I actually educate people on that, and I just give a lot of value, man. I give a lot of value. I have people who already have properties, but they still go ahead and just buy land for me for the sake of. Gain so much value, they just wanna do something with me. Yeah, so it's been, it is been awesome. I love sharing, I think I'll be doing this at 50. welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast. This is your host here, Haydynn, back with another episode for you guys. And joining us all the way from Africa. I have Rush Asare did I say your last name right? It's Sari, right? You nailed it. Okay. Awesome. I love it. I had a, I had a, one of my other friends, Yamu, who's from West Africa, actually, she introduced me to a guy named Welby Elli, and I completely murdered, like I just did not get his name right the first time. So I'm, I'm working on it. Pretty straightforward. Some, you know, some African names could be kind of hard to pronounce, so I understand. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well rush, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I'm super excited to get to know you a little bit better and to hear your story from what Autumn shared with me. I'm super excited to hear about all of the journeys and crazy things that you've gotten to do in your life and business. So why don't we go ahead and just get started with you introducing yourself. Right. Thank you for having me, Haydynn. My name is Rush. I'm a US Navy veteran also a Ghanaian in know West Africa from Ghana. my parents brought me to the state at the age of, you know, 13. I was there for about 14 years, and I moved back to Ghana almost four years now. In 2021, may to be exact, I moved back to Ghana. Yeah, so that's, that's about me. I'm a vet accountant. I hold a master's degree in accounting, but I work for KPMG briefly also trading the stock market. And then now I'm into real estate in Ghana, building a gated community, selling people land. There is actually an issue down here in West Africa, Ghana, to be exact, a lot of land scams and stuff like that. So that's what I'm doing, you know, solving that, that, problem. I would love to dive right into that. It gets me really excited. So as I told you before we got started, real estate is my, is my jam. That's where I, that's my, my zone of genius after connecting with people is real estate. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you got into that. How did, how'd you learn about this opportunity? Right. So I would take it all the way back to America. So I was living in New York. Always was good with numbers, so I knew I was gonna have to do something with accounting, those sort of things. Very organized, analytical, that's who I am. The real estate side of things was more of like every African notice, you know, Africans come to the states to work and send money back. To build something for themselves so they can, when they retire, you know, the money goes a long way, so they'll come back home. You know, enjoy their money. Whether that's social security money is not much in America, but when they come to their countries and their houses already built, they can live a pretty good life. And that's basically the blueprint for a lot of Africans that do travel out to uk, you know Germany, US. That's basically the blueprint. You go there, you work, you save some money, you send it back home. You buy some land, you build a house, building a house. Actually, very normal people don't buy houses. They build it for the most part. I guess like the vast majority of the people, maybe 85% of it, they build a house from scratch, including myself. Where we sitting right now built are from scratch, so, I noticed there was a problem. My father is really active in the Ghanaian community and his friends, when they come over, they all have this horror stories of them thinking they were building their house for them to go retire and then they got duped, right? They're sending the money to somebody and they're not building it or they basically. Buying cheap and inferior materials to save on it, and a lot of land scams. So I became aware of that. However, you know, I, you know, I proceeded to joining the Navy. The four years in that came out, I did my undergrad and masters in accounting. And around that time a friend of mine Matt, yeah, he, you know, I work out a lot. So I work, I was working out with him. I actually met him in the gym and he really I would say sparked my entrepreneurial brain because I was very entrepreneurial when I was in Ghana. I. You know, I left at 13, but even when I was like nine years old, I was cutting people grass and did whole bunch of side hustles to make money, but when I went to America it was kind of like you know, it's a new environment and my father was really protective of me and I couldn't go out and do all the things I was doing here in Ghana. So I basically went the academic route. And it's been like that ever since. So when I. Met Matt. He made me believe that, you know, I can kind of do this thing on my own. Like I don't have to work for KPMG, which is a company I work for briefly, that I can actually do something on my own. So initially it wasn't a real estate, it was more of like gym, because I'm, I'm really heavy in working out. I noticed that, you know. Ghana to be exact, you know, west Africa, that's where I'm from. So I know a lot about Ghana and I know that Ghana is developing very rapidly and the idea of like a gym membership and it's like it was coming in the mix, but it wasn't so much so, so there was an opportunity there. And I said that's something I can jump into like, you know, create gyms and the membership, the same model in America. A lot of people actually replicate a lot of models that's already worked in the developed countries. They just bring it to these developing countries and implement it. So I'm like, okay, I can, I can work with the gym side of things. But then, you know a lot of research coming back, asking around and properties can be really expensive in prime areas of Ghana. Cry to be as to be exact here and looking at the numbers, it was, it was pretty difficult. But then covid strike, right, so it was between 2018. 2020. We were, we were deliberating on this. And before I moved in, I had a piece of land already. Like I said, it's quite normal to buy land and build in Ghana. So I had a land in 2016. I just bought it for the sake of, you know buying a piece of the country that I'm from. So when I decided to move, I started planning on architectural drawings and all that stuff, and I came to realize that my childhood friend that I went to school with in New York have moved back to Ghana and he's now an architect. So when the idea of me moving back came to the picture, he's the first person for me to contact. I mean, knowing all these scary stories, I'm like, okay, I know this guy, like on a personal level already, on a personal level already. And you know, he's an architect so I can work with him. And he was pretty young at the time. So he gave me a beautiful design. And then I pitched the idea to him. It clicked because he was using this, insurance where they, he insures your money, right? Like always insurance in performance bond and all that stuff, which was kind of foreign to a lot of Ghanaians because they do things by trusting, you know, your cousin, trusting your uncle, trusting somebody who know paperwork really in place. They just, they just go through that and a lot of them were having a lot of issues. So when he started like doing everything by the book, very professional way, I just right away noticed that. We can really do this, like we can really go to the Ghanaian market, people in the diaspora people in Germany, London, you know, us that are trying to do something back home. They don't have to take the risk of going to the family members, first of all. Some of them don't even know what they're doing. And then secondly, most of them will actually spend the money. They won't use it for what, you know, you send the money out for. So he bought into the idea and we created a company called Akaddia Limited. And but we didn't perform, so we went ahead, we bought my house and that was gonna be the model. Like, okay, this is what we can do. And then we built a beautiful house and then I moved back. In 2021, but in the interim, I was trading stocks. So from my background in accounting helped me out a lot. And then Covid was kind of like a lot of newbies in the markets. The market was wide open. I ended up trading, created my job at KPMG, and then traded full-time. And you know, I was fortunate I made some good money. So when I came to Ghana, I was actually in a position to build my own gym. Like, I didn't need any investors. I was good to go. So I have finished the house that I'm gonna live in.'cause that's your biggest expense in Ghana. I mean, if you own your house outright and you're not like an extravagant person, you can live a very pretty comfortable life for like$900 a month here. So you, you could live a pretty comfortable life going out, you know. You'll be fine. So that's why it was so imperative for me to build a house before I move. And I came down here with money, so I'm like, okay, I now wanna build a gym. And I went ahead to buy land. It was actually an existing car wash. You know, by the main road because I did not wanna deal sell. Also a lot of litigation with land Ghana is crazy. So I went to buy a land, which is like, documentation was right. These people have possession, they were living on the land. And I'm like, I have absolutely nothing to worry about. So I dived into that all this. I had a real estate company, but I wasn't active in it. I came here, I had a vision that I'm gonna create a gym. So the real estate company was registered, but I already did like one job, like my father's friend wanted to do something and my father told him about what we can do, and then one job that was about it. So it was something more of like a side gig, and this gym thing was like the main thing for me. So I went ahead, I bought this commercial property. We just spent quite a bit of money on it. If you're looking at how much the land was for Ghana Standard. But when I was taking over the land, when the previous owners moved out and I was taking over the land, somebody showed up. I don't know whether the land belonged to them. So, you know, I had to fight this person off, you know, to basically use the police, blah, blah. He was using the police. I was using the police. It's, it's, it is a normal thing here in, in Africa, you know, bribery and all that stuff basically fought him off and he kind of backed off with the police side'cause I was able to write letters to the police, warn them I'm gonna have them investigated, blah, blah, blah. And then he backed off. So I thought I was good to go. I was cleaning the land, getting ready to start this development. It's actually a minimal, I. And then the gym was gonna be in there. I have a salon for my wife Barbershops you know, kind of like a, you know fast food restaurant rooftop. It was a whole, you know, a whole mixed use development. Yeah, exactly. You got it. Mm-hmm. So that was the idea. And the gym was just a part of it. But the way this guy was acting, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna keep on the car wash going, I'm gonna keep the operation going. So that's, you know, everything is always active. So I renovated the car wash and he, you know, he took me to court and put an injunction on it, and this was 2022. He put an injunction on it. I, I purchased a property in 2021 December. He put injunction on it like May, 2022. So I had traveled to the state for about two months in between. So when I came back three months I was working and then he just put injunction on it. I couldn't do anything on the land. I couldn't go on the land, nothing. For two years I was in court. So while and the market crashed too because of the Russia, Ukraine war there, market crashed and then I lost a lot of my capital. So now I didn't have the money to. The money that I thought I had to build a minimal was gone. And I'm in court and I'm here in Ghana now, and Ghana is not a place where you can easily get a job and you get good money. Now it doesn't work that way. You have to be lucky, well connected, get some sort of international gig where you get like paid decently. Other than that you are not making money. So I wasn't looking at that route. I mean, I came down here if I wanted to work, I was gonna go back to the States, but I wanted to, you know. Create something on my own. I felt like I was of more use because they need jobs here. You know, the unemployment rate here is quite high and I felt like I would not take from them. I'd rather create and employ people. So I was just thinking and during these down times and eventually I started a YouTube channel. You know, showcase my house. I actually didn't think YouTube would be that powerful to let people reach out to you, you know, and give you huge sums of money to build a house for them. I didn't think that was even a possibility, but I was just sharing my story all the difficulties I'm going through. I bought my land, how it was, what you can expect to spend on a house like this. I was just educating people what to look out for when you're trying to buy land. Just because the documentation is right doesn't mean that somebody won't show up. Basically, just sharing my life from experience and immediately, I think within two weeks. I noticed that, ah, this is what's gonna take this company to this to whole new, to a whole new level. Because people started asking about, oh, the house is beautiful. Who designed it? How do you go? Like. How long was the process? People just seemed so interested in the house. And from there we took a couple of designs with my business partner. We did a couple of designs. I think that year we did about like 30 houses. We designed like 30 houses. Wow. So I'm like, okay, that's, that's amazing. And then we started taking over people's houses that. They like, you know, the finishes here too can be very terrible. People just do whatever, lack of supervision. And they love the finishes of the house. So they were like, okay why don't you take over my house? I've been building this house, horror stories. I've been building this house for like 15 years. It's not going anywhere. Can you take over this for me? Can you take over that for me? And it was just taking off. But all this were, I'm scared of land, right? So we are just building on people, house people land. Land that they already had. Taking over people's buildings. And I educated people on some road expansion that was coming in because also our roads network needs some work on. It's a developing country, so they're spending some of the roads to make you know, a drive that will usually take you about 30 minutes without traffic because of traffic.'cause the road is, you know, is congested. It will take you about an hour, an hour and 15, but it shouldn't be. So it's not that far from a lot of things. But because of the traffic, it seems like it's far. So I knew that they were doubling the road, and I knew that after they doubled the road, it's about 30 minutes. So land value in these places will go up like drastically because just 30 minutes away, land is going for, just to put in perspective, land is going for like$150,000,$20,000, and then 30 minutes out land is going for 500,000. I mean 500,$5,000,$6,000. So because of the traffic and how long it takes you to get to these places. So I was educating people what, you know, and then people started asking me for land. I had no intention of selling land, especially going through the, that myself. I didn't wanna deal with land. Land is really like a very tough, tough thing to do in Ghana. You have to be well connected and do a lot of things right in order to be able to be in that business as far as like sell a land, buying and sell a land. A lot of businesses going on that are trying to do this. So while I was in court with this guy who was bothering me, basically I had to go see the larger owners of the land. You know, in Ghana it's usually two land, family land or government land. So the land that my land. My land was actually a family land, so they took me to the larger owners. They conquered this land like way back in the days to war. Like after them. Nobody can say this land belonged to us before it passed out. So when you do a search, they are the last stop. I make a joke that after God was them, right? So, so I went to see them and they showed me that, hey, you got the right, you got the line from the right people. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. This guy's trying to stall you. Stick at it. We are here for you. If you have to go to court and you need any witnesses, we are here for you. I didn't need them, but they assure me that, you know, so that's how I made the connections with them. So when people were now coming to me and crying for land. I am like, okay, these people, and also in Ghana, a lot of people don't do things for free. You know, like something like that. They will, they will. They're very nice people. But something like that. For example, you drove to my lawyer's office. He didn't ask me for gas money or anything like that, right? The way the culture is here, you gotta pay up. You gotta give them something. But that, that's, you know, me having lived outside and knowing that you can be a genuine person, do things for people without asking anything in return, will pay off later. I was paying attention to these things and I knew I can trust this guy. The, the, the puff attorney of the family. I'm like, I can trust this guy because from my experience this guy should have asked for something he drove. It's not like he even just assured me. He drove all the way to my lawyer's office and he didn't ask for anything, which is not typical here. So I said, okay, I can trust this guy. At the same time, I develop a system where if you buy him from me, I'm gonna guarantee your money back in a, in six months period. If you go and work on the land and somebody comes like, what happened to me? I have to give your money back. So I knew I was playing a, like some sort of like insurance game. So if I'm gonna sell land, I have to. Have the money to refund that person in case it goes south right away. Mm-hmm. And I have to start slow and then build my way up. And I was well aware of that. If I'm selling a$5,000 land, I need$5,000 to refund a person if you go south.'cause once I sell the land, I'm giving the load your owners the cut. I might have like a thousand dollars out of your 1,005. The rest goes to them and once it goes to them, I'm not getting the money back. It's Ghana, I'm not getting the money back. I can get land from them or something like that. But trying to get the money back is not gonna work, is a big family. It's gonna go to them, it's gonna take a long time. So I basically just analyze my risk. Knowing where they are, knowing their lineage and all that I knew that I didn't really have much to worry about. So I began by selling one plot, two plot, and you know, had a clean record. Right. So I've sold on to a lot of people and basically just the guarantee that people get, you know, I've had people buy land for me like Autumn, like you said, they have no idea how Ghana works. I have people that have never been to Ghana, their own their own land down here. I've built a war around it, fence war around it. Some of them have even started, I'm building retirement homes for some of, some people that have never been to Ghana, or they came to Ghana for like two days. They know nothing. But I've built, I've been able to build this online presence that people people can go there, look through my videos, and they can tell that this guy, I have nothing to worry about. I mean, I have people that just send me money and they've never seen me before. They've never been to Ghana before, and that's what I've been doing down here now. And then we decided to, instead of. Sell one plot, building designing, building for people. Why don't we create like a community, like a gated community where we actually have like. A few models, right? Like we have like four typologies, we have two typologies for the two bedroom. One is detached, one is semi detached. We have a three bedroom and four bedroom. So why don't we do something like that? And then you just, you just paying as a community. Some people like that. So so we've been bid on for people. They have their own line. They came to our US for design and rebuilding. We have people that will take over their building. And now we are building to sell and we are selling off plan thing too is off plan in Ghana because getting loans out here is extremely hard and if you do get it, the interest is about 30%, how are you gonna make profit? So it's pretty difficult to get loans down here. So there is a popular method that they use here, known as off-plan sales. So off-plan sales is basically, unfortunately some real estate companies took advantage of that. Scam a lot of people. It's pretty difficult nowadays, but because of my brand, I'm, I've been able to execute it. You have to have a very good brand to be able to execute this. It wasn't always like that, but some people have made it so difficult. So offline still works this way. You come in, at least for us, our Methodist, you come in. You see this 3D picture, you come to see the location of the land. There is the entrance. You can get the visuals like this is how it's gonna look. We can tell you your house will be here, but it's not there yet. And basically you just make a, you pick a payment plan, six months, one year, one and a half, two years. There's no, there's a mortgage system here, but the mortgage is extremely hard to get. Very difficult, very expensive. The fees that it will take to even give you that, it's not even worth it. Just so difficult. So we also do payment plan for those people. They don't pay outright and as they're paying, we are building. So we are using their own money to build in a way, and we get paid that at the end. Right. That's the off plan sale method and that's what we are using to build this gator community still selling land left and right. That's essentially. For me, as far as Ghana real estate is concerned, the problem I'm solving, really the biggest problem is just saving people from being scammed and being played. It's more of that than actually building a lot of people can build in Ghana, but the reputation of somebody that, you know, you can sleep well at night, he is gonna get it done. That's what I'm building. And you know, I've been doing this for. Actively since about two years now, and I've managed to put myself there as far as one of the most trustworthy real estate companies here in Ghana. And I believe the sky is the limit. So yes, that's essentially the story, how I went from an accountant wanting to build a gym to now building houses. That's incredible. So what happened with the car wash? I'm curious, did it, did it ever end up becoming what you wanted to make it? Yes. So I won the case last year, around September. I won a case. I'm back on a car wash, actually. I won a case in August, but I was back on a car wash in September. I took full possession and actually, let me see, let me show you a live, I have it on camera live for monitoring. So the car watch is operational now, and I'm gonna start minimal. I think you can see this. Yeah, I can see it. The tower. Somebody's actually there washing. Yes. So it's basically pressurized wash. It's, it's pretty common here because of the dirt rows and, and you know, cars can get pretty dirty. The inner rows, most of'em are dead rows. And what so pressurized washing machine is is what they use down here for the most part. And I've been operating it since September. I'm gonna start the mini mall. I'm making arrangements to start in like, July, June, July and Ghana. It is pretty difficult to do things like this because it's always outta pocket, you know? Right. Always outta pocket stuff. That, that's one of the challenge down here. You can't get favorable loans, you know, to do things that you wanna do. So everything is out of pocket. So now planning to start the mini mall and, and, and, and finish it and buy the gym equipment and put it in there. Nice. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So how long has it taken you to build your reputation? It sounds like you really, I mean, you've been in business for maybe two or three years, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've been, I've been, the company was created in 2020, but we didn't really do anything until like 20 22, 19 20 23. 2023. Yeah. January, 2023 is when. 2022, we did something. But it was off camera. It was off, it wasn't YouTube. I, I told you my father's friend was using us, so it wasn't, but 2023 is really by the power of the internet. Right. It's been really exponential. Wow. Because it has this compounding effect. Right. The more land sell, the more proof I have to show. The more proof I have to show, the more people that come, the more people that come, the more proof I have to show. So it's been like that and it is been compounded like heavily. And you know, then you also have people that refer us, that's your border line from this guy, and he's pretty legit. So it's been, it is been two years, I would say two years and a couple of months. It is, it is been amazing. It's been amazing. The land side of things has been like,'cause initially it was just building and designing of homes. The land side of things has been like maybe a year, year and a half, but the land size is the, is the biggest side of the business is really huge because it's a low entry point, right? The lands that we are selling is like the measurements, like 70 feet by 100 feet point 16 acres. That's known as one plot here in Ghana. That's where the average house is sitting. Of course, some people have big lives, but the average house is sitting on one plot, which is like point 16 acres. So. That can cost you$6,000 and, you know, people can afford that. So that's, that's, that's like the volume is there for that one for a house. Then again here people build out a pocket. So for a house, you know, it's not a lot of people that have one$50,000,$200,000. But yeah, some people also build slowly. But the, the land side of things is where the volume is. We build a few houses here and there, but the land side is, the land is where the volume, the volume is, and it's, it's been great. I, the sky is just limit. I just started so I feel like, you know, I'm just getting started. I know the compound effect that this has, right? Yeah. Just executing, having more. If if you come to me, you want me to build your house for you, it's like, okay, what have you built? That's what, that's what everybody asks. What have you built? Like they wanna see your finishes, they wanna see this. The more you have to show, the better. Yeah. So do you want a construction company as well? Yes, I do. I do. So I own, what does that look like? So I own two companies, right? I have a construction company called Akkadian Limited, and that's with my business partner who is an architect. And that one is design and build. We can just design it for you. You can take it to your own builder, but design, build, solar, installation, furniture, all of that. Customized furniture is like, we have a lot of handyman do like beautiful woodwork. So it's everything is a one stop shop. Then I have rush in properties, which is solely owned by me. That's the land side of this. So that one, I buy land to resell. I do brokerage. We are like, I take land in people's names and then I have a contract between them and I giving me the sole right to sell the land. Then I, I just, I just sell it with a contract. That, so yeah, I sell homes as well. So it's a brokerage company Rush n properties. So the course rushing companies are Kenya Limited is design and build and the rushing properties, the sale of land and houses. That's awesome, right? Yes, yes. Okay, cool. And so you would say like the biggest like catalyst of success has been YouTube. When you first started, like, were you just making, like what, what was the driver to make the videos and to share with people like what your house looked like? What, what was the thought process that went behind that to, to start sharing the videos? Oh God. It's pretty normal for, I wouldn't say normal,'cause not everybody does this, but for somebody who has moved back. Right who has moved back, which is kind of like a whole movement now. It's getting crazier. I think I was early people that moved back, whether that's uk, a lot of people in the uk, a lot of Ghanaians actually end up living outside of Ghana too. Like,'cause we all dream of living outside. We have this, we have this notion that it's, the grass is so green on the other side. So we tend to go there at first glance and people move back and not all of them, but maybe 10% of them end up sharing their life, how it is moving back, the challenges they're going through, whatever mine, I was just bored. If everything as a matter of, I'm so happy that I went through what I went through because I don't think I will be here now. I got the car wash and I got everything back plus more, but I think that if everything was so smooth for me, I was just gonna concentrate on building this mini mall, make good money, probably compound from there. But now I get to have everything else plus the reputation. And if I want to get capital, it's so easy now'cause I have people in my email all the time trying to, you know, give you money to do things because all because of YouTube, right? So it all started by being bored, right? So I lost all my money. I'm not working. Right. I'm not working. I'm, I'm, I'm basically living on my residual income that I set up. If all else failed, that's how I plan my life. But I bought this house. If I come to Ghana, I'm not going back. I'm gonna stick it out. Whatever that happens, I need something. as I mentioned to you earlier, the 900 bucks a month, you can live a comfortable life. I mean, not a life that. You want to travel, you're not gonna have that luxury traveling, going on vacation. You're not gonna have that, but you're gonna buy your food. You can go out to have dinner with your wife, buy gas, all that. You, you'll live a very normal life. That average person is living right? So that, that was me for while I was in court. That was me. And then one day I was just bored, right? I wake up, I go to the gym and there's nothing to do because of money issue too. It's not every day that you can go out. Then the 900 is not gonna be enough. You gotta do strategically. You go out two times. Two times a two times a week to go eat. But you can't do it every day. You can't, you can't try to have fun. And that's not me. I like to be productive. So I was really bored at, I wasn't enjoying the process of just sticking out, staying, staying you know, just looking around, can read books and stuff, but I guess boring, you know what I mean? Can read books, but yeah, it gets boring. So one day. I finished working out. I went to take a shower. This wasn't planned, actually, it was not planned. I have no idea what happened that day. So I put on a very nice outfit and my wife was like, where are you going? Because that outfit, I only put it on when I'm going somewhere. And I'm like, I don't even know. Like I have no idea what I have this on. And I didn't know. So I came to this office I'm sitting in and I put on my phone and I just recorded. I just recorded how I built my first house, how I manifested my first house, and it's because I didn't have the money, right. I built you know, 350,000 house in Ghana. You know, it's a pretty big house. You know, this would cost you about maybe$3 million to build this in America. So I didn't have the money when I started, so I just shared the story of just believing and going through the process. I, I did it in a year and a half. Going through the process, I was able to make money in the stock market also working, and everything just worked out. Like, I don't even know how it happened, but I felt like I just printed a house straight out of pocket. I didn't have the money when I started, so I just shared the whole story, why I bought the land. You know, my father's friend advised me to byline because I'm from here. I had no intentions of moving back here. It was like something you do when you old, as I mentioned earlier, you do that during your last, you know, years you come and retire here. But I bought a lane because I took his advice. I don't know what struck home. So I recorded the video and I felt like if that video performed poorly, I don't know if I would be a YouTuber. I have no idea. But the video took off my first video, 16,000 views. And I'm like, I was hooked. Like, you know, great comments. Who built, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Like who built this house? Where are you? Oh, we thank God everything worked out. I, this time I didn't share my car wash audio with anybody and then I had people interview me. I had. A lot of people interview me because I was pretty young at the time, 27, just kind of a big deal in Ghana when you build a house, there's no mortgage include like, so when somebody build a house, they actually out of pocket. It's a big deal. So I had a few interviews and also moving back is a big deal. I had a few interviews from, you know, some successful YouTubers and that really boost my channel up like crazy. In the early stages, within two months I was monetized on YouTube gained, gained 5,000 views, 4,000 views easily, and it's been like that. Now I think I'm at 33,000 subscribers. And, and. Yeah. Ever since I, I've been sharing and sharing and sharing, and the audience tell me what they need, right? And I've been open, and open and open about it. I I advise people not to do in business how to move, what to expect. I share my failures just as much as my success. I'm an open book. I'm not trying to seem perfect. I, I talk about things that I did everything right, but still, I went through this and blah, blah, blah. So you need to be careful. You need to do this. Just because you bought something doesn't mean. Because what happened to me, everything was legit. That's what I won. Everything was fine. The people were living there for 20 years. They had a title. I transferred the title to my name. It was just somebody who wanted to bother me, and I had to go through the process. So I, I encourage people. A lot of people had to come down here trying to move and the fail, the, the failure rate of people trying to move back successfully, like when they're young and start a business is so high. It's so high. Like I would say about 80% of the people that come down here end up leaving because you know, their business didn't work or people are stealing from them. They didn't have the right system. They bought land and they lost it. You know, they didn't fight for it. They got threatened on their land and you know, the story goes on. So I just share how to avoid this. How to be strong, how to go about things, educate people help people with like, you know, connecting people to lawyers. Like some people ask me, who was your lawyer? Also, you can have a lawyer that doesn't really care, like the vast majority don't care. They just wanna get paid. It's, the world here is different if you have lived in the west. You can pay. You pay an attorney and you think everything's settled and or you buy land and you think everything is good to go. It's just not the case here. Its more work to be done. You have to understand the system. You have to know somebody that knows the system, and it's more than just the paperwork here and the title. So I actually educate people on that, and I just give a lot of value, man. I give a lot of value. I have people who already have properties, but they still go ahead and just buy land for me for the sake of. Gain so much value, they just wanna do something with me. Yeah, so it's been, it is been awesome. I love sharing, I think I'll be doing this at 50 because the way, the way my content is, is basically what I do. I just share it. Like I'm opening this cement business, I'm doing this, this is what I did wrong here. I just share it. I'm an open book and there's so much value out of it that people get, and it is very fulfilling. And I'm happy to always share. So that's been a genuine issue. It sounds to me like in Africa, you know, there's, there might be some trust issues, right? Like it's, you, you, you're always in the back of your head wondering like, is this person out for my best or are they out for their best? It sounds like nailed it. That's kind of the, the, you nailed it. The common team. You nailed it. How do you create trustworthy relationships in an environment like that? And I think this can apply to people in all types of different places, whether they're in Africa, whether they're in the West, like, like how do you vet your relationships to make sure, and obviously you can never be a hundred percent right, but like knowing what you know now, how do you make sure that attorney isn't gonna go and screw you over, you know? Oh, hey there. It's me again. I know you expected Morgan Freeman to come on and talk about the biggest company in the world. Well, I'm sorry, but you get the next best thing. This show is sponsored by the company that I co founded, Acadia Capital, and acadia is a hard money lending fund originating loans in Southeast Tennessee and Northern Georgia on residential one to four unit renovation properties. We are regulation D five Oh six C fund and are actively seeking accredited investors. We provide fantastic first position real estate back returns. If you're ready to get your tired and lazy capital to work with a minimum 8 percent return, go to Acadia loans. com backslash invest. Not only do we accept standard investments, but we can also accept self directed IRAs and other self directed retirement accounts to take advantage of tax advantage investing. Thank you so much for listening to art connecting now back to the show. It's been, I would say my relationship's been referrals and I've been fortunate, thank God. It's been referrals, like even workers. I'll be working with this guy who's pretty good that I trust, who would say, oh, this guy is pretty good. For example, my car my car wash manager. So I would, I would take us back. My attorney is a friend of my business partner, so he's, he's been vetted already. I met him through most of my friendship is like that through somebody I know. Who I know I can, I can say This guy is legit and he will recommend this person, or he will bring this person around and then, you know, we, we tend to talk and then lead to the other. So it's been referral. I haven't went out, I think I've met a couple of friends, maybe three, but most of'em on YouTube. Like I, most of my friends here in Ghana now, people that I've connected with is like people that reach out to me because they wanted their solar systems installed or something. They were moving from UK and since I'm already down here, they kind of like, they came as a client, but then we started talking more, can you, can you grab a drink here? I wanna pick your brain on this. And it's been like that. I've, I've made a lot of meaningful friendship because YouTube has been so good to me. Like I don't go look for people. People come to me and I get to sort it out. Yeah. So it's, it is been like that. So I've been fortunate in that regard. But workers wise. The land that we have usually has security guys part of the game here, we have security guys on the ground. And one of them is they are very loyal, good people, and they recommend somebody. I take it serious. So my car watch manager, he's like, I got this guy for you. And I asked him a couple of questions. He said, yeah, he's he's, this guy is legit. He is good. You have nothing to worry about. I'm out here. Bring him in. So it's been like that. Somebody that I know, that I know this person, I can take his word for it. That will introduce me to that person. It's been like that, but you get crush here in Ghana trying to, it's just so many stories. So you just gotta be careful with who you bring on board. And I've been fortunate. My assistant is great. You know, with her to, I didn't even hire her, my business partner hired for me, so, but she's great. She's been really great. Handling the business phone. You know, some people, the first one, oh, I find my first assistant first one sucked. But anyways, it is like that. You know, through referrals for the most part, through referrals and just mutual friends it's been beneficial. And then YouTube also but it's usually not the locals, it's people that have lived outside and they are people like in the same bucket. They are moving back. And or they've moved back and we connect on that level. I have a few local friends as well, that's my neighbors and I, my neighbors. They're doing well for themselves. They got their houses done, whatever. They got a good job and stuff like that. It's a few things that, you know, you, you, you have to look out for and also just. Just watching out for people. I also have some workers. If I have a worker for example, I give you so much work and then I'm like, come and do something small for me and you charge me like crazy. I take notes on those stuff. If I've given you so much work, right? You a carpenter. I've given you so much work throughout the year and let's say McDonald. Then you come and you charge me. I take notes on that. There's nothing wrong with it, but I take notes. So the person that comes and be like, oh boss, I'll do this one for free because I'll still give you something. But I take notes on that. So I just, I'm just nitpicking a few things to see how somebody is, and that's how I've been operating and it's been great. Would you say that like you mentioned the kind of corruption and some of the issues that come along with you being in a developing country. How has that impacted you? Because I always wonder about that. Like, I've been to Mexico and some of my friends got pulled over and they got extorted from the cops, you know, and it's like, you don't really think about that when you're here in the US. It's just not really a thing. Right, right. How do you navigate that? Like it is it, how important is knowing the right person in that environment? So I imagine it's way even more important to be like, just drop a name. Yeah. And then all of a sudden they go away, you know? Yeah, so knowing the right people is absolutely important, but Ghana is not, it's not scary. It always comes down to the money, and usually it's not much. It always comes down to the money when it comes to situation, like what you said, like, when a police officer stops me, I really don't get any sort of fear at all. Zero. Like the worst case scenarios, some$20 or$10 to move on. So I've accepted that's, that's just what it is. You just understand the game. Here you play. You do what the romances do, but nothing is like, aside from this guy who was like, that's what he does, just really, it's not because I'm coming from the states. He just bothering people around. That's what he does for a living. There are people who do that for a living. So if I didn't want to go to court, all he wanted for me is to buy the land for me for the second time, or paying 50% of the money that I bought the loan for, and he'll go away and I didn't do it. He was willing to stress me out onto I do. Which I didn't. So he was So he wanted you to sell him the land for 50% of what you did? No, no, no, no. He wanted me to come and buy the land from him. He wanted me to, he said the land is his, so he wanted me to come and see him and pay for the land so that I can keep it. Hmm. But he wanted half of what you paid. He wanted about 70%. But I feel like if I really wanted to deal with him, if I really wanted to pay up, then I would've negotiated it down and pay like half or maybe 40% how much I paid for the land. And I was gonna do that at some point. I didn't even have the money to do that, so. Right. So I Some princip bull though, you're like, I'm not gonna pay him off. I'm not gonna pay him off. So I went through the pain. It sucked. But for police officers and certain things, for example let's say. Somebody's bothering me on the land somewhere.'cause I deal with land all the time. Now. I haven't, I haven't found myself in this situation, but other situations I have accepted that this is the system down here on the ground. You, you have to make other people happy. Just$5,$4. They might not, they won't even ask for it. It's just that they're not, they're not gonna care. So let's go, let's say I, I went to the police officer or something. I made a case. I'm gonna give them something. If I don't it, probably gonna do it somewhere after I leave. I don't care. So you get to, you come to understand the system and then you just play by the rules. But it's not something that's scary or like your life is in danger. It's just you want things done, you're gonna pay. Nothing is free. I've accepted that nothing is free here. That's why I mentioned earlier that when the guy came to my lawyer, I was expecting to pay, right? Like I was expecting to. So. It is a normal thing that you always gotta be willing to give somebody something to get what you want. I pay attention. So let's say I come to a police. I had this police officer when this guy was bothering me and I went in there and I used, he was helpful in basically making the guy back off, but he was sucking the money out of me, man. Like sometimes I'll say, you know, when are you coming? He would just ignore me. Until some money come, then he become active. And I'm like, ah. So after that, I'm not gonna reach out to you to see how you're doing. Like it was transactional. So I, I've learned to not get emotionally involved in things. If I come to find out you are a nice person through dealing with you, I might give you something.'cause I mean, that's how it is. You gotta eat. Most of these people don't get paid. Well, I'm making money. So we all gotta eat right? It's normal here. You feed me, I feed you. That's how this see us is saying that one person don't eat alone. If, if you try to, if you, if you don't give here, your life can be pretty difficult. It can be absolutely difficult. So you gotta give. So, but if I'm giving and I see you are greedy, like you want more, you trying to make me desperate for more, I pay attention to those things and I know it's pretty transactional and I'm gonna look for an alternative. I'm in the moment. You might get what you want, but you're not gonna be dealing with me again. So I've, I've realized that I don't take it personal. I go to do something. I easily just give it to you without even asking'cause I know that's how it is. Next time when I come, they see you. They, they remember you. Like it is like that. There are people that get things done without letting go pretty difficult. Some people take forever. Something that can take me two months to do. It would take somebody five years'cause they were unwilling to pay up. Hmm. And, and I don't have that time. So, yeah. Yeah. People ask me what time to the point that you made about like when you give someone something and, and there's an expectation of something in return? I do a lot of referral business. I refer out tons of business, like to 50 different people. I send referrals and I get paid when I send someone one business. And I have people ask all the time, well, you know, do you have a contract, a standard contract to use? I'm like, no. I, you know, with big ticket items, I have a contract. Like if it's gonna be a thousand,$2,000, I put it on paper. But if I'm gonna get like paid a hundred bucks on something, I don't have a contract. Like, well how do you make sure they pay you? I'm like, if they don't pay me, I'll never send anyone ever again. It's great. Right? Great. Like, if they get greedy and they don't wanna pay me on something, then that's fine. You know? Like I now know not to ever work with that person again. And that's okay. I love it. I love it. I do the same. I do the same thing. It's not a big deal. I do the same thing, like, like selling, selling. So I, I deal with a lot of people in the diaspora yet again. For example, there's this doctor, plastic surgeon. He was selling this farmland, 230 acres of farmland, which I sold for him already. And it was just. Word of like, this is how much I'm gonna take to sell it for you. This is, that's how we did it. I didn't, sometimes I do put contract in place and all that. If the person wanna go buy the book, I don't mind. But then I feel the energy and I feel like I can trust you. The thing with me is I don't really care if you don't pay me. I don't care is like, of, am I gonna think like, wow, this person is really brutal. Yes, but I don't really care and I, I trusted that he was gonna pay me. So usually I'll be the one to take the payment. And I would take a percentage out. Also, another thing is when you take money in dollars here, they take 3% inflow fee, which is crazy. Like they take 3%. Any money that hit your dollar account here, they take 3%. So he decided to take the money in the states, which made sense because he can take all the money and pay me. Like he paid me my commission outta his money. And I'm like, that's fine. He got it. He paid me. I've never been to school before. Ever in, in a deal like this. So until that happens, maybe when it happens, I'll restructure, but so far I've, he's not the first one. I've, I've made deals with people. There was a lady that I sold her apartment for, no, no deal. On paper, we agreed on what she would give me. I sold the apartment. The money went into her, her, her account, she sent me the money. I haven't had any issues where though, most of the deals, I'm the one collecting the money and actually paying the owners. I haven't made a deal where the money went to the owner and they were like, ah, you helped me sell. Thank you. You're not getting your commission. That hasn't happened yet, but if it happens, it's not the end of the world. Yeah. You so not to ever do business with that person again. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, it's our time to ask the final question of the podcast, and that is, what is a connection to a person or group of people that change the trajectory of your life or business? Oh, I will give it to my good friend Matt, the gym guy who told me that I can, you know, create gyms and stuff like that. He really inspired me and also put me on my entrepreneurial journey. I was an entrepreneur as a kid, but based on circumstances and stuff like that. I just got caught up in the whole ac, you know, academic system going through the nine to five thing. But he just believed I could do so much more in myself and introduced me to things like though I was an accountant, good in school, nice GPA and all that stuff, but I wasn't reading books on my own. So all the books you see behind me, it's all inspired by Matt. Matt, when I wanna do something, Matt recommends like a few books to me to read. That's how I started. And from there, then I went on my own. But that's how I started like, oh, you want to learn about Brandon? Read this book, that book, that book. And he suggested like 10 books to me. And after that I was hooked. And I, you know, I kept reading ever since. He also introduced me to spreadsheets. He actually educated me on, I already understand Excels, but like, analyzing the business, financial projection, projections and all that stuff, which I still use to this day. He gave me, so my tools and how to think about things. I'll give it to him. Absolutely. He had the greatest impact in my life. Yeah. That's amazing. Sounds like an amazing mentor. And you happen to just meet him at the gym. Yeah. That's, that's how it happens. Yes. I that my mentor just happens instead of a house party and he's changed my life. That's awesome. Awesome. That's awesome. Awesome. Thanks Rush. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, man. It's so cool to get to hear your story and to get to hear about all the amazing adventures you've had and really such a short period of time. I mean, like. That, that's really amazing to hear all that, that you've been able to accomplish and really how powerful the power of the internet can be, you know, to, to create opportunity for, for people. So thanks you, thank you for sharing your story and coming onto the show. If people wanna follow along with you, what's the best way for them to go and follow your YouTube channel, or Instagram or wherever you would wanna send people? Yeah, so I'm on Instagram, Rush, RUSH. A RE Instagram, same thing for Facebook. Rush, R-U-S-H-A-S-A-R-E. Yeah, I'm on both, pretty active on both channels. I, I mean both platforms. So you can, you can connect there. What's your YouTube channel called for people to connect with you there? Rush, R-U-S-H-A-S-A-R-E. Perfect. So Ari, everything keep, keep I use my name. Keep it simple. Yeah, yeah. Keep it simple. And it is a pretty unique name, so. I was able to get both without having to pull, underscore, or anything like that. So it's pretty straightforward. Okay. Sick. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Guys, if you're still listening, I just wanna tell you, thank you so much for being here, listening to the Art of Connecting. It's so amazing to get to share this journey with you guys and interview people all over the world and learn their stories and their connections behind the stories. If you have not already give the show a follow and a five star review is the best way for a show to grow. Naturally and organically. Yes, I do. And also, if you can share this episode with a friend, me and the world, I'll catch you guys on the next episode.