Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / John's Story: The Influence to Become an Entrepreneur

Transcript

John's Story: The Influence to Become an Entrepreneur · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
0:03
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. So my
0:16
Speaker 1: road to entrepreneurship wasn't some fairy tale, and it certainly
0:21
Speaker 1: wasn't easy, and that's good because then you can relate
0:25
Speaker 1: to it. When I was in Compton and living with
0:30
Speaker 1: my mother, the backstory to meeting this white banker who
0:38
Speaker 1: taught me financial literacy in what was then home economics
0:41
Speaker 1: class was my mother who had bought that home. And
0:49
Speaker 1: so I saw somebody make a choice right between rending
0:54
Speaker 1: and owning the dignity and the respect that gendered the
1:00
Speaker 1: sense of somebodyness that we had knowing that the roof
1:04
Speaker 1: over our head was our own home. There's an unconscious
1:10
Speaker 1: thing about owning your own stuff, right. And you could
1:15
Speaker 1: tell whose home was rented because the grass was up
1:18
Speaker 1: to your knees. Our grass was well maintained because well,
1:25
Speaker 1: nobody washes rental cars, right, but you when you own it,
1:28
Speaker 1: you take care of it. You tend to take care
1:30
Speaker 1: of it. And so we would cut the grass. I
1:33
Speaker 1: would cut the grass right for for my mom. And
1:37
Speaker 1: at that one five five oh two South Freely address
1:40
Speaker 1: in Compton, California, the corner.
1:44
Speaker 2: Corner lot that she owned.
1:46
Speaker 1: And when I was growing up there in Compton, i'd
1:53
Speaker 1: already seen, you know, the death of our net worth
1:57
Speaker 1: or the death of our family structure, divorce when I
2:03
Speaker 1: was less than five years old. Then I saw a murder.
2:07
Speaker 1: Oh see, the guy who saved my life when I
2:10
Speaker 1: was you know, six, seven years old, might have been
2:14
Speaker 1: even five or six murdered right in front of me.
2:18
Speaker 1: That was about over money. He was selling marijuana part
2:23
Speaker 1: time in the wrong neighborhood, trying to make some extra money,
2:28
Speaker 1: the wrong side hustle, and they murdered him for it.
2:31
Speaker 1: I witnessed that. I can still see it in my
2:33
Speaker 1: own mind's eye to this day. And I had met
2:38
Speaker 1: when I moved to Compton, this young man who was
2:41
Speaker 1: older than me by ten years plus, George.
2:45
Speaker 2: He was eighteen.
2:46
Speaker 1: I was nine or ten at this time at this
2:50
Speaker 1: particular point. So when I met him, you know, he
2:53
Speaker 1: was you know, maybe seventeen or sixteen, but when he was.
2:58
Speaker 2: Murdered he was eighteen.
3:00
Speaker 1: Uh. George was smart. George had great grades. I had
3:05
Speaker 1: okay grades, by the way, I got to C minus
3:09
Speaker 1: C plus in math. I think, so the finance, the
3:11
Speaker 1: so called financial literacies are you know, financial literacy big
3:16
Speaker 1: baller for the country, who's advised three US presidents from
3:19
Speaker 1: both parties, President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama, who's
3:25
Speaker 1: advised the Treasury Department, helped create policy for the Executive
3:29
Speaker 1: Order through the federal government, and financial literacy policy and
3:33
Speaker 1: emergency financial disaster policy through female homeland security, and all
3:37
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've done in Operation in Hope, et cetera.
3:39
Speaker 1: I got a C minus C plus in math. That's right,
3:44
Speaker 1: And I'm in good company because you may not know this,
3:47
Speaker 1: but doctor Martin Luther King Junior got a C minus
3:51
Speaker 1: in public speaking from Krozier's seminary. Did you know that?
3:54
Speaker 1: That's right? They said, if you don't stop talking like that,
3:57
Speaker 1: you never amount to anything. Well, he turned out more
4:00
Speaker 1: than okay. So doing something different doesn't mean that you
4:04
Speaker 1: can't do it. It just made mean that it's different.
4:08
Speaker 1: So George had a great grades. He was a perfect student,
4:13
Speaker 1: but didn't have great parents. And I don't think i've
4:18
Speaker 1: ever remember seeing his father. Now, I didn't have a
4:20
Speaker 1: father at home, but I had a father. My mom
4:22
Speaker 1: and dad were divorced, but my dad spent time with me.
4:26
Speaker 1: My mother spent time with me. They did not argue
4:30
Speaker 1: with me. They didn't make me a negotiating point between
4:34
Speaker 1: them in the household. They didn't make their children to
4:37
Speaker 1: argue point. Please don't do that to your kids. They
4:39
Speaker 1: don't Your kids not asked to come here. They did
4:41
Speaker 1: not get a vote, right, you guys got busy. They
4:45
Speaker 1: showed up. And so you have a responsibility to raise
4:48
Speaker 1: them into adulthood and to make them responsible citizens and
4:51
Speaker 1: give them all the tools they need to compete. Discipline, structure, love, accountability, confidence, belief,
4:59
Speaker 1: all in the tool they need to roll in this world. So,
5:04
Speaker 1: my mother was like a mom and a dad when
5:07
Speaker 1: I was, you know, with her. And then my dad
5:10
Speaker 1: was like extra sauce right when I go went to
5:13
Speaker 1: go hang out with him oftentimes on weekends. He lived
5:16
Speaker 1: in South Central, We lived in Canton. He lived at
5:18
Speaker 1: thirty fifth in Western and But but I never saw
5:23
Speaker 1: George's father and and and his mother was nice enough,
5:26
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't really remember her very much.
5:30
Speaker 1: When I would hang out, he would spend most of
5:31
Speaker 1: his time at our house because I think he loved
5:34
Speaker 1: my mother. Anyway, George was a great student and I
5:38
Speaker 1: want to be like George because I want to be smart. Unfortunately,
5:41
Speaker 1: George didn't know who he wanted to be. So George
5:44
Speaker 1: started hanging out with my next door neighbor, Tweet, the
5:49
Speaker 1: local drug dealer. The whole family next door was just
5:53
Speaker 1: off the chain, crazy like they were.
5:55
Speaker 2: They were.
5:55
Speaker 1: They were all involved with the drug train, ganging, slanging
5:58
Speaker 1: and banging. Police were always at the house next door.
6:03
Speaker 1: Tweet was he was a handsome guy. He was, you know,
6:06
Speaker 1: he was super cool, but just uses talent for something
6:09
Speaker 1: that did not have a return on an investment. And
6:13
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood you had prison, baroque and death, and
6:19
Speaker 1: Jors started hanging out with Tweet, started walking like Tweet,
6:24
Speaker 1: talking like Tweet, acting like Tweet, and got shot and
6:29
Speaker 1: killed with Tweet. So that was the third time I
6:35
Speaker 1: witnessed a death, and the second time I actually I
6:38
Speaker 1: didn't witness that it happened, right, but it was witnessed.
6:41
Speaker 2: In my life, I.
6:43
Speaker 1: Saw three deaths, two murders, experienced three deaths, deaths of
6:48
Speaker 1: something important to me that was transformational to family structure,
6:52
Speaker 1: our net worth, you know, generational wealth. Then the murder
6:58
Speaker 1: of Oc and then the murder which I actually witnessed
7:01
Speaker 1: in the murderer of George, and I realized being smart
7:06
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. Like you know, yeah, it's really important, but
7:09
Speaker 1: it's not enough. Being cool is not enough. Hanging out
7:14
Speaker 1: certainly depends who you're hanging out with.
7:17
Speaker 2: Not enough.
7:28
Speaker 1: Culture matters. Like culture to this day is not the
7:31
Speaker 1: most important thing in business. It's the only thing in business.
7:34
Speaker 1: It's the only thing in your life. On your street,
7:36
Speaker 1: your neighborhood has a culture, your household has a culture.
7:39
Speaker 1: As my wife Schachuer has said, most habits are learned, right,
7:45
Speaker 1: most things are learned. What is the habit in your household,
7:48
Speaker 1: in your life, and your family structure. So you're trying
7:52
Speaker 1: to get a sense of what the habits were in
7:53
Speaker 1: my family structure and the ecosystem in my family that
7:58
Speaker 1: my mother, what's going to make sure sure was embedded
8:00
Speaker 1: in our culture before we walked down that front door,
8:04
Speaker 1: and even when she wasn't around, we were guided by
8:09
Speaker 1: her role. Modeling right, you model what you see. A
8:14
Speaker 1: lot of kids want to be rap stars, nothing wrong
8:17
Speaker 1: with it, but you can't scale a rap star. TI
8:20
Speaker 1: is my friend, Killer, Mike's my friend. I have a
8:22
Speaker 1: lot of friends who are rappers, actors and my friend
8:25
Speaker 1: I was with Chris Tucker to bring comedian and actor.
8:28
Speaker 1: Uh just today, great friend. You know, I have a
8:32
Speaker 1: lot of people in the entertainment business. Quincy Jones is
8:35
Speaker 1: a mentor of mind. But the very fact that I
8:37
Speaker 1: can mention these names, I know, Oprah Winfrey, I know
8:39
Speaker 1: I know a lot of a lot of these people
8:40
Speaker 1: that you are aware of, Quavo, right, but you can't be.
8:44
Speaker 1: The very fact that I mentioned their name means that
8:46
Speaker 1: they're there, their their brands, they're unique into themselves, and
8:51
Speaker 1: you cannot have forty million black people trying to be
8:54
Speaker 1: you know, three thousand rappers and two hundred named actors,
8:58
Speaker 1: and just the numbers don't work right, not scalable, and
9:02
Speaker 1: and even their businesses dependent upon their personality. So they're
9:05
Speaker 1: they're in all likelihood have two, three, four to ten employees.
9:08
Speaker 1: But our community needs even going to go work for them. Uh,
9:13
Speaker 1: you need somebody who can create hundreds of employee employees
9:16
Speaker 1: and thousands of employees. I I e. I wrote a
9:20
Speaker 1: piece once that America needed and I love the presidency
9:24
Speaker 1: of Barack Obama and what he represented, but I wrote
9:26
Speaker 1: that America probably needed black America probably needed a Black
9:29
Speaker 1: Bill Gates before it needed the black.
9:31
Speaker 2: President, right.
9:33
Speaker 1: We needed that role model to see, uh, and experience
9:36
Speaker 1: what it's like to create a business that create that create,
9:39
Speaker 1: created a business of the billionaire that creates one hundred million,
9:43
Speaker 1: one hundred millionaires to work for him, that create then
9:47
Speaker 1: you know, uh, multi millionaires, and then creating millionaires underneath
9:51
Speaker 1: underneath underneath that then create one hundred thousand airs salaried employees.
9:55
Speaker 1: And all these people are giving money back, you know,
9:57
Speaker 1: you know, to their communities and donating charities, going to donating,
10:02
Speaker 1: tiding at church, and hooking up the vendors at their
10:07
Speaker 1: house where they be you know, painters or electricians or
10:13
Speaker 1: folks cutting the grass. It all trickles down right, and
10:16
Speaker 1: it's all habit for me. So that's why I've said
10:19
Speaker 1: Black America probably needed a Black Bill Gates or several
10:22
Speaker 1: of them before we needed a black president, because government
10:25
Speaker 1: can't save you, just like drug dealing can't say you,
10:27
Speaker 1: just like rap stars can't save you. So my point
10:29
Speaker 1: was that we end up wanting to be rap stars,
10:31
Speaker 1: athletes and drug Dealer's nothing wrong with a rap star example,
10:36
Speaker 1: other than it's not scalable, and you shouldn't want to
10:38
Speaker 1: be a drug dealer or a gangster.
10:41
Speaker 2: But we end up modeling that because that's what we see.
10:43
Speaker 1: Those are symbols of success that we see and where
10:47
Speaker 1: the rules of published and the playing fiellers level, Black
10:50
Speaker 1: folks and brown folks succeed. Think about the arts, you
10:54
Speaker 1: sing well, you dance well, people buy your records or whatever,
10:57
Speaker 1: go to your performances, you succeed. I think about sports.
11:00
Speaker 1: You run fast, you hit a bounce a baseball, you bounce,
11:04
Speaker 1: you bounce a basketball, you throw a football, whatever, you're
11:08
Speaker 1: good at it, You get the.
11:09
Speaker 2: Contract, and you succeed.
11:10
Speaker 1: Right even though that, by the way, is not necessarily sustainable,
11:13
Speaker 1: because seventy percent of those seventy percent of those in
11:17
Speaker 1: professional sports, namely the NFL, in the NBA or bankrupt
11:21
Speaker 1: five years give or take after retirement. That's another podcast
11:26
Speaker 1: doing all focus on professional sports and all that. But
11:29
Speaker 1: on this example, just once you understand that this is
11:31
Speaker 1: the math of the matter. You cannot have forty million
11:33
Speaker 1: plus black people trying to fit into these sub categories
11:37
Speaker 1: of artistry that are scalable. So you got all these
11:42
Speaker 1: people trying to do these few jobs which don't last.
11:47
Speaker 1: But that's what we're modeling what we see because we
11:49
Speaker 1: see success in it, but you can't scale.
11:54
Speaker 2: It, and.
11:57
Speaker 1: So we end up to do these things that don't
12:01
Speaker 1: have what I call economic legs on them. There are
12:06
Speaker 1: no retired drug dealers, r prison, beaged, probation, parole, death right.
12:11
Speaker 1: It does not have a retirement plan. There's no pension plan.
12:15
Speaker 1: But one thing I did understand in my neighborhood, and
12:17
Speaker 1: I do give credit to the folks in my neighborhood,
12:20
Speaker 1: and think about people now in your neighborhood, if you
12:22
Speaker 1: can relate to this where you grew up or where
12:24
Speaker 1: you may live right now, there are no dumb drug
12:27
Speaker 1: dealers who is successful. It may be immoral, it may
12:30
Speaker 1: be unethical, it may not be a good business plan
12:34
Speaker 1: because you're selling death to youral community. In many cases,
12:37
Speaker 1: you're infecting people with something that doesn't doesn't prosper their lives.
12:41
Speaker 1: It's what I call bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where
12:44
Speaker 1: I benefit and other people benefit more. Bad capitalism is
12:47
Speaker 1: where I benefit everybody else pays a price for it.
12:49
Speaker 1: So drug dealing is by its own very nature bad capitalism.
12:53
Speaker 1: But we're not necessarily talking about bad people. Right, So
12:56
Speaker 1: if you're a drug dealer, you're an I legal and
12:59
Speaker 1: ethical entrepreneur. You understand import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale retail,
13:04
Speaker 1: customer service, security, territory logistics, and on and on and on.
13:08
Speaker 1: You've got payroll, right, I mean, these are business people,
13:10
Speaker 1: they're entrepreneurs, they're hustlers, and they just need a good
13:15
Speaker 1: business plan. By the way, I'm not picking on black
13:17
Speaker 1: and brown people. Poor them were poor whites in America,
13:20
Speaker 1: the poor anybody else?
13:21
Speaker 2: Hello?
13:22
Speaker 1: And where do you think NASCAR came from? Moonshine running
13:28
Speaker 1: from the Appalachian mountains?
13:29
Speaker 2: That's right.
13:30
Speaker 1: These are guys who are running from the police, selling
13:32
Speaker 1: moonshine running the police. Became really good at it, realizing
13:35
Speaker 1: that the moonshine running part was not going to last.
13:38
Speaker 1: Running from the police was not a sustainable career. Get prison, ovation,
13:41
Speaker 1: garrow death right, right, And so it was they had
13:45
Speaker 1: to stop that part. And they're like, you know, we're
13:46
Speaker 1: good at driving, and so they started driving on those
13:49
Speaker 1: country roads, then driving on the beach, and then driving
13:51
Speaker 1: in circles on dirt tracks, and then that turned into
13:54
Speaker 1: a fifth generation five generations later. If you go back
13:57
Speaker 1: five generations of a lot of these NASCAR families. You'll
13:59
Speaker 1: find moonshine runners, but their multi multi multi millionaires today
14:03
Speaker 1: is a multi multi billion dollar industry today. And the
14:06
Speaker 1: president of asdcars on my board of director's great guy,
14:08
Speaker 1: Steve Phelps. So how do we take where's the rainbow?
14:13
Speaker 1: After this start? He took a negative to turn into
14:14
Speaker 1: a positive. These drug dealers are natural business people. Maybe
14:17
Speaker 1: they can't go work for IBM because a lot of
14:18
Speaker 1: them have a public record, but they can go create
14:20
Speaker 1: the new IBM, right they can. If you can't get
14:23
Speaker 1: a job, create a job, you can't cast a check,
14:26
Speaker 1: right one. And if you're a gang member, you're a
14:29
Speaker 1: frustrated union organizer. Hello, right, so that's organizing skills, right.
14:35
Speaker 1: These are talented people. Unfortunately they didn't get the memo
14:38
Speaker 1: of my neighborhood. So George got murdered with tweet. My
14:40
Speaker 1: friend Andre got hooked up at jail. I'm looking at
14:43
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about now in the I was on the corner.
14:46
Speaker 1: Look left, there's Tweet and there's George murdered. Look in
14:50
Speaker 1: front of me, there's Andre and all my boys that
14:52
Speaker 1: hung out there jail, prison, per parole, in some cases murder.
14:59
Speaker 1: These are friends of mine, but an extremely talented never
15:01
Speaker 1: got out of the hood. To my right was this
15:14
Speaker 1: one family, our role model, Hispanic family and one of
15:20
Speaker 1: my dear friends lived down the street, Sanchez family, and
15:25
Speaker 1: they all lived in the same property. Now, part of
15:27
Speaker 1: that was because it's a Hispanic neighborhood now Compton where
15:31
Speaker 1: grew up, but it was a black neighborhood there with
15:33
Speaker 1: a few Hispanic families. They didn't feel necessarily welcome to
15:36
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. So they had a fence around their property.
15:40
Speaker 1: And that actually forced them to work together as a unit.
15:43
Speaker 1: And they lived in the same house. It was a house,
15:45
Speaker 1: a frontment house in the back. They lived together, worked together,
15:48
Speaker 1: slept together, were family together, created business together, built wealth together.
15:53
Speaker 1: To this day, the whole generation, multi generations of them
15:56
Speaker 1: make it's three generations now immensely successful. I'm still in
15:59
Speaker 1: touch with the family. I watched that, right, I watched that,
16:04
Speaker 1: and I say them in my book Up from Nothing,
16:06
Speaker 1: and I'll get into details of that. The five pillars
16:09
Speaker 1: a success. But the third pillar is family structure and resiliency. Right, So, uh,
16:16
Speaker 1: becoming an entrepreneur and a businessman is not just about
16:19
Speaker 1: having a great business ideas having the right culture, the
16:21
Speaker 1: right role models, right environment, because you and you model
16:24
Speaker 1: what you see. And so I said, when the rules
16:27
Speaker 1: of publishing, the playing field is leveled, black people succeed.
16:31
Speaker 1: I mentioned the arts, I mentioned professional sports, politics, that's hey,
16:36
Speaker 1: you give a good speech, you you have a good platform,
16:38
Speaker 1: they vote for you. The rules of published in the
16:40
Speaker 1: playing field is level. But in entrepreneurship, in business, there
16:43
Speaker 1: is no rule book right. And you confuse making money
16:46
Speaker 1: of building wealth right. Anything hustles enough, it's not. And
16:49
Speaker 1: so we have to get our hustle right, get our
16:51
Speaker 1: life right, and our role models right, our our and
16:54
Speaker 1: then we'll get we'll get our business plan right, and
16:56
Speaker 1: then we'll get our story right. So I became an
17:00
Speaker 1: entrepreneur in my mind before I ever became one in
17:03
Speaker 1: real life. I became a businessman in my spirit, before
17:06
Speaker 1: I ever became one who cast a check or brought
17:09
Speaker 1: in revenue.
17:10
Speaker 2: It was a mindset. Mindset matters.
17:12
Speaker 1: And and I looked around my neighborhood and saw what
17:14
Speaker 1: I liked, so what I didn't like, decided I didn't
17:17
Speaker 1: want that. And there's a lot of love of the
17:19
Speaker 1: word no and so I'd start by legal hustle and
17:23
Speaker 1: I started selling mail order because I have any inventory,
17:26
Speaker 1: didn't have any money, So what can I do.
17:27
Speaker 2: I've got good hustle.
17:29
Speaker 1: You if you don't have any compounded capital, if you
17:31
Speaker 1: need a compound and hustle and hustle and hustle can
17:33
Speaker 1: create more hustle.
17:34
Speaker 2: And that and you know fear.
17:38
Speaker 1: Fear is a lazy bastard, and the devil's a lazy bastard.
17:42
Speaker 1: They don't work hard. They wait, they wait for you
17:45
Speaker 1: to give up. So I figured if I got up earlier,
17:48
Speaker 1: stayed up later, worked harder, likes my teacher says, nobody
17:52
Speaker 1: cares work harder, that that would be my advantage. And
17:54
Speaker 1: so I h hustle and I had gift for gam
17:57
Speaker 1: and I sold mail order anything. I would share my
18:02
Speaker 1: dream with my teachers at school and whatever, and all
18:05
Speaker 1: that led to then my lesson in financial literacy that I, uh,
18:09
Speaker 1: you know, had this banker come in my classroom.
18:11
Speaker 2: And click click click click click.
18:13
Speaker 1: That plus what my mother taught me, what I saw
18:15
Speaker 1: my father, what I saw my neighborhood. But I didn't
18:17
Speaker 1: want but I did want rainbows after storms boom. That's
18:21
Speaker 1: the business plan for my life. And you know, this
18:26
Speaker 1: story can go on forever. I can do two three
18:28
Speaker 1: different segments on just this aspect of becoming an entrepreneur
18:32
Speaker 1: and a business owner. But it all started with that
18:36
Speaker 1: childhood framework. And there's nothing I just said that's magical, right,
18:41
Speaker 1: And none of it required a lot of money capital,
18:44
Speaker 1: none of it required fancy stuff or you know, flossing.
18:48
Speaker 1: None of this it was all pretty basic and it's
18:52
Speaker 1: everyone of these tools are available to you. And uh
18:56
Speaker 1: so when that banker said I'm a banker and not
18:58
Speaker 1: financial entrepreneurs, well that became the business plan for my life.
19:02
Speaker 1: I'm gonna become an entrepreneur. And then when I asked
19:04
Speaker 1: that banker, well, how many bankers are there in you
19:07
Speaker 1: know they're more than you, right, Like, make sure understand
19:10
Speaker 1: this is properly. I can borrow money from you, and
19:13
Speaker 1: I don't get dead if I don't pay you back.
19:15
Speaker 1: So what are you talking about it? Well, in my neighborhood,
19:16
Speaker 1: if you borrow money from pooky them and you don't
19:19
Speaker 1: pay them back, you're not coming back. You know, they
19:21
Speaker 1: take you out or they enslave you for the rest
19:24
Speaker 1: of your life. You don't never you never get out
19:26
Speaker 1: of debt. He's like, no, no, you you know you
19:28
Speaker 1: take it a loan, you qualify. You know, you take
19:30
Speaker 1: the loan out, you pay it back, your fine, and
19:32
Speaker 1: you don't pay it back. You know, we have notice
19:34
Speaker 1: of default. We foreclose on you. You live this fight
19:37
Speaker 1: another day. I'm like, Okay, well, I just figured out
19:40
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do, and I gotta do is convince
19:41
Speaker 1: you my business plans right and have decent credit. Yet Okay,
19:45
Speaker 1: so how many people are like you? Well, there's a
19:47
Speaker 1: couple hundred thousand bankers in the Bank of America, he said,
19:49
Speaker 1: So it's got to be millions of bankers in America.
19:51
Speaker 2: Whoa whoa?
19:52
Speaker 1: And how many bankers are there in America? May ten thousand?
19:54
Speaker 1: Back then it's forty five hundred banks today. FDIC Insurance Bank,
19:58
Speaker 1: whose mission is to in you capital if you can
20:01
Speaker 1: prove you could that.
20:03
Speaker 2: You qualified, said, who whoa wa who whoa whoa whoa.
20:05
Speaker 1: So my people don't have to go out and get
20:08
Speaker 1: money from Pooky them and Jojo and Bang Bang and
20:11
Speaker 1: the mafia and all that stuff, paity lenders and rent
20:14
Speaker 1: own stores and check cashers and look, what's what's going
20:16
Speaker 1: on in our neighborhoods wrapped, you know, fire of the
20:18
Speaker 1: credit score, neighborhoods, check cash or patio on lender, rent
20:21
Speaker 1: on store, title, lended, liquor store, pawn shop. They're just
20:23
Speaker 1: praying on people with low financial literacy and high aspirations
20:27
Speaker 1: and dreams.
20:28
Speaker 2: Where the house.
20:28
Speaker 1: Whoever's a surviving mindset, they're praying on you. It's target marketing.
20:32
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but I'm sick and
20:34
Speaker 1: tired of being sick and tired. It's Malcolm Max said,
20:35
Speaker 1: I've been we've been bamboos, we've been tricked, we've been full,
20:38
Speaker 1: and I don't know about you, but I'm sick and
20:40
Speaker 1: tired of being sick and tired.
20:42
Speaker 2: So he told me that that.
20:43
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, but that was a business plan
20:45
Speaker 1: for Operation Hope, which I had found, which I would
20:47
Speaker 1: found back then, so I was nine going on ten
20:49
Speaker 1: years old. I would have found it twenty six sixteen
20:51
Speaker 1: years later, I would have found Operation Hope. And there's
20:54
Speaker 1: a whole nother story of some organization I found it
20:56
Speaker 1: for Tom Bradley, which is still a city government agency.
20:59
Speaker 1: I found out was nineteen years old and a volunteer
21:02
Speaker 1: for the City of la under Tom Bradley. But I
21:03
Speaker 1: was too young to run it. They told me it
21:05
Speaker 1: was a city lending agency. But I'll try to put
21:08
Speaker 1: that in the in the in the comments for the podcast.
21:12
Speaker 1: God remember the name of the city agency, but you
21:13
Speaker 1: can look it up today. I inspired when I was
21:15
Speaker 1: nineteen years old, if that became the preamble for what
21:18
Speaker 1: Openan would become after the Rony King riots. Operation Hope,
21:22
Speaker 1: but Operation Hopes business plan of really unleashing untapped human
21:26
Speaker 1: potential at scale and making people bankable at scale and
21:29
Speaker 1: get your credit score up and your debt down, your
21:31
Speaker 1: savings up, and making you bankable, turning you from black
21:35
Speaker 1: and white or red or blue to green right right bankable.
21:41
Speaker 1: That get making the private banker to the working class,
21:44
Speaker 1: the underserved folks were too much month at the end
21:46
Speaker 1: of their money, folks who are moving from a struggling mentality,
21:51
Speaker 1: surviving anxiety, to a thriving mentality to a winning mentality
21:55
Speaker 1: you know again, the private banker for the working class
21:57
Speaker 1: and working for the working working middle class. Operation Hope,
22:02
Speaker 1: which is large in the country today, fifty four million
22:05
Speaker 1: dollar budget, five billion dollars invested almost in under cerved neighborhoods.
22:08
Speaker 1: Raising credit score is fifty four to one hundred and
22:10
Speaker 1: twenty points in twenty six months and twenty four months.
22:12
Speaker 1: All that started with this kid and this dream. It's
22:16
Speaker 1: all the same business plan. I became the entrepreneur and
22:19
Speaker 1: now operation sho was you're a banker, so you can
22:21
Speaker 1: become dream makers in your life. Rainbows only follow storms, right,
22:27
Speaker 1: you cannot have a rainbow without a storm.
22:28
Speaker 2: First?
22:29
Speaker 1: Can I grow without legitimate suffering? Don't run away from
22:31
Speaker 1: your problems, run through them. I love you, I'm out.
22:35
Speaker 1: Let's go do this thing. They bought at eight unit
22:43
Speaker 1: of Harber Building. First lived in one unit rented to
22:46
Speaker 1: out that covered the mortgage payment that was supped three
22:49
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month. Yes, they built. They bought it
22:51
Speaker 1: for eighteen thousand dollars. For anybody who think in real estate,
22:54
Speaker 1: that's not magical that private buildings worth several million dollars
22:57
Speaker 1: today almost, I think it's a six lesson. I checked
23:01
Speaker 1: it was six million dollars. That's that apartment building is worth.
23:04
Speaker 1: We bought it for eighteen thousand dollars and the rest
23:07
Speaker 1: of the unit rent so was eight units. So we
23:10
Speaker 1: lived in one unit rented out to to cover the
23:12
Speaker 1: mortage payment. The rest of the units, the five units
23:15
Speaker 1: that were left for profit, and they used that profit,
23:18
Speaker 1: saved that extra money to then put a down payment
23:21
Speaker 1: on their home, the home I'm talking about on Santa
23:23
Speaker 1: Barbara Boulevard. And by the way, we lost the apartment building.
23:26
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. And I say
23:28
Speaker 1: we lost because that's generational wealth for our family. It
23:31
Speaker 1: wasn't just my mom and my dad. It wasn't just
23:33
Speaker 1: my dad. My dad didn't realize that they had to
23:38
Speaker 1: be better together. My dad was a great hustler, by
23:40
Speaker 1: the way, a great hustler. But there's a difference between
23:43
Speaker 1: making money and building wealth. I'll get the end of
23:46
Speaker 1: that in a separate podcast. We're really focused on that.
23:49
Speaker 1: But like a lot of black strivers, we think that
23:53
Speaker 1: making that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting
23:55
Speaker 1: that buck, getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right.
24:00
Speaker 1: You can you can make you can win the battle
24:02
Speaker 1: and lose the war. And that's exactly what my father
24:04
Speaker 1: did and wouldn't listen to my mother. So but here's
24:08
Speaker 1: the positive part. They were smart enough to buy that
24:11
Speaker 1: apartment building for eighteen thousand dollars, and they did nothing
24:15
Speaker 1: else but buy that and just hold it. The whole
24:17
Speaker 1: family would be set today, more set than ultimately we
24:22
Speaker 1: ended up being with my mother by at least six
24:24
Speaker 1: times more set. My mother ended up being technically a
24:27
Speaker 1: millionaire when she passed on, but that one apartment building
24:30
Speaker 1: again would be worth six million dollars today.
24:32
Speaker 2: We only only own eighteen thousand dollars when we purchased it,
24:35
Speaker 2: when they purchased it.
24:37
Speaker 1: And when you buy a piece of real estate, you
24:39
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the depreciation at tax benefit. You
24:42
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the appreciation the equity, and you
24:46
Speaker 1: write off the most of the mortgage payments against your income.
24:49
Speaker 2: So it was really a win win when.
24:52
Speaker 1: Anyway, so we moved from the apartment building, owned it,
24:56
Speaker 1: then woved got a house, great good job. Then we
24:58
Speaker 1: bought a gas station at I believe it's at Normandy
25:02
Speaker 1: and Vernon south east corner. For those who know Los
25:06
Speaker 1: Angeles geography, you know that that gas station is still
25:10
Speaker 1: there today. Last time I was in LA it was
25:13
Speaker 1: still there and functioning. We owned that gas station. We
25:15
Speaker 1: own a cement contracting business. We owned a little nursery
25:19
Speaker 1: business taking care of knucklehead kids like me before and
25:23
Speaker 1: after school for working parents. My mother had a side house,
25:28
Speaker 1: so making arts and crafts. Anyway, my dad ought to
25:31
Speaker 1: really argued over money because my dad could make it
25:34
Speaker 1: but couldn't keep as I mentioned earlier, and he was
25:36
Speaker 1: a great hustler, but he was not financially literate. And
25:39
Speaker 1: Vassil Young says the men and women failed for three
25:41
Speaker 1: reasons ar against, pride and greed. My dad was not greedy,
25:46
Speaker 1: but he was full of pride and slightly arrogant, and
25:51
Speaker 1: he wouldn't ask my mother for advice. And only in
25:54
Speaker 1: a relationship do I think that the mass should not work?
25:58
Speaker 1: Like I love math, my friend Melody Hobson, I love
26:02
Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion right, But only
26:07
Speaker 1: in a relationship should the math not work two plus
26:10
Speaker 1: two if it doesn't equal? Who was six, eight or
26:12
Speaker 1: ten meaning more than four? What are you doing right?
26:16
Speaker 1: You can do bad all by yourself if you're not
26:18
Speaker 1: better together, what are you doing right? So Dad and
26:24
Speaker 1: mom had the building blocks right, but they didn't have
26:26
Speaker 1: the strategy right. They didn't have the mindset right. They
26:28
Speaker 1: still had a surviving mindset. They didn't together move to
26:32
Speaker 1: a thriving mindset. Again, my mother finally got to thrift
26:34
Speaker 1: your mindset, we're not there yet. And unfortunately they thought
26:38
Speaker 1: they were builders, but they still had a surviving, hustling
26:43
Speaker 1: mindset and approach, and so end up winning the battle
26:46
Speaker 1: and losing the war. Crossing bridges ahead of time, picking
26:51
Speaker 1: up a stepping over a dollar to pick up a din?
26:54
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? They argued over money.
26:56
Speaker 1: Dad wouldn't listen to mother. He would bid jobs of
26:59
Speaker 1: the scene, seement contractor. He wanted to win the bid.
27:03
Speaker 1: I respect the hustle, but again not financially literate. So
27:06
Speaker 1: the job was if the last contract to bid with
27:10
Speaker 1: the client for a thousand dollars, my dad would go
27:12
Speaker 1: in and bid at nine hundred. Well, the materials might
27:15
Speaker 1: be nine to fifty. My dad didn't think about that.
27:18
Speaker 1: He thought the cash flow is profit wrong. So the
27:21
Speaker 1: more money he made, the broker we got. He made
27:23
Speaker 1: a dollar and spend a dollar fifty and we lost everything.
27:28
Speaker 1: We lost the gas station, we lost the apartment building,
27:32
Speaker 1: we lost our home, and on the verge of losing
27:36
Speaker 1: our home. My mother again, she was a master at savings.
27:40
Speaker 1: Remember this going back to the Grandma story, and she
27:43
Speaker 1: would you put those sea corns to the side, and
27:45
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen get married. I want you to trust
27:48
Speaker 1: each other. I want you to be in each other's lives.
27:50
Speaker 1: I want you to all that and understand that you're
27:52
Speaker 1: meeting a business partner here and not just to mate.
27:55
Speaker 1: And when you go to the club and you see
27:57
Speaker 1: the dude, oh he's handsome. Guys, you see the lady,
28:00
Speaker 1: she's fine. Don't just ask their name, ask their credit score. Right,
28:05
Speaker 1: And I'm joking, but I'm serious, right, because this is
28:08
Speaker 1: the business partner for the rest of your life. So
28:10
Speaker 1: you want to have a joint account, right, and you
28:13
Speaker 1: want to have a separate account to make sure that
28:17
Speaker 1: you know, if you find out this person is actually
28:18
Speaker 1: not financially literate, they tear their own revery and they're
28:22
Speaker 1: not tearing yours, the collective of yours. At the same time,
28:25
Speaker 1: you need to have the backup plan for your family.
28:28
Speaker 1: So my mother had a separate little account that she
28:31
Speaker 1: had set up and she wasn't hiding for my father.
28:34
Speaker 1: My father knew it was there, and she had saved
28:37
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then.
28:40
Speaker 1: This is nineteen sixty eight. No, this was nineteen seventy.
28:44
Speaker 1: I was four four or five years old, between three
28:47
Speaker 1: and five years old. I get the math right, So
28:49
Speaker 1: sometime between sixty I was born in sixty six, sixty eight,
28:52
Speaker 1: sixty nine, seventy seventy one, that time period, anyway, four
28:56
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a lot of money. My mother had said this,
29:00
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars to send my brother to a college
29:02
Speaker 1: of his choice, because she wanted him to move from
29:04
Speaker 1: a surviving mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, a thriving mindset,
29:09
Speaker 1: SOS surviving mindset is free. Your first reconstruction, out of slavery,
29:12
Speaker 1: you're free. Second reconstruction, civil rights movement, getting access to jobs,
29:18
Speaker 1: access to careers, access to education, access to the polling booth,
29:22
Speaker 1: access to public facilities, restrooms of your choice, all that
29:28
Speaker 1: stuff being able to have access. Of course, third reconstruction,
29:31
Speaker 1: which we're in today, that operation SULP is helping the
29:34
Speaker 1: lead is a movement from the streets to the suites,
29:37
Speaker 1: from civil rights to silver rights. Right at the third reconstruction.
29:41
Speaker 1: The color is not black or white, it's green. It's
29:43
Speaker 1: not red or blue, it's green. It's economicist opportunity for all.
29:47
Speaker 1: It's it's about writing checks, not just cashing them. So
29:51
Speaker 1: we're in the second reconstruction. Now we're in the sixties
29:54
Speaker 1: and the seventies, and my mother knew that for my
29:57
Speaker 1: brother to do better, he needed a higher education. And
30:01
Speaker 1: you know better, you do better, and so my brother
30:04
Speaker 1: was set to go to a college of his choice
30:06
Speaker 1: to be whoever he wanted. My father got to the
30:09
Speaker 1: bank first and took that four thousand dollars. Unfortunately my
30:12
Speaker 1: mother had him as a signer on the account. So
30:14
Speaker 1: you might want to have until you guys in bed,
30:16
Speaker 1: until you embed yourself into you know, going for about
30:20
Speaker 1: me to a bout a week. It may take a
30:22
Speaker 1: minute for you guys to come together as one and
30:24
Speaker 1: you trust each other, not just romantically, but about money
30:27
Speaker 1: and business decisions, and you're on the same accord. You
30:30
Speaker 1: might want to have an account just your own name
30:32
Speaker 1: on it, and then he has an account, or she
30:34
Speaker 1: has an account with their name on it. Then you
30:35
Speaker 1: have a joint account. Until things evolved. He got the
30:41
Speaker 1: money and wasted it on some hair brain idea. He
30:44
Speaker 1: had to get a bag, my dad did, and of
30:48
Speaker 1: course he lost it, and my brother could not go
30:50
Speaker 1: to a college of his choice, and it broke my
30:52
Speaker 1: mother's heart. And by the time my brother ended up
30:55
Speaker 1: going to them to the Navy. And he went to
30:59
Speaker 1: the Navy because he could get a four year education
31:01
Speaker 1: to be signed up for military service. He thought he
31:03
Speaker 1: signed over for four years. Of course, it's like they
31:05
Speaker 1: know the psychology in the military. Once you're there, you
31:08
Speaker 1: probably stayed there. He had a good experience, so he
31:10
Speaker 1: signed for four years, resigned up, resigned up, and had
31:13
Speaker 1: a career the Navy, became a noncommissioned officer, a great
31:16
Speaker 1: career in intelligence there, and ended up retiring to Hawaii,
31:21
Speaker 1: marrying somebody who lives in Hawaii. It works for retire
31:25
Speaker 1: from the Navy, works for the Navy as a private
31:27
Speaker 1: contractor with his family, and it's a beautiful story. But
31:32
Speaker 1: it wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by
31:36
Speaker 1: that four thousand dollars moment where he did not have
31:39
Speaker 1: self determination. Right, but, uh, what would his life be?
31:44
Speaker 1: How to be different? Right if if if he had
31:50
Speaker 1: gone to college of a choice and become a dentist
31:52
Speaker 1: or a doctor, or a banker or a business person
31:55
Speaker 1: or an engineer or whatever. Right, you know what does
31:57
Speaker 1: a matter what was but it could have been his
31:59
Speaker 1: choice and he just didn't do uh that and as
32:03
Speaker 1: a result of that, Uh, well, I just told you
32:06
Speaker 1: the story, right, He's a great, great life, but it
32:10
Speaker 1: wasn't his choice.
32:11
Speaker 2: And that was enough.
32:12
Speaker 1: My mother had had enough and my mother said I'm
32:15
Speaker 1: out and uh and that became the fight of all
32:18
Speaker 1: fights and my dad they had domestic abuse came to blows.
32:20
Speaker 2: They had to call the police to get my mother.
32:23
Speaker 1: My dad off, my off, my mother beating her up,
32:26
Speaker 1: and she put off a pump, a three inch pump
32:28
Speaker 1: popped him on the head. Here didn't grow on the
32:31
Speaker 1: top of his head until his last dying days from
32:34
Speaker 1: that pop. Uh. So he learned how to do that
32:36
Speaker 1: with my mother again. But uh, she she was out,
32:40
Speaker 1: you know that she left. We left with the shirt
32:42
Speaker 1: of her back and her kids and we went to
32:45
Speaker 1: go to stay with with somebody, she said, with my
32:47
Speaker 1: uncle oc. Uh was really her girlfriend and her boyfriend
32:52
Speaker 1: whose name was OC. But it order made me feel comfortable,
32:55
Speaker 1: make the kids feel comfortable, she said. It was that
32:57
Speaker 1: that was my uncle and I was playing on the
33:00
Speaker 1: and she was staying there with her girlfriend and her
33:03
Speaker 1: boyfriend to save money for her by her first.
33:06
Speaker 2: House on her own.
33:08
Speaker 1: Again, here's that same lesson again, the basics learning, you know,
33:13
Speaker 1: spending lesson you make, putting a little side for the future.
33:17
Speaker 1: So she's working as a seatrist now in McDonald bill's
33:19
Speaker 1: aircraft when she later became boeing and making you know,
33:25
Speaker 1: equivalent of today of fifteen dollars eighteen dollars an hour.
33:29
Speaker 1: And she worked work, work, safe, safe, save. And while
33:32
Speaker 1: she was doing that, I built a relationship with the
33:34
Speaker 1: guy O C. Who again thought was my uncle, and
33:37
Speaker 1: I was. I was playing on the porch one day
33:39
Speaker 1: and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I
33:44
Speaker 1: was choking, and he cleared. He cleared my throat, you know,
33:49
Speaker 1: he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I
33:53
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I
33:55
Speaker 1: adored this guy, right, and you got a murder it
34:00
Speaker 1: in front of me. Well, in order to take care
34:04
Speaker 1: of his family and all and our staying with him,
34:06
Speaker 1: he didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I
34:08
Speaker 1: can't afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's
34:11
Speaker 1: talk about this against Young's quote. Men, when failed for
34:14
Speaker 1: three reasons, arrogance, pride, and greed. He could have just
34:17
Speaker 1: had a conversation with us. My mother would have contributed
34:19
Speaker 1: some money. But he decided he was going to go
34:21
Speaker 1: to work his legit job. Then he was going to
34:23
Speaker 1: go out again and he was going to sell drugs
34:26
Speaker 1: part time, and it was marijuana. Was in the wrong neighborhood,
34:29
Speaker 1: and those guys sitting very seriously, they followed him home.
34:32
Speaker 1: They said, you're in the wrong territory, and they drove.
34:36
Speaker 1: They dragged him. They hit him with a truck and
34:38
Speaker 1: dragged him. He was on a bicycle.
34:39
Speaker 2: Uh.
34:40
Speaker 1: And that was right in front of me, in front
34:41
Speaker 1: of the house. And I think they did it because
34:42
Speaker 1: I could see him. Sent a message and they killed
34:45
Speaker 1: him right in front of me. And I still did
34:48
Speaker 1: mention my in my head. So I saw my first
34:55
Speaker 1: death and that was about money. So the first death
34:59
Speaker 1: was the of our of our parents net worth, family structure,
35:03
Speaker 1: generational wealth. Second first murder was oc getting murdered in
35:09
Speaker 1: front of me. All this is about money. And my
35:11
Speaker 1: best friend George got murdered over money selling drugs with
35:15
Speaker 1: the next door neighbor, tweet who we moved into. My
35:17
Speaker 1: mother bought her first home one five five oh two
35:19
Speaker 1: South Freeley in Compton, California. And she bought that house. Uh,
35:25
Speaker 1: and I became friends with George, who was real smarter
35:30
Speaker 1: than me, by the way, so intellectual alone is not enough.
35:33
Speaker 1: And but George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset,
35:37
Speaker 1: and got murdered hanging out with Tweet. So watch who
35:39
Speaker 1: you hang around again. You hang around nine broke people,
35:41
Speaker 1: you'll be the tenth. Whoever you hang around, whatever you
35:44
Speaker 1: see is who you will be.
35:46
Speaker 2: And so I could go on and on and on
35:50
Speaker 2: about my mother.
35:51
Speaker 1: But the story here is that she she bought that house,
35:56
Speaker 1: we lived in it.
35:57
Speaker 2: It was the beginning of our generational wealth.
35:59
Speaker 1: She built equity and then she sold that house, bought
36:02
Speaker 1: another house, sold that house, used the equity to buy
36:05
Speaker 1: another house. She did that seven times, and she ended
36:09
Speaker 1: up with a net worth of a million dollars. And
36:11
Speaker 1: I know that because she gave some money to my
36:14
Speaker 1: sister and my brother to buy a home a couple
36:15
Speaker 1: of times. And of course I'm the manager of her
36:18
Speaker 1: state trusty Verus state. Because she had a will. I
36:20
Speaker 1: want everybody to have a will when she passed on
36:22
Speaker 1: the glory, So Hopefully she's an inspiration to you. She
36:25
Speaker 1: lives on today, she has a fund in her name,
36:28
Speaker 1: and her legacy lives and hopefully now you know that
36:32
Speaker 1: even if you're a single parent, you can still make it.
36:35
Speaker 1: You can work an hourly job and build a net
36:38
Speaker 1: worth of a million dollars and live a life of dignity.
36:42
Speaker 2: And self reliance. You can be free. It is possible.
36:46
Speaker 1: The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom
36:48
Speaker 1: can be taken away from you. Money and Wealth with
37:04
Speaker 1: John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
37:08
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
37:11
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
37:15
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.