In this episode of Minority Business Access, host Solomon RC Ali along with health and wellness coach, former police officer and Howard University graduate, Mitchell Smith-Bey, discusses financial fitness, the ten commandments of good business, and the difference between presentation and implementation on the road to success. “Howard University taught me about presentation,” Smith-Bey tells Solomon. “You’re teaching me how to implement. You can tell people in academia how it should look and what you should say and do, but there is a difference when you meet someone who is implementing that; and that’s huge in my life.” You won’t want to miss this conversation!

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Learn The Ten Commandments Of Good Business With Mitchell Smith-Bey

I am glad to be here with you again to do another episode of Minority Business Access. This is an awesome thing. We love giving back, my team and I, sharing with you the information that we have, the things that we have learned on our journeys so that you can be able to benefit from it and don’t have to step into some of the same minefields that we have stepped in and things that we have seen. Sometimes we’re able to help solve problems a lot quicker because we’ve been through it or we know someone that’s been through it or we have a team of network around us that we’re able to elaborate and take advantage of. Here at Minority Business Access, we’re going to be speaking with Mitchell Bey. We spoke with him before. We’ve been talking about helping minority companies and helping other people to bootstrap their company to be able to take it to the next level.

Mr. Ali, I appreciate you having me back. Thank you for having me back. It’s been a productive year despite the things that the country has been going through as a whole. I’m appreciative of your tutelage and your mentorship that you’ve assisted me in moving forward leaps and bounds.

Thank you so much. You’ve been hit with COVID-19 like the rest of the world. A lot of things have happened since you’ve been on Minority Business Access. What’s been going on? Talk to us.

It’s been like for most but also different. It’s nothing like having a game plan. After talking to you, I put my pen to paper and said, “Let me set up a game plan and utilize the information that you shared in setting up a revocable trust.” Also, making sure I get people in place that know what they’re doing and I didn’t have to do all the work and I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting so that I can have access to resources and money to help grow me even in this troubled time. It’s been effective. Thanks to you and RCA, I’m moving forward and looking for a more prosperous 2021.

I understand that you asked some questions and things of that nature, some things we’re going to talk about that you want to ask. There’s no question that won’t help someone else because they may be afraid to ask the question. I know you. You are not afraid to ask anything.

A closed mouth will never get fed. After going out and dealing and talking with people that I knew, they were like, “What do you think you learned? What do you think is going to happen?” I said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen but I’m going to put in the work.” Of the things that stuck to me from our conversation, I came up with ten commandments of life.

Tell me about it.

Talking to you, being around you, and following your podcasts. The ten commandments of life came to me in a vision, it says, “Be impeccable with your words.”

I need you to pay attention to this because this is some good stuff, to be impeccable with your word. Be a man of your word. Don’t use your words lightly. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Take nothing personally. No assumptions. As I was going forward and trying to apply what you taught me, I was starting to try to fill in the blanks. I said, “No assumptions. Do what you’ve been told.”

A closed mouth will never get fed.

To me, that means communication. You think what it is but communicate to make sure, “If this is what I’m thinking, is this the right way and how I should be going?” A lot of people want to turn around and they want to fill in those blanks. They want to take it in a different direction and then they come back and say, “It’s what you told me.” I was like, “I didn’t say no such thing.”

I didn’t want that to happen. When I manifested you into my life, I wanted a financial coach. The universe blessed me with you. I said, “If I’m going to be disciplined and obedient in requesting and receiving my blessing, I need to follow it.” One of the things that I got from our conversation before is to get the expert in the lane. Let them drive the car. Become a passenger.

That’s one of the things I do, I get the consultants and the people around me and let them do what they do and I follow the instructions. If I only learned a little bit from them, I’m still way ahead of everybody and that’s okay because I’m learning from the best.

That’s why COVID-19 has not directly affected my business, but a little with my mental. The other one is to do your best. Be impeccable with your words. Take nothing personally. Do the work. Don’t lie, steal, and cheat. No shortcuts. We’re in a society of text messages, saying something and don’t mean it.

I’m not a good texter at all. If I text you something, you probably won’t understand anything I said. Normally, I’m speaking. People read and comprehend on different levels. The person reading the texts or emails is comprehending on a much different level than you may have been. Your level may be higher or lower. The person sending the text or email may be writing, as one would say, on a higher level and using words that someone may not understand or comprehend. In my day, they said, “Go get the dictionary.” I go and ask my mother a word and she’ll say, “Go get the dictionary. Go look it up.” You get tired of going to look it up. I can only imagine what they do these days. Although they do have Google, but I don’t see anybody looking up any words.

With this technology, you could speak it and it’ll give you a definition. We’re lazy, so that’s why we have to be definite of purpose. That’s another one of the commandments, it had to be definite of purpose. After you gave me my orders to do the things I need to do, I said, “You have to do them now. Now you have a purpose.” The biggest and what will always ring in my head in the morning and evening at night is I have to do the work. It’s nothing like you giving me and sharing with me information but you have to apply it now and you have to work. 2020 has been a year of work.

I shared a story with everyone in Denver at Magnify Your Wealth. In that story, I told people about procrastinating. I kept procrastinating. I had all the knowledge. I had the tools. I had the resources. I had everything I needed but I kept procrastinating. I didn’t do the work. I kept saying, “I’ll get to it.” I had all the tools. I had everything I needed and I said, “I’ll get to it tomorrow.” One day, it was too late to get to it.

What happened from that experience when you didn’t get through that task that you were supposed to get to in your business life?

I learned a great deal because I lost a lot. People who know the story know that I was on the verge. I was possibly going to take my life because I lost so much and I did not think it was possible to recover it. At the time, my wife believed in me, my attorneys believed in me. I was able to recover and bounce back and go on to do bigger and better things by helping other people and not focusing on myself solving someone else’s problem. It’s tough. You can’t look at your, like, “If I have some bumps in the road, if I have some failures or some losses, it’s over.” What you have to say is, “What did I learn from it? What can I do from it? How can I help someone else from it? It’s not over.” That was a learning process, take it that way. That’s what I learned.

I’m learning by sitting here and talking to you. We got to know how to use the technology. Instead of having senior moments, you need to have a present moment. In the present moment, we’re going to reiterate the ten commandments and I’ll make sure that we have them because they’re important to my life. Be impeccable with my words, take nothing personally, no assumptions, do your best, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat, no shortcuts, have a definite purpose, and do the work. The caveat of all of that, which he always says and has said before and to the present moment, you have to do your deal. If somebody said, “I went to Howard University. I got a four-year degree.” Our conversation in that short time we’ve known each other has been more impactful than four years of education of going through university. It’s not about your educational level. It’s about who’s teaching it.

 

They taught you some different stuff that was extremely valuable.

Your comment with me is more impactful to the point when I share it with people, people came up with questions and they say, “If you get a chance to sit and talk with him, can you ask him this question?” They don’t have access to you. One of the things that I’ve learned is about relationships and accessibility. Howard taught me how to present your presentation. You taught me the implementation and that’s powerful. You could tell people in academia how to look, how it should look, what you should say, and what you should do, but there’s a difference when you meet someone who’s implementing that. That’s huge in my life. I know no other way but to be truthful and to the point. I’m not sugarcoating it anymore.

We get a little more direct.

I thank Howard for my free education. For me to get my financial literacy, I’m thanking Mr. Ali. If I didn’t have the opportunity, I have a question to ask, Solomon, how can I grow my business? What do I do? How do I start that in growing my business? I have a great business concept but how do I grow that?

The first thing I would say to anyone is what I told you, you don’t have to lie, cheat, or steal. What you have to do is do the work. The next thing I’m going to say, is it compatible? Is there a good fit? What is it that you’re looking to achieve? If you haven’t gone to SolomonRCAli.info and looked at what’s going on and looked at some of these episodes, you’re going to miss it. That’s huge because it helps you to avoid the minefields that you’re going to experience. We all experience them in business.

I don’t care if you’re black, white, Mexican, Spanish, Asian, male, or female, you’re going to experience a lot of different things that you do not expect. You have to have consultants around you, people who’ve been there, done that and made it through. They may not have always been successful but they learn through those trials and tribulations and they know now what not to do and tell you, “Don’t step there.” That’s important. Go to the website, SolomonRCAli.info, and look up and find out. The next thing I’m going to say is to understand why you want to grow your business. Why do I want to grow my business? What industry am I in? Do you understand your industry? Do you have a good management team? What are the capabilities of your management team? What are you planning on using these proceeds and everything for? Those are the things that I would say.

I went through the website. I’m talking to people that have always said they did something. I went there but I still don’t understand. Once I get through that first hurdle, what type of documentation would you need from my organization to further the process?

I’m glad you asked. We need your three years financials, balance sheet, profit and loss. Three years business. Three years tax return. Three years personal tax return. Three years personal financials. That’s going to paint a picture of how you’re collecting money, how you’re getting paid, and everything of that nature. Let us know when you have your shortfalls and things like that. We then need a business summary. What we’re trying to do is model and see what’s going on within your business. Is scalable? Those are the things that we begin to look at.

The next thing we’re going to need is your forecast. What are you looking to grow by? How are you planning to grow, which will be in the business plan? In the forecast, we’re looking for those numbers. Are you going to do ten acquisitions in the next eighteen months? If so, what is the cost of those acquisitions? That means, how much money are you looking for and how much value will be created and what will go to the bottom line? Those are the things that we will be looking for.

I’m fidgeting around and I’m thinking, “Is that going to help me decide whether or not I need to merge something with someone else or keep going the path that I’m on?”

People can tell you what to do, but the real difference happens when you implement it.

What we do is overall due diligence. You hire us to be your consultant to put a package together so that you can access the capital. What we do is leverage our relationships with different investors, private equity people, banks, and stuff.

I’m getting in a relationship with your relationship.

We have the opportunity in our relationship to help you. The best way for me to explain it is we know what the bank is looking for. We know the private equity company, the hedge fund the investors are looking for. We put a model together and picture together so that your company meets what they’re looking for. When you present it to them and we sit back and we help and guide you on how to present it and what you’re presenting so that you can make the best deal that makes sense to your company.

I’m taking this information and if I were to, in layman terms, share it with my buddies, you have the answers to the test of business. You say, “Mitchell, here’s the answer. That’s the test you want if you want to grow your business.” You’re saying I need three years this, three years that, and three years of a lot of information. That’s the blueprint of me starting. If I don’t have that, I’m not in the right place. I don’t need to waste your time and I don’t need to waste my time.

We won’t let you, hopefully. My team is going to kick you. I’m being sarcastic. In all sincerity, when we do this, our whole job is to help people to develop a strategy that is usable for them so that they can develop their companies. We like companies that are between $3.5 million to $20 million in revenue with some profitability. However, they don’t have to be profitable for us to work with them. what we do like to say is we want you to be in the right industry where there’s scalability within that industry, where there’s a certain growth rate that can take place within that industry. We like for you to have a good management team that can execute on the performance that you’re telling us on your business planning. We like to see the cashflow that’s going to be used in the business, to be reinvested in the business, to help grow and develop the business. Those are the things that we like to see.

Some of my buddies are also Howard grads.

In my Bible, it tells you this, don’t pour new wine in old wine bags. We use the same philosophy in investing when we’re putting packages together. We understand that investors do not want to pay off your previous debt obligation that you caused and got in trouble over. They don’t want you taking their money and paying those things off. They want you to take their money and move the business forward. From your profit that you make from your portion, you go back now and pay those things off.

Be successful where you’re going and then take care of your past. That’s what my buddies did, they looked for shortcuts. They go to that shortcut, “I like what he’s doing. I fit the criteria that he’s offering. If I get X amount of dollars, I can take care of my bad debt.” This has been helpful. If you get it early and often and do it right, you have no reason not to be successful.

It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of persistence and dedication. More importantly, it takes being humble, asking for help. Bring in people and circle them going around you who understand your industry, your business, how to grow a business, and help to guide you through that process. That’s why, at Solomon RC Ali, we do the due diligence. We do the due diligence and we sit back and we consult you on the process of what it looks like, why it looks this way, what do you need to do, and how do you need to do it to change it. We further take that and arrange your capital. We’re not promoters. We’re not market makers. We’re not broker-dealers. We don’t act as investment bankers. We don’t do any of that. What we do is come in and educate you as consultants on your business, how to access the capital. We set up those arrangements so that now your package looks what they’re looking to see.

 

Here’s the million-dollar question. Everything you’re talking about, I wanted it yesterday. How long will it potentially take? If everything was in order, I got everything you needed, I have my finances in order, I got my management team in place, everything that’s needed to be put in place that you put in as a request, how long will it take?

My team and I worked with outside also vendors and consultants to help to address all of that stuff. It depends on their availability. It depends on my team’s availability.

I’m not the only deal.

No, you’re not. How quickly you’re able to turn the information around and get it to us. Years ago, I used to have a saying, I used to tell my people two minutes to get them three years of tax returns, personal and business, all our financials, and our business plan. That’s clear, two minutes. If any one of our lenders asked for that information, you had two minutes. Don’t go looking for it. Don’t go searching. If you didn’t produce it in two minutes, ask one of my people from the past, you are gone because it was unacceptable. That was part of how we needed to go out and do our business. That’s how important it was to scale our business. We went from one nursing home to another nursing home and we were doing almost one every six weeks.

It’s unbelievable. I can’t believe that I’m sitting in the presence again. Everybody wants to know how much or how. That ego gets no place. People would call it a success but you don’t wear it on your sleeve. If I follow and get an inch of what you’ve been successful at, I’ll be happier than three pigs in a slob. If you continue to do what you’ve shared with me, I will be successful in my blessing of financial literacy and the implementation of that. I’d like to thank you again. A lot of times people talk about you but I like to talk to you. Thank you for having me once again. Go to the website, SolomonRCAli.info.

My team and I would be more than glad to help anyone who goes there. If we can help you, we will. Business is not for the faint of heart. Business is for the person that puts in the work. If you’re willing to put in the work and do the work, you’re going to make it. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have more down than you will up.

Do you have a book?

I got a book.

When is your book coming out?

We have two books coming out. The book’s coming out in 2021. It will help you to avoid the minefield and all of the pitfalls. It’s 34 years of my personal experiences. When you look at my team and my attorneys and everything, leveraging all of that experience, you got over 100 or something years of experience and helping you to navigate the mine so you don’t step in these places you shouldn’t be stepping on. We know how to maneuver around them and that’s the important thing.

Health and wealth always work effectively hand in hand.

I told somebody one time, I said, “How do you do your marketing?” They said, “I do A, B, C, and D.” I said, “Really?” They said, “How do you do yours?” I said, “I call my marketing consultant and I say, ‘Let me touch all these different people who you’ve worked with and plug me into that distribution so we can get those done.’” That’s a huge network now. I leverage my relationship and their network. If I’m working with people who are the best at what they do, who are professional at what they do, we’re going to have automatic results that are going to resemble what these people have already done. If I work with the best attorneys and if you ask me a question, I can take that question. I might not know the answer. Believe it or not, I don’t have all the answers.

I can go and ask my attorney the question and he’s going to give me an answer. You didn’t have to pay for that. That was already paid for by Solomon RC Ali Corporation. You’re being able to leverage that relationship and that relationship helps springboard you to the next. If they know a lot about contracts and you need to know something about contracts, that’s something that you didn’t have to pay for. I’ve given people a lot of documentation and stuff like that, work with attorneys, that I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for. That is giving back.

Do you know what else you’re giving? Your podcast. I can replay this each month, each week, as often as I want. How often is your podcast?

The podcast is once a week. We’ve been doing it for a little over a year. It’s pretty successful.

You have part of your team coming on. For those who don’t know me, Mr. Ali and I work out together. Health and wealth work. Take it off the W from wealth and put in H, it’s health. If you take off the H from health and put W, what do you have? You have wealth. They’re interchangeable. When I manifest them, we’re interchangeable. Wealth and health.

Nobody is sitting on their death bed or in the hospital room wishing they had more money. They wish they had better health. When do you get better health? Today. What you do today is preparing you for tomorrow. That’s the same in business, what you do today prepares you for tomorrow.

I’m better today than I was before, financially.

That’s not due to Solomon. That’s due to you doing the work.

It’s due to Solomon’s information for me to do the work. We got to give credit where credit is due.

You have to do the work, like I was. I’m partnered with a company called Laughlin Associates. It’s been around for years. I’ve been doing business with them for years. They had given me all the tools. They have given me some information and things of that nature and I never used it. I never used the information. I walked around, I looked at it, and I had it. Everything was set up and ready to go and I procrastinated until one day it was too late. Information that’s not used or applied is useless.

 

I don’t want to say anymore. I want to absorb this. I’m going to replay this and listen to it. For my friends and family or people that know me, I’m going to refer them to the podcast, to the website. I’m going to say, “If you want to be successful or hear something different than what you’ve been told, try this out.”

We do the ABCs. Do you know what the ABCs are? Solomon RC Ali’s ABC is simple, arrange the funding. If the company sent your books and your records and your structure together, we’re not going to lie and cheat. We’re going to put it together in the correct way. We have a good understanding of what it is that the people on the other side that’s willing to invest or loan you money or whatever the case may be what they’re looking for. That’s the A, arrange the funding.

The B, we help to build wealth. We help people who already have achieved a certain level of success or may not even have got there but desire to be an investor and say, “I want to invest in the next Facebook. I want to invest in the next emerging company. I want to invest in the next iTalk or the next smart home technology or the next energy company.” We teach them how to do that, how to take their monies and invest in these companies that are going to be emerging within different industries. It’s like walking in a room and flipping the light switch. Once you understand the fundamentals and the principles of it, anyone can do it. You don’t have to call Solomon. You might want to call us out and say, “Solomon, you’re doing that? Where can I that cup?”

“What are you doing? Can I duplicate what you do?”

That’s when you know these people do the due diligence, they do the industry, they do the work. If they’re doing the work and they’re doing the homework and if I followed their path and they’re successful, I should get the same results. That’s the whole key. The C is we consult. People in companies, whether you’re an individual or a company, you’re not quite sure where you’re going and how they get there. My team and I, we consult you. We help to guide you. We help to direct you. We help to put a package that fits your talents, that fits your management’s talents. This is where you are within your industry. This is where you’re trying to go. This is how you get there. These are the steps that need to be taken. That’s the ABCs.

Thank you. Please have me back.

I’m going to have you back because I want to know where you’re going to be.

Thank you. I’m going to bring my checkbook and my account. I’m going to say, “This is where I was and this is where I’m at.”

I expect nothing less than 7 to 8 figures.

I’m all in. I’m ready to do the work.

I want to thank everybody for following Minority Business Access. I hope you found this information to be useful and a great help to you. If you have any questions, reach out to my team and me. We’re here to help. We want to help 50 companies. We want to help you do the thing because you can do this thing. Reach out to SolomonRCAli.info and we’ll get you the information and we’ll be glad to work with you. If you do not feel like you’re confident and you can’t do it, keep reading this podcast over and over. Hang around people who believe in you. If they don’t believe in you and they’re not following the same path and the same road, cut them loose. Don’t have any conversations or debates about it, cut them loose. Thank you for following Minority Business Access.

 

Important Links

• Mitchell Smith-Bey – LinkedIn
• SolomonRCAli.info

 

About Mitchell Smith-Bey