Expert Financial Advisor Kevin Matthews Share His Top Investing Tips for Entrepreneurs

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Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
As a new entrepreneur, you’re likely more focused on how to make money in your business, but what do you do when you’re making money and want to multiply it?

One way to do that is investing. My guest today is an investing expert with the mission of making investing simple. Kevin L Matthews, II, is an award-winning, number one bestselling author and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNBC, and many others. He’s helped hundreds of individuals plan for retirement, in addition to managing more than $140 million in assets during his advisory career. In 2017, Kevin was named one of the top 100 Most Influential Financial Advisors by Investopedia. And today, he’s sharing some of his investing tips with us. Kevin, thank you so much for being here, it’s so awesome to meet you on camera.

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I am excited to talk about investing because I know that I should do some more of it. I do dabble here and there, but I know that I could do more, so I’m looking forward to diving deeper into that. But before we get deep into investing, tell us about your background and how you even got started in investing and becoming such a guru at it.

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah, so my journey really starts in 2010. I was an ECON major at Hampton University and took an internship to New York City, I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma originally, so it was a culture shock for me. And that’s where I was bombarded by all the Wall Street terms, all the things they were talking about, and I was utterly confused. It wasn’t until the last week that I figured it out and said, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t have to be complicated, but also, why doesn’t everybody know about investing and what it can do for you?” That’s why I started my company, BuildingBread and became a financial advisor, several years later, and really worked my way up the ladder. But it was that internship that really opened my eyes to it, but really opened the fact that it can be simple and investing is accessible for everybody, even entrepreneurs.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely. Piggybacking off what you said, investing is important for everyone. Our audience is entrepreneurs, mostly entrepreneurs, so the premise of the show is to help entrepreneurs build better businesses, and I think that investing is instrumental to that. In your opinion, why is investing important for entrepreneurs?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah, I think of it as let’s say, if you’re opening a restaurant, it’s opening that second location, it is broadening your income streams, increasing your wealth. But it’s also giving you access to a different level of wealth without having to be as active in it. As an entrepreneur, you know how it is, you’re hiring, you’re figuring out prices, you’re marketing, you do a lot of stuff. I don’t have to do that with the market. And it’s a way to accelerate, even double my wealth in some cases. And we’ll look at any entrepreneur, whether it’s someone like Shaquille O’Neal or Magic Johnson, even Michael Jordan, all of these entrepreneurs have businesses, but they also invest in the market too. And it’s a way to unlock a different tier of wealth building, one that can be a lot more passive.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely. As entrepreneurs, we’re so used to being hands on and feeling like you have to do something or do a lot, to get money or to get revenue, but investing shows a whole different way, so that completely makes sense. What would you say, Kevin, are the top three do’s or don’ts of investing? What are the three headlines we need to know about investing?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. I’ll kind of mix these in together. I would say the first thing is do be consistent. As entrepreneurs, sometimes you go out there and you have an instant success. Investing is not always like that. It’s something that you want to be consistent with, its something that you do day in and day out, so that’s number one. Number two is, don’t fall for the hype. There are a lot of things out there that say, “Oh my God, this is going to be the next Google, the next Amazon, the next big thing.” Everything can’t be the next Amazon, that’s just the honest truth. Kind of tune out the noise, tune out the hype. And then I would say the next thing is to be patient. Investing does take time. You are not going to become a millionaire overnight, but it can happen over time.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Right. I think that’s good because investing, when we think of investing, people want things so fast, but it doesn’t work like that. What is a realistic expectation or timeline? Because people are in the now, especially with the age that we have now, social media, things are right in your face, but investing isn’t always like that, right Kevin? When someone is investing, what expectations should they have for themselves in terms of turning a profit or no expectation at all?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. I think honestly, I would have no expectation at all in terms of what profit level. Obviously everybody wants to make money and you should aim for that. But I wouldn’t say, at the end of this month, I should have $20,000 or anything like that. What I would say is in terms of expectations, I would expect to invest X amount over a certain period of time, maybe it’s $1,000 a month, I want to do this four or five years or something to that degree. And I think that’s the most important thing is expecting to put money in, expecting to put time in and the result is going to be the result.
Now we know over time, we have data that shows us that the market on average, returns anywhere between 7 to 10%. Now again, that’s an average. Very rarely, can you point to a day on the calendar where you made exactly 10%. That’s why you don’t want to just hone in on the return. But I want to hone in on saying it’s 10% of my revenue. It’s $1000 dollars a month or whatever that number’s going to be, but I want to put the expectation on the time and money I’m putting in to investing, as opposed to the exact dollar amount that I’m going to get out of it.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That makes sense, because you can only expect what you can control, so I can control how much I put in, so I can expect to continually invest this much and really inevitably, there’s going to be something, if you stay committed, you stay consistent as you mentioned. Awesome, I feel like I got that. Investing is huge. It’s a huge category. What would you say are the various forms of investing that you particularly encourage?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah, There’s passive investing and active investing. Passive investing says, “Look, I’m going to buy something,” like what we call index funds, that represents an entire sector of the entire stock market. And it says, “Look, I’m going to put my money in and I’m going to go away. I don’t have to check on it. I’ll just come back whenever I come back,” and that is passive. Then you have active investing. These are people, usually the ones that you see on TV, the ones they make movies about, where you’re going in and you’re looking at charts, you’re looking at data sheets, you’re just in the weeds and data has shown that more people are actually more successful on the passive investing route.
I think for entrepreneurs, you’ve got a lot more things to worry about and you definitely want to be more passive. Those are the two styles of investing. Those are two most popular, but again, those who are passive investors, we see more billionaires out of that category. We see people who are less stressed in that category, and then again, those who tend to be a little more successful as well.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
And that’s interesting because I didn’t think that, because people think that the more you pay attention to it, then you move around and you move around as you think. But sometimes moving so much, isn’t really what you should be doing.

Kevin Matthews:
You’re actually right. There’s a study that was published, it might’ve been 10 or 11 years ago now, but essentially you really don’t want to check your account more than four times a year. When you’re starting to check daily, weekly, monthly, you tend to over correct, and you actually hurt your overall performance. I like to think of it and you’re in Atlanta, so I know traffic is bad, but it’s kind of like when you move lanes over and then the lane you just left speeds up, it’s like, “Ah, why did I do that?” That tends to happen.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That is the perfect analogy, Kevin. I think everyone can relate to that. I think that happened to me this morning.

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah, definitely.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I think a bulk of people who want to get into investing, they might not have much, but they want to turn it and flip it into something. But I also know that we have viewers that are established entrepreneurs. They’re having great revenue from their business. And how can those people use investing or what advice would you have for them that want to multiply their fortune? Because there’s some new investors that, they might have a small sum to start with and just starting easy, but someone who you feel like or someone who’s coming to you and says, they have, they’ve been successful with their business. I have this large lump sum of money. What advice would you give for someone like that?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. The process, right? The process is the exact same, it’s just adding a zero or two, depending on how much you have to invest. For example, in 1995, that was when Windows Explorer came out. If you put in $100 a month from 1995, until May of 2022, you’re looking at more than $680,000. $680,000, on just $100 a month. If you’re already well and your business is thriving, you can afford to do $10,000 a month, then you’re adding a few zeros, to that amount, but the process is still simple.
For example, it’s still being consistent. That’s a long time from ’95 until now. It’s not following the hype. A lot of people don’t see Microsoft as being something ridiculously crazy. It’s something that’s there, that’s simple, that’s relatively boring. And those are the same exact steps that we had talked about earlier will apply, whether you’re starting out very, very small or you’re someone who’s already established. But being consistent, focusing on long term, those are still going to help you to be incredibly successful.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Nice. What would you say to someone who has fear of investing their money? Because I think a lot of people struggle with that, but so many people are successful with investing, but a lot of people also have the fear of doing it. What do you say to people like that?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. One is, I understand. I totally understand that, that fear is there. I’ll also say that you’re an entrepreneur. The stats aren’t the stats and that is also scary. But it’s a different type of fear, because as an entrepreneur, you feel, I’m an entrepreneur myself, you feel that I have my hands on the wheel. I can stare steer things to a degree, whereas the market, I don’t really have that much control. But I will say this though, when you think about how high or low the market has been, you can go back to 1990. There have only been five times that the stock market has been negative in terms of a bear market. That’s it, that’s just five times. And we’re talking 20, almost 30 years at this point. It’s really taking a step back and playing the numbers and understanding what actually happens.
Because that’s what we feel, where it’s like, “Oh my God, it feels like things are the worst thing ever.” And you look back and say, “Wait a minute? This is not that bad.” So in 2022, the market is down. It is not as bad as what it was in 2020. It’s nowhere near as bad as what it was in 2008 and that’s not that bad. And that’s only three times since 2008 that the market has been like this, so it’s really taking a step back and saying, “It might not be what I think it is. And the last thing I’ll say too, is that as people, we are programmed to remember the worst thing. You remember that bad, embarrassing fall. You remember the hurricane, you remember the snowstorm, especially in Atlanta. I know y’all remember that snow storm. But all the perfect days, yeah, you don’t think nothing about it. I think that happens in investing too. All the years in between, a lot of us don’t think about.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s so true because we just talk about when the market was bad, but what about when the market was good and everyone was flourishing?

Kevin Matthews:
All these times. Yeah, all these types of market was good and a lot of people don’t even register that.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That makes perfect sense. When I was doing some research on you, Kevin, I found your book, From Burning to Blueprint. What is your book about, because I love the title. Tell us about the book. What inspired you to write it? And what’s your goal with the book?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I’m originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, the home of Black Wall Street, born and raised, middle school, high school, birth, all that was in Tulsa. And for me, I grew up wanting to know what happened to Black Wall Street and how was it that, now it’s 100 year, when I was a kid, it was 80 years or so. How’s it that we haven’t rebuilt anything? What happened to that wealth and what is preventing us from having it again? And that was really, the premise of the book, is my story of figuring out what exactly happened in Tulsa, and how do we rebuild Black Wall Street in Tulsa and everywhere else across the world. I talk about how much racism has cost the black community. I talk about entrepreneurship. I talk about how you can start investing in doing that, not just for yourself, but for generational wealth as well.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely. That’s fantastic. When did the book come out?

Kevin Matthews:
The book came out last year, May of 2021.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Awesome. And where can viewers grab a copy of it?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah, you can grab a copy on Amazon. It is also carried in a lot of black owned bookstores, so if you have one in your area, feel free to pick one up there as well.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Fantastic. Kevin, tell us about the services you offer in your digital products, for people who want to work with you or at least learn from you, about investing. What do you have to offer?

Kevin Matthews:
Yeah. Again, my thing is I want to make investing simple and everything I do, I want to make sure that I’m not using complicated words, but I want anybody who interacts with me to be able to say, “Look, I get it. I want to go ahead and take action.” I have a YouTube channel, I have a website, you go to buildingbread.com and find all of that information there. I also teach free classes at buildingbread.com/freeclass, where you can learn more about investing and how to make investing work for you.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Fantastic. Well, Kevin, thank you so much. I know I learned a lot. I am kind of in that category with a little bit of fear, but I’ve overcome that, but I feel like I could be doing a little bit more. I know that if it was helpful and inspiring for me, for everyone that is watching, it has done the same. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to having you again.

Kevin Matthews:
Yes. Thank you for having me.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Well, I hope today’s show help to educate and inspire you as you pursue your business goals. Be sure to share today’s show with someone who can benefit and visit MyASBN.com and subscribe. If you have any questions or comments about today’s show, I would love to hear from you, send me a message or comment on Instagram at @daynathomaslaw. Remember to tune in next week and every week to make sure your business is launched and legal.