"Empowerment Hour " with Gregory Malcolm - Monday (07/27/2020)

I'm doing well, Darwin. Thanks for the, well, that was quite a worthy introduction. Not sure if I'm deserving, but thanks, man. But before we get into it, Darwin, let me just say that you've been doing a really commendable job as a moderator for the Empowerment sessions. I've had the privilege and benefit of seeing quite a few of them, either live or taped, and I think you've got a natural knack for this moderating stuff. I know you and I were talking, I was asking if you had some training and background in this, and you said you didn't, it came naturally. But I must say, it's your calling, really. Fantastic job.

All right, good stuff. So first, let me say to the viewers, to the Rusea's family, as well as to the broader Rusea's community, sincerely hope everyone's doing well. Tough times we're going through, impact is wide-ranging, but I do trust everyone's hanging in there and coping well. About me, people probably know me more as the quieter, reserved half of the brother duo of Troy and Bulla. Troy is my brother, obviously. I went to Rusea's, graduated from Rusea's in '83, I graduated fifth form in 1983, and I actually went on and did two years of sixth form in Jamaica before, of course, doing my CXCs, A-Levels, and all that stuff, and I did relatively well in those studies. Then I left. When I left Rusea's, I went to work for one of the Big Four accounting firms in the island. The Big Four firms in Jamaica work off the British system, the chartered accountancy system, and they actually recruit a few high schoolers each year. Their main pool of talent is from the colleges and universities, but they select a few high schoolers. I was one of three high schoolers that joined this Big Four firm in '85. When I left Rusea's, I moved to Kingston and was working with them for about nine months, going around doing varying audits of some of the local Jamaican companies. Then in '86, I left and came to the U.S. This was, I don't want to say a mass migration, but it was almost a mass migration of the entire family. With a few exceptions, about 10 of us migrated to the U.S. I personally was enjoying working in Jamaica; I didn't really have much interest in coming overseas. But what happened was, when we got to the embassy and we interviewed, this included Troy as well—Bulla Troy, I'll refer to him as Troy rather than Bulla—and because of his age, he was past the age where he could be sponsored by my aunt, who was the one sponsoring us here. So someone had to stay behind, and Troy was the one. I ultimately came here in '86. You come to the U.S., New York, it was the typical immigrant story: you struggle to find your way around. I actually migrated with my uncle, and my uncle is actually the father of Bosu, so Buzz and I are cousins. Yeah, Kirk. And I call him Andrew, I don't know what people know him as. It's a popular name, I know, but Andrew is what I call him. He's the pastor of Casta Cup winner for a secret. Correct. Yes, yes. Of course, I used to go around with my uncle, who was a cabinet maker when we got here, and help him out a bit. Then about three or four months later, I actually got my first gig. I was applying for jobs all over. My first gig was on the stock market. I was working with a brokerage firm, based on the exchange. I wasn't a broker, just to be clear; I didn't have the lofty job of being a broker. I was one of the backroom analysts largely working on settling the trade. Imagine you see it on TV, all the brokers on the exchange shouting at each other, it looks quite confusing. Well, they make mistakes. Firm A may say I want to buy 100 shares of stock, firm B says I want to sell 100 shares. Instead of capturing firm A and firm B in the transaction, somehow one of them picks up firm C. My job at the end of the trading day was to find out who the real buyers and sellers are so we could settle the trade. It was during those years that I really picked up an understanding of the stock market, financing, investing, all that good stuff. At the same time, I was also going to college, studying. Roughly four years later, I got my bachelor's in accounting. As soon as I got my bachelor's, I left the brokerage firm and went to work in public accounting, again doing auditing. I ended up back with a Big Four firm, did auditing for about five or six years. Then I left that job and joined my current company, which is a major global multinational. People would know this company; it's a personal goods, home care company with a global footprint. I've been with them now for 21 years.

Yeah, absolutely. You're right. I was born in Lucea Town, went to Lucea Primary, and Miss Enid Gonzalez was the principal. I was generally a very good kid, so I didn't have to get subjected to the whip too often. But there were times I showed up late and got that spanking in your palm and all that stuff. So that discipline started there. I also must commend, I had some strong individuals around me. I give a lot of praise and commendation to my brother Troy. At the time I didn't recognize it, but growing up in Lucea, his friends were my friends. I remember if I'd go out and try to hang out with some of the friends, Troy was there as well, and he would chase me away. I couldn't be in the same place at the same time. I ended up spending most of my time behind the gates in my house. That's how a lot of people tend to remember me. When they ask who I am, they say, 'Oh, that's the boy that used to be behind the gate.' Part of it is because of the discipline that I was subjected to. Troy being one of the prime disciplinarians, even though he's not that much older than I am.

Yeah. When I was very young, I wanted to be a lawyer. I was quite good in the English language. When I got to Rusea's, I still maintained good grades in English. But it was about in third or fourth form when I came across one of the persons that I say is one of the great educators of our time in Lucea. His name is Desmond, Mr. Desmond Donkley. He's actually Shana's uncle. He was a math teacher, just a brilliant educator. I learned so much from that man. To this day, we stay in touch. He was a moderator at my wedding. I have a great deal of respect for that man. Even after he left teaching and went into separate operations, I've always said to him that he belongs in the classroom. He was one of the brilliant minds in terms of educating kids and leading them down the right way.

Yes, yes, yes. I'll admit that I was always into my books, but I also tried to seek a balance, and I love playing sports. I used to walk from the house into the neighborhood playing catch-a-foot, playing football. When I went to Rusea's, I actually played for the junior Colts team and the Colts team. I'll say one thing: if she's listening, my sister-in-law is Miss P, I don't know if you guys know Miss P. She's sort of the first lady of soccer in Jamaica, but for sure in Hanover. She was very much working alongside the coaches. Miss P, of course, we grew up in the same neighborhood. She'll probably be the one to say that she influenced the coaches to pick me for the teams. I'd like to say I made it on my own merits, but who knows? I played junior Colts. Some of the names I played with are Donald Ewers, Corey Brevet, on the Colts team. Conch, yeah, to name a few.

Yeah, it was an eye-opener. First, let me say I think it's a good point you raise in terms of it doesn't matter where you start from. We all have to recognize that you're learning experiences in all walks of life. It doesn't matter if you're in the biggest corporation or you're sweeping the streets somewhere. We're all key contributing members to society, and we're all trying to develop, learn, and grow. I didn't have any concept about the stock market when I left Jamaica. When I got here and got involved in the mix, it was a little bit intimidating. This was my first job in the US, sort of thrown into the pit, as they would call it. The pit is what they called the brokerage, the trading area where the guys are trading and trying to sort things out. You have to build a certain temperament because the brokers are going 100 miles a minute. When the trades are done and you're trying to figure it out, they're coming at you saying, 'No, this can't be right,' and pushing back. It was quite challenging. I think that helped me to build a certain resolve and a certain temperament to be able to relate to people in a way that, despite how one may react to what you're saying, you've got to maintain a certain calmness because you know what you're trying to achieve. It was quite an insightful experience. That sort of laid the foundation and framework for me as I continued to grow and evolve as a professional and as a human being here in the States.

Sure. Let me talk a little bit about money management. I shared a little bit about my experience on the stock market, but the last 21 years I've been with this company, and I've been blessed to have the opportunity to live and work in a number of different locations and countries. I lived in Puerto Rico for a couple of years, lived in the Philippines for three years, lived in London for four years—that's where I met Byron actually—and in France for a year. I came back to the US at the end of 2015 with the same company, back into a corporate role, leading the audit department, the internal audit department for the company. Now I'm in a different role overseeing different financial services groups based in different parts of the world. I've gone through an experience where I picked up experience in the stock market, and in this business I've largely been operating in finance leadership roles, helping the organization determine how best to invest their resources, looking at whether we are getting the payback and return for where we invest our funds. In terms of personal financial management, the first thing is you need to know your numbers. You need to know what you are bringing in in terms of income and where you are spending your dollars. The first fundamental thing is to set goals and write down on a piece of paper what your budget is: this is my income, this is where I'm spending my dollars. Look at your spending and say, 'What are the things I absolutely have to spend on?' The non-discretionary, mandatory stuff: rent, utilities. And what other things are discretionary? Discretionary is going out to have a meal. Do I have to? No, I could cook at home and avoid spending outside. So you need to set a budget for yourself and then track how you're doing against that budget—the actuals versus the budget. One thing I say to folks is do not ignore the obvious. People get into the trap of spending above their means and hoping something miraculously comes along to change the dynamics. You have to take control. I'm not suggesting it's easy; people are in circumstances where they have to pay the bills and are only making a certain amount. But this is where you need to carefully scrutinize what are the things you truly could manage and control in your spending. You could also do things on your income—get another job, whatever. But there are things in your spending as well that you could control. The other thing I say is, however small it is, save. Put away. That's a priority you need to have for yourself: to put away money in income-producing assets. People go out and say, 'I'm going to buy a car.' Nothing against buying a car; we all drive nice fancy cars. But very few cars retain their value. You've got to think about if you have a certain amount of funds, you need to prioritize the things that are going to bring you value much further in the future. The other thing I would say to folks is you need to plan for the unexpected. As COVID is a perfect time, a lot of people are losing their jobs. You want to think about having at least, I think the rule of thumb is anywhere from three to six months of basic living expenses saved up in case something goes wrong. Another good practice for folks to bear in mind. The other thing I'd say is know your credit standing. Know what your credit score is and what the things driving your credit score are, and how you could potentially influence an improvement in those credit scores. In most places, if you don't have good credit, you're running uphill.

Yeah. I talked about the importance of saving. Then it's a question of what forms those savings take. Where do you invest those savings? I'm a quite aggressive investor. Whatever I say here, it's my personal opinion. If anyone's thinking about getting into the stock market, do your own research, consult with your own advisors. But these are my personal views on investing. When you think about investing, there are varying vehicles. People will save in their savings account. What we know today, the interest you earn on savings in a bank is almost nothing—one percent, two percent at best. So you start to think about what vehicles could get you a better return. There is, of course, the equities or stocks. Historically over time, stocks have performed the best in terms of return on investment. There are also fixed income securities, such as bonds, which get you a fixed rate of return, but the overall return tends to be less than stocks. Stocks typically carry a concept of high risk, high reward. You could invest $100 in a company today, and it could be a thousand dollars in 10 years, or it could be zero. So it's high risk, high reward. When you begin investing, you've got to think about your time horizon. If someone is early in life, I'd say you want to take a more aggressive approach to how you invest. You'll probably put most of your money in the stock market to start. As you get older and closer to retirement, you don't want to take those risks. You want to try to preserve what you've got. You think about rebalancing. As you get older, you start shifting away from the stock market and more into fixed income securities that are about preserving what you've earned. When you get to retirement, you've got those funds available because when you're 60, you don't want to be investing in the stock market for the risk that it's going to go away when you're ready to retire. So you want to be very cautious as you get older. I think I saw something where they said if you invest about $20 a month at the age of 21, if you begin to invest 20...

20 a day, and let's say on average that earns you, if you know you get a return of 5%, by the time you get to 65 you would have built up a million dollars. Now, if you wait 10 years later to start investing, so rather than at the age of 20 you start investing at the age of 30, you're going to have to double what you need to put away to get to a million. And of course it continues to build and compound. So investing early is important, starting early is important, and staying consistent is important. So you can't try to play the stock market thinking you're always going to win. So the key is when you're investing in the stock market, you want to be consistent. Identify a pool of funds that you're going to invest, and stay consistent in terms of continual investing over time, and that will help to balance out a portfolio that's diversified. You want to look across different industries and diversify, and hopefully it gets you to a position where because you're diversified, your risk profile is reduced because now you're in different segments and sectors that helps to balance that out. And the other thing I'd say is, invest in, when you're investing, educate yourself. Make sure if you see a company you want to invest in, you research as much as you can on that company. Know its products, know how much it makes now, know how much the company is telling how much it is growing, what are the things the company is talking about bringing out in the future. So know as much about the company as you can before you start throwing your money out there.

So if you come into some money and you feel that you're not in a position to make a decision on your own in terms of the research stuff I talked about, then that's when you reach out to a financial advisor. The financial advisor could help you better think through and articulate, based on what your goals are, to devise a plan for you. Now there's another element where rather than investing in individual stocks, you could invest in a consortium of stocks. So you've got what they call mutual funds or index funds, which are made up of a multitude of companies that you could invest in. These are typically based on industries or a cross-section of stocks, or could be based on companies operating in different markets, international companies, etc. So these consortium of stocks called mutual funds or index funds take the guesswork a little bit out of trying to pinpoint a specific company to invest in. Yes, and trading these days is quite easy. You could open an online trading account for free, and these companies charge very low fees to trade. Some of them nowadays are charging no fees whatsoever. Use Google to educate yourself. The funny thing you mentioned that because I spoke to a few persons before who, you know, John Campbell Central, and still this is what they always come back to: always try to educate yourself about whatever you are interested in getting into.

Yeah, yeah, that's a very good question, and this is the one thing I'm glad you raised that because if your company offers a 401k and particularly if the company is providing a match to what you contribute, that's absolutely the first thing you should be putting your money in a 401k. So a 401k is a defined contribution plan where individuals could put their money into each month, and it comes from your paycheck. So from your paycheck, the company withholds a certain amount based on what you say. So let's say you say I want to take 10% of my salary and put it in this 401k plan. The 401k plan is actually made up of a number of different mutual funds. So it's what I was saying before, you've got these mutual funds that are made up of a multitude of stocks. There are different variations of mutual funds that companies would offer to the employees that they could put their money towards. So it's good also because if you make a hundred dollars a day as an example, let's make it simple, a thousand dollars a month, and you typically would get taxed on a thousand dollars, so let's say your tax rate is 20%, so you'd pay $200 in tax. If you now say you're going to put a hundred dollars of that thousand into the 401k, what happens to your tax is that your tax actually goes down. So you put a hundred dollars off the thousand, you only get taxed on nine hundred dollars, so 20% of 900 is $180 versus $200 before, so you save $20 on your taxes. And at the same time, you're putting money into a savings vehicle that's going to benefit you for the long term. And typically most companies will provide a matching contribution to what you put in. Not to the full extent, so some companies may say if you put in 6%, they'll match up to 3%. Again, you want to maximize what the company is going to match because that's free money from the company for you. So I'm glad you raised that, that's a great point.

Yeah, absolutely. So that's what I encourage, the earlier you could start, the much better. These days, particularly in the US environment, college is expensive. They've got these college savings plans called the 529 plans where you could put money into those plans for your child's future education, and again, you get a tax deduction when you contribute to those plans. So any vehicle that you could take advantage of that helps to lower your taxes, you want to do that. The last thing you want is to give your money to the US government. Exactly. The last thing you want is to give your money to any government because governments all over the world, they don't manage your money very well. But you need to make sure you pay your taxes, whatever your taxes are, you need to pay, but leave it at that and no more.

Yeah, so the two countries that I lived in was Puerto Rico, Spanish speaking, and France, French speaking. I had no fluency in those languages when I moved into those locations. Disappointedly, I left those locations without picking up any fluency in those languages, so I've probably wasted a good opportunity. But the thing is, when I went to those locations in leadership roles, the staff actually reverted to talking to me in English as opposed to me trying to communicate in their language. Because I was in a leadership position, they felt they had to talk to me in my language. So that's largely what happened. I regretted not picking up the language. I went in with a very open mindset, humble, not trying to show that I knew too much, and just trying to make sure the team on the ground was the one bringing forth their ideas. Culturally, that worked. Living in the Philippines, all the way across the other side of the world, it opened up my cultural awareness. I think us Jamaicans, we can find Jamaicans in all parts of the globe, and that ingrained persona allowed me to meld and adapt to those environments. I enjoyed it greatly. Probably my best location was the Philippines.

Yeah, it is to a certain degree, but in hindsight, I wished it was the other way because I probably could have learned more. The language is one, and while I tried to immerse myself in the local environments as much as I could, there were certain things because of the language restrictions that didn't allow me. There are times I wish it would have been a little different. Quite frankly, I was a little bit lazy. I could have forced it to get into that uncomfortable space with the language piece, but I just got a little bit lazy.

Yeah, there's an awful lot of vehicles that are coming on. I think the landscape will continue to evolve as the world moves on, as people get more creative in terms of currency or investment vehicles. I think the world will continue to evolve. The one thing I would say to someone is, don't get into it if you're not comfortable. If you're not able to go through it and understand it, stay away from it because that's where you're going to get yourself in trouble. The whole Bitcoin and cryptocurrency stuff, it's out there, but it hasn't really infiltrated deeply across society. We still have the very basic currencies we use today. Ultimately, will Bitcoin and cryptocurrency take hold? I think so. I think we'll also move away from some of these exchange mechanisms to some of these things. But part of what's holding some of these things back is one, people don't fully understand them, so clearly you won't get the masses using them. And there's also an element of security concerns about how much people could get duped. Norwin in his technology piece a few weeks back talked about cyber fraud and cyber threats. I think a lot of people in the world today still want to hold on to that hard currency, they want to see the dollar bills or the coins. To tell them to get into something else that they don't truly understand, and you hear so many stories about how people get defrauded, it's going to take a lot of socializing across the globe to get people comfortable. Will it get there? I think it will take some time.

Yeah, I think that's a good question. The first thing I'd say is have balance in your life. Clearly you're at school to learn, but also as young kids, you want to go out, kick a ball, have some fun. So you want to maintain a balance, you don't want to go too much in one way. Remember why you're in school, to get an education, because that's a foundation for future growth and development. The other thing I'd say is maintain a very inquisitive, continuous learning, continuous improvement mindset. Don't pretend you know everything. Some people pretend they know stuff when they really don't because they think it may look foolish. Part of my success has been going into roles where I didn't know 99% of things, and feeling comfortable to ask what people may perceive as a silly question. I don't care if they perceive it as silly, I'm focused on my personal growth. Be okay to ask a question that people may think is simple, because the simplest questions at times get you the most eye-opening insights. Allow yourself to struggle, to make mistakes as you experiment and search for knowledge. There's also learning to be a good human being. Humility is important. I know a lot of us in our race can be quite boastful. Sometimes pride leads to a lack of humility. Being humble is important. Respect for each other, respect your elders. I grew up knowing to respect my elders. I see today some of that is being lost. Respect others around you and show kindness to your fellow human beings. I've always lived my life in a way that it doesn't matter who I interact with. People look at me and say I've been successful, great. I'm still learning, growing, developing. But regardless of how people view me, when I interact with someone, whether it's the person out on the street sweeping the streets or someone in the boardroom, I try to be as respectful as possible. There's a saying: treat people as you rise up the ladder with dignity and respect because you may be reaching out to them on your way down.

Let me give a plug for the Rusea's Brosius Foundation. I was approached about being part of this organization, and it stemmed from a bunch of guys in the football community getting together and talking about how they could give back to Rusea's. When Troy approached me, I started to question whether we needed to set up a separate organization or leverage other organizations. But as I got into it and interacted with more people, I saw the level of passion, commitment, and most importantly, the heart and soul in which these people talk about what they're trying to do. It was a vision of an organization that could bring the resources and skills of a large mass of like-minded people to benefit Rusea's in numerous ways: infrastructure, sports, education, mentoring. The guys and gals have talked about a bunch of things that I think is tremendous. I agreed to be a part of this, doing a lot of work in the background to formalize this foundation. We've incorporated the foundation, and we recently received our tax-exempt notification from the IRS. There's a formal board in place with guys that bring a whole range of experiences that will help bring the bigger group's vision to light. I encourage everyone to support and be a part of it in some way because I think it will accomplish a lot for Rusea's.

Alright, thanks Darwin. Truly appreciate the conversation. And as I said, the moderator stuff, that's your calling. Well done.