ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Rushion McDonald, an award-winning TV executive producer who’s worked with successful celebrities and owns a marketing and media company.
From humble beginnings, McDonald told Corie about going from the Fifth Ward to producing and writing for the likes of Kevin Hart and Steve Harvey.
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“My father was a truck driver. Third-grade education. My mom graduated from high school. Six sisters, two brothers, grew up in a two-bedroom shotgun house — if you’re not familiar with that term, open the front door, open the back door, shoot a shotgun through the house, no bullets hit the wall, you’re in shotgun house my friend — that’s what I grew up in, but what gathered me and made me the person I am today is mentorship, and back then that term wasn’t used that way like it’s used today. People fully understand the value of mentorship,” McDonald said.
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McDonald told Corie that it said a lot about where he was in life, given that he wanted to be a forklift driver instead of going to college, and while he did briefly attain that dream after graduating top of his high school class, he said he got fired after dropping a box on someone’s hand. From there, he described going back to one of his teachers to talk.
”She had me fill out a piece of paper that I didn’t know what I was signing and submitted all my information to the University of Houston, and that’s how I got into college,” said McDonald, who would go on to graduate with a math degree.
Becoming a millionaire is easy, McDonald said, or it’s at least straightforward. Just take out an insurance policy, right?
According to McDonald, what takes real practice and produces real wealth — the kind that lasts lifetimes and benefits more people than just yourself — is learning to set long-term goals, planning your movements with compound interest in mind and, above all, owning property.
“What you have to start with is ownership, and ownership is not a car, ownership is not clothes, ownership is not jewelry, ownership is property. We all know God can’t make another planet, and so if you buy something, you own it and you can hold on to that. That’s where the root of generational wealth comes, in equity and property. You know, that is really the basis of what it is. If you start understanding that, then you can grow out,” McDonald said. “Buy property — property can be land or property can be homes — invest your money into a compound interest account, which will not strangle you, which means you ain’t putting out $1,000 or $5,000 to buy stock because that’s what happens is that $150 might not be able to buy you a stock, but $50 a month into a compound interest account can enable you to grow, and correctly. All the billionaires say compound interest. You could talk to Buffett, you could talk to all of them, and they’ll tell you that’s the way to go.”
Hear the full interview in Season 4, Episode 16 of “Black Men Sundays.”
Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.