Latest / Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant / Worker to Owner: Why Ownership Is the Real Key to Wealth
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
- 0:03Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo is
- 0:10Speaker 1: John O'Brien is the Money in Wealth podcast series, Season three,
- 0:15Speaker 1: twenty twenty six on the iHeartRadio platform Black Effect Network.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Let's get into another episode leading up to Capitalism for All,
- 0:26Speaker 1: my new book coming out in twenty twenty six on
- 0:30Speaker 1: the twodred and fifty anniversary for America, the one hundredth
- 0:34Speaker 1: anniversary of Black History Month, which is Carter G. Woodson.
- 0:40Speaker 1: But the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America and
- 0:44Speaker 1: the need for the country to figure out who it
- 0:47Speaker 1: wants to be when it grows up is a question
- 0:50Speaker 1: I'm going to try to help it answer with my
- 0:53Speaker 1: seventh book. This episode is from Worker to Own, how
- 1:01Speaker 1: Capitalism becomes for All. Let's get into this. Pull out
- 1:06Speaker 1: your pen, pull out your paper, pull out your iPhone,
- 1:09Speaker 1: your android, take notes. Let's get busy unpacking the system
- 1:14Speaker 1: and repacking it with you in mind, capitalism only works
- 1:18Speaker 1: when people can participate as owners and not just workers.
- 1:24Speaker 1: If the only role available to most people is labor,
- 1:27Speaker 1: the system breaks down, wages cap out, stress rises, resentment grows,
- 1:39Speaker 1: ownership changes everything. Nobody washes rental cars. Right, if you
- 1:44Speaker 1: drive the rental car and you're finished with it, it's got,
- 1:48Speaker 1: it's dirty, it's got. You can barely see out the
- 1:50Speaker 1: side windows because the film is just build it up
- 1:55Speaker 1: on it, and you can write your whole name on
- 2:00Speaker 1: the back windshield. You're going to return it to the owner.
- 2:04Speaker 1: Let them wash it. That's just human nature. Unless you're
- 2:07Speaker 1: just an extraordinarily unique human being. Nobody washes rental cars.
- 2:14Speaker 1: So ownership does change things that we bought. My mother
- 2:17Speaker 1: bought a house, missus Winnie the Smith, God rest her soul.
- 2:21Speaker 1: She bought a house, our first home, our first home notices.
- 2:24Speaker 1: I say that our first home in Compton, California. She
- 2:28Speaker 1: divorced my father. And it's amazing. When you buy a house,
- 2:31Speaker 1: you remember the address one five five two South Freightley,
- 2:35Speaker 1: right complin California. So today I wanted to talk about
- 2:42Speaker 1: how people moved from worker to owner and why that
- 2:46Speaker 1: transition is what makes capitalism work for everyone. My mother
- 2:50Speaker 1: worked an hourly job McDonald Dougla's Aircraft and Boing Aircraft.
- 2:54Speaker 1: She worked twelve dollars fifteen dollars an hour. She was
- 2:58Speaker 1: a worker, but she had an ownership mindset, and she
- 3:06Speaker 1: kept buying assets, stocks, bonds, treasury bills, then in real estate,
- 3:12Speaker 1: more real estate, buying and selling real estate, upgrading real estate,
- 3:17Speaker 1: helping her kids buy real estate, my sister and my brother.
- 3:22Speaker 1: It appreciated, allowed her optionality in her life, and ultimately
- 3:32Speaker 1: she passed away with a million dollar net worth. That's gangster, right.
- 3:41Speaker 1: And my mother had a will, and she put in
- 3:44Speaker 1: that will that anybody who protested the will was excluded
- 3:51Speaker 1: from it. And it got real silent, right, the whole family.
- 3:58Speaker 1: Just who were going to have things to say about
- 4:02Speaker 1: this will? My mother said, nothing, ownership matters. It allows
- 4:08Speaker 1: you to chart your course. And when you own your
- 4:10Speaker 1: destiny and you have your own agency, and you pour
- 4:13Speaker 1: that into a will, into insurance policies and wills and
- 4:17Speaker 1: trusts and things that determine or the trajectory of how
- 4:21Speaker 1: your ass is going to be used, the whole narrative
- 4:26Speaker 1: of your family aligns, and sustainability changes, optionality extends, and
- 4:36Speaker 1: generational wealth is possible. Ownership does all of that. So
- 4:42Speaker 1: this is why ownership is the real divide. And even
- 4:44Speaker 1: my mother was what you might call working class, but
- 4:49Speaker 1: she died with a million dollar net worth. She was
- 4:53Speaker 1: a millionaire working an hourly job with an eight hundred
- 4:56Speaker 1: and fifty four credit score doesn't go that high. Now
- 4:58Speaker 1: goes to about eight to fifty with the revisions and
- 5:01Speaker 1: credit scores. But my mother was top of the mark.
- 5:04Speaker 1: No one told her no. The biggest missus, Winnie the
- 5:08Speaker 1: Smith is her name. By the way, the biggest divide
- 5:10Speaker 1: in America is an effort. Okay, it's ownership. My friend
- 5:16Speaker 1: Michael Milkin would say that intelligence is equally distributed, but
- 5:20Speaker 1: opportunity is not. I want you to have an opportunity
- 5:23Speaker 1: to become an owner. Owners build equity, and in this
- 5:28Speaker 1: AI world you're going to have. Everybody's gonna have an
- 5:31Speaker 1: opportunity to own your own agency, to own a new business,
- 5:36Speaker 1: a new industry, to own the resetting of everything. I'll
- 5:40Speaker 1: come back to that in another parallel podcast of another day.
- 5:43Speaker 1: I'm going to do something with Van Jones as we
- 5:45Speaker 1: unpack hope AI and what that means to you. Let's
- 5:48Speaker 1: stay focused on traditional ownership here. So owners build equity,
- 5:55Speaker 1: workers earn wages. Again, that's why they call it making
- 5:58Speaker 1: a living. You make a living during the day, you
- 6:00Speaker 1: build wells in your sleep. Owners benefit from time. Workers
- 6:07Speaker 1: trade time. Not hating on workers. We need workers. I'm
- 6:12Speaker 1: trying to explain to you the difference between somebody who
- 6:17Speaker 1: writes a check and someone who cashes it. Someone who's
- 6:20Speaker 1: making a living and someone who's building a life. Cannot
- 6:22Speaker 1: give an amen. Owners pass assets forward, workers start over
- 6:30Speaker 1: each generation. Capitalism isn't broken because people don't work hard.
- 6:40Speaker 1: It struggles because too few people can own. And then
- 6:43Speaker 1: people can't relate to capitalism because you don't see anybody
- 6:49Speaker 1: who looks like you who's an owner. So you then
- 6:51Speaker 1: rightly so resent it and begin to believe it's not
- 6:54Speaker 1: for you. Let's change that. There are four primary paths
- 6:58Speaker 1: into ownership. There aren't secrets, they're systems. Start number one,
- 7:08Speaker 1: one service, one customer, one contract. I want you to
- 7:17Speaker 1: start small, get reliable, build trust so you can start
- 7:25Speaker 1: a business. You can start something right. This is not
- 7:29Speaker 1: a secret. This is you know. This is the get
- 7:31Speaker 1: it done party. This is about moving into your agency,
- 7:36Speaker 1: your destiny. If all you have is you and your hustle,
- 7:40Speaker 1: here's a place that you can begin. This is what
- 7:44Speaker 1: happened with me, is how I did it. One service,
- 7:48Speaker 1: one customer one contract, start small, become reliable, build trust. Okay,
- 8:00Speaker 1: here's number two. By the first one will start second
- 8:04Speaker 1: path by So many business owners are aging out. The
- 8:09Speaker 1: children don't want the businesses. I've said this countless times,
- 8:12Speaker 1: as one hundred trillion dollars of wealth is going to
- 8:15Speaker 1: transfer in the next decade or so. The wives, the husbands,
- 8:21Speaker 1: the children wants the stocks, the bonds, the cash, the cars,
- 8:26Speaker 1: the vacation homes, precious metals, jewelry. They don't want the business.
- 8:36Speaker 1: It's too much work. So if it's one hundred trillion
- 8:41Speaker 1: dollars of wealth being transferred from baby boomers who are
- 8:44Speaker 1: all trying to go play golf at the same time
- 8:46Speaker 1: at age sixty five, white wealthy generalization, but it tends
- 8:51Speaker 1: to stick. White wealthy all trying to go play golf
- 8:54Speaker 1: at the same time. Maybe there's an opportunity for you
- 8:57Speaker 1: to befriend one of these people and buy their business
- 9:01Speaker 1: because their kids don't want it. There's nothing wrong with
- 9:03Speaker 1: these businesses. They have cash flows, they have contracts, they
- 9:07Speaker 1: have name brands, they've got a real estate, they've got
- 9:10Speaker 1: customer lists. They might have seven figures of cash flow,
- 9:17Speaker 1: million dollars of cash flow, which means with a decent
- 9:21Speaker 1: profit margin, they you know they're a multi million dollar business.
- 9:25Speaker 1: You can buy and get a bank or finance or
- 9:28Speaker 1: private equity firmers or financing instrument firm to finance the
- 9:33Speaker 1: purchase in part with non recourse debt which means you
- 9:37Speaker 1: don't personally guarantee it, and maybe sometimes you get the
- 9:41Speaker 1: seller to take back the paper. Mean this seller financing.
- 9:46Speaker 1: This is a huge opportunity, and they're business brokers in
- 9:49Speaker 1: every city who are selling businesses. So that's where you
- 9:53Speaker 1: can start is talking to business brokers or just going
- 9:57Speaker 1: door to door literally and finding the person you think
- 10:01Speaker 1: is sixty five years of age or so and proposing
- 10:04Speaker 1: to buy their business after you get to know them.
- 10:07Speaker 1: I know this sounds simple, but this is exactly how
- 10:10Speaker 1: it works, or how it can work for you. So
- 10:20Speaker 1: many business owners are aging out, their children don't want
- 10:22Speaker 1: the businesses. That creates an opportunity for you. SBA financing
- 10:28Speaker 1: exists for this exact reason. You can go to a
- 10:32Speaker 1: bank and get SBA financing for small business administration through
- 10:37Speaker 1: the bank. The bank will take a bit more of
- 10:41Speaker 1: a risk because part of the loan is SBA guaranteed.
- 10:44Speaker 1: But I've just also just described why, why and how
- 10:47Speaker 1: it's ness whiskey for the bank anyway, because you're buying
- 10:50Speaker 1: existing cash flow. Okay. The third way is specialized Okay,
- 11:00Speaker 1: not general cleaning, hospital sanitation, Okay, something very specific, not it,
- 11:11Speaker 1: municipal cybersecurity specialization. All this AI is going to go
- 11:17Speaker 1: be going on. Don't you need to know. There's gonna
- 11:20Speaker 1: be folks that need to be training AI, retraining AI, UH,
- 11:25Speaker 1: maintaining robotics, maintaining mechanical systems, rebuilding. I mean, it's gonna
- 11:33Speaker 1: be all kinds of businesses specialize that will come out
- 11:36Speaker 1: of this new movement in the technology and artificial intelligence.
- 11:40Speaker 1: You want it, You're interested in some of that. That's
- 11:42Speaker 1: gonna be a whole new boom of business opportunity in
- 11:45Speaker 1: wealth creation. Specialization increases margins, which is basically profitability and defensibility,
- 11:55Speaker 1: meaning it's like having your own Niche is hard for
- 11:59Speaker 1: other businesses to compete against you because you have the
- 12:02Speaker 1: specialization of other people don't understand and can't easily compete with.
- 12:09Speaker 1: You can't easily gain that same specialization. The fourth approach
- 12:13Speaker 1: are roll ups small businesses centralized administration, increase efficiency. That's
- 12:30Speaker 1: private equity without the noise. By the way, don't demonize
- 12:34Speaker 1: private equity. It's literally when you invest in your friend's
- 12:38Speaker 1: pizza shop, or you help somebody buy somebody in your
- 12:42Speaker 1: family buy a house, help them with the down payment,
- 12:46Speaker 1: what you just contributed is private equity. It's private equity.
- 12:51Speaker 1: It's just private equity. It's just that the private equity
- 12:55Speaker 1: we talk about or hear about is institutional on Wall Street.
- 12:58Speaker 1: But it's the same thing. When an NBA player, NFL
- 13:03Speaker 1: player finance is the car wash for his best friend,
- 13:06Speaker 1: he or she is put in private equity. It's just
- 13:11Speaker 1: this is just private equity without all the noise. Why
- 13:15Speaker 1: cities are the most democratic platform and I don't mean
- 13:20Speaker 1: democratic in a political sense. I mean in the level
- 13:23Speaker 1: playing full sense. Cities buy services publicly, right, I mean
- 13:28Speaker 1: they're not hidden their contracts. They often have what's called
- 13:31Speaker 1: an RFP requests for a proposal, which is publicly issued
- 13:37Speaker 1: and sometimes even announced in the newspaper, so everybody knows
- 13:41Speaker 1: what the service is, and everybody knows what the published
- 13:43Speaker 1: price is and the profitability is, and you get to
- 13:45Speaker 1: compete on the level playing field with everybody else, Procurement
- 13:51Speaker 1: is transparent with cities, Rules are published with cities, Contracts
- 13:58Speaker 1: are recurring with cities. Your cash flow You're gonna see
- 14:01Speaker 1: another podcast for me talking about cash flow. Watch out
- 14:06Speaker 1: for that one. Cities reward competence not connections. Again goes
- 14:15Speaker 1: back to the RFP requests for proposal and how they
- 14:19Speaker 1: have to bid for contracts in a transparent way. Now,
- 14:23Speaker 1: once you have a contract, yes, relationships matter, beget in
- 14:27Speaker 1: the contract. You don't need to be hooked up like
- 14:31Speaker 1: you do in most traditional businesses. Hooked up meaning somebody
- 14:36Speaker 1: likes you, somebody knows you. That's the way, the only
- 14:38Speaker 1: way you get in. This is a way anybody can
- 14:41Speaker 1: get in. If you show up, do the work, follow
- 14:45Speaker 1: the rules. You can stay in business for decades with
- 14:49Speaker 1: a city. And there are literally, I think it's three
- 14:53Speaker 1: or four thousand counties in America. There are tens of
- 14:57Speaker 1: thousands of cities in America. It might be one hundred thousands.
- 15:01Speaker 1: I mean, it's a huge number of cities and municipalities
- 15:04Speaker 1: in America. Fifty states and four thousand counties. I believe
- 15:10Speaker 1: in the countless cities. So literally, like don't just think
- 15:13Speaker 1: about La and New York and Atlanta. No, no, no,
- 15:17Speaker 1: what about Cummings, Georgia? What about Dawsonville, Georgia? What about Fresno, California? Like,
- 15:22Speaker 1: you want to go where no one else is banging
- 15:25Speaker 1: down the door, where you don't have a bunch of competition.
- 15:28Speaker 1: You want to you want to control that market, their
- 15:31Speaker 1: their money, cases, their checks cast like everybody else. Right.
- 15:38Speaker 1: So that's capitalism and its most practical point, Well, capitalism
- 15:43Speaker 1: for all really means for you, CAPLI, we're all. Doesn't
- 15:49Speaker 1: mean equal outcomes. Okay, I'm not guaranteeing you an outcome.
- 15:55Speaker 1: It means equal access to ownership, pathways and playing fields.
- 16:00Speaker 1: It means that that ladder of opportunity once again goes
- 16:04Speaker 1: down to the ground and you can grab a hold
- 16:06Speaker 1: of it and hustle up. It's a hand up, not
- 16:10Speaker 1: a handout. It means systems that reward value creation, not
- 16:15Speaker 1: just proximity to power. It means giving people a way
- 16:19Speaker 1: to build dignity, stability, and legacy that starts locally, often
- 16:26Speaker 1: with cities with essential services, with ownership. So your local
- 16:32Speaker 1: city could be a place for you to become the
- 16:35Speaker 1: millionaire next door. Is my point. Capitalism for all isn't
- 16:42Speaker 1: a slogan, people. It's a system, a system where people
- 16:47Speaker 1: can move from labor to ownership, from survival to stability,
- 16:56Speaker 1: from income making a living to legacy, building a life.
- 17:04Speaker 1: And it doesn't start on Wall Street. It may start
- 17:08Speaker 1: on your street. Do you know that ninety percent of
- 17:12Speaker 1: all GDP gross domestic product in this country, the income
- 17:16Speaker 1: of America? Do you know that ninety percent of it
- 17:21Speaker 1: comes from cities? So you wouldn't think about it. You
- 17:25Speaker 1: wouldn't think that's true, right, You wouldn't think based on
- 17:29Speaker 1: what you see on TV, what you're hearing every day,
- 17:33Speaker 1: you wouldn't think that it comes from cities. You think
- 17:35Speaker 1: that it all emanates from Washington, d C. Or maybe
- 17:40Speaker 1: you think it all comes from hygh finance or maybe
- 17:46Speaker 1: a few billionaires. Not true. Ninety of all GDP in
- 17:53Speaker 1: this country comes from cities. That's where I'm sending you.
- 18:02Speaker 1: That's what I'm unpacking for you. That's what I'm trying
- 18:07Speaker 1: to explain to you. You need to focus on and
- 18:14Speaker 1: you need to mine for opportunity. Your city council members,
- 18:23Speaker 1: your school board has a budget, who's doing their sanitation,
- 18:28Speaker 1: who's doing their IT services, who's doing their security services,
- 18:32Speaker 1: think about all the services. So the school system is
- 18:36Speaker 1: typically a separate business from the city of city Detroit City,
- 18:46Speaker 1: Detroit Public schools or Atlanta Public schools. I'll pick on
- 18:49Speaker 1: Atlanta Atlanta Public Schools and Los Angeles Public schools. I
- 18:57Speaker 1: can say talk about both that I live in one
- 19:00Speaker 1: city and lived in the other. That's a separate budget.
- 19:03Speaker 1: It's a separate business than the City of Atlanta government
- 19:07Speaker 1: in the City of La Government. Completely separate, separate budget,
- 19:11Speaker 1: separate opportunity for you. And again, the GDP of this country,
- 19:21Speaker 1: ninety point eight percent of all GDP comes from cities.
- 19:27Speaker 1: So are we looking for love and all the wrong places?
- 19:31Speaker 1: We're sitting here chasing the the flashy thing, the thing
- 19:39Speaker 1: that's shiny, the thing that's got all the attention, when
- 19:42Speaker 1: your opportunity to become a millionaire next door might literally
- 19:47Speaker 1: be right next door. So capitalism, again, is not a slogan,
- 19:53Speaker 1: it's not some fancy thing. It's a system. And I
- 19:55Speaker 1: want you to understand that system. Trying to unpack that
- 19:58Speaker 1: system for you and repack it with you. You in mind,
- 20:01Speaker 1: a system where people can move from labor to ownership,
- 20:04Speaker 1: from survival's ability from income legacy from Wall Street to
- 20:09Speaker 1: your street to main street. It starts next door in cities,
- 20:15Speaker 1: in communities, in businesses. People overlook. If you don't understand
- 20:23Speaker 1: the system, you can't master it. If you do understand
- 20:27Speaker 1: the system, you can access it, you can enter it.
- 20:31Speaker 1: I want this to stop being a mystery to you.
- 20:34Speaker 1: What if Malcolm X say, we've been bamboozled, we've been tricked,
- 20:36Speaker 1: we've been food, we've been a hood, we've been running up.
- 20:39Speaker 1: No one's ever explained this system to you. No one's
- 20:41Speaker 1: ever unpacked it and repacked it with you in mind.
- 20:44Speaker 1: You're not dumb, and you're not stupid. It's at most
- 20:47Speaker 1: is what you don't know, that you don't know but
- 20:48Speaker 1: you think you know. Let's remove the fall, remove the mystery,
- 20:56Speaker 1: and empower you with transformational change right inside of you
- 21:00Speaker 1: at scale. If you can enter it, you can own it.
- 21:07Speaker 1: And ownership is how capitalism finally works for all. It's
- 21:12Speaker 1: how it can work for you. America has a strange
- 21:17Speaker 1: relationship with wealth people. We celebrate the loud winds startups,
- 21:23Speaker 1: the startup exits, meaning that they sold the company, build
- 21:26Speaker 1: and sold the company, the viral moments. Of course, overnight
- 21:32Speaker 1: success stories. We admire visibility, we reward a tension, celebrity influencers,
- 21:43Speaker 1: reality TV stars, whatever. We confuse recognition with results. But
- 21:51Speaker 1: most wealth in this country wasn't built loudly. Go back
- 21:55Speaker 1: to my Millionaire next Door episode. Listen to that after
- 21:59Speaker 1: you listen to this. All these episodes sort of tie
- 22:02Speaker 1: in together and one builds on the other. This wealth
- 22:10Speaker 1: we're talking about, if a millionairet millionaire next door, and
- 22:12Speaker 1: most millionaire millionaires are millionaires next door type profiles, it
- 22:18Speaker 1: was built quietly, slowly, boringly. My brother Bishop td Jakes
- 22:24Speaker 1: Chairman td Jakes, Bishop td Jakes would say, let's make
- 22:29Speaker 1: boring sexy again. I've said let's make smart sexy again.
- 22:32Speaker 1: He's gone one step further, and I agree with him.
- 22:35Speaker 1: Let's get back to the fundamentals, the basics, the blocking
- 22:40Speaker 1: and tackling, and the basic infrastructure for success in your life.
- 22:45Speaker 1: The truth is, this cloud looks good on camera, but
- 22:51Speaker 1: cash flow keeps the lights on. Can I get an
- 22:54Speaker 1: amen as a church of what's happening now? And what
- 22:57Speaker 1: have you done for me lately? Today? I want to
- 23:02Speaker 1: talk about the boring path to Welsh not because it's exciting,
- 23:08Speaker 1: but because it works. You know, people admire the celebrity,
- 23:16Speaker 1: the recording artists or whatever. They may be hot for
- 23:18Speaker 1: two or three years, but that attorney, that accounting firm,
- 23:22Speaker 1: the finance company, the finance the houses and the cars
- 23:27Speaker 1: that celebrities. That personality may be hot for two or
- 23:30Speaker 1: three years, but that infrastructure I just mentioned they may
- 23:35Speaker 1: be going for twenty years. The new you know, financing,
- 23:38Speaker 1: providing support systems, some limousines, you know, jewelry whatever. For
- 23:44Speaker 1: the next round of quote hot relevant personalities. I'm not
- 23:48Speaker 1: hating on the hot relevant personalities. I'm saying you, if
- 23:52Speaker 1: you rock the mic, also think about owning it. So
- 24:00Speaker 1: if you ever felt like you were chasing the wrong scoreboard,
- 24:05Speaker 1: this episode is for you. Pull up a cup of coffee,
- 24:09Speaker 1: grab a cup of tea, grab a glass of wine.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Let's have a conversation. Here's what the millionaire next door
- 24:16Speaker 1: actually teaches us. You know what, researchers study millionaires across America.
- 24:23Speaker 1: They found something a little uncomfortable. Most of them didn't
- 24:27Speaker 1: look rich. Okay, By the way, rich is a contract.
- 24:31Speaker 1: You build wealth in your sleep. Parallel conversation, but as
- 24:34Speaker 1: separate says, stay focused rich. If you have a contract
- 24:38Speaker 1: you can get rich. Contract in the NBA, NFL professional sports,
- 24:42Speaker 1: contract at a city city, a city contract to produce,
- 24:47Speaker 1: to do sanitations, contract with a stadium to provide food services.
- 24:57Speaker 1: Any kind of a contract can a lot you to
- 25:00Speaker 1: get rich. And then you take that money from getting
- 25:02Speaker 1: rich cash flow and you build wealth. And that's how
- 25:05Speaker 1: you create generational sustainability. But I'm getting ahead of myself,
- 25:10Speaker 1: so they don't. The average millionaire does not look rich.
- 25:13Speaker 1: They live in average homes. They drove and drive use
- 25:19Speaker 1: cars by the way up until recently. Think about this now,
- 25:24Speaker 1: actually I have only bought one new car as in
- 25:28Speaker 1: off the lot new you think about this, I think
- 25:33Speaker 1: it was twenty nineteen. It was a forty two to
- 25:36Speaker 1: fifty truck. But all my really expensive cars are quality
- 25:40Speaker 1: pre owned. In other words, somebody bought the car and
- 25:44Speaker 1: it took and they took the depreciation hit, and I
- 25:47Speaker 1: bought the car for seventy five percent of what they
- 25:50Speaker 1: paid for what they paid for, and there's nothing wrong
- 25:52Speaker 1: with the car. It might have had two thousand miles
- 25:54Speaker 1: on it or something, and let them pay for that.
- 25:58Speaker 1: When when you draw a car off the lot, you
- 26:00Speaker 1: lose ten percent right away, anyway, just thinking about the
- 26:05Speaker 1: researchers that was done and how millionaires by used cars. Yeah,
- 26:08Speaker 1: that's that's literally me and I've got I love cars,
- 26:11Speaker 1: I've got a bunch of them. But even my race
- 26:13Speaker 1: car was not brand new, and I people know that
- 26:15Speaker 1: I raced cars. Even that was not brand new. Why
- 26:19Speaker 1: I get the same car at a fraction of the
- 26:22Speaker 1: price if somebody else pays for it new. They wear
- 26:26Speaker 1: practical clothes. Look at what I'm wearing now right, Nothing
- 26:29Speaker 1: fancy here. They ran, they run, they ran, run, sold
- 26:37Speaker 1: ordinary businesses. What made them wealthy wasn't extraordinary income. It
- 26:44Speaker 1: was ownership. They owned businesses, they owned cash flow, they
- 26:50Speaker 1: owned their decisions. All money is his freedom. They reinvest
- 26:55Speaker 1: profits instead of upgrading lifestyle. That was me all day,
- 27:00Speaker 1: my entire life. I reinvested, reinvested, reinvested in what I
- 27:07Speaker 1: was doing. I didn't take a salary. Heck, for my businesses,
- 27:12Speaker 1: I don't think I don't. I still don't take a salary,
- 27:14Speaker 1: and now I think about it. From my businesses. For
- 27:19Speaker 1: my for profit businesses, I don't take a salary. It's
- 27:22Speaker 1: all upside. My nonprofit pays a modest salary, but it
- 27:29Speaker 1: doesn't sustain my lifestyle. It's almost like a token from
- 27:33Speaker 1: them for my time. But I raised seventy million dollars
- 27:37Speaker 1: for them a year. We've deployed four and a half
- 27:39Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of capital. They're getting a pretty good deal.
- 27:43Speaker 1: They take the most of my time. But the thing
- 27:45Speaker 1: they build all my wealth, my businesses, doesn't pay me
- 27:47Speaker 1: a salary at all, but I get all the upside
- 27:49Speaker 1: net on capital gains and appreciation of the assets in
- 27:54Speaker 1: the business. And I took some of the profit from
- 27:57Speaker 1: the businesses, and I actually took care of some of
- 28:01Speaker 1: my employees, my senior leaders at Operation Hoped, not my
- 28:04Speaker 1: primary nonprofit, because I knew they couldn't get bonuses, they
- 28:08Speaker 1: could not do anything other than get a check cash flow.
- 28:12Speaker 1: They're you know, making a living. So I wanted to
- 28:15Speaker 1: help them build a life and gave them a million
- 28:18Speaker 1: dollar made a million dollar investment in them, gave them
- 28:22Speaker 1: a car that they they each going them got a
- 28:25Speaker 1: car that they always loved, and an investment account, so
- 28:28Speaker 1: they they knew they were not just living for the day,
- 28:30Speaker 1: but they're building for the future. And of course that
- 28:33Speaker 1: made them work harder at their jobs. So we all won.
- 28:36Speaker 1: Everybody won. But even that was not about me. That
- 28:40Speaker 1: was It wasn't about me flossing. It was about me
- 28:44Speaker 1: helping people fulfill their dreams and I and I can
- 28:48Speaker 1: only do that because I'm an owner. So living is
- 28:52Speaker 1: better an underestimated and overperformed than overestimated and underperformed. Live
- 28:56Speaker 1: below your means and you can do things. It's like
- 29:00Speaker 1: what I did with my employees in time. They avoided
- 29:05Speaker 1: debt that didn't produce income millionaires. They measured wealth by
- 29:12Speaker 1: net worth, not appearances. Most importantly, they didn't confuse income
- 29:19Speaker 1: with wealth. I've said this several times. I'm gonna say
- 29:22Speaker 1: it again. You make money during the day, you build
- 29:24Speaker 1: wealth in your sleep. If you miss some of this
- 29:30Speaker 1: or don't truly understand some of this, just hit replay.
- 29:34Speaker 1: That's the great thing about a podcast. You can replay
- 29:38Speaker 1: the episode. You can back it up, stop, take notes,
- 29:41Speaker 1: think about it, talk to your friends, talk to your
- 29:43Speaker 1: family members, replay it again until you get it. So
- 29:49Speaker 1: income pays bills, wealth creates options. So now let's deal
- 29:59Speaker 1: with cash flow versus clout. This is getting into it
- 30:02Speaker 1: now right. It's for all the folks who are watching
- 30:04Speaker 1: too many influencers online who are selling clout. Let's define
- 30:10Speaker 1: the difference here very clearly, right. Cloud is attention people
- 30:16Speaker 1: and adding inso to injury. The social media platforms own
- 30:20Speaker 1: your algorithms, algorithms you do not. They can shut you
- 30:25Speaker 1: off at any time. They control of the platforms. I'm
- 30:30Speaker 1: not saying you not to do it. I'm telling you
- 30:33Speaker 1: to understand what you're doing. So cloud is attention, cash
- 30:37Speaker 1: flow is control. Which one would you rather have? My
- 30:43Speaker 1: friend Tim Burt would say, do you want to be
- 30:46Speaker 1: famous or do you want to be dangerous? Intelligence makes
- 30:50Speaker 1: you dangerous. I'd rather be dangerous. Cloud spikes, cash flow compounds,
- 31:00Speaker 1: depends on platforms you don't own. Cash Flow depends on
- 31:05Speaker 1: customers you serve. Start to see the rhythm here. Cloud
- 31:14Speaker 1: is fragile. Repeat that cloud is fragile. Cash flow is resilient. Okay,
- 31:24Speaker 1: And here's the part that most people miss. Cash Flow
- 31:28Speaker 1: creates optionality. All money is is freedom do as you like.
- 31:34Speaker 1: But you can't be free unless you understand how the
- 31:37Speaker 1: system works and you create optionality for yourself. Most millionaires
- 31:41Speaker 1: have several streams of income coming in. They're not depending
- 31:46Speaker 1: on any one thing, which increases their level of optionality
- 31:49Speaker 1: and freedom. So cash flow lets you borrow, cash flow
- 31:55Speaker 1: lets you invest. Cash Flow lets you survive downturns in
- 32:00Speaker 1: the economy, in the market. Cash Flow list you say no.
- 32:07Speaker 1: Growing up, I want to say yes to everything, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Increasingly,
- 32:14Speaker 1: in order to focus on what's important, you got to
- 32:17Speaker 1: say no to the noise, the drama, people wasting your time.
- 32:20Speaker 1: I love being able to say, very respectfully, very decently, no,
- 32:25Speaker 1: thank you, appreciate that I'm going to do this. You
- 32:28Speaker 1: go do that. I'm good. I like I walk through
- 32:32Speaker 1: life consciously oblivious and most things around me because it
- 32:34Speaker 1: just doesn't matter. I'm just focused on the value I'm
- 32:38Speaker 1: trying to create. It allows you to say no. If
- 32:41Speaker 1: you're desperate, you say yes to everything. Clout might get
- 32:45Speaker 1: you applause. Cash flow gets you freedom. Can I get
- 32:50Speaker 1: an amen? This is the church of what's happening now?
- 32:53Speaker 1: And what have you done for me lately? So here's
- 32:56Speaker 1: why boring businesses win people. Businesses have advantages, and exciting
- 33:02Speaker 1: businesses just don't. They're predictable, they're essential. So if you're
- 33:12Speaker 1: running a club, it's not predictable a dance club. There's
- 33:17Speaker 1: a lot of things that are fancy. It's just not predictable.
- 33:22Speaker 1: But these businesses that I'm talking about, they check all
- 33:26Speaker 1: the boxes for wealth creation. They're predictable, they're essential, they're repeatable.
- 33:32Speaker 1: They don't depend on trends, they don't depend on hype cycles.
- 33:37Speaker 1: They don't depend on being discovered. Okay, they depend on
- 33:42Speaker 1: being needed. Let me explain. Nobody cancels the plumber. Okay,
- 33:50Speaker 1: the country needs fifty thousand plumbers minimum a year over
- 33:53Speaker 1: what they have right now. They need sixty thousand electricians
- 33:56Speaker 1: a year over what they have right now. You can't
- 33:59Speaker 1: a plumbing you can't ai an electrician right right. There's
- 34:06Speaker 1: an essential need in these businesses. In these trades are
- 34:11Speaker 1: often multimillion dollar enterprises pulling down high six figure incomes
- 34:15Speaker 1: every year. So don't hate on somebody in overalls. Nobody
- 34:23Speaker 1: disrupts trash collection. That's a private company doing that under
- 34:28Speaker 1: contract for the city of the county. Couldn't that be you.
- 34:34Speaker 1: Nobody replaces the HVAC heating you know, air conditioning services,
- 34:41Speaker 1: et cetera. Nobody replaces the HVAC with vibes you want,
- 34:48Speaker 1: you want the HVAC company out there when it's one
- 34:50Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees. You need that plump. You need
- 34:52Speaker 1: that air conditioning to work. You need you need the
- 34:55Speaker 1: heat to work in the code. You need the their
- 35:00Speaker 1: condition to work when it's hot. No questions asked. These
- 35:05Speaker 1: businesses quietly raise prices with inflation and nobody complains. They
- 35:12Speaker 1: quietly renew contracts, They quietly build balance sheets. A balance
- 35:19Speaker 1: sheet is you're basically what your asset sits on in
- 35:24Speaker 1: your business. I don't want to assume you know what
- 35:27Speaker 1: a balance sheet is. They don't go viral, they endure.
- 35:34Speaker 1: So how cash flow becomes wealth? How does that happen?
- 35:39Speaker 1: Cash Flow is the seed people. Wealth is the tree.
- 35:44Speaker 1: So the seed put in good soil produces in time.
- 35:49Speaker 1: The tree make money during the day. You build wealth
- 35:52Speaker 1: in your sleep. Here's the progression most people will never see.
- 35:57Speaker 1: Steady revenue leads to predictable expenses. Please write this down,
- 36:02Speaker 1: go back, talk with your friends, rinse and repeat. Okay,
- 36:05Speaker 1: this is very important. Steady revenue leads to predictable expenses.
- 36:10Speaker 1: Predictable expenses lead to reinvestment. Reinvestment leads to scale. Size.
- 36:20Speaker 1: Scale leads to credit access. Prime credit access is why
- 36:24Speaker 1: you can't tell you to keep your credit score up.
- 36:26Speaker 1: Your credit score is essentially your credit rating if you
- 36:30Speaker 1: were an institutional company like a bond rating or triple
- 36:33Speaker 1: A bonderating on Wall Street. Your credit score for most
- 36:37Speaker 1: small businesses is your personal scorecard on how you pay
- 36:42Speaker 1: your bills and how dependable you are, and that extends
- 36:44Speaker 1: to you, is going to extend to your your small business.
- 36:48Speaker 1: That's what the bank's gonna be looking for. Okay. Scale
- 36:53Speaker 1: leads to credit access. Credit access leads to asset ownership. Nobody,
- 37:00Speaker 1: no billionaire, no multimillionaire, no millionaire, no one hundred thousand are,
- 37:05Speaker 1: no city, no county, no government, no company succeeded without
- 37:09Speaker 1: good debt. Good dat is tied to something that appreciates.
- 37:13Speaker 1: Bad dad is tied to something that depreciates. I cover
- 37:16Speaker 1: that in detail on a separate podcast. Go back to
- 37:19Speaker 1: season one or two to check that out. So this
- 37:24Speaker 1: is how a plumber becomes a landlord. Okay, That's how
- 37:28Speaker 1: a contractor becomes an investor. That's how family businesses become
- 37:34Speaker 1: generational wealth, not overnight over time. Why this path works
- 37:42Speaker 1: for first generation of wealth very important here. If you
- 37:46Speaker 1: didn't inherit capital, this matters. Cash flow doesn't require permission.
- 37:55Speaker 1: It doesn't care where you went to school, it doesn't
- 37:59Speaker 1: care who you know. It doesn't reward hype, it rewards reliability.
- 38:08Speaker 1: That's why immigrants have built wealth and precisely this way.
- 38:13Speaker 1: Every wonder why sixty percent of all motels are run
- 38:16Speaker 1: and owned by my Indian brothers and sisters as in
- 38:19Speaker 1: from India. It's low cost of entry, high return, dependable
- 38:25Speaker 1: cash flow over time building wealth. Why are my Asian
- 38:30Speaker 1: brothers and sisters buying things and build owning businesses like
- 38:33Speaker 1: Neil salons and here product businesses? Same thing. Low barriers
- 38:38Speaker 1: of entry, low costs of entry, cost containment, high levels
- 38:44Speaker 1: of cash flow, which leads to wealth creation over time,
- 38:48Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why working
- 38:52Speaker 1: class families have used this path to build wealth for generations.
- 38:59Speaker 1: Because it works. Now want it for you. But it's
- 39:05Speaker 1: not because this is easy, but because it was available.
- 39:09Speaker 1: This is like the open source version of capitalism and
- 39:13Speaker 1: free enterprise that not just is available to Wall Street,
- 39:18Speaker 1: was available to Main Street. It's available to you. It's accessible.
- 39:25Speaker 1: So here's some cheat sheets for you. If culture tells
- 39:34Speaker 1: you to look rich, resistant, if social media tells you
- 39:40Speaker 1: to chase attention. Question it. If somebody gives you a
- 39:46Speaker 1: free lunch is probably stale. Whatever. Look, love is work.
- 39:50Speaker 1: Nothing good comes easy, even in the dictionary. The word
- 39:53Speaker 1: success comes before the work work only in the dictionary
- 39:57Speaker 1: because it's alphabetical. Every place else, wor comes first. So
- 40:01Speaker 1: stop looking for the easy, slick, loud answer. It's probably wrong.
- 40:09Speaker 1: The boring path of wealth isn't glamorous, but it's dependable,
- 40:16Speaker 1: and it's how the millionaire next door got there. It's dependable,
- 40:23Speaker 1: and it depends on what works, and what works will
- 40:30Speaker 1: always be what's new. In the next iteration of this
- 40:40Speaker 1: Discover conversation, I want to step into how workers become
- 40:47Speaker 1: owners and how capitalism actually becomes for all. So now
- 40:54Speaker 1: I've talked to you about cash flow beating clout, I've
- 40:59Speaker 1: unpacked the millionaire next door. I've unpacked how you don't
- 41:05Speaker 1: have to think global you can think local. In fact,
- 41:09Speaker 1: ninety percent of GDP gross domestic product the income of
- 41:12Speaker 1: the country comes from cities, not from even the federal government.
- 41:17Speaker 1: I've made it approachable by having give you an idea
- 41:20Speaker 1: of how you can contract for a need with a
- 41:23Speaker 1: city or county, A municipality, not even a big city,
- 41:26Speaker 1: a small one. Go where no one else is looking.
- 41:30Speaker 1: I've tried to make this accessible to you and practical,
- 41:35Speaker 1: so you have a step one. Because real freedom doesn't
- 41:44Speaker 1: come from applause people, doesn't come from hype, doesn't come
- 41:49Speaker 1: from showing off. It comes from ownership. And the first
- 41:57Speaker 1: thing I need you to do is own your own narrative,
- 42:00Speaker 1: own your own knowledge, own your own pathway, own your
- 42:04Speaker 1: own agency, own your own business plan for your life,
- 42:11Speaker 1: and move on that thing with confidence, knowing that there's
- 42:17Speaker 1: a high probability it will bear meaningful fruit. This is
- 42:24Speaker 1: John O'Briant. This is the Money and Wealth podcast series,
- 42:29Speaker 1: season three on a Black Effect Network and iHeartRadio. This
- 42:35Speaker 1: is another mechanism for me to take a big idea
- 42:38Speaker 1: and crunch it, smash it down the ground, to put
- 42:44Speaker 1: it where as they say in the South, to put
- 42:46Speaker 1: it where the goats can get it. To make it accessible,
- 42:50Speaker 1: to make it not overwhelming, to allow you to get
- 42:53Speaker 1: your hands around it, pick it up and make it
- 42:55Speaker 1: your own, and decide where you're going to start in
- 43:00Speaker 1: this broad, deep well of opportunity called capitalism and free
- 43:05Speaker 1: enterprise for all, we haven't even got into how artificial
- 43:11Speaker 1: intelligence is going to literally change everything and there literally
- 43:17Speaker 1: are business opportunities everywhere that you can used to be
- 43:21Speaker 1: able to start for a million dollars or one hundred
- 43:23Speaker 1: thousand dollars, you'll be able to start for fifty bucks.
- 43:25Speaker 1: Used to you require ten people, now to just be one.
- 43:28Speaker 1: That's another podcast. I'll get into our breakdown the future
- 43:32Speaker 1: business opportunities on the other side of AI. Watched for that,
- 43:35Speaker 1: But for now, consume this, absorb this, play it back
- 43:40Speaker 1: to yourself until you get it hole and complete, and
- 43:44Speaker 1: go on social media and let me know whether you're
- 43:48Speaker 1: getting the memo, whether you understand what I'm putting down,
- 43:52Speaker 1: and what else you want me to cover. And of course,
- 43:55Speaker 1: order pre order your copy of Capitalism for All my
- 43:59Speaker 1: new book, Capitalism for All Inclusive Economics in the Future
- 44:02Speaker 1: Proofing of America. Go to Operation help dot orgon get
- 44:05Speaker 1: your scholarship for free financial coaching and counseling, and sign
- 44:08Speaker 1: up to the one Million Black Business Initiative to start
- 44:10Speaker 1: a business join us. On Green Socks Day, April thirtieth,
- 44:16Speaker 1: everybody in the country to put on a green sock
- 44:19Speaker 1: because it would it be nice if we actually agreed
- 44:22Speaker 1: on something for a change, versus arguing over red or
- 44:25Speaker 1: blue and black and white. My god, aren't we tired?
- 44:27Speaker 1: Aren't we exhausted from arguing about silly stuff. That's finding
- 44:31Speaker 1: something we can agree on. Green Socks Day. This is
- 44:35Speaker 1: a movement from civil rights to civil rights on the streets,
- 44:37Speaker 1: the sweets. This is the third reconstruction and it's all
- 44:40Speaker 1: about you. I want you to own you. Let's go.
- 44:46Speaker 1: This is John O'Brien. I'll see you in the next episode.
- 44:50Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
- 44:53Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
- 44:56Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 45:01Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.