Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / Going After What's Yours w/ Kneeland Youngblood
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
- 0:03Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Hey, Hey, this.
- 0:15Speaker 1: Is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and Wealth
- 0:18Speaker 1: podcast series on iHeartRadio and Black Effect Network. I want
- 0:23Speaker 1: to thank everybody, first.
- 0:25Speaker 3: Of all, for making this.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Season a top season for the podcast. We are top forty,
- 0:33Speaker 1: top fifty on the outside on entrepreneurship for Apple, top
- 0:37Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty for business. This is our time
- 0:41Speaker 1: and our message is time for everybody to come up
- 0:44Speaker 1: from nothing. And it's appropriate because my new book is
- 0:49Speaker 1: going to be Capitalism for All in twenty twenty six,
- 0:52Speaker 1: so watch out for that.
- 0:54Speaker 2: And really, the.
- 0:56Speaker 1: Guest today is not only emblematic of what I mean
- 1:01Speaker 1: when I talk about up from Nothing, which was my
- 1:06Speaker 1: second to last book, or talk about financial literacy for
- 1:09Speaker 1: all as a foundational civil rights issue. My last book
- 1:14Speaker 1: our Capitalism for All, Inclusive Economics in Future Proofing America,
- 1:20Speaker 1: my future book. I could have written these books about him.
- 1:23Speaker 1: Just a really decent, honest, brilliant leader who happens to
- 1:33Speaker 1: have figured out money and finance and wealth creation, who
- 1:39Speaker 1: happens to be black. I'm talking about none other than
- 1:44Speaker 1: Kneel and Youngblood. Now that may not be a household
- 1:47Speaker 1: name to you, that's just fine for him, I might add,
- 1:52Speaker 1: he's happy to flow under the radar, useful to him
- 2:00Speaker 1: for most of his life, probably because somebody would have
- 2:03Speaker 1: tried to stop him. We're going to unpack during this
- 2:09Speaker 1: podcast our private equity. We're going to spend several podcasts
- 2:16Speaker 1: episodes unpacking different types of private equity. We've got some
- 2:22Speaker 1: real stars coming up and some real surprises coming up
- 2:26Speaker 1: that I think will please you as we begin to
- 2:29Speaker 1: really unpack this area that's been hidden from most of
- 2:33Speaker 1: people who want to strive. But to talk to a
- 2:36Speaker 1: man who created his own company, who founded Pharaoh's Capital
- 2:47Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, really in the backdrop of a
- 2:51Speaker 1: guy who getting a lot of attention back then, which
- 2:53Speaker 1: was Reginald Lewis, and Reginald Lewis, who was really the
- 2:56Speaker 1: Martin of the King of Wall Street in many ways
- 2:58Speaker 1: in the eighties, created billion dollar acquisition backed by this
- 3:03Speaker 1: really another guy who also supported Neilan Youngbird young Blood,
- 3:08Speaker 1: which is a friend of ours, Michael Milken.
- 3:11Speaker 2: But because of the prominence.
- 3:12Speaker 1: Of a guy named Reginald Lewis, you might have missed
- 3:16Speaker 1: the story of Niel and Youngblood again, which is fine
- 3:19Speaker 1: with him. But I'm gonna tell you a story because
- 3:22Speaker 1: this inspiration should be to you. Let me start with
- 3:25Speaker 1: the end in mind. By the way, he manages over
- 3:28Speaker 1: a billion dollars in assets. I don't mean Mexican pesos.
- 3:33Speaker 1: I'm not talking about Russian rubles. I'm talking about I'm
- 3:39Speaker 1: talking about a billion dollars of US currency assets in
- 3:45Speaker 1: the biggest economy in the world. He founded this in
- 3:50Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, has grown it into a prominent
- 3:55Speaker 1: private equity firm with a substantial footprint. He has invested
- 4:01Speaker 1: his best I can tell in fifty eight portfolio companies.
- 4:05Speaker 1: He has over a billion dollars in assets, probably more
- 4:08Speaker 1: than that. He don't want you in his business. He
- 4:11Speaker 1: specializes in middle market healthcare companies, focusing on growth acquisitions
- 4:17Speaker 1: recapitalizations of companies that aim to lower costs, improve outcomes,
- 4:21Speaker 1: and expand access to care, often in underserved areas. You know,
- 4:25Speaker 1: he's my guy talking about good capitalism. Beyond the row numbers.
- 4:31Speaker 1: PHIOHS has institutional reach and legitimacy, with young Blood personally
- 4:36Speaker 1: serving on boards of major public and private companies. Over
- 4:40Speaker 1: the years, from hospitality to pharmaceutical and holding appointments under
- 4:45Speaker 1: multiple US presidents from both parties at state and federal institutions.
- 4:51Speaker 1: I thought I was the only person who served both parties.
- 4:54Speaker 1: But again, I'm not surprised that Nielan pioneered that before
- 4:57Speaker 1: I did, not some small boutique outfit.
- 5:03Speaker 3: He is.
- 5:04Speaker 1: Firals, under Neeland's leadership, is a mature, institutional scale private
- 5:09Speaker 1: equity firm with broad influence, capital and a track record
- 5:13Speaker 1: a building and scaling companies, especially in healthcare. Now personal note,
- 5:21Speaker 1: I met him through my wife.
- 5:23Speaker 2: We were at a Milkin conference. I didn't know who
- 5:26Speaker 2: he was.
- 5:27Speaker 1: Alice saw was his cool dress dude walking around, smooth
- 5:31Speaker 1: as butter, and he was spending too much time with
- 5:35Speaker 1: my wife. He was talking to her about whatever she
- 5:36Speaker 1: was talking about. I don't know what his goode is
- 5:38Speaker 1: to dude is he was too smooth for me, and
- 5:41Speaker 1: my wife says to me later, Oh, Neiland, we were
- 5:44Speaker 1: at an event and there was no seats and he
- 5:47Speaker 1: gave his seat to me.
- 5:48Speaker 2: I said, lot tid, I'm.
- 5:49Speaker 1: Sort of tired of as Neeland young blood dude. Let
- 5:51Speaker 1: me go talk to him and on a serious note.
- 5:54Speaker 1: I couldn't have been I couldn't have wanted anybody to
- 5:57Speaker 1: be to have my wife in their care better than
- 6:00Speaker 1: Knel and young Blood. He was just being gracious and
- 6:03Speaker 1: kind and respectful as he was raised that way. And
- 6:07Speaker 1: he operates some Texas by the way, so he has
- 6:09Speaker 1: that Southern charm. So on a serious note, he really
- 6:13Speaker 1: is just good people. My wife shake for read spirits
- 6:17Speaker 1: very well and really just came back affusing about this
- 6:21Speaker 1: guy NonStop.
- 6:22Speaker 3: I had to.
- 6:24Speaker 1: I wondered whether she he was saying, paying her a
- 6:26Speaker 1: pr retainer or something. She was just going on and
- 6:28Speaker 1: on about Neeland, and so I knew I had to
- 6:30Speaker 1: meet him. And of course when I met him, it
- 6:33Speaker 1: did nothing but confirm that he was all that.
- 6:36Speaker 3: She made him out to be.
- 6:38Speaker 1: Let me add a personal note here in addition to
- 6:43Speaker 1: the war he recently got at the Milk and conference
- 6:45Speaker 1: committing him Neeland is a bad brother because and hopefully
- 6:49Speaker 1: we cover this, he sued some folks in uh in
- 6:52Speaker 1: Texas I think it was, and again hopefully he talks
- 6:55Speaker 1: about this. This is this is a gangster lawsuit. This
- 6:57Speaker 1: was what even the Wall Street Journal said. He dropped
- 7:00Speaker 1: the mic and it's tied to his legacy, tied to
- 7:03Speaker 1: his family, and laying their own tied to some oil whale.
- 7:06Speaker 3: This guy should be a movie, a documentary.
- 7:08Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen.
- 7:10Speaker 4: Neilan Youngblood, Well, thank you John for that very gracious introduction,
- 7:16Speaker 4: and certainly your better half, your lovely wife. I really
- 7:21Speaker 4: appreciate the fact that you know she was able to
- 7:23Speaker 4: facilitate our introduction. And again it speaks to you and
- 7:28Speaker 4: your character having someone as extraordinary like that.
- 7:31Speaker 3: As a partner in your life. And so my compliments
- 7:36Speaker 3: to you and what you've done in terms of building
- 7:41Speaker 3: the firm that you've built, the legacy you've built in
- 7:44Speaker 3: terms of you're not for profit work, and the leadership
- 7:48Speaker 3: you've shown not just at Milkin, but you know across
- 7:52Speaker 3: multiple vehicles and and thattorization of you as as one
- 8:01Speaker 3: of our premier leaders is well deserved. So thank you.
- 8:05Speaker 3: I'm honored to be here, honored to have you, Niland.
- 8:08Speaker 1: And it's this, this should be obvious, but we got
- 8:12Speaker 1: to start doing this more. Two straight black men need
- 8:18Speaker 1: to more often say I love you brother, I'm.
- 8:20Speaker 3: Loud, love you proud.
- 8:22Speaker 1: I got to say that more and more often to
- 8:25Speaker 1: each other and spend times commending and highlighting each other
- 8:31Speaker 1: and holding each other up. You also are a doctor,
- 8:35Speaker 1: as I understand, is doctor Neelan Youngblood?
- 8:37Speaker 3: Right?
- 8:38Speaker 1: Yes, what a story, my god, let's back us up.
- 8:41Speaker 1: Tell us how this all happened?
- 8:43Speaker 3: Man? Yeah? Well you know. Well, first off, just to
- 8:46Speaker 3: give you some some contexts, I've been very blessed to
- 8:51Speaker 3: have as as you know, wonderful parents. Both my parents
- 8:56Speaker 3: finished high school at fifteen, college of nineteen. Both went
- 8:59Speaker 3: to graduate school. My grandfather, both my grandfather s finished
- 9:03Speaker 3: college in the nineteen twenties. My grandfather finished medical schools
- 9:06Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty. Wow. He went to medical school because
- 9:10Speaker 3: his uncle, his father's brother, wasn't emt. This was in Texas.
- 9:14Speaker 2: Wow, in Texas.
- 9:16Speaker 3: So what I like to say is I have no excuse.
- 9:19Speaker 3: I have no excuse. And so look, even though you
- 9:25Speaker 3: know my parents were quite educated. You know, I had
- 9:28Speaker 3: four brothers, two sisters. We weren't particularly well off because
- 9:31Speaker 3: there was a lot of mouths to feed. And my father,
- 9:34Speaker 3: to his credit, and I was able to see not
- 9:37Speaker 3: only through his words, but more importantly through his example.
- 9:40Speaker 3: Both my parents their work ethic and they're focused on education.
- 9:44Speaker 3: So my father was an optometrist. He worked kind of
- 9:47Speaker 3: nine to five, but he waited tables from six to ten,
- 9:50Speaker 3: six days a week. Wow. And because he had to
- 9:55Speaker 3: provide for, you know, these seven kids. And one of
- 9:59Speaker 3: the things he taught me early on and my siblings
- 10:02Speaker 3: as well as never let money get in the way
- 10:04Speaker 3: of your success. He said, he said, look, you just do.
- 10:09Speaker 3: Because I was worried about college and how they're going
- 10:11Speaker 3: to pay for it. He said, look, you just take
- 10:13Speaker 3: care of your business. We will figure out how to
- 10:16Speaker 3: pay for it. You do what you have to do,
- 10:19Speaker 3: and I promise you we'll be there for you. So
- 10:22Speaker 3: and that ethos really has stuck with me in that,
- 10:27Speaker 3: you know, do your best, do your job, and then
- 10:30Speaker 3: we'll figure the rest of it out. So so anyway,
- 10:34Speaker 3: I you know, coming from Glena Park, Texas, I had
- 10:38Speaker 3: had wonderful experiences. Fourteen, I got to skip part of
- 10:41Speaker 3: a year of school work in Texas legislature. So that
- 10:43Speaker 3: exposed me to politics. Never been out of Texas, was
- 10:47Speaker 3: an extinct Sumit de Greece. So I go to Greece.
- 10:51Speaker 3: My friends are anarchist, communists, left right hate the United States.
- 10:54Speaker 3: I was, like, I thought everybody loved America, what was it?
- 10:56Speaker 3: And they said no, apparently to see I ate orth
- 10:58Speaker 3: on the government Greece put in a military dictatorship. So
- 11:02Speaker 3: all my friends were hating on America, but all trying
- 11:04Speaker 3: to get a green cart to get to.
- 11:05Speaker 2: America because of opportunity.
- 11:07Speaker 3: Whoa And I was like, what's up with that? And
- 11:10Speaker 3: it was like, it's a land of opportunity, man, we
- 11:13Speaker 3: want to be there. And that insight was so fundamental
- 11:18Speaker 3: to me because for most black folks in America, if
- 11:21Speaker 3: you're coming over on a boat from Vietnam, but tata
- 11:24Speaker 3: famine in Ireland, you you know, you get to the US,
- 11:29Speaker 3: things are challenging and tough, but they have a frame
- 11:32Speaker 3: of reference. But blacks in America don't have a frame
- 11:35Speaker 3: of reference because of slavery. And so this was my
- 11:39Speaker 3: moment of clarity that they call fiction to say America
- 11:45Speaker 3: is a land of opportunity. I need to take full
- 11:47Speaker 3: advantage of it. So came back, finished high school, went
- 11:50Speaker 3: to Princeton. You know, all I knew was doctor, lawyer, teacher, preacher.
- 11:55Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about business. I didn't know anything
- 11:57Speaker 3: about finance. And while I wasn't going to teach and
- 12:00Speaker 3: preach medicine law the only two things I thought of,
- 12:03Speaker 3: and I spent the first two weeks just interviewing upperclassmen.
- 12:07Speaker 3: What courses would you take, what wouldn't you take? What
- 12:09Speaker 3: mistakes did you make? How did you get through this?
- 12:11Speaker 3: Because I was worried. I knew I could not fail.
- 12:14Speaker 3: I couldn't. It was too much on the line, too
- 12:16Speaker 3: many people sacrificing for me back home. I had to
- 12:20Speaker 3: be successful. So I, you know, took those two weeks
- 12:25Speaker 3: and kind of distilled it down. Most people screw up
- 12:27Speaker 3: their first two weeks, most people, you know, between girls
- 12:31Speaker 3: and drinking and drugs and whatever, you know. You know,
- 12:34Speaker 3: I was like, I was locked down for the first
- 12:37Speaker 3: two years. And again I took the pre med courses,
- 12:41Speaker 3: took the pre law courses, and my junior year, which
- 12:45Speaker 3: was my reward, hadn't worked so hard. My first two years,
- 12:49Speaker 3: I spent overseas in Europe, semester in Sweden University of Stockholm,
- 12:53Speaker 3: semester in the UK at a small college in Oxford, England,
- 12:56Speaker 3: looked at the British and Swedish healthier systems, and then
- 12:59Speaker 3: traveling over Western and Europe. In Eastern EU York, tiny decide,
- 13:02Speaker 3: am I go to medical school? Am I go to
- 13:04Speaker 3: law school? Medical school? Law school? And basically I flipped
- 13:07Speaker 3: a point and said, okay, medical school here. So I
- 13:11Speaker 3: came back to Princeton my senior year, got involved in politics,
- 13:15Speaker 3: the anti part that movement was going on. We did
- 13:18Speaker 3: sixty five days of protest on the campus and then
- 13:22Speaker 3: actually took over the administration building and it sit in
- 13:26Speaker 3: at Princeton and NASA Hall and post that, you know,
- 13:32Speaker 3: arrest and what have you? Graduated and came to medical school.
- 13:37Speaker 3: And I came home to the University of Texas, the
- 13:39Speaker 3: University of Texas UT Southwestern, and I loved it. I thought, wow,
- 13:43Speaker 3: you know I would be a heart surgeon. And I
- 13:47Speaker 3: called one of the prince and a lums and I said,
- 13:50Speaker 3: doctor urschel T, doctor held Erschoo was heart surgeon in Dallas.
- 13:53Speaker 3: And I said, they ought to be a heart surgeon
- 13:56Speaker 3: like you. And he said and I said, can I
- 13:59Speaker 3: come and see you? He said, yes, you can come
- 14:02Speaker 3: by and see me, but you have to go see
- 14:03Speaker 3: my former roommate first. That's odd. I said, well where's
- 14:08Speaker 3: he at? He said, he's down in Houston. I'll make
- 14:10Speaker 3: arrangements go down and see him first. So I drove
- 14:13Speaker 3: down the Houston to see his former roommate, and he
- 14:17Speaker 3: was black heart surgeon. Ok. And he was the most
- 14:21Speaker 3: extraordinary man I've ever met. His name was doctor John C. Norman.
- 14:27Speaker 3: He had come from He was born and raised in Charleston's,
- 14:33Speaker 3: West Virginia. He gone Howard of fifteen, transferred to Harvard,
- 14:39Speaker 3: finished summa cum laud, turned down the Rhodes scholarship, went
- 14:43Speaker 3: to Harvard Medical School in the nineteen fifties. They wouldn't
- 14:47Speaker 3: let him trained at the Brigham. He died that Columbia
- 14:50Speaker 3: fellowship in the UK, came back on the faculty at Harvard,
- 14:53Speaker 3: and then was recruited down to Texas to be the
- 14:55Speaker 3: first director of research at the Texas Heart Institute, which
- 14:59Speaker 3: is doing more heart surgery place in the world. Wow.
- 15:01Speaker 3: And you know it was founded by a guy named
- 15:05Speaker 3: Denton Cooley who was very famous, but infamous because he
- 15:09Speaker 3: had literally stolen the artificial heart of Michael Debate, stolen
- 15:13Speaker 3: in the night and implanted in a patient. So he
- 15:16Speaker 3: needed this brother to give him academic credibility. Really needed
- 15:21Speaker 3: this brother to give him academic credibility. I met doctor
- 15:25Speaker 3: John C. Norman and said, I can't do heart surgery
- 15:29Speaker 3: because this brother has done everything there is to do.
- 15:32Speaker 3: I did quite literally, yeah, he had done it. I
- 15:36Speaker 3: was just he He never moved to Boston, he never
- 15:39Speaker 3: moved from Boston. He commuted to Boston, lived in the
- 15:43Speaker 3: hospital with a great Dane, and you know, his wife
- 15:46Speaker 3: and daughter were still in Boston. And I just said,
- 15:50Speaker 3: I want to be as good at something as this
- 15:52Speaker 3: guy is. And it was just he was an extraordinary
- 15:58Speaker 3: man who became a oneful friend and someone who I
- 16:02Speaker 3: dearly loved. And I just said, look again, I want
- 16:07Speaker 3: to be as good as something as he is at
- 16:10Speaker 3: this And so I knew heart troding wasn't it. So
- 16:12Speaker 3: I came back, I wrote a proposal, got funding, and
- 16:17Speaker 3: I actually went to the Middle Least. I was early
- 16:20Speaker 3: in Egypt. Really yeah, I was an Israeli Jordan, but
- 16:25Speaker 3: primarily Egypt. I had apartment on the now Pyramids in
- 16:27Speaker 3: the background, and I was going to do research, but
- 16:30Speaker 3: really I was going to find myself. I was going
- 16:32Speaker 3: to find out who I was and what I was about,
- 16:36Speaker 3: because I had this vision of where I was going
- 16:39Speaker 3: and recognized I had to pivot. And so, like I said,
- 16:42Speaker 3: I would go out to the Sahara Desert. We look
- 16:44Speaker 3: at these pyramids, and I would just meditate on hours
- 16:48Speaker 3: one end and reflect and essentially say, look, when I'm
- 16:52Speaker 3: dying and taking my last breath, what is it I
- 16:56Speaker 3: want to define me? Who is that I want to be?
- 16:59Speaker 3: Maybe I can reverse engineer to get to that point
- 17:01Speaker 3: in the decisions I make moving forward. And I came back.
- 17:06Speaker 3: I you know, I'd been exposed to different types of medicine,
- 17:10Speaker 3: and I decided the emergency room with something that I
- 17:13Speaker 3: really enjoyed. It was fun, it was immediate gratification. It
- 17:16Speaker 3: was you know, crisis intervention. But it also from a
- 17:21Speaker 3: lifestyle standpoint, you didn't work more than fifteen days out
- 17:23Speaker 3: of the month and not more than three days in
- 17:25Speaker 3: a row, and to me time to explore some other things.
- 17:28Speaker 3: And so I ended up training in surgery in New York,
- 17:31Speaker 3: did my residence in emergency medicine in your town, in Atlanta, Atlanta,
- 17:35Speaker 3: and in Grady Hospital the Great Ages, and from the
- 17:39Speaker 3: hospital here, yes, And then came back to Dallas and
- 17:42Speaker 3: practiced for twelve years emergency medicine.
- 17:45Speaker 1: WHOA wait a minute, So before you ever built what
- 17:47Speaker 1: you have now, you had a whole other career as
- 17:50Speaker 1: a research or a doctor an emergency surgeon. My god,
- 17:54Speaker 1: so when we're not looking at balance, shees, I can
- 17:56Speaker 1: have you do some.
- 17:56Speaker 3: Surgery on this yet, but it's been a while, but yeah,
- 18:00Speaker 3: no emergency medicine. Was was was what I did before.
- 18:04Speaker 3: And I keep one thing as a momento before I left.
- 18:11Speaker 3: There was a police officer who a motorcycle police officer
- 18:14Speaker 3: who was hit by a truck. Uh, And so he
- 18:19Speaker 3: came in the er and you know, he was not intobated,
- 18:25Speaker 3: he didn't have a two, he couldn't breathe, and whatever
- 18:27Speaker 3: it is, I was able to intubate him, resuscitate him,
- 18:30Speaker 3: you know, mean for the audience. Intubate means I was
- 18:34Speaker 3: able to put a two into his mouth, down his
- 18:37Speaker 3: uh creak heads so that he could breathe because he
- 18:40Speaker 3: wasn't able to breathe on his own, which then you know,
- 18:44Speaker 3: and also given him an intravenous fluid so he could
- 18:47Speaker 3: you know, be rehydrated, et cetera. But he had lots
- 18:50Speaker 3: of different injuries, and so was able to then successfully
- 18:55Speaker 3: get him off to the operating room where folks could
- 18:58Speaker 3: take care of him. I then left the hospital and
- 19:03Speaker 3: I got a note back, you know, a week or
- 19:06Speaker 3: so later, and from his wife basically saying, doctor Youngblood,
- 19:13Speaker 3: when I got to the emergency department, you had already gone.
- 19:19Speaker 3: And I understand you the reason my husband is alive today.
- 19:23Speaker 3: So I want to thank you. He is, you know,
- 19:25Speaker 3: the father of our three kids, eaking in our church,
- 19:30Speaker 3: you know, thank you for what you've done for my husband,
- 19:33Speaker 3: for our family. God bless you. So that's the one
- 19:37Speaker 3: thing I keep from practicing medicine, and it also grounds
- 19:41Speaker 3: me in a way because as you're doing business and
- 19:45Speaker 3: deals and all of these things, you know, it's important
- 19:49Speaker 3: to understand perspective on things, and having practicing medicine for
- 19:56Speaker 3: twelve years, it's given me, i think, a a very
- 20:01Speaker 3: good perspective among the things that are important in life.
- 20:05Speaker 2: Well.
- 20:05Speaker 1: And one thing I've gotten from the backstory is something
- 20:09Speaker 1: that translates perfectly into wealth creation is discipline. You're very
- 20:15Speaker 1: disciplined problems at the beginning and middle and an end.
- 20:21Speaker 1: You weren't emotional about decision making, you weren't judgmental. You're
- 20:25Speaker 1: able to separate a fact from fiction or useful facts.
- 20:30Speaker 1: And for instance, when you're in Greece and people hating
- 20:33Speaker 1: on America and calling all the America these bad names
- 20:37Speaker 1: and phrases and words, some of which are true. They
- 20:40Speaker 1: but then they couldn't wait to get a passport to
- 20:43Speaker 1: America because it was a land of opportunity, and you
- 20:46Speaker 1: were able to separate the emotions of that from the
- 20:51Speaker 1: opportunity of that, and you're like, well, you let me
- 20:54Speaker 1: go back to where everybody's trying to get to in
- 20:58Speaker 1: spite of its history of slavery and Jim Crow and
- 21:02Speaker 1: all these other things. It is the biggest economy in
- 21:06Speaker 1: the world. Your ability to laser focus and cut through
- 21:10Speaker 1: the mess, as my guests, been one of your advantages
- 21:16Speaker 1: nor the noise, as I would like to say, is that.
- 21:18Speaker 3: Right, That's actually quite accurate, and it's allowed me to
- 21:25Speaker 3: make decisions, very difficult decisions sometimes at the time, you know,
- 21:31Speaker 3: when I ended up quitting practicing medicine, and frankly, what
- 21:35Speaker 3: led up to my practicing medicine and opportunities that presented itself.
- 21:41Speaker 3: You know, I want to say one of the challenges
- 21:45Speaker 3: for most people, for many people is the inertia of
- 21:49Speaker 3: their success. That is very easy to keep doing what
- 21:53Speaker 3: you're doing because you maybe you have a good income.
- 21:57Speaker 3: Maybe you know you have credibility, prestige and trappings that
- 22:04Speaker 3: are quite comfortable, and so for me, medicine was that.
- 22:11Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, I had gotten
- 22:14Speaker 3: exposure to experiences which I'm happy to discuss that led
- 22:19Speaker 3: me to say, this a whole nother world out here.
- 22:23Speaker 3: I need to challenge myself to look into these things.
- 22:36Speaker 1: I have a couple of questions for you that are
- 22:39Speaker 1: very specific. It already I already know that we could
- 22:43Speaker 1: turn this into part one and part two just by
- 22:46Speaker 1: listening to you. There's a lot that you have to
- 22:49Speaker 1: teach an audience that wants to learn. Let me get
- 22:53Speaker 1: the most important things out for those who have limited
- 22:56Speaker 1: time and unlimited dreams. You built a billion dollar private
- 23:02Speaker 1: equity firm from scratch. Let's say that again slowly. You
- 23:07Speaker 1: built a billion dollar plus private equity firm from scratch,
- 23:12Speaker 1: without inherited capital, without a Wall Street pedigree, no disrespect intended.
- 23:19Speaker 1: What was the first door you had to break down?
- 23:24Speaker 1: What were some of the gatekeepers that you experienced, the
- 23:29Speaker 1: early barriers, the first LP check, limited partnership check to
- 23:35Speaker 1: invest in your dream? How did you navigate exclusion? What
- 23:42Speaker 1: can young investors learn from how you earned.
- 23:50Speaker 3: What I would say is, first off, I interesting enough.
- 23:53Speaker 3: I started getting involved in politics medicine. That was the genesis.
- 23:59Speaker 3: I gathered my prints together and said, look, I want
- 24:02Speaker 3: to we're all doing well, but let's kind of give
- 24:05Speaker 3: back in a different way. And my observations as a
- 24:08Speaker 3: fourteen year old having worked in the Texas legislature was
- 24:11Speaker 3: that while women and people of color had been involved
- 24:13Speaker 3: in politics, they had been involved in grassroots politics primarily
- 24:18Speaker 3: not the money side of politics. And again, as explain that,
- 24:23Speaker 3: as a fourteen year old, I saw the guys who
- 24:28Speaker 3: were and it was primarily guys who had written big checks,
- 24:32Speaker 3: who had access to the governor, who had access to
- 24:34Speaker 3: legislators in ways to get things done. That while again
- 24:40Speaker 3: women and people of color it were doing wonderful grassroots
- 24:44Speaker 3: efforts and trying to lobby for this and that and
- 24:46Speaker 3: the other. But I didn't see that as effective as
- 24:52Speaker 3: what I saw the people who had the capital. Yes,
- 24:56Speaker 3: so I, you know, had met Bill Bradley, who was
- 25:01Speaker 3: you know, former Prince of a lumb who had been
- 25:03Speaker 3: a Rhodes scholar and played in New York knicks won
- 25:06Speaker 3: the World championship and he was running for the governor,
- 25:08Speaker 3: and he was running for Senate in New Jersey, and
- 25:10Speaker 3: I met up joining alumn my organization. I said, come
- 25:13Speaker 3: down to Texas, my friends, and I would love to
- 25:15Speaker 3: raise some money for you. And you tell a politician
- 25:18Speaker 3: you want to raise money for him, they I thought
- 25:23Speaker 3: I was doing him a favor, and I thought he
- 25:25Speaker 3: was doing me a favor, and when in fact I
- 25:27Speaker 3: was doing him a favor. He came down. We raised
- 25:30Speaker 3: some money for him, and it was enormously successful, and
- 25:36Speaker 3: he became godfather one of my kids. And then guess what.
- 25:39Speaker 3: Ann Richards called me said, look, I'm run for governor
- 25:41Speaker 3: of Texas. Will you will you help me? I said,
- 25:43Speaker 3: you know how to raise money, and so put the
- 25:45Speaker 3: band back together raise money for and she became governor.
- 25:48Speaker 3: Then another friend of mine, John Rodgers, let's call me
- 25:53Speaker 3: who would help me? With Bill Bradley, who'd helped me
- 25:55Speaker 3: with Anne Richards, said look, we've got Carol Moseley Brawn
- 25:58Speaker 3: in Illinois. She's got a shot. Would you help brought
- 26:01Speaker 3: her down to Texas. We raised money for her. I
- 26:03Speaker 3: did it with Barbara Jordan, in fact, who I'd worked
- 26:06Speaker 3: with when I was a fourteen year old. And then
- 26:08Speaker 3: I get a call from Ron Brown.
- 26:10Speaker 2: Oh my god, the Ron Brown.
- 26:12Speaker 3: Yeah, will you help this Doman Bill Clinton?
- 26:15Speaker 1: So Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, first black commerce secretary in
- 26:18Speaker 1: the history of the US, I believe, first black man
- 26:21Speaker 1: to be chairman of the d n C.
- 26:22Speaker 3: I believe absolutely, and one of and one of the
- 26:26Speaker 3: most successful, if not the most successful commerce secretaries. Yeah.
- 26:30Speaker 3: And a mentor of mine by the way back then,
- 26:33Speaker 3: So yep, and so raise money for for Ron. And
- 26:39Speaker 3: again I look up Bill Clinton's president, you know, Bill Bradley, Senator,
- 26:43Speaker 3: I know Ann Richards, She's got you know, Carol Mosey
- 26:46Speaker 3: Brown is you know? And Bill Bradley says something very
- 26:49Speaker 3: simple but very profound to me. He says, if the
- 26:53Speaker 3: President of the United States walks in the room, what's your ask?
- 26:56Speaker 2: Hmm.
- 26:56Speaker 3: I was like, what are you talking? I was confused,
- 27:00Speaker 3: I said. He said again, if the President of the
- 27:03Speaker 3: United States walks in the room, what's your ask? I
- 27:06Speaker 3: was like, I don't understand. He said, don't just be
- 27:09Speaker 3: happy to be in the room.
- 27:10Speaker 2: Who come on, now, don't just be.
- 27:12Speaker 3: Happy to be in the room. Don't get distracted with
- 27:14Speaker 3: the lights, cameras, all the rest of the noise. If
- 27:18Speaker 3: you're in a room with the president, you're there for
- 27:20Speaker 3: a reason. They know what they want out of you. You
- 27:22Speaker 3: should know what you want out of them.
- 27:23Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 27:25Speaker 3: I was like, oh wow, okay. So and Richards calls me.
- 27:30Speaker 3: She says, I'm Governor. I want to put you on
- 27:34Speaker 3: the Board of Medical Examiners. You'll be chairman. And I said, no,
- 27:37Speaker 3: I want to be on the Tax Policy Committee. Whoa
- 27:42Speaker 3: She said, wait time out. You know me. Know what
- 27:43Speaker 3: I'm saying. You're a doctor. I'm making you chairman. You'll
- 27:45Speaker 3: be in charge of all the doctors in the state.
- 27:47Speaker 3: This is a big deal. And I said, no, I
- 27:49Speaker 3: want to be on the tax policy Committee. She says,
- 27:52Speaker 3: why on earth would you want to be on the
- 27:54Speaker 3: tax policy Committee. I said, because the Tax Policy Committee
- 27:57Speaker 3: is composed of CEOs from that's around from this state
- 28:00Speaker 3: of Texas. If it's important enough for them, it's important
- 28:03Speaker 3: enough for me. And there's no one like me in
- 28:05Speaker 3: that room. I want to be in that Wow. So
- 28:07Speaker 3: she was like, okay, whatever I you know, I mean
- 28:11Speaker 3: years later she said, okay, it was it was brilliant,
- 28:13Speaker 3: but you know, so, I'm in the hospital one day
- 28:16Speaker 3: nurse hands me the phone talk to you, hum about
- 28:18Speaker 3: this guy was talking something about taxes or whatever it is.
- 28:20Speaker 3: And you know, I'm I'm a little arrogant. I'm saving
- 28:22Speaker 3: lives there the art. Look, I'm busy man, you know,
- 28:26Speaker 3: and says, look, you don't know me. And my name
- 28:28Speaker 3: is Don Williams. I'm CEO of this company called travel Crow,
- 28:30Speaker 3: which is in the real estate business.
- 28:31Speaker 2: Oh my god, Crow.
- 28:32Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd never heard trump Crow. And I live in Dallas.
- 28:35Speaker 3: You live in Dallas. These meetings are in Austin. Why
- 28:38Speaker 3: don't we go together? And I was like, sure's you
- 28:40Speaker 3: want to drive down Southwest Carolina. He's got his jet.
- 28:43Speaker 3: He's like, I got my own jet, so just just
- 28:45Speaker 3: me at Signature Aviation. Well we'll be okay. So I
- 28:48Speaker 3: get on the private jet and I'm like, forgive me, damn,
- 28:52Speaker 3: I'm in the wrong business. I had no idea that
- 28:57Speaker 3: world existed. Againt, I'm a doctor. I'm making more money
- 29:00Speaker 3: ever thought of making my life. I'm a pill of
- 29:02Speaker 3: the community. I'm you know, I'm raising money for politician.
- 29:07Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm I'm I'm thinking, I'm at the peak.
- 29:09Speaker 3: And then there's a whole nother world that opens up
- 29:11Speaker 3: for me. And so that caused me to really, in
- 29:16Speaker 3: that forty five minute flight, I quit medicine. And that
- 29:21Speaker 3: really that forty five minutes because all I thought about
- 29:25Speaker 3: was my time in Egypt. And you know, it's easy
- 29:31Speaker 3: when you aren't confronted with, oh yeah, if I have
- 29:34Speaker 3: this decision, I'll do this, I'll do you know, I
- 29:36Speaker 3: was going back to Egypt, you know when I die,
- 29:39Speaker 3: you know, I want to do that, you know, and
- 29:41Speaker 3: then I'll reverse engineer to get to it. But then
- 29:43Speaker 3: here was that fork in the road. So what are
- 29:45Speaker 3: you prepared to do? And so in that forty five
- 29:49Speaker 3: minute flight, I said, okay, I'm done here, I'm done.
- 29:52Speaker 3: But how did you get there? And you know, again,
- 29:56Speaker 3: you know, I married, I got six kids, I got lots,
- 30:00Speaker 3: I have a lot of private school tuitions. I have
- 30:02Speaker 3: a high burn rate. In other words, I have you know,
- 30:05Speaker 3: I'm spending more than iron. And I say to myself, Okay,
- 30:10Speaker 3: I can't afford to go back at an NBA work
- 30:12Speaker 3: on Wall Street. I've got to understand money.
- 30:15Speaker 1: However, by the way, audience, I want you to rewind
- 30:19Speaker 1: what he said for a moment. I want to interrupt him.
- 30:21Speaker 1: But he said, even though he was this prominent doctor, surgeon,
- 30:25Speaker 1: you know, doing extraordinarily well, or raising money for politicians,
- 30:28Speaker 1: living a great life home, all that stuff, he was
- 30:32Speaker 1: still had an incredibly high burn rate, which meant that
- 30:35Speaker 1: he was making And he said, I'm making more. I'm
- 30:38Speaker 1: spending more than I earn. If your outflows, he's your inflow.
- 30:42Speaker 1: Your overhead will be your downfall. If you make a dollar,
- 30:44Speaker 1: it's been a dollar fifty. The more money made, the
- 30:47Speaker 1: broker you get. It doesn't matter whether you're a thirty
- 30:48Speaker 1: thousand dollars postal worker or three hundred thousand dollars as
- 30:53Speaker 1: a doctor, or three million dollars as an NFL pro.
- 30:56Speaker 1: You can still out kick your coverage. So please make
- 31:00Speaker 1: sure you're listening to everything he's saying. Of the day
- 31:03Speaker 1: you build wealth in your sleep. This is the fundamental
- 31:06Speaker 1: premise of financial literacy.
- 31:09Speaker 3: Amen, Amen, and again, because as a doctor, you get
- 31:13Speaker 3: a mindset, well, I just make more money. It's that
- 31:15Speaker 3: you know, I'll do work in the shif I'll do that,
- 31:16Speaker 3: you know, because there are always people in the er.
- 31:19Speaker 3: You all, you know, and and to your point, look
- 31:22Speaker 3: you can and again, I got all these private schools.
- 31:25Speaker 3: I got all you know, got house not you know.
- 31:27Speaker 3: So I said, look, I can't afford to go back
- 31:29Speaker 3: and to get an NBA. I need to figure this out.
- 31:33Speaker 3: I then asked the governor, you know, Richard's to appoint
- 31:36Speaker 3: me I to the Board of Texas Teachers, which is
- 31:38Speaker 3: the pension fund, the largest pool of money in the state.
- 31:41Speaker 3: I figured, let me get next to money and I
- 31:44Speaker 3: figure it out from there. Yes, and Richards appoints me.
- 31:47Speaker 3: CDM promptly loses the election. George W. Bush wins. But
- 31:51Speaker 3: George W. Bush is a good friend. He's like, of course,
- 31:54Speaker 3: I want you to serve by the way, and a
- 31:57Speaker 3: very good man. And so I'm on the board of
- 31:59Speaker 3: Texas team for six years. I look at public equities,
- 32:02Speaker 3: fixed income, real estate, which I chair, and then alternative
- 32:06Speaker 3: investments private equity, and I said, okay, that's what I
- 32:10Speaker 3: want to do. And why do I want to do that,
- 32:12Speaker 3: because that's where wealth is created.
- 32:14Speaker 1: So what he's saying to the audience is because it's
- 32:16Speaker 1: going really as quickly.
- 32:17Speaker 3: This is so rich.
- 32:19Speaker 1: This is actually one of the best podcasts I've done
- 32:22Speaker 1: because he's given you so much really relevant information. He's
- 32:25Speaker 1: saying that when he served on this committee at Texas Teachers,
- 32:30Speaker 1: he went right to the portfolios or areas where he
- 32:34Speaker 1: thought there was much as much relevance and residence for
- 32:38Speaker 1: both folks he cared about and things he cared for
- 32:42Speaker 1: and something he might be interested in in the future.
- 32:45Speaker 1: So he was basically getting an education from his assignment
- 32:50Speaker 1: as he was doing this job.
- 32:51Speaker 3: Back to you, absolutely, so, I said, you know, private
- 32:55Speaker 3: equity is what I want to do. How do I
- 32:58Speaker 3: get there? How do I get there? I said, I
- 33:00Speaker 3: needed great mentors, people who could advise me. I needed
- 33:04Speaker 3: credibility outside of medicine, because I didn't want people to
- 33:07Speaker 3: just think to me as a doctor and put me
- 33:08Speaker 3: in that box. And I needed a great team. And
- 33:12Speaker 3: so on the mentorship side. As I read about finance,
- 33:16Speaker 3: you know, I started reading about finance and Wall Street Journal,
- 33:18Speaker 3: et cetera. It was a name in Texas. I got
- 33:20Speaker 3: the name of Richard Rainwater and kept coming up. This
- 33:23Speaker 3: got Richard Rainwater came out of the bass fan Who
- 33:26Speaker 3: is he? You know? And as I read more and
- 33:28Speaker 3: more about him, you know.
- 33:30Speaker 2: Ask family is a big investment family in Texas.
- 33:32Speaker 3: By the way, without a doubt in Fort Worth, and
- 33:34Speaker 3: so I just I live in Dallas. I happened to
- 33:36Speaker 3: be at a big event in Dallas at the Anatole
- 33:39Speaker 3: Hotel and and I saw Richard Rainwored at this thousand
- 33:45Speaker 3: person event. And I just ran up to him and said,
- 33:48Speaker 3: mister Rainwater, I'm gonna be like you. And I grew up.
- 33:51Speaker 3: And he said, come bin and see me. Well, just
- 33:53Speaker 3: just come bin and see me, okay. Uh. And you
- 33:58Speaker 3: know it took a little while. And the point about
- 34:01Speaker 3: that is, look, if your mentors can be anyone who
- 34:05Speaker 3: it doesn't you know, if.
- 34:07Speaker 2: You're a grown man. When you said I'm an old.
- 34:09Speaker 3: Man, I'm a practicing medicine, I got to sick to this.
- 34:11Speaker 1: You know, you're a surgeon. You just let your ego
- 34:15Speaker 1: get in the way. I'm too old to have a mentor. Crazy,
- 34:18Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. I still I have a mentor. Mentors right
- 34:21Speaker 1: now absolutely always learn.
- 34:23Speaker 3: Yes. So I made my way to Fort Worth. I
- 34:26Speaker 3: met Richard Rainwater, and he really kind of opened the
- 34:29Speaker 3: world up to me. He introduced me to people. He
- 34:32Speaker 3: had a gentleman by the name of Ken Hirsch, who
- 34:37Speaker 3: is a billionaire in his own right at the time,
- 34:40Speaker 3: showed me my first business plan. This is this, this
- 34:43Speaker 3: is that John Goff who was his account John is
- 34:45Speaker 3: now billionaire as well. He's howns crusting real estate equities.
- 34:48Speaker 3: But Richard just made me believe this is something I
- 34:51Speaker 3: could do. He gave me confidence because I felt like,
- 34:54Speaker 3: if this man is spending the time with me he
- 34:57Speaker 3: saw something in me, then maybe I didn't even see myself. Wow.
- 35:01Speaker 3: And so next was a guy named David Bonderman who
- 35:05Speaker 3: found their firm called TPG. And and David again I
- 35:10Speaker 3: met through a mutual friend because I told his friend again,
- 35:13Speaker 3: I'm on the bord of Texas teachers. So I met
- 35:16Speaker 3: a fellow trustee and these guys in private equity, they
- 35:19Speaker 3: raised money from pension funds. He said, well, look, you
- 35:23Speaker 3: should talk to this guy, David Bonderman. He has a
- 35:25Speaker 3: firm called TPG and he might be a good person
- 35:28Speaker 3: to talk to you. So I went to Aspen, California
- 35:31Speaker 3: to meet David Bonderman. And this guy you know again,
- 35:36Speaker 3: became a great friend, great mentor no on.
- 35:39Speaker 1: You get on the plane with no promises, no promises.
- 35:42Speaker 1: You got on a plane with no nothing but your dreams,
- 35:46Speaker 1: and you made an investment in yourself to invest your
- 35:48Speaker 1: money on plane, ticket, hotel, whatever, rental car and time
- 35:53Speaker 1: to go. Pick somebody's brain, not their pocket.
- 35:56Speaker 3: Absolutely correct, absolutely, and it ever transformed my life. Became
- 36:04Speaker 3: one of my, if not my best friends. And so
- 36:09Speaker 3: David again, for those of you who don't know, David
- 36:13Speaker 3: Bonderman was from California, went to University of Washington, went
- 36:20Speaker 3: to Harvard Law School, was an Islamic scholar. Was an
- 36:23Speaker 3: Islamic scholar, traveled all over Africa in the nineteen sixties,
- 36:30Speaker 3: the bathroom War, hitch hiking, you know, all them, all
- 36:34Speaker 3: over Africa, and said, you know, one day, you know,
- 36:37Speaker 3: if I make it, I want to come back here
- 36:39Speaker 3: and really invest. And so David came back. Was a
- 36:45Speaker 3: It was at two Lane Law School, he did not
- 36:48Speaker 3: get tenured, then ended up at the Justice Department and
- 36:52Speaker 3: then after that Arnold and Porter, but subsequently worked on
- 36:56Speaker 3: a transaction in Fort Worth that was very success wool
- 37:00Speaker 3: And as a lawyer, as in a non profit capacity,
- 37:04Speaker 3: and the Bass family hired him to run their family office.
- 37:08Speaker 1: And he said the office will get into a later day,
- 37:10Speaker 1: but essentially a family office is what the mega mega
- 37:13Speaker 1: rich used to to curate and coordinate their assets within
- 37:20Speaker 1: their family structure. We'll get into the family offices with
- 37:23Speaker 1: in another interview, but go ahead.
- 37:24Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, David became very successful. He then from
- 37:28Speaker 3: their bought common Layer Lines out of bankruptcy did ten
- 37:31Speaker 3: times as money on time of Layer Lines, j Crew,
- 37:35Speaker 3: Airbnb Uber.
- 37:37Speaker 1: And this is in this this is my guess is
- 37:38Speaker 1: this is in his forties or fifties, right.
- 37:39Speaker 3: Right, right right. He didn't start until this his fifties.
- 37:42Speaker 1: By the way, audience, you most millionaires don't get there
- 37:45Speaker 1: to their late mid to late fifties. So don't feel
- 37:48Speaker 1: you're you're twenty five and you somehow you fail to
- 37:52Speaker 1: you're thirty five and you're stumbling.
- 37:54Speaker 2: You stay at it and stay disciplined.
- 37:56Speaker 1: You don't won't get there until your real money, I mean,
- 37:59Speaker 1: like not this funny money, real wealth.
- 38:01Speaker 2: It sticks and you're mid to late fifties exactly.
- 38:05Speaker 3: So David became a great friend, great mentor, and David said, look,
- 38:07Speaker 3: I'll invest with you. I'll write you a check, I
- 38:10Speaker 3: will invest with And then Mike Milkin became also a
- 38:14Speaker 3: friend mentor investor. As you know John Well on the
- 38:19Speaker 3: board of the Milking Institute on the board of his foundation,
- 38:22Speaker 3: on the board of the Center for Advanced American Dream
- 38:25Speaker 3: and again those were great mentors. And then I said, John, look,
- 38:31Speaker 3: I want credibility outside of medicine. And I said, credibility
- 38:35Speaker 3: outside of medicine. I said, serving on corporate boards would
- 38:39Speaker 3: give me credibility. I said, you know, my business card
- 38:42Speaker 3: has never said doctor. I said, serving on boards.
- 38:47Speaker 2: Your business cards have never said doctor.
- 38:51Speaker 3: Why because doctor? I didn't want to rely on that
- 38:57Speaker 3: crutch that becomes a crutch to get me in rooms
- 39:02Speaker 3: or to it becomes a crutch to not do the work.
- 39:07Speaker 3: In other words, I've already made I'm a doctor. No,
- 39:11Speaker 3: I need to understand finance. I need to understand the
- 39:15Speaker 3: work that I'm doing now, which is separate and independent
- 39:18Speaker 3: from what I've done before. So start at the beginning,
- 39:21Speaker 3: start at the bottom, and gain credibility, you know, independent
- 39:25Speaker 3: of being an EMT.
- 39:26Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell the audience something. Just pauss one second.
- 39:29Speaker 1: And I've never said to anybody, well, I've never said
- 39:31Speaker 1: publicly is what he just said is so incredibly important.
- 39:34Speaker 1: And I've got a bunch of titles that folks have
- 39:37Speaker 1: given me, royalty and this and that and the other thing.
- 39:41Speaker 1: I don't use any of them. My name is John O'Brien.
- 39:45Speaker 1: But the reason this is so important is if I
- 39:47Speaker 1: meet somebody and if their business card says doctor blank
- 39:53Speaker 1: blank blank, Comma, NBA, Comma, blah blah comma, or just
- 40:00Speaker 1: name Comma and five titles, I'll meet with them. I'll
- 40:04Speaker 1: be gracious. I won't ask them a thing. I won't
- 40:08Speaker 1: try to teach him a thing, because the impression is
- 40:11Speaker 1: that they really believe that they know it all already.
- 40:16Speaker 1: And God give you, I asked Quincy Jones, how'd you
- 40:18Speaker 1: get so smart? He I'm just nosy as hell. I
- 40:20Speaker 1: want to know everything about everything. God gives you two
- 40:23Speaker 1: years in one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk.
- 40:25Speaker 1: I love credentials. I love people having credentials. But you
- 40:28Speaker 1: don't have to wear them all on your sleeve. They
- 40:31Speaker 1: don't have to be, you know, to hit people over
- 40:32Speaker 1: the head with them. You want to be an open door,
- 40:35Speaker 1: not a closed book. And and if you do have
- 40:38Speaker 1: these credentials, by the way, you're listening to this.
- 40:40Speaker 2: Be proud of them.
- 40:41Speaker 1: Listen them sure on your resume, but then start with
- 40:44Speaker 1: the question when you go into a room. Because people
- 40:46Speaker 1: are not going to assume that you are still curious.
- 40:51Speaker 1: So so now you're you're you know, you've been, this
- 40:56Speaker 1: guy's written your check, You're in the you're in the
- 40:58Speaker 1: You're in the game, right.
- 41:00Speaker 3: So I say, you know credibly, you know credibility, I
- 41:03Speaker 3: say corporate boards. I say, if I could be on
- 41:04Speaker 3: one board, the best board being airlines because they let
- 41:07Speaker 3: you fly for free, I mean, I you know, it
- 41:10Speaker 3: just it's just completely practical. But again getting back to uh,
- 41:15Speaker 3: what Bill Brady say, if the President United States walks
- 41:17Speaker 3: in the room, le's your ask if the CEO of
- 41:19Speaker 3: American Airlines walked in the room. I didn't have an answer.
- 41:22Speaker 3: So I literally constructed an argument about why I should
- 41:25Speaker 3: be on the board of American Airlines. And happened to
- 41:28Speaker 3: be at a football game one day sitting next to
- 41:30Speaker 3: an older gentleman and we get to talking and and
- 41:33Speaker 3: he's like, look, I'd love to get you involved in
- 41:36Speaker 3: this not for profit or that not for profit. And
- 41:38Speaker 3: I you know, I love not for profits. But I say, look,
- 41:42Speaker 3: tell me who you are first, and he says, look,
- 41:44Speaker 3: I'm a former CEO of the Resolution Trust Company. I'm
- 41:46Speaker 3: a former mirror, former CEO of American Airlines. And I say,
- 41:51Speaker 3: if you think I'm so good, you should put me
- 41:53Speaker 3: on the board of American Airlines. And I committed this
- 41:55Speaker 3: thing to memory Boom and he was like, WHOA, Okay, well,
- 42:00Speaker 3: actually I'm not CEO now, but I'll be out tomorrow.
- 42:02Speaker 3: Out there be out there tomorrow. I'll look into it.
- 42:04Speaker 3: And so he came back and said, American Airlines has
- 42:07Speaker 3: three boards. They have the airline. Everybody knows that they
- 42:09Speaker 3: have Saber, which is an information technology company, but they
- 42:12Speaker 3: also have an asset manager company called American Beacon. And
- 42:16Speaker 3: I think, wow, you would be perfect on that board.
- 42:19Speaker 3: And I said what's the compensation. He said, pre first
- 42:22Speaker 3: class travel anywhere in the world, American flass for you
- 42:24Speaker 3: and your wife. Sign me up, sign me up. So
- 42:28Speaker 3: I interesting enough became you know, I served on the
- 42:31Speaker 3: board it became chairman of the board. Uh, and ended
- 42:35Speaker 3: up buying it from American Airlines What yes with David Barnerman.
- 42:39Speaker 3: So we grew to about grow to about sixty five
- 42:43Speaker 3: billion in assets and sold it. But then I also
- 42:46Speaker 3: went on the board of Star Wars Hotels because I
- 42:47Speaker 3: needed place to stay and Saint Regis's Western w you know,
- 42:53Speaker 3: luxury collection, all of those things. And then I was
- 42:55Speaker 3: a board of GAP. I had the six kids, I'll
- 42:57Speaker 3: missing clothed with food and so. And then I started
- 43:01Speaker 3: the firm with a gentleman who's younger than I would
- 43:03Speaker 3: finish number one in his class, sum Will Cumeloud at Princeton,
- 43:08Speaker 3: actually Native American who had worked at gold and Sacks,
- 43:11Speaker 3: but the Goldman. And then we really built the firm,
- 43:14Speaker 3: and you know, the focus is on making people healthier,
- 43:18Speaker 3: lowering costs, creating greater access for patients, which is you know,
- 43:25Speaker 3: fundamental to addressing the needs primarily of underserved communities, whether
- 43:29Speaker 3: it's in rural communities, urban communities, people who have the
- 43:32Speaker 3: greatest disparities in healthcare. That's what we try to address
- 43:35Speaker 3: with very good risk adjusted returns. So it's generating great
- 43:41Speaker 3: returns but also impacting communities that need it the most.
- 43:44Speaker 1: Returns means profit for the in layman's terms, so returns
- 43:49Speaker 1: on investment. So you said something. You said a lot
- 43:53Speaker 1: of things that are powerful, but you said something, and
- 43:55Speaker 1: you walk right past it. We have a nice we
- 43:57Speaker 1: laugh about it, but a lot of people watch social media.
- 44:01Speaker 1: I think there's some honor in throwing away money. Oh,
- 44:05Speaker 1: I'm gonna rent I'm gonna rent a jet, a private jet.
- 44:08Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna charter a private jet. I'm gonna
- 44:11Speaker 1: buy I'm a celebrity, I'm a hip hop star, I'm
- 44:15Speaker 1: a basketball, football star, I'm whatever.
- 44:18Speaker 2: I am gonna.
- 44:19Speaker 1: I am so important, I'm gonna go buy me a
- 44:22Speaker 1: private jet.
- 44:24Speaker 4: Uh.
- 44:25Speaker 1: And I think that that's just silly. And now I
- 44:29Speaker 1: told people most folks you see run around in private jet,
- 44:32Speaker 1: they're not paying for it.
- 44:34Speaker 2: The corporation's paying for it.
- 44:36Speaker 1: An elimited liability corporation, a cash flow that they've tied
- 44:39Speaker 1: to some deal they've done, is paying for it.
- 44:41Speaker 2: It's a tax ride off. There's something going on.
- 44:43Speaker 1: They're not taking money from They're not taking cash from
- 44:48Speaker 1: income and turning around and writing a check for outflow
- 44:53Speaker 1: that is one trip is thirty thousand, fifty thousand, one
- 44:59Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars one trip, And they're not doing that
- 45:05Speaker 1: ten times, fifty times a year, twenty times a year
- 45:09Speaker 1: coming out of their cash flow. And what you heard
- 45:12Speaker 1: Neeland say was I need to get around the country,
- 45:15Speaker 1: around the world. I don't want to pay for this stuff.
- 45:18Speaker 1: How can I there's two ways to make money, make
- 45:19Speaker 1: more or spend less. If you ever see me on
- 45:22Speaker 1: a jet, a private jet, no, I'm not paying for it.
- 45:26Speaker 3: Do you see me on anyway?
- 45:28Speaker 2: Go get me preaching? But anyway, Neil, do you agree
- 45:30Speaker 2: with that or do you disagree with that?
- 45:31Speaker 3: One hundred percent? One hundred percent? And that was really
- 45:34Speaker 3: fundamental to my thesis about Look, I knew launching a business,
- 45:40Speaker 3: I needed to be able to cut my expenses. And
- 45:44Speaker 3: so travel is a big expense, you know, Hotels big expense.
- 45:49Speaker 3: I was able to do those things for free, and
- 45:51Speaker 3: that so I could at a moment's notice get on
- 45:55Speaker 3: a plane, go somewhere and not have to worry about
- 45:57Speaker 3: the cost or for that matter, stay in a hotel.
- 46:00Speaker 3: So again it was all about you know, how do
- 46:04Speaker 3: I because I knew as an entrepreneur, you know, there
- 46:09Speaker 3: was gonna be some challenging time lean times ahead of
- 46:12Speaker 3: what you know, the beauty of medicine, it's it's pretty consistent.
- 46:15Speaker 3: You can, you can you know, you know about how
- 46:17Speaker 3: much you're gonna make. The bad news about being an
- 46:20Speaker 3: offer you don't know. And so I needed to lure
- 46:24Speaker 3: my my risk, you know, in terms of outflow and
- 46:29Speaker 3: so that's that's exactly what I did. But so.
- 46:33Speaker 1: I have come to the conclusion I had a whole
- 46:35Speaker 1: list of questions for you. I've gotten through too. I've
- 46:40Speaker 1: come to conclusion I can't do this interview justice without
- 46:44Speaker 1: part two. Will you come back?
- 46:45Speaker 3: Absolutely? Brother.
- 46:57Speaker 2: So with that in mind, I don't even ask my audience.
- 46:59Speaker 2: I know that I love you.
- 47:00Speaker 1: Let I want to go too. I want to go
- 47:03Speaker 1: in two directions very quickly with the time that we
- 47:06Speaker 1: have left. And I definitely want to cover this lawsuit
- 47:09Speaker 1: thing and why and what. I just thought that was
- 47:12Speaker 1: so gangster when I read about it in the Wall
- 47:15Speaker 1: Street Journal. It wasn't in the Houston Chronicle, it wasn't
- 47:17Speaker 1: in the you know Gazette. It was in the Wall
- 47:20Speaker 1: Street Journal. Here's this black man, and they were talking
- 47:23Speaker 1: about him in admirable terms. They were not talking about
- 47:27Speaker 1: him like a lot of times folks get talked down to.
- 47:30Speaker 1: They were talking up to his in respect. Here's some
- 47:34Speaker 1: easy questions, though, and you could decide which one of
- 47:37Speaker 1: these you want to answer, because you can't answer all
- 47:40Speaker 1: of them. What's the number one mistake people make in
- 47:44Speaker 1: trying to get wealthy, which is different from making money
- 47:48Speaker 1: What do you know at sixty eight that you wish
- 47:51Speaker 1: you knew at twenty eight. What's your personal definition of
- 47:56Speaker 1: wealth versus being rich? Is there a truth about generational
- 48:02Speaker 1: wealth that you want to share? Why ownership is a
- 48:07Speaker 1: great equalizer? You can pick any one of these you like.
- 48:11Speaker 1: And last one is uh, why, Why is the most
- 48:14Speaker 1: important asset in your life? I'm asking you this, but
- 48:17Speaker 1: I know the answer. Your relationship capital so and I
- 48:21Speaker 1: always say rich is a contract. Wealth is what you
- 48:23Speaker 1: do in your sleep. Back to my friend Tony Wrestler,
- 48:25Speaker 1: billionaire Tony Wrestler is the one who originally taught me
- 48:28Speaker 1: that business partner, friend of mine and a mentor.
- 48:31Speaker 2: Take any one of those you like.
- 48:32Speaker 1: I've made a statement about relationship capital that I'd love
- 48:35Speaker 1: for you to at least amplify on. I didn't even
- 48:37Speaker 1: ask you that. I know it's true that your most
- 48:39Speaker 1: important asset is your relationships. You can disagree with me
- 48:43Speaker 1: if there's a one percent chance you disagree, but pick
- 48:45Speaker 1: one of the other.
- 48:47Speaker 3: Relationship for clearly the reason why I've been I mean,
- 48:53Speaker 3: it's fundamental to how I've been successful. It is nature,
- 48:57Speaker 3: the ability to be able to connect with people, you know,
- 49:01Speaker 3: in your true self, meaning you know you're being your
- 49:04Speaker 3: authentic self, because it's not always it's not trying to
- 49:08Speaker 3: please people necessarily, but it's and especially people of wealth,
- 49:13Speaker 3: because people are always sucking up to them, and if
- 49:16Speaker 3: you can, you know, address them in a way where
- 49:20Speaker 3: you agree with them and agree to disagree with them
- 49:22Speaker 3: and or provide them a different perspective on a specific issue,
- 49:27Speaker 3: they respect that much more. And I think that one
- 49:32Speaker 3: you do as I do. We try to show up.
- 49:34Speaker 3: We try to be there at the important things in
- 49:37Speaker 3: the important ways, and you don't need to look. Time
- 49:41Speaker 3: is our most precious asset, that's right, It's the one
- 49:44Speaker 3: thing you can't get more. You can get more money,
- 49:46Speaker 3: you can get more friend you get, but you can't
- 49:48Speaker 3: get more time. And so being able to curate your
- 49:53Speaker 3: time in a way so that you are at the
- 49:55Speaker 3: right places at the right time with the right people
- 49:59Speaker 3: is exactly how you want to, you know, bring more
- 50:03Speaker 3: efficiency and therefore effectiveness to your objectives. And so that's
- 50:09Speaker 3: what I've tried to do. And that's number one. And
- 50:11Speaker 3: again the credibility that says when Tony Wrestler picks up
- 50:16Speaker 3: the phone and calls someone on your behalf. They don't
- 50:20Speaker 3: need anything else, they don't need to do a whole
- 50:23Speaker 3: bunch of other background checks. We've got to do that,
- 50:26Speaker 3: you know. And again the same thing with myself. I've
- 50:29Speaker 3: tried to and I've developed relationships with people that are credible,
- 50:38Speaker 3: beyond credible in their own rights, and therefore through not
- 50:43Speaker 3: only our relationship, and I mean that it's a two
- 50:47Speaker 3: way relationship. John, what you've done with your relationships, as
- 50:51Speaker 3: I've tried to do with mine, is not just take,
- 50:54Speaker 3: but in fact give, but in fact give so the
- 50:58Speaker 3: ability to introduce, use someone who hasn't met someone or
- 51:03Speaker 3: who hasn't doesn't have a particular perspective in this community
- 51:07Speaker 3: or that community. It's about being able to have that
- 51:12Speaker 3: type of give and take relationship, I think is what
- 51:17Speaker 3: creates a bond and respect. And therefore you get included
- 51:21Speaker 3: in deals, and you get invited on boards, and you
- 51:24Speaker 3: get you know, this, that or the other, and it
- 51:26Speaker 3: may be with you know, helping their kids or or
- 51:29Speaker 3: helping them personally or their wives or friends or whatever
- 51:31Speaker 3: it is. That's the way. It's a give and take.
- 51:34Speaker 3: And I would also say, quite frankly, which is a
- 51:36Speaker 3: little bit different, it's important to have a carrot, but
- 51:39Speaker 3: it's also it's important to have a stick. It's also
- 51:43Speaker 3: important to have a stick. And what I mean by that,
- 51:45Speaker 3: what Texas teachers helped me to understand, is that is
- 51:51Speaker 3: leverage and power, meaning serving on the board, being able
- 51:55Speaker 3: to allocate resources or.
- 51:57Speaker 5: Take resources creates a respect that people in power understand
- 52:07Speaker 5: and and so they are.
- 52:11Speaker 3: You know it. It puts you as a peer as
- 52:16Speaker 3: as opposed to always asking for them. Yeah, you know,
- 52:21Speaker 3: the ability to give but also to take, yes, and
- 52:25Speaker 3: you know that is unfortunately that's how mankind is.
- 52:29Speaker 1: They incentives and penalties, correct, people respond to incentives and penalties. Yes,
- 52:37Speaker 1: So which one of these questions? I can repeat them?
- 52:40Speaker 1: Do you want to the sub questions you want to
- 52:41Speaker 1: answer before you go to the this gangster made which
- 52:47Speaker 1: is which it deals with, by the way, extraction, It
- 52:50Speaker 1: deals with taking uh something from someone that you rightly
- 52:54Speaker 1: so in my opinion, deserve.
- 52:56Speaker 2: But it took courage to do what you did.
- 52:59Speaker 1: You most people to just stay quiet because they didn't
- 53:02Speaker 1: want to ruffle feathers because they what somebody gonna think
- 53:06Speaker 1: about me?
- 53:06Speaker 3: What if I lose the lawsuit?
- 53:08Speaker 2: Who's gonna who am I gonna what what?
- 53:10Speaker 3: What?
- 53:11Speaker 2: Who am I going to upset? Who am I going
- 53:14Speaker 2: to offend?
- 53:15Speaker 3: Oh?
- 53:15Speaker 1: I think I'll just stay over here quiet. Do you
- 53:16Speaker 1: know that doctor King in the sixties he only had
- 53:20Speaker 1: his height twenty percent of the black community support and
- 53:24Speaker 1: twenty percent of the white community supportant half of.
- 53:26Speaker 2: That was Jewish.
- 53:27Speaker 3: Most people just thought he's a rubble rouser.
- 53:30Speaker 1: He's he's you know, he's messing up the power structure.
- 53:33Speaker 1: I'm I like my salary, I like my life. I'm
- 53:36Speaker 1: gonna set on my hands over here and let him
- 53:37Speaker 1: go do that. And it wasn't They were against him.
- 53:40Speaker 1: They just thought that's just messy, and they let him
- 53:44Speaker 1: do the dirty work. As my mentor basstor Andrew Young,
- 53:48Speaker 1: the new documentaries out about his life, the dirty work.
- 53:51Speaker 1: You you have no problem doing the dirty work anyways.
- 53:55Speaker 1: That's gonna say. That's gonna be my final question to you.
- 53:58Speaker 1: What way or how un act that for the audience? Well,
- 54:02Speaker 1: do you want to answer one of these sub questions?
- 54:04Speaker 3: Yes, so sorry because I got distracted, please repeat that.
- 54:09Speaker 3: At least two of them.
- 54:10Speaker 1: Say I'm gonna tell you a couple of when I
- 54:12Speaker 1: think you're like, okay, what would you with your sixty
- 54:14Speaker 1: eight year o self, tell your twenty eight year o self. Okay,
- 54:17Speaker 1: and what do you really define as wealth? And why
- 54:21Speaker 1: is ownership the equalizer for underserved people?
- 54:23Speaker 3: Yeah, So what I would say is what would my
- 54:25Speaker 3: sixty eight self say to my twenty eight self. What
- 54:29Speaker 3: I would say is, continue to be true to yourself,
- 54:37Speaker 3: continue to the beauty of me. When I was twenty
- 54:40Speaker 3: eight that time in Egypt, I was actually kind of
- 54:44Speaker 3: fundamentally able to lay out what I wanted to be
- 54:48Speaker 3: when I was sixty year I mean it really and
- 54:50Speaker 3: I haven't necessarily veered from that star for me, you know,
- 54:56Speaker 3: seeing myself, you know, at the end of my life.
- 55:02Speaker 3: And and so you know, the decisions that I made,
- 55:07Speaker 3: the relationships, whether it's personal, whether it's business, have been
- 55:12Speaker 3: kind of fundamental to that. And so I've been pretty
- 55:18Speaker 3: consistent with that set of criteria. Seize opportunity when it
- 55:27Speaker 3: presents itself. Look, you know, listen more than you you speak.
- 55:34Speaker 3: You know, work hard, check your ego, don't don't you know,
- 55:40Speaker 3: don't get caught up in and and things. Put in
- 55:44Speaker 3: the work. Listen, find great people, keep great people in
- 55:51Speaker 3: your life. You know, you know, be about love, be
- 55:56Speaker 3: about about love, be about loving yourself first and foremost,
- 56:01Speaker 3: you know, loving your family, loving your friends, and and
- 56:04Speaker 3: and and but again you're you're tremendously influenced by the
- 56:10Speaker 3: people you keep in your life. And so having extraordinary
- 56:14Speaker 3: people who can challenge you as well as embrace you,
- 56:18Speaker 3: I think is enormously have been enormously important to me.
- 56:23Speaker 2: Why is wealth a great equalizer?
- 56:24Speaker 1: And you touched I'm got end this where we started
- 56:26Speaker 1: because you talk about Greece and you talk about how
- 56:28Speaker 1: people were saying America ain't nothing. They still come back
- 56:32Speaker 1: to why is wealth the great equalizer?
- 56:35Speaker 3: Yeah, wealth is an extraordinary equalized And and let me
- 56:37Speaker 3: say that there are different types of wealth. You know,
- 56:42Speaker 3: you know, there's personal wealth with regard to you know,
- 56:47Speaker 3: your family and loved ones and and and things like that.
- 56:51Speaker 3: And there's also wealth in the sense of multi general race,
- 56:56Speaker 3: multi generational wealth that addresses extraordinary challenges. It can solve
- 57:05Speaker 3: for lots of problems, but there are things that wealth
- 57:08Speaker 3: cannot solve for. And it's understanding what money can do
- 57:12Speaker 3: and what money can't do, I think allows you to
- 57:16Speaker 3: be able to embrace it in a way where you
- 57:20Speaker 3: understand what true wealth is so money can get you
- 57:26Speaker 3: the best doctors, Money can get you the best you know,
- 57:30Speaker 3: you know, transportation, all kinds of it can provide you know,
- 57:34Speaker 3: peace of mind in the sense of you don't have
- 57:37Speaker 3: to worry about certain things. But there are some things
- 57:41Speaker 3: it can't solve for. And again, and that's where sometimes
- 57:47Speaker 3: people get confused. I know a lot of wealthy people tremendous,
- 57:51Speaker 3: tremendous resources, but are unhappy. And look, I've been without money,
- 57:56Speaker 3: and I've been with money. With money is much better, better,
- 58:01Speaker 3: much it's better, have no question about that. Don't understand,
- 58:04Speaker 3: but understand it can't solve all problems. And so being thoughtful,
- 58:08Speaker 3: being being respecting for what it can do and what
- 58:14Speaker 3: it can't do, I think is enormously important, and also
- 58:19Speaker 3: recognizing that, Look, we have an obligation, I think, without
- 58:23Speaker 3: our community to create multi generational wealth because in order
- 58:27Speaker 3: for us to advance beyond where we are, you have
- 58:32Speaker 3: to have capital. You have to have capital, be able
- 58:35Speaker 3: to provide scholarships, you have to have capital in order
- 58:37Speaker 3: to be able to to invest in communities, to build businesses,
- 58:42Speaker 3: to to to to to really risk and to take risk.
- 58:47Speaker 3: And so we need to be about generating that type
- 58:51Speaker 3: of those types of resources so that we can take
- 58:56Speaker 3: the risk necessary to advance our communities forward. And that
- 59:00Speaker 3: just comes with money. It comes with money, So we
- 59:03Speaker 3: need to be about doing.
- 59:04Speaker 2: Just that in the final moments we have here.
- 59:07Speaker 1: This has been absolutely extraordinary neland this far exceeded I
- 59:11Speaker 1: had no expectation. I just wanted to I wanted to
- 59:12Speaker 1: brag about you to the world, and you have flipped
- 59:15Speaker 1: the script and you turned into a masterclass on life.
- 59:19Speaker 1: I mean, this is fanantastic. I'm so angry at you
- 59:22Speaker 1: for being hiding from the world. I'm so angry at you.
- 59:25Speaker 1: The world needs more of you, not less. You are extraordinary.
- 59:30Speaker 1: Kudos to you. Tell us why you weren't scared to
- 59:34Speaker 1: talk about what your ancestors earned and created and someone took.
- 59:42Speaker 3: I was not afraid because and what is it, by
- 59:47Speaker 3: the way, Yeah, yeah, So a little bit of background.
- 59:50Speaker 3: You know, my great great grandparents were slaves, you know,
- 59:53Speaker 3: in Texas posts the Civil War before they were property.
- 59:59Speaker 3: They ended up buying property. So it was a profound
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: transformation to be you know, of you know, someone's property
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: and then to own property with a profound transformation that
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: while I didn't know them. I knew that that had
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: to have been seared with enormous sacrifice.
- 1:00:20Speaker 4: And and.
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: What have you.
- 1:00:23Speaker 3: So my parents, grandparents, great grandparents today one hundred and
- 1:00:29Speaker 3: forty seven point five acres. They my great great grandfather
- 1:00:36Speaker 3: was then unfortunately put in a mental institution because he
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: must have been crazy if he bought this land.
- 1:00:45Speaker 2: To my drobe crazy.
- 1:00:47Speaker 3: And so he ended up dying in that institution as
- 1:00:52Speaker 3: it happens. As it happens, though by law, his hat
- 1:00:58Speaker 3: all went to his nine kids, half of his statement
- 1:01:01Speaker 3: his nine kids. The other half went to my great
- 1:01:04Speaker 3: great grandmother, and she having passed, and we don't know
- 1:01:12Speaker 3: all the details exactly because she had some financial resources,
- 1:01:16Speaker 3: but her half ended up going to let's say a
- 1:01:24Speaker 3: white family. Let's let's just leave it at that. And
- 1:01:31Speaker 3: you know, about approximately fifteen years ago, we got a
- 1:01:37Speaker 3: call from you know, landman, which of these guys who
- 1:01:40Speaker 3: are looking to establishmenteral rights in all leases, saying hey, look,
- 1:01:48Speaker 3: you all are the you own half of one hundred
- 1:01:52Speaker 3: and forty seven point five acres. And I won't go
- 1:01:54Speaker 3: through all the iterations of the different family members, but
- 1:01:58Speaker 3: you one hundred and forty seve point five acres of
- 1:02:01Speaker 3: this which is undivided and split with this white family, right,
- 1:02:08Speaker 3: you know, we said, okay, wonderful, as it happens, the
- 1:02:16Speaker 3: law firm, because I was not particularly engaged at that time,
- 1:02:19Speaker 3: did not risk the white family ended up suing and said, no,
- 1:02:26Speaker 3: that's not the case. We own all of this. The
- 1:02:29Speaker 3: attorneys who we hired at the time did not respond
- 1:02:33Speaker 3: to summary judgment, which is really really important. I mean,
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: essentially they allowed the opposing side to basically win. When
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: we when we did some research, we found out again
- 1:02:47Speaker 3: these people were not reprepresenting us. Let's just say they
- 1:02:51Speaker 3: weren't representing us that they should have been representing us.
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: Yeah, they might have intentionally not responded.
- 1:02:58Speaker 3: Correct it, correct, courage exactly.
- 1:03:01Speaker 2: People can read between the lines here, right.
- 1:03:03Speaker 3: So then at that point I got involved. My cousin Stella,
- 1:03:07Speaker 3: who's an attorney, got involved, my brother David, who's attorney,
- 1:03:10Speaker 3: got involved, three whose an attorney got involved, you know,
- 1:03:13Speaker 3: and then we said, okay, let's let's kind of lead
- 1:03:16Speaker 3: the charger. So we took it to the appellate court.
- 1:03:19Speaker 3: We then win want a verdict on the appellate court,
- 1:03:23Speaker 3: which then it was appealed by the other family to
- 1:03:26Speaker 3: the Texa Supreme Court, which we then want at the
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: Texas Supreme Court. It was then remanded back down to
- 1:03:32Speaker 3: the district court where we had originally had this this mishap,
- 1:03:38Speaker 3: and we ended up winning a jury verdict. Wow, and
- 1:03:42Speaker 3: the jury said we did, in fact own one hundred
- 1:03:45Speaker 3: and forty seven point five acres within this area of
- 1:03:49Speaker 3: Texas that it's called the Eagle Ford Shell area, and
- 1:03:53Speaker 3: it's where a tremendous amount of oil and oil are
- 1:03:57Speaker 3: being pumped. And again again they've been there's been appealed
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: to that and what have you. And so we're still
- 1:04:03Speaker 3: in the process of this this this court case. But
- 1:04:08Speaker 3: let's just say the reason why I did it. And
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: I'm not alone. I have a you know, a wonderful
- 1:04:15Speaker 3: family team and others who are involved. But uh, the
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: reason was, Look, the legacy of our four fathers are
- 1:04:26Speaker 3: our for our great great grandparents, the sacrifice that they made,
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: the sacrifices that other families have made, and I had
- 1:04:36Speaker 3: the financial ability to be able to fight this and
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: and and so it was you know, that's one tool
- 1:04:45Speaker 3: we had. We also had resources within the legal framework
- 1:04:49Speaker 3: as well through relationships both in the family and outside
- 1:04:53Speaker 3: of the family. And so you know, it was an
- 1:04:57Speaker 3: opportunity to really pay not only pay tribute to the
- 1:05:02Speaker 3: legacy of our forefathers, but also to pay forward the
- 1:05:11Speaker 3: dividends that frankly, have been accumulating on this plan to
- 1:05:17Speaker 3: the two hundred plus relatives that I have who deserve this.
- 1:05:20Speaker 3: And again, having the financial wherewith all can make a
- 1:05:27Speaker 3: tremendous difference in people's lives. The fact that they could
- 1:05:30Speaker 3: maybe have you know, a child or relative be able
- 1:05:35Speaker 3: to get counseling, or you know, or in a clinic
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: for substance abuse, or invest in a business, or you know,
- 1:05:45Speaker 3: provide better healthcare. All of those things or enormously important.
- 1:05:49Speaker 3: And so I thought that this was an opportunity to
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: step forward and do something not just for myself because
- 1:05:57Speaker 3: it won't necessarily maturely change my life, but certainly it
- 1:06:00Speaker 3: could change the lives of many of my relatives.
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: There's a couple of things as we wrap up, that
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: I love about what you said, and really we brought
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: those back homes. I asked you why as well as
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: the great equalizer you just answered it you have to
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: have the legal the financial resources to fight a legal case.
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: You actually have to have the discipline to fight a
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: legal case. It's not instantaneous. Went to this court, went
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: to that court, when to that court, then went back
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: to this court, up to this court. He was trying
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: to frustrate you, at trying to get you off track,
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: are trying to distract you, They're trying.
- 1:06:33Speaker 2: To undermine you.
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: But without those financial I am involved in a legal
- 1:06:39Speaker 1: situation myself right now, first time I've ever had. I've
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: treasured the fact that I've never had to sue anybody
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: or been sued. But you know, I got involved in
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: the situation and I wasn't going to let it go.
- 1:06:51Speaker 1: And luckily I've got the financial resources say and I'm
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: not gonna let it go. And I don't worry about
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: it either. As you said, and I love this was
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: a gangster. You said, this is not going to change
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: my station in life one ioto one way or the other,
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: but it will for others. And and I can say
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: the same thing. This won't change my station in life
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: one way or the other in my situation, but it
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: affects others, and it affects charity that want to help
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So I'm want to
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: fight the fight because I can, and I commend you
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: on that and admire you. I'm gonna do a whole
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: series next year on failure, like falling forward, failing forward,
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: That failure is not not depth about you. It's a
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: it's an experiment, it's an outcome to the situation. It's
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: how you grow. And some of the best lessons you
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: have learned I have heard have have been through what
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: somebody might determine as a failure or a misstep. And
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: that's not the way you see it. I don't to
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: ask you that. It's just another form of education for you. Absolutely, Yeah,
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: this has been brilliant. By the way, do you Is
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: it okay to mention the number that it's tied of
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: this lawsuit with.
- 1:08:03Speaker 3: The oil information? Yes? Sure, public information?
- 1:08:06Speaker 2: What are we talking about? Okay? That was dropped the mic.
- 1:08:15Speaker 2: When you got the power, you don't need to use it.
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: My man just said, only because I asked, very casually,
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: very informally, without changing the octave of his voice. Yes,
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: public information, it's not. One hundred million dollars won't change
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: the quality of his life. One eye Oda.
- 1:08:35Speaker 2: This is what.
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: This is who you need to be, everybody, this is
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: I'm tired of us just rocking the mic. I want
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: to own it. Indeed, Kneeling young Blood owns his mic
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: quite literally. You you have to come back.
- 1:08:51Speaker 3: Appreciate you, brother, Thank you, my man, loving light.
- 1:08:53Speaker 2: This is John O'Brien. This is Kneeling young Blood. This
- 1:08:57Speaker 2: is money and wealth.
- 1:08:58Speaker 1: I want your Internet search engine to go crazy and
- 1:09:02Speaker 1: your AI to go crazy searching this man and his
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: story and his firm and giving and putting him on
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: your prayer list because we need for him to live
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: a very long time so he can be a blessing
- 1:09:16Speaker 1: to many, many, many more people. As you see, it's
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: in his spirit. Ladies and gentlemen, let's go live our
- 1:09:23Speaker 1: best life. John O'Brien, this is money and wealth and
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: kneel and Youngblood, and we're out. Money and Wealth with
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: your favorite shows.