Today we’d like to introduce you to Darius Butler
Hi Darius, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My beginnings come from Zion, Illinois on the north side of Chicago. I grew up there about the first 10 years of my life before moving to The Woodlands, Texas because of my mother’s job that drove our entire family down. This first part of my life was pretty dramatic, but I like to think it was the catalyst that helped me become the man I am today. The culture shock alone was quite the adjustment. I went from having minimal experience from anyone outside my culture and the not-so-friendly northern mentality to being in an environment that had no one from my culture with the best southern hospitality had to offer!
Even from an educational background, once arriving to the Texas school system, I was almost immediately pointed out and tested to find I was dyslexic even though I had been successful in Illinois schools. Still, the difference was so vast I played catchup my first few years to learn my learning style with my newfound diagnosis. After a few years in, we settled in the Klien ISD district where I would finish high school, and my sports of choice were football and wrestling. I attended the University of Houston-Downtown for college where I worked in leadership and went to school full-time. This was a key moment in my life as well because I had a huge wake-up call from my professors and counselors who saw enough in me to challenge me to give my best effort which I never really had to do up to that point. After all, I was gifted enough in both grades and sports to do better than average without trying too hard.
In my last year of college, the self-commitment was made that I would not go past 2016 chasing a degree, within that year I was able to take 13 credits hours in my last 2 semesters and 3 credit hours over a mini semester to graduate with my bachelor’s in business administration, minor in human resources, and certification in entrepreneurship. Also, I took on the role of Operations Director for my operator 3 months before graduation. This year was very memorable because it set the tone for all the awards and experiences, I would be able to amass in my 9 years with Chick-fil-A; 8 of which were multi-unit from winning all the highest awards, building a team over the years of leaders, and effectively working myself out of a job. After all, the business had been built to be efficient and effective.
Now I find myself looking to take the next step in my progression and building my financial brokerage through Global Financial Impact as I look to do for myself what I have helped others do all these years and build a business that allows me to not just trade my time for money but take my own financial life into my own hands. I also have partnered with Khristopher Fields who is the founder of the Wise Up to Rise Up Foundation. I joined him as the Principal Officer to help build a leadership team along with systems and procedures to create community-driven programs to help our youth make themselves more competitive in the world and help build their community up in the same token.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has never been a smooth road, but I thank God for the challenges because they have shaped me for the blessings. From working a full-time job and a full-time college load for 4.5 years. Working construction, tying steel with family for multiple summers to help pay for it all. Taking on certain roles that forced me to grow myself in ways I could not have imagined. Even now as I put myself on the journey of entrepreneurship, you have to have blind faith and trust in God that everything you go through is a lesson and when you are ready for the opportunity, it will come.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As a financial professional, I can help a family with anything besides trading stocks. What I specialize in and have a huge passion for is retirement. Primarily because I have seen our average American work so hard towards retirement and because of a lack of options have relied on a financial tool that is not meant to help them win the war on retirement. Many of us, know elderly individuals who have had to go back to work after retirement. I want to see less of that because it is a much easier journey than what people think.
We lead with financial education and I sit with families free of charge. Teach them about fixed, variable, and indexed growth so they can understand no matter what account we are talking about, it is only 3 ways money grows. Also having them know the difference between, tax now, tax later, and tax-advantaged. This is the information that is seriously lacking and because we don’t lead with sales. I help metaphorically lead the horse to the water and once you know these things; People want to drink the water.
This fills a huge part in my heart because this type of work will affect generations, there will be so many individuals who will benefit from the work done now. As a true believer, I want my legacy to be much more. I started by helping my parents because all their lives they’ve worked hard to provide a life for me and my siblings. The biggest thing I could have done for them is ensure that they will retire and not have to worry about going back to work. I even have set my kids up for financial freedom. I dream of the day that I sit them down and convey the decisions made to see them take the next step and lead their generation because my wife and I planned for them.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I define success as being able to comfortably take care of my responsibilities at its core. What continued success is going past this point! It is easy to get comfortable and there is nothing wrong with that but there is a select few who don’t relish in comfortability. They want to continue to see just how far they can go in this game called life. They continue to challenge themselves to push further and go farther. Where the marker stops varies from person to person but for me individually in my current mindset, Success is something I will be chasing after all my life and my biggest form of it will be when I can help others reach self-actualization of their version of success.
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