From Borrowing $50 to Business Titan by Following This Method

[00:00:00] Entertainment Insights Don't Take Life Too Seriously Welcome to Brainsky Unleashed. Hello everyone, welcome to what I'm going to consider a really spectacular episode of Brainsky Unleashed. I am joined today by someone who to me is very inspirational.

[00:00:23] I have seen him in person, he's spoken in person, he's wildly just like I said inspirational. To me, sometimes I just love to have a guest that can motivate you to just do more with your life.

[00:00:36] We are joined today by Charles CK, Charles Knuthiat and Charles is a guy who literally went from absolute nothing, nothing. We're not talking about American nothing. We are talking about nothing, nothing. So Charles welcome to the show. Thank you so much.

[00:00:56] Thank you so much Thomas for having me. I appreciate it. Now, alright, so what my audience doesn't know about you is that when I say you came from nothing, you straight up the shit came from nothing.

[00:01:06] And now you help people because you got you are a millionaire, multi-millionaire and you guide people and help people along the way to do what you've done. And to me, that is just a tremendous service that you provide.

[00:01:23] So can you just go into where you came from and how you got to where you are today? Well so I was born and raised in Kenya, a little country in the east of Africa.

[00:01:36] And you know, talk about poor Thomas, the truth be told, I mean we were so broke that our next door neighbors who are broke used to call us broke. That's how bad it was. You know, we lived off less than a dollar for a family of five.

[00:01:49] So my mom was a school teacher who was paid less than about $20 a month at the time. My father was a taxi driver. So that is what life was to us and that's all we knew growing up. It was nothing but a conversation of luck.

[00:02:06] We really embraced the scarcity mindset. It was every time we don't have, we can't afford that's impossible. There's no way you're going to get it done. And I remember growing up one of the biggest disruptions of my life was just being

[00:02:21] sent home every time because we couldn't afford school fees. Now to your audience, just to put it in perspective, my school fees was literally about $3 per semester because I was going a very poor school and that was about $3 per semester. And my parents just couldn't afford it.

[00:02:39] So I had to keep going back home and once they got the money, they took me back to school and so it was very hard trying to catch up growing up and that's really what our background was. Talk about when it comes to basic needs like food.

[00:02:54] In no exaggeration, we found ourselves in situations where we ate the same thing over and over and over again and my mom had a very positive outlook to life that she would kind of just try and twist it out a little bit but it's the same thing

[00:03:10] so we don't get bored. And talk about basic needs. We take it for granted. When we say poor in America, that's not the poor we know. We know a different level of poor. Actually the poorest people in America would probably believe in us, kings in Africa.

[00:03:29] I'm just being honest. It's true, people but the thing is true and I think people really especially the activist types, they lose sight of this. They do not grasp what you're actually saying. The fact of the matter is we have activists out there who are basically

[00:03:48] saying that we have it so terrible. No, we don't. Even our poorest have it amazing. And the thing is this one of the reasons that I say no we don't here in America is because we have access to certain things and if you really went out there

[00:04:05] and searched for access to these things like education and things like that you'd have access to that. I mean the rest is really up to you in some form or shape but one of the biggest problems growing up in Africa is that there was just no access period.

[00:04:21] It just wasn't access and the gap between the rich and poor is extremely, extremely wide. And of course now things are changing with just the information age that we're living right now but we lack the information period.

[00:04:37] And when you lack information there's really no way to make it. I mean one of the things that I tell people all the time is that the difference between the wealthy and the poor is information. And sometimes if you have the right information and execute on the information

[00:04:51] not only do you want to have the information but execute on the information it can change your life. Now here you are, you have no way of executing and also you have no information at the same time. I mean that was really a terrible times growing up.

[00:05:07] What does that look like? Can you just give me like a mental visual picture? What does the home look like? What does the school look like? What does it look like your daily life and that kind of poverty? Wow, absolutely.

[00:05:23] So actually it's very interesting because just a few years ago I went to the very same school that I grew up and I went to the very same house that I grew up. Like I said earlier we lived off less than a dollar a day

[00:05:38] so our family house was really two rooms and a bathroom that never had water the entire time. We used to have to go to fetching water. Now it wasn't from the river, as many stories are told

[00:05:51] but we had a particular place where we used to go and fetch water and we had to buy the water, carry it in our bags and then take it and that's the water we used to shower

[00:06:00] that's the water we used to cook and so on and so forth. So with the two rooms and a shower and little eskies of what we partition and call the kitchen that's all I know growing up from zero to 18. That's the only house we ever lived.

[00:06:18] That's the only place we know there was really no security. I went back to the same house and what was so interesting Thomas was I found the house looking the very same way. I left it. I came to the United States in 2006 but I left Africa in 2002.

[00:06:36] I went to Finland. That's where I first went and then I moved to Australia then I ended up coming to the United States. So call it 15, 17 years just going back and having a look actually about 20 years, same thing. Schools again very, very interesting situation.

[00:06:56] No windows, just regular benches where you're sharing three, four children. We really could not afford eating at schools so my mom would cook whatever it is and then give us so we can be able to take that to school. Each class had about 50 to 60 students.

[00:07:17] Now we take for granted when we talk about the ratios in America where you say each class can only have 22 to 24 students, it sounds so good. And then you hear teachers complaining, wow, if it's over 30 like you can handle that. We used to be 50 to 60 students.

[00:07:35] So your concentration level if you're not private because I was in a public school it becomes very difficult from an educational point of view. Wow, so 50 to 60 students in a classroom and talk to me then about the classroom materials

[00:07:51] and I mean I know that because you and I talked before the call and I've certainly listened to you speak you weren't exactly a great student. No. I wasn't exactly. And I don't even understand why or how. I mean part of me reflecting the older version of me

[00:08:12] I look back and I'm like, you know, I think it had a lot to do with lack of school materials. It had a lot to do with lack of textbooks and things like that. But really growing up, you know I was one of those bottom students.

[00:08:29] Let me just put it. I was number one from behind. Like some strange reasons it just didn't click. But the second part to it that I really wanna share to your audience is most of it was affected because of the environment that I was in at home.

[00:08:50] If you're constantly struggling with basic necessity education is not something to focus on. I mean, you know, we're talking about you going home you have to go fetch water. You know, you're getting home. There's no food. You have to wait for your mom or my dad

[00:09:05] to get some money and come and cook some food and so we can be able to buy some food. I mean, when you start putting it in perspective you're like, that's those are just too many life disruptions for a small, you know

[00:09:17] seven year old boy to still have the time to process. Number three was the on and offs with power. I mean, I remember so many times that our power was cut off and we had to use a lantern to just be able to study.

[00:09:33] It sounds so dramatic Thomas, but I'm telling you it was just second to nature. It was just our life. So you didn't see like there was any problem like having no power was just like, oh, we don't have power today and life moved on.

[00:09:46] And so I think that really affected my education growing up. What's interesting is that you basically put things in a slightly different perspective than what we feel here in this country. So for us, we look at education as a necessity. It's not a want it is a necessity.

[00:10:10] All kids must go to school that is necessary. And by the way, you're in great company. I too am a horrible, horrible student that would always manage to get school at the absolute bottom of my classes. So you're in great company.

[00:10:24] But what you did is you just kind of identified it as education is more of a want instead of a need because your needs prompt education so severely you have to survive. Whereas education would be something really nice. And again, that's just one of those things

[00:10:38] that I think in this country, man do we lose sight of how good we have it. So we're gonna fast forward a little bit. You went to Finland, you got out of there, you went to Finland and probably discovered like most people do that it's called.

[00:10:54] And then you moved on to Australia but you go to Finland and you've come from a life of absolute extreme poverty but now you're in a country and you've gotta make money. Yes, you gotta survive in Finland. You've got a rapid education. I know I have one too.

[00:11:14] What do you do? Absolutely. So what you do is that you default to the only thing that you know and that's hard work. So living in Finland, I literally was working three to four jobs at any given time and going to school.

[00:11:27] And real quick, just so that you understand the transition how did I come out of that? When I finished high school, it's right about the same time that our cell phones were introduced in Africa for the middle class because for the longest

[00:11:45] it was very expensive and it was only the elite only carried cell phones. And so it was around that time and I seized an opportunity because I would go to the city just out of being idle, finished high school. We couldn't afford university or high education.

[00:12:03] So you know, I would just sit around the house and then I would keep going to the city and I met a friend who was working at this new cell phone shop and I was so fascinated. I'm like, hey, this thing, like you can hold it

[00:12:14] and wirelessly it can talk to somebody else. And so I would hang around there so much and people started thinking that I used to sell cell phones because I was always at this body of mine who had a shop. And so over time, people started asking me,

[00:12:30] hey, I know you and I'm looking for this particular cell phone do you have? And immediately my fast business enterprise started. I would literally tell them, oh yeah, you know, I just don't have them right now but you give me 40% down,

[00:12:44] I'm gonna go and grab it for you. That's really how I started my fast business and I would go look for the stuff. Then I got a little small space from a pharmacist and I literally went and told this pharmacist,

[00:12:57] I said, you know, you're displaying medicine on here and you're not selling cell phones. If you start selling cell phones, you're gonna have more clients coming and buying medicine. He said, what do you want? I said, give me the space on here in your pharmacy.

[00:13:11] I'm gonna be paying you some money every single month which was equivalent to $5. Guy didn't even spot the opportunity. He goes like, okay sure. I went and bought dummies for the phone, not real phones, dummies. And people would come and say, hey,

[00:13:25] now mind you again, the excitement is cell phones just got introduced in Africa right now in Kenya, so people are asking a lot and people would come, what's that? I'm like, oh, this is a Nokia. Do you have the real one?

[00:13:38] I said, man, I'm out but I can go get you one. That's how I started making my money and quickly I started spending time on the internet and I found these scholarships on going to Finland at the time I applied and they accepted me.

[00:13:54] All I had when I left my country was the air ticket to go to Finland. No pocket money, didn't think where I was gonna leave and stuff like that. So that is how I end up in Finland. No pocket money, nothing. I'm in a new country.

[00:14:09] I love the fact that, I mean, here we're looking at a guy who could have gone into some bad things in life because sometimes when you're in poverty there's a lot of very sad tragic stories of people going to the drug trade

[00:14:25] or the weapons trade or things like that that don't help people that just cause harm and destroy lives, right? But you have this, I guess a genetic entrepreneurial spirit it was just in you and something clicked and instead of like hocking drugs or selling weaponry

[00:14:47] or any other kind of bad thing, you're literally dealing in Nokia's and you hustle your way through Nokia and Motorola to get you to Finland. So now you've got yourself in Finland. You've got a scholarship that takes you there. What happens next?

[00:15:08] So the biggest shock for me is first and foremost, I landed there during summer but I'd never experienced that weather now. Finland folks are crazy because when it's like 52, 55 degrees they're like it's summer, they're working without shirts you know and for me I'm freezing.

[00:15:25] I'm from the warm weather. So here's me in the middle of the city with big jackets and everybody's looking at me like what's wrong with him? This is summer, right? So I went there and I did my entrance exam. I had to go and take an entrance exam

[00:15:39] and I passed the entrance exam. Now this is June, they tell me great school is starting in August. And I didn't process all that when I was leaving Kenya. So I had not even thought about where I was going to live literally.

[00:15:54] So for three days, I put my bags in the train station there and literally I'm staying at the train station. I spotted someone who looked like me, looked like a foreigner and I went and talked to them. I said hey, I came for the entrance exam,

[00:16:10] I've passed but I have nowhere to go. So he tells me technically you're supposed to go back and then come when school starts but if you don't have accommodation, I can help you out. So the guy puts me at his place for about two weeks

[00:16:23] and then he gets a girlfriend so he kicks me out. And so I'm back on my homeless situation. But this time around, I get a job, a cleaning job, I was cleaning a movie theater. So I got a little bit of money

[00:16:35] and I got a little room where I could rent. But I was homeless in and out the first two months like I would go because train stations are safe. You just go hang out there, look for a bench and knock yourself out.

[00:16:48] But it's crazy because here I thought I'd found my dream and now it's starting to become a disaster. But one thing I purposed and this is there, one of the things I wanna tell your audience is that it's very important to understand that

[00:17:03] you know, there is no success without hard work. You gotta put in the work. One of the things that I defaulted to, I said, man, you know what? One thing I know I can do is work. So I took all of the shifts I could take

[00:17:16] on the movie theater. Any shift that was available, I started working because I was afraid of being homeless again. And you know, the place is cold even though it's summertime. The second obstacle for me was the language. So English at the time was the third language.

[00:17:33] So it was Finnish, fast Swedish and then English. So nobody's talking English. So here's a struggle. So the only jobs I can get are cleaning jobs because that's easy. Like, hey, take the trash out and you know, wipe the movie theaters, you know, clean the restaurant,

[00:17:50] clean the restrooms and stuff like that. And so that is what, and where my life begins in Finland is work, work, work, work. You gotta save some money or else winter is coming and you don't wanna be homeless when it's winter. So I put in the work

[00:18:06] and I literally was doing three to four jobs at any given time. And studying at the same time. So now you're in school and I mean, how are your grades with this program? I mean, as a terrible student again, just like myself, you know, how were you learning

[00:18:23] as you're working three jobs? So they have a very interesting model. I wish in the US we could adopt or learn from some of this educational model because they use a problem-based learning approach. So pretty much what and how it works is the professor would come

[00:18:40] and he would give us an abstract. We would try and figure out what's the problem in the abstract. And by the way, those are real abstracts from real companies. So it's not that they're making it up. No, you know, they'll bring, you know,

[00:18:53] the irony here is that they would bring abstracts from Nokia, which is a Finland-based company. They used to sell Nokia. So perfect, right? And so on the abstract, we have to try to understand what the issue is going on. And then we would use a problem-based learning approach.

[00:19:09] We would say, no, I think the problem is marketing. No, I think the problem is sales. No, I think the problem is value creation or whatever. We would list all of them out. We would look at the consensus and then we would agree now as a class,

[00:19:21] from small groups to as a class. I think the problem is marketing. The professor would come back the following day and he would, you know, train or rather give a lecture on marketing because that's the problem. We agree that that's the problem.

[00:19:37] Once we get the fundamentals on what marketing is, he would tell us where we can get the resources and then we would have to go and write the solution for Nokia as it relates to that problem, given that marketing is a problem.

[00:19:50] Then they would take that, pick the best ideas, take them to Nokia. That was all I was doing at school. So the grades, you know... I know, I tell people that all the time and they're like, are you serious? I'm like, no, we were solving companies problems

[00:20:06] day in, day out. That's the only thing we were doing. Now, there was for international students, there was a grade that if you're below that grade you could affect your sponsorship and scholarship and stuff like that. So that motivated me. So my grades were very good

[00:20:23] and I think that was a switch for me because all of a sudden, you know, I'm the lead of the class from the bottom of the class to the lead of the class really. Look at you. So again, the thing that you just identified, right?

[00:20:36] Is they taught you how to critically think. Yes, absolutely. This is what they focus on now. In the United States, critically thinking is something that doesn't seem to matter anymore, which to me is a tragic, tragic mistake that we are making. We put so much importance on feelings,

[00:20:56] on just bull crap. Whereas if we would... I mean, can you imagine what this country would look like if everyone had to go through what you did in terms of just a critical thinking environment? I mean, we'd be an unstoppable force. Yeah, unbelievable.

[00:21:13] Programming kids, even at a very early age, I was looking at my daughter the other day and I went to her school for a project and everybody's a winner and there's nobody elite and they had a little march going outside. Everybody wins. I'm like, come on.

[00:21:29] You know, I was there cheering her up so much. Somebody was like, hey, it's not a competition. Like everybody's gonna win at the end of the day. I'm like, what are you teaching her? Like that's unacceptable. Like that's not how the world works. That's not how business works.

[00:21:42] Yeah. Yeah. Charles, I think you and I just had this amazing breakthrough and I am so excited to be a partner in your new elementary school that you're gonna start for children that only teach us critical thinking. I love this, this spring. I like the partnership already.

[00:22:01] We're gonna change the world. Let's change the world. So... So you left Finland, you got an education. It was, it's cold. You go to Australia and then you come to America but can you, you know, cause in the interest of time, you went from fabric poverty to wealth.

[00:22:21] So how did that transition happen? And what are you doing today that just changes people's lives? Absolutely. So, and you were right. The reason I left Finland was it was just too cold. So I went to Australia and then I moved to the United States.

[00:22:39] Now, when I came to the US, the excitement for me was equal opportunity. That's how it was sold to me, right? And I just kept looking and I'm like, man, I'm struggling in Australia cause I'm not like, you know, just having breakthroughs.

[00:22:55] Finland now struggling because of the language which I ended up learning. And then there's just all these things but every time America was showing up, my brother at the time had found his way over here. He's like, bro, you got a man. There's equal opportunities here.

[00:23:10] Like it doesn't matter where you come from. And that was the excitement. That's what I came for the American dream. But as soon as I got here, I defaulted back to things that it was more about working hard and I discovered that there was a better way

[00:23:27] if I just would open my eyes. I discovered very quickly that I was spending my time, I was trading my time for a few dollars every single day. I was walking at a security company and had two jobs.

[00:23:42] And again, it was just the fear that was driving me. And so all of a sudden, I find myself in shell low bricans. I'm walking in their accounts, payable department and stuff like that. One day in the interest of time, really I walked there and I told them,

[00:23:59] I'm done. I had two jobs, shell and my security job. And I told them, I'm done. I'm walking away and stuff like that. Then on Thursday, that was on a Tuesday. On Thursday, my supervisor found me sleeping at my security job and they fired me.

[00:24:15] So in one week I left from having two jobs to having none. I sat down depressed in my room and I said, what can I do? When I used to work as a security guard, at night I would spend a lot of time in my computers

[00:24:28] just trying to learn how to make websites and stuff like that. So here I am, I'm broke, my car note is due. And I'm like, what am I gonna do? I went, borrowed my mother $50, I'll never forget. And I followed her the other side of town

[00:24:42] to get the money at that time. My mom is already here as well. And she gave me the 50 bucks. I'm driving, I see a sign that says 50 signs for $50. That's how those see hard signs. I went and bought the 50 signs.

[00:24:54] They asked me, what do you want us to put there? I said, put 40% professional website. So I put the sign on there, 40% professional website. I went and put them at night. Following day people started calling me, Thomas. They're like, hey, I saw a sign.

[00:25:08] And by the way, one of the things I wanna share with your audience, if you're gonna do anything, do it with excellence. One of the things that I did, people would literally call me and say, we saw a sign. This was me answering the phone.

[00:25:19] Thank you for calling CK Web Designers. How can I help you? And at that time I'm seated in my air mattress in my one bedroom apartment. And they'll be like, I saw a sign that you guys have 40% professional website. I'm like, yes.

[00:25:31] Let me see if one of our representatives is available. I literally would put music on a little radio that I had and I would put the phone over there and then I would come back and say, all our representatives are busy right now, but I can help you.

[00:25:45] The next question they would ask me, where are you guys located? I told them, the good thing about us, you don't come to us, we come to you. So wherever you're located, we're coming to you. And I started meeting people at McDonald's

[00:25:57] and my fast check, I'll never forget was $600 for a website. My second one was $2,500. And I was like, wait, I'm onto something. And so that is how my journey in America started. I quit my job, got fired for my second job. I never looked back.

[00:26:15] Now an opportunity presented itself. Somebody came to me and told me, you know, you do have self-employment income. I'm like, yeah. He said, you can't file it the same way you file other stuff. I said, so what am I supposed to do?

[00:26:30] He said, you need to file a schedule. I'm like, what's a schedule C? So I entrusted someone to help me with the taxes. They failed. I missed the deadline. I decided to take the responsibility on myself to learn how to do it.

[00:26:43] When I did, I started helping other people. Then I opened my fast tax office. Then I was so shocked because I got 50 clients. The second year I moved on to the streets, I got 500 clients. Then I decided, let me open up.

[00:27:00] Then I decided, let me open a second location. I mean a third location. So I opened a third and a fourth location. When I got to 13 locations, this is the edited version, I decided to franchise my business. So I franchised, grew into eight different states

[00:27:15] of our 18 locations, and then I sold the business. Now what do I do right now? I help people with their businesses scale them, put systems in place. I'm a master of systems because I learned how to put systems and to duplicate results no matter where you are.

[00:27:32] And that's what I've been doing, just consulting businesses and helping companies franchise. So freaking beautiful. I love that spirit. I love that game, that spirit, that drive. To me, that is just one of the most beautiful things to see from a human being. I don't see it enough.

[00:27:55] I don't know if you're like me and you and I have been in the same room, we've been at business conventions where there's speakers and all that and then you've got the networking that takes place. I always get bummed out when I go home

[00:28:09] because when you go back home, you typically are no longer surrounded by people who have that kind of drive, that spirit. It's like, oh, if only more people could have that, it's just so powerful and we'll all miss it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Going home.

[00:28:26] Yeah, you have surrounded some right people because if you fail surrounding yourself for the right people, they're just energy vampires. I mean, they kill your energy, they kill your dreams and then here you are, you start defaulting to what you already know instead of having a new perspective

[00:28:43] about what's happening around you. So absolutely agree with that. Yeah, there's that expression. You show me your friends, I'll show you your future. Absolutely, very true. And it is so true. If you're gonna hang around with a bunch of,

[00:29:00] if you're gonna hang around with a bunch of lazy people who have zero drive, that's your future. If you hang around with people who have a ton of drives and just that killer spirit, that's going to manifest itself. Absolutely. How do people find you?

[00:29:18] I mean, you're inspirational, you help people, you help businesses and so if there's any business that's out there that's part of this audience that really wants to double their sales, grow their business system ties things, improve their lives, how do they find you?

[00:29:31] Absolutely, so you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, CKCharlesOfficial, TikTok, CKCharlesOfficial, Facebook, CKCharlesOfficial. All my handlers are same, CKCharlesOfficial and that's what we do man, we just out there adding value to businesses, helping people systemize their business so they can be able to scale it

[00:29:52] and that's what I'm a big puddle right now. That's, you know, I love what you're doing and I'm so honored and grateful to have you on this program and I thank you, Charles for joining us. Thanks so much Thomas, it was great being here.

[00:30:10] And to this audience, just a side note and Charles doesn't know this yet and well it's so good that I could present him with this amazing surprise is that one of these days I'm going to be on a stage with him and helping his audience pay less taxes.

[00:30:26] Remember, I'm sleeping. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm all in, Thomas, we need to do that because I think this tax thing is getting out of hand. I just read something there that now the tax code is about 74,000 pages. I'm like holy cow. 77,000 actually not,

[00:30:45] not because I know but because we did the study. 77,000 pages, the United States, we spent 6.5 billion hours doing taxes as a collective nation in 2022. There's a fact, there's a stat that makes you want to vomit and yes, 93% of business owners overpay their taxes anywhere between 31 and 74%.

[00:31:09] How about that? Is that disgusting? That's disgusting. It really is. All right, well again, thank you so much Charles. It's been a pleasure having you on and I want to have you back and I'm going to be so excited even though you've never invited me

[00:31:21] and I've invited myself because that's just kind of the schmuck that I am. Did you want to do one of your vets? That's great, Thomas.