TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:01
Speaker 1: Will Lucas here, Black Tech Green Money. So good to be with you guys again. And I have a special guest for you today.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: We're about to talk about your money.
00:00:10
Speaker 1: Anthony O'Neill is the number one national bestselling author, host of The Table with AL, and one of the most watched personal finance voices in the country.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: His latest product, In the Black, is.
00:00:21
Speaker 1: An AI-powered budgeting app built to be the money coach he never had and a lot of.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Us never had as we were growing up. Anthony, welcome to the show.
00:00:30
Speaker 3: Hey, man, I appreciate you having me on the show, bro. I've been looking forward to this for like the last few days. So, man, thanks for having me.
00:00:37
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
00:00:38
Speaker 1: I want to dig right into your story because you've been very vocal about the struggles that you've had, you know, in your early 20s and your teens growing up. And there were some times where you were living in a parking lot and you've been very vocal about this. And that's very encouraging to people who have tried to overcome and are overcoming today. And so what has been like the actual mechanism of change, like not the motivational version, but like the unglamorous first two moves or three moves you made to get out of that situation?
00:01:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, if we really go back to it, a lot of people say I have I had this struggle, you know, I'm saying growing up and I really didn't have the struggle. I just had parents who didn't know what to teach me.
00:01:23
Speaker 2: Right.
00:01:23
Speaker 3: So we weren't I never missed a meal. I never. needed clothes. I always had clothes. Did I have a lot of clothes? No, right? Did we eat steaks every night or once a week? No, right? But I grew up in a good home, a good home that did not really understand financial literacy. So the only thing about me that was taught about money was just being generous and tithing and just giving, but they didn't really teach me what to do with the other 90% after you gave to the church. What do you do with the other 90%? So when I graduated high school, I had all this spiritual wisdom and context around things, but I didn't know anything about interest. I didn't know anything about credit cards. I didn't know how, what was a 401k? No one ever had that conversation with me on about it. I didn't know that if I got a credit card, I swiped it. I thought I just had to pay back if I swiped it for $ 20. Bro, I thought I had to pay back $ 20. I didn't know I had to pay back, you know, $ 20 plus, 10% interest. And so, man, when I racked up all this debt by the time I turned 19, I was in a place of where I was like, wait, I don't know anything about money. Right? And I'm like, wait, no one taught me about money. So when you say, what are some of the practical things that was one of the first two steps that I had to take to get out of it. Number one is I had to step back and admit that I do not have the financial wherewithal or the financial literacy to become better. So that's the very first thing. I think a lot of us think what we're doing is the right thing to do because that's what we saw our parents do. That's what we saw the people in our communities and our world does. But I had to be honest and be like, Hey, Yeah, no, this is not the right thing. Then once I identified that wasn't the right thing, the very next step before you can do anything in your life is go identify what is the right path, what is the right strategy, and be a student of that path and of that strategy. That's when I started reading books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, The Richest Man in Babylon, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I had to change the narrative of how I saw money. And man, one of the greatest things that I resonated with was the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey because it was a practical money book that was broken down into baby steps with a spiritual context. And with me being a Christian and also getting Christianity plus practical money principles, man, those are the two very first things that I had to do is I had to, one, admit okay, what I've been doing and what I've learned was wrong. Two, I have to go do research and figure out what is the right path that resonates with me and where I'm at and how can I change it? And this is your show, bro, so tell me to shut up when I need to shut up, but it's like, in 2026, no one should be broke. In a day of internet, chat, GPT, AI, there is so much information out there that we can really tap into.
00:04:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And we're going to get into that. You know, you remind me of a story. A mentor of mine told me growing up because, you know, not having much and trying to build the dream. And he was very well off. He owned a bunch of restaurants. And he was like, you know, when you start really making money, all the things that you thought you would want when you started making money, you're.
00:05:01
Speaker 2: Not even going with that stuff. Like your perception of what wealth is changes.
00:05:06
Speaker 1: And you talked about in some of your content, You used to think wealth was what kind of watch you have, what kind of car you drive. And that's a lot of what people in our communities grow up with. Where does that definition come from culturally and why is it so durable, I guess?
00:05:24
Speaker 3: When you're talking about the watch, the jewelry, I call them the liabilities. Why do we associate liabilities with wealth? Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about it, man. In our generation... I don't know how old you are, but in my generation, I would say, man, I grew up in the era of 106 and Park. I grew up in the era of BET, MTV Cribs, MTV Cars makeover. So what we saw as in wealth was a physical, tangible things. It was a jury. It was the watches. It was the
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cars. It was the spinning wheels that when the car stopped, the wheels kept on spinning. It was the houses. And so that's what we tend to strive for is The physical, tangible things. But your mentor is so correct, man. I was playing golf with my dad about two years ago. And we was driving towards the ball. We just drove off the tee. My dad stopped mid, I mean, just mid, halfway through. And he looked at me and said, son, I'm wealthy. Now, mind you, I know how much money my dad makes. And I'm like, you wealthy, bro? And he was like, yeah, you know, I may not have as much money as you. But it's on a Tuesday afternoon around 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm on a golf course. And when we look around, we the only black men on this golf course. I'm playing golf with my 40-year-old son. And I'm not stressed about how I'm going to pay bills. And my son is in a position to where he can play golf on a Tuesday afternoon and not working the job. He said, to me, son, that is well. I am wealthy enough to enjoy freedom, to enjoy life, to have experiences with my son when others have to go to work. And when my dad said that, I always knew that wealth wasn't just about money, but it was about what opportunities can you experience. And when he said that, man, I couldn't even hit my next ball correctly because it just got me emotionally that, How many people are going for the tangible, the cars, the jewelry, which there's nothing wrong with that, but at the cost of true wealth, at the cost of having true freedom and time freedom and options and opportunities because we want the image of wealth, but we don't want the freedom of wealth, man. And I think one of my purposes in life is to really teach people, one, how do we get to financial freedom first? That then produces... a level of income that can then produce a true level of wealth.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. I like that.
00:08:04
Speaker 1: You know, there's sort of a love, hate, not hate, too strong a word, but sort of a love, incomplete frustration relationship I have with like Dave Ramsey's zero credit doctrine, especially as an entrepreneur. You know, like if you got like a nine to five, you probably should be all in on Dave. You know, Ramsey's content. But when you're an entrepreneur building a business and leveraging this to do that, there's a little bit more nuance that I think those conversations need to have. And, you know, even on your own show, you said, and I'm paraphrasing, like, your mind has evolved.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: On this conversation.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: You know, how hard is it to change your position in front of millions of people who followed you specifically because of that position?
00:08:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's not hard. I would definitely say my position has changed maybe about 20%, right? I think that, uh, credit cards, um, and, and I would even say this, uh, debt is not a sin. It is not a bad thing. My stance is still this though. 90% of American people do not have the financial intellect to steward the debt correctly, to let it build into a wealth position. Right. And so I still firmly believe that the majority of Americans should stay away from debt. However, my philosophy that I even talk about in my book that's coming out later this year is that I think that once you can be debt-free for two years and you create this habit of financial freedom, then okay, go get a credit card, go get an Amex and pay that off every single month. Why not get the points if you can pay it off like a debit card, right? I do not want specifically African-Americans, I think we hear this narrative of use other people's money But when we really look at the numbers, not opinions, not suggestions, not thoughts, but actual data and actual numbers, the majority of us do not pay off the debt within a timely matter, and we pay out way more interest. So I 100% understand your philosophy, and I understand everyone's philosophy. Like, hey, why not do that? Well, let me ask you this question. If that was the case and everyone can do it, we wouldn't have the economy we have today because the economy strives off of people being in debt, not being good stewards and utilizing it correctly, right? And so the economy would change. So I think that for me, I still operate from a debt-free perspective. I do have an Amex. We do pay it off every single month. I like the points, not going to lie about that. But I've created the habit in my head is I want to receive way more interest being paid to me than me paying out interest. And I think that's where we got to get people to. But before we can even talk about leveraging someone else's leveraging debt, we got to teach financial stewardship and financial discipline first. Then once we get that established, then how do we play the money game correctly? How do we do like what a lot of wealthy people do leverage debt, but they also had an income to where they could pay it off. And it's a wise move, but I don't think we are at a point as a large community to really have that conversation in a healthy way.
00:11:22
Speaker 1: I remember reading, um, the color of money by Marcia Baradaran changed. Well, I won't say it's opened my aperture on like what really happened foundationally in our communities to, to get us in the situation we're into where you're talking about. We weren't taught these certain things. And I wonder, um, how this app you're building in the black app is the coach that speaks the language that helps get through because there's other apps out there, but like there's something about speaking to us that has to penetrate in order to make changes in our community.
00:11:58
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, we are in a day and age of information, right? We, I think people can just type in on chat GPT. Hey, how do I pay off my debt? Boom, they'll come up. So we're in a day and age where I don't really think people are lacking information because If they're lacking information, it's because
they lack wanting and desiring information. But I think a lot of people are on TikTok. One of the top search engines, or not search engines, but one of the top search items on TikTok is financial literacy. So people are desiring how to get out of debt, how to use a credit card the right way, how to get the most miles, how to pay this and how to finance that, how to do this. So it's good. One thing I've learned, though, is if someone just hands you a million dollars, do you honestly know how to strategically use that million dollars? And I noticed that my income situation didn't change until I honestly got a mentor in my life. Until I got around people like the Dave Ramsey that was like, hey, you're making this kind of money, do this. Who were giving me systems and strategies and weekly and monthly and quarterly mentorship. And I said, here's the truth, bro. Black people, we are the most creative group of people. You put us in a situation, we will be creative and then we'll get out of it. If you put us in a corner and we got to figure out how to pay our mortgage for next month, black people, we going to figure out how to live and survive. Problem is we don't have daily systems and habits and strategies that complements our creativity. So I created in the black app to where it's like every single day when you woke up, I'm going to make you 1% better. Every single day when you go to sleep, we're going to analyze your bank statements. We're going to analyze your debt situations. We're going to look at your goals and we're going to see, hey, what did you do today that got you 1% closer to your goals? If you tell the app, hey, I want to retire by 50. Hey, I want to have $ 10, 000 in my savings. Hey, I want my kids to go to college debt free. Well, we are going to assess your spending habits. And when you wake up, we're going to give you actionable items to do that day. to get you 1% closer to your goals. One of the things my mom used to always tell me when I was young, she said, son, I don't need you to be perfect. But every single day when I come in your room, I want it cleaner than yesterday. If you can just practice being neat, eventually one day your room will look perfect. But every day, I just want you to get just a little bit neater, a little bit neater, a little bit neater, a little bit neater. And now, bro, you walk into my room, My room looks like perfection. It's not perfect, but it looks because I said every single day, I just want to get neater. Every single day, I want to lose one pound. Every single day, I want to do this. And so that's what this app does. It's going to ask you for all of your banking information. It's going to ask you for all your goals. It's going to ask you for all your income, all your debt, all your investments that you have. And then we're going to really walk you through every night when you go to sleep. We're going to go through all your stuff. And then when you wake up, we're going to tell you, hey, yesterday you spent $ 20 at McDonald's. Why? Don't do that no more. We're going to hold you accountable to the goals that you give the app, not goals that we set for you. That's what this app is so important. It's not just a budgeting app. It's not just an app to go watch videos. Think of a coach, Anthony O'Neill, Netflix, a whole volume of educational content at your disposal every single day, helping you get to financial freedom, no matter what situation you're in today. If it takes us six months to six years, we're going to give you something every single day, not even exaggerating, every day to get you closer to your goal.
00:15:56
Speaker 2: And this is a very technical audience.
00:15:59
Speaker 1: This audience is tech savvy, and you mark it the AI that's integrated in this. Can you talk a little bit about what that specifically is inside the application? Things that you can do now in the app that you probably couldn't have done before AI was successful.
00:16:18
Speaker 3: I think that's the part. What I said earlier is one is the AI. For example, I teach the debt snowball method to where you got to line up all your debt from smallest to largest. Once you put in all your debt and all your accounts that's in there, the AI is going to automatically line up all your debt from smallest to largest. And it's going to tell you, hey, based upon your strategy right now, your income right now, you could be out of debt March 25th of 2028 on the money, right? That's one. Number two, because of AI, this is one thing I do not like about other apps. Every other app is going to be going to give you general information. Well, you come to us and Tom and say, hey, Tom, I am here. Well, Tom, Anthony and Rebecca may be in three different areas. Well, because of AI and because of how I teach things, the AI is going to give Tom one route to go, give Rebecca one route to go and give this person a totally different route. So no one is getting the exact same information because one person can be drowning in debt. The other person could be debt free, but not investing. So we don't need to talk to you about getting out of debt. We need to talk to you about saving and investing, right? Well, this person who's drowning in debt because the AI knows it and knows their situation. Well, you shouldn't be talking about investing like that right now. You're drowning in debt. Let's get you out of debt so everything is around debt. So that's number two. Number three, which I think is the bread and the butter, is that we analyze and we go through everything at midnight, between midnight and 3.59 a.m. in the morning every single day. And when you wake up This is one thing I love about it. I just did it the other day. It told me this. I said, man, I'm already good at money, but my own app was like, bro, you spent $ 14. 22 at Starbucks. I thought you said you don't like Starbucks. That $ 14 invested into your index fund was honestly, that could have been another, I think it was like $ 32,
000 over the next six years. So just make sure you keep that in mind, Anthony. You didn't go over your budget, but just make sure you keep in mind, make coffee at home because this $ 13 invested correctly over the next few years could be X amount of dollars. So it helps you put things into perspective. Here's the fourth thing that I really love. I am in a process of potentially looking into buying a home. I asked the AI software, I asked the coach, I said, hey, this is my situation. This home came available. do you think I can afford this home with this particular down payment? It took time, went through my financial situations, went through my bank statements, went through the projections of the year based upon what I make on an average month as a self-employed individual, and it told me, yes, this will put you down to about 20% of your average net take-home pay. I think it's very, very good. We want to keep you right around 25% to 30%. This will be your down payment. If your payment is over this and your down payment is over that, I would not do it. So it literally can assess any financial situation because of AI. But it took us about a year to build this AI because I wanted to make sure that it's not giving general information. This app is all about how do we get them out of the red, get them into the black, meaning positive net worth, and we keep them there and they're building well. So we're not going to teach borrow money. We're not going to teach go leverage debt. We're going to teach you, hey, let's get you out of the red building a seven figure net worth. And that's the whole point of that. Yeah.
00:19:59
Speaker 1: And so kind of like my position with Dave Ramsey.
00:20:03
Speaker 2: Is like, who is the app for? And so like you.
00:20:06
Speaker 1: Say, hey, you know, We're not going to talk to you about getting credit cards or etc. That might be for an audience. But not every audience. So who is the target that this is specifically for? So if I'm listening to this, I know if this is for me.
00:20:22
Speaker 3: This is for the individual that's saying, man, I want to have financial freedom. I am in debt. I want to pay off my debt. When we look at it, man, 73% of people are living paycheck to paycheck. So the majority of people are not leveraging debt the correct way. So it is for that audience of people who are saying, hey, I want to grow my financial intellect to where I can get out of consumer debt and I can get in a position to where I'm investing, I'm not wasting money. I don't care if you want to have a credit card. We're going to tell you inside, if you want to have a credit card, the favorite one is an Amex so you can pay it off monthly. If you have another credit card and you're drowning in debt, And let's just say, for example, you know for a fact you can't pay off this credit card every single month. Get rid of it for a season. Get rid of it for 24 months. Because the habit of treating your credit card like a debit card is way
more important than you having some points. Because a lot of people, we get confused that this is free money. No, it's not. If you're paying interest every single month, you bought the flight. Those points, you pay for the points with your interest that you're paying. The strategy is like, hey, Pay it off. Don't pay any interest. So if you put $ 5, 000 on the credit card, pay it off by the time your next bank statement hits. Now you get the points. Now that's free miles because you didn't pay anything for it. That's the strategy. And I always say this, and this is what we taught the AI system. We want to teach everyone how to play the money game because it is a money game. You're either going to be a pawn and play the game or you're going to be played. You're going to be picked up and moved around. We want to teach people how can they play the money game and not be a pawn who's being picked up and moved around in pieces. And that's who this app is for, saying, hey, you know what? I'm in a lot of consumer debt. I'm up to my rear end on student loans, on car notes, on credit cards, on personal loans, on paycheck loans. I want to get out of that so I can get in a position to have true financial freedom And then, okay, yeah, if I get a business, how do I leverage this business in a healthy way to where I can expand my business? But it starts with us first.
00:22:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:22:38
Speaker 1: You know, I really believe that a lot of us would be helped if we set a personal mission for ourselves or if we found out what our mission.
00:22:46
Speaker 2: And purpose was in life. You know, I spent some.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: Time right before COVID happened, like three or four months, like just kind of just working through what I believe my purpose was to get to a mission statement. And I've heard you talk about your mission, yours, Anthony, is to break generational wealth gaps.
00:23:03
Speaker 2: And that's a conversation we.
00:23:04
Speaker 1: Talk a lot about in the Afro tech ecosystem, the black tech green money ecosystem. And generational wealth, though, is like often built over decades and sometimes centuries and passed along through those decades and more centuries.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: Like what is a realistic scope.
00:23:20
Speaker 1: Of change that someone using the app and using your content can actually set in motion in their lifetime?
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Man, you know, such a great question. One of the things I put inside the app is that when you first come into the app, it's going to ask you, what is your life goal? Because I believe that your mission and vision for your life should be congruent with your money, a.k.a. your budget. So before we even really get into the money, what is your vision? So when the app asked me that, I said, man, I want my grandkids, my great grandkids to know my name. Truth to the fact is I'm 42 today. I would be blessed to see grandchildren. More than likely, bro, I'm not going to see my great grandchildren. But I want them to know it. So the app asked me, well, how do you think they can know it? And I paused and I said, well, I got to leave them something. And they said, now you're thinking, so what are you going to leave them? And I paused. I could leave them money. And as I just started having this conversation with the app, I just got my dual citizenship in Accra, Ghana. And I believe that everyone African-American should have something to do with Africa, no matter what part. And so I told the app, you know what, I'm going to buy a condo this year. And inside of my estate plan, I want to leave that for my great-grandchildren, to where my wife and my children and my grandchildren can't have it. It's for my great-grandchildren to have it. That's breaking generational curses. And that's building generational wealth. How is that? In two different ways. Remember, it's not just monetarily. now is, man, I can't even tell you my great-grandfather's name. I've never had a conversation about him with my parents. Why? Because he didn't leave them nothing, he didn't leave me nothing. And so now if I leave them something, my great-grandchildren, now I've got to have a conversation about Anthony O'Neill because it's like, well, wait, why would he leave this to me? Well, let me tell you more about him. Let me tell you his vision and mission about life. Let me tell you why we don't have consumer debt, why our family is so wealthy, and why it's so important for you to have it. That's breaking generational curses. That's setting generations way beyond you to be good. And to me, when I think about that, man, I get more excited about buying a condo for my great grandchildren than I do buying my dream car. I get more excited about having a conversation with the app and coming up with ideas and strategies and systems on how to do things that goes way beyond me, that I won't be able to see the smile on their face. I won't be able to see their responses to what I leave them, because more than likely I will not be here. But to know that my legacy is impacting generations beyond me, now it forces change within my family, because then what happens? Now my children are going to have to do the same thing for their grandchildren, for their great-grandchildren. Now we're closing the wealth gap with Black families, And I'm not just buying all this stuff for me now. I'm thinking for generations beyond me. And that's just really, for me, I get excited about that because the app, when you get inside the app and you start telling it the vision for your life, it's not just going to say, okay, it's going to stretch your mind. It's going to make you go longer, deeper, and really make you think like, okay, prime example, I'm buying this house. I'm looking at buying this house and said, well, if you do that, it aligns with your vision because then now that's going to build equity. And now you're buying a house of that magnitude. This is, and it was so funny. I never
thought about it. It was like getting into this bracket of a home. They call these estate homes, Anthony. Now this is about legacy. I was like, wait, what? This is an estate home? So it just really get creative, man. And the app really stretches you in a far place.
00:27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:27:35
Speaker 1: So I want to talk at least for a few minutes while I have you about like your position and opportunities as an entrepreneur and somebody building businesses, particularly in the age of AI. One of the things that you kind of touched on in the beginning, I said, when you come back to it, it's like you said, nobody should be broke. Nobody should be in need in this day when you have these new tools. So I want to talk about Anthony, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the businessman, the influencer, the figure.
00:28:03
Speaker 2: Also, that personal profile.
00:28:06
Speaker 1: How are you leveraging the tools at our disposal now, AI and other tools even, to amplify and put yourself on an even bigger platform, things that you couldn't do two years ago?
00:28:18
Speaker 3: Oh, man. I mean, AI has been a massive, massive over the last, I would say, year. Really, I've really been taking advantage of it over the last year. I had a meeting with my team, and I told them, I said, hey, listen, AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. And the truth be told, AI can replace my job because I am a thought leader. I teach. So now people can go on chat GPT, ask a question, get an answer. Now, will it be true or not? You know, chat GPT AI still has that issue. I said, so for us, we have to start using AI to deliver content faster and to create systems that allows us to our daily emails, our daily comments and responses. How do we automate that via AI and to where now it allows me to go back to school. And that was one of the things that I really, really loved about AI that we were able to, um, automate a lot of things that we do within our company. And it freed up so much of my time that I was able to go back and finish my MBA and go back and start my DBA, my doctoral program in finance and investing. So now this way, I'm not just a content creator. I'm not just a YouTuber. No, Anthony is a thought leader who's teaching from facts, stats, and discipline. And so AI for me has generated so much freedom. Watch this. It has not generated income for me yet, but it has generated income. Because it's created so much more time freedom, it allows me to focus on things that does produce more income. I was reading a study earlier, man. It said that By 2030, they are estimating that we will have close to about 70 million jobs replaced by AI. But it's also saying that it will create 85 million new opportunities. And those opportunities are individuals who are using AI, who know how to use it to its full capacity. And so I think right now, man, if you're not learning AI, if you're not spending 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day learning AI, you are going to miss out on this financial boom that's about to happen. We saw it with the housing market. We saw that with the internet boom. Now we have this AI boom. And I firmly do believe within the next five years, three to five years, if you do not learn AI and incorporate it on your job and even incorporate it within your business, you're going to be overlooked and you're going to miss out on an amazing opportunity.
00:30:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker 1: I got one more, and this one is more introspective for you because you've talked so much about the mindset that it takes to shift and get out of a situation and into a new situation.
00:31:05
Speaker 2: And so you've talked.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: About how, you know, you were in that car, you know, before you finally broke out and you were washing yourself up and you looked at yourself in the reflection and you just said something to yourself to the effect of, like, there's got to be something bigger for me.
00:31:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
00:31:21
Speaker 1: You can tell that story because I just gave a synopsis of it, but if that version of you, the question is if that version of you could see what you're building right now, this app, this platform, this reach, what would he say?
00:31:38
Speaker 3: At that time, he would have said there's no way in the world that this is possible because I wasn't exposed to that. I love and respect my family, but What I'm doing today, my family did not do. So I couldn't see beyond that. It wasn't until I got around, unfortunately, and I say this honestly in a respectful way, it wasn't until I got around white people who took me in and exposed me to different opportunities and things. And it wasn't until I got there and I was like, wait, wait, wait. I got to leave this world and go back to my community. Because they need to see black people who are financially successful, financially well, who are not celebrities and who are not hip-hop artists.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: That's right.
00:32:30
Speaker 3: They're in tech. They're entrepreneurs. They're scholarly people. And I think a quote that I live by, and I remind myself this every single day, is that the caliber of my future will be determined by the quality of my decisions today. So every single day, I'm telling myself and reminding myself You just got to make one good decision. I'm a math guy. I'm a money guy. I'm not looking for that one decision to pay me back today. The power, the eighth wonder when it comes to money is compound interest. And compound interest, the reward is over time. So if today I make one good decision, tomorrow I make one good decision, the next day, the next day, the next month, the next year, eventually all those good decisions over time will compound and reward me. But I know that if I want to be healthy at 80 years old, then, man, today I need to eat healthier. If I know at 80 years old I still want to run around my grandchildren, then I need to go see a doctor of physical therapy and start working on my knees and start working on my back. Now at 40, if I know I want to retire and be married to a beautiful black woman in our 70s and my wife got on a nice bikini and she still look good like she did in her 40s, then I know that I need to work hard now in my 40s to provide us that lifestyle. And I just think that a lot of us do not really step back and say, you know what? What do I want my future to look like? And what decisions do I need to make today mentally that will make sure that that is possible? And I'll end on this, man. I haven't had McDonald's in years, man. I lost about 40 pounds in the last year. And I went to McDonald's. Because it was like 1 o'clock in the morning. I just landed on a delayed flight. I need something because I had a headache. And I didn't want to go to bed with a headache. So I got me a small fry and a high seed orange. And get to the window. And this elderly lady hands me my food. And she's shaking. Her hands are shaking. And I'm just a spiritual guy. And I asked her, how old is she? And I asked her. And she said, baby, I'm 82 years old. It's 1 o'clock. in the morning, and an 82-year-old is serving a 40-something-year-old food. That bothered me because I was like, wait, what? And she walked away and she came back. She said, baby, let me tell you something. The reason why I'm here is because when I was your age, I didn't make the right decisions. So today, I gotta be here serving you at 1 o'clock in the morning. Now I want to. And I was like, man, We got to make better decisions when I'm younger, when we're younger. And those decisions may not feel like they're going to pay off today. But before we know it, man, just yesterday, I don't know how old you are, but just yesterday, I remember being 25. I remember being 30 just yesterday. Time moves. Make sure your decisions are moving too.
00:35:32
Speaker 1: Anthony O'Neal, thank you so much for joining me.
00:35:35
Speaker 3: Man, thank you for having me, brother.