The wealth gap between white and black Americans is staggering.

There are many variables that play into these statistics issues of systemic and institutional racism in banking employment, housing and education.

But my guest today on Courageous Conversations is taking steps to empower the black community to find greater financial success in the markets and create generational wealth.

Hello, my name is Pastor Phil Davis.

I'm the host of Courageous Conversations.

Joining me today on the show is Trevor Rosier, BRD, founder and CEO of Stack World Capital, a company that is committed once again to helping African-Americans build wealth.

Don't go anywhere.

We'll be right back with Trevor Rosenberg, the CEO of Starkwell Capital, Welcome back, everybody.

Welcome to the show.

We're so excited to have this amazing guest on the show with us today.

Trevor, I want to welcome you to the show.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your, I'm sure, a super busy schedule just to hang out with me today.

I appreciate it.

Pastor I really appreciate you having me on today.

I'm excited to have the conversation and.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, you're doing some exciting work in the area of economic empowerment.

You know, I was reading a recent report that calculates that the median wealth for black Americans will fall to zero so by 2053.

If current trends continue and in the Latin community as well, they say about two decades later, their median wealth will fall to zero as well.

What do you think is the problem?

Where are we seeing the issues within within the community?

Yeah.

So I think there are a range of different issues that are contributing to the wealth gap.

We all know the history of America is filled with issues and examples of systematic disenfranchisement of black and brown communities as relates to economic empowerment and certainly opportunities for wealth accumulation.

And so I think that those are sort of some of the foundational contributing factors to the existence of the racial wealth gap Sure.

But then I think, you know, as we have evolved over time that you mentioned at the outset, so issues of access to, you know, career opportunities, access to opportunities from a real estate and housing perspective, I think all of those things have stacked up over time.

But for us, that stack well, we we also look at the rate of investment or lack of investment in black and brown communities, in particular in the black community, as also being a key contributing factor, which is what we are squarely trying to address at Stockwell.

Yeah, no, that's exciting.

You know, at our church, I always talk about what we're doing at our church, you know, we're having a economic empowerment seminar right at the end of the month.

And the goal, of course, is to provide access and information because many of times when folks don't know.

Right, they just can't engage.

And we historically have not participated in the market.

I don't know exactly what the statistics are, but I do know that a recent report says that the total buying power of the African-American community was something like $1.6 trillion.

And so we have the resources.

Right.

But many times we're not investing those resources in places where our money can work for us versus us working for our money.

What has been your experience with that?

Yeah, I totally agree with that point.

And part of the reason why we gravitated towards the racial wealth gap and in particular trying to get more people into the financial market is exactly what you just said.

Right.

So the buying power of the black community is massive.

The influence of black consumers is massive, but we're not, you know, reaping the benefits of that positioning in terms of ultimately enabling us to build wealth.

And so taking a step back from all of that, like I looked at the racial wealth gap and the data is telling us a story of a gap that's getting more severe with each passing generation.

Right.

And, you know, for us at Stockwell, we believe that the racial wealth gap is the social justice issue of our time.

It directly impacts many of the material issues that we care about within the black community.

So you think about things like access to affordable health, health care, housing, quality education, food insecurity issues, you know, issues of criminal justice reform.

The list goes on, right?

So for us, we founded Stockwell.

Ultimately to help more people within the black community leverage the market so that they could grow and amass a little bit more wealth, so that they could have greater agency and control to direct outcomes pervasively in their lives.

And so, you know, when I think about spending power, what can and what can we do to find opportunities to take that capital that is flowing through our communities, put it to to its highest and best use so that we can achieve the collective objectives that we have and realize, frankly, our fair share of the American dream.

You know, it's amazing when I think about the kind of work that you're doing.

And and so, you know, we talk a little bit about the reasons that we see some of the challenges within the African-American community.

Another recent report says The cost of racism cost the US economy about $16 trillion.

Right.

Because of discrimination.

You know, and it was a report actually by Citigroup Bank.

But what Citigroup failed to talk about was the fact that they benefited off of slavery.

And the tragically transatlantic slave trade.

You know, and so we understand that there are a number of underlying issues, right.

That are driving the wealth gap.

But but I stack well, you guys are doing something amazing.

So if you could talk a little bit about Stack well, capital, how you how you got to the place of you know, really wanting to empower the community.

And what is what is your journey been like thus far?

Absolutely.

So, look, for me, I have spent the entirety of my career both as a business person and as a legal as a lawyer in the financial services and asset management space.

And so I have seen firsthand how powerful the markets can be as a tool to help people grow and amass wealth.

And frankly, you know, I spent a bunch of time helping to create wealth for folks that don't look like you.

And I And so through those experiences, I knew that there was a massive opportunity to get more people within our community invested into the market.

But it would require us giving them access to a bit more information and tools that are intentionally created to address some of the challenges that exist within our community and ultimately have resulted in underinvestment.

So I know we have sort of talked about this a bit thus far but the fact of the matter is only about a third of black families are invested in the market as compared to almost two thirds of white families.

Right.

And what we know to be true is that the S&P 500, which is the index that tracks the largest 500 stocks in this country, is up 279% over the last decade.

Right.

So extend that out even a bit further.

Right.

So when you look at the S&P 500 over the last decade, it has produced around an eight and a half percent rate of return on average every year for the last 30 years.

So on those data points alone, the lost opportunity for black Americans to accumulate wealth is massive.

Now, I say all that, knowing that there are a whole host of social, emotional and cultural barriers to entry that exist within our community.

But the fact of the matter is the process of leveraging the markets and building wealth doesn't have to be as hard as a lot of people think.

And in particular, Eric, I'll just give you one example If you did nothing more than invest a dollar a day for the next 30 years and get the rate of return that I just described at the end of that period, an individual would have nearly two times more wealth than the median black family has in this country today.

Wow.

Right.

And so what we're trying to do at Stockwell is to be the conduit to facilitating better understanding and access to information and frankly, a platform through which people can access the markets and leverage those opportunities to grow their wealth so that they can direct outcomes.

Like I said before, more pervasively in their lives.

That's amazing.

I think a lot of times the the the issue is access to information and then having someone to help walk you through it.

Because many times, as you said, one third of people in our community are invested.

That means that, you know, that one third can pass that information on to their kids and onto their children.

Right.

This just this idea of creating generational wealth.

How will stack well, get the message out.

How are you looking to leverage the information and then and then really communicate it to to the masses?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a number of different ways that we're working to get the message out to our communities.

And we do that through conversations like this.

And so it is extremely important for me to get out there and to be accessible to people within our community.

They need to see me.

They need to hear this story, and they need to understand that there are people that look like them that are operating in these spaces and that this is absolutely something that is within their reach and a place in which they belong.

So we start there with conversations We also do it through partnerships with other mission aligned brands, as well as black community based organizations and affinity groups.

Churches, things of that nature.

One of the areas where I'm also just particularly excited about the work that we're doing is that we have started a school student ambassador program where where we're working with college and university students across the country and empowering.

18 to 22 and some graduate level students to be agents of change within their own community.

Right.

And so we are giving them access to the information to go out and start to have the conversations with their peers with their parents that frankly are just, you know, pervasively not taking place within our within our community and so we have seen tremendous impact as a result of that program.

We at Stockwell are so inspired by you know, frankly, just the the progress and the opportunity that exists within that cohort of individuals and certainly like their trajectory to to go off and do great things in this world.

So, you know, really, it's about developing community and to the point that we both made earlier creating more access to information and really doing the things that are necessary to start to normalize these conversations around black wealth.

Because I think with better information, people will be able to make smart decisions and ultimately position themselves to to realize like the financial futures that they deserve for themselves and for their families.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I think about I think you you talked about working specifically with a cohort in high school and college.

Can you talk about that a little bit more in and what that looks like?

I mean, that's so empowering.

You know, I didn't learn about finances in high school or really in college, you know, and and a lot of times people are just lacking information, but getting them at a young age and helping them to connect and really see the value in it all, I think is critically important.

What does that look like?

For you?

Is it is it partnerships across the country or are you did you start in this specific region?

Yeah.

So I'll start by giving you a little bit of a story about my own personal background, because that's what contributed to our desire to start some of these programs.

So for me, much like you like, you know, I didn't I didn't learn about finance in school or growing up.

I didn't know much about the financial markets even up until the point when I graduated college.

But for me, and my first job out of college happened to be at a law firm that was supporting clients that ultimately were bringing product to the financial markets and in and around the same time.

I will never forget this.

One of my best friend's father sat me down one night after work and he explained to me an hour long conversation the power of long term passive investing and how the stock market is not about trying to buy low or so high.

It's not about timing.

The market.

It's about time spent in the market.

And it's not about how much money you make.

It's about how much money you save and invest.

And so I learned that at 22 years old, and I know how powerful that has been for me in terms of just my own financial trajectory.

And so we attack.

Well, I think it is extremely important for us to start as early as we possibly can, not only improve just because we know one of the biggest contributing factors to a person's ability to build wealth is actually time.

Right.

Like the longer that you are in the market and the more opportunities you have to get the benefit of compound interest, the greater your opportunity is to build wealth.

But that the other factor is like when you look at the gap, the gap actually gets to its highest point within the millennial population.

Right.

So this is where this is where the problem is most acute.

And so we have gone out and on a very individualized basis, identified students at various colleges and universities, including and a number of HBCU.

OK, I go out and have conversations with with college or high school level students as well.

And it's all about letting them see themselves in this process.

Yes.

Yes.

And then giving them access to information to start to have these conversations and understand a little bit about the decisions that are available to them and the pathways that they can take to to ultimately start to build wealth.

Do you find do you find that this generation is welcoming to the information?

Because, you know, they do everything on their phones now.

Right.

And and so, you know, I downloaded an app that you know, allows me to do my investments right on my phone.

This this this is the wave not of the wave of the future is right now.

Right.

Most people are doing a lot of it digitally.

Right.

On their phone is stack well engaging in the digital market in regards to giving people the capacity to to invest on their phones Absolutely.

So Stack is accessible through a mobile application.

So people will be able to download it on their phones and use it as a tool to help them get into the markets.

The first part of your question was about just like receptivity from some of the younger populations within our community.

And I will say it has been like absolutely outstanding one time.

They are so receptive of the information they as individuals are so focused on it impact not only in their individual lives, but more pervasively within their community.

And so what I see from them is just a really intense focus on collective achievement and about promoting better outcomes for themselves and for their communities more pervasively.

And that is squarely what we are about at Stockwell right.

Like this problem of the racial wealth gap impacts all of us within the black community across the age, income, education spectrum.

Right.

And so it doesn't matter how old you are, what your financial situation is like.

There are different polls on us that limit our ability to grow and amass wealth commensurate with our similarly situated peers and other demographic groups in this country.

So and so, I think it is incumbent upon all of us to engage in this conversation and to think about the ways in which we can leverage better information and tools like stock.

Well, to get into the market and start to sustainably find opportunities to grow and to mask more wealth.

Yeah, there seems to be this this real collective movement around it, specifically in the African-American community with unity, right.

Where folks are working together, working towards a collective, you know, growth economically of our community.

I think since the George Floyd murder, I call it a public lynching.

When they killed George Floyd, there was really an elevation of this need for us to address systemic institutional structural racism but at the same time, out of that comes this desire to really empower our community and really fight against that historical racism that has really oppressed and caused African-Americans to be behind.

You know, it's amazing because when you think about it, Americans weren't middle class until like the 1930s or forties.

Right when they made this huge investment into building out the middle class, you know, and African-Americans were left out of that.

Right.

The New Deal was really not a great New Deal for African-Americans.

Even with the GI Bill.

Right.

We were denied from participating in those resources.

But it seems now this resurgence of folks really moving towards economic empowerment is critically, critically important.

Tell me a little bit more about Stack well and kind of your team, who you are and what you're really hoping to accomplish.

You kind of gave us the mission already, but.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I want to touch on that point that you just made, the empowerment, because that is why we ultimately focused on investment.

And so, you know, unlike a lot of other financial products and services that are out there, there are fundamentally no gatekeepers to the financial markets.

Right.

So there's nobody that's stopping you or I from going and opening out a brokerage account and starting to put a little bit of money into the market and getting the same access to returns that anyone else can get that participates.

Right.

So it's not like going down the street and running into, you know, a loan officer at a bank that might have some level of bias and them having the ability to say to you, like, you know what, not for nothing.

I'm not giving you that loan to buy that house.

Right.

Right.

So this is everything about the financial markets is entirely within our reach.

Right.

And so what we're trying to communicate to our community is saying, like, here's an opportunity for us to go off and do whatever it is that we want to try to accomplish in terms of accumulating more wealth.

And no one has any sort of say about it.

Right.

So this is our opportunity to to do what we feel is necessary.

And we don't have to wait.

Right?

We're not asking for permission.

We're just going to go off and create the future and the opportunities that we want to have for ourselves.

Now, you asked about our team, and I'm super proud of the group of people that we have been able to assemble.

We have a really strong interdisciplinary team that has experience across finance and asset management as well as software development.

And in particular in the high growth tech startup space.

But more importantly, our team is reflective in large part of the community that we are all going on and trying to serve well.

Right.

And so we have we have the personal lived experiences both individually and through our families and our friend groups to understand and just like how strong some of the challenges are that have prevented people from getting into the market or just growing and amassing a little bit more wealth in general.

Right.

And so as a result of that, we have built stock well with an intense focus on intentionality around addressing some of those challenges.

Right.

So when you think about the contributing factors that have resulted in people not participating in the markets, it's oftentimes that people feel like they don't know where or how to start.

They feel as though they need to have some level of sophistication or understanding some prerequisites that are required before they can start to participate.

They think that they need to have a lot of money to get started.

Right.

And I know from experience that many of those things couldn't be further from the truth.

Right.

And so we have been very deliberate and intentional about the way in which we have created our product so that we're addressing those challenges along the way.

So for us, what Stack Will is, is a mobile application that automates the investment process.

So we've created model investment portfolios that are aligned to individual users, risk profiles and investment objectives.

We've paired that with access to investment education that is delivered in culturally competent ways.

We leverage behavioral psychology to help people model and shape the effective behaviors that are required to persist along a path and sustain their commitments to the investment process.

And most importantly, we have made it accessible from a price perspective, so it only costs a dollar a month for our fees to to manage your money.

And from an investment perspective, the investment minimum is $10.

Wow.

So it doesn't matter where you sit on the income spectrum stack, well is accessible to you, and you can use it as a tool to get into the market and to grow in a mass more wealth.

Yeah, that's amazing.

I mean, you you've answered a number of the questions, right, that individuals and overcame the barriers.

You know, I don't have enough money.

I can't afford it.

You know, it's not an easily accessible it sounds like you've you've checked off all of the boxes, right.

Necessary to help people engage and really become a part of, you know, the market and be able to benefit financially.

So now they can download this off of the App Store, Google Play and the Apple Store as well.

They will be shortly.

OK, so we are current.

We are currently in private beta, which just means we're going through a final testing process and wonderful to ensure that everything is all good with respect to the app.

We are going to be going through a process of a bit of a soft launch over here over the next couple of weeks and months with the intention of fully releasing the application to the market later this spring.

Now, that said, people can go to our website today which is right that called capital dot com they can enter their email address and sign up for our wait list, which means they'll get access to some of our investment education content as well as updates and alerts around what's going on with Stack well, but more importantly, they will reserve their spot in line to get early access to the product.

OK, so I would encourage certainly all of your viewers to go off and do that and to ultimately become part of this community that we're creating at Stockwell.

You know, that's pretty exciting.

So I guess I already went on.

So just so you know, if you look at the name, you'll see Phil Davis on there.

But that was of course, that was of course, for our folks.

And what makes tech?

Well, you shared a lot of it, but what makes tech, well, different from other digital investment platforms, just so our folks can really get their their minds wrapped around it.

Yeah, I would say it starts with the intentionality with which we have created this product, right?

So we're the only people on the market that have created a product that is specifically designed to address the social, emotional and cultural barriers to entry as they exist within our community.

And we are making an unwavering commitment to deliver information and financial products and services to people in our community and transparent and honest and fair ways.

So we are starting with investments over time.

We will move into other areas of financial services, whether it be banking, lending or other opportunities.

You know, our aspiration is to to serve the end to end financial services needs of people within the black community, all with a view towards creating opportunities to help people grow in and ask for wealth in sustainable ways.

And I think it goes back to what I mentioned about our team, right?

We are from the community and so we understand the challenges.

We understand the angst and anxiety that goes along with a lot of the financial decisions or, you know, the the feeling of unease because you just don't know in certain situations.

And so we are trying to not only create a product that addresses those things but a community in and around Stockwell that is focused on promoting the collective achievement and empowering and uplifting one another such that we all have access to better information and opportunities to leverage the tools available to us to ultimately grow more.

Wealth that, you know, that's amazing.

So let me ask the question that, you know, a lot of my viewers may be wondering.

Is it only for African-American?

Can only black folks invest with Slack?

Well.

No, absolutely not.

So we have been intentional about addressing the problems and the issues that have limited investment within the black community.

But the fact of the matter is, like these challenges cut across all races, all communities within this country.

And so what I would say is, if you or someone that, you know has felt many of the same feelings along the way, or someone that is about promoting greater access and inclusion and collective empowerment of more people pervasively in this country, then Sackville is a place for you.

It doesn't matter what you look like.

It doesn't matter how much money you make this is what we are trying to do is to create an environment that I think, frankly, all of us want to see how in the world like there's there's too much negativity in the world right and so we see ourselves as positive agents of change that are also about creating access to opportunity from a financial services perspective.

Because we know, you know, with more money basically comes power and influence to shape the outcomes socially.

That we care about within this country and within our communities.

So that's what it's about.

It's for all.

That.

That's great.

And, you know, and a lot of times what happens, it's kind of like the whole Black Lives Matter you know?

Then there's a whole all lives matter and then there's blue lives matter.

You know, the problem that we're facing as African-Americans, as it relates to Black Lives Matter is not that other lives don't matter.

It's just that our lives are being snuffed out right at a greater rate than others.

So it's not dismissive of other people, but it's really zero focusing on the fact that we have issues within our community.

And what you're doing, I think, also turns down this whole idea of cultural competency.

Many times when we go into a bank right?

We're sitting in front of someone who doesn't look like us or when we're dealing with a financial advisor, someone who doesn't look like us, who may not understand our context, you know, Trevor, I have to say, I'd really like to thank you for coming on the show today.

I told you the time was going to go really fast.

You're doing great work and we'll change countless lives through economic empowerment.

So thank you for taking the time to come on this show.

And to all of our viewers, thank you so much for taking the time to watch our courageous conversations.

We say God bless and keep being courageous.

We'll see you next time.