Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / How John Hope Bryant Built a Non-Profit Powerhouse

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How John Hope Bryant Built a Non-Profit Powerhouse · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

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Speaker 1: Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
0:49
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio Yo Yo
1:01
Speaker 1: Yo is John O'Brien and again, Money and Wealth is
1:06
Speaker 1: the series and the topic today. It's something I've never
1:11
Speaker 1: really talked about. It's something I've never unpacked, but I'm
1:16
Speaker 1: going to unpack it with you today. It's how I
1:21
Speaker 1: created a seventy five million dollar a year national nonprofit
1:27
Speaker 1: organization that, in many people's minds is a bit of
1:31
Speaker 1: a powerhouse for financial inclusion and financial literacy and economic empowerment.
1:39
Speaker 1: You may hear the announcements and press releases and things
1:43
Speaker 1: like that, but I'm going to unpack, and as I've
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Speaker 1: said I'm going to do with the entire series in
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Speaker 1: this podcast these podcast episodes, is to unpack and demystify
1:59
Speaker 1: the how, the what, the who to less degree the why.
2:04
Speaker 1: We sort of know why though I get in a
2:07
Speaker 1: bit of that, but I'm going to get you into
2:09
Speaker 1: the wheelhouse of what I did thirty two years ago
2:15
Speaker 1: in founding Operational. But I've created sixty different entities and
2:19
Speaker 1: I'm happy to unpack the other entities. If any of
2:23
Speaker 1: those are of interest to you, just send me a
2:25
Speaker 1: note on social media to me and my team and
2:27
Speaker 1: let me know the ideas you have of what you'd
2:29
Speaker 1: like me to talk about. I've talked about the Promise
2:31
Speaker 1: Homes Company, before, which I substantially sold a few years ago.
2:36
Speaker 1: I still own any interest in that. That's the company
2:39
Speaker 1: that owned seven bought, you know, seven hundred homes and
2:43
Speaker 1: from Atlanta through North Florida. I walked through that, but
2:47
Speaker 1: I'm happy to go into detail there. There's my other ventures.
2:52
Speaker 1: I won't go through them. But today I want to
2:55
Speaker 1: unpack the nonprofit which most people know me through, which
3:00
Speaker 1: is really my passion. I believe financial literacy it's the
3:05
Speaker 1: civil rights issue of this generation. I believe, and I
3:09
Speaker 1: say this respectfully and humbly. I believe this is what
3:11
Speaker 1: doctor King would be doing if he was still alive today.
3:14
Speaker 1: I believe this is a game changer for this generation.
3:19
Speaker 1: Is as important as the right to vote. But none
3:22
Speaker 1: of that is the reason that Operation Hope has become
3:30
Speaker 1: this behemoth. Let me take you back to its founding.
3:34
Speaker 1: But let me start by making something clear. I say
3:37
Speaker 1: it several times in different interviews, but I'm going to
3:43
Speaker 1: make it claim and make this clear. With regard to
3:45
Speaker 1: my own enterprises, business is not personal. Whenever you make
3:51
Speaker 1: an emotional decision, it's going to be a bad one.
3:56
Speaker 1: So please know that with a nonprofit corporation, it is
4:01
Speaker 1: a corporation. It's not a plaything. It's not a toy,
4:04
Speaker 1: and you don't own it. Here's here's a wake up call.
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Speaker 1: I founded Operation Hope. I gave it its original money. I
4:12
Speaker 1: birthed it, I created it incorporation documents. I'm the founder, chairman,
4:16
Speaker 1: and chief executive officer. I took my money from my
4:20
Speaker 1: for profit and gave it to lent it to my nonprofit.
4:23
Speaker 1: Gave some of it to my nonprofit and lent some
4:25
Speaker 1: of it to the nonprofit which I expected that money
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Speaker 1: to come back to me. Most of it was a gift,
4:31
Speaker 1: an intended gift, but a gift. But I don't own
4:36
Speaker 1: this nonprofit. It's actually Operation Hope is owned by the
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Speaker 1: American public because it's a five o' one C three
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Speaker 1: nonprofit corporation. Now it is a corporation, just like Netflix
4:51
Speaker 1: is a corporation. It's a corporation, just like Tyler Perry
4:58
Speaker 1: Studios is a corporation. It is a corporation just like
5:05
Speaker 1: any other for profit entity. The difference is that when
5:10
Speaker 1: you apply for a tax exempt status for that corporation
5:15
Speaker 1: in order to not pay taxes on revenue and income
5:20
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, transactions to be tax exempt. You
5:25
Speaker 1: have to have a purpose that is for the public,
5:28
Speaker 1: public purpose, and the shareholder stops being you the individual.
5:36
Speaker 1: Please pay attention to this. This is very important. I
5:38
Speaker 1: don't want you end up in prison. I don't want
5:40
Speaker 1: anybody here listening to this to end up in bad
5:43
Speaker 1: stayed with the federal government, particularly the irs. This is
5:47
Speaker 1: so important to get this right. When you have a
5:50
Speaker 1: for profit corporation and you're the shareholder and you take
5:56
Speaker 1: the risk and you get an it does well and
6:01
Speaker 1: it's profitable, depending on the shareholder agreements and the kind
6:05
Speaker 1: of shares that you have, and whether you're the sole shareholder,
6:08
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Theoretically that money is yours.
6:14
Speaker 1: You take it out as you see fit to take
6:16
Speaker 1: it out in the form of salary, take it out
6:18
Speaker 1: in the form of a loan. You can invest it,
6:24
Speaker 1: you know you can. You can sell the company, you
6:26
Speaker 1: can sell your shares, you can dilute the shares, do
6:29
Speaker 1: whatever you want. You are a shareholder in a for
6:33
Speaker 1: profit enterprise. But when you run a five O one
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Speaker 1: C three, in my case five O one C three nonprofit,
6:40
Speaker 1: it starts out as a normal corporation. Use an apply
6:43
Speaker 1: to the internal revenue service or tax exempt status. And
6:49
Speaker 1: if they grant that status, you become a different entity,
6:55
Speaker 1: no different than I said. The institution of marriage existed
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Speaker 1: three thousand years before I start a lord and dowbed
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Speaker 1: it with spiritual dimensions. It existed as an agreement to
7:06
Speaker 1: protect wealth, and then it became spiritually endowed. Of course,
7:10
Speaker 1: we know the life of Jesus and so on and
7:12
Speaker 1: so forth, and now it is a different thing, rightly so,
7:17
Speaker 1: But it started out as a contract. Similarly, by the way,
7:22
Speaker 1: what I just told you was literally true. I've talked
7:25
Speaker 1: about that several times. How marriages, it started out as
7:28
Speaker 1: a business agreement. If you think about the royal houses
7:31
Speaker 1: in Europe, and you had two family members effectively marrying
7:37
Speaker 1: each other, sort of disgusting, but anyway, two family members
7:40
Speaker 1: marrying each other, they didn't even live any the same
7:44
Speaker 1: castles with the same rooms sometimes where they were protecting
7:47
Speaker 1: the assets of the family. That's why they that's why
7:51
Speaker 1: one royal house would marry another royal house. Was it
7:53
Speaker 1: back then for love? So in this case, you start
7:58
Speaker 1: out as a for profit corporation they read generic corporate entity,
8:04
Speaker 1: a sea corporates, corpor whatever, and you request TAXESIMP status
8:10
Speaker 1: from the federal government. Now when you do that, and
8:13
Speaker 1: it gives you this taxes simps, and there are different
8:15
Speaker 1: types of tax exemption, so you research that yourself. By
8:18
Speaker 1: the way, a church is another form of a tax
8:21
Speaker 1: exempt organization, but let's stay focused. Mine is a five
8:24
Speaker 1: oh one C three nonprofit organization the minute, And by
8:28
Speaker 1: the way, if it's pending, if your TAXIXIP standing status
8:32
Speaker 1: is pending, you can take that corporation and go to
8:36
Speaker 1: somebody else who has an existing nonprofit and they can
8:39
Speaker 1: host your nonprofit. I've done this for several entities, people
8:42
Speaker 1: like trust. You got to be a trust of people
8:44
Speaker 1: who bring you this. But I have hosted other nonprofits
8:46
Speaker 1: who are trying to get their TAXESIP status, so tax
8:49
Speaker 1: exempt status, so folks who want to donate to them
8:51
Speaker 1: can send them money to Joe's feeding pantry through Operation Hope.
8:58
Speaker 1: And we're a bit of the care taker where we're
9:01
Speaker 1: carrying the money in trust and the folks making the
9:06
Speaker 1: contribution still get their tax exempt status even though they
9:11
Speaker 1: get their tax where they get their their the benefit
9:14
Speaker 1: of their tax contribution, the charitable contribution of which they
9:19
Speaker 1: then write off their taxes because they're sending the money
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Speaker 1: to Operation Hope, which is tax exempt, even though the
9:25
Speaker 1: entity that they are trying to donate two is still
9:28
Speaker 1: pending with the i R. S now back to the story.
9:32
Speaker 1: Once you make something a tax exempt like that, you
9:35
Speaker 1: no longer own it. You have traded a benefit, You've
9:38
Speaker 1: traded your interests, your ownership of that entity for the
9:43
Speaker 1: public good. And now you're talking on the public good
9:46
Speaker 1: versus your own good, you and you. And as a
9:49
Speaker 1: result of that, because the money is not folowing to you,
9:51
Speaker 1: the interest is not folowing to you, you don't want
9:53
Speaker 1: the taxes to be owed by you either. And the
9:55
Speaker 1: government says, well, you're doing good work. We're going to
9:57
Speaker 1: give you a We're going to give you a break,
10:00
Speaker 1: a pass on any earnings you make when I got
10:04
Speaker 1: to charge you with that. And on top of that,
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Speaker 1: we're going to give those who donate you money a benefit,
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Speaker 1: a TAXI ship status for their donation, their contribution. Why
10:14
Speaker 1: am I telling you this? I have some rules at
10:16
Speaker 1: Operation Hope. One of the rules, and I've had these
10:20
Speaker 1: rules for thirty two years. I can benefit my nonprofit,
10:26
Speaker 1: but my nonprofit cannot be seen is benefiting me now?
10:30
Speaker 1: I didn't say my nonprofit couldn't benefit me. I went
10:33
Speaker 1: further and said, my nonprofit cannot be seen perceived as
10:38
Speaker 1: benefiting me. Right. I've also said, don't do anything you
10:44
Speaker 1: don't want to see you on the front page of
10:46
Speaker 1: the New York Times in five years. Don't put me
10:49
Speaker 1: in a limousine by accident, in charge of the Operation Hope.
10:54
Speaker 1: Don't put me in some luxury hotel suite in charge
10:59
Speaker 1: it to Operation Hope. Don't buy me a first class
11:02
Speaker 1: plane ticket with rack rate in charge of the Operation Hope.
11:06
Speaker 1: So we have policies for travel. Right. I used to
11:09
Speaker 1: travel for years and years and years. I traveled cheap, cheap,
11:12
Speaker 1: chief coach. Right. I remember one ticket trip I took
11:18
Speaker 1: early and they found against sherut of Operation Hope. Rachel
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Speaker 1: my chief of staff now for thirty plus years. She's
11:24
Speaker 1: an amazing human being. She was trying to save some money,
11:27
Speaker 1: so she put me this on when we lived in La.
11:29
Speaker 1: I lived in La She put me on this plane
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Speaker 1: that was going someplace in the US, but for some reason,
11:34
Speaker 1: it detoured to the South America, went through Mexico on
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Speaker 1: his way. It was a cheap, very cheap ticket, and
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Speaker 1: it was a chicken underneath my seat in my coach seat.
11:47
Speaker 1: My feet were already my knees were already at my chest,
11:50
Speaker 1: but there was a chicken book book book underneath the seat,
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Speaker 1: and boy, I let Rachel have it. But she's like, hey, you'
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Speaker 1: to only to find the best, the best, the cheapest ticket,
12:01
Speaker 1: and I didn't. They'll be bad at me because I
12:03
Speaker 1: did my job. We've had so much fun and so
12:06
Speaker 1: many fans and familius memories over these uh these thirty
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Speaker 1: two two years, and we don't have time. I'm now,
12:12
Speaker 1: it's not our accounting this. We won't have time to
12:14
Speaker 1: get through all this on this one podcast. But I
12:16
Speaker 1: hope you like this. I hope this is enjoy enjoyable.
12:18
Speaker 1: I'll try to get some lefts through these key lessons
12:21
Speaker 1: for you of dos and don't and then maybe you
12:24
Speaker 1: have to come back and do part two. You'll tell
12:26
Speaker 1: me whether you're too bored with part one for me
12:27
Speaker 1: to do part two. But I'm happy to go deeper
12:30
Speaker 1: into this. So never do anything you don't want to
12:33
Speaker 1: see you on the front page of the New York
12:35
Speaker 1: Times in five years. So if so, as Rod McGrew,
12:38
Speaker 1: my dear friend would say, think three times in that once.
12:40
Speaker 1: If you think about something and it doesn't sound right
12:43
Speaker 1: to you, and you got to think about it again,
12:45
Speaker 1: think about it a third time, you probably shouldn't do it.
12:49
Speaker 1: It's probably going to end up badly if something is
12:52
Speaker 1: to your benefit. I have an expense report, not an
12:56
Speaker 1: expense account. There's a difference. I don't carry the corporation's
13:02
Speaker 1: credit card. I use my credit card and I'm reimbursed
13:05
Speaker 1: by the company for the company's expenses. Is my nonprofit,
13:09
Speaker 1: I don't have an expense account. An expense account means
13:13
Speaker 1: that you have an account with the corporation. It allocates
13:19
Speaker 1: certain monies to you for whatever, and you just have
13:22
Speaker 1: to account for the monies that are being allocated to you.
13:25
Speaker 1: But when it's a five O one C three charitable nonprofit,
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Speaker 1: you're using the public's money and you cannot use that
13:32
Speaker 1: money like it's your own, because well it's not your own,
13:37
Speaker 1: right and you can go to jail. Have drive your attention. Now,
13:43
Speaker 1: you can go to the popo, you can go to prison,
13:47
Speaker 1: and you can go to jail. Which one's worse. Now
13:51
Speaker 1: go to jail, yeah, jail. Then you can go to prison.
13:55
Speaker 1: If you are seeing it's a felony to defraud the
14:00
Speaker 1: public funds to a charitable five oh one C three nonprofit.
14:04
Speaker 1: There have been many nonprofit founders who have gone to
14:08
Speaker 1: jail because they thought that the money they were using,
14:13
Speaker 1: they treated it as if it's there all. So I'm
14:18
Speaker 1: paranoid about certain things. These are some frameworks that you have.
14:21
Speaker 1: I know, I'm a black man in America. So I've
14:23
Speaker 1: got to be twice as twice as intelligence, twice as honest,
14:26
Speaker 1: twice as smartket twice as early staid, twice as late work,
14:29
Speaker 1: twice as hard, have twice as much integrity. And that's fine.
14:32
Speaker 1: Haters make me better, but no one's harder on me
14:36
Speaker 1: than I am. So I just make sure I take
14:39
Speaker 1: care of the business. So I run this nonprofit like
14:44
Speaker 1: a for profit. Did you hear me? Even though it's
14:47
Speaker 1: not my for profit. We have have a ratio at
15:02
Speaker 1: Operation Hope. That's uh that well, it's the expense ratio.
15:06
Speaker 1: So I'm getting to But on Wall Street, you a
15:10
Speaker 1: for profit company is judged through bond ratings, so you
15:14
Speaker 1: have a triple A bond ratings or you know, double
15:17
Speaker 1: A bond rating. But there are companies that rate the
15:21
Speaker 1: quality of your debt, the quality of your you know,
15:24
Speaker 1: the quality of your company. And it's a public facing rating.
15:29
Speaker 1: In the nonprofit world, you have a couple entities that
15:33
Speaker 1: do the similar a similar thing. This one that we
15:36
Speaker 1: use is called Charity Navigator, and their top rating is
15:40
Speaker 1: a four star and we've had a four star Charity
15:45
Speaker 1: Navigator rating for over a dozen years now, it's over
15:48
Speaker 1: ten years now, I think it's eleven. And that means
15:52
Speaker 1: in short that in order to hit that rating at
15:55
Speaker 1: there's several benchmarks, but one of them is that basically
15:59
Speaker 1: about eighty eight eight cents of every dollar that comes
16:02
Speaker 1: into Operation Hope. So the dollar comes into Operation Hope,
16:05
Speaker 1: and eighty eight cents goes to the mission, do you
16:08
Speaker 1: hear me? So it's not shopping, it's not partying, it's
16:11
Speaker 1: not not launching, restauranting. You know, it's not. No, it
16:17
Speaker 1: is the eighty eight cents of every dollar goes to
16:21
Speaker 1: in our case, coaching, counseling, supporting the mission, and twelve
16:25
Speaker 1: cents of that dollar goes for useless things like me
16:29
Speaker 1: and to a lessergree, my senior management team. So that's
16:33
Speaker 1: called a very efficient nonprofit. You don't want to have
16:36
Speaker 1: a nonprofit that has a bad efficiency rating. You don't
16:39
Speaker 1: want to have a nonprofit where sixty or eight cents
16:42
Speaker 1: of every dollar is being used for administration, for salaries,
16:46
Speaker 1: for fluff, and twenty twenty five percent is actually going
16:50
Speaker 1: to the mission. It should sound sort of obvious, but
16:53
Speaker 1: people don't think about that for some reason, even a
16:56
Speaker 1: nonprofit where fifty cents on the dollar is going to
16:59
Speaker 1: the mission, since on the dollars going to somebody's pocket
17:02
Speaker 1: or the expenstory administrative expenses is actually not a good thing.
17:07
Speaker 1: So you should want to aim for, you know, somewhere
17:11
Speaker 1: above seventy cents of every dollar. I believe should be
17:13
Speaker 1: more like eighty five cents plus of every dollar it
17:16
Speaker 1: goes to the mission. As a result of us having
17:20
Speaker 1: eighty seven eighty eight cents of every dollar coming in
17:22
Speaker 1: going to the mission consistently, and we have auditive financials
17:25
Speaker 1: and transparent books and records like you can go to
17:29
Speaker 1: the internet and find out what my senior team and
17:32
Speaker 1: I guess me is compensated for at the nonprofit. It's
17:35
Speaker 1: we're a public entity. You can pull our tax documents
17:39
Speaker 1: and go through it, and people have right. I've had people,
17:43
Speaker 1: you know, call the organization operation Hope and write us
17:46
Speaker 1: letters and all this kind of stuff. Years and years ago,
17:49
Speaker 1: when people didn't like me talking about check cashers or
17:52
Speaker 1: payday loan lenders or rent to own stores. I would
17:55
Speaker 1: have people trying to shut me up, and so they
17:56
Speaker 1: would send letters. They'd go through our financials and send letters.
18:00
Speaker 1: Luckily it was just I mean, I'm paranoid about things
18:02
Speaker 1: like books and records. That's how people get you. So
18:05
Speaker 1: you're not gonna catch me slipping. They thought they did,
18:09
Speaker 1: and they were wrong, and our books were just tight.
18:12
Speaker 1: They made certain assertions which I knew weren't right. So
18:16
Speaker 1: we have audited financials. You can have, by the way,
18:18
Speaker 1: a bookkeeper do your financials. You can have a tax
18:21
Speaker 1: pro do your financials. Those are not bulletproofnially. Somebody doing
18:25
Speaker 1: your books and records. Somebody has to certify that these
18:28
Speaker 1: books and records are actually accurate and use We use
18:32
Speaker 1: an audit firm in addition to our accounting firm to
18:36
Speaker 1: certify that our company is doing what we're saying it
18:42
Speaker 1: is that we are doing, and that we're running it
18:45
Speaker 1: in a proper way. And so I have a chief
18:47
Speaker 1: financial officer. I have a chief accountant. I have an
18:53
Speaker 1: accounting team, I've got audit firm, I've got bookkeepers, I've
18:58
Speaker 1: got project managers. We are parent weight about managing the
19:02
Speaker 1: money correctly. Let's go back now to so Operation UP
19:09
Speaker 1: today is seventy five seventy seventy five million dollars. It
19:13
Speaker 1: fluctuates sixty five million, seventy five million, but it's a
19:16
Speaker 1: lot of money. And that's every year, and it's the
19:20
Speaker 1: budget was I mean, I think actually hit around two thousand,
19:24
Speaker 1: when the pandemic hit, we were about twenty twenty five million,
19:28
Speaker 1: so you can see the budget is double tripled. Since then,
19:31
Speaker 1: we have invested through Operation four point five billion dollars
19:34
Speaker 1: in the underserved neighborhoods for homeowners, small business owners, entrepreneurs,
19:39
Speaker 1: those trying to you know, lift their lives up. And
19:44
Speaker 1: that seventy five million dollar budget facilitates us doing coaching
19:49
Speaker 1: and counseling in bank branches. Were the only nonprofit allowed
19:53
Speaker 1: to operate side of a bank branch in US history.
19:55
Speaker 1: How did we do that? It wasn't a wish, hope
19:57
Speaker 1: and a prayer. It wasn't a good feeling. It was
19:59
Speaker 1: me going to the federal banking regulators and writing a
20:02
Speaker 1: letter to all the federal banking regulators. It's called the
20:05
Speaker 1: f fie CS. Not important view to know what that means,
20:08
Speaker 1: but it's basically all the regulatory agencies into one one
20:11
Speaker 1: group FDIC, Federal Reserve Comport of the Currency CFPB, Consumer
20:15
Speaker 1: Financial Protection Bureau, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And
20:19
Speaker 1: writing them a letter made a case for why Operation
20:22
Speaker 1: Hope is a final one C three nonprofit should be
20:24
Speaker 1: allowed to operate inside of a bank branch so that
20:27
Speaker 1: I can get the bank branch to do for a
20:30
Speaker 1: bank what it couldn't do for itself, which is the
20:34
Speaker 1: coaching council it's customers or perspective customers. The bank can't
20:39
Speaker 1: do that because they're afraid to be sued, they might
20:42
Speaker 1: fall if they might run into a law or something
20:45
Speaker 1: that they are running a foul of by trying to
20:48
Speaker 1: counsel somebody. So we are in the bank where we're
20:51
Speaker 1: not employed by the bank, employed by me. It gives
20:54
Speaker 1: me the advantage over a bank employee. And so we
20:57
Speaker 1: can work with colt that client to get their credit
21:00
Speaker 1: score up fifty four points in six months thirty six
21:03
Speaker 1: to forty to fifty four points, the debt down as
21:05
Speaker 1: much as thirty eight hundred dollars, their savings up about
21:08
Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars, so that the bank for somebody making
21:11
Speaker 1: forty eight fifty thousand dollars a year, the bank and
21:13
Speaker 1: then say yes, So getting the bank out of the
21:16
Speaker 1: no business and to the yes business or the bank
21:19
Speaker 1: and say yes and give you prime credit. Why is
21:22
Speaker 1: that important? That's why we have three hundred physical locations
21:25
Speaker 1: for Operation Hope and twelve hundred satellite locations for a
21:28
Speaker 1: total of fifteen hundred Operation Hope locations in fifty and
21:32
Speaker 1: forty two states. Sorry, And that's why we're a sustainable
21:36
Speaker 1: business model and continuing to grow because we have a
21:39
Speaker 1: product that solves a problem. What capitalism is is problem solving.
21:45
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurship is well, capitalism is not necessarily problem solving. Capitalism
21:51
Speaker 1: is making a profit, putting in your pocket. It's more
21:54
Speaker 1: complicated than that, but I simplified it. But entrepreneurship is
21:57
Speaker 1: problem solving. A business model is problem solving for a
22:03
Speaker 1: profit for a return on that investment. So I found
22:07
Speaker 1: a problem in banking, and this is one example that
22:10
Speaker 1: I wanted to solve and that's turned into a sustainable
22:13
Speaker 1: business model. I had a problem with youth financial literacy
22:18
Speaker 1: I wanted to solve. I'm still solving that from a
22:20
Speaker 1: business model of even though we've taught millions of kids
22:24
Speaker 1: financial literacy that is not that model is not as refined.
22:31
Speaker 1: That's called Hope and Side for kids as my Hope
22:32
Speaker 1: and Side for adults model is. So there's a hopen
22:35
Speaker 1: side disaster model that's slightly refined. We are the only
22:40
Speaker 1: organization that is approved by the federal government to do
22:44
Speaker 1: it well. We pioneered actually emergency financial Disaster Preparedness, Response
22:49
Speaker 1: and Recovery. So a for the long explanation, but we're
22:52
Speaker 1: basically the economic red Cross for the country. And we
22:54
Speaker 1: did that after I created that after ninety eleven, because
22:57
Speaker 1: I had employees and Bankers Trust building loss from well
23:03
Speaker 1: I think it's called Bankers Trust. It was across from
23:04
Speaker 1: today Towers at ninety eleven. When the towers came down,
23:07
Speaker 1: they ran it, they fell into the building where my
23:09
Speaker 1: employees were at my employees running out the building, and
23:12
Speaker 1: it dawned on me it wasn't just rich people and
23:14
Speaker 1: these buildings who were you know, lives were impacted and
23:18
Speaker 1: some people lost their lives. It was the janitors, the
23:21
Speaker 1: office workers, the you know, the parking valets, and when
23:25
Speaker 1: they lost their life and the wife is grieving, she's
23:31
Speaker 1: also having to pay rent or mortgage that same week
23:34
Speaker 1: or that same month. And now she doesn't know where
23:36
Speaker 1: the bank account is because they didn't talk about that.
23:38
Speaker 1: She doesn't he didn't have any reserves.
23:40
Speaker 2: Uh.
23:41
Speaker 1: So we had to work with FEMA on their behalf
23:44
Speaker 1: and American Red Cross. And so after the cameras leave
23:48
Speaker 1: the disaster for a few days, the real disaster, the
23:52
Speaker 1: secondary disaster, begins after the loss of life, which is
23:55
Speaker 1: I have a car loan and no car anymore. I
23:58
Speaker 1: have a home, no home anymore. I'm a small business loan,
24:01
Speaker 1: no small business anymore. I've got bills and no jobs.
24:04
Speaker 1: So we created a program Rainbows after Storms. Can I
24:08
Speaker 1: have a rainbow with our storm? First, we created a program,
24:11
Speaker 1: got it blessed by the federal government. It's actually a
24:14
Speaker 1: funny story around this, and became the nation's partner for
24:20
Speaker 1: FEMA and Homeland Security and the American Red Cross for
24:23
Speaker 1: emergency disaster prepared preparedness, response and recovery. And we're actually
24:27
Speaker 1: responding no to the Los Angeles fires. God bless those
24:31
Speaker 1: who are affected by that. So here's the funny story.
24:36
Speaker 1: I was. This was the George Bush administration, President Bush
24:40
Speaker 1: after nine eleven. So I came up with this idea
24:42
Speaker 1: and I went to go see the president's team and
24:46
Speaker 1: they liked my idea, and before they could let me
24:50
Speaker 1: proceed with it, I had to go talk to the
24:51
Speaker 1: I think it was a general counsel, but it was
24:53
Speaker 1: bracing the president's lawyer in the White House, and he
24:56
Speaker 1: was like, well, this sounds like a great idea, but
24:58
Speaker 1: we can't have any liability here. You need to go
25:01
Speaker 1: back and come back, and you know, go work out
25:03
Speaker 1: the liability. I know you're working with the insurance companies
25:06
Speaker 1: and some loan executives from insurance companies back there. Believe
25:08
Speaker 1: it a state farm, remember, and go work it out
25:11
Speaker 1: with them and come back and prove that this is
25:14
Speaker 1: not a risk. I didn't know what the guy was
25:16
Speaker 1: talking about, really, but I faked it well. So I
25:18
Speaker 1: went back to I mean, how do you create a
25:22
Speaker 1: business plan for something that's never happened, never existed before.
25:27
Speaker 1: I created this out a whole cloth. It was an idea,
25:29
Speaker 1: So I go back. I flew back to La and
25:34
Speaker 1: I sat down with my team and I said to Rachel,
25:37
Speaker 1: my chief of staff, when this, I don't know what
25:39
Speaker 1: I'm asking for, but I'm telling you, when I go
25:41
Speaker 1: back to Washington next week, I need a thump. Well
25:44
Speaker 1: what does that mean? That means that when somebody looks
25:47
Speaker 1: through this risk management binder, we're going to prove that
25:50
Speaker 1: we're safe and trustworthy to do this emergency disaster work,
25:57
Speaker 1: coaching work. That when the law here at the White
26:00
Speaker 1: House and his team flips through, you know, his binder,
26:04
Speaker 1: it thumps on their desk and then it overwhelms them.
26:09
Speaker 1: So I get this binder. I fly back to to DC.
26:13
Speaker 1: I go to the Attorney's office the White House, and
26:16
Speaker 1: I drop it out on his desk. He looks up
26:19
Speaker 1: at me, looks down at that, looks up at me,
26:21
Speaker 1: grabs it to there with one hand, right, looks looks
26:27
Speaker 1: at a couple of pages. Said yeah, this looks about right.
26:31
Speaker 1: He asked me a couple of questions. You signed off
26:33
Speaker 1: on it, and that was it, And I signed agreement
26:35
Speaker 1: with Tom Bridge, with the first Secretary and history of
26:38
Speaker 1: Homeland Security that was George Bush administration. And this little
26:42
Speaker 1: black boyfriend complin that created the nation's first emergency financial
26:46
Speaker 1: disaster Prepared as Response and Recovery Agency. That's back up.
26:52
Speaker 1: Now I'm taking you. I've really taken you from Operation
26:54
Speaker 1: Hope backwards. I'm going backwards now. I want to start
26:56
Speaker 1: at the beginning. But this works too. I'm gonna tell
26:59
Speaker 1: you another story. This was now President Bush, Bush the father,
27:06
Speaker 1: So that was Bush the son. I believe this was
27:09
Speaker 1: not Reagan. I believe this was George Bush the father.
27:12
Speaker 1: He's president and secretary of HUD. Was Jack Kemp, football
27:18
Speaker 1: star and a friend. So I had somehow maneuvered myself
27:25
Speaker 1: through a small business association to sit in the front row.
27:29
Speaker 1: This is actually not an Operation Hope story per se,
27:31
Speaker 1: but it's still I'm still going to tell you because
27:32
Speaker 1: it's it's instructive. And I'm sitting in the front row
27:36
Speaker 1: for the National Federation of NFIB National Federation of Independent
27:40
Speaker 1: Business And I'm sitting in the front row, and how
27:43
Speaker 1: do I get there. I'm the only black guy who's
27:44
Speaker 1: a member of NFIB. I always keep showing up where
27:47
Speaker 1: nobody's at. So I would go to the National founder
27:50
Speaker 1: Federation of Independent Business NFIB. I think it's what it's
27:54
Speaker 1: called and I was the only chocolate drop in the room,
27:57
Speaker 1: trying to do business, trying to build a business. Anyway,
27:59
Speaker 1: So the President Bush is gonna is doing this thing
28:02
Speaker 1: and he and he's speaking and he's and they're inviting
28:05
Speaker 1: some folks to come there, and they're just completely all white.
28:08
Speaker 1: They're like, well, can you come, John? Sure, So he
28:12
Speaker 1: sent me in the front row and the President notices
28:16
Speaker 1: me they would invited in to the White House. Now
28:18
Speaker 1: the President's gonna speak again, and they have they want
28:20
Speaker 1: some background information on me. So I get to the
28:23
Speaker 1: White House and they were gets impressed with the work
28:25
Speaker 1: I was doing in community, uh, which included Operation Hope.
28:31
Speaker 1: I just started Operation Up. I believe I'm trying to
28:34
Speaker 1: think of the years if this might have this amount
28:36
Speaker 1: of slightly predated Operation Hopes. I think Joe started when
28:40
Speaker 1: I started an earners when when when Clinton had come
28:43
Speaker 1: in office. So anyway, he calls my name, he says,
28:46
Speaker 1: I commend John Bryant for his work in community and
28:49
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And so I was so
28:51
Speaker 1: excited to get up and the President walks by me
28:53
Speaker 1: and I shake his hand and I said, you know,
28:55
Speaker 1: can I have your business card to the President of
28:57
Speaker 1: the United States, and he just points up right live
29:00
Speaker 1: right there. Well, Jack Kemp and other kind of members
29:03
Speaker 1: saw me talking to the president, and so I went
29:05
Speaker 1: to say hello to the secretary Jack Kemp who saw
29:08
Speaker 1: me talking to the president, And I said, can I
29:09
Speaker 1: come see you? He's a secretary hud He says, sure.
29:12
Speaker 1: I fly back to LA. We call Jack Kimp's office
29:15
Speaker 1: to confirm the appointment. We only asked for fifteen minutes.
29:18
Speaker 1: Who's going to ever turn you down for fifteen minutes.
29:20
Speaker 1: I fly back from LA to d C. From my
29:24
Speaker 1: fifteen minute meeting, I'm in Jack Kim's office and he says, a, ha,
29:27
Speaker 1: what are you doing in Washington, d C? See Secretary?
29:30
Speaker 1: Oh that's really great. He's putting his football, throwing his football,
29:34
Speaker 1: you know in the areas. You got a chief of
29:35
Speaker 1: staff there with him. Oh that's really great. What else
29:37
Speaker 1: you're doing here in DC? I'm gonna see I'm here
29:40
Speaker 1: to see umiss secretary. Oh that's again, that's really great. No,
29:42
Speaker 1: what other meetings do you have in d C? No,
29:45
Speaker 1: I just came all this way to see you, miss Secretary.
29:47
Speaker 1: I came to saw to see the president. He said
29:49
Speaker 1: nice things about my work in community, which I appreciate it.
29:52
Speaker 1: And I really wanted to meet you because I want
29:54
Speaker 1: to do some business with HUD Housing and Urban Development Department.
29:58
Speaker 1: So now he feels guilty because it only giving me
29:59
Speaker 1: fifty ten minutes. So what did he do? Extended the
30:03
Speaker 1: meeting to an hour and then he said, look, follow me,
30:06
Speaker 1: so he goes down. So he's gonna swear in. Raoul
30:10
Speaker 1: Carroll got rested. Soul as the FAHA Commissioner of Federal
30:15
Speaker 1: Housing Authority. First black man I believe to be sworn
30:20
Speaker 1: in as No, that was another guy who is who
30:24
Speaker 1: is FAHA commissioner. Raoul was the president of Jenny May.
30:28
Speaker 1: There's Fanny May, and there's Jenny May. Near mind all
30:31
Speaker 1: the details here, just he was a bad brother, right,
30:35
Speaker 1: and Ral Carroll's his name, and Raoul had his family there.
30:39
Speaker 1: And so Jack Kemp says in the middle of the
30:41
Speaker 1: swear again ceremony form Roald Carroll because I was tagging
30:43
Speaker 1: along with him, he says, Oh, and by the way,
30:45
Speaker 1: my friend is here from LA meet John Bryant. Well,
30:48
Speaker 1: I just met the dude, right, but he called me
30:50
Speaker 1: his friend. Ral Carroll didn't know anything different any better.
30:53
Speaker 1: So then I said to Raul Carroll, congratulations, Can I
30:56
Speaker 1: come see you when you get settled? Sure? So I
30:59
Speaker 1: fly back to LA like another plane taket. I fly
31:01
Speaker 1: back to Washington, d C. I go sit down with
31:03
Speaker 1: Raul Carroll. Now Ral Carroll doesn't know me from hill
31:06
Speaker 1: of Beans, but he knows that I was introduced by
31:08
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Housing Urban Development, which is his boss,
31:11
Speaker 1: as his buddy, and Washington's about proximity to power, so
31:16
Speaker 1: he know, and I'm the only brother around, so he
31:19
Speaker 1: knows to be nice to me. So I asked for
31:22
Speaker 1: a business deal, and again it's not important. I gonna
31:25
Speaker 1: get back to operation Hope. The longest short of it is,
31:27
Speaker 1: I got the business deal. I even got the then
31:30
Speaker 1: g E Capitol g GE servicing, the finance in service.
31:33
Speaker 1: The business deal that I got Ral Carroll and gmmy
31:38
Speaker 1: may just on the power. Luckily, the deal that I
31:41
Speaker 1: go through, I would have lost a lot of money
31:43
Speaker 1: right right at the end of that deal going through,
31:47
Speaker 1: the President lost his presidency. Bush lost re election. I
31:50
Speaker 1: believe it was, I'm pretty sure to Bill Clinton. So
31:55
Speaker 1: they the deal was just unraveled at the last minute,
31:58
Speaker 1: thank god. But I had made it all that way
32:01
Speaker 1: with my mouth and integrity, not you know, I didn't lie.
32:06
Speaker 1: Everybody else was fudging the truth, not me. I just
32:09
Speaker 1: follow the money and you know, and didn't give up.
32:14
Speaker 1: That's operational story. I'd followed the money. I made it
32:17
Speaker 1: about the green, not black or white or red of blue.
32:20
Speaker 1: We were founded in the bipartisan way, by the way
32:23
Speaker 1: George so I went. Tom Bradley was mayor of Atlanta.
32:27
Speaker 1: It was the democratic mayor of Atlanta, the first black
32:30
Speaker 1: man to run a city like the city of la
32:33
Speaker 1: I said the Mayor of Atlanta, my bad. Tom Bradley
32:36
Speaker 1: was the mayor of Los Angeles for twenty years and
32:42
Speaker 1: had no black men to ever run to see like
32:44
Speaker 1: that a major economy before. And I became a bit
32:47
Speaker 1: of a mentee to Tom Bradley through friends like Will
32:51
Speaker 1: Marshall and Bill Raphael, others who were supportive of me
32:54
Speaker 1: as a young man trying to make it. I used
32:56
Speaker 1: to carry a little computer. Still to this day, it's
32:59
Speaker 1: gonna I pad it. Back then I had a big
33:01
Speaker 1: compact computer, and I had a radio shack computer. He
33:04
Speaker 1: sings with that, plus the brick that had on my
33:06
Speaker 1: shoulder called a mobile phone back then would break somebody's back.
33:10
Speaker 1: How am my good shape today? I carry all that
33:11
Speaker 1: stuff all the time to every business meeting. And oh,
33:15
Speaker 1: it's so many stories. I can tell you all these stories.
33:17
Speaker 1: There's no time. But anyway, Tom Bradley took to me,
33:21
Speaker 1: and when the riots happened, he created Rebuild in LA.
33:24
Speaker 1: I became the youngest board member of Rebuilt Los Angeles
33:27
Speaker 1: for pet yearboroff, and I asked Tom Bradley for some
33:31
Speaker 1: startup money money for Operation Hope. Tom Bradley, this is
33:36
Speaker 1: why I want you to be bipartisan. Follow the money right.
33:40
Speaker 1: Tom Bradley, a Democratic mayor, reached out to outgoing President
33:44
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. I'm not sure if it was obviously
33:46
Speaker 1: that point he wasn't going to be reelected, but he
33:48
Speaker 1: reached out. I think it was to George W. Bush,
33:51
Speaker 1: the President of United States, a Republican, and asked him
33:54
Speaker 1: for some money for this young man. He was impressed
33:57
Speaker 1: by after the Ryny King riots and was going to
33:59
Speaker 1: do some stuff to help economically. Tom Bradley's administration says,
34:02
Speaker 1: we don't have any money. We're on our way out
34:04
Speaker 1: the door, but we there's this little grant the seven
34:07
Speaker 1: J grant that sixty one thousand dollars available. I think
34:09
Speaker 1: I had a budget of six hundred thousand dollars or something.
34:12
Speaker 1: We have sixty one thousand dollars available at the Small
34:15
Speaker 1: Business Administrative Tration US Small Business Administration. Do you want that?
34:19
Speaker 1: I just said yes. Always say yes. It always stuns
34:22
Speaker 1: me when somebody has a business or something and they
34:24
Speaker 1: don't want to take like the American Express card because
34:26
Speaker 1: the fees are too high. Wait a minute, are you
34:28
Speaker 1: arguing with me about what percentage of the profit you're
34:30
Speaker 1: going to get from what my purchase I want to
34:33
Speaker 1: make you? Or are you going to let the things
34:35
Speaker 1: sit on the shelf and not sell it to anybody
34:37
Speaker 1: so versus making If you're selling it for ten bucks
34:40
Speaker 1: and there's you know, and you're making I'm making this
34:42
Speaker 1: up and making a you want to make a dollar
34:45
Speaker 1: profit off of ten bucks or two dollars profit off
34:47
Speaker 1: of ten bucks? No, you're going to make a dollar
34:49
Speaker 1: twenty five profit or dollars seventy five profits because the
34:52
Speaker 1: fee is increased because it's AMEX. Look, just sell the thing,
34:56
Speaker 1: get it off your shelf and buy something else. Don't
34:58
Speaker 1: let the perfect become the death of the When somebody
35:01
Speaker 1: would say something to me as an entrepreneur, the answer
35:03
Speaker 1: was always yes, I work out the details later. Never
35:05
Speaker 1: let the perfect become the death of the goods. So
35:08
Speaker 1: when they offered me sixty one thousand dollars, it was
35:10
Speaker 1: ten percent of what I was looking for, but I
35:11
Speaker 1: said yes. I took that sixty one thousand dollars budget
35:15
Speaker 1: and money and put it to work and sent out
35:18
Speaker 1: a press release let everybody know that we got this
35:21
Speaker 1: grant we were legitimate from the federal government. Then I
35:24
Speaker 1: use that money to raise to get private banks and
35:27
Speaker 1: corporations in Southage, Roila or in LA who wanted to help,
35:30
Speaker 1: who were not giving money to rebuild LA, which was
35:32
Speaker 1: a big baller in town to give me to match
35:34
Speaker 1: me some money for me. It was this company called
35:46
Speaker 1: Banker's Trust. I'd asked her six hundred thousand dollars from
35:49
Speaker 1: Banker's Trust still try to meet my budget, and they
35:52
Speaker 1: had approved it. And I had a city councilman on
35:55
Speaker 1: my board. I won't name his name because he's still
35:57
Speaker 1: in the mix right there. I want to embarrass him,
35:59
Speaker 1: but you would know who he was. He was on
36:02
Speaker 1: my boarding directors. And when I said I'm going to
36:04
Speaker 1: rebuild someone eradicating poverty in the world or something like that,
36:08
Speaker 1: eradicating poverty in my lifetime, he wrote, eradicating poverty in
36:12
Speaker 1: the ex district. I'm not going to tell you which district. Now,
36:15
Speaker 1: I'll tell you it's the eighth district that missed his stories.
36:18
Speaker 1: Can figure this out. Eradicating poverty in the eighth district
36:21
Speaker 1: is what he wrote. He crossed my letterhead out. I
36:24
Speaker 1: crossed that out and said, eradicating poverty in the world.
36:27
Speaker 1: I was mission authistic, and he resigned for my board. Now,
36:32
Speaker 1: mind you, this is south central LA. The rise happened
36:35
Speaker 1: in South central I need incredibility. When he resigned from
36:38
Speaker 1: the board, that resignation letter somehow made it into the
36:42
Speaker 1: offices of banker's trusts that had my grand application. Do
36:46
Speaker 1: you know they turned they put that into committee, which
36:49
Speaker 1: means you'll never see it again. I mean, you'll never
36:51
Speaker 1: get that money. That councilman or his staff sent that
36:56
Speaker 1: letter because he was upset with me that I wouldn't
36:59
Speaker 1: just cowtout him and do what he said. And he
37:02
Speaker 1: sent that letter to the board that making the committee
37:06
Speaker 1: the decision about this money with Banker's Trust, and Banker's
37:09
Speaker 1: Trust just said that I met with him and they
37:12
Speaker 1: were like, well, we're going to consider this when we
37:13
Speaker 1: put in the committee and evaluated the committee is a
37:16
Speaker 1: nice way of saying, you're not getting this money until
37:19
Speaker 1: like the end of the world. And I never got
37:21
Speaker 1: that money, and they thought I was going to fold
37:23
Speaker 1: up and go away, and I just doubled down again.
37:26
Speaker 1: An entrepreneur works eighteen hours day to keep from getting
37:29
Speaker 1: a job and just becauld be an entrepreneur of a
37:32
Speaker 1: non profitganization. It doesn't matter. I take no for vitamins. Right.
37:35
Speaker 1: First they able to ignore you, then they criticize you,
37:38
Speaker 1: then they try to copy you, and then in time,
37:40
Speaker 1: if you keep going, then you went. I had a
37:42
Speaker 1: vision at a mission. I was not going to be
37:45
Speaker 1: controlled by anybody. Now this is really important because if
37:47
Speaker 1: I had allowed that city council person to control my
37:51
Speaker 1: agenda so that I could get some city funds and whatever, whatever, whatever,
37:55
Speaker 1: I would still be the susage or LA only a nonprofit,
37:59
Speaker 1: you know, wrapped up in local stuff, and which is
38:01
Speaker 1: all good. It's important. We need organizations that are just
38:05
Speaker 1: focused on local We do that just wasn't my mission.
38:09
Speaker 1: I already had a global vision. I was just starting
38:12
Speaker 1: out inspired by the potential I saw in my community.
38:16
Speaker 1: After the ride at King Riots, he didn't like that.
38:21
Speaker 1: He didn't like that they couldn't control me. That happened
38:23
Speaker 1: several times with other elected officials and I to this day,
38:28
Speaker 1: Operation Hope only has about fifteen percent of federal or
38:30
Speaker 1: public funds and our budget. Most of our bunds money
38:33
Speaker 1: is private and that has really allowed me maximum flexibility.
38:37
Speaker 1: Is much harder to raise private money. But once I
38:39
Speaker 1: got a business plan down and a reputation for raising private,
38:43
Speaker 1: private money and looking after it well, people raised send
38:46
Speaker 1: me millions of dollars today and that you know, they
38:50
Speaker 1: know I'm not going to abuse it with our financials
38:52
Speaker 1: also of course every year, but they know I'm not
38:54
Speaker 1: going to abuse it. So they wired money to wherever
38:56
Speaker 1: we tell them and know that where to treat it right.
38:58
Speaker 1: And it's done informally. People wire me millions of dollars
39:03
Speaker 1: to Operation Hope, and it's never a big deal because
39:05
Speaker 1: they just know that we're going to treat it right.
39:07
Speaker 1: And today when a lot of nonprofits are having problems
39:12
Speaker 1: because they're maybe they can't get money out of the
39:14
Speaker 1: federal government or whatever. I don't have that problem because
39:17
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of money locked up in
39:19
Speaker 1: the federal government. But it's just harder to get my
39:22
Speaker 1: kind of money because well, you got to create a
39:24
Speaker 1: legitimate business plan. So again, there's so many stories and
39:28
Speaker 1: I'm just jumping around. I apologize, but it was really
39:31
Speaker 1: important for me to give you some lessons about how
39:35
Speaker 1: to run a proper corporation. And there's some examples of
39:39
Speaker 1: what happens when you don't do that right. You go
39:42
Speaker 1: to jail, or you or you go out of business.
39:44
Speaker 1: So we started out in south central LA. Initially it
39:47
Speaker 1: was about financial literacy for children in public schools. I
39:52
Speaker 1: was doing that essentially for free with volunteers at a
39:56
Speaker 1: big bank I won't name the bank, you know who
39:58
Speaker 1: it is, who I just and their financial literacy program.
40:01
Speaker 1: They then decided I was going to become their captured
40:04
Speaker 1: financial literacy organization. I'd run their program with mine. And
40:09
Speaker 1: they thought that because they were the big, bad whatever bank,
40:12
Speaker 1: that I would just say yes, and I said, no,
40:13
Speaker 1: we're not doing that. We're honored to create a program
40:16
Speaker 1: for you. I hope it helps you I'm off and running.
40:19
Speaker 1: And they said, well, we're not going to give you
40:20
Speaker 1: any money, and I said, fine, I'll go get some
40:22
Speaker 1: money from somebody else. There are eight being people in
40:24
Speaker 1: the world. You don't like somebody saying to you, just
40:26
Speaker 1: go talk to somebody else again. This bank tried to
40:29
Speaker 1: do the same thing that this elected official did. And
40:32
Speaker 1: it'd be real clear. The bank you want to if
40:34
Speaker 1: you want to call the bank the white bank, Okay,
40:36
Speaker 1: you can do that for this conversation. That makes you
40:38
Speaker 1: feel better. But the elected official who tried to jam
40:40
Speaker 1: me up twice, two different elect officials three Actually we're black, right,
40:45
Speaker 1: So pimping is everywhere, right, if people try to take
40:49
Speaker 1: advantage of you or of every power, of every stripe.
40:52
Speaker 1: So you really there's I call it the bum factor.
40:54
Speaker 1: Twenty percent of people in your family are bums. Twenty
40:57
Speaker 1: percent of people who are Republicans are bumps. Percent of
41:00
Speaker 1: people with Democrats are bumps. Twenty percent of Latinos, whites,
41:03
Speaker 1: blacks of bumps, twenty percent of I mean, it's just
41:06
Speaker 1: a bum factor. It's everywhere. So you should not generalize anybody.
41:10
Speaker 1: Take people as they come and give them a bit
41:13
Speaker 1: of the doubt. But when they try to trip you
41:15
Speaker 1: up and tell you some you know, some wolf tickets,
41:19
Speaker 1: just say no, because you're going to be the one
41:22
Speaker 1: call with your hand and cookie jar later and you're
41:24
Speaker 1: going to be the one that's going to be in trouble.
41:27
Speaker 1: So I always think long term. I step over mess
41:30
Speaker 1: and not ended. I'm never thinking about the transaction, always
41:33
Speaker 1: thinking about houses going to look again, five years out,
41:36
Speaker 1: looking backwards. So we started operating again locally, talking about
41:41
Speaker 1: financial literacy. I didn't have a business plan for that.
41:44
Speaker 1: We did small business stuff. I had a small business
41:46
Speaker 1: plan from the SBA. Just tell you about that money.
41:49
Speaker 1: I had a line of credit from Cedars Bank, which
41:52
Speaker 1: changed his name twenty eight times bank. William Hannah was
41:55
Speaker 1: my banker. I remember we got a line of credit SPA.
42:02
Speaker 1: It was a MAP program mobile assistance program. I created
42:05
Speaker 1: this van that we'd go around doing mobile technical assistance
42:08
Speaker 1: for small business in Los Angeles, and I got the
42:12
Speaker 1: SBA to fund that. That was another grant got in
42:14
Speaker 1: the fund that and we'd go around and do mobile
42:17
Speaker 1: technical systems for small businesses. And that program was going
42:22
Speaker 1: pretty well until it wasn't. But that lasts for two
42:25
Speaker 1: or three years. And I got a bank to give
42:28
Speaker 1: me a line of credit. I think it was twenty
42:30
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. In fact that that's exactly what it was.
42:33
Speaker 1: To finance it was. What happened is you put a grant,
42:36
Speaker 1: you get a grant from the federal government. They don't
42:37
Speaker 1: just give you money. You got to do a request
42:40
Speaker 1: for a draw against the grant. First of all, you
42:43
Speaker 1: got to match the grant private money. It's a whole
42:45
Speaker 1: nother story. And then you got to submit to the
42:47
Speaker 1: federal government to be reimbursed for the cost of what
42:51
Speaker 1: you're spending on this program now in accords with the
42:54
Speaker 1: budget that you gave them. I didn't have the money
42:56
Speaker 1: to advance and float while the federal government wait took
42:59
Speaker 1: its time to pay me back. So I went to bank,
43:03
Speaker 1: to Cedars Bank and as h for a lot of credit.
43:04
Speaker 1: William Hannah, the CEO with right to the top the
43:06
Speaker 1: community Bank, told on my vision, he believed in me.
43:10
Speaker 1: Gave me twenty five thousand dollars a lot of credit
43:12
Speaker 1: on my word, secured by this SBA grant. Now the
43:17
Speaker 1: federal government shuts down and they weren't writing checks to anybody,
43:21
Speaker 1: and they'd shut down for months, and I went to
43:24
Speaker 1: William Hanna. I said, look, I need one hundred thousand dollars.
43:26
Speaker 1: I think it's one hundred thousand dollars. I need a
43:28
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars line of credit. I don't have
43:31
Speaker 1: any collateral, can't I can't give you any but my
43:34
Speaker 1: word right, I'll pay you back. But if I don't
43:37
Speaker 1: get this, I'm out of business. And William Hannah told
43:40
Speaker 1: me later he went to his chief financial officer. I
43:43
Speaker 1: can remember the lady's name, but I won't say it.
43:46
Speaker 1: She's still in banking, I think, and I just want
43:51
Speaker 1: to embarrass her. But she told William Hannah, don't make
43:54
Speaker 1: this loan to John. You'll never get your money back.
43:57
Speaker 1: I know because he told me, and he overruled her,
44:00
Speaker 1: and he gave me this loan for one hundred thousand dollars.
44:03
Speaker 1: And when I found out that she had the chief
44:06
Speaker 1: financial officer, he recommended chief credit officer. He recommended chief
44:08
Speaker 1: credit officer makes credit decisions at the bank, recommended that
44:11
Speaker 1: I should not get that loan. That wasn't It wasn't
44:14
Speaker 1: directly racism. She was a minority herself. Frankly, she just
44:18
Speaker 1: didn't believe in me. I was a young kid, and
44:20
Speaker 1: you know what, you know everything she knew, thought she
44:23
Speaker 1: knew about a young kid, a young black kid. Was
44:26
Speaker 1: looked like. I had credit risk all over it. She
44:28
Speaker 1: just wrote loaning money to rich people. I don't blame her,
44:32
Speaker 1: and I don't and I don't judge her. But I
44:34
Speaker 1: was gonna pay that money back and prove her wrong.
44:37
Speaker 1: So I hustled and we paid that money back, every dollar,
44:41
Speaker 1: every dime. And I made sure I walked past her
44:44
Speaker 1: office when I had the payoff slip and put it
44:47
Speaker 1: and made sure she saw it as I put it
44:49
Speaker 1: under her desk and put it on William Hannah's desk ultimately,
44:52
Speaker 1: and took his hand and said thank you, and we're
44:53
Speaker 1: friends to this day. William Hannah changed my life. And
45:00
Speaker 1: I started out with twenty five thousand dollars lines of credit,
45:03
Speaker 1: and now I have lines of credit in the millions
45:06
Speaker 1: unsecured on my name. Okay, Now there's all these little
45:10
Speaker 1: tests that you've got to go through. I remember Mary Ayrson,
45:13
Speaker 1: who still works with me to this day. She always
45:15
Speaker 1: gets mad at me. I don't know the exact year
45:16
Speaker 1: that how many years she'd been with me, twenty eight years. Whatever.
45:19
Speaker 1: Lance Trigg has been me for about thirty years. Rachel's
45:21
Speaker 1: been feed for thirty one, thirty two years. Janay Roscoe
45:25
Speaker 1: has been me for twenty years. And all these people,
45:28
Speaker 1: these legacy leaders who've been with me. So Mary was.
45:32
Speaker 1: Mary comes in and she's she's been you know, she
45:35
Speaker 1: a little white girl from She won't mind me saying
45:37
Speaker 1: that because we actually call her white chocolate because she's
45:39
Speaker 1: been to South Africa. Everybody more times, everybody had opera
45:42
Speaker 1: so other than me. As we opened the offices in
45:45
Speaker 1: South Africa, she ran them all. But anyway, Mary, A
45:49
Speaker 1: lot of great stories of Mary. First one when she
45:52
Speaker 1: came she came in. She was from New York City
45:55
Speaker 1: and she wanted to work for me. And I said,
45:56
Speaker 1: I don't have any money and what do you and
45:58
Speaker 1: what are you going to do in Southenterola? I mean,
46:00
Speaker 1: are you okay? Like are you safe? She's like, I
46:02
Speaker 1: just we're talking about I just built thirty eight homes
46:05
Speaker 1: in Watts with Habitat for Humanity. I'm like, are you
46:07
Speaker 1: smoking something? You can't even walk through Wats. Well she
46:10
Speaker 1: was right, she did go to Wats and built thirty
46:12
Speaker 1: eight homes to habitat for humanity. Once I realized that
46:15
Speaker 1: she had done that, I hired her immediately, and I
46:18
Speaker 1: gave Mary every job title I had, because I you know,
46:20
Speaker 1: if you could walk and che comes at operation, if
46:23
Speaker 1: you walk past my desk, I to hand you a task, right,
46:26
Speaker 1: competency was not important. So Mary had a chief financial
46:30
Speaker 1: officer job. She had every title. So this was the
46:33
Speaker 1: development officer. And this is how bad we were. Back
46:36
Speaker 1: at the ind of the day, Mary, we gave we
46:38
Speaker 1: had this grant I think it was ninety thousand dollars
46:41
Speaker 1: or something from the City of Los Angeles, and the
46:46
Speaker 1: deal was you took draws against the grant and let's
46:50
Speaker 1: say the work costs sixty thousand dollars and you had
46:52
Speaker 1: a ninety thousand dollars grant, so you actually had a
46:54
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars profit that you can pay your staff
46:57
Speaker 1: and your bills with. Well. Mary being so alstruous, I said, well, Mary,
47:01
Speaker 1: we payrolls. Do like, where's the money? Like we did
47:04
Speaker 1: the work. She says, oh, no, John, we were so efficient.
47:06
Speaker 1: I just gave the rest of the money back to
47:08
Speaker 1: the federal government, I mean to the City of Los Angeles.
47:11
Speaker 1: What are you out of your day online? Right? We
47:14
Speaker 1: need that money for payroll. I took Mary out of
47:16
Speaker 1: that job immediately. Right. Let me tell you this other
47:19
Speaker 1: Mary story. But hold on. I used to have to
47:22
Speaker 1: write checks out of my check book. First of all,
47:24
Speaker 1: I used to crack certificates of deposits CDs. You don't
47:27
Speaker 1: even know what those are, but certificates of deposits basically
47:31
Speaker 1: a fancy name for a savings account from my own business.
47:34
Speaker 1: I would break these twenty five fifty CDs to pay
47:37
Speaker 1: Operation Hopes bills because Operation Shop was broke. And I
47:41
Speaker 1: would write a check on a Friday for payroll and
47:45
Speaker 1: give the check to Rachel and I said, look at
47:47
Speaker 1: the donations. Don't come in by Monday. Payroll's due was
47:49
Speaker 1: actually payroll was Friday night. The checks you know need
47:52
Speaker 1: to clear. I said, you know, if you need to
47:54
Speaker 1: deposit my check, here it is, and I'd go off
47:57
Speaker 1: about my business for my weekend. I had to complete
47:59
Speaker 1: faith in Operation Hope. I probably wrote ten checks over
48:01
Speaker 1: time to Rachel for for for a payroll. She never
48:05
Speaker 1: had to cast one of them, but she always knew
48:07
Speaker 1: I was there if she needed it. And the staff
48:09
Speaker 1: knowing that I could do that, I would do that
48:11
Speaker 1: meant the staff would stay up late, coming early, stay
48:14
Speaker 1: up lay work weekends and would never complain. Okay, here's
48:17
Speaker 1: another Mary Airsome story. Okay, I'm not am I telling
48:22
Speaker 1: you am I this is entertaining, But am I helping
48:24
Speaker 1: you to run to run a nonprofit? To build it?
48:27
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been doing we were doing so much
48:29
Speaker 1: with so little so long. We can almost do anything
48:31
Speaker 1: with nothing. I got to break this up into in
48:33
Speaker 1: the chapters and stories. I'm only get I've covered the
48:35
Speaker 1: last few years in the first couple of years, so
48:40
Speaker 1: you just have to have hoots, but and courage. We
48:43
Speaker 1: were building a Hope inside location back then it's called
48:45
Speaker 1: a Hope Banking Center in south central LA. Oh, so
48:49
Speaker 1: many stories. I need to stop. We were building, uh
48:54
Speaker 1: this Hope center and I wanted to put a digital
48:56
Speaker 1: cyber cafe in. This is about fundraising now, and of
49:02
Speaker 1: course I didn't have any money as usual, and I
49:05
Speaker 1: thought Vice President Al Gore then the Vice president, he
49:08
Speaker 1: loves technology. I need to get his attention, get his
49:11
Speaker 1: attention about this, He'll fund it. So I would go
49:14
Speaker 1: to run around the country wherever the Vice President was
49:17
Speaker 1: and try to get his attention unsuccessful. And you can't
49:22
Speaker 1: just run up in the Vice President's secret services to
49:23
Speaker 1: shoots you. But I, you know, get close to Shake's hand.
49:26
Speaker 1: But I couldn't have a conversation. Finally I was able
49:29
Speaker 1: to get to go to a Christmas party at the
49:32
Speaker 1: Vice President's residence. I enagled an invitation, and I gave
49:35
Speaker 1: him my best ninety second spiel. Don't waste somebody's time
49:40
Speaker 1: talking to them for five or ten and twenty minutes.
49:43
Speaker 1: If you can't, as my friend Hugh Price has said,
49:45
Speaker 1: he was former president of the National Urban League, if
49:47
Speaker 1: you can't say something simply and quickly and crisply, as
49:50
Speaker 1: if you're old slightly seen. Now Auntie can understand it,
49:54
Speaker 1: it's not clear in your own head. I remember that
49:56
Speaker 1: quote precisely. So I had my elevator pitched down, and
50:01
Speaker 1: I told the Vice President of the United States about
50:04
Speaker 1: my vision of having an inner city cyber cafe. Because
50:06
Speaker 1: people in the inner city did not have access to
50:09
Speaker 1: the internet. We had a banking center set up, which
50:12
Speaker 1: is a whole another story. Because this racist banker who
50:16
Speaker 1: used to be CEO of Hawthorne Savings had to give
50:19
Speaker 1: me money because he was not compliant with the Community
50:21
Speaker 1: Reinvestment acting. He had had to give money to somebody.
50:24
Speaker 1: And my friend Tim Christman, who was chairman of that bank,
50:26
Speaker 1: who was not racist, was a good guy. He knew
50:30
Speaker 1: the CEO was racist, but we were trying to get
50:31
Speaker 1: money out of him. He said, told me what to
50:33
Speaker 1: say and how to say it. I went in, gave
50:35
Speaker 1: this guy my spill. He said everything he could to
50:37
Speaker 1: offend me. That didn't work. I didn't respond to it.
50:40
Speaker 1: At the end of the meeting, I said, this is
50:41
Speaker 1: the guy's I'd give me anything. And then he said,
50:44
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a million dollars to build
50:46
Speaker 1: this banking center. So that built the banking center, even
50:49
Speaker 1: though the guy was racist. Yes, that story is completely true.
50:53
Speaker 1: Hawthley Savings, thank god, was acquired by somebody else, so
50:56
Speaker 1: I'm to worry about them being upset with this. They're
50:59
Speaker 1: gone away. But thank you Tim Christmin for giving me
51:02
Speaker 1: the support I needed. He also became chairman of Operation
51:05
Speaker 1: Home and Now because there's a banking center, but I
51:16
Speaker 1: want to build a cyber cafe next to it, so
51:19
Speaker 1: I go and sell this idea to the vice president.
51:22
Speaker 1: I pitched him. He says, yes, this is a great idea.
51:25
Speaker 1: So I then went to Washington, d C. For the
51:28
Speaker 1: Vice President's residence. The next day met with the US
51:30
Speaker 1: Economic Developm Administration and say, your vice President of the
51:32
Speaker 1: United States wants to support coming. He will. He's got
51:35
Speaker 1: to cut the ribbon for the Inner City cyber Cafe
51:37
Speaker 1: on this day. It was like six weeks eight weeks later.
51:41
Speaker 1: But the problem is I need to build it. It's
51:43
Speaker 1: going to cost me six hundred thousand dollars. I don't
51:45
Speaker 1: have the money. Will you give me the money for
51:47
Speaker 1: your vice president? So they said, we can't give you
51:49
Speaker 1: the home out, but we'll give you three hundred thousand
51:50
Speaker 1: dollars grant. You got to raise the rest the matching grant.
51:53
Speaker 1: No problem. I then took that three hundred thousand dollars commitment.
51:56
Speaker 1: I went and they said, well look, I said, do
51:59
Speaker 1: you guys know anybody who funds technology, any computers and
52:01
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. He said, well, this is
52:03
Speaker 1: a guy named Steve Ryan. He's got a lot of
52:04
Speaker 1: clients there in technology. So I called this guy Steve
52:07
Speaker 1: Ryan and told him my spiel. He says, where are you?
52:09
Speaker 1: I said, I'm in DC. I think he said he
52:11
Speaker 1: was in New York and he was there with his wife.
52:13
Speaker 1: I said, hold on, I'll be right there. So I
52:15
Speaker 1: flew to New York, met with him at a bar.
52:18
Speaker 1: His wife was checking me out, making sure that she
52:20
Speaker 1: was the one to make sure that was not a charlatan.
52:24
Speaker 1: And he called me and he says, yeah, my wife
52:26
Speaker 1: checked you out. She likes you. Will help you. I'm
52:28
Speaker 1: gonna have a conference call with you these tech companies.
52:31
Speaker 1: So this is the next few days tech companies do.
52:35
Speaker 1: On the phone. One of the people on the phone
52:37
Speaker 1: was all saying, this is this is a horrible idea.
52:41
Speaker 1: And I said, look, you need you off the phone.
52:42
Speaker 1: You're negative energy. I told the other people on him,
52:44
Speaker 1: I don't need your money. And knows I know I
52:46
Speaker 1: can't get a grant from you this short period of time.
52:48
Speaker 1: But but there's two ways to make money, make more,
52:51
Speaker 1: he spend less. So I don't need your cash. I
52:54
Speaker 1: need your computers. I need your computers, I need your software.
52:58
Speaker 1: By the way, this is how I ended up with
52:59
Speaker 1: a partner named into It who twenty thirty really thirty
53:04
Speaker 1: years later. The chairman of into It is former chairman
53:06
Speaker 1: of Into it is now a very wealthy man, Brad Smith,
53:11
Speaker 1: who runs Marshall University in West Virginia. He's still on
53:15
Speaker 1: my board to this day, and he gave me a
53:17
Speaker 1: million dollars just recently. But back then, way back when
53:21
Speaker 1: I didn't know him. I knew the vice president forgiving
53:24
Speaker 1: corporate giving back then into it, which is makes Quicken software,
53:28
Speaker 1: and they weren't going to give me a dime. They
53:29
Speaker 1: didn't know who I was. But all I wanted was
53:31
Speaker 1: I said, look, can you give me the software. Because
53:33
Speaker 1: you gave me the software, I can grant it too
53:35
Speaker 1: small business owners in south central LA. It wasn't called
53:37
Speaker 1: an in kind grant anyway. I got three hundred thousand
53:41
Speaker 1: dollars of in kind computers and software and whatever from
53:44
Speaker 1: these tech companies. Didn't hang up the phone on that
53:47
Speaker 1: matched the three hundred thousand oars grant from the price sector,
53:52
Speaker 1: that matched the federal grant for three hundred thousand dollars,
53:55
Speaker 1: comply maybe compliant with that federal grant, and then the
54:02
Speaker 1: money could flow. I then went to Turner Construction Company
54:05
Speaker 1: and said, I need you to start work at costs
54:07
Speaker 1: because this is a good doing good work through my
54:09
Speaker 1: five o' one c three taxes at nonprofit organization. I'm
54:12
Speaker 1: going to give you a nonprofit in kind grant in
54:16
Speaker 1: kind receipt for a charitable contribution for all the money
54:19
Speaker 1: you didn't make building this inter city cyber cafe. But
54:22
Speaker 1: you're going to get a lot of good will from
54:24
Speaker 1: building this. I want you to do that. And they're like, well,
54:26
Speaker 1: how when you need this done? And at this point
54:28
Speaker 1: I need it done in three or four weeks. That's impossible. Look,
54:30
Speaker 1: nothing's impossible. Just just say yes. It will make you,
54:33
Speaker 1: make you look great. We're gonna do a parade for you. Whatever.
54:37
Speaker 1: So they're like, sure, they put this African dude. I
54:43
Speaker 1: always get a signed the black person. The whole white
54:45
Speaker 1: company get his sign. It doesn't have any more of
54:47
Speaker 1: we used to like. And this black guy did not
54:49
Speaker 1: want to be there, did not want to be I
54:50
Speaker 1: got one more story for he did not want to
54:52
Speaker 1: be in sausagral A at all. Nice guy, but didn't
54:55
Speaker 1: want to be there. Well, he was always there late,
54:57
Speaker 1: and so if he's late, the workers are late, and
54:58
Speaker 1: I needed this work done on time. I'm not ladies,
55:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna hate me for this. Next story. I've apologized,
55:03
Speaker 1: but I'd had to do what I had to do.
55:05
Speaker 1: I said, I know how to get these guys to work.
55:07
Speaker 1: Mary Ayarson, please show up to the work site with
55:15
Speaker 1: your best smile and just stay there all day. And
55:17
Speaker 1: she'd get there early, bring coffee and donuts. And somehow
55:21
Speaker 1: these guys all showed up one time now for work
55:23
Speaker 1: sometime early, and they stayed late. And they built this
55:27
Speaker 1: thing on cyber cafe. Now, the Vice President's team shows up,
55:32
Speaker 1: the security team, the secret service team to do a
55:34
Speaker 1: security check. And it's a construction site and they can
55:37
Speaker 1: show up and they're looking around. What the heck's going
55:39
Speaker 1: on here? And I showed up when they were there
55:41
Speaker 1: because I knew they'd be drama, and said, look, there's
55:43
Speaker 1: no problem. I'm doing your job for you. You can
55:45
Speaker 1: look right through the walls and see there's no bombs,
55:46
Speaker 1: there's no security threat. So they signed off on the
55:52
Speaker 1: it's called an advanced team, did an advanced visit for security.
55:55
Speaker 1: They signed off on it. The Vice President of the
55:57
Speaker 1: United States came cut the ribbon. We have photos of it,
55:59
Speaker 1: you can look them up online. It was a classic experience.
56:03
Speaker 1: And yeah, that that's how I met Michael Milkin. That's
56:07
Speaker 1: a whole another story. I don't have time to tell you.
56:10
Speaker 1: But there was one story that I did want to
56:15
Speaker 1: leave you with, and it left me just that fact. See,
56:18
Speaker 1: I'm got so excited now. It got me. I've gotten
56:20
Speaker 1: into this all these battle wounds from from Operation Hope
56:24
Speaker 1: and what we did and how we did it, and
56:27
Speaker 1: what we ducked and what we you know, the many
56:29
Speaker 1: times we could have got plastered. I'll tell you I
56:32
Speaker 1: had this grant that went sideways. Well it wasn't. It
56:35
Speaker 1: was a series of grants that we had and we
56:37
Speaker 1: and we got the we we got the allocations wrong,
56:40
Speaker 1: and we had multiple years of just bad books. One
56:45
Speaker 1: day we found out that our bookkeeper, it was a brother,
56:49
Speaker 1: did not have a bank account. This is like Operation
56:52
Speaker 1: was Found in ninety two. This was like a ninety
56:53
Speaker 1: four ninety five. I think our whole budget was like
56:57
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars or something, but now, of course
57:00
Speaker 1: seventy five million, give or take. But the guy and
57:03
Speaker 1: we had so much compassion in our hearts. We hired anybody,
57:06
Speaker 1: and we hired this guy. Rachel listening to this show
57:09
Speaker 1: know executive I'm talking about Lance might know and he
57:12
Speaker 1: did not have a bank account. Our bookkeeper did not
57:14
Speaker 1: have a bank account. Yes, we quietly walked about the door,
57:19
Speaker 1: and you know, we gave him a little gift to
57:21
Speaker 1: go away with. And that was not his fault. It
57:23
Speaker 1: was ours. We shouldn't have hired him in the first place.
57:26
Speaker 1: And we got our books in record straight because because
57:29
Speaker 1: again that's a perfect way to have the government shut
57:32
Speaker 1: your stuff down or worse, go to prison if you
57:35
Speaker 1: cannot account for public money. So we was from that
57:38
Speaker 1: time forward. Once I got saved by that. I think
57:41
Speaker 1: Fred Smith was our president back then, who was a
57:43
Speaker 1: former assistant Deputy treasure for the state of California. Once
57:46
Speaker 1: I got our books and record straight, I made a
57:48
Speaker 1: vow I would never get into that situation ever again.
57:54
Speaker 1: I'd be paranoid about the money. And I was, and
57:57
Speaker 1: I still am. There's been so many times I've had
58:00
Speaker 1: people steal from me. I've had I had a former
58:03
Speaker 1: president of the organization take money. I've had board members
58:06
Speaker 1: try to OUs to me because they thought I was
58:08
Speaker 1: getting too bricks with my bridges. You know, I was
58:11
Speaker 1: in LA and I now wanted to move from LA
58:14
Speaker 1: to a regional. I was in LA and I think
58:16
Speaker 1: the first office we opened was New York. That's a
58:18
Speaker 1: whole nother story. But the directors who were in LA,
58:22
Speaker 1: the board members who were in LA, saw me getting
58:24
Speaker 1: on planes going across the country and they had to
58:27
Speaker 1: fight the freeway going from southern California to northern California.
58:30
Speaker 1: And they were a big deal in LA, but no
58:31
Speaker 1: one knew them outside of LA. And here I am,
58:33
Speaker 1: this little black hid complain in New York City and
58:36
Speaker 1: they were not feeling it. And so before I knew it,
58:40
Speaker 1: there was a campaign to unseat me for my own nonprofit.
58:44
Speaker 1: And I had to again once again, you got to
58:46
Speaker 1: learn this to have over mess and not in it,
58:48
Speaker 1: and don't be emotional and don't get mad. Get even
58:52
Speaker 1: success is the best revenge. And ultimately they resigned from
58:56
Speaker 1: the board. I didn't, and I'm still here and they're not.
58:59
Speaker 1: And I again, I know the names, and they were
59:02
Speaker 1: friendly until they weren't. Business capitalism or gladiator sports is
59:07
Speaker 1: not personal. Do not take this stuff personal. I've just
59:09
Speaker 1: been amused by all these folks who underestimated me over time,
59:15
Speaker 1: and they got caught slipping. I didn't, and uh, these
59:22
Speaker 1: I had this this guy who Bob Bishop was his name,
59:28
Speaker 1: but he didn't exist, meaning that he was a made
59:30
Speaker 1: up person. Somebody had hired somebody and uh to try
59:35
Speaker 1: to take me out because I was talking on this
59:37
Speaker 1: mess about the check cashing industry or whatever, and this
59:40
Speaker 1: guy supposedly named Bob Bishop. We investigated. The guy didn't exist,
59:43
Speaker 1: like he was there, but it wasn't a real person.
59:46
Speaker 1: But he was. But this person with his name was
59:48
Speaker 1: sending letters to my board members. And again, if my
59:51
Speaker 1: records weren't straight, i'd have been out of it. I'd
59:53
Speaker 1: been out of there. But it was a lie, and
59:57
Speaker 1: I was able to prove that he I was running
1:00:00
Speaker 1: opera shop properly. He said I had basically hit my
1:00:02
Speaker 1: hand the cookie jar of Operation Hope, which anybody knows
1:00:06
Speaker 1: me knows it's just absolutely not true. And he went away.
1:00:11
Speaker 1: I didn't, I mean literally, he just stopped. He just
1:00:14
Speaker 1: went away when and I think the person who who
1:00:17
Speaker 1: was associated with them went away with them. All these experiments,
1:00:21
Speaker 1: experiences made me. Haters make it make it greater. Like
1:00:26
Speaker 1: all these experiences just made me a better leader and
1:00:29
Speaker 1: a better person, made me more resilient. I don't hate anybody.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: I don't resent anybody. I'm a happy guy, and I'm
1:00:38
Speaker 1: still as loving and supportive of even people who player
1:00:42
Speaker 1: hated me back then. People who if somebody who player
1:00:44
Speaker 1: hated me back then called me today, I still try
1:00:47
Speaker 1: to help them. I actually do get these calls all
1:00:49
Speaker 1: the time, people who want me to hire them all
1:00:50
Speaker 1: this stuff. We have four hundred employees today. We're in
1:00:53
Speaker 1: forty two states. We have thousands of volunteers. We have
1:00:56
Speaker 1: millions of clients. Our partners are the best company and
1:01:00
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the country. We have five thousand community
1:01:03
Speaker 1: based nonprofit partners. We have a bunch of initiatives like
1:01:05
Speaker 1: one million Black Business Initiative with Shopify. Committed one hundred
1:01:08
Speaker 1: and ninety million dollars to that initiative. Maybe I'll tell
1:01:12
Speaker 1: you that story before I wrap up. We're already over
1:01:14
Speaker 1: an hour. Have you enjoyed this, by the way, or
1:01:16
Speaker 1: to hear me rambling? We have Financial Literacy for All,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: which I co chair with Doug mc millan, the CEO
1:01:22
Speaker 1: of Walmart, another great leader, and our missionaires to get
1:01:26
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the fortune five hundred to make financial
1:01:29
Speaker 1: literacy part of its core mission. One mbbor works works
1:01:36
Speaker 1: well because it's just really about creating new customers for Shopify.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: I remember I was on the Rowland Martin Show and
1:01:42
Speaker 1: somebody said, well, what's the big deal about Shopify? Why
1:01:44
Speaker 1: are they're giving us all this money? I'm like, Uh,
1:01:47
Speaker 1: they want more customers, right. And it turns out, even
1:01:51
Speaker 1: though I said that in twenty twenty after George Floyd's murder, tears,
1:01:56
Speaker 1: turn it out that's that was the best strategy for
1:01:58
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Like, it wasn't DEI wasn't some minority program.
1:02:03
Speaker 1: It's just we just you know, they just Shopify wanted
1:02:07
Speaker 1: more customers, and we wanted more black businesses to be
1:02:11
Speaker 1: created and grown. And so those two things happened to
1:02:13
Speaker 1: work together. And uh, there are a lot of other
1:02:18
Speaker 1: stuff Operation was doing, but let me stop. Go back
1:02:20
Speaker 1: to Shopify for a minute. I had done a town
1:02:23
Speaker 1: hall meeting and normally I get paid to speak, but
1:02:25
Speaker 1: this time this billionaire who ran Shopify was a friend
1:02:29
Speaker 1: of mine and asked me to give a speech for
1:02:31
Speaker 1: his team for free. I said sure, and so I
1:02:35
Speaker 1: did it and it was over and it was virtual,
1:02:38
Speaker 1: and and my payments for speaking where that's not my job.
1:02:44
Speaker 1: An Operation hope to give my personal time to speak.
1:02:46
Speaker 1: So if I want to pay to speak, if I'm
1:02:48
Speaker 1: want to get paid to speak, you know, that's my
1:02:50
Speaker 1: own business as long as I'm doing it on operation
1:02:52
Speaker 1: hopes time or an operational's capacity. So I did this
1:02:57
Speaker 1: for free. I speaked for fee, soing afford this speaks
1:03:00
Speaker 1: for free often. And when it was over, he said, well,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: what can I do for you? And I said, well,
1:03:07
Speaker 1: let's try to make sure that George Floyd situations don't
1:03:10
Speaker 1: happen again. Help me, I don't know, help me create
1:03:12
Speaker 1: a new million a men, new black businesses in America.
1:03:15
Speaker 1: And he said that's interesting. Now I didn't say hook
1:03:18
Speaker 1: me up, hook my cousin up, or hoop pooky up
1:03:20
Speaker 1: my friend. I said, help me think big about these communities.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: He said, well, that's an interesting idea. Send me a proposal.
1:03:28
Speaker 1: So I wrote something up, very short, because you don't
1:03:31
Speaker 1: want to give somebody two three four weeks to forget
1:03:33
Speaker 1: about you again. Don't let the perfect become of the
1:03:35
Speaker 1: death of the good. I send it right away, and
1:03:37
Speaker 1: I waited a few days. Crickets nothing. I waited a
1:03:40
Speaker 1: week crickets nothing. So then I wrote a letter back
1:03:43
Speaker 1: to Toby Hey Toby you know, love you brother. Thank
1:03:47
Speaker 1: you very much for being considerate and caring and wanting
1:03:50
Speaker 1: to help the community. I recognize that. Hear back for
1:03:53
Speaker 1: me that you're probably not interested. No big deal, We'll
1:03:55
Speaker 1: do something else down the road. Wish you well. Thanks
1:03:58
Speaker 1: for your care, Signed John Bryant send. I get an
1:04:01
Speaker 1: email back almost instantly. What are you talking about, John Bryant.
1:04:05
Speaker 1: We said, yes, I go to my spam folder. There's
1:04:11
Speaker 1: a commitment of one hundred and thirty million dollars that
1:04:13
Speaker 1: would end up being a he said yes, but it
1:04:15
Speaker 1: ultimately became because I worked with It was Toby. I
1:04:19
Speaker 1: there's a Toby Y. He used to be there. There's
1:04:21
Speaker 1: now Harley Finkelstein, who's the president, who's my guide. He
1:04:24
Speaker 1: supports us, and this Caz and all these people there
1:04:27
Speaker 1: who have I've growt all these relationships with Shopifi, but
1:04:30
Speaker 1: that was Toby the founder, and that ultimately ended up
1:04:33
Speaker 1: becoming one hundred and thirty million dollar commitment that I cut,
1:04:35
Speaker 1: a deal I cut three days before my Hope Global
1:04:38
Speaker 1: Forum that allows people to start businesses essentially for free
1:04:43
Speaker 1: on Shopify, which is e commerce. And he just always
1:04:49
Speaker 1: check your spam folder, but always be gracious. Here's a
1:04:51
Speaker 1: rule I use for life in business. Talk without being offensive,
1:04:56
Speaker 1: Listen without being defensive, and always lead even your adversary
1:05:01
Speaker 1: with their dignity because if you don't do that, then
1:05:03
Speaker 1: they was they would spend the rest of their life
1:05:05
Speaker 1: trying to make you miserable. It becomes personal except over
1:05:09
Speaker 1: mess and not in it. So Operation UP today is
1:05:11
Speaker 1: coaching all debt. This is hop beside the workplace is
1:05:14
Speaker 1: another business model I created and we pioneered. Financial coaching
1:05:18
Speaker 1: was inside of corporate corporations. Uh So we have a
1:05:25
Speaker 1: financial coach for all one hundred thousand Delta employees, the
1:05:27
Speaker 1: financial coach for UPS employees, financial coach. Uh so now
1:05:31
Speaker 1: for some Walmart employees, for Venetian Hotel employees in Las Vegas.
1:05:37
Speaker 1: So so we're paid more than it costs us to
1:05:40
Speaker 1: do it. That's our sustainability model. So we have we
1:05:43
Speaker 1: run a nonprofit like you run a business, even though
1:05:45
Speaker 1: it's a five to one C three checkese and status
1:05:47
Speaker 1: and we check all the boxes, but we run it
1:05:49
Speaker 1: on a sustainable basis. And uh that's what I encourage
1:05:54
Speaker 1: you to do is to figure out, uh, can you
1:05:57
Speaker 1: solve a problem? Can you? But can you when you
1:06:00
Speaker 1: solve that problem, can you run the entity that you're
1:06:02
Speaker 1: trying to run it to solve the problem with with
1:06:06
Speaker 1: the highest level of integrity and yes, vision, but business finesse,
1:06:12
Speaker 1: financial acumen and return on the investment. Whether that's a
1:06:15
Speaker 1: nonprofit or a for profit, the rules are all the same.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more of these stories, If
1:06:20
Speaker 1: this is useful for you, let me know in the
1:06:23
Speaker 1: comments and I'd be happy to you. As I'm going
1:06:26
Speaker 1: through this, there's so much of this background that I
1:06:31
Speaker 1: had to manage to maneuver my way through without getting
1:06:36
Speaker 1: triggered or upset or petty. I had to always sort
1:06:41
Speaker 1: of rise above and keep it going and never give
1:06:45
Speaker 1: up and never give in, and oftentimes doing things for
1:06:49
Speaker 1: free turned into opportunity later on. It was my way
1:06:55
Speaker 1: of proving that I was there for the right reasons.
1:06:58
Speaker 1: I went there for a quick buck transaction. I was
1:07:02
Speaker 1: there because I believed in the mission. And ultimately Opera
1:07:08
Speaker 1: JOP went moved to home ownership and UH and which
1:07:12
Speaker 1: we became a big thing. We've done well over a billion,
1:07:16
Speaker 1: maybe two billion dollars in home ownership, disaster response, mortgage crisis.
1:07:19
Speaker 1: We did mortgage crisis counseling and coaching. Banks paid us
1:07:23
Speaker 1: to work out mortgage to restructure mortgages for people during
1:07:26
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight crisis. We did about a
1:07:29
Speaker 1: billion dollars of restructuring those mortgages. Yeah, I mean and
1:07:35
Speaker 1: on and on and on and on and on and uh.
1:07:38
Speaker 1: I've worked with Republican and Democratic administrations. I've served as
1:07:41
Speaker 1: an advisor for three We triggered the renaming of the
1:07:43
Speaker 1: building on the White House campus called the Freedman's Bank Building.
1:07:48
Speaker 1: And we're finishing in our way, continuing our way, in
1:07:52
Speaker 1: our small way, the work of doctor Martin the King Jr.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: And his Poor People's Campaign, as well as the Freedman's
1:07:58
Speaker 1: Bank and Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lee of eighteen sixty
1:08:01
Speaker 1: five in nineteen sixty eight, this unfinished work, which we
1:08:06
Speaker 1: call silver rights, from civil rights to silver Rights. Tell
1:08:11
Speaker 1: your friends to follow money and wealth. Tell them to
1:08:14
Speaker 1: buy the book Financial Literacy for All, which is a
1:08:16
Speaker 1: best seller a year after it's publishing as of April.
1:08:20
Speaker 1: Tell your friends to follow us on social media at
1:08:23
Speaker 1: Operation Hope and at John Hope Bryant, and be inspired,
1:08:27
Speaker 1: be encouraged, and listen to the other episodes I have
1:08:30
Speaker 1: on the series where we solve other problems for you.
1:08:32
Speaker 1: I want to know a whole library of where I
1:08:35
Speaker 1: unpack and demystify how to live your best life and
1:08:40
Speaker 1: how to not just crawl up the latter but own
1:08:42
Speaker 1: that dang ladder. At some point, you want to join
1:08:45
Speaker 1: the opperatune admission. You can do it with a small
1:08:47
Speaker 1: contribution to become a member or for free. See it's
1:08:54
Speaker 1: not about the money for me. We're teaching money, but
1:08:57
Speaker 1: I'm actually not obsessed about money and obsessed with, say,
1:09:00
Speaker 1: helping you to take your life back. John O'Brien, Love
1:09:05
Speaker 1: and Light. I'll see you in the next episode. Money
1:09:22
Speaker 1: and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the
1:09:24
Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black
1:09:28
Speaker 1: Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
1:09:32
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Then Happened the
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Speaker 1: t