Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Leaving A Financial Legacy Part 1
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This week they bring to you Part 1 of a two part interview with Karl Chen, Esq. Karl is an estate and business planning attorney whose practice revolves around Estate Planning, Probate Matters and Business Law issues for businesses and individuals. Before they get into financial matters, though, the old high school friends meander down memory lane.
Clearly, their classmates from NYC’s elite Brooklyn Technical High School Class of 1980 form quite a successful and supportive village (check out Pam Skinner from S3: Black Legacies Matter, Kay Benjamin from S3: More Stories on Caribbean Ancestry, and Kim Coles from S1: Coach Kim Coles is in the Building)
Karl has been on quite a circuitous journey indeed: pivots galore and a disappointing “un”encounter that led to the book Think & Grow Rich that totally changed the trajectory and outlook of his life.
Come back for Part 2 for Estate Planning essentials.
This episode and all previous episodes are available on The Besties’ YouTube. Please join our Besties Quad Squad as a Patreon subscriber at the $5 or $10 monthly level. You'll receive exclusive behind-the-scenes content.
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Ange. Hey Les. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm really happy. Me too. So before I get into it, I'm gonna say welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. Brooklyn. In the house.
SPEAKER_02In the house.
SPEAKER_01And guess why I'm happy, Ange?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. There's someone else here. It may have something to do with him joining us today. I don't know. I'm just guessing.
SPEAKER_01It it really is because one, we're gonna now have our second male guest on our podcast.
SPEAKER_00I wasn't the first.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_02No, you were working and busy. You're the first male lawyer. How's that?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. And and and you're the first high school crush that I have on our show.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, here it comes. Let it all out, let us let it all the way out.
SPEAKER_01You know, listen, I could look at Carl across the lunchroom and just, you know, whatever. I was young. We were teenagers. Wow. That's okay. Listen to you every day. Every day. Every day. Yeah, he's still a look, I'll tell you. I want to introduce to you our special guest this episode. I've asked our friend and uh fellow Brooklyn Tech Knight to join us. We have Carl Chen Esquire. And we're gonna get into just some questions, talk about old times and what he's up to these days, and how it could be helpful to all of us at this time of our lives. So, Carl, you want to introduce yourself?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely do. Uh well, that was a wonderful um introduction. And Leslie, you you bring on something new for me, you know, anytime I talk to you. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02You too, huh? No.
SPEAKER_00So look, ladies, thank you so much. Um, yes, I'm Carl Chen. I'm from, well, okay. I say I'm from Brooklyn because that's where I lived uh from the age of five till you know through college when I left college and all. But actually, I was born in Harlem.
SPEAKER_03I was born in St.
SPEAKER_00Louis.
SPEAKER_03I know that.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and I actually spent my first five, six years in the Bronx. So it's okay. Can I claim brutal forgive you? I know I it happens, it's not it wasn't my my phone. I just had to come along wherever I was taken. So um uh uh my family, I'm um uh first American born of immigrant parents, Panama and Jamaica. And uh and uh as you know, attended that prestigious high school Brooklyn Tech class in 1980. I think it was the best class in the past.
SPEAKER_02You better believe so, and still believe it.
SPEAKER_00Class of 80, yes, absolutely, and um after that I ended up uh going to college, um majoring uh in finance uh eventually at Ohio University, although I did a stint at Boston U for a year with some of my other fellow Brooklyn Tech colleagues, uh classmates, and uh ended up here. I'm in Maryland now. So ended up in Maryland back in 1987 after graduating and everything else, and started my career as a financial planner. And um from 87 through 94, did financial planning, worked at uh one of uh local insurance, well, national insurance company called Monumental Life. Um, when I was going to law school, I went to law school at night.
SPEAKER_01So I was uh Wow, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. Um, because uh, well, I was lucky I was only three blocks away from the law school for my job, so it made it nice during lunch. If I needed to go into the law school, get some work done or something or another, I was able to do that. But uh, but did that uh was a night student, came out in three and a half years, and um ended up right there for a second.
SPEAKER_01So you studied finance in school, yeah, and then went into the financial section sector um after graduating. Not really to think about law, not not really.
SPEAKER_02Okay, a pivot more pivot is coming.
SPEAKER_00You know, well, obviously, as you know, our our school was primarily a science technology, a STEM type school, right? So I started out as an engineering major at Boston University, but it was like manufacturing engineering. I didn't want to do that. I was a civil guy, right? And yeah, Boston U gave the most money. Not that it mattered because I didn't stay.
SPEAKER_01So I thought you were gonna say not that it mattered because we were wealthy, we didn't care about giving.
SPEAKER_00So end up going to Ohio University. I said, okay, I'm gonna major in finance, because as you know, being in New York, we traveled to school. Well, I did by train, yeah, right? So you're in the train and you're seeing and you're with the mix of people in the city and the folks wearing suits and ties. So I really like that.
SPEAKER_03I was like, man, I'm gonna wear suit and tie, right?
SPEAKER_00And then right after graduation, I actually worked downtown at Chase Manhattan Bank in the summer, um, down in the trust fault department. So I did that for a couple years every summer. Oh, okay. So so I wanted to be the seed has been planted, yeah, and I wanted to be like, you know, dressed up in a suit and tie, right? You know you could have just done that, right? You didn't have to, I know, okay, but I figured I had to have a place to go though, so you just don't dress up and walk around to McDonald's, right? So I end up getting this job, and anyway, make a long story short, to transition as to how I got into financial services, because Les intimated that, you know, well, okay, you graduated and then you ended up in financial services. No, my first job was an assistant buyer at Lord and Taylor.
SPEAKER_02Oh, wow. You got the outfit then, huh? You got the lock. Listen, by any means necessary. 20% discount. I see you.
SPEAKER_00Yes, right there, right there on 39th and uh Fifth Avenue.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh wow, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00Men's rugby knit shirts. Oh, that was my area.
SPEAKER_01What?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01Black man selling rugby shirts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I was there, you know, I'm an assistant buyer and the Lord and Taylor trainer for, you know, it was cool. Got it, but that's not what I wanted to do, right? So um I had a couple other jobs in the middle. I sold uh cigarettes for Philip Morris. Oh wow, we'll go to the bodegas and I'm placing the products all over the place and battling with the folks from Winston and all that other stuff. Yeah, but uh yeah, but I knew I wanted to be in financial services, so I took an insurance job all the way in in Baltimore, working for Equitable Life Insurance, Society of the United States, based in New York.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00But I was in Baltimore, so Equitable, actually, their headquarters at the time, it still may be, is right across from Radio City. The Equitable Building. So anyway, I go there and I start selling my insurance, started doing financial planning, got my license. And while I was doing that, that's when I went to law school at night.
SPEAKER_02Ah, wow. And the from financial services to law, what made that pivot happen?
SPEAKER_00Well, it would seem like it's a natural transition to do like estate planning. Because I'm helping people with retirement planning. I see what happens when they die by having life insurance and stuff like that. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So this is this is like I I started law school in 91. So I went 91 to 94, right? And graduated in December of 94. And so that was what I was was planning on doing, but that's not what happened.
SPEAKER_02Okay. It sounds like a clip hanger. I know.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah. So I have the securities background, I have all this stuff. So the SEC hired me, the securities and exchange commission.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I became a securities lawyer. Uh working at the SEC and uh reviewing like IPOs, mergers, and acquisitions, a lot of public company filings and proxy statements and all this other stuff. And I did that for about three years.
SPEAKER_01Interesting stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was very interesting because quite frankly, I'm more of a technical math kind of person, which was fine, but law is a lot of reading. Uh yeah I hated reading. I hate I hated reading and writing.
SPEAKER_02And you had to understand what you read. You couldn't just say, okay, the cliff notes.
SPEAKER_01Right. You couldn't read the cliff notes. Right. Remember those? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Got me through tech.
SPEAKER_00Right. Most of us English.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, because we're science heads. Right.
SPEAKER_00We're science. Oh, yeah. Chemistry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, physics. Okay, yeah, man. I was into English as well. I was into English as well. I was I was on the staff of um our literary magazine at at tech. Yes, yes, I was. Horizons, exactly. Horizons. Yes, yes. Okay. So I had both sides of the brain fired up. Okay. But anyway, continue.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, that's the funny thing though, Andrew, is that I I wanted to challenge myself because I went to law school and I knew that was like a weakness, but I want to really build it. When I was there, I became editor-in-chief of our law journal.
SPEAKER_02Good for you.
SPEAKER_00What it shows is that if you really want to do something, you can do it. That's right. And not let your own fear, yeah. Fear, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And just uh it's just a little bit more difficult. And I learned a lot.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03Wow, fist bum. Yes. Fist bum. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So so anyway. Um, so I ended up when I left uh the SEC going to a place called Nextel. Now during this time, I was married and I had um I had two kids at this point.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you were busy, you were burning candle at both ends.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I got more for you. Oh, I got more for you.
SPEAKER_01Oh boy.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I'm at Nextel and I'm corporate lawyer, securities lawyer, and grinding. Grinding. And during that time, I'm grinding. You're not gonna believe what I did. So I moved to Virginia at this point because Nextel is based in Virginia. I left Baltimore, I was there for 10 years. And um, I get there and I'm we moved into the subdivision, and there's you know, there's no coffee spot, nothing. I was introduced to like Starbucks back in '94 when I worked at the SEC. And I'm like, man, there's no place to get coffee other than an ex gas station. So, you know, working at high tech and all, you get stock options, you get different things. So I opened up a coffee bar. You didn't call I Like It Black.
SPEAKER_02No, you did not. What?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. Come to find out, I've recently found out that there's a coffee bar in Harlem called I Like It Black. They just opened up a couple years ago. I'm like, I bet you they stole my name. I didn't trademark.
SPEAKER_02You could have sold that domain name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but yeah, it was called I Like It Black, the coffee team. I knew that I love this. Yes, yeah. They wrote an article on me back in um 1999, 2000, the Washington Post.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00And it was about um uh lawyer has uh all a different kind of grind.
SPEAKER_01Um you know grinding, you see, I know it.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I was grinding, love it, exactly, and uh and so I had that for about four years, and um we do open mic nights, it was catering to the community, and then eventually I sold it back in 2002, 98 to 2002.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow we love that, you know. So now you have the entrepreneurial spirit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, then you have the law spirit, and then the financial spirit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you could tell that my brain is all over the place, like I I see it as you being the change you want to see. You saw a need, and you know, you just said, Hey, who's gonna do it but me?
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, well, you know what else also, Andrew, to that to that um point, um, you know, I had a lot of different um disappointments. Right and we all do, I think. I think for the most part, sometimes there's things in life that disappoint. And so there was this situation that happened back in 1982, 83. So I went to um I was hanging out, visit for the summer, and I went to a club out in the city. I don't know if it was Bentley's or something, I forget where it was. But anyway, yeah, you remember, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we had our prom there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I never went to our prom, but I know. Um, and I met a young lady, and I wanted to go out on a date with her, and she lived right across the street from the Empire State Building. It was a thing there right across from probably Harold Square, somewhere around there. So I go to go visit her and I get ghosted. Right? So I go to Barnes and Noble, right? And I find this book called The Magic of Thinking Big. Oh boy, and I read that book because it was thin. I was like, oh, this thin book, I could read that. I could read that.
SPEAKER_01I don't like to read, but I can have to write about it.
SPEAKER_00I can read this, and and and to be honest with you, it changed my life. It really did. It changed how I perceived things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is how I look at God moments and what is ordained and supposed to happen. You were supposed to be at Harold Square, yeah, not for that ghosted date, right? But to pick up that thin book. If it was not a thin book, you may not have picked it up. That's right. If she had agreed to the date, I would never have you would not have picked up the book.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so give us some nuggets from it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I took the book and I took and I went over to 59th Street Bridge and I got on the tram and I went to Roosevelt Island and I sat there and I read through this book, right?
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00And and then I just realized that in life you just gotta think big. You cannot um allow setbacks, so to speak, to hold you and and and dwell in it and things of that sort.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_00So it and every so then I just started dreaming bigger, right? Wow. Saying, like, look, if you could think about it, if you really put the energy behind something, you can accomplish it, you could achieve it.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So that's and that's all about our podcast, actually. We talk about some of the things that we've done either in the face of adversity or when people say, Oh, it can't be done, or if we think, like, how am I gonna get this done? When I went to um, as I've mentioned in the podcast, and people who know me know, when I went to medical school, I was 35 or 36 years old. I was a single parent of a 10-year-old at the time, and you just make it happen because this is what you're going to do. And thank God when you make these kind of decisions and pivots in life, the road just opens up and the things just line up for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so true, you know.
SPEAKER_01I have a um um a plaque on my wall that says, and God says yes.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean it's um it's pretty I I think for people who haven't experienced that or um have um doubts about the validity of that, I just want to kind of pause here and say sometimes our our heads are so full of stuff that mask what is for you. Our heads are so full of doubt, so full of um, you know, judgment of others, of oneself that you you can't you can't see it. But I believe that you can sense it and it's a matter of being obedient to it versus denying it. It's kind of just lean into that, just just say yes, just say yes to it, and and you're gonna see more and more that's what happens to you, Carl. I think that's an amazing story. So you think that book impacted your decision?
SPEAKER_00It has been it's impacted all of my decisions for the most part.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Oh, I cannot wait to put that up on our podcast notes, that book. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um and it's funny, I even I kind of uh took excerpts of it. I remember I was speaking at a a little um graduation for junior high. I was the speaker or something, and I took excerpts out of that because I knew it helped me. And even if it was a nugget of information for somebody at that time, you know, it's been a minute since I've revisited it, but it's it's it's it's in there. It's keeping, yeah, yeah. And of course, faith and having faith of of you know, because you know, faith with worries is not faith, right?
SPEAKER_02You just gotta you just gotta you just gotta keep um God in front of you or or I was just talking to um I had um a coffee date with Cookie because I was in Brooklyn last week, and um she was she was telling me about you know how she's she is in prayer about her next steps, and we were talking about um how worry it's either pray and don't worry or worry and don't pray. Right, right, pray and don't worry, worry, don't pray. It's one or the other. You can't consider yourself to be faith-led if you're worrying all the time, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not easier said than done, but um, you gotta push through, you gotta push through that.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And so after that, you know, I left um Nextel. I went to a couple other companies, Fannie Mae and another company called Watson Wyatt. They went through a merger in 2010, and I decided to take a package and open up my own practice in 2011.
SPEAKER_02That's incredible. Incredible. And we want to hear about that because you've got you're doing all the things, and um, I I know that I'm gonna be convicted, Leslie not so much, because Leslie, you know Leslie has it all on lock. Me not so much, so I'm gonna be listening, and a lot of my questions are gonna be I'm gonna pretend that I'm asking for our audience, but I'm actually asking for myself, but you'll never know the difference. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, but yeah, so so if you're like Ange, who wants to get all the scoop about estate planning for a friend, stay tuned for part two of our episode with your estate planning attorney, Carl Chad. See you next week. And this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besting from Button.
