hi everyone it's good to see you thank you for joining us on managing your well i'm your host deborah frasier welcome to our program the goal of our program is to bring timely and relevant information on wealth management topics to you  audience and to interview guests who can help him parred knowledge that will help you make better and more informed decisions around managing your wealth and as a matter of fact today our topic of discussion is well and here to  help go through our topic is marjorie perry and marjorie is the president and c e o of see him construction hi marjorie how are you thank you for having me today deborah think you're welcome to welcome to managing your well thank you waste management and transportation renovation and also motivational speaking and business training and the c e o of m c m margery has been recognized as one of news jersey's best fifty women in business yet she's also been recognized as one of the top twenty five entrepreneurs in new jersey and she has been recognized as s b a small business association two thousand and twelve new jersey small business person of the year yes marjorie you've been you're quite accomplished yes yes hard work hard work it's you know it's one thing to receive the award but it's and another thing to make sure that the awards don't get bigger than what the mission is every day so we try to stay focused on the mission and we're very honored by all of the awards we've received from grace so during our discussion you know i hope to give you an opportunity to tell us more about the hard work and when yes behind receive an absolute recognition absolutely so now in the construction industry that's not an industry that attracts many minorities certainly not a lot of women how in the world that you get started in construction well there's two parts you just said of lot of minorities on the housing side there is a lot of diversity ok building a house renovating a house etc on the commercial side that's a project over let's say half a million above that's where there is you know little or none of women and certainly not of diversity i started my company with two partners and the goal was i was just going to be the c f o operations person and they were going to be on hands deck to build and take m g m to the next level that's with initials m z and comes from as a result of that they could not manage that process so we brought them out in one nine hundred ninety nine and the rest is history a huge learning curve is one thing to know how the business runs another thing to make sure you understand the field which is going to impact the bottom line on operations so that was a bit of a learning curve for it was a huge learning curve and so that's how i got into it i actually started it for them to just help them run the business model which i was very good at the time so bureau of labor statistics in two thousand and fourteen so of the ten million only nine percent who are women and of these nine hundred thousand women are the one percent only point two percent were black women so we have eighteen thousand diverse women i can say diverse because this is specifically for black women because there are asian and other and latino women in the industry but but eight hundred thousand black women across the united opportunity to run a business in the construction world where you're competing with the large companies that are international so is the eighteen thousand that you hear  nationwide that's labor ok and that's transactional and women it's a physical it's a physical demanding job i mean you're picking up steel in the shoulder you're picking up lumber you know you don't have an elevator you got to clim and cold and hot all day every day so i it's just not in the track dismissed to women in the business side of that again i wasn't starting out to be the business owner but i my commitment and my integrity of finishing the job that were on when they wanted to be bought out i just couldn't walk away at the time so you know how you fall into something and you just kept it going now why did i keep it going why they stay i think at the end of the day i always wanted to be a entrepreneur that's number one number two i always wanted to be extremely wealthy but it was also my best teacher in the failure moments to get to the other parts of success and wealth building ok because it taught me the game now i don't know if i would have gotten the answer in the other means i would have liked to some days but i stayed because i had not completed my mission that i had set up for by self and i think everybody should have a personal mission as well as a business mission and my personal mission was not done so what do i have to learn what do i have to do how do i get better because moving to another kind of business sector is still going to have the trials and tribulations whether you're a p r company a marketing company if you don't know how to navigate you don't become an excellent network or you don't really learn how to build best practices if you don't learn how to understand that this is not your wheel house stop pushing up against it when do you stop when do you go it's any business owner that wants a go to the next and the next and next have to learn all of those layers as they go whatever business it is so that was one of the read my personal mission was stronger than my let's go out today and it was many days i want to quit maddy days i want to quit so we're beginning to move into the area that we want to discuss wild man to men and a motivational speaker speaking so i know you're renowned motivational speaker and we just saw a little bit of why you are youth poking at the new jersey's governor new jersey governor's conference for women the national association of women business owners and it's having lots of money or whatever well means is that europe for me is a church dream the confident inside which automatically it starts to attract wealth on the outside because if you don't have this inside where it's solid the work will come and go ok you make money you know a lot of people are making money but they don't build wealth because the wealth is something that slow and steady it's no fast pace on building wealth you know it might be buying one or two apartment buildings then you have a plan to sell those and buy one gigantic apartment building now that might take twenty or thirty years to build wealth and most people confuse wealth with being rich i say no assets as well ok and when you have assets you can always pull other people's money to help you move your agenda forward rich is hey you know i sold a book today and i made twenty million dollars but there's no repeat ok because you're not planning the world strategy that's what my definition is well one become extremely comfortable in your skin and to now build on what your best practices for how do you going to every year build the milestones for a truly massive building and that is not a quick and fast direction for wealth building in my eyes estimation so do you think most people understand the real meaning you know now of course not because we wouldn't have so much anger and frustration and you know i'm not getting paid enough and you know they say one thing well you know i need to get a raise but just give me two percent but i want to be a world where you can have both conversations going to same time you know no one wants to make a sacrifice that builds wealth there's going to be sacrifice you may not be able to buy that big house by the time you're thirty five you might buy it at sixty because you're on the wealth plan you may have to drive a honda for a minute before you go out and buy the mercedes versus you have to have it right now that's what building well play most people don't know what this they know what getting rich is but they don't know what a building is so you tend to keyword sacrifices and i was going to ask you a little bit later but it's a good time what are some of the personal sacrifices you had to make both to become an owner in construction and to begin to build your journey of building well you know i was a  minimalist you know my lifestyle stayed very minimal you know i lived in my one bedroom apartment forever if we had a great year in the business i took the money and put it back in the business or i invested in the markets you know i went out and bought property  i was a minimalist on the personal side and because this call was very important to me you know to get into the residual factor which is also what compounds your interest as you know to be come to build you well so now you know if i made thirty thousand dollars last year let me take half of that and split it and put it into other markets or there's an apartment building because a good time to build this when the markets are are lot that's when you go out and buy a couple apartment  time i had to learn it was seven years whole sell or do i sell it right away because this is the right times as learning finances so i went back to school and learned how to do financial marketing and financial trees where i can do the data gathering and say ok this makes sense for me to do that now or to hold it for seven years so those are all the things that i sacrifice and so i didn't have a lot of stuff couldn't travel on big trips my friends were all  the time now i'm like you know i hate i mean there are never how you do it but it took time and also the sacrifices i made on the earlier earlier days let's go back to the education for a moment so i know when you go out and you speak to people and one of the things you tell them is you can do it too the talk a little bit about what it took for you to go back and what were some of the continuing education or things that you did can remember some of them well you know i it always is a light bulb for me and i again part of my personal mission is to share this story all the time i'm a project girl from newark new jersey i didn't like us being poor now back in the day in newark we had all jewish teachers that looked like meekly the howls and i'm like you know another guy came in the cook them like what do you do for a living you know and then we go back to the projects twelfth floor it was twelve f i remember it and you have t your kitchen and your dining room is one room and a kitchen i have three sisters so i mean three of us were in one room only my parents are in the other girl then i go to his go find house again so exposure don't matter where you are is ninety percent of the game that's why i really work hard i'm doing scholarships to the you know listen you want to go to panama but let's get you a ticket to go to panama because your parents can afford to send you that ninety percent i think of education comes from the willingness of folks willing to sacrifice for their children can be exposed that's the first once they are exposed it will ignite something that they want more and they want to do more second then they're going to start on their own love doing this and doing that if they stay open and coachable and then you will never stop learning till the end that's right always oh it's just so i'm getting ready to take some finance courses now to see what the new modeling is for financial markets going forward i mean you could do that online today is so easy to educate yourself i talked to a young woman the other day who wants me to show her how to be a developer i said why can't you have be a developer when you don't know finance so she signed up at n y u could do to her last was online don't talk to me about something it and you have an even taken a course or that means i have to do all of your own financial planning she signed up for two classes very proud of that so it's ongoing and then two years or nash is going to do it again because things are constantly i started there i was designated one of the top businesses to watch and grow back in ninety seven so i was one of their first non i t businesses to go into each beta program there  as a result of continuing to grow i went back and started working on my construction management certification i went back and did my m b a in finance and technology i went back and started working on my civil engineer degree while i went back and now i volunteer i went back and now the co chair of the board of overseers i i can't say enough about  it's my home it's my family as a result i can spread out and speak at maybe a clear university for school for entrepreneurship which i'm very proud of as well so that has been the anchor for should i try this should i go this way you know where where did i go wrong and when they're planning method that i just came up with that was a disaster and i didn't see it coming out of my limit bring down my blind side in this and those are all the things you have to start getting very good at to build wealth so that's that's my home away from ok so what are what are some of the other things that you tell business owners that some of the things they need to do to change to get the things that they say they want  talk about that lesson ninety percent of people today have a low emotional i q instant instant instance an instant instance or their feelings get hurt or hurt hurt hurt or i've been done wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong ok i've just given you three reflects you're not ready for this because failure is part of the game is just growth this doesn't mean he's done and over to how quickly can you come back from what occurred or right and say ok let's just assess what happened and third dismiss that personal this is not unlike or dislike you don't know what i'm thinking in the morning i don't know what you're thinking in a more wise person how about maybe you just didn't have the skill set that was required to do the job versus you made a deeply personal how you hold on to that distraction for like a year because you need to be right versus lower yeah so those are the things where the emotional i q states here in order to build wealth as you know if you really talk to well builders and i have to say some of my idols not idols but people that i read about back in the twenty's and thirty's they were persistent on the goal so if you were carnegie mellon ok it took time to build a real world but you watch the competition with walk a phone you got a re you know they didn't have that didn't happen overnight so they had to figure out how to shut that down because if i can bring my own steel and don't have to go through that track then i can monetize my product and my information so that is where the emotional i q states year because people stay in their box and what they know there is no bots i've got to know your box i didn't know everybody else's but and then i got to pick out what's best for me out of that box this box and my box is fluid right that's that's a differential to me and  you know i've been given that title i don't think i've woke up salmon up the instant i ate i think i stand in my truth i stand in my integrity and they see if i say it i mean it i i am it i again until that occurred i think you're did he become a role model the young lady said to beach volleyball they lost the goal i think they're great role models if they had a game the next day for the bronze then the played just as hard get over the mental distraction that they didn't the goal and thought for the brand that's a role model but what it says is that that's the mindset you want and that's what i think role modeling really is i want her mindset and if i can get her mindset then i can start doing some of the things that she's doing as well that's that's my take so when i when i speak to them i always ask them are you ready to hear what i have to say and if they're not then i succumb back to me when you're ready to hear what i have to say because i have to tell you the truth and you four years yes but there was the point in your career when things nothing with going right for you with things you're really down a slow how did you bring yourself out of that that mindset and i fought through the distractions and to feel sorry for myself and being  victim i'm also a million dollars i was on the verge of bankruptcy at least ten times during that period it was about a five year period but again that's where you have to have a strong personal mission that you can go back to read and be reminded  what did i get there yet ok all right ok all right snap out of it let's go back to work that didn't work let's try this that didn't work let's try that i don't know if you can build that but i think you can but i think the earlier parents work with young people to let them take responsibility in their lives and they have the resilience to go through anything that comes they can't get back up dust yourself off and keep moving i've asked a question a million times i'm always trying to say well what what what what was it about me that was so different and i used to always remember my grandmother says well did you die and i will say no grandmother i didn't die did i feed you deceive me yes she did did you have clothes on your back today yes i did this this is a woman who had no education she says then the strike again and that stays in the back of my head since i was a little girl because she said if you didn't die you've got another day to try them again just that simple sprays and then more phrases and affirmations and prayer and you know i just kept going so i had learned during that period was when i learned how to become better at being in the present moment versus what happened in the future what's going to happen the future and what happened in the past and learn have let's do a great job today that's to much of that scene tension so then let's applaud what you did today then i get to the next day so it's really staying learning how to get very very good at staying in the present moment so why do most people feel that they can have an hour do you find that many people feel that they really can't have it all most people don't want to do the sacrifice so of course they can't have it all if you don't want to do sacrifice  most people think that the victimhood is stronger than the sacrifice so if you have a couple of bumps here in the road then do you think that i can't do this i can't do that it's cetera et cetera  the end of the hour they start doubting themselves whenever they say they can't have a law down to start to prevent and then they start attracting more things that feed into the doubt well see i knew i was  attraction right and you know the law of attraction if you start saying you know that all i can have all sure enough stuff that you said that you can't have is going to prove that statement right and and i don't know what all is i think you have in their shoes they may already have it all but they're looking outside because the media says you should have all of this that's why they really get stuck on i don't have a lot they may have it all right now they working they have a family they have people that love that they have a whole they have transportation so if you can focus back on that you in just count those blessings and and those gratitude things you might  talk about integrity and how it has kept you how it has guided you on your journey journey and how important it has been in all of your business dealings is what one of the reasons that i wanted to invite you on my show today so talk a lot about integrity and the role it plays and how important it is for wealth for everyone but specifically about business owners since we're talking about that today well an entrepreneur than i sink when you know who you are you can't get moved by the emotions i have seeing where people jump at the opportunity and sell their soul that doesn't make any sense for the long term integrity for me is everything if we didn't tell the truth we didn't deliver on time we didn't do everything that we said we were going to do i'm out of integrity how do i get back to integrity we don't make excuses and we don't qualify that should be somebody else's problem so i am of the opinion that my success is because ok you're right i absolutely do that i'm actually going to follow through if i didn't do a good job to go shake the debt and i got to learn how to renegotiate that's integrity and people love interest really intended it may not like it in a minute but you know what go to her because you can count on her to tell you the truth and to know that we've got a good deal that's integrity to me and i am going to take that with me to people about how to big how to build well a step one two three are any parting words you like to give we need to send a few thirty seconds all right first say wake up in the morning set your intention of what you want to do well second where do you want to build wealth this is from the inside it will automatically translate to the outside and that last piece education education education you must do finance if you're not a finance person take courses online just learn what the metrics are so you know the highs and lows of what's coming what's not coming or you can just leave it alone those are my three takeaways for wealth building and it's great it's many of my viewers know i'm a financial advisor at morgan stanley and i'm i'm also an adjunct teacher at mercer county community college and i teach personal finance so i'm teaching young people about personal finance that i find out i don't have the slightest idea on they're getting ready to graduate college a field that is the key key and that's one recommendation i would give to any young