Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / Wealth Whispers: Why 'Quiet' May Be The Most Valuable Asset You Can Own

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Wealth Whispers: Why 'Quiet' May Be The Most Valuable Asset You Can Own · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, hey,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: it's John Hope Bryant here of Bryant Group Ventures and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Operation Hope. And I'm saying that intentionally in that way
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: because I want to stress here that I'm an operating entrepreneur.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that something that Charlemagne told me, Charlemagne, the guy of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club and Black Effect Network, the platform that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I do my podcast on, a good friend of mine,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: good brother, brilliant, really. And at some point I'll have
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: him on this show as well. I'm on his board,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Black Effect Network, because I believe in him. But one
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: thing he told me when I agreed to do this
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: podcast and he asked me to do it was, John,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: you're different. You're an operating entrepreneur. You're an operating businessman.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: You know, you meet a payroll. You've got 400 employees.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: You've got operations on the ground around the world. You've
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: got a success story. You've got a track record. You've
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: done deals. You've done nine figure deals. You know, you
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: have a billion dollar fund that you stood up. You've
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: sold companies for over a hundred million dollars. You know,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: you're not out here playing like you're an entrepreneur. You
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: really are one. And that struck me and made me
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: want to do this. And I felt a little bad.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: from time to time because I don't have the perfect, well,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I could have the professional studio if I wanted to,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: like many other podcasters. And I really admire many of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: them who have done a really great job at podcasting,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: but I'm not a podcaster. I'm an entrepreneur who's doing
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a podcast. Okay. And so I just decided I'm going
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: further in. I'm not going further away from who I am.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to dive further into taking you with me
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: on this entrepreneurial journey as a real operating businessman and entrepreneur, creator, grower, developer,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: builder of companies from the ground up, which includes, you know,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I think three of my 40 companies I've created are
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the biggest of their kind in the category in the country,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: in the largest economy in the world, the United States
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of America. And we built this thing to the point
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  Speaker 1: where we've gone from one of the poorest zip codes
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in America, my story, Compton in South Central LA, to
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  Speaker 1: Forbes 250, number 145 on that list of the greatest
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: living self-made Americans on the 250th anniversary of America. So
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: why do I say all that? Because that's really about
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: distance traveled and inspiring you that you can go from
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: zero to hero. But why am I saying that sitting
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: in this casual environment? Because I'm not going to create
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: these fancy studios. I've got fancy studios. I can go
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to iHeart Studios anywhere around the world, actually. and record
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: my podcast. I've got a beautiful studio at my headquarters
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, but I'm often on the road. I'm often
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: traveling because I'm a real businessman with a real need
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to meet with my partners and board members and customers
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and clients. And you're constantly in play with me and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm giving you, you know, the real world as I
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Experience it, which includes podcasts done in hotel rooms, podcasts
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: or straight-to-life videos done by me literally in cars, in airports. Well,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: these podcast series that I do, often myself talking straight
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: to you, the camera, is from wherever I am in
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the world. And so right now I'm in Maui, and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: it's the middle of the night. And the ocean's in
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the background, by the way, so you might hear a
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  Speaker 1: little bit of that. but it's quiet throughout all of
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the city of Maui, certainly in Wailea, the more upscale area.
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  Speaker 1: And as you get closer to the wealth, it gets quieter,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: irrespective of race. A straight-to-live video I did has gone viral,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: which inspired me to do this longer-form podcast. I did
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: an interview with a gentleman in Atlanta on his podcast,
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  Speaker 1: and I just mentioned that poor neighborhoods are noisy, and
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  Speaker 1: wealthy neighborhoods tend to be quiet and Because I grew
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  Speaker 1: up in this neighborhood that was black and brown, I
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  Speaker 1: inferred or suggested that a lot of the black and
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  Speaker 1: brown neighborhoods tend to be noisy. And that when you
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  Speaker 1: go to wealthy neighborhoods, they're just quieter. And the presumption was, well,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you mean white neighborhoods. No, there are black neighborhoods that
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  Speaker 1: I lived in in Atlanta, Niskay Lake Falls in particular,
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  Speaker 1: gated neighborhood of 22 homes, was dead quiet all the time.
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  Speaker 1: The color's not black or white or red or blue.
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  Speaker 1: The color is green. as in economics. So let me
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: break down for you in this episode, why wealth whispers.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So pull out your pen, pull out your device, get
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  Speaker 1: ready to take some notes that will change your life.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you some scratch notes, some cheat
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  Speaker 1: sheet notes that most folks never communicate to you about
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: how wealth really gets created and sustained It may shock
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  Speaker 1: you because it's going to be different from what you've
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: been told and what you see in social media and
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: on TV. So let's get into this. And I dare
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  Speaker 1: you to prove me wrong because I live this life.
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  Speaker 1: Wealth whispers. Why quiet may be the one and only
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  Speaker 1: most valuable asset you'll ever own. and it costs you nothing.
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  Speaker 1: The central equation here, stability to quiet, to thinking, to
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  Speaker 1: ideas leads to creation, leads to ownership, leads to wealth,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: leads to wellness, leads to longevity. Yes, those things are connected.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Wealth whispers. I'm sitting here, like I said, in Wailea
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  Speaker 1: in Maui, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 5,000
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  Speaker 1: miles from the closest landmass. It's the most remote landmass
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  Speaker 1: in the world. Everybody's asleep here. I'm doing this podcast
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  Speaker 1: because I can think right now, I can ponder, I
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  Speaker 1: can reflect. It's peaceful in this place, this space. We
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  Speaker 1: come here, the family comes here twice a year to retreat,
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  Speaker 1: not to vacation, to retreat. to unpack ourselves, to sit
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  Speaker 1: in silence, to reflect, to restore, to rest, to renew,
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  Speaker 1: to commune with nature and God, to listen and observe
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the power of the waves. The biggest mass of anything
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  Speaker 1: in the world is water. 70% of the world of
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the earth is water. 95% of that unexplored, by the way.
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  Speaker 1: Power and majesty of that, the power and majesty of
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  Speaker 1: what God created there is breathless. And we come here
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  Speaker 1: to honor that and to reconnect with that. By the way,
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  Speaker 1: you can do that in a local park. You can
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: do this in your local beach. You don't have to
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: come to Maui for what I'm talking about, but this
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  Speaker 1: is the price I was willing to pay for this.
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  Speaker 1: I've been coming here for 30 years. And when I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: started coming here, originally inspired by my brother, Lance Triggs,
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  Speaker 1: who still works with me at Operation Hope today. He's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: president of all programs. He's the first person who turned
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  Speaker 1: me on to Maui. When I first started coming here,
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't afford this. I could afford a coach plane
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  Speaker 1: ticket and to rent a room in a fancy house. Actually,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: it was a rent a room in a not fancy
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: house up in Haiku. Anybody knows Maui? That is not
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a wealthy area. It's like a hippie zone north of Paea, Haiku. Beautiful. And,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: you know, middle-class family was renting a little room. There
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: was no running water. There was no kitchen. It was
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a place to sleep. And then I could go outside
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: because it's very natural here and, you know, wash myself
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  Speaker 1: off and all that kind of stuff. And then it
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: was a restroom facility outside. And then it was off
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  Speaker 1: to explore Maui. But I had my piece of paradise,
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  Speaker 1: even when I couldn't afford the villa that we stay
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  Speaker 1: in now. And by the way, it was It started
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: as renting a room, then renting a little, you know, ohana,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a little house behind someone's house, a little, not even
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: a house, you know, a little apartment. And then one
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: thing led to another and led to another, and then
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  Speaker 1: better areas, we moved to better areas, and we end
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  Speaker 1: up where we are now. But all this was the
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  Speaker 1: journey with the one constant being the power of quiet
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  Speaker 1: and silence and Create wealth. It's quiet here. Not empty.
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  Speaker 1: Not lonely. Quiet. You hear the wind. You hear the ocean.
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  Speaker 1: You hear the birds. And most importantly, you hear yourself.
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  Speaker 1: You hear God whispering to you. And that reminds me
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  Speaker 1: of a post that went viral that I want you
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  Speaker 1: to pull up. where it was a big debate around
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  Speaker 1: this simple observation, go into many wealthy neighborhoods and they're
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: remarkably quiet. Then go into many poor, struggling neighborhoods like
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  Speaker 1: the one I grew up in, ones I grew up in, plural,
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  Speaker 1: South Central Los Angeles before the, oh, sorry, after that, Compton, California,
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  Speaker 1: and they're often noisy. By the way, it's not black
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  Speaker 1: and brown neighborhoods exclusively, poor white neighborhoods, pretty much the
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  Speaker 1: same thing. They're just rural, so you don't get the
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  Speaker 1: concentration of noise like you do in an urban area.
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  Speaker 1: But the noise of frustration, the noise of depression, the
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  Speaker 1: noise of anger, the noise, not just physical noise, it's
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  Speaker 1: emotional noise, it's psychological noise, it's spiritual noise, it's tension noise,
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  Speaker 1: it's unsettled noise, the noise of a being that can't focus.
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what that means. It means cars,
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  Speaker 1: it means sirens, it means television blaring, And music, it
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  Speaker 1: means arguments. It means, yes, music and people coming and
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  Speaker 1: going in your house, in your neighborhood, in your place,
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  Speaker 1: in your space. Everybody reacting to something, never responding to something.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready, fire, aim, living a life. Now get this one.
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  Speaker 1: If you haven't got anything else, this one will. If
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  Speaker 1: you live in a poor rural neighborhood, maybe you don't
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  Speaker 1: feel the sirens, all that stuff, but get this. It's
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  Speaker 1: a surviving mindset. It's a surviving mindset in a thriving
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  Speaker 1: and winning world. In order to win, you have to think.
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  Speaker 1: Because winning is about a mindset. But most people are
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: in a surviving mindset. And surviving mindsets are just what
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  Speaker 1: they sound. It's noisy. It's painful. It's complicated. It's angry.
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  Speaker 1: It's It's argumentative. It's drama, lots of drama, lots of trauma.
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  Speaker 1: It's a lot of INGs, right? Struggling, drinking, texting, sexting, peeing, oversleeping, hollering, screaming,
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  Speaker 1: you know, hanging. A lot of INGs are useless, but
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: not healing, not dealing. So we're going to get to
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  Speaker 1: that because the real goal of all of this is
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  Speaker 1: to become reasonably comfortable in your own skin so that
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  Speaker 1: there's nothing stopping you from creating the world that you
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: want at scale. So here I'll say again, wealth whispers.
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  Speaker 1: Not rich. Rich is a contract. Wealth is potentially generational.
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  Speaker 1: Wealth is generational. because riches can come and you lose
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: your money. You can still regain it because you've got
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  Speaker 1: the right wealth mindset. We're not human beings having a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Energy matters.
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  Speaker 1: So I wasn't criticizing poor people when I did that
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  Speaker 1: viral video clip. I was describing an environment. To me,
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  Speaker 1: it was just common sense, like saying, This is a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: table in front of me. It wasn't complicated because poverty
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't just take money out of your pocket. Poverty takes
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  Speaker 1: peace out of your environment. Can I get an amen?
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  Speaker 1: It can take time out of your day. It can
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: take bandwidth out of your brain. If you hang around
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: nine broke people, as I keep saying, you'll probably be
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the 10th. Our Hope Financial Wellness Index at Operation Hope,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: which we have gathered with data from Experian and a
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: range of government sources, it shows that for every 50
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: point increase in credit scores, you live five more years
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: on average. So in a 500 credit score neighborhood, you
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: live to about 61 years of age. So you don't
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  Speaker 1: even get to social security, but in a 700 credit
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  Speaker 1: score neighborhood, get this, with 15 minutes apart in an
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: urban area on average, you live to 81 years of
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: age on average. 20 year delta, 20 year difference, 15
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: minutes apart, mindset, mindset. This even affects your wellness, not
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: just your access to capital, not just your access to opportunity,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: your wellness. And so I'm sitting here in Maui. I
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: started thinking, what if quiet isn't merely something you get
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: after you become successful? What if quiet is something, what
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: if it's one of the ingredients of something that helps
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: you become successful? successful in the first place. Because quiet
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: gives you something incredibly valuable, space to think. And thinking
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: is free. Everything I've said so far is available to you.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You don't have to come to Maui for it. You
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: don't have to go to Beverly Hills or Buckhead or
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: whatever the wealthy neighborhood, Lincoln Park in Chicago. You don't
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: need to go to the wealthy neighborhood. You don't need
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to go to Manhattan for this. This is free to use.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: It is a gift from God, but you got to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: reclaim it in your brain first. So this is thinking,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: this is the thinking that produces ideas, people, that allows
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: ideas to produce creation. Creation can become intellectual property. Come
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: on now. Intellectual property can become ownership. Ownership creates assets.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Asset can create wealth. And financial stability can contribute to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: something even more important, wellness. Quincy Jones once told me,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: God rest his soul, he was my big brother. He said,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: if you think you're in the music business and you
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: don't own music rights, publishing rights, or licensing rights, some
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: kind of rights, intellectual property rights, you actually are not
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: in the music business. You're just a temporary performer. You
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: rock the mic, but you don't own it. Michael Jackson
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: was at one point the most famous, most highly regarded
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: entertainer in the world. And his music was incredibly valuable.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: What was more invaluable? That intellectual property that he acquired,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: including the Beatles catalog, because when he wasn't performing and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: being loud on stage, he was sitting in quiet, thinking
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  Speaker 1: about how to own the stage. Listening, because God gives
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: you two ears and one mouth, so you listen twice
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: as much as you talk. Wellness. This is typically... the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: topic of my wife, Chaitra Bryant, who I'm, well, she's
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: health and she's helped me to sustain my life. She's
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: helped me to extend my life, lower my blood pressure,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: increase my wellness and lower my inflammation. Do you know
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that 75% of all disease lives on inflammation? So I'll
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: bring her on. I'll bring her back on because she's
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: done an episode with me before to talk about the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: power of wellness. But I'm going to just speak to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that in part during this podcast. So today I want
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to talk about something that sounds like it has nothing
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to do with money, but it has everything to do
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: with wealth, and that's the economic power of quiet. So
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: let me just say this. Poverty is louder than money.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: When we talk about poverty in America, we usually talk
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: about income. But poverty isn't simply a shortage of money.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Poverty can be a shortage of margin. You don't have
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: enough room. You don't have enough time. You don't have
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: enough savings. You don't have enough credit. I've been on
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: both spectrums. You don't have enough options. So you start
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: living from a sense of urgency and it's now ready, fire, aim,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a surviving mindset, as I said earlier. And so therefore
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: everything becomes urgent. I recently told my old team, my
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: own team, who's been doing this urgency thing for so long,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: building companies with me, that they let the urgent crowd
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: out the important. I told them to drop the urgent.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I demand that you now focus on the important. At
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: least one day of five days a week. Because that's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: where strategic thinking comes from. See, they're thinking. That's where
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the magic comes from. Otherwise, you're winning the battle and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: losing the war. You're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: The ship is sinking and we're picking drapes. You need
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: time to think. You need time to strategize. You need
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: time to reimagine. You cannot just keep running all the time.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: If you go far enough for the North Pole, you'll
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: end up South. The red is due. The car has
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: broken down. The hours get cut. Your child needs something.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Somebody gets sick. The refrigerator breaks. The landlord calls. The
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: credit card company then calls. You're juggling five problems all
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: at once. Is this sounding familiar? That's noise. I walk
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: through life. This is my personal ethos, people. I'm giving
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: you my personal strategies for winning. It's not out of
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: some book somewhere. It's what I do. I walk through
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: life consciously oblivious of most things around me because it
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: just doesn't matter. The noise just doesn't matter. I just
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: block it all out. It just doesn't matter. And I
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: take no for vitamins. Yeah, you told me no. I'm
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: not focusing on the nine no's. I'm focusing on the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: one yes. That's what I'm listening to. The rest of
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: it is noise. And then there is the actual physical environment.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe three people share a bed. Maybe you're living next
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to a highway. Maybe you hear the neighbor's television through
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the walls. Maybe there are sirens outside. Maybe right now,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: this very moment. Maybe there's instability in the neighborhood. If
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: you grew up in a 500 or live in a 500,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: or sub-September credit score neighborhood, I guarantee you there's instability
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. Maybe you're constantly worried about safety. That's
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: noise too. It's occupying space in your brain. But here's
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the part we don't talk enough about. Financial stress creates
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: noise inside your head. How am I going to pay
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: these bills? How am I going to pay this or that?
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: What happens tomorrow? What if I lose my job? What
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: happens if the car breaks? How do I make it
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: until Friday? That's mental noise. There's a book called The
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Don't listen to it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: It'll drive you crazy. He drones on, but he's genius.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And read the book. It's like, it's crazy. It's long,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: but read it. But essentially the cheat sheet notes I'll
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: give you is yesterday is a memory and doesn't exist.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow's the future and hasn't happened yet. But we spend
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: most of our time, most of us, with one foot anxiety,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: our paralysis of analysis, our lack of faith. Everybody wants
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: to get to heaven. Nobody wants to die to get there.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: We want to believe in God. We want him to
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: prove it first, whatever the it is. That doesn't work
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: that way. Faith is what you do. We don't have
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: all the facts. So we have one foot in yesterday,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: one foot in tomorrow. Neither one of them are true.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: That's why you're not present. That's why they call the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: present a gift. So I learned to be present. And
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the gift I got was more time. You create time
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: when you're present and you create peace. And when your
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: brain spends all day solving or just reacting to emergencies,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: there's less bandwidth left for imagining possibilities. That's why when
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: my friends were going out partying when I was growing up,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize what I was doing at the moment. Hey, John,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: come out and hang with me. Hey, come on. We're
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: going to this club. We're going to this party. It
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: was a lot of noise, a lot of people. I'm
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: thinking to myself, none of that stuff is making me
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: any money. None of that stuff is building me wealth.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not getting paid to be at the club, right?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And all you folks, I'll say to myself, all you
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: guys are broke, or at least not where I'm trying
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to go. I'm going to stay here and study. I'm
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: going to stay here and read a book. I didn't
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: realize what I was doing, but I was building my
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: mental and psychological and spiritual war chest to win. I
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: was doing what the book The Outlier says, which is
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: 10,000 or 20,000 hours above studying anything. I think it's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: 10,000 hours more than what the average person is spending
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: in the course of their life and career just working.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You put 10,000 hours in at another 20 hours a week.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: maximum thinking about studying anything, and you become the NBA
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of that thing, the NBA player, the NFL player. You
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: become a pro athlete at that thing, and no one
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: can compete with you. So survival asks, how do I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: get through today? Creation asks, what can I build tomorrow?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Both are legitimate questions, but they're very different questions, and
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: poverty can trap people in the first one. That's why
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I say, and this was the founding thesis for Operation Hope,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: there's a difference between being broke and being poor. Being
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: broke is economic, but being poor is a disabling frame
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of mind and a depressed condition of your spirit, and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: you must vow never, ever, ever to be poor again.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: What wealth really buys? Let's go back to those wealthy
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: neighborhoods for a minute. Why are they so quiet? Part
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of the answer is obvious. Bigger lots, better insulation in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the houses. That's why I don't hear what's going on
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: with neighbors. Even if the neighbors were having a party,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I would really hear it because they can have their
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: space and I can have mine. And these walls are
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: like hotel construction quality. It's so thick and made of
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: concrete in many places. Better insulation, less density. You know,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: people not on top of each other. More trees, hello,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: which buffers noise. and also creates oxygen. So you're breathing easier,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: green spaces, private offices, gated communities, second homes, retreats, like
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I'm on now, wealth buys control. Now I'm talking about
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: first the wealth of spirit, the wealth of mindset, control
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of your own self, then financial wealth, okay, economic wealth
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: buys physical control. control over your environment, control over your schedule.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: All money is, is freedom. I do what I want,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: when I want, however I want, with whomever I want.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And I don't argue about it. To argue with a fool,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: truths there are too. I'm not arguing with you. I'm
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: just going to say, bye, Felicia. I'm going over here
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and you're going wherever you want to go. You don't
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: have to go, but you got to get the heck
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: out of here because I own the door job and
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I set the rules. So you control your schedule, control
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: your transportation, Control over where you live. Control over who
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: gets access to you. Can I get an amen? Control
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: over your time. I just refuse to hang around toxic people.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Like you ain't gotta go, but you gotta get out
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: of here. Like I refuse to hang around deadbeats and
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: negative people and toxic. Oh God, my God, I'm allergic
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: to toxic people. My God. Control over your environment. Control
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: over your attention. Think about what wealthy people spend money on.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Think about this. Privacy. First class lounges. It's not meant
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: to floss. Wealthy people just want simplicity and the control
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: of their environment. It just looks like they're flossing because
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: it happens to be doing that in, let's say, a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: private plane or a first class cabin. They're really just
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: buying control of their environment. A first class cabin for
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: me is just a mobile office. Private clubs. Spas. Resorts.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Renewing yourself. Retreats, homes on acreage. We have 40 acres,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: buy some more at our place. I just love, I've
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: always wanted to have land, right? And I can walk
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: on it and breathe. And by the way, all that land,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: that green space is restoring me and my family with oxygen.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: It's calming also. Same rules apply there as here in Maui.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Noise canceling headphones. Why? Because peace has economic value. That's why.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Think about it. Successful people spend enormous amounts of money
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: buying do not disturb. Think about it. And maybe they're
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: on to something. Maybe we're on to something. Successful people
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: spend enormous amounts of money and time just trying to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: create their own environment. because your attention is one of
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the most valuable assets you possess. Google knows it. Meta
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: knows it, Facebook. TikTok knows it. YouTube knows it. Advertisers
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: know it. These companies spend billions of dollars figuring out
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: how to get a few more minutes of your attention.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: We're basically in an attention economy. Now think about that,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: your attention. has now been monetized. So here's the question.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: If everybody else understands the economic value of your attention,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: why don't you? What did Malcolm X say? We've been bamboozled.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: We've been tricked. We've been fooled. We've been hoodwinked. We've
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: been run amok. I don't know about you, but I'm
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: sick and tired of being sick and tired. So I'm
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: trying to set you free with financial liberty. That's my
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: little rap. Civil rights. Quiet is a factory for ideas.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Let's connect directly to wealth creation here with this topic.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Where does wealth come from? So before the company, before
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the building, before the factory, by the way, when people,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: this is really important point here, when companies buy a company,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: are they buying the furniture and the fixtures and the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: wall hangings and even the structure? Is that what they're
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: really buying? Are they buying a management team? See what
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I'm saying? You're buying the human capital, the culture, the philosophy,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the net result of folks creating something incredibly unique in
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the quiet of creation. So before the factory, before the stock,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: before the product, there was usually something else. An idea.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: An idea. Think about virtually every great innovation, okay? The automobile,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the airplane, the personal computer, the smartphone, Google, ChatGPT and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. My friend Sam Altman is an innovator there.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: New medicines, new manufacturing techniques, Somebody first imagined something that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: didn't exist. And this is why I find patents so fascinating.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: A patent is essentially a protected, potentially monetizable idea. the
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: product of creation, of mental creation. Thinking. Somebody begins inside
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: their own brain with something called imagination. It weighs nothing.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: You can't touch it. Nobody else even knows it exists.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Then somebody develops it, tests it, protects it, commercializes it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Attorneys wrap legal protections around it and suddenly a thought
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: becomes an asset. Am I going too fast for you?
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: You can always rewind this and replay it. This is
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: one of the most important episodes I've ever done. That
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: asset can be licensed, people. It can attract investment. It
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: can become a company. This is the power. And if
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you can take the power of your thinking and connect
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: it with artificial intelligence, by the way, oh my God,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: what's possible. That's why me and my co-creator partners in
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, my AI agent, we sit in quiet all
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the time. My family's gone a bit, just throwing ideas
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: back and forth, creating things quietly that will make a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: very loud thump when they hit the market. a young
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lady told me, former executive of Coca-Cola, very, very powerful
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: black woman in Atlanta, retired from a prominent position in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: finance there, Vicki Palmer, her and her husband, John Palmer,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: we were at dinner with Ambassador Andrew Young one night.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: She says, you know, you're very quiet. I'm like, huh?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: She says, you do things very quietly. And I'm like,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think most people would agree with you. I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: think most people would say I'm pretty loud. I mean,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: I can't go down the street without somebody stopping me
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and talking about the video that they saw or this
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: or that, which is a blessing, by the way, and
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: how it changed their life. She says, no, that's not
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. You do things, but you've been
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: thinking about those things for a very long time quietly,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and then people hear you did them. You don't talk
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: about them. You just go, do the work quietly. You
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: make the moves, you create the partnerships quietly. And then boom,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: one day, it's a reality that other people hear about.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And then you amplify the lessons of that through your podcast,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: your straight talk, all videos, your books, et cetera. And
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you have really gotten me figured out.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a really private person living a very public life.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: So here we go, this idea becomes a company and
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: it creates jobs, it can create an industry, it can
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: create enormous wealth, right? So that's the story of many
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of the companies I created from an idea to, in
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: one case, a company I sold for nine figures and,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a company that took me five years,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: there's another company I created after that, that doubled the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: asset size of the company, it took five years to do,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: we did that in five months. What took me five
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: months with this Nugent partnership with CIM Group, $ 30 billion
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: company out of LA, the CIM BGG Impact Ventures and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the fund that we're creating, a billion dollar fund raised
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: $ 350 million, $ 315 million so far, but we raised $ 250
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: million in five months. But it took me five years
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to create the last company to get it to $ 150
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: million of assets, sell that company for $ 120 million, most
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: of my interest in that company. transition job at that
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: company now. But that's the power of compounding lessons learned
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: and honing my intellectual property development process in my head,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: going from good to great. So human imagination becomes economic output.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: That's extraordinary when you think about it. And where does
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: imagination often do its best work when you're not constantly
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: being interrupted. Quincy Jones again told me that he puts
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: together the greatest musicians and the greatest music in the
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: studio and everybody's talking and then at some point everybody
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: goes quiet and he sits at the piano and he
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: cracks the door, leans his head to one, tilts his
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: head to one side and leaves the door cracked. I said, why?
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm listening. For what? I'm waiting for God
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to walk in. The magic of the music ultimately is
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: created in the quiet of God's voice whispering in his ear,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: even if we did all of that other stuff with
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: all those brilliant people in the room. So when you're walking, reading, writing, thinking, reflecting, sitting.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Quiet is not inactivity. Quiet can be a factory for
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: your ideas when you're doing these things, normal things. You
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: don't need to sit like a Buddhist monk. You can
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: go on about your life like listening to this podcast.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: You can't listen to this podcast and have 15 other
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: things going on whispering in your ear at the same time.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: That's why you have your headphones on or why you're
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: listening in your car or while you're cooking or while
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: you're gardening or while you're jogging or working out. You
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: need a focused environment so you can listen and learn.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about nations for a minute. Let's look at
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the many countries generating enormous amounts of intellectual property and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: patent activity. The United States of America. legitimate patents, China,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: not really patents, they're really knocking off our stuff, but
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I'll give them props for a lot of creativity. Japan,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: South Korea, Germany. Then look at the greatest, the great
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: industrial and economic powers of the world. You see the
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: same country. So that's the countries, you know, doing all
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: this patent work, right? Now let's see, if we can
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: be precise. I'm not saying patents automatically create GDP, gross
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: domestic product. They don't. And correlation is not causation. Strong
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: economies also require education, right? Infrastructure, capital, research universities, rule
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of law, markets, entrepreneurship, talent, manufacturing, self-determination, the ability to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: benefit from your Creations capitalism responsible capitalism good capitalism is
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about my book capitalism for all number
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: one bestseller By the way, thank you very much five
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: months going But here's what the relationship tells me great
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: economies create They don't just consume which is why America
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: is gonna have to get a reboot on our business
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: plan in quick They don't sit in conflict all the time. Hello.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants to be an American but Americans and They invent,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: they experiment, they improve, they commercialize, yes, and most importantly,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: they own. This is why I believe one of the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: greatest natural resources America possesses isn't underneath the ground, it's
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: between our ears, it's us. It is unlike oil, it
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: never runs out. Gold is finite, land is finite, human
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: imagination is renewable, and because of God, it is unlimited.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Every child born in America represents potential intellectual property, human capital, literally,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: potential innovation, potential entrepreneurship, potential GDP, gross domestic product, which
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: means when we leave millions of children trapped in environments
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: where they cannot develop their potential. We're not simply failing
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: those children. America is leaving GDP on the table and
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: failing itself. That's why I wrote the book, Capitalism for All.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: It's not just a story. I know this podcast is
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: listened to all around the world. Thank you for making
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: it top 70 for entrepreneurship in every continent, top 250
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: for business on every continent. This is not just an
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: American story. but I live here, I'm an American product,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and we're still the light on the hill for the world,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: but this is gonna be replicated everywhere in the world.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I believe there's nothing wrong with work. Labor makes a living,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: ownership builds wealth. There's nothing wrong with work. Everybody needs
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: to work. Only in the dictionary does the word success
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: come before the word work because it's alphabetical. So I
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: believe in work. An entrepreneur works 18 hours a day
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: to keep from getting a job. I believe in work. Hmm.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Work creates dignity. Work creates discipline. Work puts food on
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the table. But eventually you've got to understand the difference
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: between labor and capital. Labor gets paid when labor works.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Capital can continue working when you stop and gets paid
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: when you sleep. I've said this another way. Money makes
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: more money on money than labor can ever make money
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: on sweat. I'll say it again. Money makes more money
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: on money than labor can ever make money on sweat.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean stop working. No, no, no, no. Never that.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: And don't start playing games either because there are no
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: shortcuts to success. If somebody gives you a free lunch,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: it's probably stale. It means don't stop the work and
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: don't stop at work. get the job, develop the skills,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: increase your income, improve your credit, okay? I want you
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: to create some savings, acquire assets, start investing, build something,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: create an intellectual property or two or three, own equity,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: build up the ladder, and move up the ladder from
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: cashing a check to writing it, just like me. Worker, creator, owner, investor, capitalist.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: I'll say it again. Worker, creator, owner, investor, capitalist. From
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: cashing the check, starting on endorsing it, to writing it,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: front of the check versus the back. That's the journey.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Too many underserved communities have been taught only the first instruction.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Get the job, cash the check. Absolutely do that. But
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: then what? The job should become a platform, not a ceiling.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Use labor to acquire capital. Use capital to acquire assets.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Then let assets begin working alongside you. That's why I
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: use intellectual AI as my co-creator alongside me. Because when
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: you own the business, the business can potentially understand earn
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: while you're sleeping. You make money during the day, Tony
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Ressler advice, you build wealth in your sleep. Real estate
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't punch a clock. Equity doesn't need a lunch break.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Intellectual property doesn't need a vacation. That's ownership. Your phone
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: can turn a mansion into a poor neighborhood. Now here's
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the modern problem. You can escape physical noise and still
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: have a noisy mind. You can live in a $ 10
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: million house and carry a poor neighborhood around in your pocket.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Or worse, in your brain. Yes, I said it. It's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: your phone. It can be a smartphone or it can
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: make you really dumb. It can be a dumb phone.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of people use the smartphone in really dumb ways. Ding, ding, ding, email, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: text message, breaking news, notifications. Somebody's angry. Somebody got divorced.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Somebody got a Lamborghini. Somebody said something stupid. Said something
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: about some politician. Some politician said something about somebody else.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Some celebrity did something. And now you've got invited to
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: other people's business. You've invited the entire planet into your
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: nervous system. And no one's paying you a dollar for it.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: In fact, in an attention economy, they just monetized you
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and you get nothing for it. I am ruthless about
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: my time. I don't let anybody consciously waste my time.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: You can waste my money. You can't waste my time.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Only I can do that. Now that's gangster. Your phone
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: can turn a mansion into a noisy neighborhood. It's the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: mansion of your mind. That's why This isn't ultimately about geography.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: It's about attention and intention. If you spend all day
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: consuming everybody else's ideas, when do you create your own?
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: When do you have time for your own? If you
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: spend all day watching somebody else's life, when do you
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: build yours? I've often said, go to a poor neighborhood.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Everybody's talking about somebody else. Go to a wealthy neighborhood.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: People are talking about their ideas. It doesn't matter the race, mindset.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: If you spend every waking moment reacting, when do you reflect?
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: If you're reacting, you can't respond because those are two
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: different emotions. If you're making an emotional decision, it's probably
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a bad one. Noise doesn't merely consume time. Noise consumes imagination.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: And there is a war being fought for your attention.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Protect it. the 500 credit score versus 700 credit score neighborhood.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: But this isn't just about money. It's about, as I
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: said earlier, wellness. At Operation Hope, and we have a
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: wellness advisor at Operation Hope. It's my wife, Chaitra Bryant.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: She donates her time. She's not paid. She's an unpaid
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: advisor at Operation Hope on health wellness. She's certified in it.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: She's a registered dietician, has all these certifications and degrees,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: and is brilliant at it. We spent years looking at
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: the financial health of communities. And now we think there's
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: correlation between wealth and health. And one of the most
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: powerful indicators we've focused on is a credit score, of course.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Not because the credit score is perfect, it's not, but
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: because it tells you a lot about the economic ecosystem
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: surrounding a household and a community. It's a trending indicator
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: of hope, well-being, belief, confidence, joy, faith, et cetera. Think
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: about two communities, right? Community A, 500 to sub 600
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: credit score neighborhood, what might you find? Higher financial stress,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: higher interest rates, more subprime loans, more check cashers, more
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: payday loan lenders, more rent to own stores, more renters
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: versus owners of property, less access to affordable capital, greater instability,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: more financial emergencies, more people using the emergency room as
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: their healthcare, more frequently More noise. Now drive to a
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: 700 credit score neighborhood. It's a short distance, typically maybe
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: 15 minutes. Go to my Hope Financial Wellness Index. Just
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: look up a zip code. You tell me your zip code,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you how you live it, right? You'll be stunned.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: It literally, changing your environment will change your life. So
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: now you've driven to a 700 credit score neighborhood and
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: what changes? More homeowners, more banking relationships, Lower borrowing costs.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: More access to mainstream capital. More businesses. More stability. More options.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: More financial margin. And often, more quiet. Just like this.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Where I'm at now. And here's where this becomes much
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: bigger than money. Okay, now we've seen extraordinary life expectancy
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: gaps between distressed communities and financially thriving ones. In some comparisons,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: it's literally 15 to 20 year or more difference, 15
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: minutes apart. Now think about that, okay? So Quiet has
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: a health premium, 20 years. Now your credit score isn't,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: magically determining how long you're going to live. That's not
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. The credit score is a trending indicator
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of the ecosystem. It reflects things happening all around you. Income, debt, housing, education, employment, safety, stress.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: What's the number one cause for death in America? Heart attacks.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: What's the number one cause for heart attacks? Stress. What's
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the number one cause for stress? Money. Right? Number one
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: cause for divorce? Money. Number one cause for domestic abuse? Money.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Access to healthcare, right? Food choices, access to capital, opportunity. Again,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: end stress. Don't underestimate stress. Let's talk about disease now
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and dis-ease. A lot of disease is dis-ease. Your body's 70% water.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: What happens when you get all worked up and angry?
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: You're heating up that water. You're burning yourself up. You're
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: frying your organs. Get another topic another day with shapes. Troy.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Come back into this. Think about chronic financial stress. You're
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: worried about rent, worried about food, worried about your children,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: worried about the car, worried about your job, worried about crime,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: worried about tomorrow. You go to sleep worried. You wake
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: up worried. You look old because you're worrying all the time. Look,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: if you're going to pray, why worry? If you're going
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to worry, why pray? I mean, look, just give it
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: to God and do the best and let God do
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the rest. Just give it to him. Don't, I mean,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: don't make yourself look old and tired and worn out
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and you haven't given God a shot or faith a shot.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: People say, why should I try God? Because he cannot
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: possibly mismanage and screw up your life worse than you have.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Give him a shot. Your body doesn't know whether the
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: threat is a tiger chasing you or a Visa bill
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: chasing you or MasterCard bill chasing you. It just knows
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: that your nervous system is shot. It knows that something's
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: a threat. And when the stress becomes chronic, that's not
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: simply an economic problem. That's a wellness problem. And this
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: is why health and wealth should never have been separated
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: in the first place. Financial stability creates options, right? Better housing,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: better food, fruits and vegetables, you know, quality food. We've
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: been eating fabulous, fresh food right out of the ocean.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: You feel different. I don't even want to eat fast
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: food anymore, right? I do it when I have to,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: but when I have no choice late at night, you know,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: driver's taking me someplace, I'll put it into a fast
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: food restaurant. I have a couple of favorites when I
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: do that, but they don't balance their quality. But I
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: try to eat real food these days. And that was
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: not always me. This is a new reality based on
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: more education and more knowledge, which I got from reading
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: when I had quiet and time. So we're talking about
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: preventive health, not just reactive, stressful health scares. Exercise, sleep, vacations, retreats,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: green space, walking. On the beach, putting your fingers and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: your toes in the soil. Time with your children. Time
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: with your mate. And something we rarely put on the list,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: time with yourself. Peace, quiet, margin for error. I mean,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: what's the whole point of this? To become reasonably comfortable
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: in your own skin is my goal. Nobody's perfect. But
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to become reasonably comfortable in your own skin is a
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: powerful thing. Because if I don't like me, I'm not
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna feel good about you. If I don't
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: love me, I don't have a clue how to love you.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: And if I don't respect me, I'm not gonna respect you.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Somebody's listening to this and says, John, that's easy for
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: you to say, you're sitting in paradise. Fair enough, but
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you don't need Maui. I did it without Maui until
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I got here, until I was able to afford to
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: get here in the first place. You need intentional quiet. Fine,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes. Start there. Start with 15. Maybe before your
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: family wakes up in the morning, crack a book. Maybe
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the Bible. Maybe my book, Capitalism for All. Who knows? Whatever.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Find a book. Read it. Or just meditate or just
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: sit in silence. Maybe in your car if you can't
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: find times before the family wakes up. Maybe walking to work.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe at the library. Maybe on a break. maybe in
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: a park, maybe at a church, turn off your phone.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Turn off the television. No social media, no news, no gossip.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Take out a notebook and ask yourself some questions. What
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: problems do I understand that other people don't? What frustrates
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: me that could be done better? There's a point to this.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Stay with me. What skill do I have that somebody
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: would pay for? What could I create once and sell repeatedly?
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: What could I own instead of consume? What could become
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: intellectual property and owned by me? What idea have I
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: been ignoring and my favorite? What is my future trying
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: to tell me that my present is too loud for
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: me to hear? Drop the mic. What are you passionate about?
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: What's your purpose? What are you here for? You're not
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: here just to pay bills. You're not here just to struggle.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: The Bible suggests that you can't grow without legitimate suffering.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: So don't walk away from your pain or run away
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: from it. Run right through it. But your pain has
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: a purpose. It's not meant to just be painful. It's
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: meant to teach you something. That's the whole point of
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: all this is to learn. So just sit there in
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: that moment and ask yourself that question again. What is
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: my future trying to tell me that my present is
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: too loud for me to hear? And don't rush the answer. Think.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Let it come to you. Sit in silence for a minute. Oh,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I love the silence, the power and majesty of silence.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: Because that 30 minutes might ultimately be more economically valuable
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: than 30 hours of activity. and busyness. Let me close
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: this up. We've been talking for too long. I've been
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: talking for too long. You know, you never want to
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: meet an old guy in the club. So before you
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: all get me out of this, I'm going to leave.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: You take life seriously, by the way. Never take yourself
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: too seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself all the time.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: It's very therapeutic. So sitting here in Maui reminded me
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: of something else. I grew up around noise. Today I've
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: learned to treasure quiet, But this episode was never really
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: about noise. It's about your human potential. And I'm all
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: about untapping, untapped human, about unleashing, sorry, untapped human potential
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: at scale. That's what my website, Brian McVendrew says, is
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: my value proposition. That is the overriding theme of all
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: my businesses tied to good capitalism. Because somewhere right now,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: there's a child sitting in a 500 credit score neighborhood
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: with a billion dollar idea in their head. They need
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: a partner. They need a mentor. They need a sponsor.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: They need a friend. They need somebody to listen to them.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: They need somebody to help them create quiet in their
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: brain so they can create magic for us all. There's
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: somebody driving a bus with an idea right now. There's
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: somebody working at Walmart with an idea, a powerful one
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: right now. Somebody waiting a table with an idea Right now,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: somebody sitting in a community college classroom with a powerful
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: idea right now. Somebody listening to this podcast right now
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: with an idea. And that idea might become a business,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: a book, a patent, an app, a new product, a solution,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: a movement. a mind shift of AI, an asset, but
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: first you've got to hear it. That's why God gave
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you two out, two ears and one mouth, so you
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: listen twice as much as you talk. And that requires
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: something really rare, right? But achievable and cost-free. Quiet. So
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: here's the whole journey. Stability creates margin. Margin creates quiet.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Quiet creates space to think. Thinking produces ideas. Ideas produce creation.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Creation can produce intellectual property. Intellectual property creates ownership. Ownership
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: creates assets. Assets can create wealth. Wealth creates greater choice
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: and stability. Stability can support wellness. Wellness can contribute to longevity.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: And now you have more control over your whole life.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: By the way, you can take that through a financial
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: lens or a wellness lens. In other words, this doesn't
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: have to have anything to do with money. And that
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: cycle still works. And then the cycle begins again. That's
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: the virtuous circle. And the opposite can become a vicious circle. Instability, noise, stress, reaction,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: poor decisions, less ownership, financial insecurity, more stress, death prematurely.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Our job is to break that cycle, people. That's what
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: financial literacy is really about. That's why I call it
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: the civil rights issue of this generation. That's why I
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: want you to learn what capitalism for all is, the book,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: the philosophy. It's not a book. Somebody told me it's
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: not a read book. It's a work book. It's a
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: think book. It's a mark it up book. It's a
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: read it again book. Let's start a movement. civil rights
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: to silver rights from the streets to the suites. The
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Third Reconstruction. The Ownership generation. That's what inclusive economics is
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: really about that I created. Not making poor people comfortable
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: in poverty, creating more owners, more inventors, more entrepreneurs, more investors,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: more healthy families, more peaceful communities, less depression, and more
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: people with enough economic security to dream again. What did
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Dorothy Height tell me, the late Dr. Dorothy Height? John,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: I like you because you're a dreamer with a shovel
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: in your hand. Because the greatest asset you own may
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: not be your house, although I want you to own
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: a house. It may not be a stock portfolio, although
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: I want you to have a stock portfolio. It may
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: not be your bank account, you better have one of those.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: and an FDIC insured bank. It may be your imagination,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: so protect it. Give it space, give it time, give
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: it quiet and give it grace. And when the idea comes,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: build it, protect it, patent it if appropriate, finance it,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: sell it, scale it, and most importantly, own it. Because
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: poverty can keep you busy. Labor can make you a living.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Creation can make you an owner. Ownership can create wealth.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Wealth can create choices, and those choices can help you
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: create a healthier, more peaceful life. It might just bring
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you to Maui, and you might be the neighbor next
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: door in the villa they've yet to build. Wealth whispers
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and asks you, are you dreaming yet? Make sure your
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: life gets quiet enough that you can hear that dream.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I'm John Hope Bryant. This is Money and Wealth on
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. This is season three.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to me and coming along on this
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: journey with me every week and pass this on to
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: a friend. This may be one of the most important
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: episodes I've ever done, at least from my perspective. And
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take you proudly with me all around
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: the world this year and next. And I'm not going
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: to again try to create this beautiful, perfect set that
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: I so admire that other people have. It may be
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: a little raggedy sometimes. It may be, you know, not
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: as a beautiful setting as this is. It may be
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: noisier than you like. I'm sorry if I can't perfect
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: every moment and place and space. But I'm going to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: give you the benefit of the quiet of my focused
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: attention on you Every single time. I'm out. Get the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: podcast to others as a referral. Get the book for yourself,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Capitalism for All, my seventh. Get one of the AI,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: the AI agent that Hope AI created. Van Jones and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I have co-chair Hope AI. Wait for powerful stuff coming
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: from Sam Altman and I and the AI Ethics Council.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Stand by for that. Think about the Hope Global Forum
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: coming up. Go to Operation Hope. Sign up for the work.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Check out what my businesses are doing at Brian Group Ventures.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: You can sign up, and I won't overwhelm you with noise.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I'm out. John O'Brien. This is Money and Wealth. Money
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.