Latest / Masters in Business / John Hope Bryant on Financial Literacy

Transcript

John Hope Bryant on Financial Literacy · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holds on
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: John Hope Bryant is a fascinating entrepreneur and philanthropist. He
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: is the founder of Operation Hope and one of the
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: leading voices for financial literacy in America. He was vice
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: chair of President Bush's Council on Financial Literacy and sat
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: on a similar council on Financial Capability for President Obama.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: He has written five books with more coming. Really a
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: fascinating person who operates in a realm that I think
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of people in finance overlook, and he's really
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: moving the needle in terms of having people take control
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: of their own financial life in a way that benefits
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: not just them, but the entire economy, in all of society.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I found on our conversation to be just compelling and fascinating,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: and I think you will also so, with no further ado,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: my conversation with Operation Hope's John Hope Bryant.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me and honor to be here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: By the way, my last book is Up from Nothing.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That's my favorite one. That's my story of my failures,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: not my successes. I like that.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I like a tail. We tend to learn more from
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: our mistakes than we do from our successes. But we'll
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: circle back to that in a bit. Let's start a
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: little bit with your background. You tell a story in
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: one of your books of a banker who shows up
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: at your elementary school class, and that kick started your
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: interest in finance.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, it was a transformational experience to have this banker
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: come in my classroom. On several levels. I had an
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: economics lesson, I had a life lesson. I had an epiphany.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I had a race relations lesson. I had a self
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: esteem and confidence lesson. Those two things finally came together.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I had aha about how the world really works. I
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: figured out how to keep my friends from getting murdered
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in the streets because when I was nine years old,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a year before this class, actually the same years as class,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: my best friend George was murdered on a street in
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Compton with my next door neighbor tweet selling drugs. Even
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: though he was a student, he hung out with the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: wrong character, the wrong kids. And character is not the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: most important thing in business or whatever. It's the only
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: thing really and culture. Culture then informs characters. So culture
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: my neighborhood was a thug culture that you were respected
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: if you were you know, hard, a tough guy. And
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: so my friend, my best friend, who was very, very smart,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: did not have good parents like I had, who told
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: me I could do anything I wanted to do, and
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: who loved me and told me. My mother she told
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: me she loved me every day of my life. So
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: there's a difference barrier between being broken being poor. Being
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: brokens economic, but being poor as a disabling frame of mind,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a depressed condition of your spirit. You must vow never
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to be poor again. So because I had this self
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: esteem based on my mother, and I had self love,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: just not self confidence. My next door neighbor, oh well,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: my best friend had self confidence but did not have
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: self esteem, so he was influenced by those around him.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: He was murdered then when I was seven years old,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the guy who saved my life because long story short,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: my mother moved away from my father arguments over money,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: domestic abuse involving money. When I was five years old,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: they fought, she moved. We were staying with her relative
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to save some money for her first home. The guy
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: who was dating, oh see, dating my mother's cousin saved
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: my life on the front porch when I was swallowing
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: my tongue, and I just idolized this guy. What I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: didn't realize was he was ashamed to admit that he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: could not afford to float the expenses of his immediate
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: family and hours. So he went to go sell drugs,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: also part time, and he was murdered by the drug dealers,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: for whom this was their territory. They came around the
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: corner in a truck, Barry. I'm sitting on the porch
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: waiting for him to come home. I'm seven years old.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: This is my idol. He saved my life. They hit
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: him in the truck on a bicycle. I can see
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: it in my mind's eye. Wow. They drag him down
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the street in front of me until he was dead.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: They did it in front of our house to send
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a message. And so here was You know, these are
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: two stories, maybe three before I'm nine years old, of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: bad economics, bad culture, and a bad business plan. So
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: now I'm nine years old, Berry and this banker comes
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: in my classroom. It's home economics class doesn't exist anymore.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: He's white, He has a blue suit, a white shirt
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of red tie, he's six ' to two, and he
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: starts talking about money and free enterprise and capitalism and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: ownership and balance sheets and all this stuff. And I'm
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: sitting there mesmerized.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: You're nine years old at I'm nine.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm completely entranced. And I remember probably the second
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or third class, because by the third class I was
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: actually wearing a suit, the only suit I had, which
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: was my Sunday suit to school, trying to emulate the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: suit that I saw this guy in. By the way,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: this was a crush velvet three p suit with a
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: ruffled shirt and a big bow tie. So you can
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: imagine I got beat up when I went to school.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So I raised my hand Barry, and I said, excuse me, sir,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I had enough courage to ask this question, what do
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: you do for a living? And how'd you get rich? Legally?
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And Barry I was dead serious, like I was, just
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: completely It was to me it was a common sense
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: question because everybody in my neighborhood was a thug, a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: drug dealer, or a criminal. I mean, nobody had legit wealth.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So this guy's a banker talking to a room full
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: of nine and ten years old, Yeah, how does he
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: answer the question? What do you do for a living,
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: and how do you get rich legally?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs. And
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I said, what's an entrepreneur? I never heard that word
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: my entire life. French word built something out of nothing,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: create value. What's an entrepreneur? I mean, no one's ever
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: taught me that. So I went home to the dictionary.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: For those in the you know, current generation, it's a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Google search, and I opened the dictionary to the word entrepreneur.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And my whole life changed. And when I came back
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: to school, one more thing, what's a banker? And how
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: many of them are you? And you did you say
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: one more time that your job is to lend people
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like me to be an entrepreneur money. I said, I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: need to get this whole script straight, because here my
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: friends were getting murdered and jailed and shot and all
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: this kind of you know, over economics, over some you know,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: trying to sell drugs or sell TV said or whatever
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it is in the hood.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Hustle up some money instead of launching something that was
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: very foreign to that part of the world.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And so when this guy told me that we're at
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that time ten thousand banks hundreds of thousands of bankers.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: In your neighborhood or were you an unbanked real.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean it was, you know, it was. It
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: was so few you knew where they were. Put it
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that way, right, And this guy was a banker, to
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: be full disclosure, it was a banker for Bank of America.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: So I knew what Bank of America was because my mother.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: It was a big deal to go to the banking
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: over to a past book account, or to go there
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: with my mother every couple of weeks, you know, and
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: have or my dad to make an appointment with the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: local the local branch banker might have been the mayor.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I mean he was a very important guy back in
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: those days. But it was pretty rare occurrence. So one,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I was shocked that there was an industry that was
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: whose job it was to lend a risk taker money. Two,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I was shocked that it was legal. Three I shocked
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that it was an actual occupation for a guy who
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: was a legitimate hessler. And my whole life changed and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I left there. I went, as I said, open the dictionary.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I started seeing the muffler shop as a business. By
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the way, the different between an entrepreneur and a business
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: man as a or a businesswoman. Those are those things
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: are different, different risk tolerance and different business plan. But
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I started seeing the nail salon as a business. I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: started seeing the I think a barbershop. All these things
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: were businesses. I never seen it that way before, and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I went back to school bery, sir, your business card?
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Can I have one? Okay? What's the sixteenth floor thing?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: You know? There's no floor above the sixth floor in
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Compton and that's the courthouse. What's in the sixteen floor?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And where is that at? And by the way, how
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: can you show the coming here in the middle of
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the day. My mother is an hourly job at mcdonaldalla's Aircraft.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: She's got two fifteen minute breaks in lunch. How is
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: this you here in the middle of the day. It's
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: called a salary. You have a white shirt. My father
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: wore a blue shirt. How do you keep the shirt clean? Oh?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You just do work with mathematics and intellectual activities. You
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: don't do any dirty work, you know. And how's it
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: that you? What's this car? This in the parking lot.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: It's got plates on it and and a tag and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: it's brand new. Translation is not hot? Right? I mean?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And it's beautiful. What do you do? And this world
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: opened up to me man, and I was done. And
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: so mister Mac Max liquor Store six to two and
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: also six two black man own Max Liquor store. And
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I realized for the first time, Barry, this was a businessman.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And I went to mister Mac. First of all, I
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: didn't know there was a black businessman in comptence. So congratulations,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: mister Mac. You're selling the wrong kind of candy, he said,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: excuse me, I said, you have a liquor store. You're
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: probably good at liquor, but you have a candy rack
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: in the liquor store and you're selling wrong kind of candy.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Go away, a little boy. I've got a college degree,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: that's nice. I've got cavities. You're selling wrong kind of candy.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I'm nine at that point. That's ten. So he said, look,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you've got a lot of hootsba. I'll hire you. I'm
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: gonna put you at the counter.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I want you in charge of the candy.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Right, I said no. I declined the offer. He said,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay you top dollar for you know, you
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: come after school. I'm gonna pay you. You'll be paid
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: more than any of your friends. I didn't want to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: do it. And by the way, Barry, this is analogous
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: today to the basketball player with a contract, to the
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: rapper who can sing really well and it's rocking a mic,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: to a baseball player, or anybody who is performing at
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: top dollar, but they're cashing the check, they're not writing it.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: And if you are a great performer, no matter what
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: your industry is, you'll get paid a lot. You may
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: not build wealth, but you'll get a lot of income.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize what I was doing back then, but
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I was making a choice. I was like, I don't
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: want to be a performer. I don't want to be
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: your performer. You're the owner and I get to perform.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want that. Tell you what I want. Make
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: me a box boy. Excuse me, Yeah, I want to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: do stocking, he says, the worst job I got. That's
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: what I want. I worked there for three weeks and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: quit because then I knew what the wholesale rate was,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: in the retail rate, I knew what the markup was,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I knew what supplying the man looked like, what things
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: were moving, what wasn't. I quit once I knew where
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: he bought his inventory. He was on the side of
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the box. I went home, got my mother, sold my
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: mother on making a forty dollars investment. She made me
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: pay her back by the way, and my new business,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and went to Smart and Final and Irish food store.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Was why about his inventory, and got put in business.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And I actually put him out of the candy business
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: not soon after that. I mean, three hundred dollars a
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: week on a forty dollars investment.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing. So let's talk a little bit about
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: a quote of yours that's very relevant to this. Persistence
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and resilience are more powerful than pedigree and raw intelligence.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Explain what you mean by that. Although I think I
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: have a suspicion as to where that came from.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I think that ties directly into what I said about
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: self esteem and confidence and the difference. It also ties
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: into the race relations lesson that I got by meeting
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: this white banker who was actually helping me to understand
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the free enterprise system. So my experience with a white
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: person was different than the folks growing up. My folks
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: growing up, but my friends growing up, they'd get hit
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: over the head with by a police officer putting them over.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: It was a negative experience as a result of that.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: They didn't like white people, they didn't trust white people,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: didn't want to talk to white people. My experience was
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: this banker who basically opened my head up to a
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: whole new world. And so I wasn't intimidated by him.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I actually found an affinity with him. I didn't want
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: to be him, on to be me, but I was
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: not both reposed. I was ne either rapost or you know,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I wasn't. I wasn't trying to be him, nor was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I trying to avoid him. I thought he was useful
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and he had a place in my world. So that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: then relates to self esteem. If I don't like me,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like you. If I don't feel good
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: about me, I'm not gonna feel good about you. If
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I don't respect me, then how can I ever respect you.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: If I don't have a purpose in my life, I'll
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around comes around.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: That's self esteem. Self confidence is confidence put in action.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So I'm confident and I execute on that, then then
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I have confidence. And that is where my hustle comes from.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: That's where my resiliency comes from that self esteem applied
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: through a with a skill in the marketplace. Over time,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you start taking no for vitamins, you start becoming incredibly resilient.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Hard to hit. It's hard to hit a moving target,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: as I said earlier, And if I don't give up,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you can't beat me. When you're sleep, I'm working. When
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you get up, I'm already. I'm already prepared for the day.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: When you go to when you were going to children
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: in the evening, I'm ready. I'm preparing my next business plan.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't have compounded capital. I had compounded hustle, and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and so I had time. I didn't have money, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I decided to use that time in a way that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: made me bulletproof or or harder to compete with, because
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I was going to be smarter than anybody else in
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the room, and I was gonna work harder. So I
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: think that resiliency piece never giving up, never give again.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Redefining Barry success as going from failure to failure without
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: loss of enthusiasm. Mm hmm, I think that's everything.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Let's take the reverse of that, because I think this
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: other quote is so telling. The most dangerous person in
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the world is the one with no hope. That that's
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: the flip side of resiliency and persistency. What is the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: challenge when you encounter either a person or an entire
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: region where there's no hope.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I really wish we had three hours versus thirty minutes
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: to talk about this one topic, because it's everything Verry.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I won't go down this rabbit hole, but at another time,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and we should talk about why African American experience is
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: different in this country from even Afro Caribbean, from those
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: from Africa or other dark people from around the world.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Why is the African American experience different. It was how
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: we were treated, and that treatment messed up our head,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: our psyche, which is where real wealth sits.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So I really like that insight that your psyche is
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: where real wealth resides. Yeah, I mean, I've never heard
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: it quite phrase that way.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I'll be even more blunt. Poverty sustenance. Poverty is a
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: roof over your head, food on your table, reasonable health,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It's a sustenance the ability to sustain yourself. All other
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: forms of poverty are mindset based. So whether I believe
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: I can or whether I believe I can't, I'm right.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Is the glass half full? Or half empty, depends who's
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: looking at the glass. So when you tell people for
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: two hundred, when you enslave them for two hundred and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: seventy years, you destroy their family structures so they have
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: nothing to believe in. You destroy the ability to protect
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: their mate from harm, to destroy their self esteem and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: their sense of independent you know, agency, There you go.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You don't give them education, so they don't know any
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: They can't only have a skill set. You don't teach
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: them about the free enterprise system. You basically want to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: use their body, in their mind, the body because they're
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: agricultural geniuses from Africa. They want them to work that's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: land in the south. But you don't want them thinking,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and you certainly don't want them believing. And you do
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that for three hundred years plus, really two thirds of
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: American experience. It doesn't You can't help but have a
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: group of people who have low faith, low confidence, low trust,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: who are cynical, not skeptical, and as a result of that,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and who have crappy role models. And if you hang
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: around nine bro people, you'll be the tenth. So now
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: you have a group of people who don't know, who
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: are smart, brilliant, amazing. With the rules of published and
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the playing fielder's level, they excel. Think about the arts,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: think about professional sports, think about politics, rules of published
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: playing fielders level. African Americans in this example kill it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: But in capitalism and free enterprise, there is no rule book,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and we were denied that whole lesson and the best
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: we were taught was how to make the dollar, not
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to how to build it. And so this hopelessness you
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: talk about comes easily from the population that it has
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that experience, and who has descendants who are now looking
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: at parents unsuccessful at commercially or economically, who did not
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: get a chance or a shot, whose mother was not
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: called missus, who's dad who was called mister or doctor
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And so you have these kids who wake
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: up on on a scale of one to ten on
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: anxiety nine and they're on they're on edge. And you
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: do something to that kid, tap them on the shoulder,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: he may swing on you. Now now the kid's in jail, okay,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And so the energy is used for all the wrong stuff.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And now you start becoming expert at things are going
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: to get you locked up drug dealing and underground. So
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: you have genius, you have brilliant. I mean, what's that
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a drug dealer, Barry? If not, I mean it's an illegal,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: unethical entrepreneur, business person. You understand import, exports, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: customer service, security, territory logistics. These are not dumb people.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: They have a dumb business plan. They're an underground economy
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: because they don't trust the mainstream economy. So this hopelessness
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: that you just mentioned is everything for repressing the human spirit.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: We've got to turn that around. My whole life's work
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: is really summarizing one sentence to unleash untapped human potential
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: at scale. And you think about if this issue is
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: racism real, of course it is.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: But.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, but no, no no. But here's
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: a twist, and you may probably never heard this, one
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: African American, what is race the only issue? No? In fact,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: i'd argue race is not the primary issue today today,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: not one hundred years ago, not fifty years ago. If
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: it was Barry, you wouldn't have poor whites, poor whites
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: who are segregated from wealthy whites economically. You would not
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: have African Caribbeans and Africans from Africa who actually do
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: better in some ways than African Americans on ownership issues.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: If she was just race, all whites would be immensely successful,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: all blacks would be immensely repressed. You have the sub
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: sectors because mindset has it provided a differentiated path. So
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: what I am saying is you can level the playing
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: field with a business plan based on Hope.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about what Operation Hope does.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: But I want to start by asking why don't we
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: teach financial literacy in school? Why isn't this a core
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: course offering across the entire country.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: A couple of very practical reasons. Number One, a school
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: district is a business, and like every business, they want
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: revenue and they'd like to have a surplus profit. What
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: they don't want is an unfunded mandate. And as well
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: meaning as financial literacy is, it's got two problems. One,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have a budget allocation from Congress, and the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Department of Education does not set curriculum. They're a budget.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: They're a check writing organization. They give you criteria at
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the state and local level, and they give you money.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: They incentivize you with grant payments from the from the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: federal government to meet that criteria. The school. There's no
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: there's no funding base for financial literacy. I got President Bush,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush, to make financial literacy the policy of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the US federal government. I was naive Berry because I
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: thought I didn't realize that when he inserted the word
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: federal government that just meant government employees, that that meant
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the federal government. I also was naive by thinking that
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: if I wrote a letter, which he allowed me to
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: do with Charles Schwab, we wrote a letter. He was
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Charles Schwab was chairman, I was vice chairman to every
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: one of the fourteen thousand school district superintendents that was
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: around in two thousand. I think it was nine or
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: ten that they school districts would just see the White
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: House letterhead and understand the nobleness of this work, and oh,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: my god, of course crickets I got. We got. We
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: got not one response, really, not.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: One recive zero. A letter goes to every school district
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: on the.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: White House stationary, signed by the chairman and vice chairman
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of the President's Council of Financial Literacy. Crickets because there
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: was an unfunded mandated in their view, and they're like
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: they're shaking the paper, going hey.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Where's the check?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Is there a check attached to this? And number two?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And I think that they were like, I'm sure there's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: another note coming after this with a congressional allocation, and
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: it never came. Number two. Money is emotional, So money,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: unlike math, money is highly emotional and people want to
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: spend money. They don't want to talk about it, including teachers, superintendents,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: school board members, city council people, members of congress. People
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: are most people have too much month at the end
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of their money.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Too much month at the end of their money.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir, they're living from paycheck to paycheck. Seventy percent
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: of the US economy has been recently shown. I think
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: it was a Bloomberg report, actually that half of all
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: people in this country making one hundred thousand dollars a
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: year paycheck to paycheck to a third of those making
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a quarter million dollars a year living from paycheck to paycheck.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: So this is not just poor people, it's not Almost
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: everybody is struggling with cash flow. But they want to
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: look good, they want to look successful, they want to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: go on a vacation, they want to go shopping. So
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: people think, they'd like to think that credit cards are
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: cash and they don't want anybody disavowed them. With that belief,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I can't be broken still have checks left. The one
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: was that they want to be able to say yes
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: to their children, yes to their wives or spouse. That
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: insecurity if you will of wanting to say yes and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: live the life. Conflicts with a budget, conflicts with a limit,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: conflicts with having to sit down and understand if your
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: outflow exees your inflow, then your overhead it'll be your downfall.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: This was my dad's problem. My dad thought the cash
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: flow was profit. He had a construction company and he'd
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: bid a job at a thousand dollars. It costs five hundred,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: but he'd outbid the other guy who's bidding a job
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: or fourteen hundred. He thought he was successful. Well, the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: more you if you live that way you make a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: dollar spend a dollar fifty, the more money make the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: broker you get. So by the end of my dad's life,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I was taking care of a man who had a
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: gas station, an eight unit apartment building, our own home
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and nursery business, semien contracting business. I probably missed a
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: couple but he lost it all, all of our generational
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: wealth because when you don't know better, you can't do better.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And my dad didn't know what he didn't know. Goes
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: back to what I was saying earlier about that slave experience.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: My dad's dad was a sharecropper, probably born in a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: slavery in eighteen seventy one in Mississippi. Was certainly a sharecropper.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: My dad was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm obsessed
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: with financial literacy because I think it's the civil rights
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: issue of this generation.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Say that again, financial literacy is the civil rights issue
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: of this generation. That's a fascinating take on that. Go
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: into more detail about that, because I've never again I've
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: never heard anyone quite hon in just that way.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Look at where we are right now.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: In the center of one of the wealthiest cities in
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: the wealthiest country in the world.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And in the center of a studio made by an entrepreneur.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And this whole thing works on money. This whole city
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: works on money. It sets public policy in many ways
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: in the world because it's the center of money. The
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: even slavery, real talk was about money. Of course, everything
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: is not about God or love. It's probably about money.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: But do we understand money? What did I say about
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: how I mean. Malcolm X said, We've been bamboozled, We've
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: been tricked, We've been fooled. You can say, you know
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: what Andrew Jung said, who is doctor King's right arm?
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: That to live in the system of free enterprise and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: not to understand the rules of free enterprise must be
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the very definition of slavery. So if you're in a
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: system and you don't understand how it works, and you
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: think the cash flow is profit or getting that bag,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: getting that dollar, getting that money's actually going to advance
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and shoe when in reality inflation is out running your
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: ability to even compete on a wage basis. You're not
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: going to build wealth. You have a lifestyle, but you
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: build wealth in your sleep. In your sleep. That's compounding.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But forty one percent of black folks own a home,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: seventy five percent of white folks own a home. There's
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a delta thirty five thirty thirty five percent of natural
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: home ownership. The black folks are missing. But no one
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: taught gave us a memo on money and wealth creation.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: We don't own stocks, we don't own bonds, we're not
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: starting businesses with employees and technology ninety six percent of
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: black businesses don't have an employee. I mean, and how
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: do you build a business in how do you build
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: wealth in America business? How do you buil wealth in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: their business? Creation is a primary portost So my Jewish
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: friends did it, by the way, it is the level
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: of playing field in an unleveled world is it became
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: owners and that gave them a different version of social justice.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a model, by the way, for
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: African Americans and other groups trying to come up from nothing.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: To me, the color is not white or black, it's
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: not red or blue. It's green actually, as in the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: color of US currency. Barry, It's always been green, is
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: my point. But we just never got the memo. That's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: my book, the third book, I think.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: So let's keep this at the school level. How do
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: we teach financial literacy in schools? How do we get
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: that funded? And at what grade should we be starting
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: that process?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: We should be starting as early as possible, fifth grade,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: sixth grade, kindergarten. We are yeah, yes, nice thing. Yet
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: we have Operation Hope is the official kids accounts manager
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: for the Atlanta Public school System, and the Atlanta City
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Council funded us a few million dollars to open kindergarten accounts.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Meaning what what do kindergarteners get through operation?
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Underprivileged kids in kindergarten will get a bank account, a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Savors account to start for fifty bucks. We will match
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: it for fifty bucks and then rap financial literacy around
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: that for every kid in kindergarten all the way through
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: middle school. And the reason that this is so important
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: is studies have already proven that if a kid has
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: a bank account at kindergarten, they're half as likely, sorry
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: fifty percent likely to go to college.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: If you have more likely to go to college just
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: because you have a bank account, that's right, going and target.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Is that driven because the family has money or is
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: it driven because of a whole philosophical viewpoint that, Oh,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I understand how the economy works, how the market works,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: and I want to advance myself.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: It's what you said earlier, Barry. It's a difference between
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: being broken being poor, difference between sustenance poverty and mindset.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Now your mindset is connecting the dots between education and aspiration.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Why am I going to school? What's the point of
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: all this? Oh, of a bank account? What's the point
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of the bank account. Oh the bank houn's tied to
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a salary or or okay, now, okay, so this is.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Oh so it's a financial world that you might not
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: known about.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Otherwise your mind opens up right and so and if
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: you and you're two thirds more likely to graduate from
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: college if yours money in the account. This is unbelievable.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: It's and it's it's so low ha hanging fruit. It
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: changes the endorphins in the right side of your brain
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: where hope, well being, faith, confidence, joy and what it's
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: slavery rob It robbed hope, It robbed self esteem, and
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: robbed belief, It robbed confidence. Now you're gone from a
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: surviv from a thriving and a winning mentality to a
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: surviving mentality where your life is ready fire aim. And
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: now the world's got you distracted with your survival and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: you're surviving. Now you're not competing with the capitalists. And
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: what this does is get people at the bottom of
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the wrong competing with the capitalists, which is, by the way,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: what this country needs every one hundred years is a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: new Henry Ford. This country needs a new Steve Jobs,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: or a new Tony wrestler, or a new you know
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: whoever your hero, Shiro is this country needs every big
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: business wants a small one. Goldman Sachs. There is a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: guy named Goldman and a guy named Sax, like financial services,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: door to door. Where's the black version of that? Where's
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the Latino version of that? Where's the Indian version? Where's
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the poor white version of that? By the way, NASCAR
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: came from moonshine runner in the Appalachian Mountains. These guys realize,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I can't keep running from the police and selling moonshine,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: but I drive really well. That's Nascar. We have to
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: legitimize the hustle.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: The ripe business model, not an illegal one.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: That's what happened to me with that banker in my classroom.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: So it has to be you can't just be a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: curriculum barried on your point of how to teach it.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: It has to be a real life exploration of connecting
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: education with aspiration. It has to be life experiences that
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the kid and the parents and the family can relate to.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And you have to have a role model that experiences
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that with that kid in the classroom who looks like
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the person that we're trying to emulate. Right, So you
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: need that banker or that entrepreneur or that business person
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: or a barrier or John to come in at least,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: you know, three or four times during the coursework, t
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the endorphins in this guy's this kid's male or female's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: head about Wow, by the ways, role modeling, this is
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: who I could be because because in you're in my household,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: my guess is there's somebody in the household who we
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: could emulate. But most of these kids, seventy percent of
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: black households don't have a man at home. So your
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: mother is working two jobs, so you don't see her.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: She's trying to keep the lights on. You don't see
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: a positive role model who's male. So where's your role
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: models in the streets? I mean, it makes perfect sense.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: So why are you being a rap? Why do you
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: want to be a rap star, an athlete or a
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: drug dealer in the hood because that's what you see.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: So we've got to give kids dumpling different to see.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: This could literally reset everything. And I believe you do
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: this right. In urban black and brown neighborhoods, white poor,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: rural neighborhoods, struggling actually working class neighborhoods, you add two
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to three percent of GDP in five to ten years
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: for America as a country. Because the bottom of the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: pyramid gets rehabilitated, you get them back in the game
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: of economic value creation. Get the credit score up through
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: our coaching at Operation Hope, which is we're raising credit
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: scores at Hope fifty four points in six months, one
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty points in twenty four months. Nothing changes
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: your life more than God or love than moving your
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: credit score one hundred and twenty points. We're reducing debt
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: by thirty five hundred bucks in a year. We're increasing
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: savings five hundred and fifteen hundred dollars in that same
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: year for somebody making forty eight thousand dollars a year.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: This is Operation Hope. This is what you're doing. So
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: let's talk about where you operate, how many people you reach.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Just started in Atlanta?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: No, No, started in south central Los Angeles.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, so it started on the west.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Coast Rodney King Riots nineteen ninety ten.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: That's what that was the initial motivation.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the new work started in Atlanta.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, what brought you to Atlanta originally?
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Andrew Young Andrew J. Young, Ambassador Mayor, civil rights icon
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Andrew j. Young, the guy who's on the balcony with
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: doctor King when he was assassinated in sixty eight. He
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: became a mentor and a role model to me. It
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: was the only black man one of two who were
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: who was international when I was twenty twenty five years
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: old who happened to be black. I was like, I
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: want to be an international businessman, the other being Quincy Jones.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Now this is sad. Here I have. I don't have
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: like a you know, in this example, I don't have
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: a Bloomberg as my role model who's a businessman, or
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: a Tony rest Or whoever you're or Michael Raghetty, whoever
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: your you know, mindset is, Henry Cravits or whatever. I had,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: you know, a entertainment uh genius Quincy Jones, and I
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: had a civil rights icon Andrew Young. So here here
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: you go again. I'm starving role models. I went with
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: what I had. But the only two international people I
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: knew at that time who were black were these two.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: You could do worse than Quincy Jones and Andrew Young.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I could do worse.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Not not not bad role models, just not enough of.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Them, and maybe and not rightly positioned in capitalism and
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: free enterprise, not squarely by the way they would admit it.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And so I became good friends with Quincy Jones, and
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I became dear, almost family with Andrew Young. Thank god,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: it changed my life. And so I remember Quincy told me,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: if you think you're in the music business and you
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: don't own music rights, publishing rights, rights music, you're just
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a temporary performer. And I've already given you a quote
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: from Andrew Young, who shows you. I mean, he's built
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the He built the tenth largest economy in the country,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the only international city in the South, Atlanta, Georgia, on
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the bones of diversity and inclusion as an economic model.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Uh and and and of course you know we can
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: see today that the moral capital in America, which is Atlanta,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: is also the largest economic engine in the South, built
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: on like New York, diversity of inclusion and good common sense.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: So I moved to Atlanta for a number of reasons.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: But I remember one conversation in particular, Barry. Uh. There
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: was a city of there was a mayor I don't
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: mention his name, but there was a mayor in la
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: who saw me as a threat by my age, and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: he asked me to schedule a meeting with Andrew Youngs.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He knew that Andrew Andrew youngs my mentor. I did that.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: There was a meeting in LA and I was sitting
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: on the floor because this particular mayor was sending a
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: message to me. There was no seat for me, so
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I sat on the floor. Fine with me. I didn't care.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I should say for the audience
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: this was so they don't want to try to guess this.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: This was twenty years ago, so nobody thinks it was recent.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And after the meeting, Andrew Young was at the airport
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and he said to me, you know, you got to
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: move out LA. Either they see you as a threat
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: and think you want to become mayor, or they're going
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to treat you like a child for the rest of
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: your life because you grew up here. And he said, John,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a prophet is only without honor in his hometown. That's biblical.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: And he said, in Atlanta they called doctor King in
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Atlanta Marty M. L. Michael his original name. They were
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: digging at him. That's why staff called him doctor King
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to give him gravitas, and had twenty eight thirty years old.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: It was only five to seven Doctor King was five
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: seven hundred sixty pounds, so he was like, we had
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to give him some gravitas. You got to move out
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: of this city and come back as an honored citizen.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Later on he was completely right. And the other thing was,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: you know, history in la is two years old. I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: don't mean the as a diss I mean la is
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: a place where you reinvent yourself, constantly reinvention. So it's
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: a great for an entrepreneur who's trying to make it. Well,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I had already made it to a certain degree. What
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I was looking for in now was purpose, and Atlanta
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: was steeped in purpose in civil rights history. So I
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: went there and created civil rights, from civil rights in
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the streets to civil rights in the c suites. This
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: is an extension of doctor King and Andrew Young's unfinished work,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: an extension of what Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: doing in the eighteen sixty five with the Freedman's Bank.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: It was. It was an extension from the streets to
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the suites, a discussion about green, free enterprise capitalism and economics,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: ownership in wealth creation at scale to set people free
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: using the free enterprise system.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: So let me jump in here. We're talking about Atlanta.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: You set up Operation Hope or you expand Operation Hope
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: in Atlanta. How many students are you reaching and how
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: large would you like to see this get?
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: So the student pieces is cool, but it's almost like
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: a pilot project given on our larger work. I mean,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: it's fifty thousand kids in the Atlanta public school system,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: So you can do the math there. You know, we've
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: got We've got ten percent of that in the kindergarten
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: kids as a target, but a million we taught a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: million kids financial literacy. That's still to be very small
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: beings or our target. There are forty million black people
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: in this country. There are one hundred million blacks and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: poor whites in this country. You have one hundred and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: thirty million people who are financially bruised in this country,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: including working class, middle class people. My goal is to
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: become America's Angel coach. My goal has become the Starbucks
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of financial inclusion, the Walmart of financial literacy at scale,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve of the hood. I have two hundred
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: and forty five locations today. Barry two hundred and forty
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: five locations in forty six states, how.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Many people in total have you worked with through Operation Hume.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: We've had over four million clients and we have two
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty five locations in forty six states, where
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the largest financial inclusion and financial literacy coaching organization in
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the country. We are inside also well, we're the only
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: nonprofit allowed to operate inside of a bank branch in
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: US history. We're the only nonprofit in Fortune five hundred
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: companies doing financial coaching for employees, including Delta Airlines all
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: ninety thousand of their employees. So much so that Delta
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: CEO has given one thousand dollars emergency saviors account to
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: everybody goes through our financial coaching work, all of his
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: ninety thousand employees. That's how much he believes. I can't
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: go to a Delta terminal without people talking about their
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: financial coaching in the thousand dollar savings account that they've gotten.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: I can't go through an airport without a TSA agent
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: screaming out their credit score, what you've.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Worked with TSA and all their staff members doing this.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Just my clients happen to be working at TSA. But
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: we are a coach for ups. We are a coach
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: for Harley Davidson. We are a coach for the Venetian
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Hotel employees in Las Vegas. We are a coach. I've
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: already mentioned Delta Airlines. We have a big I can't
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: mention it, but there's a big company day. One of
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the big probably one of the top five employees in
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the country is just signed up with us. So we're
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: in banks, whether it's Truest or Wells Fargo or Bank
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of America, and they're ordered over one hundred branches from US.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: You know, that's business. One hundred branches is a business decision,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: not a charity decision. We're getting the bank out of
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the no business barry and back into the yes business.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: In other words, if I can get your criteria sort it,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: get your savings account up, get your debt down, get
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: your credit score up, the bank and say yes.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: That's an attractive customer to any Yeah.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So that's why I'm saying this is a business case,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: not a charity case that we're making.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: So let let me focus on the financial literacy side.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: There's been some academic research that shows financial literacy as
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: a tendency to fade over time. How do you keep
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: this front of mind with people? How do you not
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: let the hard won one skills atrophy over time?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Put your credit score on your phone. Let's start there,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: because it lives. Oh my god. Yes, it is a
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: complete living barometer of how you're doing. We have a
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: credit score index that's powered by experience as an example,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: their data from experience. I've measured every zip code in
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: America by credit score. You tell me your zip code,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you how you.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Live in the Average credit score within a zip code
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: will give you a standard of living for that space.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: For that reason, oh, it'll tell you how long you're
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: gonna live.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Really, that's pretty impressive.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: In a five any credit score neighborhood, you lived at
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: sixty one.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: That doesn't sound like very attractive life.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Social Security at sixty five. Yeah. In a five any
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: credit cord neighborhood, you'll have a high school education. Sixty
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: one percent of people. I'm sorry, sixty one percent of
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: people have a high school education in one parent household.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: These are the averages in a five any credit cocred
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: neighborhood and a five atty credits cord neighborhood. The biling
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: crimes per thousand is off the charts. The the the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: all the negatives explode. Home ownership level is sub forty percent,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: twenty five percent unemployment, unemployments through the roof. It's all predictable. Right,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: you go into a seven hundred credit score neighborhood of
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: any race.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Now that's good, But then what credits go to?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Like a twenty Yes, but anything above seven hundred is free?
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Is fine?
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, banks say yes to you at seven hundred. You
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: had to seven hundred bearer you lived at eighty one
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: years old? Wow, ten minutes away Chicago. These zip codes
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: are ten minutes away in I mean most cities. Manhattan's
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Burroughs is slightly different, but most cities, these zip codes
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: are ten minutes away. These realities. So seven hundred credit
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: SCRD neighborhood, you live to ninety sorry to eighty one plus,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you have a high school graduation rate of over ninety percent.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: They're going into college. You have two parent households. Vioding
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: crimes are non existent. It's a complete world. So here's
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: what you see in a five any credit score neighborhood.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Right check casher next to a payday loan lender, next
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: to a rent to own store, next to a title lender,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: next to a liquor store next to a pawn shop.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: And by the way, Berry, this is not just black
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: and brown urban neighborhoods. It's poor, white, rural See you
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: got me, You finished the sentence for me.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I'm very well aware that people seem to be you know,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: whenever we look at entitlement spending, and some people think
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: there's a racial component. The biggest consumer of government assistance
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: are poor rural whites in America.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: And the number one group dying in America is a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: white high school educated white man dying of essentially opioiddiction depression.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: So what I'm doing is taking the emotion out of
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: this conversation. I believe I love math because it doesn't
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: have an opinion. That's a melody hops in quote. And
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: if I can replace the emotion with a science, with
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: a mathematical equation or a credit score, okay, and that
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: credit score changes is dynamic, It changes you know, every week,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: that keeps your attention, that keeps you it's an individual scorecard.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I can't Here's what's beautiful. If you're an underserved person
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: or somebody who's used to being used to racism dogging
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: you or sexism dogging you, I can't get in your
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: heart and change how you feel about me. I can
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: get into my own head and change my credit score.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: It's control of my own destiny. And the credit score
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: is a trending indicator for all other things hope, faith, belief, confidence,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: well being, trust. These things you need to access banking,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: financial services of market economy investors. So I believe we
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: found a burning bush. You move, I'm gonna say something
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: on your podcast that I rarely said to anybody. You
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: move credit scores one hundred points in this country. You
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: stabilize this country.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: We're talking unemployment, poverty, crime, health, health, and life expectancy
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: all tied to credits.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Plus economic vitality, prosperity, business creation, stable families. I've got
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: five pillars of success in my newest book, Up from Nothing.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Here's the five things you need to succeed. As much
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: education as you can shove down your throat. Understanding, financial literacy,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: how the economy works, the math of the matter, family
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models in
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: an environment. You have five of those things, you're going
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to be immensely successful. You have four of those things,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: you're going to be very successful. You have three of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: those things, you will pop your head over failure. You
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: have less than three of those things, You're stuck. Who
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: has less than three of those five things? Poor whites,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: African Americans, Native American Indians.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: So you were recognized by Oprah Winfrey's quote use your
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Life Award and you were also named American Bankers Innovator
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: of the Year award. What do these recognitions mean to you?
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Given what you've done in your life to move the
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: needle for so many people.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: You combine those recognitions with CEOs of fortune five hundred
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: companies today suggesting that I'm a conscience on capitalism, which
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: several big time CEOs have said, including the CEO of
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: walmart In, Delta, etc. And it says, this is a
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: bit of my This is my version of a Nobel
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Peace Prize, which is really a gateway or substitution clause
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: for having this conversation with mainstream power structure. When you
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: have these recognitions, it allows you, It gives you entree
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: into a door or doors in the c suites where
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you can have a conversation as a peer, as an equal.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: So I'm not talking at people anymore. I'm talking with people,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and they understand they have value, and they have credibility
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: and success, but they also value in a different way
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: my credibility and success. And I've had enough private sector
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: success also in growing and building enterprises. They know I'm
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: a legit capitalist. I mean I've clipped a coupon on
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Wall Street. I've done I've run a balance sheet in
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: an income statement, etc. Etc. So there's respect in consideration,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: not just for my beliefs, but for what have I
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: guess what we have built in how we performed, which
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: allows us to have a conversation that's different, that allows
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: us to create a coalition of the willing of leaders,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: which we're building now. I mean CEO of Walmart and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: I are co chairing Financial Literacy for All dougriat Millin.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Our goal is to get eighty percent of the fortune
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: five hundred by twenty twenty five to embed financial literacy
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: into its business plan, not to its philanthropy plan. It's
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: business plan, just like healthcare was forty years ago. So
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: our mission in schools is to get financial literacy funded
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: by Congress K through college so they answer that question
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier. I'm vice chairman of No Labels now
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: as of two months ago, my mission there is to
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: be the voice of the underserved and the voice of
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: the voice. Let's try to get public, get fifty eight,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to be very practical, get fifty eight US Senators to
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: agree on a bipartisan basis to pass the civil rights
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: bill of this generation. Financial literacy. Then that I'll get
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: us into schools. And I've got a plan for the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: banking and financial services system. I mentioned that hope inside.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: I've got a plan for workplace, which I've just discussed,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: but hoping with financial literacy for all, it's really about
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: building this culture amongst Fortune five hundred companies, which is
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: where you spend most of your time working, well living
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: if you're you know you spend most of your time
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: at work if you're employee, and changing the culture and
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the places that change America.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about promise homes. Where
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: did this idea come from, and what's the company's purpose?
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: And to reiterate, this is a for profit company. This
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: is not a philanthropy.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: It's a for profit company. And coincidence is God's way.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Amiting anonymous, I guess I wanted to build wealth for
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: myself so that I did not have to continue to
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: go begging to philanthropists to help Operation Hope with its growth.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to reach into my own
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: pocketbook and to write my own check, which meant I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: needed assets. I needed a business that didn't conflict with
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Operation Hope. So there's a lot of things I couldn't do.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: It couldn't do banking, can do rock Ridge, couldn't do
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. Single family residential rentals was a
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: business I thought I could be in that had no
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: conflict with my philanthropy. It also, oddly enough, Barry was
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: a business that Frederick Douglass was in.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Oh really, uh huh.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: He owned six million dollars worth of real estate rental
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: real estate in Baltimore, Maryland that he rented it out
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: to work in class blacks. That gave him the financial
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: freedom to be a civil rights leader and an abolitionist.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: He woul don't know that story, but he was a capitalist.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: And actually Frederick Douglass ran the Freedman's Bank for Abraham
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Lincoln in eighteen sixty five that was charted to teach
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: free slaves about money. So he was both a financial
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: literacy champion, pioneer pioneer, and he was an asset owner
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: and in many ways I am literally replicating his business model,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't intentional. This is just sort of tripped
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: on to this same narrative.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about this business model a little bit,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: because private equity has moved into the space or lots
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: of criticism that big money is pushing out smaller potential
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: home buyers. Tell us a little bit about how promise
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: homes operate. Where are you operating and how large do
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: you want to get this?
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: So I think that this can be a game changer.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: And there I mean, some of this criticism is legitimate
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: that a lot of folks who are own these homes
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: are sitting in office buildings pushing basically a financial formula.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: They're not connecting this to the emotions of somebody's most
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: prized asset, which is where they live. They're not connecting
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: this to the human experience. And they probably shouldn't be
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: in the business of owning homes and low wealth neighborhoods
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: unless they are fully committed beyond a balance sheet investment.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: You'll get your return, but but really should you be
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: should this be the business that you're in If you
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: don't really care, we care, and maybe go back a
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: little bit story because the rig Orgon story is a
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: little interesting. I went to Tony Wrestler of Arias Management
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and micael Oaghetti had this idea. I had this idea.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: So Michael said he's going to put up a few
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: million bucks to partner with me. I went to go
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: see Tony about supporting Operation Hope and I get asked
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: him for fifty thousand dollars. He said, yah, yah, yeah, yeah,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: what's in your other pocket? Excuse me? He said, look,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: you got fifty thousand dollars out of me philanthropically, but
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: you're a smart guy. What do you make in the
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: other pocket? Because you just took money out of my
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: out of my left pocket out here. So I said,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I got this business idea. He said, I'm in just
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I'm in.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: No.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I shared my vision and three minutes into it,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: he said, that makes sense to me, I'm in. I said, well,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: you can't be in. I've already got a partner. Well,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: who's your partner? Telling him who it was, Well, he
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: worked with me, tell him I'm in. About a week later,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: I'm in New York and we're having a conference call.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: He said, I thought about this, Why do three men.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: When you can do thirty million, it's a great idea.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Why do thirty mini when you can do one hundred
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: and thirty men, Let's do one hundred and thirty million.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And we built this company over five years, from zero
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: to one hundred and twenty million. And I paid all
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: the bankers off, all the Ferty Max City National Bank,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: these other bank first for a public bank, I paid
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Tony and michaeloff plus their coupon. I was so proud
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: to be a black man in America who came from nothing.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: And I paid all of my debts off dollar for
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: dollar under agreement, and I owned the company and I
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: as teaching and we did this honorably because I was
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: doing financial literacy for the residents. Free financial literacy. If
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: you major payments on time, re rewarded you. If you
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: had a credit score of six hundred or five eighty,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: you had to go into financial counseling and coaching with
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: my organization, Operation Hope. If you raise your credit score
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to seven hundred, I would reduce your rent by ten percent.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: And as long as you kept the credit score above
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: seven hundred, we made sure that the vendors that did
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: the work on maintenance plumbing, heating, lighting, landscaping, roofing, etc.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: That they that we gave a shot to minority in
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: women owned businesses. So fifty five percent of all of
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: my merchants, my vendors were minority in women. If I
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: was not a black guy owning this company, I don't
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: think anybody else would have done that. I was sensitive
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: to it because of course I am it. And then
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: we gave a path to home ownership from rent to
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: own for people who said I loved this experience and
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: been paying rent on time? Can you help me become
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: a homeowner. That caught the attention of the media, and
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: so media starts saying, well, is this a model of
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: going from rent to own? And can you actually treat
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: people like residents and not just renters? And can this
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: business be also a catalyst for social justice through living
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: wage jobs and contracts? The answer to those questions were
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: all yes. That also, those three things allowed me to
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: access different kinds of capital pools than Wall Street were
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: accessing that were cheaper. So, without getting in a bunch
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: of detail, I found another capital stack that was multiples
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: less expensive than the hot money on Wall Street. And
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: there's two ways to make money. You make more, you
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: spend less. I was spending less. That allowed me to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: sell my business at a prime rate. And then I
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: then became an advisor to KKR and their Global real
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: Estate group because of the philosophy that I had a
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Promise Homes company. And now I've sold that company into
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: a partnership. I'm growing that company now with the new
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: partners Seawan Horowitz and Clayton Wyatt, We're going to now
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: scale this company from seven hundred homes to ten thousand.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: And I want to own all of these affordable housing
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: homes that are in the institutional portfolios. I want them
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: to sell those homes to me. Let me treat them
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: as a priority, as these are the communities that I love,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: and I think you can do well and do good too.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: In fact, I know you can. So here we have
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: a philanthropic model with Operation and Hope financial coaching, and
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you have a wealth creation and a job creation and
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: home ownership model, affordable choice model with Promise Homes Company.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: And at some point I'll get into access to capital.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: That's another conversation for another day. But this is my
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: mechanism to uplift the bottom of the economic pyramid.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: And it's a for profit company. What cities do you
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: want to expand into.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: It's national. I'll go every place, but those places that
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: are literally unaffordable for rents, I'm not You know, you
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: can't do it in Manhattan, but you can do it
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: in the the boroughs. You can't do it in La Proper,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: but you can do it in some of the cities
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: around that. Beyond that is, almost every place in America
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: does have slots for affordable housing. What I want to do,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I mean is only half. It's about five hundred thousand
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: homes that are owned institutionally out of seventeen thousand rental homes.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: So the concept that institutions are wall streets owning main
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: street is in and of itself a fallacy. But is
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: it true that most of the sales in the last
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: few years have been from institutions. That is true in
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: these underserved neighborhoods. So what I want to do is
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: buy the homes that have less than two thousand dollars
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: a month rent from these institutions. I want to own them,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: and I want to buy or build homes in other
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods that have, you know, sub two thousand dollars rents.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: So let's address both of those. First, are these big
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: companies willing sellers? Do they want to sell? I don't
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: know where that falls in their range, buttons up two
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: thousand is in the top of their range.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: You want to get rid well, frankly, that's how operation hopes. Sorry,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: that's how the Promise Homes company got started.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: The first one thousand or the bottom of the rain.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And institutions that did not really think this was a
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: sweet spot for their portfolio. This was so you had
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine economic crisis.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: They had investors come into their funds to buy assets
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: in a downtown downturn. Five or seven years later, the
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: investor wants out. It's not that they don't like the asset,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: but they're like, we've hit our return, we hit our bogie,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: We're done. I was at the door in twenty sixteen,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: knocking on the door, saying good timing, and I bought
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: some of these assets at a decent rate when they
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: were trying to exit. And even if they didn't want
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: to exit their whole portfolio, the one part that they
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: were willing to get rid of was this bottom section.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: I think we're at that point again, I think with
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: where the economy is right now, the next two years,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: there'll be a pruning, a refinement, a tightening of institutions,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: business plans focusing on their sweet spot. The sweet spot,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: to be blunt and Berry, is somebody like you and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: me who has multiples of income over their expenses. They're
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: looking for that renter. They don't want a renter who
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: has three times rent, which is a low income, low
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: wealth renterer. They don't want somebody who's a doctor, doctor,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: a Walmart manager, or the you know, McDonald's manager, or
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the police officer. But I do I want them. I
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: want I love these communities. I love these residents as
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: my you know, occupants. I love these neighborhoods that are untapped, underserved,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and unseen. And I think my passion for these neighborhoods
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: matches with the strategic interests of institutions who hit their bogie.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: They've hit their number, and the homes are not deferred,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: they've been rehabbed, but it's headline risk maybe for somebody
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: to own it other than me. Let me own it,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: do well and do good.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: What about building homes you mentioned you want to start
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: doing construction. Is there enough land around. There's lots of
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: regulatory restrictions, there's lots of where people don't want lower
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: income housing in their neighborhood. How do you operate around that?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: You go into existing inner city neighborhoods and you find
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: bum properties. You find property with a tree in the roof,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: or whether it's the what's the worst house or houses
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: on the best blocks. They're you know, crime infested or
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: they're magnet for problems. Partner with the city and say, hey,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: city council person, Hey, you.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Know, we want to take this off your hands.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: We want to help you. Can you help us? Oh
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: my god? Sure? And you buy it right, you rehabit
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: with minority vendors, which is what we're doing, and you
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: then either put it back into inventory as affordable rent
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: or you sell it to somebody in the neighborhood. We
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: have all those relationships, we have the credibility. We've got
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the street cred and the institutional cred to get that done.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: And we're trusted. We're the honest broker in these neighborhoods
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: because they know me. They've seen me there for thirty
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: plus years. So I'm not selling wolf tickets as they say, And.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: When you say national, is this a city by city
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: approach or do you roll it out all at once?
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: No, I think it's both you. You when you when
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: you if you're buying portfolios, you may find that you
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: bought portfolio homes in six cities. So now as long
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: as you have enough cities to have property management, that's
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: really the key. You want to have centralized property management
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: uh in a city so you can so you can
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: keep the promises to the residents. I've learned a lot
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: in this business. Like one thing I've learned is that
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: no one washes rental cars, right, like if you don't
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: own it. If you're the property management company, you don't
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: own it. So you're not going to have the same
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: care for these residents as as I would as the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: owner of the prop of the property. It's myself. And
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: so you may let that resident call you six or
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: eight or ten times and not go out to them
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you made it. You may overcharge on maintenance because you can,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: so they're the property management company. Is really a key
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: part of delivering and keeping the promise to these communities.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: And if you get lucky, you get a great property manager.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: If not, you need to do it yourself, so I
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: will roll out in areas. When I've got that, I
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: can keep the promise to my communities, in my residents,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and we have a formula for that.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: So the pandemic seems to have upended housing. People realize
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: they don't want to live very far away from where
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: they work. They don't want to long commute housing closer
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: to employment centers tend to be much pricier. What's the
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: impact of the pandemic been on promise homes and how
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: you operating in what appears to be a somewhat new environment.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: So you just I'm smiling because you just hit on
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: a genius part of America's untapped business plan, and it
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: comes from discrimination. Where's the inner city in France? Paris?
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Where is an inner city in the UK? London? You
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: can you do all day? Where's an inner city in
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles South Central? Fifteen minutes from the port, fifteen
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: minutes from the beach to fifteen minutes from downtown, ten
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: minutes from jobs. But who lives there? We put inner
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: city poor stroming people because because in the fifties and
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: sixties and forties, people want to get away from these folks.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: They built suburbs when traffic was not onerous and moved away.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Now traffic is paying the Kazanga beans, and young people
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: are not afraid of minorities. So young people are moving
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: into inner cities at low rates, rehabbing these properties, building businesses,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: and creating new neighborhoods and communities. And what I want
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: to make sure that happens is, if there's going to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: be gentrifications, let it be diverse and inclusive gentrification the
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: folks who actually live in these neighborhoods, and not just
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: those who can afford to be in these neighborhoods. So basically,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: you have every inner city in America, with exception of Manhattan,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: is a gold mine waiting to be tapped. Every these
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: are all these neighborhoods, Inner City Detroit. I mean, you
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: pick one. It's right near jobs and or at least
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: economic opportunity and energy waiting to be explored. I see
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: opportunity everywhere. It's the guy who went to Africa selling shoes.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: He wired back three weeks later, Boss, please send me home.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: No one here wears shoes. Then they bring Barry and
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: John out there and we get lost in the bush,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: and no one hears from us. Because we're exploring the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: culture and all that stuff. And then three weeks later,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: there you go, barry everybody in every shoe. You've got
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: No one here wears shoes.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. Let's talk about a few of your older
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: books before we get to your most recent one, the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: memo five Rules for your Economic Liberation? What are the
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: five rules? And I have a feeling I have an
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: idea what those five pillars are because you've talked about those.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: But but what are the five rules for economic liberation?
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, let's talk a little bit about why
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: the book was even necessary. Who didn't get the memo?
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, what is a memo? I mean when you
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: think about being in Bloomberg, you know, are we open
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: on on on Christmas? Or are we open on you know, Thanksgiving?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: That's a memo that goes around. Everybody's on the same page.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: What happens if no one sends that memo? Do you
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: either show up for work or don't know? You know,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: there's no there's no direction of what the leadership wants
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: to do or not to do, and so you're sort
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: of on your own. So everybody needs a memo, and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: everybody needs a business plan. For their life. And what
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: we found is that after slavery, we were told after
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Americans we were free, but nobody gave us a memo
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: on the rules of freedom in a free enterprise democracy
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: and free enterprise system. And so it's what you don't
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: know that you don't know that's killing you and a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: blind tout on one eyed man's king. And when you
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: don't know better, you can't do better. So we just
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: found that you had to literally go back to the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: drawing board and deliver the business plan for a free
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: enterprise success story to successive generations of people who were
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: not giving direction or guidance. And my goal at Operation
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Hope was to do that through coaching, but also my
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: goal in the books was to provide literal training grounds,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: if you want to call it that, so that there
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: was no guess work anymore around success. And each of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the books are a bit of touch tones and maybe obvious,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: but common sense is not so common.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: So let's go over. Let's start with the five rules.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: What are the five rules that we want to get out?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Rule number one, you live in a free enterprise system
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: embraces So people say, oh, I hate rich people, No,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: you don't, you hate rich people til you become rich.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: All we're socialists. No, no, no, no. As my friend,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: late the late Shimon Praira has said to me, He said, John,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: even if folks want to distribute money like a socialist,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: they have the first collect money like a capitalist. So
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: we're all living in a capitalist system. If you're going
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: to work and using your talents to get a paycheck,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: you're using your human capital. So let's stop playing a game.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Let's understand that our freedoms aren't free, and we live
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: in a free enterprise democracy. So that's Number one, is
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: you live in a free enterprise system. Embraceist. Let's not
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: playing the stupid game that somehow we don't. Number two,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: and are these kids who are railing against capitalism at
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: fre enterprises, rich kids who are only able to do
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: that on a college campus because their parents are capitalists
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: and could send them the best colleges in the World's
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating to me. Number two. So it's not just
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: poor people or under a misnomer, it's rich kids too.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Number two. Your mind set makes you lose money or
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: build wealth, you choose. Number Three, Relationships are investments, build
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: relationship capital with yourself first. That's that self esteem. Piece
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Number four, be entrepreneurial. Don't just get a job, maybe
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: create one so you can write that check, not just cash.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: And number four spiritual capital is a start of true
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: wealth on your power. So I would say that we're
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: not living, we're not human beings having a spiritual experience.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Where spiritual beings having a human experience, energy matters, and
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: the most important thing in life probably is becoming reasonably
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: comfortable in your own When I met you, instantly I
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: could tell that Barry was cool with Barry. Well, if
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: you're cool with you, then you'll be cool with me.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about another
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: of your books. I love the title of this and
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: I'm really curious as to how this can be done.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: How the poor can save capitalism?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: It always has, he always.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: Has, of course, well us more. And I say this,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: by the way, as someone who grew up pretty hearts gravel,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: you know, always had a job since I was, you know,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: ten twelve years old, put myself through school, never thought
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: about capitalism till much later in life, till I was
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: out of college. How can the poor save capitalism?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it always has?
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: How has it in the past? Give us some examples.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: All of the creators of wealth in this country, legitimate
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: wealth came from poverty. In the twentieth century. You think
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: about all these vaders who created companies I mentioned earlier.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Is there's a good example, because it's visual. Here in Manhattan,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: you have a tower that says Goldman Sacks. Well, one
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: hundred plus years ago, there was a guy who was
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: an immigrant named Goldman and another guy who was the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: imigant name of Sacks, and they literally were walking door
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: to door selling financial services out of a briefcase because
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: they couldn't get a job in the office towers of
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: that day because of discrimination. So they had to go
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: create their own job because no one would hire them
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: for an existing job. And that created an institution today
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that people think is hotty, toddy and hard to access,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: called Goldman Sacks. But whether it's ups and I think
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: his name was Kelly, I think it's his name who
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: founded the ups On with the bicycle messenger service, or
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: whether it's Coca Cola, which was a pharmacist and his
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: son who created that business and they were dead broke
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: sold it for five hundred bucks. By the way, so
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the pharmers the pharmacy formula. You can go on and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: on and on. You know, black enterprise was created by
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: a heart scrabble black entrepreneur Ebony magazine. The guy bro
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: a few books from his mother. So he's black entrepreneurs,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Latino entrepreneurs, white entrepreneurs. It doesn't matter. All legitimate wealth
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: came from nothing, who built something into something. And these
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: are big companies where once small ones. And uh, that's
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: just a historical fact.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about looking forward. Are you suggesting that
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: we need the poor to continue this process of entrepreneurship
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: and building businesses and creating something from practically nothing.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Is that I'll go once, I'll go one step further.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: My rich friends need my poor friends in order to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: stay rich. My rich friends eat my poor friends to
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: do better.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Explain this.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Seventy percent of the US economy is consumer spending. That's
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: the guy who's cleaning this office building, paying rent, paying
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: a car note, buying some food on the corner, paying
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: for a parking ticket, going to a restaurant every now
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: and then with his wife. If without this activity, the
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: economy comes to a grinding stop. Think about the pandemic.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Think about what happened in March of twenty twenty, everything
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: everything froze because the average human being was not out
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: engaging in the economy. So rich people cannot on their
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: own sustain the Lard's economy on the planet. We literally
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: need each other. So whether you're a consumer or whether
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: you're a stakeholder and a builder, you have a role
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: to play. And I'll say something else is maybe shocking
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: to me, it's common sense. Demographics are destiny. The reason
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: I believe in this business plan today that it's about
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: mission and money and morals. Today there's not enough college
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: educated white men to grow the economy for the next
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: thirty or forty years. It's just mathematically impossible. So you
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: need minorities, you need women. We need other people to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: grow into the economy in a sustainable way in order
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: to keep this thing, this party, in this beautiful story
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: of America going, and so that China does not. It
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: is way of illegitimately becoming the leader of the world
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: by cheating at capitalism and free enterprise with their partner Russia,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: which is by the way, rounding air economically and a
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: bunch of thugs who can't do anything illegitimately. But China
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: and Russia together want our way of life. They want
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: to be us, and they can't do it with a
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: fair fight. We if we realize we're better together, probably
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: my next book by the way, this topic. If we
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: realize we're better together and that two plus two has
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: to equal more than four, mean, that's every good marriage.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: Is that two plus two equals six, eight or ten.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: You're better together, then you can realize that you can't
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: succeed if there's a hole in my end of our boat.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: We're in the same boat. So we need the bottom
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: of the pyramid to be here, rehabilitated and engaged in
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: the economy to grow GDP by an extra two to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: three percent sustainably. And black folks are a one point
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: five trillion dollars consumer spending for us, Barry, that's one
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: of the largest economies in the world. But we don't
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: own anything we spend. We've got to move from just
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: being a consumer to a wealth creator.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about your most recent book, Up from Nothing,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: The Untold Story of How We All Succeed. Tell us
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit about that.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: It's my failures, it's it's I mean, it's everything, it's
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: all my trips, my failings, my fallings, my people who
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: laughed at me, people who roll their eyes at me,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: folks who dismiss me. First, the world will ignore you,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: then they'll criticize you, then they'll try to copy you.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Then you win. That was my message, And I'm just
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: trying to get a whole generation of leaders to understand
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: that just because somebody the lack of preparation in somebody
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: else's life is not constant an emergency in yours. And
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: just because you don't respect me doesn't mean I don't
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: respect myself. And your interpretation of my value is not
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: my reality of my value. And when we start understanding
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: that we are unique in this world, and we are
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and we are powerful in that uniqueness, and that egles
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: don't fly in packs. Berry, You've never seen a flock
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: of eagles, but buzzers love packs, and turkey's got wings
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: and can't fly. And if you're not careful, you'll get
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: so offended by what turkey, what buzzards say about you,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: or you'll be so distracted by what turkeys are laughing
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: at you and saying about you and your family, that
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: you will get distracted. Come out, get out of your ego,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: your ego, altitude, and you'll go down to try to
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: show that uh, that that bird a lesson, and the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: pig will find you out in the pig pen and
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: throw some mud on your wing and get that ego
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: down into the mud pit. And now the turkey and
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the buzzard and the pig look at you and say,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: now we got you right where we've always wanted you,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: down here with us. You got to step over messing,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: not in it. You got to stay above the fray.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: You got to understand that that that the philosophy for
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: success is talk without being offensive, listen without being defensive,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: and always leave even your adversary with their dignity, because
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: if you don't, they'll spend the rest of their life
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: trying to make you miserable. It becomes personal. It is
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: not their interpretation of you that matters. It is your
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: interpretation of you that matters. Not one ounce of my
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: self esteem is dependent upon your acceptance of me. It
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: just not so. So why am I spending all my
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: time trying to impress somebody who I do not know,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: with money I do not have in the places they
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: do not want me, with philosophies and things that there
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: that don't work. They're broke, they're they're unhappy, they're miserable,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: and I want to be like them. What I want
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to impress them? Why are we spending our time trying
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to impress somebody we actually even don't want to be
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: like like all these lessons of wasting time. I don't
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: mind wasting money every now and then. I don't want
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: you to abuse and waste my time. I'm trying in
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: this book to short circuit time wasting and energy wasting
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: and depression inducing activity and give you legitimate hope that
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: you can come up from nothing in the greatest economy
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: and I think the greatest creation of democracy, open source democracy,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: in the world, which is America. We're not perfect, but
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: she's a country. She's an idea, not a country. We
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: can make her anything we want, and we can be
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: part of that remaking process up from nothing. I could
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: never be me in Germany or France or China or Japan. Culturally,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: I just would not have gone from the bottom to
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: the top.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: So I love the message, but let me push back
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: a little bits to say, you know, back when my
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: parents were entering the workforce, there was a decent amount
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: of social mobility in the United States, forget race or religion,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: just lowest economic strata to the upper economic strata. The
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: economic mobility, at least by the most recent measures, as
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: well as a geographic mobility, both have hasn't gone away,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: but it's not nearly as broad as it once was.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: What's your response to people who say the American dream
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: isn't as robust as.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: It once was because small business starts stalled in two
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: thousand and four and they didn't actually pick up again
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: until after the pandemic. That's I mean, that's almost twenty years.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: And by the way, what's the largest group starting businesses
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: post pandemic?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: Millennials?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Blacks? Oh really, what's the largest supergroup amongst all other groups?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: Black women? Interesting, So now you have the group that
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: was thought to be left back, left behind, ignored, who
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't get the job, couldn't get the promotion, ignored in
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: their corporate suite. Now they're not going to the corporate suite.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: For two years, they were at home. They got some
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: stimulus money, which they call venture capital, and now they're saying,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, do I need to go back to
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: that job? You know? Do I need to go back
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: and be a again and have people coughing on me,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: and I don't have health care, and I'm not getting
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: good tips and the owner doesn't really care about me.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: Do I really need to go to that dead edd job?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: Do I need to go to that boss that doesn't care.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'll create my be my own boss. Maybe I'll
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: create my own way. And so now you have this surge,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: this super surge of the of the thing that made
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: America different from Europe in the first place, Barry, which
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: was business creation. I mean, the reason we have celebrity
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: in America is because it was our answer to bling.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: In Europe had royalty, that was their bling. You didn't
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: have royalty, and we didn't want it. But celebrity was
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: our desire to has something that sparkled the real marrow
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: of this country was the first corporation, sorry, the first
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: the first entity creating this country was a corporation. It
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: was a trading corporation that then created democracy, not the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: other way around. Municipalities came out of trading corporations. So
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: we are in our bones traders, financiers, business people, ar newers, hustlers.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: That is in our DNA and every I think twenty
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: thirty to fifty certainly every one hundred years you need
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: a generation of strivers who own something, own, create something,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: and by the way, create jobs. So have we become
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: over dependent upon less than a thousand companies that employ
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: ten thousand people or more fortune five hundred. Yes, you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: have all these folks going through college wanting to go
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: work at at Google or whatever the thing is. Who's
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: not hiring or will fire you at the moment that
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: there is an economic glitch where most of the businesses, sir,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: most of the jobs this country come from employers with
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: less than one hundred employees. Most businesses in LA ninety
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: five percent of all businesses have less than one hundred employees.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: Let's drive down Manhattan and look at these skyscrapers. That's
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: the dentist's office for people. That's an architect, eight people.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: That's a law firm, twenty people. That's a you know,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: an analyst firm. These are small businesses. I called a
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: chiropractor yesterday. He's got him and the secretary. I mean,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: this is what's driving the economy is. So you're either
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: gonna become the business person or are you going to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: work for that small business owner who probably is going
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: to pay you more. You have more social mobility in
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: that place than you will in some huge corporation. I'm
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: not saying I think, don't go work for the big company.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that that's not way to made America.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: So let's jump to our speed rounds. These are the
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: questions we ask all our guests and plow through very quickly,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: starting with tell us what you've been streaming these days?
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: What's been keeping you entertained?
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: Succession used to be billions eighteen twenty eight things? The
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: name of the show Yellowstone the latest? I mean, I
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: keep watching the Matrix movies, which most people don't listening
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: to your show probably won't know. It's a bit of
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: a cult film, but I think everybody needs to watch it. Man,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: which supposedly is a martial arts movie, but really it's
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: a movie about really moral decision making and ethnical This guy,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: martial arts genius who who trained Bruce Leeb, never wanted
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: to fight. You had to force him to fight. Now,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: he'd whip your rear in if you if you if
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: you force them, but he never wanted to fight. When
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: you have the power, you don't need to use it.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time late at night on
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: a sort of a mental vacation, I will turn on
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: something online and have my brain completely fantasized. There's an
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: F one. There's a series on Netflix that that that
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: drives there you go it unpacks F one Racing, That
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: is Genie. My sport is auto racing. Actually I have
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: a professional and I'm sorry, a competitive auto racing license.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: So that is my one of my passions. A very
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: great movie by Paul Newman that Paul Newman did, uh
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: call driving It actually that he was a great actor,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: but his passion was auto racing. He's the only sport
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: he was elegant at, he said, So anyway that I
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: can sell. I talked about things I would love to
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: watch all day and all night.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about your mentors. You mentioned a few
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: tell us who helped shape your career.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. Uh, you know, in no particular order,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: Astor Andrew Young, Bishop t d JS, Quincy Jones. This
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: is the moral side of my life. On the on
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: the business side again, you know, in particular order, Michael
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: Arraghetty Tony rest Or, Bill Rogers of Truist. I think
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: you know, Charlie Sharf at Wells Fargo, would call him
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: a mentor, but I tell him an inspired friend Jamie Diamond,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: that we don't spend a lot of time together, but
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: I love what he's built. Great guy. I've got so
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: many heroes and she ros that have that. I actually
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: had to go sort of like find the roadmap because
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: it didn't exist for me where I grew up. So
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: I had these saragate far and mothers, surrogate family that
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: I have literally put around me so I can map
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: out what success looked like. I probably have fifty of
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: these mentors and mentees, sorry, heroes and she wrotes who
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: are mentors that have guided my path forward. A few
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: of the names I just share with my mother wanted
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: to smith amongst them.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: Really interesting list. Let's talk about books. What are some
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: of your favorites? What are you reading currently?
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: Mere Christianity is something I read once a year by C. S.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Lewis is from the nineteen forties. The book The Power
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: of Now by Eckart Tole is something I try to
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: Some books I read continuously over and over again. The
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Seven Spiritual Laws is Success by Deepak Chopra is something
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: I read. It's only seventy pages. Is a great primer.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: It's worth reading over and over again. I'm reading a
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: book about green Span right now on capitalism that I
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: think is really, really very good. I'd encourage everybody to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: read it. By the way, edn't ask me this, but
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: there's a it's a documentary that could be a great
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: book called Easy Money that just came out. I believe it.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: Actually it's even a PBS documentary. You can find it
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: on Amazon's platform. But it is fascinating and as much
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: as I think I understand money, it really unpacked what
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: happened in the last twenty years and that I just
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: saw that. Sometimes you got to watch things two or
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: three times. The Men Who Build America an eight part series.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: Everybody needs to watch that. One problem I have with
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: it is there's no blacks or browns or there's just
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: a bunch of, you know, industrious white people. And that's
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: just a misnomer that only white men built this country.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: That's a whole another podcast for another time. You know,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: we can't get it. You can't get an elevator in
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: this building without a black man's invention. Who built the elevator?
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: So we all had a place. But these are sources
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: of inspiration for me.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Huh, really interesting list. Last two questions, what sort of
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: advice would you give to someone coming out of school
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: who was interested in a career in either finance or investment.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Ignore the noise. There's been a lot of noise around you.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: There will be a lot of people around you who
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: are not good role models, who want to party all
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: the time, who want to have fun. There's nothing wrong
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: with having fun. But only in the dictionary does the
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: word success come before the word work, because it's alphabetical.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: Egos don't fly in packs. And mentioned that earlier, So
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't expect everybody to get you or
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: understand your path. So, particularly if you're a person of color,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: in listening to this podcast, you're going to need to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: hyper focus because your white friend with a trust fund
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: can make all kind of mistakes and still land on
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: their feet. You know, you may have to burn the
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: ships behind you and hit that beach and like a
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: laser beam and never give up. I am consciously oblivious
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: of all things around me that don't matter. I am
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: very focused on what I think is super relevant. If
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: you're hyper focused, you're resilient, and you never give up.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: You actually don't have to be the smartest guy in
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: the room. You just outrun failure, and at some point
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: you will succeed because failure is lazy, and the devil's lazy,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: and frosters are lazy, and if you're just not lazy,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: you'll succeed. Be curious, God gave you two ears in
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: one mouth, or listen twice as much as you talk.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Be fascinated, Be super nosy, Be respectful, be kind. You
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: never know the toe you step on maybe conect to
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: the rear, and you got kiss tomorrow. Just be gracious
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: if you want to have a little grace, show a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: little mercy.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: I like that line and our final question, what do
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: you know about the world of capitalism, entrepreneurship, and just
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: generally the economy today that you wish you knew thirty
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: or so years ago when you were really ramping up.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: Everything's about money everything you know, marriage was originally about unions,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: uh you know, different royal houses or whatever. Uh being
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: part of the world you're talking about. They were trying
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: to protect their economic interests. That's why they got married.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: They didn't even sleep in the same beds or the
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: same houses. Back in those days. It was you know,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: families trying to protect each other's interest. Love is important,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: but alignment is also important. Money is in I mean church,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: church needs needs donation. Catholic Church is one of the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: largest owners of land, by the way and financial services
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: in the world. This is not a criticism, is a critique.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying my observation is that whatever you want
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: requires money and or an understanding of same in order
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: to live a life is free. Freedom today is self determination.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: You cannot have self determination unless you unless you have
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: some level of economic If all money is his freedom,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That's all all. So you shouldn't
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: pursue money to control other people's freedom slavery, but you
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: should understand that if you have money, then no one
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: can control yours.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Huh. That's really quite intriguing. We have been speaking with
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: John Hope Bryant, founder of Operation Hope, and a slew
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: of other companies. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: and check out all of our previous podcasts. You can
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: find those at YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you find
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: your favorite podcasts. Sign up for our daily reading list
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: at rituelts dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Ritholtz
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: follow all of the Bloomberg Family of podcasts at Podcasts,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I did not thank the
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: correct team that helps with these conversations together each week.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: Pariswold is my producer. A Teak of Albrun is my
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: project manager. Sean Russo is my researcher. My audio engineer
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: is Sebastian Escobar. I'm Barry Ritt. Adults, you've been listening
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.