Hello and welcome to another episode of Women in Blockchain Talks. This one is a little bit special because as you may or may not know, Women in Blockchain Talks is a platform that is all about advocating the use of blockchain technology, but we're always flying in the flag of diversity and inclusion at the forefront. Now we are a platform that promotes spotlights and amplifies the voices of women, but our male allies is equally important to us and we are a community and a platform that is open to all genders. So with that being said, I am very happy and excited to have the awesome Dexter Simms on this podcast episode with us. Dexter Simms is a man who walks his talk. He is a big hearted entrepreneur and a visionary. And I had the pleasure of speaking at his event, Black Tech Day, last year. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce Dexter to you all and we will go more into who Dexter is. But Dexter, welcome.
Thank you for that introduction. Thank you for having me, Lavanya. I really appreciate it.
I appreciate you too and I appreciate the work and the positive vibes that you put out there. But before we delve into who you are, where you're background, Talk to me about Black Tech Day coming up the 20th to the 21st of July. So it's very imminent. And of course, Black Tech Day is about financial education through tech and gaming. So break it down to me, break it down to the listeners. I wanna know more. To be honest, I just got goosebumps hearing you say it because I know what it means to me and the reason behind why I made it. Some people may see it as a celebration. Some may see it as an event people may see it as opportunity, but to me it is educational awareness and it is awareness of how to become financially independent which will lead to financial freedom. And what I mean by that is in today's society it's very hard to get the right information. It's very hard to get transparent information. It's very hard to get trusted information. So for those of you that don't know, knowledge is now shared within small groups and small communities. But it's very hard for you to become a part of a certain community. And the reason why I built Black Tech Day was because I wanted to be a part of the financial community. I wanted to be a part of the technology community. But unfortunately, when I attended places such as London Tech Week to throw no shade at all, or when I was a guest speaker at NFT London, or when I visited EGX Comic Con. When I've come back to where I reside, where I live in the heart of South London, in the garrison of the community, I was shocked to hear that not many people knew what EGX was, what Comic -Con was. They've never heard of London Tech Week and they definitely ain't heard of or couldn't afford ÂŁ2 ,000 tickets to attend NFT London. So it really dawned on me that our community, especially our black community in the underprivileged areas are really getting left out. They're getting left out just through awareness. They're getting left out through opportunity and they're getting left out on being the forefront runners on innovation. So what I decided to do was, yeah, go and mingle with the knowledgeable, with the rich, with the wealthy, with the educated and then bring back their knowledge and education to my community. So what Black Tech Day essentially is a two day event which brings together financial, education, technology and gaming. Why I picked those three sectors was very important. In today's society, our households are being broke down and the distance between a parent and a child has now become very distant because of technology and gaming. So I thought why not use those same two tools to bring back and bond a family together. The importance of having bonding relationships in a household is because of influence. Today's day and age, youth are being influenced highly into negativity. They're being influenced highly away from culture, away from identity, away from even gender. So it's very hard again to get the right trusted transparent information. So I believe if we strengthen families through bonding and helping families to bond through financial education, this can lead to them providing a more financially stable situation for their household. Also allow them to have extra space or room to educate, re -educate or un -educate their self into what they've learnt before unlearn and relearn, but then more importantly to have the stability in order to pour into their child so their foundation of their child is not reliant upon society. I know it sounds a lot and it sounds long -winded I can put into a nutshell. The nutshell is this, technology and gaming are dividing families. We are using those same devices to bond back families. When the power is back within the household we can hope for better outcomes when we are guiding our children to education, whether it's in schools, colleges, universities, online courses, online businesses, whatever it is, but we will have more knowledgeable, trusted information to be able to provide to our family.
Wow. Now, I did say he's a visionary, right?
This is not your first rodeo. And before we delve into your background, I need to touch on some of the points that you just mentioned. I'm not a parent, but I am a very hands on auntie and godmother, right? And as there's a saying in the black community, it takes a village, right? And that means that it isn't just your parents, your mom or your dad, be it both parents, single parent who just raises a child, it's a community. And that community can be the grandparents, that community can be the aunts and uncles, the godmothers. It can be the shopkeeper, it can be the gardener, it can be your neighbour, it is your community. And if we don't believe more and more that pouring into our community will actually help the community pour back into you, then we are on a losing battle. Do you understand? Yeah. If you don't teach the youth, very seriously, if you don't teach the youth, that's all corner shop man has been providing food to your mum for these years and he's going to be there for a few more years, it's better that you have a good relationship with him rather than a bad relationship, then our area and our community is going to get broken down. And this is what's happening. We are so divided that we're not realizing that the corner shop man, the fish and chip shop man, the lollipop person, that's our community. We're together. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And each element of the community feeds into who you are and the community as a whole.
But let's just go back to some of the points that you touched upon. You talked about financial freedom. And of course, financial freedom and that education piece can lead to generational wealth. 100 percent. And generational wealth is something that we don't talk about in many communities. And I think one of the reasons for that is simply because it's where do I start? So a question for you is, yes, we've got Black Tech Day, but where would you say someone listening to this? and their ears have perked up around the term generational wealth. Where would you tell them to start? Like what books or influences have you read or you've been around that helped you get started? There's many things that I can add and I'm gonna say a lot of them just because you can choose each of them and whichever one helps you not quickest is which one you relate to at that time. So I can give you books. I could tell you that you must have a mentor. I could tell you that you must invest. But let's go through them. So the very first thing I would say, very serious, the very first thing I would say if anybody wants to start their route to financial freedom and building generational wealth, invest in yourself. That's like number one. But I think everybody, not everybody, lots of people think outwards. When I say invest in yourself, if you invest in your health, they say health is wealth, they're just saying it.
But if you think about it, if you invest in your health, you will breathe better. You will stay awake longer. You will be able to run faster. You will be able to think quicker. That's helpful for you to progress. Invest in yourself. If you invest in your knowledge, the more you know is the more you can get done. It's the more that you're not out of the loop. It's the more that you can get investment from a younger age or earlier stage because you was aware of something. Remember, knowledge is just knowing. People say, knowledge is power, knowledge is some secret thing. It's just knowing that's a chair, that's knowledge, you're knowledgeable about the chair. And this is where language misleads a lot of our people. They say financial freedom, I don't know about that. They say cash flow, they don't know about that. They say invest, they're thinking of a certain thing. There's lots of words that gets used that realistically when they say for you that you would know from our black community, if you wanna hide something from a black person, put it in a book. That's not a joke to me no more. Because realistically even just on the way here in the Uber, he had a book on his side and I screen -shotted it. And that's the next book I wanna purchase. Because I understand knowledge is power. So invest in yourself, in your knowledge, in your health in your mannerism, in your dressing, practice what you like doing. So if you wanna be a speaker, then keep speaking, whether to people, to the mirror, whatever, practice. If you wanna be a finance person, keep going through money, keep going through books and etc. That's the first thing, invest in yourself. The second thing is, which is heavily important, is get a mentor. Mentors are highly important. I've paid for mentors, business coaches, and I've had free ones. Why they're so important is because they have the knowledge you don't. They've experienced things you haven't.
Yeah, there's a saying isn't there, you don't know what you don't know. That's it. And so a mentor helps you to know the things that you don't know. That you don't know. And then it will make it, if he made eight mistakes, if he teaches you well, you're meant to only make six mistakes. You're not meant to make nine. Do you know? So get yourself a mentor. The third thing I would say is actually read. I would put that number one but that's the same as investing in yourself, but it's a part of it. Read. So I've only started reading in the last three years. I've only started studying in the last three years in terms of finances. I've always been an entrepreneur for 21 years. I registered my first business in 2003. I've always made money. I've always made exciting stuff. I've never studied finances. And to me, finances is the fundamentals of anything. It's the fundamentals if you've got a job. If you don't understand, your in -goings and out -goings, you're gonna always be poor at the end of the month. The finances, the fundamentals of a business. You won't know if you can hire people, if you can do promotion right now, because you don't know about your income and out -goings. Finances of your life. I'll give you an easy one. This is what my mentor taught me. If you wanna learn about cash flow and finances, the first place you should start is your fridge. When you understand that the milk goes off in four days, and the cabbage may last six days, and the drink may last two weeks, then you have to start overstanding when is my next money? Do I go shop now and buy that? Because you have to measure. You have to have timeframes. That gets you thinking. That's the same as business. You've got a hundred pound. If I spend it all right now in this one week, next week I might not be able to get the flyers. Do you understand what I'm saying? But if you study your fridge, you'll start learning how to manage money better.
So it's about applying that simple analogy to your finances and grow from there because you've got to start from somewhere. You've got to start from somewhere. That's why I said your fridge. Everyone's got a fridge. Yeah. And if you know how many times a month do I go shopping? Yeah. How much money do I spend on average? Yeah. You see, when you can govern that, you're ahead of a majority of people who don't know how to govern money. Yeah. Because they get it and it goes.
You've just said something that's so key about being ahead of so many people. It's a mindset shift. It's being able to see something from a different perspective, other than just seeing as groceries in the fridge. You're seeing it as an example of how to work your money. Now to just pause you for a moment, because obviously you're dropping some great nuggets here and I love the passion and I just love what you're about. I follow you on social media.
Like I said, I've spoken at your events and I love your WhatsApp messages. Let's just go back. You just said that you've been an entrepreneur for 21 years, but you've only started to study finances, financial wellbeing, because this is something that I did some years back. So everything you're talking about, I get. Financial wellbeing for me is underestimated because it will have an impact on your mental state. And there was four pillars that I created. When I was working in this space and it was your money mindset, how you think, Phil, about what you say about money. When you say I'm broke, you're due to be broke. You don't just say I'm low on money. Yeah, I'm low at this moment. Yeah, exactly. It's what you speak into existence. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, exactly. Or money is not good for me or money so hard to get. Where are you getting negative connotations? Yeah. And these stories from who's taught you it? You learn in. Right.
And then the next thing is money mastery. So when we're all going to go through financial challenges, right? That's just life. But the question is, how do you deal with it? How do you become bigger than it rather than allowing it to come over you? And then you got your money mission. So what's your purpose with your money? What do you want that money to stand for? Yeah. And the last one is just, I can't even remember what the last one is. It will come to me in a minute. Going back, tell me about your journey and why three years ago you started to go through this financial journey of understanding and wellbeing even.
Let's be open right now. You're calling me at a good time because I've just had a major loss in my life and all I can do is speak the truth right now. And everything's about role models. Everything's about influence. You wanna become what you know. And that is the problem. People only know what they know. People only see what they see. So...
All right, Pimani Tracy, she was the person that I saw that had a business. I was 14 or 15 years old and I used to come from school and go to a laundry shop and help her sell underwear. She had a laundry shop on Streatham High Road. Like, how come you've got a shop? Like, how come you've got a business? This is crazy. This is great. And I didn't know even after how many years it took me to start a business, that was the trigger. because I didn't see no one else with a business. So it's about what you're around and who you're around. But passionately, There's something that happened to me when I was younger. After I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, Di Robert Carozacchi, when I was 20 years old, I got something completely different from the book. What I got from the book is that I could make money off anything I love. And I know a lot of people don't understand it, because it teaches you assets and liabilities. It teaches you about money management. But to me, it was, I can, okay, he said to his son, you've got to know how to make money. His son came the next day and he was trying to, melt the metal in that to make money because you don't understand the concept of making money and a lot of us don't understand that concept. Once I understood that concept of making money I thought, rah. So if I do a football tournament, because I like football, and charge, I make money. And I had fun. Okay. So if I do a rave and I dance and I charge, I make money. Rah. Well done. I want to do a cinema event where I'm going to show a film and I charge. I made money, cool, now I wanna do an event. Then I done a different event. Then I started selling cars. Anything I liked, I done it, I made money from it. So I thought, raw, it's serious. You can make money from anything. So this is the answer to your question. Why you started only three years ago to study finance? Because it took me 18 years to realize I'm so great at making money and I'm good at spending it. But I always gotta do it again. I don't like starting from zero. It took my latest mentor to tell me that you see you especially Dex, when you go to zero, you start using your chimp brain and you start acting erratic and you forget how to be genius. What not a lot of people can do, the genius bit. So as soon as you get no money, that goes away. Now you're the average person. Now you're talking average. Survival mode. Yeah, survival mode. And when he started explaining that to me, I started seeing my behaviors.
When I go down to zero, go down to 15 pounds in my bank, and I start panicking and I start phoning me and I start shouting and I start getting aggressive and I think, whoa, finances are serious. So when I started investing in 2019, and I thought, what, I can just leave my 20 pounds in there? What, I can just leave my 100 pounds in there? It wasn't how much money's in there, it's how long you can keep it in there without using it. That's the power. Because they say it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. So I was really good at making money. All my life, 20 years, I've been in the music industry, I've been in the clothing industry, I've been in the childcare industry, I've been in education, I've been in tech, I've been in motivational speaking, I've had a teeth whitening company, I've had a food bank. I've made so much money, so much money. And I spend so much money. But hold on, I can't say that I've got so much money. That's a different word. In these last three years, I've probably read more books, learned more about finance, saved more money, and invested more money than I have in my whole life in three years. And that's what makes me think, wow, the only thing we're missing is financial education. Because I've done music, I'm a visionary. So when I was saying music, there was no music. There was no UK rap. I was the start of it. A lot of people know me from Big Bad Blue Industries Entertainment. I didn't have enough money to carry it through, but I was doing a vision.
I didn't know how to keep the money from it. Cool, moved on. I done clothing, I was telling everyone you can have your own clothing line. I done it for 10 years, I gave people jobs, fashion designers, makeup artists, photographers, everything. But look, the cash flow, the balance, the P &Ls, everything to do with finance brings you back to the beginning again, you gotta do it all again. I hated it. When I got to 2020 when it crashed, when lockdown happened, and I had my hub, because now look, we're doing podcasts.
I was telling everyone to do podcast 2019. I had it on my shop window and people saying, what's podcast? I'm saying, no, I had this space to use podcast. What's podcast? Why do we wanna do podcast? I'm saying, bro, it's the future, bro. It's the future. So in 2020, when people are not hiring my podcast space, because they don't know what this podcast is for, it's a community hub, because I got a big heart, but I'm not making money. No, I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm living how I want, but I'm starting again every minute. So finances is what made me get to who I am right now. Yeah, because all those things was great. I'd done great in music. I'd done great in clothing. I'd done great in children's holiday club. Made lots of money. Then I had to start again. How old are you gonna be when you have to start again? You can't start again at 40 and 50 and 60. You can't keep starting again. You have to learn at some point. But this has been your journey and now you're taking your journey and you have invested it, seeded it into Black Tech Day. And that is a beautiful thing. One of the things that I've seen you, that I've seen, like I said, I follow you, I see that you've got some great sponsors and collaborations. Talk to me about that because just congratulations to you.
I have to say congratulations to my team, because that's another thing. I feel like I need to go on a lot of podcasts because I want to talk a lot of the last parts of my journey. The last part of my journey is all about studying. The last part of my journey has been about teamwork. The last part of my journey has been about structure. So now I've realized it's not just me winning. My team makes me win. My team is very good. I got a partnership, head of partnerships. He gets sponsors and that's his paid job. Do you know what I mean? And that's a part of my company. And for me to have a sponsor like Capcom, I grew up on Street Fighter. And it's even God rest my soul. She bought me a Game Boy. The next day she brought me Nintendo, next day she brought me Super Nintendo. Now I'm working with the companies who made those games. Then NBA 2K or then Noble Chairs. Like even now, we just got a sponsor from the Super Team. Super Team is the representative of Solana blockchain. Now what's mad is Solana is the third biggest cryptocurrency in the world. What's more crazy is I follow a guy named Gary Vee. I've been following Gary Vee for nine years. Gary Vee now follows me on all my platforms. He taught me a lot about crypto, NFTs. I was in the We Friends community for long. I earned over 50, just under 100 grand from NFTs and stuff. Since then, I launched my own NFT. But what I'm getting to is getting you to explain and getting to this point that life is what you make it. After leaving the We Friends community, I then invested in Solana as a normal person, now I'm working with Solana. Life is what you make it. I followed Gary for nine years, now I speak to him. It's everything you want, it's just if you're willing to put in the work, because no one can doubt my work rate. So anything I get, people say, you deserve it. Even though it was hard to get there, I know I deserve it, because I work so relentlessly. So if you do work hard, and you do use people's mistakes, Stop not learning from people's mistakes. Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are to not learn that he went up there then they kicked him out? Why do you think you're gonna have a better goal? Even though people are different, but still learn from people's mistakes to get you where you wanna get to faster.
100, 100. Okay, so you just talked about Solana and of course Women in Blockchain Talks. The crux of why we exist is about blockchain. I love blockchain. I came into this space because I feel like Blockchain is a technology that truly can be used for good because of its elements around transparency, trackability, traceability, mutability, open source decentralization. Change, change, change, change. Yeah, yeah. So why blockchain for you? Oi, you see the deep roots of everything I do. Yeah. It's about ownership. Once you own it, you can control it. And see over these years that I realized This is all my epiphany. This is how serious I am. What? This is you rapping? What, you made this? What music? What music that I love? This is you in your house. Burn it then, put it on a CD for me. We can make music. Wow. So I own it, it's mine and I can sell it. Okay, cool. That was a first. Then there's what, where I can make clothing. What do you mean I can make clothing? And it's mine and I get the profit off it and then people wear my thing. I own it, not that. Whoa, hold on, this is crazy, you can own anything. So ownership gave me my freedom because I leverage what I own, whether it's selling it, giving it away, using it as a favor, whatever. Ownership gives you control. You cannot control what you don't own. So when people are complaining, this is the crooks and cranny of everything. We wanna complain about the school system. You send your child to school. You wanna complain about the food, you go to the supermarket, you buy the food. You wanna complain about the bank, you put your money in the bank. You wanna complain about the government, you get your benefits from the government. So what I'm saying is, there's no one to blame but yourselves or the lack of knowledge. Why? Because you cannot tell someone to change their thing, even if it's affecting you, it's theirs. We can't be mad at that. We can't be mad at the UK wants to push these agendas. It's their country. Everything's theirs. So if you don't own nothing, you don't have a say. So far as I'm concerned, blockchain identified what I've been trying to do all my life, is own my stuff. When I learn that I have to give away my data in web two, because remember, we only learn about web two because of web three. They've never been told web one, web two. It's only because web three came where I'm thinking, hold on, what was web two then?
Then I learned that Web2 is app driven. It is them taking our data in return for our entertainment. Hold on, I'm not a clown. I don't want to be entertained. Hold on, I didn't sign up for this. I never told you that you can use my details, but guess what you did in their terms and conditions. So I'm like, okay, I'm not wronging you. You're good at what you've done. But blockchain's here to save me. I'm no longer giving you my details.
I'm no longer giving you my freedom. I'm no longer giving you nothing of mine if it's not value exchange. We need to start valuing each other and ourselves as ownership, as business owners, as founders, and then doing value exchange amongst each other. And that brings us power. Blockchain will give us power. When I was teaching about digital assets before I even knew about blockchain, just owning dot coms, it was going over people's heads.
I'm like, you just own .coms and you hold them and then you can sell them. People wanna buy them. There's different websites, etce Now I own .eaths and .org and whatever. But blockchain also gives you transparency. So this is the problem. This is the major problem about blockchain. People don't care. So where I was going wrong is I was forcing education. You cannot force education on people who do not wanna be educated. you will get frustrated. So I'm trying to teach blockchain, but they don't even understand entrepreneurship. They don't understand business. Business first, then entrepreneurship, then blockchain. So I'm not paying, I'm saying, yeah, but I just want to teach you what I know. No, they're all the way down there. And they're saying, I'm saying, don't you want to own your data? They're like, no, I don't want to own my data. Let Facebook have it. I said, don't you want to own your pictures? They said, I don't care, bro, I just want to play. I'm saying, whoa, I can't knock you. I cannot wrong you. Because you're saying you want, it's like saying,
If you take it away quickly and say, let me teach you how internet works. You're gonna think, I don't know how internet works, I just wanna know when I go on it, it works. I didn't ask, what does WWW .mean? That's why lots of these youth don't even know what WWW .stands for. Because they don't wanna know that bit. They just wanna know when they go on their phone, I can go to a website. That's the lack of wanting ownership. That's the lack of wanting to grow. That's where we're getting manipulated.
People are not seeing the need to own, to grow, to be better, to change, to evolve. They're not seeing the need. Therefore, we're going down and deeper to the bottom. To the bottom, it's not an industrial revolution no more. It's a digital revolution. We was in the information age. Now it's the age of doing. Of ownership. And now we haven't even started reading yet.
Let alone owning. I'm like, I'm not a part of it. I love my black people. And now you can see that I've got a company, because this is the part we've got to talk on. I've got a company called Black Tech Day. It doesn't mean I'm racist. It doesn't mean I'm pro -black. I've told you about my feeling. My feeling is, yes, it doesn't say it's called White Tech Day. Yes, it doesn't say NFT to white yet. But when I go in these environments, I don't feel welcomed. I don't feel that I can be myself. And I don't feel included.
So I'm saying I wanna build one of these for my people to feel included. When I called it tech taster day, my people felt the same. It's tech, it's not for me. I'm saying, rawr, is that how deep you lot are caught? Let me call it black so you know you're allowed. Then say, but what about other people? Why am I caring about other people? Other people don't care about me. I'm being that serious. It's that serious. I'm saying my concern is who's losing. Is yellow people losing? Okay, let's do it for them. Is fat people losing? Let's do it for them. Black people are losing? I'm doing it for them. I'm not against and I'm not pro. I'm just doing, fixing a problem that I see. And I'm trying to make people feel as comfortable as possible who look like me, because I've been felt uncomfortable for many years. And that's where we are.
The saying goes, if you feel it, you know it. So why should you ignore it? Yeah, those who feel it knows it. But not only that, I was at your Black Tech Day event last year. And yes, it was predominantly black people, but it was also a mixture of other people. Because at the end of the day, what I know of you and what I see of you, and also the fact that you've got quality sponsors, you've got Adidas. Yeah, we've got the murky building now as well. A lot of people don't even know about the murky building. Yeah.
Pause, pause one moment. We got too much to say. I think this is going to be like two parts of my... Yeah, there was everybody from all sorts of nationalities from there. And just recently I saw there was a Muslim Tech Day and what a lot of people saying, it's great to be in a room where I feel... I feel included. Many people will feel like I don't understand, but maybe you don't understand because you haven't felt it. That is it. Like you see that living there, like that can bring a tear to my eye.
Why? Because I'll be honest with you, there's not many people, there's no one who's not a black man who knows how it feels to be a black man in the UK. That's it. It's the same as a black woman. You cannot tell me you know how I feel. You don't know what I go through day to day just coming up the lift now. You don't know how I go through. So realistically, my actions don't need to be explained to you because I didn't explain to you how I felt.
That's why you don't know what I'm doing. Who feels it knows it. Exactly. And it's important to have a safe space. One of the things that you were saying at the beginning was just talking about how you feel and you have seen black people being left behind. And you're talking about in the places where your manner, so to speak, as you said in South London. And as a woman and also, yes, a woman of colour, but as a woman, I have this is one of the things I always say is that we, it's very important that we are leading from the front rather than chasing from behind because the data shows that as much as this space is open, how many women are decision makers? How many women are leading? How many women are the CEOs? How many women are getting funding and just touching back again? on what you was talking about, ownership and blockchain. That speaks to my spirit because ownership is so key. That is how fundamentally you create generational wealth. And we had Robby Yung as one of our guests on this, on our podcast. And he is the CEO of AnimoCo Brands Gaming. And that was the key thing. He was talking about ownership. Can you give your child a job? Yeah. Do you understand? Yeah. Can you give them an opportunity? Yeah. Can you give them a part of the company, can you give them an opportunity? It's proper serious. Or even do you have the network that you can open those doors so that they can. Open those doors so that they can, yes. That they can. All right, we've touched on blockchain and I feel your passion, just loving the conversation. But tell me, you talked about ownership, and I think you've touched on this already, but I want to ask this question specifically. What does blockchain, technology, and web 3 mean to the modern day entrepreneur.
Yeah, as I said, it puts the cherry on the top of the hat because I was advocating for this all the time and I didn't have a word. It was just like I used to say to people when I used to say I was an entrepreneur, people used to say to me, you mean you just don't have a job or you mean you just don't get paid regular. no, now everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. You see, it's because I'm a visionary. And that's the same thing. I'm doing blockchain and it's a new word. But to me, it's the same thing I've been doing all my life is ownership. So what owner what blockchain and Web3 means to me is I can own it, I can control it. I don't have to trade my information what I don't know about it. And I can see transparently what is going on. Because to be honest, that's how things are bandulu. Because you don't know. When you put your money in the bank, that's it. It's like you don't even have to ask the question, where's my money going? Is it there still? Even though, again, the problem is you don't want to know. That's another problem. We just do things and don't want to know.
I'm like, whoa, now I know how a bank operates. A bank is there to sell you derivatives. This is how banks make money. So therefore, you use my money in that whole mix. And the way you make money is by gaining interest. So interest is the ability to live off somebody else's labor. Okay, I get it.
I wanna do what you lot are doing. And that's why I changed. Because I don't put my money in the bank no more. Because I wanna put my money in where I'm gonna get interest. That's it. But I didn't know that. Because I didn't know when you're giving my money, you're gonna do something to get interest. I thought you saved it. But that's because it's not you lied. You just gave the information in a way that we wouldn't care about it or we wouldn't wanna know about it. Now I've realized that's how you cover up all information. By just making us feel like we don't need to know. Or we don't want to know.
But guess what? I'm awake now. It's too complicated to know. What do you mean? When I say derivatives, when I say dividends, when I say cash flow, when I say assets, when I say all these kind of fundamental words in finance, people don't know that they're normal words.
or even you can take the words and they can be broken down so that you understand it. And once you have the understanding, then it's just the next step is just to, how do I take that understanding and implement and execute it in my life so that I can benefit the same? Maybe not on the same scale, there's a big bang. And it's okay. And that's okay if it's not on the same scale. But it's the process and the fundamental. A mindset and a mind shift to be able to apply that knowledge even on a small scale. And one of the reasons I loved blockchain technology and a lot of people don't really think about it this way and a lot of people they're like, crypto is bad, crypto is for fraudsters and for... Can I just start from that point? Crypto is bad, crypto is for fraudsters. Do you know why? Every single person that says that does not understand finances. Yeah, or even understand crypto. No, finances. Let me explain.
There used to be only four assets which are the major assets in the world. This is how you generate wealth. The question you asked me earlier on, how do you actually get to wealth? I told you the beginning part. This is how you get to wealth. The only way to get to wealth is through ownership and owning of assets, especially cash flowed assets. What are the asset groups? This is what people miss. The asset groups, real estate, that's land and property. Commodities, that's gold and silver and iron and all that stuff, even coffee. Coffee, sugar. Yeah, these things. Paper assets, that's stocks and shares and then a business. Those are the four assets. You have to own one of these to get to generational wealth. Now, there's a fifth one, digital assets. That's because it's real. It's a real asset. It's digital money. It's propositive. So if you think crypto's a scam, that means you know nothing about investments in an asset or money. And the point I was gonna just say about crypto, one of the reasons why I was like, I like blockchain, I like the transparency of it, is because we're the bank is a gatekeeper. And so if you have a hundred thousand in your bank account and I only have 10 ,000 and Dexter only has 1000, Dexter will only get maybe 0 .01%. I might get 0 .05 % and you as the person who has a hundred thousand, you'll maybe get 5%, right? On your money with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, if it goes up by 20%, everybody's amount goes up by 20%, irrelevant of if it's a pound, 10 pounds, a thousand, 10 ,000. One bitcoin is one bitcoin. Yeah, one bitcoin is one bitcoin, but it goes up by 20%, right? If it goes down by 20%, then everybody's amount goes down by 20%. There is no sort of tier or gatekeeper even saying that you can't come into this space because you don't earn enough.
If you can only afford five pounds worth of Bitcoin, then you put your five pounds of Bitcoin in. If you can afford 50 ,000, you can put your 50 ,000 in. And that for me, there's an equity and a quality to it, a transparency to it that I really like. And of course, it's not just straightforward. You need to learn, you need to understand. But I think if people look at it from that perspective, you will have a mind shift, a paradigm shift in regards to chain. it's use cases and what it stands for. And blockchain isn't just about crypto, of course. It's about, and if you listen to our other podcast episodes, you'll hear other guests speakers talking about real world assets, RWA, and how blockchain is fundamental for these different use cases as well. Yeah.
Let's put a touch on that as well. How they have the control, the same thing you said about banks and the gatekeepers. There's a thing called redlining, what a lot of people don't understand institutional racism, a lot of people don't understand because they don't understand how the credit system works. When you understand how you are scored on your credit, it's so deep because you think it's because of one thing and realistically it's actually because of how many off -licenses are in your area? How much potholes are in your area? How much bumps are in your area? How much robberies happen in your area? How much police cars are in your area? These things affect your credit. This is what happens behind the scenes with your FICO score.
But people are not taught this. It's so over everyone's head that I think, of course we're gonna lose. Because we don't know what FICO score is. We don't understand about credit. So therefore, when we go in there and they say, okay, let me give you a quick example. 1 ,000 pound and you gotta give me back 1 ,600. You're like, why? My man just got 1 ,000 pound and you said 1 ,200. You don't know why that is. But it's because of your credit score. And these are the things that's happening. If you get out of mortgage, they're giving you this much APR, they're giving you this much, and they're giving him this but you don't see these things because you don't know they exist. But this is how you get blocked. This is how you get left out. This is how you get raped. When I mean raped, I'm talking about you have to keep paying, you never finish paying. One more thing about that. Debt slavery, I think might be a better term. Debt slavery, wicked, and then see what that is? That's the exact same as catalogs. Our people, we grew up on catalogs because we think it's good and I appreciate it. It helped us out of situations. But we must learn money management, we must learn finances, overstand that. If we're paying a hundred pound for training, we should pay the hundred pound. If we don't have the hundred pound, you should not buy the trainers because it's not worth paying 200 pounds for the hundred pound trainers. Sorry, but it's annoying to have the way they've blocked us and we don't know. Yeah, as we said, knowledge is power. It's important to say that there's lots of people from different communities who lack this knowledge. But unfortunately, what you will see is if you do come from a certain level of society, private schools, then that knowledge is passed down. And so it's just the same people who are being able to leverage this information, continue generational wealth and also control. And it's great to have these conversations. And I hope if you're listening to this, that you'll take the time to reach out to Dexter to check out his website, Black Tech Day, reach out to me, because I've done a lot of work, as I said, around this conversation piece.
Thank you for saying management because that's what the other was. So it was four M's, money mindset, money mastery, money mission, and money management. And money management touches on debt. What does that mean? What does it look like? It also touches on savings. And it also looks at how to protect yourself when you, a lot of people in the community and just across the UK do not have life insurance. And they're utilizing GoFundMe as their life insurance after or not the life insurance for themselves, but to be like, hey, this person didn't have life insurance and then we need to bury them and can we put money together? And life insurance can be as little as 20 pounds a month. And I think once you have children, life insurance should be paramount on your investment list, so to speak. But anyway, this is a conversation piece that...
Wow, you've taken me down memory lane, let's just put it that way. But just to round off, because I've loved speaking to you, and I'm sure everyone can feel your passion and your motivation and your focus and your drive. You are a very motivational person. What do you want to leave the listeners with?
First of all, if you want to contact myself, Google's probably the best place to type my name in Dexter Sims. But if you actually go into each social media page, and looking for myself is more or less Mr. Dexter Sims. My companies are Moola Cake, so if you type in Mula Cake, -U -L -A -K -E, you can find information on the holiday club or the clothing line. And Black Tech Day is all around technology, education, finances, and gaming, so type in Black Tech Day, that would also come up. But what I would like to leave the listeners with today is something we just kind of touched on in terms of the M's. I have my own free M's of money and I've got it from a book I want to recommend from Robert Karazaki which we call Cash Flow Quadrant. This book helps you realise what quadrant you're in and how to get to another quadrant. Once you realise this you'll start understanding what tax bracket you're in and how money actually works. The three M's out of this book is the first is what everybody should be able to do and I think everybody is and could do it which is making money. If you can't make money then you're really in a problem. That is like If you can't get a job, if you can't make a business, if you can't sell something, if you can't do anything to make the money, then actually you do have the problem. The second one is the problem what we have, especially in the black community, is maintaining money. The reason why we don't get to the third ever is because we don't get past the second The reason why we don't get past the second which is maintaining money, is because we love spend. We love spend. So as soon as you get the money, you spend the money. Then you go backwards to number one again. You gotta make the money. Then you spend the money and go back and back. But if you can get to the next month, which is maintaining the money, you will get to the third MThe third is multiplying money. This is where wealth is made. When you can multiply the money you already have, that's when you are on the road to success. Stop making the money, spending it, then have to go making it again. You make the money once, and then you make the money work for itself. Don't forget that.
Yeah, love that. Great point to end on. Black Tech Day is happening on the 20th and the 21st of July. And like I said, 2024. Yeah, 2024, of course. And like I said, I was there last year as a speaker. It was amazing. Really love the work Dexter Sims and that's S ims is doing not just for the black community, but for the community full stop. And the privileged community that gets forgotten about. Exactly. And also just for the tech scene full stop, because everything we do, if it's coming from a good place, which it is, it's going to have a positive impact on all areas. And so without further ado, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you for having me, man. It's been a great conversation. Wonderful, wonderful. All right, until next time, folks. We out. We out.
