 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. And guys, we are back here in Honolulu, Hawaii with the Prince of Investing Show right here in Honolulu, Hawaii on Think Tech Studio. Guys, this is episode six, and we still hadn't gotten canceled. Man, isn't that crazy? But I want to say thank you guys for all of the amazing support throughout the globe who's tuned in all across the place and making us the number one financial literacy show here in Hawaii. So thank you guys for all the support. But as always, guys, I don't have a lot of time, and I definitely know you guys don't have a lot of time. So we're going to jump straight into it. So today, we are going to talk about a lot of, you know, we know a lot of athletes, you know, professional athletes, NBA, NFL athletes and stuff like that. And we're going to talk about how to get into investing. Now this is a crazy story. Y'all know earlier this year, I was over at Warren Buffett's meeting at Berkshire Halfway in Omaha, Nebraska. While I'm there, I'm going around. I'm, you know, this is my first time there. I'm trying to get interviews, and nobody would give me an interview, right? So, you know, people are like, well, who are you, you know, because you got Yahoo there, CNN is there, Fox is there, all these other big major brands that are there, then it's just little old media with my tripod and my phone pretty much. So then I take a look and I look over and I see a shock. It's this six, seven guy, he's wearing the fitted cap. And I look over and I'm like, man, I think that's a metal world piece. For you guys who don't know metal world piece, you know, he played in the NBA for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years or something like that. He played for Chicago LA and all the way in 2010 when he won the NBA championship. He won the NBA championship with the LA Lakers and Kobe Bryant in that game set, that game seven, Boston versus LA, where he came in and scored like 20 something points, you know, hit two, three points. I remember like it was yesterday. And I went to him and I said, Hey, I said, Hey, Melody, you know, I said, I've been told no about 20 times. I didn't care about another no. So I said, Hey, Melody, you mind if I get a quick interview? Long story short, he actually gave me the interview. When he gave me the interview, that was my first interview at Berkshire. And that gave me the confidence and built me up to get all the other things that you guys saw on at Berkshire. So I want to thank him personally. But even better for that, I reached out to him and I said, Hey, would you mind come on the show? When he said sure. So no further ado, guys, here's Mr. Metal World Piece. Metal, how's it going? Everything's great. Everything's great. Man, it's good to be on your show. That was my first time at the Berkshire Hathaway meetings. And, you know, I was absorbing everything. So I had a good time. Now, the thing about it was you were the last person I was expecting to see at Berkshire Hathaway meeting. And when I saw you, I'm like, wow, I didn't know Metal was into investing, right? So what got you into investing? Well, the main thing is as I was growing up, I was into friends, you know, having a good time and into the streets and, you know, having to pass my test just to play NCAA basketball. So I was kind of forced to become a good student academically major in math for before I announced I was going to the NBA. So only did two years of college. And I remember wanting to start my own shoe company when I was 19 years old. Similar to what LaVar's doing for his kids. I wanted to do that for myself. And when I was trying to do that, nobody would help me. So throughout my whole entire first half of my career, I always wanted to do business. I was always trying to be entrepreneurial. But I never had the guidance and nobody ever would just sit me down or just help me out and show me business and teach me how to do business. Everybody was always trying to preserve my wealth, which is great. But as an entrepreneur, you want to grow your wealth, right? So as I got older, one of the things that was my weak point was the stock market and companies and analyzing companies. So I decided to just learn a little by a little by a little. And it became interesting when I first started, it was intimidating. And you see big companies and you're going to invest in companies and you're afraid, you might lose money, or you got to put in that work. And you got to research and do analytical work. That's like tiring, frustrating and intimidating. And you know what I'm saying? Mentally tired. But as you get more comfortable with it and meet different people and talk about different things, that's what led me to meet you at a bird shop. Wow. Wow. Nice. Now what made you give me that interview? You know, I don't think you probably, I didn't see you do another interview or anything like that. You know, I know a lot of people want to meet you. For me, it was great because I never got a chance to talk about finance from my point of view. I always heard about finance from a network's point of view or a host's point of view or some rich billionaires point of view out of an interview. But from my point of view, you know, I'm from the streets just like anybody else. But most of my friends invested in, you know, crack or cocaine, you understand? Or rap or whatever. You see what I'm saying? And we never was exposed to investing in real estate, investing in the stock market, researching companies. You know, these things are fun. They make money. And all you want to do as a child is make money. So I was just happy to be there. And I was happy to learn when I first got at the line, I was probably the only black person I saw until I saw you. And then I saw a couple other people. Another black guy, another black guy. A black girl. Oh, wow. But it was really cool to be there. A lot of great people. And when I did the interview, I was honored to do the interview quite honestly, because nobody asked me for an interview. I wanted to be interviewed. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's pretty cool that, you know, you say, hey, I was a lot of people weren't exposed. And for people who are viewing this and people who know who I am, they know two years ago for what I've been doing in children's financial literacy with animated cartoons, with books, with, you know, workshops, I've been doing with me and myself and my son. We've been doing over years. It's just over the years, you know, we just slowly, slowly, you know, gathering exposure for it. And that's very interesting to hear. But when you got, we hear about people in the NBA, right, throughout your career, you know, we're seeing you guys make millions and millions and millions of dollars. And I'm like, wow, these guys are making millions and millions. They never have a financial issue. You know, if I was in their position, I'll be doing XYZ, this and this and that. So why don't athletes or professional athletes do this? Why we hear these sad stories of them going broke or, you know, I made all these millions of dollars? What happened? Well, the first thing is that when you read about an athlete going broke, people never talk about how those athletes stimulated the economy. So I want to really, you know, give a shout out to those athletes who helped people who the government was helping anyway. A lot of people complained about people getting on Medicare and Medicaid and the government got to pay for this. The government got to pay for that. Well, a lot of those athletes that went broke, they took care of a lot of citizens and they never get credit for taking care of so many citizens. At least a billion dollars probably has been spent on citizens from athletes. So you got to recognize them for that. They should be commended for that. Now, the flip side is the investing. When you become a professional basketball player, you're a high pick. You make $10 million a year, $20 million a year. Immediately, you are a $20 million person after it's actually a $10 million person. All right, cool. So now people put you in that title or that lane of being rich. So you got to live up to that. In order to live up to that, you got to have financial literacy. You have to know how to invest and where to invest and went to buy a real estate and went to sell. Well, not everybody knows. So although you see a lot of guys making that amount of money, they are not really the $10 million person that you might think they are. And then you'll get a guy who is maybe a one or two million dollar person who grows his wealth to 10, 20, 30, $50 million. It's because of the mindset. So not everybody has the mindset. So you have to, one, commend a lot of those athletes for helping family, for helping friends, even though they get taken advantage of. But wow, what a thing to do. And nobody talks about that. And on the flip side, you have to put in things in our board of education school system that is necessary. Financial literacy, real estate class, home owners. That's why you see countries like China's beating us. A lot of people don't know. But in China, in order to go to a public school, you must own a home. If your family doesn't own a home, they will not be able to go to school. So then when you see the Chinese come to America, they buy real estate. Not because they have the money. A lot of Americans have money to buy real estate, but you don't see a lot of Americans that was never introduced to real estate buying real estate and flipping properties. But when you see the foreigners come over here, mainly Chinese, they know the business. You understand? So we're in terms of, we're behind A-ball globally when it comes to that type of stuff. And we have to fix that problem. And then we'll see it get better in the future. Okay. Now, when I look back at it, I say you're 100% correct. I even see it at a much lower level where I see people that, let's say, when your network doesn't grow, that's one of the problems I see with a lot of professional athletes. It happens overnight. Someone who's been watching me, they see me, they see, when you saw me at Berkshire, you met a world peace. So automatically, you're at the top. You're an NBA athlete, you're this. They don't know behind the scenes how many videos, how many books, and how much stuff I had to do just to get to Berkshire. And then they become one of the first only independent, and of course, I was the only African American there, media outlet. But you know what? You're the first independent. That's good enough. Oh yeah. So I had, but along my path, my network has slowly changed. You know, my network has slowly changed over the years. So I meet, you know, better and better people who have a higher network. And I learned, read a lot of books. I meet a lot of authors like here on the show. In the past, you see a lot of, you know, gigantic real estate guys, a lot of gigantic, you know, entrepreneurs and things like that from Wall Street, all the other good stuff. But so, and I think what an athlete, they go from, like you said, they go from the streets, all of a sudden, their first round pick, they get $10 million, they're multi-millionaire, and their whole circle is the exact same from the streets. So when they look to invest, they don't have, you know, financial experts, business people, entrepreneurs, investors around them. Then on top of that, what I've learned so far in my years, that a lot of the financial industry is credit repair. It's geared towards adults. Who is it geared towards children? You know, now when I go teach, you know, a 30-year-old, I have people that are, I've been to universities that are, you know, these are people of doctorate degrees, and they're trying to get into investing, and I think one of the biggest problems is why there's so foreign to them is because it's not introduced to them as a child. Right. So it's not, you know, it's like, you're going up, someone grows up, they'll be like, well, I'll stay away from that because I don't know what it is. I'll stay away, and I don't care where you go at, what you do in this world, it's, you will end up into some type of financial situation. You will need some type of financial help. And my years of watching you on the, you know, the NBA, win championships, your highs, your lows, you know, from being run on tests to, you know, the ironic, you know, the brawl that you went through, then coming back as metal world peace, that up and down that I've seen, I never heard you speak like this, that's why I had to have you on the show, and being a professional athlete, turning into investors. Now, what do you think, what do you think we should do as far as getting more athletes or professional athletes to become investors or entrepreneurs? Deep for me. So my team, my type of investment is a little different from investing capital. So I'm on the flip side, right? So I like to raise monies, but I had to see how you investor minds work. So I went, I go to a lot of investor conferences and different things like that. So what I like to do is position my companies to be bought out or to position them to have investments with smart investors. And then also with the clients that I have, I want to position their companies to be able to be in a situation to get investments also. So you got to have everything in place. For example, if you have a Berkshire bought, what was the last company they acquired? They just acquired American Express, I guess, over the last couple of years. So American Express had to have, you know, a lot of things in place. They couldn't have, you know, any stones like unturned, you know, from marketing, from, you know, from staffing, from personal, everything had to be in place. And sometimes, so for me, in my earlier days as an entrepreneur, not an investor, as just entrepreneur, you know, I never had everything in place. So it's not sexy to an investor. So it's too sized to it, you know, and it's all important. So it's important you learn the mind of an investor. Then it's important you learn the mind of somebody who's trying to raise money. So a lot of the athletes have to make sure they open up their minds to both sides. Okay. Well, Mena, we're going to get more into your entrepreneurial ventures and investing in entrances and stuff like that. But we got to take a quick one minute commercial break. Once we come out of this commercial break, we're going to get more into mental world pieces, entrepreneurship ventures, LaVar Ball, all the other good stuff like that. And you know what, we got to stay tuned. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every Monday at one o'clock, I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest, both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. Back here with NBA champion, NBA legend, meta world peace, hearing him, you know, talk like I never heard him talk before, if I haven't seen him anywhere, on my personal thing, seeing him talk about investing. But the thing I was surprised when I met meta, we all know he's an NBA champion, right? We all know, you know, we all know him as an athlete, right? What I didn't know about meta was, after I had met him, and I was like, man, you know, this is somebody I watched on TV, you meet him in person, like, man, they're actually a pretty cool person. So as I did my research on him, I said, man, I didn't know he was a children's book author. I even told the people here in the studio, they was like, man, I got children's books. I'm like, yes. He has, I counted six children's books that you've written since 2014, dating to now with the panda's friend. Then also, I saw your clothing line that you have as well. What got you into children's books and building your own clothing line? The thing that got me into children's books was wanting to give back. And I had a lot of fans who were parents. And, you know, as a parent that wasn't, I would say, the most ready to myself when I first had my child at 16 years old. I always wanted to make sure my fans who are parents, especially young parents, that they reach their children. Even though my books is not, I would say like Dr. Seuss, where Dr. Seuss, you've never seen him in any instances. You've never seen him in any trouble. So it's like, should I do a children's book? Am I ready to do a children's book? I often promote, I'm from the streets and I really, I'm a fan of the streets because that's where I'm from. And am I ready to do a children's book? But I thought it was necessary because although I have my own person, my own character and personality, I still affect a lot of people out there. And family is very important to me. So if family is important to me, why should I just hold that in and not give that back to somebody else? So children's books is very, very important to me. I'm going to do more. And I want to do some more where it's a little bit more edgy, a little bit more realistic. Because for me, when I was a kid, Dr. Seuss was good, but I needed to know how to avoid being in the streets. You understand? So not enough children's books is realistic for that kid who can't relate to Green Eggs in here. You know, some kids need something else. And it's very important to me, things that are, you know, just being transparent and just being honest. It's very important to me to give back and just get right to the point. For example, in elementary schools, I think they should teach kids about the importance on being a good partner, the importance on being a good parent. They often learn about how to disrespect women and clubs. And they'll often learn about how to, you know, do this and that to another person on an album. But do they often, but do they learn about being a good partner, being a good parent? Right. They learn about finance and literacy and real estate. So honesty for me is everything. And that's why when people see me on YouTube, when they see me out there, you're not going to get somebody who's trying to be corporate, who's trying to be in, you know, Coca-Cola commercials, like they're going to get me at all times. Because I think it's very important, you know, it's not enough for that. So chosen books is something that's dear to my heart. Wow. Okay. Well, man, I don't think nobody out there is questioning how real you are. Everybody knows that meta is, is really, is come. I knew that before I met you, but it was kind of, you know, I, I wasn't, I see you play basketball before, you know, I went to a court side game in San Diego. Back when I had won a championship, you had the championship team together. So I've seen you before. So that wasn't my first time ever seeing you in person. But I was court side. You didn't know who I was. But, you know, but when I saw you later on, and I got a chance to talk to you and interact with you, you know, whatnot, I was like, wow, he's, he's actually a real person. And, you know, I'm actually shocked that you showed up. I didn't think he was going to show up. When I came into the studio, everybody's like, that is going to come. I'm like, he say is I talked to him yesterday, you know, but we'll see. Now, that's crazy. Now, I feel, I feel that exact same way, you know, like I've written over the last two and a half years, I've written two, two of his books myself. And that was true. You know, we, me and my son started on YouTube about investing four years ago. Rather, I got, you know, during my time, I went and got my MBA, got my different investment license and stuff like that. And he was two at the time. I wasn't taught about financial literacy. But as I learned about it, and I had my son sitting on my left, my lap named Wesley, then we slowly, it just turned into something we know writing books, we know going to shard tank, we are doing all the other great stuff. But that's enough about me. A couple of questions I got to ask you, because I know people that want to ask these questions. Now you spoke about parenting, and you spoke about entrepreneurship and business and your history with the Lakers and being with the Lakers. I'm pretty sure you probably met or been around LeVar Ball and the Ball family and stuff like that. How do you feel he's doing with his kids and with the whole shoe brands and building the entrepreneurship, kind of changing the game a little bit. And I know you said you wanted to start your own entrepreneurship and shoes. What do you think about that whole situation? I think it's great. You know, America gives you the opportunity to do business. And it also gives you the opportunity to be a Nike and have a, you know, strong hold on the market. But it also gives you the opportunity to be ambitious and to dream. And that's what LeVar is doing. You know, he's trying to either get a big deal right out the gates where his kids can become billionaires instantly with the deal he's trying to get, or just do it on his own. He's not perfect in terms of what the majority of the public wants to see, but he is perfect for his children. You know, I feel that he has three pros on his hand. And the one nobody's talking about, he's going to be a pro, okay? LeAngelo. He's going to be a pro. He's a really good shooter. I played against him two weeks ago. Yeah. So for a dad to give that much time to each of their children, and all his children are very good players, and they're smart, they're entrepreneurial, like that needs to be commended. They should have eventually maybe a class on him and how do he do it? Because it's very important. How do you turn, you know, something out of nothing? And he's doing that not only with his kids, but he's doing that with a brand and his own personality. You know, so you have three kids, you have the brand, then you have your own personality. And now on top of that, you have collectively, you know, he has six different empires gone. That's pretty brilliant. Okay. Very interesting, interesting perspective. Now, another question I wanted to ask you is, during your time in your history, you had the opportunity to play with two of the greatest players of, you know, our past couple of decades, speaking of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. You know, I know Kobe was your teammate, and you played together with Kobe. And I think you played with Michael at one time too. I know I saw a video. I don't know if you did. You did play with Michael. So you did play with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Which one of those would you say is the best? And why? Well, man, it's tough, man, like Michael, Kobe, LeBron. I mean, is the difference between an apple and a pear and a maybe, I'm not going to say a green apple, because a green apple is not as good as a red apple. I like green apple better, but okay. You like green apples? Yeah, I like green apples. I think they're way better. Well, they have more electrolytes than red apples. There's a much better thing to drink than Gatorade or something like that, right? So it's better to have a green apple. But so that's good in itself, right? And that's the difference between those guys. They're all different. They have different DNA, but they're very effective, and they're all champions. And LeBron has been to the finals more than any of them. And Kobe has more rings than LeBron, and then Michael has more rings than all of them. But LeBron's average triple double. These guys are great. So it's hard to say who's better, man. It's really, it really is. It's like choosing between your kids. Which one of your kids is better than others? Well, man, if you were, if you had to play a pickup game, which one would you pick? I had to play a pickup game. And you had to pick one all three of them on the sideline. You know, I'm going to ask you the tough questions, man. None of them. I don't want to play with those. I'll play it myself. I don't need those guys to win the game, quite honestly. You know, I much rather play against those guys. And I'll tell you a story. Right before I came to the Lakers, I was trying to go to Greece, actually, because I wanted to play overseas in the middle of my career. I always wanted to play overseas, but my agent said nobody wanted me, which is, I don't believe that. I don't think he tried. And then I tried to play with Detroit or any other team. I didn't want to play with Kobe because why would I want to play with somebody who's really good? It just doesn't make sense to me, right? I want to beat those guys so I could have a better legacy. And but the only reason I was with the Lakers is because no other team wanted me at that time. So I had no choice but to go to the Lakers. Wow. And then I also actually, I could have went to Cleveland. LeBron actually called me a good guy. I love that. He's a man now. We'll call him a kid, but he's a man. But I didn't want to play with him because why would I want to play with LeBron? It just doesn't make sense to me because I want to beat LeBron. It's much better for my legacy if I beat these guys. So I wanted to play with Kobe, but the only reason I played with Kobe was because it just had no choice. And it was between LeBron and Kobe for the most part, but I didn't feel like holding LeBron back because I already kind of said I'm not going to play there and nobody else wanted me. So I was forced to play with the great ones, but that's not what I wanted. Now coming into 2017, 2018 season, who's going to win the championship this year? Who you putting your money on? It's been a lot of moving around in the NBA. I want to see Nick Young get his to get his ring. So I mean, I would love to see Nick Young get his ring. And so I probably would be writing The Warriors, but my family and my household were LeBron James fans. So we always like to see you in LeBron wins. Yeah, so I'm kind of in conflict. Okay. For guys out there, if you comment below the video, what you got to do, you got to comment below. And the first, I say, let's go with the first 10 people, the first 10 people to comment below that I see, you will get one of metal world pieces books. You will get something from his clothing line panda, panda friends, maybe it may be a hat, maybe a t-shirt, maybe a hoodie or one of his six books, but something out there, we're going to give away for metal world peace. Now going forward with this, that's one of the things I wanted to get out there as well. Going into your time of your history, what has been your best investment? What has been your worst investment? The worst investment was the music because it's a business and I treated it as a passion. So I did spend a couple of million with the music. Best investment was definitely that my kids are putting the time into them. Sons is about two scholarships about to happen, potentially a third one. Two potential NBA players, very smart kids. So that's great family investments. My daughter is potentially going to be a chef. She's in chef school. So full great investments there. And then financially, I think my best investment was, I would say, I do enjoy the stock market, paying attention to it. It's harder to time it, but I do enjoy the stock market. And I would say my best investment was my startups, putting a little skin in the game and then raising money. So not starting the product for a million dollars or two, three million dollars, just starting it, maybe 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 dollars, starting the project, showing your potential investors that, hey, this is the idea. I do have skin in the game. Some cases you put in 100, 200, but not putting in the full amount and then finding really smart investors. Not somebody that only has money, but somebody that can add value to your company. So my smartest investment has been my partners. All my partners are really, really smart. They're invested in my company and they add so much value. And so now we're able to grow even more. So you just see the pandas friend taking off, started four years ago. And you just see more from it because we have an investment and we got smart people around us. Wow. Okay. Now I know my producer in my ear is like, Hey, friends, you got to close out the show. You got to close out the show. But I got one more question for you, right? Yeah. For anybody, young athletes, maybe that's D one or whatever that's becoming pro or there's going pro. Right. Financially, what would be the best advice? Looking back, what would you tell the young metal world piece that was their first round traffic? I would say just take an economics class and don't think about it as class and think about it as Oh, my this is hard. I don't want to be here. Think about it. You're prepared for your future. Economics covers a lot of things, a broad range of topics. And I think every athlete not only should take it, it should be mandatory for for all student athletes to take that class because it's going to add value to them. They're going to be assets to the generation coming after them. Yeah. So we're not behind, you know, America's behind a lot of things. So I would say economics. Let's take an economics class. And then on top of your other passion classes, whether it's acting or being a lawyer, whatever that is, as a student athlete, I can potentially make millions and millions of dollars. Take an economics class. Okay. All right. Now, metal, is there anything you want to listen or leave out there for any listener or viewer from around the globe? Yeah. What do you anything you want to say to them one, two, how can they get in contact with you or follow you or anything like anything you want to do? Oh, you can get in contact with me on metalworldpiece.com. Just send me a message. And it comes right to me. And then also treat your earth right, because if you treat the earth right, it'll treat you right. It'll provide more fruits. It'll provide more food. It'll provide you that good pasta that you eat. But when you treat it wrong, it gets mad and it does weird things. So, you know, don't forget that and treat your earth the right way. Okay. So, man, you probably didn't know this, but I got a little skills myself. I used to play ball a little bit. You know, I'm just playing. I never got picked up. I'm a guy. You can try that one. They made me play one-on-one. We can put it on your show. Oh, play you one-on-one? Oh, all right. So y'all heard it right here live. Metalworldpiece, he's going to play me one-on-one. You know, I'm going to have to, you know, lace up and, you know, I don't know. We'll see how that goes. But I definitely want to thank you for stopping by, taking time out of your day out there in LA, for calling in. I would love to go even way longer than this, because, you know, here you talk about financial literacy. It blows my mind. That's a passionate thing. Let's do it again. Oh, yeah, definitely. We'll have to see. So, he's going to do it again. So, hey, we definitely got to have you back. But anyway, guys, I know my producer's in my earpiece like, man, you need to close out the show. So, if I go ahead and close out the show, guys, thank you guys for tuning in to The Prince of Invest in each and every week here on Think Tech Hawaii. If you want to follow Prince Dikes, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, follow the investor show. And as always, until the next time you see me doing some goofy cartoon, podcasts or whatever, peace. Be safe. I'm out. Thank you.