Are you determined to level up your money management skills and boost your earnings in 2024, but uncertain about where to kickstart your journey? Or perhaps you've already initiated the process but haven't witnessed the financial transformation you envisioned.
This special episode features invaluable tips and advice from entrepreneurs and successful financial dreamers who didn't start wealthy but, through dedication and strategic choices, ended up becoming millionaires or coming remarkably close.
Joining me in this episode are esteemed guests, including Cedric Nash, Attiyah Blair, Naseema McElroy, Ellie Diop, the twins Nicole and Nadia, and the couple Doctors, Renée, and Nii Darko, along with Patrice Washington. Each guest brings a wealth of experience, sharing their stories and insights to provide seven tips to help you make more money in 2024.
What we discussed in this episode:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, here’s what you can do to support me and help more Dreamers discover the podcast:
Connect with Anne-Lyse:
Are you determined to level up your money management skills and boost your earnings in 2024, but uncertain about where to kickstart your journey? Or perhaps you've already initiated the process but haven't witnessed the financial transformation you envisioned.
This special episode features invaluable tips and advice from entrepreneurs and successful financial dreamers who didn't start wealthy but, through dedication and strategic choices, ended up becoming millionaires or coming remarkably close.
Joining me in this episode are esteemed guests, including Cedric Nash, Attiyah Blair, Naseema McElroy, Ellie Diop, the twins Nicole and Nadia, and the couple Doctors, Renée, and Nii Darko, along with Patrice Washington. Each guest brings a wealth of experience, sharing their stories and insights to provide seven tips to help you make more money in 2024.
What we discussed in this episode:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, here’s what you can do to support me and help more Dreamers discover the podcast:
Connect with Anne-Lyse:
Anne-Lyse Wealth: This is the Dreamers Podcast episode 131. Today is December 26th, 2023.
Cedric Nash: I am a firm believer, and there is evidence time and time again to prove it, that anyone, regardless of your race, regardless of your education, regardless of your financial starting point, can become a millionaire and become rich and beyond, if they're willing to make the necessary sacrifices.
If they're willing to put in the effort, if they're willing to be consistent, I believe anybody can do that. And time and time again, it's been proven. Just look at the Forbes 400, probably nearly over 50 percent of them are self made. It's been proven time again, regardless of your color. I've heard the story of Tyler Perry many times.
Where he basically started from nothing, came from nothing and built a boat. It happens time again. Now you might say, well, he's incredibly talented. He's right. But there's a whole bunch of other millionaires that we don't know that did it. Starting from the bottom two. And I happen to be one of them
Anne-Lyse Wealth: Welcome to the DREAMers podcast. I'm your host, Anne Lise Wealth. today is December 26th. Just like that, the year is over. it's really hard to believe. But, 2024 is literally within days. if you celebrate Christmas.
I hope you had a good Christmas. I wanted to end the year with a topic that think we all are interested in and that's how to earn more money. So this is what we're going to be talking about in today's episode and hopefully it'll get us all on track to start the year strong in 2024.
All right. So this is
Cedric Nash: I like to tell people that I constantly collect mentors all throughout my life. There are four particular mentors that were early in my life that shaped my mindset around money. Two were in my hometown. I write about them in my book. One is Mr. Al Glover. He's been in my life since high school. Probably the reason why I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha.
He pinned me when I was an officer, became an officer in the United States Army. The other one is a white man by the name of Gus Martin, who when I was 11th grade, I met him and he was an engineer who worked for my uncle AJ, who worked for a very wealthy man in Carmel Valley. And got exposed to Gus and Gus made me feel like I was brilliant, even though I was just a regular kid.
And then I ran into Taylor, who's a family friend who quietly owned land in wine country that he would lease his land out to the big wineries. He was an African American man that owned 50 unit apartment buildings, had houses all over the place. And he had a ornamental horticulture company. He was a low key guy and he was the epitome of the millionaire next door.
And the funny part is, is he lives in the same house today. So these guys shaped my mindset around building wealth. And then finally, Mr. Bruce, Gilbert D. Bruce, when I was in college, my last year in college, these are stories that you people are going to hear about in my book. I decided to live in the basement with Mr.
Bruce in my last year as opposed to live with my frat brother because I wanted to graduate. But Mr. Bruce owned a sandwich shop, apartment houses, and he had this basement apartment, and I just wanted to be near him. And so living with Mr. Bruce, yo, a day in the life of Mr. Bruce is that I wake up and I see him laying in the bed, smoking a cigarette in one hand, Wall Street Journal in the other hand, news talk radio going on, there's also some kind of money talk show on the TV.
Going on, you're like, what in the world, you know, all this ruckus is going on. He was really all in with investing. Mr. Bruce never told me, Cedric, you need to do this. You need to invest in that, or you need to read that. Just being around him influenced me to want to know more. I started reading books. The first book I read was How to Be Your Own Stock Broker by Charles Schwab.
I just kept reading books upon books in my last year in college around investing, and it increased my thirst to want to do the same thing. And that was during the same time that I was connecting with Juan and my summer jobs down in Los Angeles. So that all merged and really inspired me to want to create a plan.
And so two days before graduating, I wrote a plan on a yellow piece of paper that I still have today. And I put that piece of paper in my book about how I was going to turn my regular job into millions. And that's what happened. Seven years later, I became a millionaire by the age of 32. And I kept building on it upon that.
And so it's with that whole concept that I actually wrote my book to teach people how to develop a plan to go from where you're starting from to destination millionaire and beyond.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: So what has real estate done for your wealth building journey?
Attiyah Blair: Do we have enough time to talk about that? That's why I started out saying like, it's so cool that my job, what I do helps to build wealth for my family.
And I'm able to share that with others, whether I'm just inspiring them by listening, being on podcasts like this. Or you come under my wing and I teach you in one of my classes or courses. It's a game changer. It really is. So anybody who wants to be a millionaire, it's really the fastest way to get your net worth to a million.
That's a game changer for somebody who has come from where I've come from. I grew up in a very rough neighborhood. In D. C., not the D. C. people walk around now, walking their dog in the night. You couldn't walk your dog in the middle. You couldn't walk your dog during the day in the neighborhood that I grew up in.
And my mom coming from Trinidad. My dad, a country boy from Emporia, Virginia. Nobody's ever heard of that place. Very, very humble beginnings. And it's just given me a lot of freedom and time and options. I did a post on my Instagram page just talking about how the ultimate flex is time and options. When you could spend your time the way you want to and you have options and you can do this or that you get to choose you get to be in control of that I think that passion and desire really came from me working on a job, a job that really put a lot of restraints on my time, and I was making good money but I couldn't go where I wanted to go I had to work the night shift when they said I had to work the weekends when they said I had to Not participate in family events when they said this is my life, but they get to control everything.
And then when I lost my mother and father, that feeling got even more intense for me. It's like, okay, I'm on the clock and I get one shot at this. I get one shot to live my life the way that I want to. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. And this has helped me do it. I like to look at every single property that I invest in as a piggy bank.
I want to clear all misconceptions. Real estate investing is not get rich quick, but it is get rich for sure. And so what I mean by that is you do a deal today and you can make some money from it, but you're not going to be uber wealthy from one deal. But when you build out your portfolio, and then when you play the long game, the wealth is in the long game.
So each of these properties, they are a piggy bank for me and my family. Each and every property that I've picked up, it has or will make me six figures, each and every one of them. Just think about those, do those numbers, right? Each and every one of them already has, since I already have buildings that I've bought even four years ago that have already made me six figures, added six figures to my network.
So each and every property is a piggy bank. And what happens is, I have this piggy bank, and every month, my tenant puts money into it. Not me! My tenant puts money into that piggy bank every single month. And myself and my family gets to reap the benefit. They benefit because they get a beautiful home to live in a beautiful safe home.
I am a good landlord. You call me, you pay your rent on time, you better leave when you call me. I'm fixing it on the spot. It's really important. So they get something out of it. My family gets something out of it. It's a win win situation. And at the end of the day, after those deposits are made in that piggy bank, whether it's a 10 year loan, 15, 20 year loan, I don't have any 30 year loans, because that's my preference, but after that 15 year period, and guess what, 15 years is going to pass anyway, you might as well get some money while you're at it, right?
So after those 15 years, they pay off that full loan, and now I have a building worth 600, 000 with no debt on it, 800, 000 with no debt on that. A million dollar building, I have a handful of them, many of them, probably at least eight now that I can foresee because of the neighborhoods they're in, will be worth a million dollars.
And somebody else paid it all off. I want to be fully transparent. The process is not necessarily super easy and you're going to deal with all kinds of things, bad deal, bad contractors, bad decisions that you've made. But at the end of the day, if you play that long game, it all adds up and it adds up in your favor in a major way.
Naseema McElroy: So
I
Anne-Lyse Wealth: love your story because you went from not being good, good with money to now basically helping others, teaching them how to get better with money. You've been very transparent about your wealth building journey. I think at this point you're either a millionaire or really close to it.
Naseema McElroy: Really close.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: So if you could pinpoint three to five things that you did to get to where you are starting from that starting point, what would they
Naseema McElroy: be? I think the most important thing that I did was really change my circle of influence. I had to know it was possible for me. And I think what ends up happening is that, especially if you're raised in kind of lower economic setting, or maybe even a different country and wealth.
Was represented by other people or people that don't look like you or you see people get well by kind of shady means you don't necessarily think that wealth is for you and you might even be self sabotaging yourself by thinking that. You know, it's not attainable for you or to think those people are evil or things like that is a way to kind of not allow yourself to build wealth.
But when I started changing my circle of influence to people that look like me, that came from a similar background that have been through similar things. I understood that wealth was something that I could easily attain. It was something that was right in front of me and that's why I share my story because I'm like, I'm just one or two steps ahead of you.
I'm right where you're at. I'm not in the finance space. I'm still a labor and delivery nurse. If I was able to figure it out, despite all the challenges that I've had, you can do it too. And that's why I think transparency comes in too, because I'm just like, listen, I'm putting everything out there. Like, these are the things that I've been through.
These are the things that I'm going through, and this is what I've been able to do still.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: Love that. And so I know you said when you started your side hustle or your business, it wasn't really intentional, right? It happened because you started sharing your journey and starting getting attention, right? Um, you've been able to build a six figure side hustle while managing your six figure job.
How do you do that?
Naseema McElroy: I can definitely say it is not easy. I tell people all the time, like everybody that wants to hop into entrepreneurship, it is not for the faint of heart. It is like you can become a millionaire from your nine to five and it'll be so much easier. So it's definitely like a passion project.
Like it's something that I'm committed to doing because I see the benefit and I see the people it can help. But it's challenging and I do what I can. And so that's my model. Like I do what I can. I set aside a certain amount of time a day to do it and I do it. And I have been extremely blessed. Like I said, I didn't intentionally decide to build a brand or a business.
But a lot of things have fallen in my lap and it has opened being in this business and on this side of the world and experiences has opened up the world of opportunity to me to things that I never even knew was possible for myself. And so I love that I have done that, but just like the things that have really helped me is having really clear boundaries.
Like, this is how much I'm going to work on it. This is how much energy that I'm going to put towards it. Understanding the things that I'm strong in and the things that I need to hire help around. And then understanding what opportunities aren't going to be really good fits for me and things that I've had to do, but I mean, like, I love being a nurse and everybody's always asking me, is your goal to leave nursing?
Not necessarily because I really feel like nursing is the ultimate way to become financially independent because of the flexibility. And it's still my passion. It's still what fuels me and I love bringing life into the world. So I probably won't do that, but I'm excited to also see where my entrepreneurship journey takes me.
Cedric Nash: On the
Anne-Lyse Wealth: 30 to life podcast, you talked about the six levels of wealth. What are those six levels?
Cedric Nash: Well, there's six levels of wealth, and these are ones I created on my own, and my ghostwriter and I, oh, we fought back and forth about it, and we did because he was like, well, Cedric, they're not absolute. I said, yeah, I understand that, Michael.
I said, but there's no real definition for these. So, in order to create a destination, we need to basically create some level of wealth aspiration. And so, this is the way I look at it. And so, I don't care if it's anybody else's rule, but this is how I look at it. And so the first level is financial comfort and financial comfort in my mind is defined by that.
You're going along in life, you're going to retire by 65 and by 65, you'll be financially independent. Your lifestyle will be covered by either your pension or by social security or accommodation of therefore, or by money that you have invested and you're living a comfortable life. You have all the necessities in life and you're at peace with your life.
And that happens by age of 65. You're in peace for that. And then there's financial independence. Financial independence is when your assets, or your pension, or any of your income producing vehicles generate enough income to cover your lifestyle and significantly more. And that's financial independence.
And then there's the millionaire. A millionaire is a person who has a net worth of one million. And that means that their sum of their assets minus the sum of their liabilities equals a million dollars. The tricky thing is you can have a net worth of a million, but still not be financially independent.
There's a lot of people who have a net worth of a million, but they still gotta go to work. Financially independent people don't have to go to work. And so beyond becoming a millionaire, then there's what I consider rich. And this is the beginning of where rich starts. And rich starts where you have a million dollars in liquid cash.
You have a net worth of five million dollars and you are financially independent in that your assets, the income you get from your assets or whatever your income vehicles are covers your lifestyle. And so that's where rich starts and it goes up to 99 million in net worth. And then there's what I call the ultra rich.
That's a hundred million dollars in net worth with ten million dollars in liquid cash and financially independent. And that goes from a hundred million to a billion where I call a billionaire. So the reason why I do this is because in my system, that it's important that I talk about, let's document your starting point.
Let's see where you are. Let's see how much income. Let's see what your net worth is. Let's see how much income your assets are producing for you. Let's see how much sustainable income you have already that you don't have to work for. Because the aim of the game is to get your assets to you to work, not you.
So we document your starting point, and then we want to document your end game. And your end game is that point in your life where you can choose not to work anymore, where you can start dedicating your gifts and your talents to the things that bring you the most happiness and joy, and not necessarily for money.
So I have people document their end game and in that end game, they're supposed to pick one of those destinations. Do you want to be a millionaire? Do you want to be rich? Do you want to be ultra rich? Do you want to be financially independent or financially comfortable? The reason why this is important is it's an old story, our old passage of the Bible that says without a vision of people perish.
It's very important that we have a clear vision for what we're doing with our money. And if we don't have a clear vision, there's a good chance that we're going to end up nowhere. We're going to be like a raft out in the ocean that just goes with the waves that pushes us from one place to another. So my thing is that if we're trying to close the racial wealth gap, if we're basically trying to build wealth, if we're trying to create generational wealth, we need a defined destination.
And once you hit that destination, you can go to the next level if you want, or you can choose to do something else with your time. Do you
Anne-Lyse Wealth: believe that anyone can become
Cedric Nash: rich? I am a firm believer, and there is evidence time and time again to prove it, that anyone, regardless of your race, regardless of your education, regardless of your financial starting point, can become a millionaire and become rich and beyond, if they're willing to make the necessary sacrifices.
If they're willing to put in the effort, if they're willing to be consistent, I believe anybody can do that. And time and time again, it's been proven. Just look at the Forbes 400, probably nearly over 50 percent of them are self made. It's been proven time again, regardless of your color. I've heard the story of Tyler Perry many times.
Where he basically started from nothing, came from nothing and built a boat. It happens time again. Now you might say, well, he's incredibly talented. He's right. But there's a whole bunch of other millionaires that we don't know that did it. Starting from the bottom two. And I happen to be one of them.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: you went from being laid off to generating 1. 3 million of business revenue in less than a year. Is there something that you wish you had known before you started on this journey?
Ellie Diop: I definitely wish I would have known sooner how possible it was. Cause I would have started a lot sooner, but I sat on my potential for a long time because I was afraid. Because I thought it wouldn't work because I thought I would never get anyone to follow me. I mean, I was honestly really afraid of Instagram, like wouldn't post.
Just didn't do it. I thought it was for everybody else but me, so I really wish future me could have come from the future and told me like, girl, this is going to work. You need to start now because I probably would have started 2 years ago and who knows where I'd be right now, but, you know, everything happens in time.
But I think that's the biggest thing is that it is possible and you should start right when you have the first inkling You should start right then is
Anne-Lyse Wealth: there maybe like a a mistake that you made as a new entrepreneur that you can warn people about?
Ellie Diop: I think I would definitely say customer service and what I mean by that is, I think a lot of the time when you start a business or you decide you want to.
Serve people, a lot of entrepreneurs get so focused on making money and they don't always remember that every single impression counts. And I know for me, I handled all my own customer service and email answering and dm for like probably seven months. And it was extremely stressful. And I mean, luckily, well, not luckily, but I used to stay up all night responding to emails and dms just to keep my customers happy.
But. I would have invested in a virtual assistant or someone much, much sooner had I really thought about, wow, you know, could have probably had 1. 7 million in sales or 1. 5 million in sales. Had I had a dedicated team of people. Who are filtering through DMS and emails and customer service inquiries constantly, because a lot of people want to talk to you first before they buy.
And if you're not available, or if someone's not available to have a conversation and answer some product questions, or even just to, to answer back, you know, some people just want an answer back and that will make their whole day. That's a missed opportunity.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: That's a great point. You know, a lot of times we think we are kind of afraid of, are we going to be able to maintain this level of revenue?
So we don't necessarily want to. Spend the money, but you spend on, you know, getting additional resources, you can make more money. It's just kind of like switching the mindset. I love that point.
Ellie Diop: Yeah, definitely got to switch the mindset and, you know, now I recognize not to be afraid of it because. That money always comes back one way or another, either because that person makes more sales or on the back end, it ends up being a tax write off.
When you hire someone or outsource work, it's still a benefit to your business. You know? So I think people just have to shift and think about instead of. Looking at the money you're quote unquote losing by hiring, you need to flip that thought and think about, okay, but what's the bigger amount of money I could be losing by leaving 10, 15, 20 emails and dms unread for a week.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: And so you said something about switching the mindset. And a lot of times when you, I guess, elevate professionally, there's a mindset shift that happens at some point it's in the conversations that you have with people. It's even in the content that you consume. Can you talk to us about kind of like what
Ellie Diop: you went through?
Yeah, definitely. It's a hard shift to me. isn't easy. And I think anyone that's saying it's easy is not setting people up. For what's to come, I found that I had to really beef up my confidence routine, my self care routine. I had to become almost overly meticulous and organized. Because you'll burn out and I knew I could burn out if I wasn't always reminding myself that I can do this if you're not constantly believing in yourself and if you don't set a routine to go by because there are going to be days where you don't want to show up and I know I've had that you know there are days where I don't want to post where I feel like I'm not equipped to I can't do it.
what did I set myself up for? I mean, the mind goes through it all. So there are going to be days where you don't want to show up, but you have to put system in place to where you don't have a choice, but to show up, even if you don't want to be there. I had to make sure my tasks were laid out so that I wasn't doing them because I wanted to, I was doing them because it was my job.
So I think sometimes people think like, Oh, entrepreneurship is so glamorous. And I mean, in some ways it is because you can have a lot more freedom. There is no income cap, but don't decide to become an entrepreneur because you don't want to work a job because it's a job.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: You'll probably work twice as much.
Ellie Diop: You're going to work twice as much. And the thing is though, there's no boss to tell you if you don't do it, this will happen. You have to tell yourself that if you don't do it, this will happen. And sometimes that I think for a lot of people that can be very hard is to be your own accountability partner.
So you have to be your own cheerleader. I had to learn how to pick myself up out of the dumps. And that forces you to create a routine or at least, have people on your speed dial list that you can call who can give you that boost when you need it, whether that's a friend, family. If you're a religious, maybe it's one of your spiritual leaders, like.
You have to create like that type of team. So your business should have a team, but you also should have a team that gets you going on the days where you don't want to go and you should have, your schedule almost laid out to where, even if you don't want to do it, like I said, these are the tasks that need to be done and you just get it done.
You might not like being an entrepreneur that day, but you know that in order to hit your numbers. These are non negotiable.
Nicole Carter: Making money does not mean that you're good with money and you can be living paycheck to paycheck because I think the rate now is probably like over 70 percent of people or at least 60 percent of people live paycheck to paycheck. So that means it spans different income levels. So I'm not a fan of saying it's your paycheck that determines you living a better life.
The difference between a person that has the savings and is prepared for a recession is that they understand a rainy day is coming, okay? So they understand that life happens. And they put money away as a habit before anything happens. You can't know when your tire is going to blow out. But I guarantee you one day your tire is going to blow out.
So you either start planning for that early or you wait until it happens. And if you wait until it happens, you're going to be in a much worse position. So just when it's easier is keep putting money away. It doesn't matter if it's little or not. Any little bit is going to help. So I would say don't wait for a recession.
Don't wait for them to come knocking at your door. Just do it every so often whenever you can. Make it a priority. I will say another
Nadia Busseuil: thing is that just on a personal level, I kept my expenses low. I saw people struggling to pay for private school.
Nicole Carter: How am I going to pay for private school if I get let go?
I
Nadia Busseuil: said, I'm not going to have that fear. I'm going to keep my expenses low. So if anybody's going to be affected, it would just be me. But I know how, if I'm making this amount of money, I know how to live at a lower level. So
Nicole Carter: let's make this happen.
Nadia Busseuil: I'll put more money away, but I'm not going to increase my expenses at the same time, because I want to be
Nicole Carter: extra sure I'll be able to sustain
Nadia Busseuil: until I can find another job or until I can find something else I want to do.
So that was just a personal level. I made that switch in my head, keep everything low as possible.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: in addition to budgeting, can you maybe share some of the things that you guys had to do To be able to pay off your debt in such a short amount of time.
Dr. Nii Darko: Oh, the biggest thing was setting up an Excel spreadsheet. This was really simple. We just did an Excel spreadsheet. She set it up where on one side, it had what our income was. And then on the other side, it had what our expenditures were. And we did that for three months. We didn't make any changes to our budget or anything like that.
We didn't even create a budget. That really helped us to understand where all of our money was going. And we found out that we were spending a significant amount of money of buying food at the cafeteria and the hospital, and we were still buying perishables at the grocery. So then we started thinking to ourselves, well, we're spending this amount of money for fast food or at the cafeteria, then why are we spending so much money at the cafeteria?
Or excuse me, at the grocery store. So we had to make a decision. So what we decided to do, after knowing some of these numbers, like spending money here and there, but The biggest change was how we ate and that had a big effect on our health and we decided that we were going to start with 200 a month on groceries and only 50 each for food at the hospital because when I'm on call, I'm on call for 24 hours and that's consistently for a week, 24 hours on, 24 hours off.
So yes, I could bring in a lunch, but also at the same time, I needed something Just in case some extra cash to hold me. So now we're talking about 300 that we're spending for food for an entire month when we were probably spending close to like 900. Yeah,
Dr. Renee Darko: maybe 900. Yeah. One of the most important things we did between the two of us is we made a pact.
Not to create any more debt. So no credit cards, no lines of credit, no nothing. Do not create any more debt. And I think that was really important because it helped us to solidify that we were on the same page and that we were working towards the same goal. It made us committed not just to each other, but to this life that we were.
Trying to build together. So that for us was really important. One of the other things that we did was we did extra work. He was talking about it. He was 24 hours on 24 hours off. He would do that for two weeks at a time, and then he would be off for two weeks. So during those two weeks that he was off, he would go.
And he would work at another hospital. And then for me, when I was off, I was part time. What that meant was a lot of times I had about four or five days of no work. And so I would use that time to go work at another hospital. That's what we did working at those other hospitals. We just threw that income.
Right at the debt to be able to pay it off as quickly as possible. And then one of the other things that we did was we calculated and you mentioned this a little bit earlier in the, but we calculated, I calculated at one point with Sally May, I called Sally May, I should say. And I asked them, if we wanted to pay this debt off in five years, what would our minimum payment be?
If we wanted to pay it off in three years, what would it be? If we wanted to pay it in one year, what would our minimum payment be? And so once we have figured out our budget, this is maybe about Six, seven months into it, once we had figured out our budget and potentially having excess to be able to throw at the debt, when I called Sally Mae and asked them what our minimum payments would be if we paid this off in a shorter, much shorter timeframe, I went back to the budget and I said, you know what, we could pay this off in five years.
We could pay it off in five years. And then I came back to him and said, we could pay it off in three.
Dr. Nii Darko: I was like, I don't believe it. He
Dr. Renee Darko: didn't believe me. He didn't believe me. He was like, there's no way. I'm like, yeah, we can. The numbers are here. If we stick to this plan, we could be done in three years.
And he fought me on it, but we ended up paying off the 662, 000 in what? Three and a half years.
Dr. Nii Darko: I think it was sooner than that. No, it was right after, it was right at three years. Yeah, it was about three years. Right under three years actually. Because we finished January 2017. No,
we
Dr. Renee Darko: finished December.
Dr. Nii Darko: So yeah, so right under three years.
December 2017. Yeah, because we started February 2014.
Dr. Renee Darko: Is that what we say? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's been a while now.
Anne-Lyse Wealth: And you guys are both physicians. You also have a few businesses. You obviously have high paying, demanding career. What made you want to do more work outside of your career? We just
Dr. Nii Darko: realized that we were high paid employees, basically.
And that was not why I became a doctor. And there was some decisions, autonomy issues that I just was like, Hmm, this is not what I expected when I was. Taking a bus to college and taking a bus and dreaming about becoming a doctor. And I started off working when I finished training. I did something that's called locum tenens, which is independent contracting.
And I did that for about a year and a half. And when you work like that, you actually dictate to a hospital when you can work, how much you want to work for. And we're talking about like, yeah, I'm not working any holidays or. Yeah, I want to get paid this amount of money. It's a negotiation, but you feel like you're in a lot of control.
So I did that for about a year and a half prior to us getting married. Then when we got married, that's when I took my first employed job. And work with my colleagues was okay, but a lot of the things that I enjoyed working on my own were gone. If I wanted to have a vacation, I had to check with my colleagues.
If I wanted to Just do just certain other things that I was like, what is this? Until it finally clicked. I was like, Oh, I'm an employee. That's what that's the issue. And I started thinking, I was like, okay, well, we're trying to pay off all this student loan debt. I don't know if there's anybody from our perspective, a two physician household, a two physician, black couple household, a two physician, black immigrants.
Household perspective, I was like, let's start a podcast where I'm just interviewing interesting doctors who are doing really interesting things. And then she started convincing me to like, start throwing in more and more about what we're going through with our finances, what we're going through with our aspirations, and the podcast just kind of grew from there.
And then also at the same time, we just started to realize that who says that we just can't continue to work on our own and work as independent contractors and not be employed by a hospital. We do everything the same. She delivers babies the same way, employed as she does, not employed. And same thing with me.
I take out spleens the same way. It's just that we enjoy our autonomy better. We enjoy being on our own better. So that's why we've kind of done this type of lifestyle. It allows us to kind of just keep that dream of why we wanted to be a doctor, that autonomy. It keeps it going for us.
Patrice Washington: We would come up with these stories and these mantras and these affirmations that we would recite over and over again. One of mine used to be, I work because I want to, not because I have to. I work because I want to, not because I have to.
Now, I didn't even have a job. I didn't have a job at that time. When I say, oh, been there, done that on the way back, I didn't have a how. I didn't have a plan. It was more so about conditioning my mind to go, this is temporary. This is not going to be forever. This is not how your story ends. This is not like, God ain't brought you this far to leave you here.
This is temporary. So we're seeing it as such. This is just the season. Right. But a part of that going jogging too, it was like the physical health. I was like, am I in position to actually maintain and staying with it, what I say I'm praying for. Like, how do I feel about myself? A part of my physical health and getting that together was about getting my confidence up and getting my confidence back because when life has beat you down, especially financially child, their confidence is in the toilet, right?
Like the confidence is bad, right? Hey, I mean, going into the bank is a struggle. Swiping your card, the stress, the stress, like swiping your card at target is like, Oh my God, is it going to go through? Let me go on a Friday when the bank is about to close and maybe something will squeeze through. I used to have all of the tricks because I was living in survival mode, right?
But I was starting to put little things in practice. And sticking to it, I was sustaining those little things with the belief that I would one day work because I want to, not because I have to. And so people always tell me that at least they're like, it's easy for you to say, no, when I started this, it wasn't easy to say, I thought I sounded crazy.
I knew it sounded crazy because I didn't yet tangibly have any results, but I believed it in my core. And I believe that if I just stayed on that path, I think what happens is we don't see it immediately and then we give up. And the difference is people are committed, not interested. I literally said things until they became reality.
And I think that that's even biblical. Like we have to speak life. We have to believe it. You don't get what you want. You get what you believe. Is it easy? No, especially when things don't change immediately. Right. Cause we want things to happen. We're microwave generation. We think that, oh, I said affirmations yesterday.
Where's my man, where's my money, where's the baby, where's the stuff. Right. I said it, I said it on Sunday. I went to church. I prayed. I'm like, where's my miracle, but that's not happened. I think that miracles are in the momentum. Like it's a part of you. Showing up for the things that you say you want first.