t at all. Except for, like you said, they said, Get on this path, and you’re not going to be anything in life. If you don’t throw football or basketball, you need to start trying to figure your warehouse job. So when I look back on it, I paid people to do my work, which I probably wasn’t there. I was out doing something else, right? I gambled a lot, and I sold drugs. That’s what I did coming up. That’s what I knew.
But now that I think about it and I would have been led in the right direction that has CEO all over it all day, and I outsource my work now, it’s the same thing. Gambling is the stock market pretty much so. I love sales. I’ve done sales my entire life, so it’s just I don’t know. It’s the reins that’s holding you back. In other societies, it’s called being a Maverick over here, it’s called being a thug.
Sean Harris: Exactly.
RT: So where we at writing now, as far as society is concerned, it gives kids more options. And I’m really proud. I’m glad for that that they really can go online and sell whatever they want to sell the product or services or whatever. So I think we’re headed in the right direction as far as that’s concerned.
Sean Harris: Right. And you know, with that, I think it was Elon Musk who said The Street pharmacist, is the best CEO out here. It’s a thinking game. You understand supply and demand, marketing, and using other people’s human capital. You know what I’m saying? Same thing like you say, gambling. All that is stock market today, legalized. One of my business mentors, Dennis Kimbro, he told me. He said A students often times teach B students who often times work for C students and the D students, that’s what the name builders out. And I found that to be true throughout life.
RT: That’s definite, man. Isn’t that something that’s the C student is the free thinker. So, the book that you have. How many pages is it?
Sean Harris: I think that was, like 114 pages if i’m correct. Okay.
RT: So here’s what I like to ask, because I’m in that boat and sometimes find it overwhelming. How do you wear so many hats at the same time?
Sean Harris: I think it’s just a gifting. A lot of times we always were told find your passion and go out and you’ll succeed. That’s not quite true. My passion is fishing. I like to fish, but fishing at my level doesn’t make any money. So that’s not what we teach our kids. You don’t go after your passion, you go after your gifting. Well, Sean, I don’t know what my gifting is. What is my gifting? Your gifting is what you do incredibly well, that’s so easy to use, but hard for most. That’s your gift. Now you got to go monetize. Once you monetize that gifting, now I can go do deep sea fishing trips whenever I want to. To go after my passion. But you let your gift- gift your way to the passion.
RT: Okay. And that leads to another question. As far as the pillars, I think you mentioned earlier, the pillars of money or the pillars of success.
“THE 3 LAWS OF MONEY”
Sean Harris: The three laws of money basically. When you live by laws, you have order, it prevents anarchy, chaos. So the same thing. I look at money as a relationship. If you mistreat or abuse your mates, they’re going to find their way away from you. But at the same time, you treat them right. You do right by them, they’re going to always attract and find his way back to you.
So the same thing with money, when you abuse money and you don’t handle it right. It’s one thing I don’t allow people to hand me wadded up cash, and I don’t hand wadded up cash to nobody. And, yeah, I still use cash in the cashless society. But the thing is, you got to treat it right. I put my bills in order. They face the same duration, lower denomination at the top, higher denomination at the back. I fold it and put it in a money clip, no dog ears. That’s the way I respect money. And money keeps finding its way to me and my family, because we respect it. That’s one of the laws, the first law of money, is being able to make money.
Now, when I say make money, that doesn’t mean go get a job. Anybody can do that. What we always recommend is figure out how to have a high income skill set. What is a high income skill set? A high income skill set is when you can make at least $10,000 a month, continuously. Well, Sean, I make $10,000 at my job. That’s still not a high income skill set because you leave a job, so shall the money go. A high income skill set is something that can’t be taken from you, is transferable. You can go make money, but more importantly, you can make money on your own with it because it’s a skill set, i.e. being an entrepreneur or business owner.
The second rule of making money is being able to hold on to money. You got to be able to hold on to it, but not hold on to it, just like I’m just hoarding it, I’m going to put it under the mattress. There’s a thing called economic balance.
One of my other mentors, Doctor Claude Anderson. He talks about economic bounce. An economic balance is how long money stays in a specific community, before it leaves the community. Unfortunately, in our community, the economic balance is only 4 to 6 hours, so we get a paycheck, we get a stimulus check, any kind of time we get money, we just got to go spend it.
No, we don’t own anything, Sean. I own my own lawn care business. We don’t own anything. And here’s what I mean by that. We don’t own hospitals, we don’t own banks, we don’t own school system. That’s ownership, not just own a little business. We need to own massive things that make a big difference and form our communities, that changes cities, that changes states and nations. So that’s what I mean when I say ownership.
So our money goes straight out. We go buy some shoes, we go buy some hot wings, we go buy hair products. They’re all in different ethnicities. So many ethnicities live on two different income. They live on 100% of their own and 90% of ours because our money goes out of his community so quick. So the Asian community and not saying it’s in stereotypical is just a fact. They dominate the hair industry, hotel and gas station industries dominated by the Arab community. Well, when we spend that money, they’re like, hey, y’all bring all your money here. We’re living off your income and 100% of ours. We do what we want to do and build other riches with that.
So what we need to do is and let me finish walk you through that economic balance. The Caucasian economic balance is about four to six days, before they money leave the community. The Arab and Asian community economic balance is between twelve and 15 days. The Jewish community, their economic balance is 21 to 30 days before it leaves their community. So you got money continuously circulating. That’s when you build that community. So again, how can our community look at it? Like you and I, how can we ever grow and dominate in any area if we’re outsourcing that money so often?
Third law of money is being able to grow that income. So let’s go back. We have to, first of all, make the money, preferably to a high income skill set. We have to be able to hold on to the money. And the third thing we got to do is we got to be able to grow the money. See, a lot of people say, Well, Sean, should I be investing right now? Well, it depends. What is your aim? How much money are you looking at investing? I got, like, $100 to invest. No, you need to build up a war chest to start investing, because if you invest $100 and you get a 10% return on investment, that’s $10 that will buy you a meal of Chickfila, barely. But if you got $10,000, 10% of that, now we’re looking at $1,000.
Okay, now we’re looking at okay, that can help with your mortgage or help paying an additional investment property. But after you had $120,000 investment, see the difference. And then we’re talking about a large sum of money. Now we’re talking about making $12,000, which exceeds your high-income skill set. Now you can take that money and start doing other things- to start buying other asset producing income. Right?
So, you can buy a car, say, hey man, I want to buy a Tesla sports car, whatever. Go to your bank account, pay the money. But why not use that money to get an extra producing income, I. e. Investment property or some type of tool that’s going to create income that pays for the car. Now, once the car is paid for, guess what. You still have the income-producing asset that can continue buying other things and other business. So that’s why it’s important to understand the Three rules and how they all work hand in hand with each other.
RT: Got you. I think the last part I’ve heard put another way is make your money work for you. They’re like your little soldiers. They go out here and work for you. I like that analogy.
The Real estate businesses, the aviation business. These are businesses that you operate or are they just pretty much automated, self sustaining type of businesses.
Sean Harris: I operate them. Everything we do is we build business systems, there’s a difference between, running a business, and then I got to be there. You remember the old commercials its time to make the Donuts. What we do is use other people’s human capital to let them make the Donuts. So everything you do, you want to be system driven. I think it was Carnegie or somebody who said, rather have 1% of 100 people’s efforts rather than 100% of one man’s efforts. So that’s where you want to build your businesses. You want to always put them where the system driven to where you don’t have to be there, and it’s still going to operate.
RT: Awesome. Because I’m working on that. And you can sell that system. Am I correct?
Sean Harris: Absolutely. Okay. And that’s the thing. Last time we build businesses and it’s like, oh, man, I want to build this business. I want to pass it down to my great grandchildren, the great great great. No, you have to have an exit strategy. Whether buying real estate or building businesses, you have to have an exit strategy. Your goal is not to actually run that business forever.
All of my businesses aren’t designed to pass down to the kids they’re designed to build up, so that the marketplace looks at it and says, hey, you’ve invested X amount of business; The evaluation of this company is now here. I want to buy it up here. So you may build a business, build it to a million dollar equity, and then sell it for $10 million. So that should be your goal is, how can I sell this business? Because that in and of itself is a business. It’s building businesses to sell them and broker them.
RT: Man, that’s something that you don’t hear about. Honestly, people think that they’re going to start a business and it’s going to last forever. And the exit is the goal. That’s real retirement money. And at some point, you don’t want to work in your business all day, every day.
Sean Harris: I will tell everybody you work on your business. Well, you work in your business, to work on your business, to work your way out of your business.
RT: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s an awesome way to put it. I never heard it put it like that. So, you have the systems in place and then you do motivational. Do you do motivational speaking as well, or is that just something to keep an eye out on you and what you’re doing?
Sean Harris: More so, educational speaking. I just teach wealth creation, generational, wealth building wealth principles. That is always a skill set that anybody can do. I always tell people when I consult people. What if we go back to your skill or your gifting? What are you incredibly good at and what have you been doing for the last ten years? 15-20 years as a profession, whatever it is, you’re good at it, because it’s always said that once you study something for 10,000 hours, it makes you an expert. So you can be a platform speaker on that subject, and every profession has conferences.
Well Sean, I’m just a plumber dude. Well’ there’s plumber conventions, and you can go in and speak as a consultant, whatever it is you did. Let’s say, Sean, I work for the government for 20 years, doing accounting. Well, guess what. You can retire from that and then come back as a consultant and they’ll pay you the same, if not more money at only a fraction of the time that you now work.
RT: Yeah. And speaking is so lucrative. Events and speaking and all of that, anything with a fan base, it’s lucrative.
“GET PAID MORE”
Sean Harris: I’m going to throw you a little freebie here. You’re ready for it? When I do a speaking event, I get paid seven to ten different ways from that one event. So I come to your town. I do a speaking event one honorarium. I’m getting an honorarium for coming to speak. The event is recorded. So the video becomes another product. It’s also recorded, which becomes an audio that’s recorded. I can also do white sheets of transcripts or white papers, that’s another product. I can also take that and turn it into a book or ebook. Also, I can turn it into a course or turn it into a webinar.
So, you see, I spoke one time at your event. But look at all the different ways that I made money from. It’s kind of like an apple a regular worker would take it or , a business owner would just take the apple and sell to apple. An entrepreneur would say, Wait a minute. I can sell apples, I can sell Apple slices, I can sell Apple pies, I can sell Apple frizz, I can sell applesauce, I can sell Apple freeze pops. So you see all the different tools that came from that one apple?
RT: Definitely.
SH: So that’s the goal.
RT: Entrepreneurs think that way. It’s really a special group that even think that way because other people, like the rest of society, family, friends, all that, they’ll look at you and say, You’re doing too much with that apple. Why don’t you just eat it?
SH: The entrepreneur would say, Wait a minute. You’re looking at discarded trash over there, there’s seeds still over there. I’m going to replant the seeds.
RT: [New entrepreneurs], A hump in the road is the fact that you are in a class of your own. And that hump of people not believing in you is just part of the process. But stay the course, just stay the course. Do you do much social media?
Sean Harris: I do, one thing with that. I’m on basic platforms, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. One of the key things is you got to stay, top of mind, what they call T.O.M.A top of mind awareness. So people look at you for consistency. You never know who’s watching. It could be another investor. It could be somebody say, hey, look, I notice you post every single day, multiple times a day. Your message stays the same. You can back and take my social media forever. You won’t see. Oh, Sean is selling coffee over here. Then he’s over here selling lashes. And then over here, he was offering lawn service. My message is the same. It hasn’t changed in 23 years. Generational wealth. It doesn’t change.
So what were you teaching 15 years ago? Generational wealth. What do you think you’ll be teaching? Five years. Generational wealth. It ain’t changing. It’s who I am. One thing I always tell people, make a post on your social media platform and say, what am I known by to you and see what people respond back to you. And that tells you if you’re focused or not, based on how people see you, people show me whatever guy that’s the car salesman. He’s the real estate professional. They should know clearly what your message is.
RT: What the message is. Okay. Generational wealth. You have financial literacy, and it is systems or systematic. So with that, the things that you include in that is on the road. It’s all under one umbrella, which is generational wealth.
“Multiple Streams of Income”
Sean Harris: You hear a lot of people talk about multiple streams of income. I like to say multiple pipelines, because if you think about a stream at any time, a stream can change course or it can actually dry out. So think about it. If you have water pressure coming to your house, do you want it to come in trickling in a stream or do you want it to come in gushing at a high PSI that you currently have through the pipeline. So that’s why you want to build your money, your pipeline.
But here’s the thing, too. With multiple streams, as people call it, multiple sources of income. Like a tree, a tree has one tap root that goes down about eight to 12ft, depending on the height of the tree, the other roots are really shallow. So if you ever seen a tree fall over the storm at topples, you’re like, man, that big Oak tree. That’s all the root system had. But you notice the tree falls over. That one root still stays in the ground. That’s when it goes down and secure the water for the nourishment of the tree.
So the same thing with building your income, you got to have one tap root, one root. This is how I make money right here. Then you take that money and you build the second 3rd 4th root system, which is a little bit more shallower, but they also keep the tree balance and keep it secure in the ground. That one tap root still needs support. It just doesn’t need deep, deep support.
So with that, when people have multiple income again, you can’t be out here saying, hey, I sell hot wings over here. I do this over here. I’m a notary over here. Oh, I do this over here. Everything has to still fall within that umbrella. So everything we do, all of our companies fall within the same umbrella. We have an aviation company., real estate companies, publishing companies, security firms, and a commercial cleaning company.
See, all these companies fall under each other, because this company does this for this company. This company is a client of this company. We’re in the process right now of looking at getting our dual citizenship, moving to a different country part-time. Guess what? The aviation company travels us there and we will then lease the jet for this company under this company, which pays for everything there. We own home health care company, the home health care company. As we travel, we use the aviation company. The transport is there. You see what I’m saying? Everything stays hand in hand.
RT: Awesome. Do you do any nonprofits? Do you have absolutely non profits?
Sean Harris: I don’t, one thing in our community. I see so many people, the first thing they say is, I get this non profit. Dude, have you made a profit yet? Nonprofits are for profited businesses. On the back end, nonprofits are excellent when you know how to use them and you use them the right way. It’s kind of like sports. If I say you go out button hook to the right, but you turn to the left. Guess what? You missed the ball because the ball was already in the air while you were running.
So if you can’t catch the ball, you can’t score. If you can’t score, you can never win a game. And the reason why you didn’t catch the ball is because you didn’t know the rules of the game. So it’s all about knowing the rules to the game in order to win the game. So again, with the non profit, unfortunately in our community, that’s the first thing I hear everybody say, I got this non-profit, I got this nonprofit.
Listen to what you’re saying. I have a non profit, which means non profit. So all the work and effort that you have to put into a nonprofit just to hopefully cut through this way, cut through that way, to get a little profit to come into the company, that same work ethic, if not less, if you just built a for- profit business, you got the money. Now you can do the cool things, you can now go and get a non profit, that you can get a bigger benefit and return on your investment because you have a for-profit business. See, nonprofits work hand in hand with for profit businesses. Unfortunately, so many people just do it backwards and get the non profit business and struggle for year after year after year after year.
RT: Wow, man. I’ve never heard it put like that, profit first before the non profit.
Sean Harris: It’s like when you’re on an airplane, what does the flight attendant tell you in the unlikely event of a water landing or crash, when the mask comes down, who puts their mask on first, you’re supposed to put yours on first, then you help your kid. So it’s the same analogy, we got to put on that for profit mask. I got cash flow coming in. I’m breathing, I’m alive. I don’t have to worry about losing the house, I don’t have to worry about losing the car. Now, I can function in my nonprofit and do things in the community, whatever it is, that you don’t nonprofit.
But see, instead of going through the nonprofit, having to jump through all these hoops through all this paperwork, just go out and make a profit. And if I want to go buy the Walmart for Christmas and buy all the bikes in there for the kids for Christmas, I can do that. I don’t want to go through all this paper stuff. I go through the green paper and say, hey, let’s feed these kids, let’s put this program together to benefit them. And then that makes that kid be like, I want to do what you do, because as you said earlier, in our community, especially our boys, we always make them think that the only way you’re going to meet success is with a ball or microphone in your hand.
You sit there and spit all you want to in a microphone. The boys don’t make no money. But that same microphone when you use it on the stage, adding value to people the way I do, you can command a high honorarium. You can make $10, $20 $30,000 in 45 minutes from sharing your wisdom and your knowledge. See, that’s what we have to teach kids. It’s all about exposure. What you’re exposed to is what’s going to resonate.
I made a post about a month ago. My wife and I were on elephant backs in the ocean, in Thailand. That was my office for the day. People say, well, Sean, do you go on vacation? No, we just live our lives in different parts of the world. Vacation means to vacate your situation. We’re not vacating nothing. I just go over there and operate my business from a beach. And again, that’s because it’s system-driven.
So, this is the exposure and the stretching of the rubber band, the stretching of the minds that we have to put in our kids to let them know. Hey, look, you don’t have to go work a nine to five, if you want to that’s great. But why not make what you were told by a company, your value is and you get paid.
See… If you’re getting paid $80,000 a year, you are bound with your negotiation. You negotiated with your company and said, I’ll take the $80,000 just pay it to me over 52 weeks. When, if you were to negotiate it better, you could have just said, hey, look, I will negotiate that $80,000 in 24 hours or in one week, you get paid the same amount of money. It’s just that we did a poor job of negotiating.
Most people have made a million dollars before. Most people made a million dollars before. It’s just that you made it over the course of 20 years. Just negotiate. Hey, I need to make this in a year.
RT: Yeah, I have a podcast about that. Matter of fact, I broke down the numbers and the numbers seem so doable, so easy- if you put your mind to it. If you like to say put a time frame to it, you could do it with a hustle, even if you had a nine to five. If you put it into the proper place and negotiate it or even negotiating the price with the customer. This is how much you want for your product or your service. And this is how many of them you’re going to sell.
Sean Harris: One of the things I do, too, is a licensed product that’s nothing to business owners. Entrepreneurs got to get good at licensing your products and services. See, I did sweat equity, I’ve written 33 books. I’ve done the work. But see, some of my books I license out. So what it is, I changed the cover and it’s your name. Now I’ve given you a license and you sell this book now saying that you wrote the book, basically. So what this does is you’re not talking about having a high income skillset $10,000 or above in less than 30 days.
So if you license my product, let’s say I give you one of my books as an ebook for $150, you go out and sell this book, ten books a day for $10. You’re talking about $9,000 at the end of the month. I’m going to assume you make at least $1,000 on your job a month, if not a week or bi weekly. But let’s just be very conservative. You make at least $1,000 on your own, but you went and took this book on your own, while you’re at work.
Hey, buy this ebook from me. Hey, send it to your uncle. Just buy this ebook. So they buy an ebook for $10 for $5. 10 people for $5 a day, every day in the month. That’s $9,000 on top of whatever you do in your own profession. That just thrust you into the high income skill set.
Yeah, it just launched you to $100- $250,000 a year. Just like that by just taking a product or service that somebody else already mastered, already baked the cake for you. All you got to do is go serve it.
RT: Yeah. You would think people would jump on that. You would think the whole affiliate thing is just so much stuff you can sell out here and you’re on Facebook all day anyway, your on Instagram all day anyway…
RT:
So you are in Atlanta currently?
Sean Harris: Yes.
RT: So I don’t really know how it is because I don’t live there, but from the outside looking in. It looks as, from what you always hear, Atlanta has a really booming black business environment. Everyone up there, I guess I can’t say everyone, but people work together and utilize each other’s businesses instead of going outsourced to- just a well known business or whatever the case may be, they can utilize their business needs with another small business or black owned small business. Is that the way that it is in Atlanta?
Sean Harris: It is. And different parts of the country is different, but pretty much anywhere you go. Here’s the story I heard before. God said, hey, look, I’m new to this city. How are the people here? The guy said, Well, how are the people where you came from before? Oh, man, everybody’s uptight. They were just the same here. But then another guy said, hey, How’s people here, man, How’s people where you came from? Oh, man, it was great. Everybody’s cooperative, it’s awesome, man. That’s the way it is here, too.
So it’s whatever you bring to the environment. So a lot of people think all the money is made on the East Coast, New York, Atlanta and California. But the bulk of the money is made in the middle, again about flying that aircraft, you got to look at that window and be like, man, all these people I have access to. So in Atlanta, it can be the same no matter where you are, you make it what it’s going to be, just the same as anywhere. You’re going to have people that just don’t want to see you succeed.
Unfortunately, in our community as a whole, we kind of have that problem sometimes. But what you have to realize, too, most of your clients and customers will not be family and friends, and they won’t be in your timeline. Most of your business, that you will dominate your wealth, your masses. It’s going to come from people you don’t know.. So don’t get hung up on the people because they think about it. Your cousin Ray, Ray and Pookie and all the people we grew up with, they know you for who you are, man. You don’t know about no money. Get out of here.
You see what I’m saying? You’re not my client, we just might have hung out in the street back in the day. My client is the other guy that says, oh, Dr. Harris, can you teach me about wealth creation and building business? Can you teach me how my kids can make six figures before they turn ten years old? Yeah, I can show you that. So that’s my client. You see what I’m saying?
RT: Definitely.
Sean Harris: What part of, where do you live?
RT: I’m in Dallas, Fort Worth,
Sean Harris: Dallas. I was just in Texas last week. I was in Corpus Christie with Dallas down there. Dallas in Houston. You’re all killing it out there. As far as the African American community being able to do business. So, the whole thing is connection and just like you and I are talking via the Internet. Man, you got to capitalize and leverage that, that’s one of the biggest things we have to learn is the word leverage and what it means, how to benefit leveraging.
Think about this. You have a contract. One of my security companies, let’s say I had a contract that pay $75 an hour. Well, if I worked at $75 an hour, but it’s 8 hours, it’s all my human effort, 100% of one person. But if I go get three people who will give me 8 hours and I pay them $25 an hour, I profit $50 an hour times 8 hours times three different officers doing that. So when people say, man, there’s only 24 hours in a day. No, it ain’t not to me. Because if I hire 100 people to work 8 hours, that’s 800 hours of billable hours I just got today in my 28 hours.
RT: Compound. Compounding
Sean Harris: The 8th wonder of the world.
RT: Yeah. No matter how you cut it, compounding that will get you where you want to be.
RT: It’s really the words and the cliches and all of that that we’ve heard for years and years that if you pay attention to it’s really the answer to everything.
RT:
We got to open our eyes and open our ears to be a success out here. And I do believe I grew up in Fort Worth. And I know that everyone pretty much that I grew up with, that I was around as kids. We had General Motors, General Dynamics, Mrs. Bairds, and the post office. And pretty much everyone I know growing up with, wanted to work for one of those companies, at this moment in time, half of them work for those companies. It’s who they aspired to be. So in my mind, man, if you can aspire and I don’t know, reach out and touch it and see it, then you truly can’t be it. We’ve heard that if you can see it, you can be it.
Those words have so much power and so much truth in them. Definitely.
Sean Harris: And it goes back to the canvas we talked about. Everybody growing up in particular industries or areas. Detroit, Chicago. Certain things. You were painted with that swipe brush, when you grow up go work for the post office, hey go work for the big plant, the GM plant. And those were the swipes that we were getting.
RT: Yeah, I used to read this or see this Meme. You ever seen the movie The Matrix? Keanu Reeves, the first guy I started following on social media that spoke about how you can actually change your way of thinking, change your mindset. Because I do think as a community, that’s first and foremost, what has to be changed. I’ve seen people make money hands over fist. But like you say, it’s not staying around long. So I start seeing these people saying and wearing shirts and memes that say, The Matrix is a true movie. I went back and watched it and I was like, wow, if you really watch this with context in mind, you’re like, wow. Yeah, man, I think we are a blank slate, and you can start with that and you can build on to it. You can build on to it.
So, yeah, man, I’m going to go ahead and close it out because I would definitely like to follow up with you a little further down the road. But as far as fishing, do you have any tips? Because the last time I went, I didn’t catch anything.
Matter of fact, we were in Texas, Corpus Christi. There was a guy fishing. I just started teaching my son how to fish last week, and he caught his first fish, caught a little bass. So he’s been running around talking about. I’m the bass master. I was like, all right, you the man.
So when we were in Corpus Christi, I saw a guy fishing, and he was just pulling them up, pulling up trout, like, every two minutes. I said, hey, would you mind if my son throw out a line real quick? He said, go ahead. He threw it out. And next thing you know, I was like, man, like, six to eight minutes, went by.. But I was like, next thing you know, I was about to tell him. I said, okay, let’s go ahead and ready to go. And right when I was about to tell him, let’s go. The end went down hard.
He started reeling, start reeling. I said, keep reeling. So I had to teach him. I said, you gotta reel and pull back at the same time. Reel and pull back. So he ends up landing a Stingray and if you ever caught a Stingray before them, things got some power. He even pulled it out the water on his own. It’s probably about Yay big. But that thing, it was heavy. And I lifted it up. It was heavy. But with that, we use shrimp. Shrimp has always been my secret.
Participant #1:
That’s one of the secrets. Two hooks instead of using one hook, use two hooks. Two. Even if you’re fishing a river use two hooks. If you fish the ocean, then you’re dropping like, seven or eight hooks on the line. . But that always works. If you want to catch catfish, get bird seed, a little dough mix, mix it all up and it forms a little ball. And then you use a little Kiro syrup or that pink syrup. I can’t remember what you call it, but you make it real nice and thick and make them balls like, a hushpuppy. Take it on the hook. Nice and neat. You catch catfish all day long with those.
RT: We’re big on catfish in Texas. Yeah.
Sean Harris: Catfish like, sweet stuff.
RT: Really? Oh, wow. And stinky stuff. Stuff that stink.
SH: Yeah, sweet stuff and stink stuff.
RT: I moved to Florida a few years ago. It was crazy because I got out to Florida and start trying to catfish like I would here. Number one, you have to fish off of a barge. So, I was never used to fishing off of a barge. I was used to just a bank, but they have alligators down there, so you have to be on something. I didn’t catch nothing! But come to find out, they fished for something totally different than we did in Texas, and they would chum and throw chum out there. I forgot what the name of the fish they were after, but, yeah, that’s what the locals had to tell me, like CATFISH!, we don’t fish for catfish!.
SH: Have you ever gone sharking before?
RT: No, I haven’t.
Sean Harris: That’s fun, it gives you a workout. I got my first shark down in Savannah. I pulled him up, I saw him, everything. He broke the line. He’s about a seven footer, and I fought with him for about 45 minutes. Sharks are smart, sharks know we’re in a boat, sharks know to go under the boat, and that’s how they cut the line. So you got to know how to get around that boat real quick and get the line around and reel it back up with sharks, they know to go back and forth under the boat.You got to work. You’re going to need to eat a big dinner that night.ike.
RT:
Yeah. All right. I’m about to check that out. That sounds like fun.
Sean Harris: Thanks a lot, man. And, yeah, I will be closely following you. Probably end up asking you for some referrals. I know your son goes on different shows. Well, maybe we’ll send you an invite and he can come be a guest on our show. Man, let us. Sounds good. I have a son. His name is. I’m going to tell you this story, and I’ll be done. I don’t know if you’re a spiritual person, but I have a son. His name is Sean, as well. He spelled it. I spelled it S-E-A-N all right. The right way.
RT: That’s right. So let me tell you real quick where it came from. Okay. I’m a real big hip hop fan. I think hip hop changed the structure of money in black communities. I think that it put us on the path to be able to make money. So he’s named after Sean Puffy Combs and a play on that with Sean JayZ Carter. I do believe in names and spirituality and stuff like that. So these guys were the epitome of success in the hip hop industry. So, boom, that’s where I got his name from.
Sean Harris: Awesome. Ain’t that something?
RT: Yeah, man, I know you Sean’s be on it.
SH: How old is he?
RT: He is 14 now.
SH: 14? Oh, yes. So he’s a very entrepreneur minded man. And, yeah, I’m pretty sure your son can teach him something.
Sean Harris: So, yeah, I love the interviewing. Here’s a freebie real quick before we go, set him up an LLC. Okay. You can use his regular name, his middle name, whatever you want to do, set him up an LLC. You can set it up as a capital investment firm, whatever. Now, what that does is, it’s going to start the time clock. You’re going to start seasoning that LLC, also apply for Duns number. Okay, get an EIN number. Duns number, a business bank account with that entity. If your credit is good to great, put them on as authorized user. What this does is it builds up their credit, whatever your credit is, going to mirror them.
Now when they’re 16 years old, they can have stellar credit, have a seasoned LLC that now can get business credit because you have Dun’s number that’s been adding them over the years. So that good credit, it bounces back and forth. Now he’s 16 years old, 18 years old. You’re talking about 800- 850 credit score. He has ultimate power.
At this point. You get to call the shots. You don’t use your own money, use OPM, other people’s money. So this puts him in a position where he can now, at 18 years old, go out and buy a quadplex, live in one, rent out the other four, the other three, those other three pays for the whole building, plus him, to live free. And he still has cash flow with great credit.
So that’s how you set them up for huge success, because having great credit is a huge leverage where you don’t have to use other people’s money. But more importantly, he had the LLC and now everything he does, he’s doing an LLC, which keeps him out of the IRS scope because he’s running everything through his business.
Because as an employee, you make $100,000 a year. As a business owner, you make $100,000 a year, whereas an employee you’re taxed up front. So from January 1 to May 1. Everything you work for, you work for free, because you start getting paid after May 1 and you’re taxed on the whole 100%.
As a business owner, you make $100,000. He needs to buy some equipment, a new vehicle for his LLC for his company or whatever at the end of the year, he only has $25,000 left over. He’s only taxed on that amount because as a business owner entrepreneur, you’re taxed on what’s left over. So you both made $100,000. But it’s who keeps the most money. So all of that expense that he used was absorbed. And on top of it, he used his LLC. Its all about knowing the game rules, rules to the game. That’s power.
Definitely set him up. Get an LLC immediately.
If he don’t understand that, he’ll definitely understand it, later. When our kids turn 16, they get keys to real estate. They don’t get keys to cars.
RT: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, man. That’s what I’m talking about. I really enjoyed having you on man I learned a lot.
Sean Harris: I appreciate it. I hope I added value to your listeners to you. And that’s the whole thing. When you walk away from somebody you gotta ask yourself, did you leave them with value? Are they better off have spoken to you than before?
Rashad Thirlkill: I would definitely remember that, I will instill that. And there will be the model for my show. Moving on forward is for my listeners. I hope that I instill value with every guest that I have on. All right, man. You have a great day. Eight night, and I’ll see you soon. All right. Sounds good, man. Have a good one. All right. You, too. Thank you. Take care. Bye.
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