[00: 00: 00 – 00: 00: 36]

I was a second year law student and former, can I say retired? Retired banker who had just spent a better part of my young adult life helping other entrepreneurs grow and manage their business using banking products. So I spent the better part of the last 10 years watching people do this. So I knew what steps to take. I knew what things to take. And then on top of that, I’m in law school learning. So again, you know, God doesn’t make mistakes, right? He gave me the first part of my career learning about business. And I spent many days at Chase like, damn man, I just wanna be my client.

[00: 00: 37 – 00: 01: 12]

Welcome to the Share the Wealth Show, where minority professionals can learn to escape the racial wealth gap and catapult themselves into abundance. Your host, Nicole Pendergrass, grew her net worth from being negative to multiple six figures. Join her on her investigative mission to expose secret strategies of the wealthy so we can all have the tools needed to build the life and legacy we were created to possess. Now it’s time for the show.

[00: 01: 13 – 00: 02: 43]

All right, welcome back everyone for another episode of the share the wealth show. This is the show where we discuss strategies on how to build, grow and protect minority wealth. And today I have with me, Mr. Dante Jones and you guys, I already know this episode is going to be fire. And I’m really excited to dig in. Um, I have a history with Dante. He is really good friends and frat brothers with my husband. He emceed our wedding. Like he’s just, you did, you forgot that, you know? It wasn’t even that long ago, but no, you saved us on that one, man. And he just has so much energy. He’s very real and down to earth. So I know we’re gonna get the raw details today, but let me read the bio that I have for him. So you guys gonna know a little bit about what’s going on. So Dante was born and raised in East Harlem, New York. He earned his BS in finance from SUNY New Paltz. And it would be at New Paltz that he began to have experiences that would forever shape him as an individual. He joined two organizations that he credits with changing his life. En-ROADS, which is an internship organization for students of color, and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. You could do a call if you want. Okay, you’re doing this. It’s simple. Oh, yeah.

[00: 02: 44 – 00: 03: 59]

Dante started his professional career at JPMorgan Chase where he spent 10 years as a business relationship manager. And after a decade in banking, he decided to earn his JD from the University of North Carolina School Law. We will definitely dig into that. And right now he works as a corporate attorney at Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough practicing manager, practicing mergers and acquisitions. Whoa, that by itself is already like a lot. But then the main thing we’re gonna talk about today is Dante is CEO and founder of Lyrically Correct, which is a music trivia card game created by him, his wife, Tiffany, and his two cousins. And so when Dante is not functioning as a lawyer or business owner, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Tiffany, like I said, and his two children, Morgan and Dante Jr. And he also has all these philanthropic. At first I didn’t know anything about. I tried. Yeah, this is good stuff man. He’s extremely proud of establishing Matthew Jones Scholarship as a professional or for professional ward room, given to students at his high school, his former high school. And then also being able to be a proud, one of the founding members of Cool Kids NYC. What does cool stand for?

[00: 04: 00 – 00: 05: 36]

That’s the only dot creating our own legacy. I like that. That’s a good one. So that’s a nonprofit organization committed to cultivating the next generation of socially conscious, service minded leaders. And Dante believes that it is his duty to take knowledge and experience that he has gained and use it to help better the lives of children in the community. Man, nice. I definitely didn’t have so much philanthropic stuff going on. I love it. I like this title, co-founder and chief turnip officer. Oh, am I? Yeah, you know, the cool thing about that is it’s my company. I call myself what I want, right? Wait, all right. So what does the chief turnip officer do? To be honest, when we first started the company, as you mentioned, we started, you know, my cousin and I, and our two wives, no one had any titles. We were kind of just, everybody was rolling up their sleeves and getting into it. So we picked our own titles. And I clearly you could tell, but I don’t really care about titles and so much of what I do, right? You don’t know. I’m not the most humble guy, I’ll be honest, right? But I don’t brag in traditional ways. So I don’t give a damn about a title. So I like to have fun. I think I’m probably the most fun out of all four of us. So I… deemed myself the chief turnip officer. That’s very appropriate, very appropriate.

[00: 05: 0037 – 00: 07: 01]

Like guys, if you could have seen him at my wedding, he’s definitely the turnip king. So I think any other VJ or DJ or whatever we, what is it called? I forget what it was. MC? MC, yes. Any other MC would have been boring. But you was definitely putting in a sweat. Okay. So out of that, No, no, I guess we start at the beginning. What made you decide to leave banking and become an attorney? So you know the funny thing? This is going to blow your mind. So I was at my Lyme Brothers graduation. You know, Kevin. Wait, before we do that, did you know that your husband went to the same high school as me? Yeah. As soon as I read it, I was like, oh, y’all went to high school together. No, no, no. Except he’s a little older. So how many, how many grades older? I mean, I guess we shouldn’t age him, but oh well. No, no, no. We would, we wouldn’t, we were never there together at the same time. Oh, so you didn’t meet until after when you were at New York until I played, yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, no, you didn’t. Oh, I think the statute of limitations is up on that. All right. Oh, it’s okay. Cause I was putting the air quotes, but you know, you’re safe now. He got 20 years in, he old enough to say what he want. All right. That’s true.

[00: 07: 02 – 00: 08: 58]

But no, so back to your question. So I was sitting at Kevin’s graduation. He was graduating from med school and I’m sitting in the auditorium or the theater, wherever I’m sitting with two of my frat brothers that were attorneys at the time. Another, a couple. Kev’s friends that were MBAs, watching all of these doctors. And I’m like, man, I should go back to school. And at that point, I’m like eight, nine years into being a banker, I have a degree in finance. I always thought that I would get an MBA at some point. So I’m thinking, okay, I’ll do an executive MBA program and that’s it. But at that point in my life, I was very prayerful and intentional about everything I did. So I said, I’m not going to decide. I’m going to pray on it. And that was Memorial day weekend of 2017. And this is the part that’s going to blow your mind that following Sunday or maybe the Sunday after I’m sitting in church, I believe it was June 7th, 2017. You may not remember that date just yet. And. I’m listening to the sermon, I’m watching pastor, and God tells me, Dante, go to law school. That was the clearest I had ever heard God, and I didn’t hear a voice, right? I felt that I heard the thoughts started clicking, things just started rolling. That’s what I mean by I heard God. And I leaned over to my wife and said, Tiff, God said, go to law school. And she was like, well, if God told you, you don’t need my opinion, right? And then we got in the car and we went to your baby shower. Oh my God. That was the day of your baby shower. We left, we literally left church and went to your baby shower.

[00: 08: 59 – 00: 09: 27]

And it was like, and I’m telling the bros like, your bro, I think I’m about, I told him, maybe one bro, I wasn’t announcing it yet, but made up in my mind right then and there. I was going to law school because this was the clearest I had ever heard God. That following day, I reached out to two of the bros that I knew that were attorneys. And literally I paid $1,400 that night, that Monday night for a LSAT prep course. And that’s when I knew, when I put my 1,400 down, that’s when I knew I was gonna do this.

[00: 09: 28 – 00: 10: 41]

Listen, I know you’ve been digging in studying everything you can listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books, even going to meetups. You basically have a degree from YouTube university, right? But you still feel stuck. You don’t know how to actually implement what you’ve learned. You’re nervous about taking the next step. So I’ve decided to start the Micro Family Investing Accelerator. This is a mentorship program where I personally guide you through my five proprietary pillars. So you can learn how to buy your first. commercial multifamily property and scale while not biting off more than you can chew by focusing on 5 to 20 units. That’s what I call micro family. And so you can also get hands-on guidance from an experienced micro family investor who’s been right where you are. And so you can also create the cash flow needed to give you freedom and options to build the abundant life that you were destined to live. So I’ll be limiting the first cohort because They’ll have direct access to me and I will be heavily invested in their success. If you’re ready to grab 2023 by the horns, schedule a free discovery call with me today. The link is in the show notes. And now let’s get back to the show.

[00: 10: 42- 00: 12: 01]

Oh my God. So I had heard the story that you heard. You heard God telling you to go, but firstly, it’s amazing that you remember those dates off rolling off the top of your head like that. Cause I remember. Yeah, that’s crazy. And the other thing is hearing that story does not sound like I had to look at the clock and see what year it was because I’m like, that was not 2017. That’s crazy. Yeah. That does not seem like how many, she’s five. Yeah, yeah. That’s insane. Like you went to law school and are now practicing in the past five years. Yeah, yeah, and I’ve been practicing for about two years now. So it’s just. It just seems to me like that’s mind blowing in and of itself because I just don’t see where that time went because to me even hearing about that story was like maybe a couple years ago, you know, like it doesn’t. Yeah I felt like people were just going and getting these degrees quick banging them out and I’m like yeah it’ll be quick and it was. When that not when you’re in it when you in it, it feels like. I may have late night. It went quick for me. Oh, okay.

[00: 12: 02 – 00: 13: 20]

Well, cause you were destined, you were ordained to. I think that’s the case as well. Yeah. Literally I can do more, some more dates just to show you how good God is. I promise I’m not that smart. It was like June 7th, he revealed to me law school, September 7th, no, September, I took the September 17th. Yes. September 17th, I took the LSAT. That. March, no, September 17th, I took the LSAT. I got my results back sometime in maybe October, something like that, or November. From November to January, I was working hard on my essays and applications, got the applications. I was in Europe in February of 2018 when I got my first acceptance letter, and that was it. Then March is when I got into UNC, and we flew down. to see the campus, everything like that. And by August of 2018, I was sitting in the Bronx packing up the truck to drive there. And I purchased a house in North Carolina before we went.

And July of 2017, by August, we packed up the house and went down. Oh my God. See, okay.

[00: 13: 21 – 00: 14: 27]

So a couple of things I’m getting already from that is just the speed of implementation. So it’s not like you wait and sit on things and, oh, I got to think, or I got to do more research, or I got to blah, blah. Like literally, you heard God talk to you, the next day you talk to a couple of people, the next day you put $1,400 down on a prep course, and then a couple of months later, you were taken to LSAT. No one takes an LSAT in a couple of months when they don’t have free law. this disposition or whatever it is. So for you to say, I promise I’m not that smart is definitely an understatement because I don’t know who else can practice, like can study for the LSAT in a couple of months and just pass it. It’s all God. It’s like off a whip. It’s all God. Yeah, I guess. Okay, so the next question before we get into the next thing. How can people make sure they are? open and receptive to hearing God? Like what was your state of mind? What was like going, happening in your life? Was there anything you think stood out that made you receptive and open to it besides just like being in church?

[00: 14: 28 – 00: 16: 26]

You know, a couple of years prior to that, I had made a decision to be very prayerful and to not make any moves without consulting God. However, prior to this, I can’t say that every move I made was because God told me to make it. I would just pray about things and I would do them, right? That I don’t recall the clarity of, okay, I’m gonna do this because God said, do it. But that decision came a while back before this actual, I received this message, right? Praying for discernment, understanding, praying. for God to be able to hear God’s voice, spending time in God’s word, spending time in the church, right, listening, finding a pastor that you trust and to deliver the message of God. All of those things are important, you know, and that just, you said, you know, having a, I guess the fortitude or the determination to not. lollygag or need to research anymore. That’s typically me. I’m going to measure 20 times. I’m going to sit on things. There’s been so many things that I’ve missed because I failed to act sooner. And I think that’s why my wife and Dula and I, we talk about this all the time. You and my wife are a lot alike. Like you guys are like right on, like let’s do this. We say we’re going to do it. We can do it. And Dula and I, we’re a lot alike in that. Okay, we go talk to 20 people about it. We go think about it. And that’s typically me, right? But this is why I knew that this was from God is because I did not do any of my, I didn’t do any of my normal behaviors when it came to this mission.

[00: 16: 27 – 00: 17: 58]

It was ordained. It was literally this, then do this, then do this, then do this. And God placed the right people around me, right? Actually funny enough. My plan that day was literally, I was going to enjoy the summer, because remember this was June. I was going to enjoy the summer, study over the fall, and take the December LSAT. But I spoke to one of the younger cues who was already done with law school, and he said, no, big bro, you’re not. You’re going to sacrifice your summer, take the September LSAT. That way you can apply and still be competitive for scholarships. And I’m just thankful to God that I was humble enough to listen to my younger brother, right? That was somebody that I made, or I helped to usher him into this organization. And he was about six years younger than me, but I had enough humility to reach out like, yo bro, I’m trying to be a lawyer, you’re a lawyer, what should I do? And when he said, no, you’re gonna do this. You know, a summer in New York City, and this was, we didn’t have no kids at the time or nothing, right? So, but I- Was that your last summer before kids? No, you had a couple more summers. No, no, no. My daughter wasn’t born until 2019, but that was- Okay. That was, no, the summer of 2018 was my last summer in the city. Okay. Yeah.

[00: 17: 59 – 00: 18: 57]

So you sacrificed your last summer in the city to study. Well, you know what? I got nothing but props for you for doing that. And that’s just like- That’s crazy. Yeah. So, and the main thing I want to say about that too, is also I love how you were open for coaching. Yeah. Like that’s basically like a mentoring coaching, even if it was from someone younger than you, it was someone who had been where you want to go, and you took their advice and you acted on it. So that is something that I think a lot of other people don’t really take seriously or take into consideration because… They just think, everyone thinks they can figure everything out on their own, which in most chances you can, but how much longer is it going to take you? What other kinds of opportunities are going to miss? Like, is it going to be the most optimal path for you to travel? Right? Like, like you say, you would have missed out on maybe some scholarship opportunities if you had waited, you know what I mean? So things you don’t know because you’ve been down that road before. So.

[00: 18: 58 – 00: 20: 44]

I say all the time, I didn’t pledge Omega to do anything alone. Right. And. I tell, I reach out to the bros for everything. And when I say a cube design, my wedding, I mean, I bought my wedding ring from a cube. I bought my first house from a cube, everything, right? Like I’m looking for another house right now. The realtor’s a cube. The attorney that’s gonna do the, handle the deal, he’s a cube. Everything, the bros, you know, I got to chase because of one of the cubes. I reach out to the bros for everything because we have everything I need. I can get through one of the bros or through one of your sorority sisters or through, you know, I got my first job from an AKA. The next one came from a Delta. There’s a cap of that kind of meant to me through, right? There’s only three black people in my office at the firm at my office location. One is an 89 capital from Harvard and he’s like my new mentor, right? And it’s like. We have everything we need. And if not, Emerald is the other organization that I said changed my life. I would reach out through that network. Is there’s no reason for me to kind of try to do anything in this world cold. And you know what? Okay, so one, thanks for shaming me for not using my past networks because I definitely don’t, like I do not reach out into Zeta Phi Beta. At all if or not enough besides outside of my chapter, like, or the media people are I or people like I went to, you know, undergrad with or, you know, network with.

[00: 20: 45 – 00: 22: 02]

But, and even like, even Cornell, like I don’t know. I know and I’m already shaming myself for that and I already has been coming, coming to fruition. This is like another nail in the coffin that like, all right, Nicole, get off your butt and like they’re the. Cornell Alumni Association, we have a whole building right downtown, I could be going there on a regular basis and just meeting people and networking. And I definitely need to do that and start reaching out to my past classmates because everybody’s doing such big stuff now, you know, executives and founders and all this other stuff and I’m not connected. So now that I am, yeah. One of the things, and let me interrupt real quick, we were always taught to network, right? I learned about networking through inroads If you know any young students, always tell them. I always tell high school and college students about it. I didn’t learn about it until college. I wish I knew about it in high school. But we talked to networking. You always think to network up. But networking across, right? And you just said a million-dollar thing. My classmates, right? When you guys are partying and turning up in Ithaca, you’re not thinking about the people across from you. But 10, 15 years after that, right? We’re going to say five because you’re really young.

[00: 22: 03 – 00: 22: 59]

But five years later, these people, these are the managing directors. These are the partners. These are the heads of hedge funds. So you have to network across as well. Yeah, no, that’s 1,000%. These are politicians. These are just executives in every different types of sector. Like one of my classmates got elected the first black female president of the American Institute of Architects or something like that. So, you know, there’s people like just are doing big things and making moves. And I just remember the college days and like, why do I not just stay in touch with people? But I didn’t learn about networking growing up. I didn’t learn about it in high school. Didn’t really learn about it in college or like the importance of it. I didn’t really learn about it until I started getting into real estate. And then that’s when I started learning how to network. And that’s… over the few past few years has really started developing. And now I’m like, okay, now I know like what I should have been doing 20 years ago. So it’s never too late to start, just start. Yeah.

[00: 23: 00 – 00: 24: 06]

But yeah, anyway, so okay, let’s get into the main, we’re rambling, but this is good chit chat. People should, are gonna take lessons and get inputs and gems from that. How did Lyrically Correct come about? Like who came up with the idea? Like, how are you getting information from it? Like I love the business model that you guys have because it’s really literally, and I’m reading the book, Frank and Roe Rich right now. This is the epitome of that book. Like, have you read that book? A while ago, a while ago. Yeah, I read it a while ago. And so this is a reread with my book club, but it’s literally like any like thought or imagination or anything in your head, you can just with definitiveness of purpose, turn an idea into reality. And that’s literally what you guys did. You know, this was information that’s out there and you packaged it into a product that is doing very well. And I wanna dig all into that. So how did it even start?

[00: 24: 07 – 00: 25: 44]

Sure, sure. So my cousin’s wife, her name is Nikki as well. She saw something on Instagram or something like that. Let’s say she saw one of the questions, someone posted a… question on Instagram or a meme or something like that. She texted to the group. She leaned over to her husband and was like, wow, this would be a cool game. And that was it. And he was like, yo, you’re right. We should make it a game. And they tell the story that he sat there and he was like, well, who can we reach out to make this happen? And he thought of Tiff and I, because of her background and because of my background. And he, I remember specifically, he texted me, yo D, you ever seen any games like this? And I was like, nah, I don’t think so. And he was like, yo, we should create one. I was like, yo, let’s do it. And you know, this is 2020, middle of the pandemic, everyone’s home, we have time on our hands. So immediately I jump into strategic planning, I jump into boss mode, right? And that’s me giving my own self credit, right? But I’m like, okay, so you do this. And I remember specifically the task was, okay, all four of us are gonna come up with 25 questions each. I’m gonna organize the entity and Tiff’s gonna start working.

[00: 25: 45 – 00: 27: 14]

So my wife, she built her career in fashion. She started in retail, then moved up to like, wholesale for a major fashion company. Then she moved over to private label stuff and all that. So she had knowledge of the manufacturing process. She had knowledge of dealing with manufacturers overseas and things like that. I was a second year law student and former, can I say retired? Retired banker who had just spent a better part of my young adult life. helping other entrepreneurs grow and manage their business using banking products. So I had seen entrepreneurs take ideas and grow them. I had, we’ve exited a couple of companies by via acquisition. I think I had one company go public. So I spent the better part of the last 10 years watching people do this. So I knew what steps to take. I knew what things to take. And then on top of that, I’m in law school learning about these how to manage and contracts and do all that. So again, you know, God doesn’t make mistakes, right? He gave me the first part of my career learning about business. And I spent many days at Chase like, damn man. I just wanna be my clients, right? They were business owners. I wanna be my clients.

[00: 27: 15 – 00: 28: 43]

And then I was in law school, you know, learning to be a lawyer, but at the end of the day, in my heart of hearts is like, I’m an entrepreneur. So back to your original point, I daily out task, I organize the entity, we come up with the questions and then everything, you know, from then the boss, then we got to pick a name. My wife has, she had a graphic designer that she worked with at one of her previous jobs. She reached out to him. She went researching through manufacturers. We spent some money getting samples and things like that. And a lot of people reach out to us, hey, I have this idea. I want to, where can I get this made at? And at first, we were giving that information out. And I told her, and I had to tell the team, I’m like, let’s stop. And it’s not that we don’t want to help, but this is our capital. We spent money to find our manufacturer. That’s hard work. That’s equity. And if people want that, They’re going to have to pay for it. So now, right, my wife has a whole other consultant business that she runs, helping people to go from idea to product. Oh, I didn’t even know that. This should have been a joint episode with Tiff too. No, somebody has to put the kids to bed, right? Somebody just has to put the, that’s what Duel was doing. Yeah, yeah. Good, somebody has to put the kids to bed.

[00: 28: 44 – 00: 30: 07]

That is great. And I love that because people don’t understand, like they’ll see your success and they’ll see that things are happening, but they don’t understand the grind and capital you actually had to put into getting it to the point. Right? It was one of my mentors that said, I used to say the same thing. I was like, man, it’s just, we just got this and we ran with it and it’s so crazy. And he said, no, you came to the table with 10 years of experience. Your wife came to the table with 10 years of experience. And that’s what allowed you guys to just hit the ground running. But the other thing is too, a lot of times people will have jobs or careers or just whatever experiences that they have and they don’t know what their strengths are or weaknesses are and how to monetize that or to even come up with an idea like this. So maybe this isn’t everybody, this wouldn’t have been the same success level. in somebody else’s hands because they didn’t have that other background and experience. But now how can people, and I know it’s a hard question I’m saying to you, but like, how do you think would help people to like kind of discover what they are, they already have like their talent in? Like, I know everyone’s looks on purpose and sometimes you got to start with what you have an experience and knowledge in and then go into purpose.

[00: 30: 08 – 00: 31: 57]

I think If we’re talking about business, do whatever it is you want to do and let the business figure itself out. Right. I think I look at my cousin and his wife and I look at them the way I look at Tesla or the way I look at maybe Steve Jobs or something like that. They had an idea. And then my wife and I, we came and made it a business. Right? So you don’t need this expertise. If you’re a fashion designer, just create the clothes. Right? Eventually the business will get right. Right? Everyone knows enough to say, okay, make this, sell this. And if you sell enough of it, then you can get the people in or you can take the time to learn all of the rest of the pieces. Right? I’ve watched that happen time. We’ve all watched it happen. Right? You look at the Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, I forget the guy name who started Tesla, but it was, or, or the guy, right. It wasn’t Elon Musk. Is it Elon Musk? Yeah. No, no, no. Elon Musk. Elon Musk is space, right? Richard Branson, one of them, Elon Musk or Richard Branson. No, but what I’m saying is he know Elon Musk from Tesla, but Tesla is named after the creator of the person who had the idea for the, the electronic vehicle, whatever their core business, right? Same thing with Uber. I just watched the Uber movie. The guy that we know to be the CEO and the one who made Uber big was not the creator of Uber, he was the business side of it. So creatives go ahead and create. The business part will come.

[00: 31: 58 – 00: 32: 37]

Okay guys, don’t kill me, but I’m going to have to cut this episode short. This is too juicy and we need to do this in a part two. So stay tuned for the next episode that airs and you can hear the rest of our conversation. Did you love this episode of Share the Wealth Show? Be sure to connect with Nicole by following her on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. If you picked up any of the gems that were dropped by today’s guests, make sure you not only put them in your bag, but if you know of someone who would benefit from this information, don’t keep it to yourself. Share the Wealth and make sure to leave us a rating and review. We’ll see you for next week’s episode. Subscribe so you’ll be notified.