The Future Goes to the Investment and Business Minded: Build Now!

My first job was at Food Lion. I punched the clock. You slid that card in, the machine stamped it, and you knew exactly what your hour was worth. That was the deal my whole generation was raised on: if you want money, you get a job.

I was born in 1977. I'll be 50 years old next year. And over the last 30, 40, really almost 50 years, I've watched something happen to the people I love. Family. Friends. Church members. People in general, and especially in the Black community. A lot of us are stuck in an economic time capsule. We are still running the money playbook of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s in a 2026 economy. And now it's really starting to catch up with us.

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Stuck in an Economic Time Capsule

We grew up in a time of struggle, yet opportunity. We could see the opportunity. Maybe it was an auntie, maybe our parents, maybe our grandparents who had a little money, had a little something, had some type of ingenuity. We got a job. We went to college. We got our own stuff. Some of us started our own businesses.

But a lot of us got stuck in how to get ahead the 1970s and 80s way. We never learned how to create generational wealth in the new age of the internet. We never learned how to set ourselves up and work with others. We were very narrow-minded about how to level up, how to use the economy to our advantage, and how to make money work for you instead of you having to work for money.

Here's the thing: the internet didn't just add a new tool to the economy. The whole economy got rebuilt around it. The people who caught on are doing well. The people who stayed in the time capsule are not. And that gap is accelerating.

But the split didn't start with the internet. It started a little earlier, and I can put a year on it.

1982: The Year the Rules Changed (And Nobody Told Us)

Think about where America was coming out of. The 1970s were the malaise years: oil shocks, gas lines, and stagflation, which is high inflation and a stalled economy at the same time. By 1980, inflation hit about 13.5%. Then the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker cranked interest rates to break it, and the Great Inflation finally ended. Under Ronald Reagan, taxes were lowered, interest rates started coming down along with inflation, and America went into a boom.

If you had the “stocks are too risky, just keep your job” mindset in the early 80s, you missed what many believe was the absolute best time to get into the stock market in the last 50 years. Look at what happened in about 18 months:

Now look at the paycheck side. From 1948 to 1979, productivity rose about 108% and typical worker pay rose about 93%. They climbed together. Work harder, the country produces more, you get paid more. That was real.

After 1979, they split. According to the Economic Policy Institute, net productivity grew 90.2% from 1979 to 2025, while typical worker pay grew only 33.0%. If pay had kept pace, the typical worker would be making about $16.40 more per hour today.

That's why I say the people in the time capsule aren't foolish. They learned a playbook, “get a job, work hard, you'll be fine,” that really did work for their parents' generation. The rules changed around 1980, and almost nobody announced it. Nobody sent the memo. Nobody told us.

Adders vs. Multipliers: The Numbers Don't Lie

This is the heart of it. One group of people learned to add. Another group learned to multiply.

Jobs add up money, if you're lucky. Wages might keep up with inflation. What wealthy people excel at is working together with others and putting their money into investments, real estate, and businesses that multiply. Money is working for them. They are not working for money.

The Dow went from about 777 in August 1982 to a record close above 54,000 in August 2026. That's roughly 70 times the starting value on price alone, and well over 100 times with dividends reinvested. Meanwhile, typical real pay grew by about a third.

So who is holding the multiplier today? According to the Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts:

• The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold 50% of all stocks, worth about $27.6 trillion as of early 2026.
• The bottom 50% of Americans own just 1% of stocks.
• Only 58% of U.S. adults owned any stock as of April 2026, down from 62% a year earlier, according to Gallup. Most of that is through a retirement account, not a brokerage account.

And in our community, the gap is even wider. Pew Research, using Federal Reserve data, found that in 2022, 66% of White families owned stock directly or indirectly, compared with 39% of Black families and 28% of Hispanic families. The median stock holding for White families was $67,800. For Black families, it was $16,500.

You might think you made it because you're making $80,000 or $90,000 a year. But if you have no stocks, maybe just a 401(k) that's only for retirement, that's not generational wealth. That's a good income. Those are two different things.

Now here's the good news, and I want you to hear it. The Federal Reserve found that between 2019 and 2022, home, stock, and business ownership grew faster for Black and Hispanic families than for White families. People are catching on. The door is open. We just have to walk through it.

Rich Dad Poor Dad, Seen Through the 1982 Lens

If you've never read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, here's the short version. Kiyosaki grew up with two father figures. His biological father, his “Poor Dad,” was highly educated and worked for the state his whole career. His best friend's father, his “Rich Dad,” never finished school but built businesses and bought real estate.

The core lessons from Rich Dad come down to a few ideas:

• The rich don't work for money. They make money work for them.
• Know the difference between an asset and a liability. An asset puts money in your pocket. A liability takes money out, even if everybody calls it an “investment.”
• Financial education is a skill, and most schools never teach it.
• Move toward ownership. Kiyosaki's “Cashflow Quadrant” splits income into Employee, Self-employed, Business owner, and Investor. The first two trade time for money. The last two own systems that make money without you punching in.

Poor Dad's plan was simple: work for one company all your life, retire, and that's it. No other options. And according to Kiyosaki, his Poor Dad died without much to show for all that hard work and dedication.

Now put that next to the 1982 timeline. Robert was born in 1947. His Poor Dad was raising him in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which was exactly the era when a job, a pension, and a paycheck that grew with productivity really worked. The stock market wasn't understood as a place for regular people to build wealth, and building a business seemed out of reach for most folks. Poor Dad wasn't wrong for his time. His time just ended. The pension started disappearing, pay stopped keeping up, and ownership became the new ladder.

My parents were just like Kiyosaki's Poor Dad in that way. Work hard at a job and everything will be OK. Don't waste your time with stocks or a business. It's too risky. I'm not judging anybody. I get it. What Poor Dad taught is valuable: hard work, discipline, loyalty. Both dads have something to teach. But Poor Dad didn't realize he needed to do something different to build wealth and pass it down. And it's not just the money you pass down. It's the mentality.

“Those People”: Why So Many of Us Won't Get in the Game

Over the years, it didn't make sense to me. I thought the people around me were open-minded. It took some very hard lessons to understand that no, a lot of them don't know how to work together. They don't know how to try something different. They don't know how to get outside the box.

Very few people I know understand the value and importance of working together, or the importance of stocks, bonds, investments, and starting a business. They look down on things like multi-level marketing like it's the most horrible thing ever. They only know how to do it one way. And if you try another way and your business doesn't work out the first time? “See, I told you.” They'll even laugh at you. “I can't believe you thought that would work.”

Some of us even look at people with stocks and businesses as “those people,” like investing is a racial or cultural designation that isn't meant for us. It is meant for us. It always was.

Meanwhile, the families who have been playing the Rich Dad game for 40 or 50 years passed it all down. The mindset. The knowledge. The houses. They paid for their kids' piano lessons, the best education, great life experiences. Then those kids took the money and the lessons they inherited and started companies worth $10 million in 5, 10, 20 years. And now, with artificial intelligence and the stock market going crazy, the time capsule crowd is getting passed by people whose parents taught them the game.

Inflation Is Playing Pac-Man With Your Paycheck

Inflation is coming in hard and fast, eating up income like Pac-Man, and I believe it is becoming a permanent feature of this economy. If you know anything about finances, you know that putting your money in an interest-bearing savings account might not even keep up with inflation.

When the Fed dropped interest rates to near zero after the Great Recession, and kept them there from late 2008 until the end of 2015, that's when the save-it-at-the-bank plan really stopped working. That's when it really stopped. And nobody told us. Nobody said, “Hey family, friends, church members, start a business. Work together. Invest your money now.” People looked at me funny for years because I've always been big on investing and business.

Here's what I see happening right now: a major financial event, and that's the falling value of the dollar. While it happens, people who own financial assets, gold, precious metals, crypto, and energy are watching those prices climb. Gold was trading around $4,095 an ounce in August 2026. The rich are well positioned for this. Do you know who gets left behind? The people making their money add up instead of multiply.

As the dollar becomes less valuable, what you do with your dollar becomes more important. You can't hide your money under the mattress anymore. You can't get away with not understanding the stock market, business, and how to multiply your money. Where there is no risk, there is little reward.

AI Is the Next Wave. Ride It or Get Hit by It.

Artificial intelligence is going to take away even more jobs, especially the routine work so many of us have depended on. That's the scary side.

Here's the other side: for about the cost of a streaming subscription, one person can now do the work that used to take a whole team. Writing, design, research, coding, marketing. That's the 2026 version of Bill Gates telling us to get a website 20-some years ago. You should be using AI right now to build your business, sharpen your investing, and grow your assets, not waiting for it to show up and take your job.

The Key to Financial and Economic Breakthrough in 2026 and Beyond

So what's the solution? You can't expect a financial plan that worked in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s to carry you through this economy. Here's what I'm doing, and what I'm encouraging you to do:

• Create valuable content and put it online. A website, a blog, a YouTube channel, social media. Online businesses can pivot fast when the economy shifts. That's why I prefer them.
• Build business systems that multiply. Systems that can push out products and volume that have value. You can find great business systems in multi-level marketing, some you've never even heard of. Ask me about them. I do both: MLM, plus my own content and affiliate marketing, working with the big media giants like Google and social media.
• Put your money in the stock market. Consistently. Let it compound.
• Diversify with hard assets. Gold, silver, real estate, and yes, some crypto, balanced to your own risk level.
• Work together. Family, friends, church. The wealthy don't do it alone, and neither should we.
• Use AI as your partner, not your replacement.

My mission is simple: get people connected to the flow of automated money, the kind that never stops moving. It doesn't come through a punch card. I had one of those at Food Lion. I know what that feels like. This is different. This is money that keeps working while you sleep, while you're at church, while you're with your family.

Personally, I'm getting as much money as I can into investing, a lot of it from my own work, and building my business as much as I can to get established before the economy really gets hit by everything that's going on. I'm encouraging everybody else to do the same. Build up your gold, your silver, your crypto, your stock portfolio. Build up your website and your social media. When everything hits, you're either in position or you're not.

Is everything going to change? Probably not. But what if some things change radically? The energy and the water are shifting. The direction and the height of the waves are changing. Now is the time to catch the wave. You're not just trying to weather the storm. You're trying to be in a good position when it passes.

If It's Just Me, I'll Still Sing This Song

This message is powerful to me, and I want to share it with anybody who will listen. If nobody else listens, that's OK. I'm going to sing this song to myself, and it's going to be the greatest tune ever. I'll enjoy it like I'm at a concert with 50,000 other people.

But I'd rather sing it with 50,000 other people.

So take a hard look at your financial position and your future. Ask yourself: am I adding, or am I multiplying? Then get in the game.

Disclaimer: This post shares my personal experience and opinions for educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, or legal advice. All investing involves risk, including the loss of money you invest. Do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making financial decisions.