Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarry Charlamage the guy.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We are the Breakfast Club. You got a special guest.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the building, Yes we do, John Hope Brian Welcome, brother,
Honored to be here. Man, how you feeling new book?
Financial literacy for all?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Not illiteracy, Financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's right, financial literacy for all. So what's the reason
for the book?
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Before we tell the book? I want people to know
who is John Hope Briant.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
I mean other than God's child, other than Jenny the
Smith's son and Johnny.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Smith's son from Closer to the mic.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
From South central Los Angeles. My mom and dad, my
granddad was a sharecropper born in eighteen seventy one. RB Smith,
my second great grandfather, was part of the Black Union
troops tied the reconstruction George Young. Everybody should know your history.
My mom and dad came from the south to south
(00:59):
central LA. Married, built a little mini fortune in southern
Trila with next to nothing, gas station, apartment building, two businesses,
own home, lost it all because my dad was financially illiterate.
So I became passionate about the topic. I mean, we
can get into I was homeless, as you know, for
(01:21):
six months of my life, so people think I had
some silver spoon in my mouth, not true, and lost
everything and had to rebuild myself today. So I've gone
from literally the bottom quartile of the economic situation too.
I guess I'm the one percent today that people talk about.
I'm the largest minority owner of single family rental homes
(01:41):
in America. Say that again please, I'm the largest minority
read black owner of single family rental homes in America.
I owned seven hundred homes. Seven homes, yeah, but to
be structured, to structure properly. I bought them through the
Promised Homes Company over five years, which I'm the I was,
(02:03):
it's the sole owner of I sold the company for
one hundred and twenty million dollars Christmas Eve twenty twenty one.
Then I went to Taco Bell as the wire transfer
is going.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Through, indeed, waning to celebrate with a not your bell
broaday a number one shell was what was the symbolism
in that? Like, did that something you ate while you
was homeless?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Actually yeah, actually good good good take It was what
I ate when I was homeless, but also just keeping
it simple, like take life seriously, don't take yourself too seriously.
I also built the largest financial literacy organization in America.
It's called Operation Hope. Have four main clients. We've invested
four and a half billion dollars in our communities. We've
created four hundred thousand black businesses through one MBB. I
(02:45):
came up here with Toby Looki, who's the founder of Shopify.
I was one of the top ten riches men in Canada.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And invested four and a half billion into black communities,
right yep. And what was that other one?
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Uh? Well, so I broke We finished with the single
family rental home piece. Even though half of my vendors
there by the way are plumbers, heating, electricians, lighting, roofing, landscaping, painting,
they're black and brown people. So owning the homes is
one piece. A DJ you know about this. Owning the
homes is one piece. But you can empower people with
jobs and contracts that you can't do anyplace else. And
(03:20):
the bigger I make that company and I'm planning only
ten thousand homes, the more I can empower my people
with contracts. I was doing I'm doing right now a
few million dollars a year in contracts, and that's sustainable
contracts and wealth creation. So that's Promise Homes Company. Then
you've got Operation Hope, which has three hundred offices across
the country. That's what you're talking about where we've invested
(03:41):
four billion, four and a half billion dollars in underserved
neighborhoods and created four hundred thousand black businesses since George
Floyd's murder. And you know, if you're if you're listening
or washing this and you own a gas station or
you have a barbershop, you should have an E barbershop.
You have a restaurant, you have an E restaurant. You
have a nail salon, you should have eatmail salon. In
(04:03):
other words, you should be able to go online, make
an appointment, buy some products. You make money during the day,
you build wealth and your sleep. At Operation Hope, we're
raising credit score is fifty four points to in six
months one hundred and twenty points and twenty four months.
Nothing changes your life more than God of Love, the
moving your credit score one hundred and twenty points. We're
louring debt thirty eight hundred dollars and increasing savings two
(04:26):
thousand dollars for somebody making forty eight thousand dollars a year.
So we're the only nonprofit in history ever allowed to
operate ins out of a bang branch. Ever, so that
means you're getting the bank out of the no business. No,
I'm sorry, I can't make you alone and back into
the yes business. Now we think it's racism, It might be,
but it also might be your credit score stakes. Half
(04:47):
of black folks have a credit score below six to twenty.
Not poor people, everybody. Latinos are right behind us. And
so when you wake up in the morning, half of
us are locked out of the free enterprise system. And
Bassard Andrew Young say, who was on that balcony doctor
King was assassinated. He say, to live in a system
of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of
free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. So DJ,
(05:12):
to answer your question about you know why the book,
it's a civil rights issue, the civil rights issue of
this generation period, the new move. The last move was
in the streets civil rights. This move is in the
sweets civil rights. The color is green, not black, or
brown not black. Black or white, or brown or red
or blue. It's green and it's always been green. Slavery
(05:36):
was about money.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Whatever.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
If your day's out about God or love, your days
above money. But we don't understand money. We want to
spend it, which is an emotional play, by the way,
which is tied to our self esteem or lack thereof.
But we which goes back to the mental health issues
that you and I talk about. But we don't understand it.
And you make as I said earlier, you make money
during the day. You build wealth in your sleep. So
(05:59):
this is like, this is like everywhere and everything and
you live in You live in a capitalist democracy. America
is the biggest economy on the planet, the sole superpower
in the world.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Let me ask you a couple of questions. And I
wanted to set the table like I'm glad. I wanted
people to know who you are.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's just that's to my five divisions.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yes, but I want people to know who you are
and what you've done because we live in this world
where everybody's a financial literacy guru and got a financial
literacy book. It's like, no, John O'Brien is the real deal.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
First of all, thank you for that, but it just
drives me nuts, man, Like, do you want to do
you want a surgeon, you know, doing cancer surgery on you?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And they they saw a video on YouTube. I mean,
do you do you do?
Speaker 5 (06:41):
You do you want somebody driving a big rick card
that's next to you and your family? And they never
took a driver's test. They'd be like, oh, I got this.
I mean, this is crazy. It's just like nuts.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It's big business.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Though.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
It is a big business, and folks that you know,
and God bless their hustle, but this is not something
to mess with. People talking about, you know, the most
important other than your health and your spirituality. There's nothing
more important than your life. This is like breathing. And
you have folks selling books and tapes and seminars. And again,
I'm not messing with anybody's hustle, but this is not
(07:18):
something to play games with. And you cannot become wealthy
by selling books and tapes on becoming wealthy, That's not
the way this thing works. But that's a whole industry
and it just stuns me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Man.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
I'm like, I've been these boardrooms. I see the credit facilities.
I don't see these people. I don't see the folks
who are the financial influence. In fact, if you're doing
that full time, all day, all night.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
How could you possibly be in the stries doing what
you're saying you.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Doing that part. I have four hundred employees. That's I mean,
that's full time.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Man.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
I've got a CEO of each one of my divisions.
My payrolls a million and a half dollars every two
weeks for the last thirty years. I mean, you can
go pull up my tax returns for my non property leads.
You can pull up my tax returns seventy two million
dollars last year. I'm the largest black founded nonprofit founder
who's running it in the country.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Got a couple of questions, So, you know, the main
thing that's been coming out of for people that's own
single proper single family units or multi family units.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Is the squad of laws.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Right, We've seen what happened a couple of weeks ago
in New York. What's your take on on the squad
of laws? Because it seems like squatters have more rights
than the actual owners.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
It's it's crazy, you know, And look again, I'm you're
not gonna You're not gonna find more compassionate capitalists, But
I am a capitalist. Even if you want to distribute
money like a socialist, you have to first collect it
like a capitalist. Like this is just nuts. And people
don't understand that most people own these properties. They're not
big businesses. It's a doctor, it's a dentist's it's a
(08:56):
it's a teacher, a bus driver, a bus driver who
has a rental property. They're trying to build some generational wealth.
And fantastic for them. By the way, that it is
possible that financial freedom is the only true freedom because
every other freedom could be taken away from you, political freedom,
religious freedom. Look at what's going on right now in society.
(09:17):
I mean, women listening to this, watching this men men
try to tell you what to do to your body,
and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Were you in the
womb with me and my mom? Were you in the
I mean, how's this conversation tied to you? But financial freedom,
unless you screw it up, that's yours. And so to
have a squatter come and move into your spot and
(09:37):
then start telling you the rights that they have, I
mean that just it just goes against every basis of
reason and common sense. That I have and I'm from
the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
They from home like this.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's a business. It's a business. You know.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
People say, here's a lot of crazy stuff like, oh,
I hate rich people.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
No, you don't.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
You hate rich people until you become rich. What you
hate is a game system. What you hate is a
system rigged against you that you don't think is fair
and honest. Okay, I get that, which is why I'm
trying to build the ladder, show you how capitalism really works,
which is why I wrote this book, et cetera, et cetera.
Just break this down and and make it and make
it approachable. But you actually don't hate it because you actually,
(10:24):
if you look at your life, most people are actually
aspiring to achieve it. That's what these quatters are trying
to do, trying to get something for free. Right, there's
all We're all capitalists, man, everybody's a capitalist. You have
a part time job, you're a you're using your human
capital and you're changing you're exchanging it for some gig money.
You have a job, you work from nine to five,
(10:45):
same thing. You have a career. Now maybe you're working
from nine to nine, or maybe you don't have hours
because it's it's a salary. You have a C suite job,
which is a step above a career. They get Boston
call you in the weekends in the evening. But still
the risk is on the entrepreneur, the business owner. And
then you can get to the piece where you've got
a business owner, which is a franchise or some kind
(11:06):
of existing business plan that you pre that you pre understand.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Like Taco Bell or whatever. But we don't even understand that.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
We don't even say that McDonald's actually is a real
estate play the property that's right. And then you have
the crazy people like me who are entrepreneurs, who are
who are wake up with our hair on fire. But
we also have the highest risk and the highest reward.
So you have low risk in lower reward here and
high risk and high reward here. But it's all capitalism.
You're all using your human capital or your financial capital
(11:38):
to go get yours.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
And what do you think about the You know, Joe
Biden was talking about raising the capital gains tax so
that business guys who try to like me, sell stuff
and buy and sell for high they're going to attax
you at He's trying to tax you at a forty
eight percent rate. Now, but what hurts is we just
talked about all these these minorities. A lot of them
is the first time that they all know is in
their family. So you got guys that a one hundred millionaires.
(12:02):
But now you make your first millionaire tax and you
forty eight percent. How can that possibly generate the generational
wealth when they're cutting it in half.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
So so folks who don't who don't own anything or
and don't realize that they're capitalists, We're like, yeah, tax them,
tax the ridge, tax Ridge until they get that tax
bill for that property they own.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't mean me
so so here.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
So you just said some deep stuff, and I'm not
sure if you realize how brill it what you said was.
But I'm gonna come back at you so and underscore
what you said. People say, oh, Warren Buffett pays more. No,
Warren Buckets buffets secretary, And I love Warren Buffett by
the way, he's a cool dude. Actually know his secretary
pays more taxes than he does. Well, of course she's
(12:46):
a W two employee. So a W two employee is
somebody who gets a paycheck. Buffett is not a W
two employee. I look forward to the day i'm not.
I'm mostly not, but I look for to that I'm
not a W two employee. Real, real wealth creation is
about capital gains. So there's so a couple of misnumbers.
Most taxes in this country are actually paid by people
(13:08):
like me and us. By the way, seventy five percent
of all the tax income in this country comes from
the wealthy. That's just a fact. The poort don't have
the taxes to pay, and luckily, and I think appropriately,
they get tax breaks. So that's one. But where does
that those taxes come from. It comes from capital gains
and other forms of taxation. So the tax capital gains
(13:28):
tax is about twenty percent. So if you're getting a
W two check, explain.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
What capital gains is for people that don't know in
simple terms.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
So if so many backups. So if I'm getting a
regular check, I'm going to pay thirty five percent plus
whatever the state tax and maybe it's the city tax.
So maybe hitting in California, maybe hitting forty eight percent
of your pay check unless you have some some kind
of carveouts and you're getting that every two weeks. Right,
if you're Tony Wrestler, who's my business partner, who's the
(13:57):
two hundredth richest man in the world worth ten billion
dollars dollars owner of Atlanta Hawks, owner of the Atlanta Hawks,
Well that's what we know he owns. Him and Mick
Arraghetti have areas management here which you've never heard of before.
That's three hundred and eighty billion dollars in assets in
the management. He gets no paycheck. He but when he
sells some stock, or he sells a piece of real estate,
(14:18):
or he sells a company, there is a capital gain.
There's a gain on the capitol, and that one transaction.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Is taxed.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
When I sold my company, I got the largest tax
bill of my life, and I was OneD to pay it.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Now. Did I work hard to get get the number down?
Sure I did.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
But what I owed I was out under pay because
that means I made some money. I did well in America,
so I'm not mad at paying taxes. I paid seven
figures that year in state in federal taxes alone, and
then I had another high six figure tax in just
my Georgia tax bill. And my Georgia tax bill that
year was six hundred thousand dollars. That was an easy tax.
(14:59):
So so and so when, by the way, once you
start paying taxes, you start being concerned about infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So you start seeing potholes. Hey man, fix these potholes.
What's up with that?
Speaker 5 (15:10):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Why does the hospital work? And what the police start?
Speaker 5 (15:13):
You realized police work for you, right, It changed your
whole mindset.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Right.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
But to come back to your point, I think that
part of this is, uh, I agree with a lot
of what President Biden is doing, and there is no
choice but him in the re election. There is no
rational choice. The other dude is a divider and got
all kind of mental issues he needs to deal with.
But and it's just not you know, the Bible says
(15:38):
a house divided cannot stand. It's just actually just good math.
You cannot have somebody who's dividing people and you're trying
to grow GDP. Hopefully we can get to that in
a minute of how how you know, really diversity is
a business plan for this country. So that one piece
I don't know I'm down with. I think that you
want to double the capital gains tax from twenty to
forty you may just literally just stop a lot of
(16:01):
investment in this country, and you will crater the returns
for the average person. So a couple numbers. You have
about eighty million rental homes in America. So eighty million
homes in America thirty million or so, I believe our
multi family if my memory's right, fifty million. So are
single family homes. Of those, about eighteen million or rental homes.
(16:21):
Of that, about five hundred thousand are institutionally owned, owned
by guys like me. Most of those are what we
were talking about. It's the trash collector who owns a
second house in his neighborhood. Well, if you double the
capital gains tax, if you're not really careful, you're going
to destroy that man's generational wealth he just created. So
(16:42):
the average person who's a capitalist is the gas station owner,
is the I mean, it's a small business owner. So
we got to stop demonizing success. We really need to
be trying to encourage actually people to become wealthy and successful.
I'm going to the exact opposite direction and making it
easy for him. Now, we gotta pay for it. Everybody
should pay their fair share. But you know, I like math.
(17:04):
It doesn't have an opinion that's a melody hops in quote.
And the math to me is what I said to you.
The wealthy already paying more than their share. Now can
there be more fairness? Yes, Like they're private equity dudes
who get away with all kind of stuff and the
hedge funds dudes that get away with a lot of stuff.
Because the way the tax is structure that needs to
be refined.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I think people are talking about like that when they
see these billionaires or these billion dollar companies not pay anything.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
That's yeah, that's that's not recorporate corporations. But by the way,
they have entire they have hundreds and hundreds of people
in the tax department trying to figure out how to
get that that you know, uh, that tax break that
the city and the county in the state did that
nobody else knows about. So they're they're working the system,
and you can't be mad at somebody who's legally working
the system. But once you figure out that somebody is
(17:50):
working the system, then you need to rework the system,
upgrade that software so that the state and the federal
government don't go broke. Manhattan doesn't work without subways, Manhattan
doesn't work without police, So you have all this, You
have one of the wealthiest countries in a city in
the world that we're sitting in right now but doesn't
work without the public sector, Right, what would.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
You say to people? You know?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
They before we go back to what I was saying,
because I think this is I think this is where
you were going. I was saying that it hurts us
when we're first time millionaires, especially minorities in our family,
and we get taxed in a way that we cannot
necessarily continue that where somebody else.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
A lot of these white people.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Get this money over time, so they already have the
money to start. And that's what I was saying, and
he was like.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah, we don't have Look, this could be a three
hour conversation. I mean you can go down any of
these directions and take it for an hour, Like, we
don't have the generational wealth, we don't have the we
don't have the inheritance. We don't have you know, our
capital is a credit card, right, That's how I came up.
So of course you're you had me a hello, You're
absolutely right. I mean I literally had to use credit
(18:55):
cards to invest in my first businesses, and I didn't
take a salary. Ever, because I knew my businesses needed
that capital return and I didn't pay. I admitted I
didn't file taxes when I was coming up as a
as a hustler in my late teens, and I was
home when I was eighteen to my early twenties. I
didn't pay taxes for six or eight years. Now they
(19:17):
came for me franchise tax board in California. They ain't
not playing. They literally put somebody in my lobby once
they found me and collected like it was like a
gangster collected every day. And I was like, hey, I'm
cool with that. I played the game, now you're playing
it playing me back. Fair change is no robbery. But
I needed that capital I needed. I needed to not
(19:39):
pay him for a minute. I needed every dime to
go in that business. I wasn't trying to avoid my obligations.
I wasn't focused on the details like I am now
now have audited financials. I mean, I arrested my.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Friend, right, I'd rather have to be a friend, right.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Absolutely, I'd rather owe money my mother God rest her
soul than they are. I mean, you know they got
al capone. It wasn't murdering mayn it was tax evasion,
So you don't play with it and you know it.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You got to take it seriously.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
And I think you should feel proud to pay your
fair share because we live in the I think, the
greatest country in the world, even with all our drama.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I think people don't have a problem with paying their taxes.
I think they have a problem with where the money goes. Right,
most people don't know that dioresis division that actually looks
at social media to see where you're at, where you're spending,
if you're on vacation, you're just spending what you're driving
and all that. I think when people start hear and
we're sending six billion to Ukraine and eight billion here
and ten billion here, and then they look at where
they live, that's why I think people have a problem.
(20:36):
I think if they knew where the money was going
and it really benefited their community, I don't think people
will have the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But then let's talk about community.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Because the grain comes from Ukraine, right, I mean, if
you're eating if you know, if you're eating food, it's
a good chance of eating bread that it actually originated
in the Ukraine. So if Russia is blocking chips and
you're wondering why inflation is popping up, is because Russia
is jamming you up on oil and they control that
and you're not getting your grain from these developing countries.
(21:07):
We get a twelve percent of our oil at least
we used to from Nigeria, by the way, and that's
a whole another conversation why Nigeria doesn't have enough oil
for its own people. But we are dependent. We're interdependent
on the world. So you can't just isolate yourself, and
you got to educate yourself, which, by the way, I
love what you guys are doing because you're the educator.
You're like an open university for the whole country. You're entertaining,
(21:30):
but you're also educating. We live in an interconnected world
with the largest economy on the planet, with the soul superpower,
and we rely on our alliances with the world, including
where you see us dropping bombs sometimes now we don't.
America doesn't drop bombs where it doesn't have an interest.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Now.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Bill Clinton was one of the few people who did that.
He went to Somalia for just for a humanitarian situation.
That was the Black Hawk Down movie that came out.
It was unfortunate outcome. But most places, if you see
us there, there's some economic interests. Why are we in
the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Hello? You know oil?
Speaker 5 (22:06):
Why are we in the Ukraine? Yes, it's horrible, but
there are a lot of places that's horrible. Look at Haiti.
We're not in Haiti. We're there because we have an
economic interest. We're protecting our interest. So on a real talk,
if you're once you start becoming a taxpayer, you start
do you start looking at where is the money going?
And it needs to make sense and when it doesn't,
vote people out that's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Now we're back to the right to vote.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
If you when you have a stake and you're a stakeholder,
all of a sudden, voting makes a whole lot more sense.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
And and filling out these forms and the senses and
all that stuff which determines what money's coming to your
community and what money is not.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You know, we've broke.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
Down credit scores by zip codes at Operation Hope, and
we found that if you lived in a five eighty
credit score neighborhood, you see a check casher next to
a payday loan lender, liquor store, next to a rental store,
liquor store, pawn show up, title lending store, and a
church down the street. That's your local neighborhood therapist try
(23:07):
to make you feel a little bit better once a week.
But if you live in a and by the way,
that's black and brown urban, that's.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Also poor white rule.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
But if you go to a seven hundred credit score neighborhood,
which is fifteen minutes away, you live twenty year longer life.
You lived to sixty one years old in the hood,
you lived to eighty one in a seven hundred credit
core neighborhood, and a riot in the seven hundredreditor neighbor
they would go shopping. This is every place in America
fifteen minutes apart. It is unbelievable. When you start looking
(23:39):
at the math and stop getting emotional about this, you
can actually figure out how the world works. And in
the underserved neighborhood, we twenty eight percent of us own
a home. If you can get forty percent, consider yourself lucky.
In a seven hundred credit score neighborhood, seventy five percent
plus own a home. In the poor neighborhood. The underserved neighborhood,
(24:00):
sixty percent of those go to high school. Ninety six
percent of those go to high school meeting graduating meetings,
go to college in a seven hundred cred school neighborhood.
Not racial, it's economic and it's not about the credit score.
It's about the mindset. And then you started sell having
different businesses who then target those neighborhoods. Policing changes, oversight,
(24:22):
your government services change in those neighborhoods. A lot of
these poor counties, man, they make their money on course fees,
on on processing the poor.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
What would you say to people who hear you say,
you know, the color isn't black or white is green?
But then they would say, but hey, there's systemic things,
you know, systemic racism that shows up in a lot
of these institutions that keep us from getting to the green.
Like you know the stat that says mortgage DENI rate
for black borrows is twice that of the overall population.
How would you how do people get around stuff like
credit scores?
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I mean, look, my mother atted my mother, my mother
when she passed away last year, Smith had a credit
score of eight fifty four. When she went to the
computer DJ at night at midnight, the credit score the
computer and then say are you black? Are you Latino.
Are you indying, Well, let me look at you. The
computer said yes, the computer. I challenge anybody listening or
(25:16):
washing this program. Get a seven in front of your name.
You want to be cool. We got to make smart
sexy again. You want to be cool. Get a seven
in front of your name on your credit score. Go
in front of the computer. But get all this drama
going on the computer and type your stuff in. Now
you have to have an income. Don't play games. Now
you have to have an income. You had been paid back,
but you have a decent credit score. You didn't play
(25:37):
games with the credit bureaus. You didn't pay for it.
And watch the approval come through. And by the way,
if it doesn't come, see me at Operation Hope. We'll
go advocate for you to the banks. I have a
policy at Operation Hope. Now I funded four and a
half billion dollars over thirty years. I have a policy.
I'll approve your loan. Of the bank doesn't, I'll put
up my balance sheet. If you do what we say
(25:57):
at Operation Hope, you get your credit score up, you
get your debt are, you get savings up? Just follow
what we're doing. What we're saying, we'll walk you into
the best bank with the best terms in America. They
may be racist, by the way, Maybe the person is
not the bank it's racist. Is a person you're talking to,
by the way, bank wants to make some money, right,
But if the person you're talking to happens have gone
from a horrible family and has is a racist, doesn't
(26:18):
want to give you a loan, We'll make sure they do. Now.
I went out to my self esteem depends on your
acceptance of me. I'm not coming to you for religious
and spiritual guidance. I mean, look, I'm coming to kid
a mortgage loan.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right. I don't need you to be my friend.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
It's okay if you don't like me, I like me, right, So,
but let's so let's keep the message straight.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I'm not coming to church. I'm coming.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
I'm coming to get some capital. I will walk you
in there and dare them not to approve your loan.
The banks and the business are making money. They can't
make any money if they don't make a loan.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You think it's a good time right now?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
To anybody out there buying a house absolutely with interest
rates so high, actual race is not.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
I I mean, you're you're prodding me.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Look because four years ago they were, you know, people
are buying houses at one point nine to two.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Points free money.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
DJ.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
It was free money.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Come on, man, it's like capital on crack. It was
free money. Man, Like why and why was it free money?
Because we had the two thousand and eight crisis that
almost created the entire day on economy. People were you know,
asked getting a mortgage loan and saying what's the payment,
and people were doing a negative am negative amortization mortgages,
pick a pay mortgages like pick my payment.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
It was crazy stuff. The trash man was getting a
million dollar house no interest.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Interesting, Oh my god, negative ammorization where you owed more
after the payment you made than you owed before. I mean,
so that the whole, the whole system went Craig Cray
and again Bill Clinton is a great quote. It's hard
to get somebody agreed to the truth, and the liar
is paying your paycheck. So that two thousand and eight
was a lie paying the paycheck for Wall Street. And
so the government had to like, Okay, we got to
(27:46):
repair this. And of course they did the thing, they
deal with the banks. But then it's like, we got
to get this we got to get the cost of
funds to a point where the economy is flowing. So
they took it to almost zero like Japan did. And
then when they tried to get everybody off capital craft,
Wall Street was like, every three or four years, Wall Street, no, no, no, no,
things are gonna get really horrible if you take if
you raise interest rates. So every FED chairman would try
(28:08):
to raise interest rates and Watery like no, Wall Streets
like no, no, no, and they and there'd be some crisis,
many crisis on Wall Street and wherever its President's like,
who wha wha wha, wha whah, not on my watch.
So they had to wait, I hate to say it
this way, they had to wait to a crisis that
had enough credibility that was COVID.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
When COVID hit, the policymakers were like, who could because
there's never been stimulus with a T in front of
it trillion in the history of the world. Think about this,
never no government has ever issued before the COVID trillion
dollar anything other than treasury bills or something. Right, So
(28:48):
we had six eight nine trillion. So when people say
inflation now, I'm like, no, no, you should be lucky.
The ship's not sank, like you should be lucky. This
is not the titannic. The fact that we're arguing over
three said interest rates. The President needs to get us
standing ovation, like we're the only growing economy in the world.
Were the biggest economy in the world, and we went
through the worst crisis since the Spanish flew one hundred
(29:10):
and twenty five years ago. We went through it for
four years, and we the economy was shut down for
two and here we are talking about, well, it is
interest rates. Are interest rates four or five percent? So
first of all, it was almost enough thing, and I
loved it. As an investor, I loved low interest rates.
I was paying for a I'll give you a personal example.
I had a a two million dollar line of credit.
(29:32):
I was making a payment every month of like twenty
five hundred dollars on my two million dollar line of credit.
I was loving this. Interest rates went up. Well, now
my payment every month is ten thousand dollars, So this
is a real adjustment. I'm rich and I still feel
that right. So it's yes, it's an adjustment, but you
can't argue with five percent. When when my mom and
dad were coming up. Interest rates were eighteen.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Percent in my first house was sixteen.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
There you go, right, and if you're financially literate today,
you feel you're still paying sixteen percent. You go into
a car lot and you're not getting a Mercedes. You
get mercy these payments because that interest rate is eighteen
nineteen twenty percent.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
They own the paper. By the way.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
People just getting pimped every day because they hope you
default on that car a loan.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
They hope you drive it for a year it breaks,
or you break, you bring the car.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Back, they have a little argument with you, they hit
your credit report, they get another payment from you, They
take your security deposit, They repair that in the shop
in the back, which is where they really make their money, maintenance,
and they resell it through the second most profitable thing
in that car dealership, which is finance department. There's three
departments in our auto dealership, sales, maintenance in finance, sales
(30:45):
is the least profitable of the three areas. But we
obsess what do we do? We obsess about what's the
purchase price? And then how do I get the loan
that I want? Here's a payment I want, which is
exactly wrong question going back to your issue. If you're
financially illiterate, you're not asking what the interest rate is,
you're asking what the payment is correct, and you never
ask what the payment is when there's an interest rate attached.
(31:07):
So five percent is yes, higher than this generation has
ever seen. This generation has only seen a black president
and social justice and all that. We're a little spoiled,
but it's actually not that bad, and we need to
get used to it because it's going to be around
for a while. I don't think the interest rates are
going to go up any more. I actually think they're
going to come down a clip at the end of
the year. But I do believe that we're in the
(31:31):
we can get down to back down to four percent.
Consider ourselves lucky. I think we're in the four to
five percent era for a while. But by the way,
that's the best in the world. You go to the Caribbean.
I own property in the Caribbean. When interest rates were
two percent, they were doing six and eight percent. And
when you can finance the mortgage for thirty years here,
they financed it for five or ten years there. We
(31:52):
have a great system here.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Actually, So what.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Would you advise people who are are listening right now.
Who might be a doctor, might be a bus driver,
might be you know, working every day. How would you
advise them to set up for not only their future,
but their children's future. So maybe they don't have to
work for the rest of their life and they can
enjoy some of their life.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
What would you advise from there?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
So, first of all, get financial literacy for all, get
the book. I wrote the book because now everybody can
be the clients of Operation Hope. Now everybody can have
a conversation with me. By the way, when I go
through airports, the TSA agents, Yo man, six p't eighty.
That's dope, Yo man, I'm seven twelve. It is dope
that they're calling out the credit square to me. That's
exactly what you want. We got to make smart sexy again.
(32:33):
We've been making dumb sexy for way too long, dumbed
down and celebrated it.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So get the book.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Half weekly conversations about money at the kitchen table, Like,
we don't talk to each other, we talk at each other.
We talked past each other. We don't sit down and
have dinner anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
It changed a lot with kids, though, because I never
had that conversation with my pop so my mother about finances, right,
it was just dead thing. You mind your business and
an adult and this adult. But I have to those
conversations with my kids now and they understand it a
lot more. They know how to make money, they know
where the money goes, they know what mortgage, they know
interest rates. They know more than I ever did at
my age, which makes them have a different relationship with money.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
But you're the exception that, with all due respect, you're
the exception and not the rule. I love you doing
that right, But that's not the real brother. That is
not what I see at operation home. That's not what
I'm seeing in the community.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
People.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Look, we mix our self esteem with our money or
the lack thereof. And if I don't like me, I'm
not gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me,
I'm not gonna feel good about you. If I don't
respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I
don't love me, I don't have a clue how to
love you. If I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around
comes around. Now you got a surviving mindset, Now you're
(33:46):
expert in what you're against, not what you're for, right,
And you don't have a builder's mindset, you're not your
head's not clear. A lot of our people, our head
is not clear, and so we shop for therapy. You know,
we have a bunch of ing's living up, running our lives, shopping, drinking, drugging, sleeping, oversleeping, sexing, texting, trolling, partying, hanging,
(34:15):
all this stuff and moderation most of it. It's not that bad,
but we obsessed about it. When you're depressed, literally, a
depression is tied to an addiction. An addiction is a
response to an emotion you can't handle, and your reaction
to that should be the heel, which and the deal,
which is what you just said, which is what me
(34:35):
and Charlot Mane's conversations are always about. But healing for
most people is just too tough. So they just they
just cope. Most of the world copes, and they cope
by pulling out of that credit card and going buying
something they can't afford to impress people they don't know
about stuff that don't matter in places where they don't
want them. And so what I say is get your
(34:57):
self esteem right, because I'm reasonably comfortable in your own skin.
Learn to love yourself, hold and complete that's that's that's
where it starts. And then once your head is clear
and you've got and you got a clear head like
you gotta get you gotta fight this Dwe fight from
the neck up in here. Get have their your your
mind has to be right. This is where wealth gets created.
(35:18):
A drug dealer can make money, a pimp can make money,
a murderer can make money, a hit man can make money.
Wall Street can make money. Anybody can make money. That's
that's that's something magical about that. But money is velocity, man,
it will come through your hands. That's why you may
can make a one hundred million dollar NBA contract and
working at Starbucks in seven years. That's how so I
(35:40):
can win the lottery. Seventy percent of those winning the
lottery broke bankrupt in five years. Seventy percent of NFL
and NBA players busted in five years after they retire.
So it's not about it's not about rich. Is a contract.
Riches is tied to an income. But that income if
your if your X flow, if your outfloks, he's your
inflow in your overhead will be your downfall. And you
(36:01):
can do that whether you're making thirty thousand dollars a
year or three million dollars a year, if you're financially illiterate,
if your self esteem's not right, if your values are
not right. And as you said, it's not like we're
not dumbing, we're not stupid. Most single parents need a
Nobel Peace Prize for running a household with too much
month of to end their money. I'm not jamming anybody up,
(36:25):
but I'm saying that just because somebody sets you up
doesn't mean you need to continue to play into that narrative.
So we need to flip the script. Start having family
meetings every week about the lights don't come on by themselves.
Let's walk through the family budget. What does it cost
for us to live. Let's buy that house in the hood,
(36:49):
d a hyphen h ood, buy it by the worst
house on the best block, buy it, rehabit, live in it,
build a equity for two or three years. Take the equity,
buy another house in a working class neighborhood. No mansions, no, no,
no flossin, buy rehabit and rent it. Do that a
(37:14):
third time. You do that three times, you'll be you'll
be a millionaire. That was my mother's story. That's one
of the smith who worked an hourly job at McDonald's
aircraft and died with a million dollar net worth having
bought and sold seven homes. A person listening to this
with an hourly job can become a millionaire. Now, somebody says, well, John,
where's a capital come from? Okay, here's knowledge earning them
tax credit. Now you earn EI. You earned thirty eight
(37:38):
thousand dollars a year. You're listening to this program. You're
a teacher or whatever. You have three children. Congratulations, you
just qualify for EI TC. If somebody says, what's that
you just all of you just hooked that person up
with a check because all you do is work and
have children in this example, and the government owes you
(37:58):
in this example about six thousand dollar. Now, DJ, it's
retroactive for three years.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Where do you go to get that?
Speaker 5 (38:06):
US or the federal government are our vita sites with
the IRS? Are your tax pro But most people who
have a working income don't have a tax pro so
you don't even know. Twenty billion dollars a year goes
back to the federal government every year because poor and
working class people don't ask for the money that is
already allocated for you, and the policymakers in Washington know
(38:27):
you're not going to ask for it, and they get
the political credit for approving it and then reallocate that
to something in their district because they know you're not
gonna claim it.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Exactly, it's not glas work, but you don't have the information
that's it.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
And we're changing that today. So this example, if you've
never filed for eiit see earn income tax credit. In
this example, you got to check for almost twenty thousand dollars.
You take that twenty thousand dollars, you then use it
a down payment on that house I just mentioned. Right,
we're gonna get your credits grew up at Operation Hope
fifty four points to one hundred points. We're gonna get
your debt down thirty eight hundred dollars. We're gonna get
your savings up through budgeting two thousand dollars. You don't
(38:58):
need to go to Starbucks three times. Way, go use
a carrging machine.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
You know you shouldn't be smoking cigarettes. It's gonna kill
you anyway, right, So let's just change that's six thousand
dollars a year. You smoke and go to Starbucks every week.
That's six thousand dollars a year. You making thirty six
thousand dollars a year. Help me with the math. That's
almost twenty percent of your income. Two ways of making
money make more and spend less. This is this is
a This is rapping. I mean this is a different
form yep a rap. It's just this is intelligent rap.
(39:24):
This is the kind of wrap that leaves you better.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Well, you got your division. What say are people parish
from a lack of knowledge?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
That part?
Speaker 4 (39:29):
And that's there's two things we have to get to today.
You know, we were having a lot of conversations man,
and I don't think you've ever shared this publicly but
never why is diversity and inclusion the only way America
will survive?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
So on this topic of d E and I and
I've never shared this with anybody. It's because of you
that I actually got focused on this. You called me
on a Sunday and we had this great conversation for
an hour and you're like, Okay, with John, what should
we do? You can't we can't just like let peop
we get away to doing nothing. It caught me to thinking,
so I said, well, here's the six things I think
we should do, and you're like, write that down and
(40:07):
and come on the show. So coincidence is God's way
of remaining anonymous. Just so happened as the book was
out at the same time, and all this stuff worked
for good. But black people are too emotional on this topic,
and some white people are too narrow minded and fearful.
This literally makes no sense. Like this, I'm dropping this today.
We're gonna publish this in a couple of weeks, I believe,
(40:28):
on CNBC, and I'm taking on the entire hard right,
and my prediction is they won't have much to say.
Here's why it's called a business plan for America. Now,
I'm gonna do this real quickly. In nineteen fifty two,
America was ninety percent white. That that's sink in for
(40:48):
a minute. That meant that with doctor King and Andrew
Young and Dorothy Hyde did in the civil rights movement
was genius because basically America was doing the moral thing
because we didn't have the numbers. America today is forty
percent black and brown, and you add all other minorities
in we're already a majority of minorities, but black and
brown group will be a majority of minority within ten
(41:10):
or so years. Now hold that together, So now we're
a majority of minorities. Those we're going to be the
surf first generation where the population is the majority over
sixty five years of age read baby boomers, who are white,
wealthy and trying to retire. By the way, none of
my comments are racial, This is just the math. So
in our lifetime, you're going to have the first generation
(41:31):
over sixty five years of age, wealthy, white trying to retire.
SOB security by nineteen by twenty thirty four will only
be able to pay seventy cents of every dollar for retirement.
Hold that up there, which means you need more money
going into SOB security. Now you have a population of
black and brown people for the first time in history,
that's basically going to be a majority of minority, and
that's just going to keep escalating. The largest population of
(41:52):
poverty in this country are poor whites, which people don't know.
In the number one group dying are high school you
heated white high school educated white men. Hold all that
to the side for a minute.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Now you have.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
By the twenty forty five census, you're going to have
all these sort of numbers coagulating together, and you're going
to have an economy that doesn't work anymore because we're
not working. You don't have Because black and brown people
are never given the memo on free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership,
and opportunity, we confuse making money with building wealth. By
(42:25):
twenty fifty three, black America will have a network worth
of zero. That that think in for a minute, if
we do nothing, but all we're doing right now, I
didn't say poor people. If all we do is what
we're doing right now, right now black people own to
have a network. Forty one percent of Black people own
a home forty one to forty three percent. The number
one way you build wealth in America is homeownership. It's
(42:49):
part of what we've been talking about today. And once
you own, become a homeowner, I mean literally there's not enough.
There's only so much land, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
It's done.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Once you only you own a piece of this rock man,
and that is hard for that value not to go
up if you're anywhere near places of economic activity and jobs.
So that's where how people compound when they sleep, but
we don't own homes. Latinos are not much better. By
twenty seventy two, I believe it was Latinos will have
a net worth of zero. So the two groups that
(43:19):
are gonna be the majority of minorities were never taught
free enterprise, capitalism, economics, and opportunity. We're the Okay, So
now let's deal with diversity inclusion. What's the biggest economy
in the world. Have already said at the US. What's
the most diverse country in the world? The US, we're
the two most diverse states. California and New York was
the two most prosperous states. These are not trick questions. California, California,
(43:43):
and New York? All right, what's the most What's the
biggest economy in the South? Not a trick question.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
The biggest economy is all.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
No biggest economy in the American South. There's a traditional
American South Atlanta four hundred and fifty five billion dollars
a year, tenth Lar's economy in the United States.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
What's the most diverse place in the traditional South?
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Atlanta?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Now you take six states around Atlanta, states not cities.
You can name them Alabama, Mississippi, like you can name them.
The Atlanta City economy is bigger than all six states.
You can take three of those states together, put them
inside a bucket, and sit it inside of the City
(44:25):
of Atlanta's economy. That's because diversity is actually good business.
If you're a business today, a company, a Fortune five
hundred company, you're thirty six more likely to be prosperous
and profitable if you're diverse and inclusive. Put another way,
the most profitable big companies in America are diverse and inclusive.
The math on this stuff, and we can go on.
(44:47):
You know, I can do this forever, but I think
the point is sort of obvious. What I'm saying is
that the mass is undeniable. And here's another One City
Group did a report, not the NAACP, which I love,
not the Urban League, not Operation No, not Lara City
Group did a report on racism about black people twenty
twenty to twenty twenty to twenty twenty. Discriminations against blacks
(45:10):
alone costs the US economy sixteen trillion dollars trillion. The
only the annual economy is twenty two trillion. And if
we just knock it off, you pick up a trillion
dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
You mean you can look up too. Don't think John
O'Brien is just saying this stuff you've sent me to information.
I've read these.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Articles everything I'm saying here. If you're nosy, if you
knows he likes me and Charlottemagne and now DJ and
now I know you. If you knows he liked me
like us, you can look this up and confirm everything
I'm saying. So what am I really saying? How do
you cancel the diversity, equity and inclusion programs which are
basically D D E and I is the R and
(45:51):
D the research and development for the future economy because
seventy percent of the US economy is consumer spending. Seventy
is you and me buying coffee, going our car notes,
paying mortgages, going to dinner. So if the folks replacing
the folks got the jokes but don't have the capital,
we can rock the stage, but don't own the right,
(46:11):
don't own but don't own the stage. We can bounce
the basketball, but don't own the team. We can rent
the house, but don't own. We don't have a mortgage
and own the home. How we're how's this country going
to continue? Like God has a sense of humor. Man, Literally,
America can only continue to be the superpower of the world.
(46:32):
There's never been a superpower that wasn't an economic power.
Think about France, Think about Germany when it was on top,
Think about Italy Rome when it was on top.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
You can go on and on and on.
Speaker 5 (46:43):
It was never a superpower that wasn't at the same
time the economic power. What's America today? But we cannot
continue unless the folks listening to this program and watching
this video become capitalists.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Oh there you have it podcast, become become compassionate capitalists.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Compassionate capitalists.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
I mean, you know, I have a patent copyright that
I'm trying to get called Black capitalist matter. We talked
about we talked about Black Lives Matter. I'm I have
a twist on that Black Capitalist matter. I'm trying to
make this whole topic sexy in the suites, just like
we talked about this stuff in the streets. We've got
(47:29):
to start expanding opportunity for all and start transitioning. I mean,
this is an intellectual property you guys have here. You
have a brand, You have a brand, just has a brand, right,
I mean, iHeart has a brand.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
This, this has a revenue stream. Right.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
What you do here allows you to go and and
go on vacations, and contract with people and whole conference
subconferences and pursue your own personal passions, right, some of
which works, some of which doesn't. Allows you to give
to charity, become philanthropic, and if you're coming from an
underserved neighborhood, you're more likely to have compassion and want
(48:05):
to give and do something for those neighborhoods. I said,
I'm sure this will be controversial, I said. When I
was an advisor for President Obama at this time, I
wrote a piece said that there was more important to
have a black Bill Gates and a black president. And
I meant it because the era of politics was the
twentieth century. The air of capitalism is the twenty first century.
(48:28):
The world's moved on is not about In fact, government
can't do anything without the revenue from the capitalists. If
you had a black Bill Gates that people could emulate. Okay,
wait a minute, this dude is a one hundred billionaire.
He's created, you know, one hundred thousand multimillionaires. And now
you've got you know, two hundred thousand people making six figures,
(48:51):
and all those people are giving money their church, their nonprofits,
that's in their kids a college. The ripple effect of
all that, and then they're role modeling. Then they go
they go off as start a business and buy a business.
And now that you had a whole new mindset of
who you can be. You cannot have everybody trying to
be Ti or jay Z or Beyonce. It's not scalable.
Everybody can't be Oprah. Literally, that's a person with thirty
(49:13):
employees maximum. God bless what they're doing. You had forty
million black people, you know, probably the same amount of Latinos.
We need engineers, we need mathematicians, we need computer scientists.
We need stuff that's scalable and lasts over time. So
it's a complete mind shift, right. We need to We
(49:34):
need a business plan. We are the business plan for America.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
The future of America depends on diversity.
Speaker 5 (49:40):
Quite literally, And I'm not making them. I'm not trying
to pick a fight. I'm not trying to I'm not
getting emotion. I'm passionate. I'm not getting a motion. This
is to me is just math. That's what I love
about this. It's the math is undeniable. It's not even closed.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
There's not enough college educated.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
Oh yeah, not enough college educated successful white men the
drive GDP gross domestic product for the next thirty years.
I'll say it again, this is not in any way
anybody want to listen to this and take a little
piece of this and take it out and try to
manipulate my words and say that John Brian is race baiting.
I'm gonna say it again, slowly. This is not racial.
(50:21):
It's math. There are not enough college educated, successful white
men to drive gross domestic product for the largest economy
in the world for the next thirty years. That's never
happened in the history of the world. Never In nineteen
fifty two, you could ignore black people, you could ignore Latinos,
you couldnorm Native American Indians could you could ignore rich
(50:42):
white people, could ignore poor white people. What are poor
white people doing now riding at the ballot box? Think
about it. That's what's happening. It's never happened in the history,
the modern history of this country.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
So when you say God has a sense of humor,
it is simply because the institutional racism of this country
will ultimately cannibalize this country.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
Yes, and I think that COVID was a Noah's Ark moment.
I think that we were we were heading down a path.
We had a guy, we had his president, who, based
on the economy of twenty nineteen, would have got reelected
because we most people vote their pocketbooks. That would have
been disastrous for democracy. I think God's like, you know what,
(51:22):
I give you guys, free will. But every now and
then I got an intervene. And within a year, looking
about this, when a year you had, you had COVID
that shut down. We haven't been shut down for two weeks.
We were shut down for two years. You could look
down the street and there was literally nobody there. COVID
(51:44):
George Floyd. Now, wait a minute. Everybody was watching it,
rich and poor, black and white, conservative and liberal. Why
we watch it? Because COVID had us at home looking
at the news. If it wasn't for COVID, it'd be like,
come home, baby, what's going on? A horrible shooting in Minneapolis?
Did you see it? I didn't see it. What Time's dinner?
On to something else? But everybody was watching it. That
(52:06):
then created a social justice reckoning of black America. Sixty
three billion to a three hundred billion, depending on how you
look at the numbers funded by the private sector, right,
which where DEI and all this stuff came from. We
haven't seen that in fourty years. Then that led to
the January sixth. We haven't seen that since the British
attacked the Capitol, which has us all things about our
(52:27):
role in democracy. Then you had as a follow on that,
you had this row versus way. Now white women are
pissed off. Everybody's now re engaged in democracy, whether whether
you like it or not. The only thing I give
is former president credit for is he's got everybody focused
on democracy because before that nobody voted. So this year
is a colonic. This year is one huge colonic, Like
(52:50):
we're just flushing everything out, trying to figure out who
we're going to be when we grow up and if
we want to be the continue to be the superpower
in the world. We got to grow up and we
got to realize better together. And this is again, this
is got to me. This is God saying you want
to play a role in history. You want to be relevant,
you want to be important, you want to know the
world knew you were here. Here's your time. Everybody listening
(53:13):
to this has a role to play. This is the
third reconstruction in my opinion, and it's and it's about
the green listen.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
If y'all want more of this great information, man, go
get John hopbrien's new book, Financial Literacy for All, Disrupting Struggle,
advancing financial freedom, and building a New American middle Class.
And you can subscribe to John ho'brien's pop podcast, Money
and Wealth with John Hopebrian on The Black Effect. iHeartRadio
podcast network. John is also it's a privilege to have
(53:44):
him on the board of The Black Effect as well.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
I'm deeply honored by that. And I and I really Dolly,
I'm so sorry I should have been talking about my
podcast and I love my I love my podcast on
your platform. We this is my chance to have a
ministry of hope. This is my this is my ministry
of finance. Once a week on Thursdays. To make this
really approachable, like break it down, tell people how stuff works.
(54:08):
Once a week, calmly, simply take one topic. I mean, well,
we talked about the day this this interview is probably
thirty different topics, right, and a lot of people went
over their heads. They gotta do it on replay, right.
I have a million viewers a week on my videos
and people, most of them are just watching it over
and over again. People are shamed to admit they don't
(54:29):
understand money. They're shamed to understand that they don't. They
don't people. I've had adults tell me like, what's a stock?
What's equity? They're shamed. They don't know what fdi C
means Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. They don't know what SEC means,
security is exchanged, and no one taught them. And now
we feel dumb. We are not dumb. If you're making
it in America, you are a genius. And now through
(54:52):
this Money and Wealth podcast, you can you know, have
your own university in your pocket. I want to have
fifty two episodes that you can give to your daughter,
give to your child, get somebody getting married, give to
that new parent, that new couple who's about to buy
a home. Right, just look, just listen to this. Just listen,
you know, in your car, and make sure you are
(55:12):
building a legacy in a life and not just a
bunch of generational debt. Marriage came from business. It was
not a romantic concept marriage came from families trying to
figure out how to join their economic interests. The couples
even lived together, they lived in different castles, different rooms. Right,
(55:35):
we've made this all about romance. Right, And when you
so you people me and a marriage, girls from strip
clubs and don't.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Know nothing about them.
Speaker 5 (55:43):
And she might be beautiful, but you might want to
know something other than whether she's cute. When you got
here's my drop the mic for this. When folks go
to the club this weekend and you see somebody who's fine,
brothers and girls, you see a dude who's handsome, get
the name, get the number, and at some point say
(56:03):
what's your credit score?
Speaker 1 (56:06):
And I'm only partially kidding.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
John O'Brien brien follow him on Instagram, tour is on
the Gram.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
It's John O'Brien everywhere.
Speaker 4 (56:15):
At John O'Brien everywhere.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Man.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Make sure you download the Money and Wealth podcast on
the Black Effect I Heeart Radio podcast network. Get Financial
Literacy for all. This is who we should be listening
to in regard as the financial literacy man. John Hope Brian.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
That's right, it's the Breakfast Club, Good morning.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarry Charlamage the guy.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We are the Breakfast Club. You got a special guest.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the building, Yes we do, John Hope Brian Welcome, brother,
Honored to be here. Man, how you feeling new book?
Financial literacy for all?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Not illiteracy, Financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's right, financial literacy for all. So what's the reason
for the book?
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Before we tell the book? I want people to know
who is John Hope Briant.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
I mean other than God's child, other than Jenny the
Smith's son and Johnny.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Smith's son from Closer to the mic.
Speaker 5 (00:37):
From South central Los Angeles. My mom and dad, my
granddad was a sharecropper born in eighteen seventy one. RB Smith,
my second great grandfather, was part of the Black Union
troops tied the reconstruction George Young. Everybody should know your history.
My mom and dad came from the south to south
(00:59):
central LA. Married, built a little mini fortune in southern
Trila with next to nothing, gas station, apartment building, two businesses,
own home, lost it all because my dad was financially illiterate.
So I became passionate about the topic. I mean, we
can get into I was homeless, as you know, for
(01:21):
six months of my life, so people think I had
some silver spoon in my mouth, not true, and lost
everything and had to rebuild myself today. So I've gone
from literally the bottom quartile of the economic situation too.
I guess I'm the one percent today that people talk about.
I'm the largest minority owner of single family rental homes
(01:41):
in America. Say that again please, I'm the largest minority
read black owner of single family rental homes in America.
I owned seven hundred homes. Seven homes, yeah, but to
be structured, to structure properly. I bought them through the
Promised Homes Company over five years, which I'm the I was,
(02:03):
it's the sole owner of I sold the company for
one hundred and twenty million dollars Christmas Eve twenty twenty one.
Then I went to Taco Bell as the wire transfer
is going.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Through, indeed, waning to celebrate with a not your bell
broaday a number one shell was what was the symbolism
in that? Like, did that something you ate while you
was homeless?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Uh? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Actually yeah, actually good good good take It was what
I ate when I was homeless, but also just keeping
it simple, like take life seriously, don't take yourself too seriously.
I also built the largest financial literacy organization in America.
It's called Operation Hope. Have four main clients. We've invested
four and a half billion dollars in our communities. We've
created four hundred thousand black businesses through one MBB. I
(02:45):
came up here with Toby Looki, who's the founder of Shopify.
I was one of the top ten riches men in Canada.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
And invested four and a half billion into black communities,
right yep. And what was that other one?
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Uh? Well, so I broke We finished with the single
family rental home piece. Even though half of my vendors
there by the way are plumbers, heating, electricians, lighting, roofing, landscaping, painting,
they're black and brown people. So owning the homes is
one piece. A DJ you know about this. Owning the
homes is one piece. But you can empower people with
jobs and contracts that you can't do anyplace else. And
(03:20):
the bigger I make that company and I'm planning only
ten thousand homes, the more I can empower my people
with contracts. I was doing I'm doing right now a
few million dollars a year in contracts, and that's sustainable
contracts and wealth creation. So that's Promise Homes Company. Then
you've got Operation Hope, which has three hundred offices across
the country. That's what you're talking about where we've invested
(03:41):
four billion, four and a half billion dollars in underserved
neighborhoods and created four hundred thousand black businesses since George
Floyd's murder. And you know, if you're if you're listening
or washing this and you own a gas station or
you have a barbershop, you should have an E barbershop.
You have a restaurant, you have an E restaurant. You
have a nail salon, you should have eatmail salon. In
(04:03):
other words, you should be able to go online, make
an appointment, buy some products. You make money during the day,
you build wealth and your sleep. At Operation Hope, we're
raising credit score is fifty four points to in six
months one hundred and twenty points and twenty four months.
Nothing changes your life more than God of Love, the
moving your credit score one hundred and twenty points. We're
louring debt thirty eight hundred dollars and increasing savings two
(04:26):
thousand dollars for somebody making forty eight thousand dollars a year.
So we're the only nonprofit in history ever allowed to
operate ins out of a bang branch. Ever, so that
means you're getting the bank out of the no business. No,
I'm sorry, I can't make you alone and back into
the yes business. Now we think it's racism, It might be,
but it also might be your credit score stakes. Half
(04:47):
of black folks have a credit score below six to twenty.
Not poor people, everybody. Latinos are right behind us. And
so when you wake up in the morning, half of
us are locked out of the free enterprise system. And
Bassard Andrew Young say, who was on that balcony doctor
King was assassinated. He say, to live in a system
of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of
free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. So DJ,
(05:12):
to answer your question about you know why the book,
it's a civil rights issue, the civil rights issue of
this generation period, the new move. The last move was
in the streets civil rights. This move is in the
sweets civil rights. The color is green, not black, or
brown not black. Black or white, or brown or red
or blue. It's green and it's always been green. Slavery
(05:36):
was about money.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Whatever.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
If your day's out about God or love, your days
above money. But we don't understand money. We want to
spend it, which is an emotional play, by the way,
which is tied to our self esteem or lack thereof.
But we which goes back to the mental health issues
that you and I talk about. But we don't understand it.
And you make as I said earlier, you make money
during the day. You build wealth in your sleep. So
(05:59):
this is like, this is like everywhere and everything and
you live in You live in a capitalist democracy. America
is the biggest economy on the planet, the sole superpower
in the world.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Let me ask you a couple of questions. And I
wanted to set the table like I'm glad. I wanted
people to know who you are.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's just that's to my five divisions.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yes, but I want people to know who you are
and what you've done because we live in this world
where everybody's a financial literacy guru and got a financial
literacy book. It's like, no, John O'Brien is the real deal.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
First of all, thank you for that, but it just
drives me nuts, man, Like, do you want to do
you want a surgeon, you know, doing cancer surgery on you?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And they they saw a video on YouTube. I mean,
do you do you do?
Speaker 5 (06:41):
You do you want somebody driving a big rick card
that's next to you and your family? And they never
took a driver's test. They'd be like, oh, I got this.
I mean, this is crazy. It's just like nuts.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It's big business.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Though.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
It is a big business, and folks that you know,
and God bless their hustle, but this is not something
to mess with. People talking about, you know, the most
important other than your health and your spirituality. There's nothing
more important than your life. This is like breathing. And
you have folks selling books and tapes and seminars. And again,
I'm not messing with anybody's hustle, but this is not
(07:18):
something to play games with. And you cannot become wealthy
by selling books and tapes on becoming wealthy, That's not
the way this thing works. But that's a whole industry
and it just stuns me.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Man.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
I'm like, I've been these boardrooms. I see the credit facilities.
I don't see these people. I don't see the folks
who are the financial influence. In fact, if you're doing
that full time, all day, all night.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
How could you possibly be in the stries doing what
you're saying you.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
Doing that part. I have four hundred employees. That's I mean,
that's full time.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Man.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
I've got a CEO of each one of my divisions.
My payrolls a million and a half dollars every two
weeks for the last thirty years. I mean, you can
go pull up my tax returns for my non property leads.
You can pull up my tax returns seventy two million
dollars last year. I'm the largest black founded nonprofit founder
who's running it in the country.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Got a couple of questions, So, you know, the main
thing that's been coming out of for people that's own
single proper single family units or multi family units.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Is the squad of laws.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Right, We've seen what happened a couple of weeks ago
in New York. What's your take on on the squad
of laws? Because it seems like squatters have more rights
than the actual owners.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
It's it's crazy, you know, And look again, I'm you're
not gonna You're not gonna find more compassionate capitalists, But
I am a capitalist. Even if you want to distribute
money like a socialist, you have to first collect it
like a capitalist. Like this is just nuts. And people
don't understand that most people own these properties. They're not
big businesses. It's a doctor, it's a dentist's it's a
(08:56):
it's a teacher, a bus driver, a bus driver who
has a rental property. They're trying to build some generational wealth.
And fantastic for them. By the way, that it is
possible that financial freedom is the only true freedom because
every other freedom could be taken away from you, political freedom,
religious freedom. Look at what's going on right now in society.
(09:17):
I mean, women listening to this, watching this men men
try to tell you what to do to your body,
and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Were you in the
womb with me and my mom? Were you in the
I mean, how's this conversation tied to you? But financial freedom,
unless you screw it up, that's yours. And so to
have a squatter come and move into your spot and
(09:37):
then start telling you the rights that they have, I
mean that just it just goes against every basis of
reason and common sense. That I have and I'm from
the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
They from home like this.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's a business. It's a business. You know.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
People say, here's a lot of crazy stuff like, oh,
I hate rich people.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
No, you don't.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
You hate rich people until you become rich. What you
hate is a game system. What you hate is a
system rigged against you that you don't think is fair
and honest. Okay, I get that, which is why I'm
trying to build the ladder, show you how capitalism really works,
which is why I wrote this book, et cetera, et cetera.
Just break this down and and make it and make
it approachable. But you actually don't hate it because you actually,
(10:24):
if you look at your life, most people are actually
aspiring to achieve it. That's what these quatters are trying
to do, trying to get something for free. Right, there's
all We're all capitalists, man, everybody's a capitalist. You have
a part time job, you're a you're using your human
capital and you're changing you're exchanging it for some gig money.
You have a job, you work from nine to five,
(10:45):
same thing. You have a career. Now maybe you're working
from nine to nine, or maybe you don't have hours
because it's it's a salary. You have a C suite job,
which is a step above a career. They get Boston
call you in the weekends in the evening. But still
the risk is on the entrepreneur, the business owner. And
then you can get to the piece where you've got
a business owner, which is a franchise or some kind
(11:06):
of existing business plan that you pre that you pre understand.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Like Taco Bell or whatever. But we don't even understand that.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
We don't even say that McDonald's actually is a real
estate play the property that's right. And then you have
the crazy people like me who are entrepreneurs, who are
who are wake up with our hair on fire. But
we also have the highest risk and the highest reward.
So you have low risk in lower reward here and
high risk and high reward here. But it's all capitalism.
You're all using your human capital or your financial capital
(11:38):
to go get yours.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
And what do you think about the You know, Joe
Biden was talking about raising the capital gains tax so
that business guys who try to like me, sell stuff
and buy and sell for high they're going to attax
you at He's trying to tax you at a forty
eight percent rate. Now, but what hurts is we just
talked about all these these minorities. A lot of them
is the first time that they all know is in
their family. So you got guys that a one hundred millionaires.
(12:02):
But now you make your first millionaire tax and you
forty eight percent. How can that possibly generate the generational
wealth when they're cutting it in half.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
So so folks who don't who don't own anything or
and don't realize that they're capitalists, We're like, yeah, tax them,
tax the ridge, tax Ridge until they get that tax
bill for that property they own.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't mean me
so so here.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
So you just said some deep stuff, and I'm not
sure if you realize how brill it what you said was.
But I'm gonna come back at you so and underscore
what you said. People say, oh, Warren Buffett pays more. No,
Warren Buckets buffets secretary, And I love Warren Buffett by
the way, he's a cool dude. Actually know his secretary
pays more taxes than he does. Well, of course she's
(12:46):
a W two employee. So a W two employee is
somebody who gets a paycheck. Buffett is not a W
two employee. I look forward to the day i'm not.
I'm mostly not, but I look for to that I'm
not a W two employee. Real, real wealth creation is
about capital gains. So there's so a couple of misnumbers.
Most taxes in this country are actually paid by people
(13:08):
like me and us. By the way, seventy five percent
of all the tax income in this country comes from
the wealthy. That's just a fact. The poort don't have
the taxes to pay, and luckily, and I think appropriately,
they get tax breaks. So that's one. But where does
that those taxes come from. It comes from capital gains
and other forms of taxation. So the tax capital gains
(13:28):
tax is about twenty percent. So if you're getting a
W two check, explain.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
What capital gains is for people that don't know in
simple terms.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
So if so many backups. So if I'm getting a
regular check, I'm going to pay thirty five percent plus
whatever the state tax and maybe it's the city tax.
So maybe hitting in California, maybe hitting forty eight percent
of your pay check unless you have some some kind
of carveouts and you're getting that every two weeks. Right,
if you're Tony Wrestler, who's my business partner, who's the
(13:57):
two hundredth richest man in the world worth ten billion
dollars dollars owner of Atlanta Hawks, owner of the Atlanta Hawks,
Well that's what we know he owns. Him and Mick
Arraghetti have areas management here which you've never heard of before.
That's three hundred and eighty billion dollars in assets in
the management. He gets no paycheck. He but when he
sells some stock, or he sells a piece of real estate,
(14:18):
or he sells a company, there is a capital gain.
There's a gain on the capitol, and that one transaction.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Is taxed.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
When I sold my company, I got the largest tax
bill of my life, and I was OneD to pay it.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Now. Did I work hard to get get the number down?
Sure I did.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
But what I owed I was out under pay because
that means I made some money. I did well in America,
so I'm not mad at paying taxes. I paid seven
figures that year in state in federal taxes alone, and
then I had another high six figure tax in just
my Georgia tax bill. And my Georgia tax bill that
year was six hundred thousand dollars. That was an easy tax.
(14:59):
So so and so when, by the way, once you
start paying taxes, you start being concerned about infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So you start seeing potholes. Hey man, fix these potholes.
What's up with that?
Speaker 5 (15:10):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Why does the hospital work? And what the police start?
Speaker 5 (15:13):
You realized police work for you, right, It changed your
whole mindset.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Right.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
But to come back to your point, I think that
part of this is, uh, I agree with a lot
of what President Biden is doing, and there is no
choice but him in the re election. There is no
rational choice. The other dude is a divider and got
all kind of mental issues he needs to deal with.
But and it's just not you know, the Bible says
(15:38):
a house divided cannot stand. It's just actually just good math.
You cannot have somebody who's dividing people and you're trying
to grow GDP. Hopefully we can get to that in
a minute of how how you know, really diversity is
a business plan for this country. So that one piece
I don't know I'm down with. I think that you
want to double the capital gains tax from twenty to
forty you may just literally just stop a lot of
(16:01):
investment in this country, and you will crater the returns
for the average person. So a couple numbers. You have
about eighty million rental homes in America. So eighty million
homes in America thirty million or so, I believe our
multi family if my memory's right, fifty million. So are
single family homes. Of those, about eighteen million or rental homes.
(16:21):
Of that, about five hundred thousand are institutionally owned, owned
by guys like me. Most of those are what we
were talking about. It's the trash collector who owns a
second house in his neighborhood. Well, if you double the
capital gains tax, if you're not really careful, you're going
to destroy that man's generational wealth he just created. So
(16:42):
the average person who's a capitalist is the gas station owner,
is the I mean, it's a small business owner. So
we got to stop demonizing success. We really need to
be trying to encourage actually people to become wealthy and successful.
I'm going to the exact opposite direction and making it
easy for him. Now, we gotta pay for it. Everybody
should pay their fair share. But you know, I like math.
(17:04):
It doesn't have an opinion that's a melody hops in quote.
And the math to me is what I said to you.
The wealthy already paying more than their share. Now can
there be more fairness? Yes, Like they're private equity dudes
who get away with all kind of stuff and the
hedge funds dudes that get away with a lot of stuff.
Because the way the tax is structure that needs to
be refined.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I think people are talking about like that when they
see these billionaires or these billion dollar companies not pay anything.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
That's yeah, that's that's not recorporate corporations. But by the way,
they have entire they have hundreds and hundreds of people
in the tax department trying to figure out how to
get that that you know, uh, that tax break that
the city and the county in the state did that
nobody else knows about. So they're they're working the system,
and you can't be mad at somebody who's legally working
the system. But once you figure out that somebody is
(17:50):
working the system, then you need to rework the system,
upgrade that software so that the state and the federal
government don't go broke. Manhattan doesn't work without subways, Manhattan
doesn't work without police, So you have all this, You
have one of the wealthiest countries in a city in
the world that we're sitting in right now but doesn't
work without the public sector, Right, what would.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
You say to people? You know?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
They before we go back to what I was saying,
because I think this is I think this is where
you were going. I was saying that it hurts us
when we're first time millionaires, especially minorities in our family,
and we get taxed in a way that we cannot
necessarily continue that where somebody else.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
A lot of these white people.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Get this money over time, so they already have the
money to start. And that's what I was saying, and
he was like.
Speaker 5 (18:32):
Yeah, we don't have Look, this could be a three
hour conversation. I mean you can go down any of
these directions and take it for an hour, Like, we
don't have the generational wealth, we don't have the we
don't have the inheritance. We don't have you know, our
capital is a credit card, right, That's how I came up.
So of course you're you had me a hello, You're
absolutely right. I mean I literally had to use credit
(18:55):
cards to invest in my first businesses, and I didn't
take a salary. Ever, because I knew my businesses needed
that capital return and I didn't pay. I admitted I
didn't file taxes when I was coming up as a
as a hustler in my late teens, and I was
home when I was eighteen to my early twenties. I
didn't pay taxes for six or eight years. Now they
(19:17):
came for me franchise tax board in California. They ain't
not playing. They literally put somebody in my lobby once
they found me and collected like it was like a
gangster collected every day. And I was like, hey, I'm
cool with that. I played the game, now you're playing
it playing me back. Fair change is no robbery. But
I needed that capital I needed. I needed to not
(19:39):
pay him for a minute. I needed every dime to
go in that business. I wasn't trying to avoid my obligations.
I wasn't focused on the details like I am now
now have audited financials. I mean, I arrested my.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Friend, right, I'd rather have to be a friend, right.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Absolutely, I'd rather owe money my mother God rest her
soul than they are. I mean, you know they got
al capone. It wasn't murdering mayn it was tax evasion,
So you don't play with it and you know it.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
You got to take it seriously.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
And I think you should feel proud to pay your
fair share because we live in the I think, the
greatest country in the world, even with all our drama.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I think people don't have a problem with paying their taxes.
I think they have a problem with where the money goes. Right,
most people don't know that dioresis division that actually looks
at social media to see where you're at, where you're spending,
if you're on vacation, you're just spending what you're driving
and all that. I think when people start hear and
we're sending six billion to Ukraine and eight billion here
and ten billion here, and then they look at where
they live, that's why I think people have a problem.
(20:36):
I think if they knew where the money was going
and it really benefited their community, I don't think people
will have the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
But then let's talk about community.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Because the grain comes from Ukraine, right, I mean, if
you're eating if you know, if you're eating food, it's
a good chance of eating bread that it actually originated
in the Ukraine. So if Russia is blocking chips and
you're wondering why inflation is popping up, is because Russia
is jamming you up on oil and they control that
and you're not getting your grain from these developing countries.
(21:07):
We get a twelve percent of our oil at least
we used to from Nigeria, by the way, and that's
a whole another conversation why Nigeria doesn't have enough oil
for its own people. But we are dependent. We're interdependent
on the world. So you can't just isolate yourself, and
you got to educate yourself, which, by the way, I
love what you guys are doing because you're the educator.
You're like an open university for the whole country. You're entertaining,
(21:30):
but you're also educating. We live in an interconnected world
with the largest economy on the planet, with the soul superpower,
and we rely on our alliances with the world, including
where you see us dropping bombs sometimes now we don't.
America doesn't drop bombs where it doesn't have an interest.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Now.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Bill Clinton was one of the few people who did that.
He went to Somalia for just for a humanitarian situation.
That was the Black Hawk Down movie that came out.
It was unfortunate outcome. But most places, if you see
us there, there's some economic interests. Why are we in
the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Hello? You know oil?
Speaker 5 (22:06):
Why are we in the Ukraine? Yes, it's horrible, but
there are a lot of places that's horrible. Look at Haiti.
We're not in Haiti. We're there because we have an
economic interest. We're protecting our interest. So on a real talk,
if you're once you start becoming a taxpayer, you start
do you start looking at where is the money going?
And it needs to make sense and when it doesn't,
vote people out that's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Now we're back to the right to vote.
Speaker 5 (22:29):
If you when you have a stake and you're a stakeholder,
all of a sudden, voting makes a whole lot more sense.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
And and filling out these forms and the senses and
all that stuff which determines what money's coming to your
community and what money is not.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
You know, we've broke.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
Down credit scores by zip codes at Operation Hope, and
we found that if you lived in a five eighty
credit score neighborhood, you see a check casher next to
a payday loan lender, liquor store, next to a rental store,
liquor store, pawn show up, title lending store, and a
church down the street. That's your local neighborhood therapist try
(23:07):
to make you feel a little bit better once a week.
But if you live in a and by the way,
that's black and brown urban, that's.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Also poor white rule.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
But if you go to a seven hundred credit score neighborhood,
which is fifteen minutes away, you live twenty year longer life.
You lived to sixty one years old in the hood,
you lived to eighty one in a seven hundred credit
core neighborhood, and a riot in the seven hundredreditor neighbor
they would go shopping. This is every place in America
fifteen minutes apart. It is unbelievable. When you start looking
(23:39):
at the math and stop getting emotional about this, you
can actually figure out how the world works. And in
the underserved neighborhood, we twenty eight percent of us own
a home. If you can get forty percent, consider yourself lucky.
In a seven hundred credit score neighborhood, seventy five percent
plus own a home. In the poor neighborhood. The underserved neighborhood,
(24:00):
sixty percent of those go to high school. Ninety six
percent of those go to high school meeting graduating meetings,
go to college in a seven hundred cred school neighborhood.
Not racial, it's economic and it's not about the credit score.
It's about the mindset. And then you started sell having
different businesses who then target those neighborhoods. Policing changes, oversight,
(24:22):
your government services change in those neighborhoods. A lot of
these poor counties, man, they make their money on course fees,
on on processing the poor.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
What would you say to people who hear you say,
you know, the color isn't black or white is green?
But then they would say, but hey, there's systemic things,
you know, systemic racism that shows up in a lot
of these institutions that keep us from getting to the green.
Like you know the stat that says mortgage DENI rate
for black borrows is twice that of the overall population.
How would you how do people get around stuff like
credit scores?
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I mean, look, my mother atted my mother, my mother
when she passed away last year, Smith had a credit
score of eight fifty four. When she went to the
computer DJ at night at midnight, the credit score the
computer and then say are you black? Are you Latino.
Are you indying, Well, let me look at you. The
computer said yes, the computer. I challenge anybody listening or
(25:16):
washing this program. Get a seven in front of your name.
You want to be cool. We got to make smart
sexy again. You want to be cool. Get a seven
in front of your name on your credit score. Go
in front of the computer. But get all this drama
going on the computer and type your stuff in. Now
you have to have an income. Don't play games. Now
you have to have an income. You had been paid back,
but you have a decent credit score. You didn't play
(25:37):
games with the credit bureaus. You didn't pay for it.
And watch the approval come through. And by the way,
if it doesn't come, see me at Operation Hope. We'll
go advocate for you to the banks. I have a
policy at Operation Hope. Now I funded four and a
half billion dollars over thirty years. I have a policy.
I'll approve your loan. Of the bank doesn't, I'll put
up my balance sheet. If you do what we say
(25:57):
at Operation Hope, you get your credit score up, you
get your debt are, you get savings up? Just follow
what we're doing. What we're saying, we'll walk you into
the best bank with the best terms in America. They
may be racist, by the way, Maybe the person is
not the bank it's racist. Is a person you're talking to,
by the way, bank wants to make some money, right,
But if the person you're talking to happens have gone
from a horrible family and has is a racist, doesn't
(26:18):
want to give you a loan, We'll make sure they do. Now.
I went out to my self esteem depends on your
acceptance of me. I'm not coming to you for religious
and spiritual guidance. I mean, look, I'm coming to kid
a mortgage loan.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right. I don't need you to be my friend.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
It's okay if you don't like me, I like me, right, So,
but let's so let's keep the message straight.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I'm not coming to church. I'm coming.
Speaker 5 (26:35):
I'm coming to get some capital. I will walk you
in there and dare them not to approve your loan.
The banks and the business are making money. They can't
make any money if they don't make a loan.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You think it's a good time right now?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
To anybody out there buying a house absolutely with interest
rates so high, actual race is not.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
I I mean, you're you're prodding me.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Look because four years ago they were, you know, people
are buying houses at one point nine to two.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Points free money.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
DJ.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
It was free money.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Come on, man, it's like capital on crack. It was
free money. Man, Like why and why was it free money?
Because we had the two thousand and eight crisis that
almost created the entire day on economy. People were you know,
asked getting a mortgage loan and saying what's the payment,
and people were doing a negative am negative amortization mortgages,
pick a pay mortgages like pick my payment.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
It was crazy stuff. The trash man was getting a
million dollar house no interest.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
Interesting, Oh my god, negative ammorization where you owed more
after the payment you made than you owed before. I mean,
so that the whole, the whole system went Craig Cray
and again Bill Clinton is a great quote. It's hard
to get somebody agreed to the truth, and the liar
is paying your paycheck. So that two thousand and eight
was a lie paying the paycheck for Wall Street. And
so the government had to like, Okay, we got to
(27:46):
repair this. And of course they did the thing, they
deal with the banks. But then it's like, we got
to get this we got to get the cost of
funds to a point where the economy is flowing. So
they took it to almost zero like Japan did. And
then when they tried to get everybody off capital craft,
Wall Street was like, every three or four years, Wall Street, no, no, no, no,
things are gonna get really horrible if you take if
you raise interest rates. So every FED chairman would try
(28:08):
to raise interest rates and Watery like no, Wall Streets
like no, no, no, and they and there'd be some crisis,
many crisis on Wall Street and wherever its President's like,
who wha wha wha, wha whah, not on my watch.
So they had to wait, I hate to say it
this way, they had to wait to a crisis that
had enough credibility that was COVID.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
When COVID hit, the policymakers were like, who could because
there's never been stimulus with a T in front of
it trillion in the history of the world. Think about this,
never no government has ever issued before the COVID trillion
dollar anything other than treasury bills or something. Right, So
(28:48):
we had six eight nine trillion. So when people say
inflation now, I'm like, no, no, you should be lucky.
The ship's not sank, like you should be lucky. This
is not the titannic. The fact that we're arguing over
three said interest rates. The President needs to get us
standing ovation, like we're the only growing economy in the world.
Were the biggest economy in the world, and we went
through the worst crisis since the Spanish flew one hundred
(29:10):
and twenty five years ago. We went through it for
four years, and we the economy was shut down for
two and here we are talking about, well, it is
interest rates. Are interest rates four or five percent? So
first of all, it was almost enough thing, and I
loved it. As an investor, I loved low interest rates.
I was paying for a I'll give you a personal example.
I had a a two million dollar line of credit.
(29:32):
I was making a payment every month of like twenty
five hundred dollars on my two million dollar line of credit.
I was loving this. Interest rates went up. Well, now
my payment every month is ten thousand dollars, So this
is a real adjustment. I'm rich and I still feel
that right. So it's yes, it's an adjustment, but you
can't argue with five percent. When when my mom and
dad were coming up. Interest rates were eighteen.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Percent in my first house was sixteen.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
There you go, right, and if you're financially literate today,
you feel you're still paying sixteen percent. You go into
a car lot and you're not getting a Mercedes. You
get mercy these payments because that interest rate is eighteen
nineteen twenty percent.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
They own the paper. By the way.
Speaker 5 (30:10):
People just getting pimped every day because they hope you
default on that car a loan.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
They hope you drive it for a year it breaks,
or you break, you bring the car.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Back, they have a little argument with you, they hit
your credit report, they get another payment from you, They
take your security deposit, They repair that in the shop
in the back, which is where they really make their money, maintenance,
and they resell it through the second most profitable thing
in that car dealership, which is finance department. There's three
departments in our auto dealership, sales, maintenance in finance, sales
(30:45):
is the least profitable of the three areas. But we
obsess what do we do? We obsess about what's the
purchase price? And then how do I get the loan
that I want? Here's a payment I want, which is
exactly wrong question going back to your issue. If you're
financially illiterate, you're not asking what the interest rate is,
you're asking what the payment is correct, and you never
ask what the payment is when there's an interest rate attached.
(31:07):
So five percent is yes, higher than this generation has
ever seen. This generation has only seen a black president
and social justice and all that. We're a little spoiled,
but it's actually not that bad, and we need to
get used to it because it's going to be around
for a while. I don't think the interest rates are
going to go up any more. I actually think they're
going to come down a clip at the end of
the year. But I do believe that we're in the
(31:31):
we can get down to back down to four percent.
Consider ourselves lucky. I think we're in the four to
five percent era for a while. But by the way,
that's the best in the world. You go to the Caribbean.
I own property in the Caribbean. When interest rates were
two percent, they were doing six and eight percent. And
when you can finance the mortgage for thirty years here,
they financed it for five or ten years there. We
(31:52):
have a great system here.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Actually, So what.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Would you advise people who are are listening right now.
Who might be a doctor, might be a bus driver,
might be you know, working every day. How would you
advise them to set up for not only their future,
but their children's future. So maybe they don't have to
work for the rest of their life and they can
enjoy some of their life.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
What would you advise from there?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
So, first of all, get financial literacy for all, get
the book. I wrote the book because now everybody can
be the clients of Operation Hope. Now everybody can have
a conversation with me. By the way, when I go
through airports, the TSA agents, Yo man, six p't eighty.
That's dope, Yo man, I'm seven twelve. It is dope
that they're calling out the credit square to me. That's
exactly what you want. We got to make smart sexy again.
(32:33):
We've been making dumb sexy for way too long, dumbed
down and celebrated it.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So get the book.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Half weekly conversations about money at the kitchen table, Like,
we don't talk to each other, we talk at each other.
We talked past each other. We don't sit down and
have dinner anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
It changed a lot with kids, though, because I never
had that conversation with my pop so my mother about finances, right,
it was just dead thing. You mind your business and
an adult and this adult. But I have to those
conversations with my kids now and they understand it a
lot more. They know how to make money, they know
where the money goes, they know what mortgage, they know
interest rates. They know more than I ever did at
my age, which makes them have a different relationship with money.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
But you're the exception that, with all due respect, you're
the exception and not the rule. I love you doing
that right, But that's not the real brother. That is
not what I see at operation home. That's not what
I'm seeing in the community.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
People.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
Look, we mix our self esteem with our money or
the lack thereof. And if I don't like me, I'm
not gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me,
I'm not gonna feel good about you. If I don't
respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I
don't love me, I don't have a clue how to
love you. If I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around
comes around. Now you got a surviving mindset, Now you're
(33:46):
expert in what you're against, not what you're for, right,
And you don't have a builder's mindset, you're not your
head's not clear. A lot of our people, our head
is not clear, and so we shop for therapy. You know,
we have a bunch of ing's living up, running our lives, shopping, drinking, drugging, sleeping, oversleeping, sexing, texting, trolling, partying, hanging,
(34:15):
all this stuff and moderation most of it. It's not that bad,
but we obsessed about it. When you're depressed, literally, a
depression is tied to an addiction. An addiction is a
response to an emotion you can't handle, and your reaction
to that should be the heel, which and the deal,
which is what you just said, which is what me
(34:35):
and Charlot Mane's conversations are always about. But healing for
most people is just too tough. So they just they
just cope. Most of the world copes, and they cope
by pulling out of that credit card and going buying
something they can't afford to impress people they don't know
about stuff that don't matter in places where they don't
want them. And so what I say is get your
(34:57):
self esteem right, because I'm reasonably comfortable in your own skin.
Learn to love yourself, hold and complete that's that's that's
where it starts. And then once your head is clear
and you've got and you got a clear head like
you gotta get you gotta fight this Dwe fight from
the neck up in here. Get have their your your
mind has to be right. This is where wealth gets created.
(35:18):
A drug dealer can make money, a pimp can make money,
a murderer can make money, a hit man can make money.
Wall Street can make money. Anybody can make money. That's
that's that's something magical about that. But money is velocity, man,
it will come through your hands. That's why you may
can make a one hundred million dollar NBA contract and
working at Starbucks in seven years. That's how so I
(35:40):
can win the lottery. Seventy percent of those winning the
lottery broke bankrupt in five years. Seventy percent of NFL
and NBA players busted in five years after they retire.
So it's not about it's not about rich. Is a contract.
Riches is tied to an income. But that income if
your if your X flow, if your outfloks, he's your
inflow in your overhead will be your downfall. And you
(36:01):
can do that whether you're making thirty thousand dollars a
year or three million dollars a year, if you're financially illiterate,
if your self esteem's not right, if your values are
not right. And as you said, it's not like we're
not dumbing, we're not stupid. Most single parents need a
Nobel Peace Prize for running a household with too much
month of to end their money. I'm not jamming anybody up,
(36:25):
but I'm saying that just because somebody sets you up
doesn't mean you need to continue to play into that narrative.
So we need to flip the script. Start having family
meetings every week about the lights don't come on by themselves.
Let's walk through the family budget. What does it cost
for us to live. Let's buy that house in the hood,
(36:49):
d a hyphen h ood, buy it by the worst
house on the best block, buy it, rehabit, live in it,
build a equity for two or three years. Take the equity,
buy another house in a working class neighborhood. No mansions, no, no,
no flossin, buy rehabit and rent it. Do that a
(37:14):
third time. You do that three times, you'll be you'll
be a millionaire. That was my mother's story. That's one
of the smith who worked an hourly job at McDonald's
aircraft and died with a million dollar net worth having
bought and sold seven homes. A person listening to this
with an hourly job can become a millionaire. Now, somebody says, well, John,
where's a capital come from? Okay, here's knowledge earning them
tax credit. Now you earn EI. You earned thirty eight
(37:38):
thousand dollars a year. You're listening to this program. You're
a teacher or whatever. You have three children. Congratulations, you
just qualify for EI TC. If somebody says, what's that
you just all of you just hooked that person up
with a check because all you do is work and
have children in this example, and the government owes you
(37:58):
in this example about six thousand dollar. Now, DJ, it's
retroactive for three years.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Where do you go to get that?
Speaker 5 (38:06):
US or the federal government are our vita sites with
the IRS? Are your tax pro But most people who
have a working income don't have a tax pro so
you don't even know. Twenty billion dollars a year goes
back to the federal government every year because poor and
working class people don't ask for the money that is
already allocated for you, and the policymakers in Washington know
(38:27):
you're not going to ask for it, and they get
the political credit for approving it and then reallocate that
to something in their district because they know you're not
gonna claim it.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Exactly, it's not glas work, but you don't have the information
that's it.
Speaker 5 (38:37):
And we're changing that today. So this example, if you've
never filed for eiit see earn income tax credit. In
this example, you got to check for almost twenty thousand dollars.
You take that twenty thousand dollars, you then use it
a down payment on that house I just mentioned. Right,
we're gonna get your credits grew up at Operation Hope
fifty four points to one hundred points. We're gonna get
your debt down thirty eight hundred dollars. We're gonna get
your savings up through budgeting two thousand dollars. You don't
(38:58):
need to go to Starbucks three times. Way, go use
a carrging machine.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Right.
Speaker 5 (39:02):
You know you shouldn't be smoking cigarettes. It's gonna kill
you anyway, right, So let's just change that's six thousand
dollars a year. You smoke and go to Starbucks every week.
That's six thousand dollars a year. You making thirty six
thousand dollars a year. Help me with the math. That's
almost twenty percent of your income. Two ways of making
money make more and spend less. This is this is
a This is rapping. I mean this is a different
form yep a rap. It's just this is intelligent rap.
(39:24):
This is the kind of wrap that leaves you better.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Well, you got your division. What say are people parish
from a lack of knowledge?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
That part?
Speaker 4 (39:29):
And that's there's two things we have to get to today.
You know, we were having a lot of conversations man,
and I don't think you've ever shared this publicly but
never why is diversity and inclusion the only way America
will survive?
Speaker 5 (39:44):
So on this topic of d E and I and
I've never shared this with anybody. It's because of you
that I actually got focused on this. You called me
on a Sunday and we had this great conversation for
an hour and you're like, Okay, with John, what should
we do? You can't we can't just like let peop
we get away to doing nothing. It caught me to thinking,
so I said, well, here's the six things I think
we should do, and you're like, write that down and
(40:07):
and come on the show. So coincidence is God's way
of remaining anonymous. Just so happened as the book was
out at the same time, and all this stuff worked
for good. But black people are too emotional on this topic,
and some white people are too narrow minded and fearful.
This literally makes no sense. Like this, I'm dropping this today.
We're gonna publish this in a couple of weeks, I believe,
(40:28):
on CNBC, and I'm taking on the entire hard right,
and my prediction is they won't have much to say.
Here's why it's called a business plan for America. Now,
I'm gonna do this real quickly. In nineteen fifty two,
America was ninety percent white. That that's sink in for
(40:48):
a minute. That meant that with doctor King and Andrew
Young and Dorothy Hyde did in the civil rights movement
was genius because basically America was doing the moral thing
because we didn't have the numbers. America today is forty
percent black and brown, and you add all other minorities
in we're already a majority of minorities, but black and
brown group will be a majority of minority within ten
(41:10):
or so years. Now hold that together, So now we're
a majority of minorities. Those we're going to be the
surf first generation where the population is the majority over
sixty five years of age read baby boomers, who are white,
wealthy and trying to retire. By the way, none of
my comments are racial, This is just the math. So
in our lifetime, you're going to have the first generation
(41:31):
over sixty five years of age, wealthy, white trying to retire.
SOB security by nineteen by twenty thirty four will only
be able to pay seventy cents of every dollar for retirement.
Hold that up there, which means you need more money
going into SOB security. Now you have a population of
black and brown people for the first time in history,
that's basically going to be a majority of minority, and
that's just going to keep escalating. The largest population of
(41:52):
poverty in this country are poor whites, which people don't know.
In the number one group dying are high school you
heated white high school educated white men. Hold all that
to the side for a minute.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Now you have.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
By the twenty forty five census, you're going to have
all these sort of numbers coagulating together, and you're going
to have an economy that doesn't work anymore because we're
not working. You don't have Because black and brown people
are never given the memo on free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership,
and opportunity, we confuse making money with building wealth. By
(42:25):
twenty fifty three, black America will have a network worth
of zero. That that think in for a minute, if
we do nothing, but all we're doing right now, I
didn't say poor people. If all we do is what
we're doing right now, right now black people own to
have a network. Forty one percent of Black people own
a home forty one to forty three percent. The number
one way you build wealth in America is homeownership. It's
(42:49):
part of what we've been talking about today. And once
you own, become a homeowner, I mean literally there's not enough.
There's only so much land, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
It's done.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Once you only you own a piece of this rock man,
and that is hard for that value not to go
up if you're anywhere near places of economic activity and jobs.
So that's where how people compound when they sleep, but
we don't own homes. Latinos are not much better. By
twenty seventy two, I believe it was Latinos will have
a net worth of zero. So the two groups that
(43:19):
are gonna be the majority of minorities were never taught
free enterprise, capitalism, economics, and opportunity. We're the Okay, So
now let's deal with diversity inclusion. What's the biggest economy
in the world. Have already said at the US. What's
the most diverse country in the world? The US, we're
the two most diverse states. California and New York was
the two most prosperous states. These are not trick questions. California, California,
(43:43):
and New York? All right, what's the most What's the
biggest economy in the South? Not a trick question.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
The biggest economy is all.
Speaker 5 (43:49):
No biggest economy in the American South. There's a traditional
American South Atlanta four hundred and fifty five billion dollars
a year, tenth Lar's economy in the United States.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
What's the most diverse place in the traditional South?
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Atlanta?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (44:04):
Now you take six states around Atlanta, states not cities.
You can name them Alabama, Mississippi, like you can name them.
The Atlanta City economy is bigger than all six states.
You can take three of those states together, put them
inside a bucket, and sit it inside of the City
(44:25):
of Atlanta's economy. That's because diversity is actually good business.
If you're a business today, a company, a Fortune five
hundred company, you're thirty six more likely to be prosperous
and profitable if you're diverse and inclusive. Put another way,
the most profitable big companies in America are diverse and inclusive.
The math on this stuff, and we can go on.
(44:47):
You know, I can do this forever, but I think
the point is sort of obvious. What I'm saying is
that the mass is undeniable. And here's another One City
Group did a report, not the NAACP, which I love,
not the Urban League, not Operation No, not Lara City
Group did a report on racism about black people twenty
twenty to twenty twenty to twenty twenty. Discriminations against blacks
(45:10):
alone costs the US economy sixteen trillion dollars trillion. The
only the annual economy is twenty two trillion. And if
we just knock it off, you pick up a trillion
dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
You mean you can look up too. Don't think John
O'Brien is just saying this stuff you've sent me to information.
I've read these.
Speaker 5 (45:27):
Articles everything I'm saying here. If you're nosy, if you
knows he likes me and Charlottemagne and now DJ and
now I know you. If you knows he liked me
like us, you can look this up and confirm everything
I'm saying. So what am I really saying? How do
you cancel the diversity, equity and inclusion programs which are
basically D D E and I is the R and
(45:51):
D the research and development for the future economy because
seventy percent of the US economy is consumer spending. Seventy
is you and me buying coffee, going our car notes,
paying mortgages, going to dinner. So if the folks replacing
the folks got the jokes but don't have the capital,
we can rock the stage, but don't own the right,
(46:11):
don't own but don't own the stage. We can bounce
the basketball, but don't own the team. We can rent
the house, but don't own. We don't have a mortgage
and own the home. How we're how's this country going
to continue? Like God has a sense of humor. Man, Literally,
America can only continue to be the superpower of the world.
(46:32):
There's never been a superpower that wasn't an economic power.
Think about France, Think about Germany when it was on top,
Think about Italy Rome when it was on top.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
You can go on and on and on.
Speaker 5 (46:43):
It was never a superpower that wasn't at the same
time the economic power. What's America today? But we cannot
continue unless the folks listening to this program and watching
this video become capitalists.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Oh there you have it podcast, become become compassionate capitalists.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Compassionate capitalists.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
I mean, you know, I have a patent copyright that
I'm trying to get called Black capitalist matter. We talked
about we talked about Black Lives Matter. I'm I have
a twist on that Black Capitalist matter. I'm trying to
make this whole topic sexy in the suites, just like
we talked about this stuff in the streets. We've got
(47:29):
to start expanding opportunity for all and start transitioning. I mean,
this is an intellectual property you guys have here. You
have a brand, You have a brand, just has a brand, right,
I mean, iHeart has a brand.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
This, this has a revenue stream. Right.
Speaker 5 (47:45):
What you do here allows you to go and and
go on vacations, and contract with people and whole conference
subconferences and pursue your own personal passions, right, some of
which works, some of which doesn't. Allows you to give
to charity, become philanthropic, and if you're coming from an
underserved neighborhood, you're more likely to have compassion and want
(48:05):
to give and do something for those neighborhoods. I said,
I'm sure this will be controversial, I said. When I
was an advisor for President Obama at this time, I
wrote a piece said that there was more important to
have a black Bill Gates and a black president. And
I meant it because the era of politics was the
twentieth century. The air of capitalism is the twenty first century.
(48:28):
The world's moved on is not about In fact, government
can't do anything without the revenue from the capitalists. If
you had a black Bill Gates that people could emulate. Okay,
wait a minute, this dude is a one hundred billionaire.
He's created, you know, one hundred thousand multimillionaires. And now
you've got you know, two hundred thousand people making six figures,
(48:51):
and all those people are giving money their church, their nonprofits,
that's in their kids a college. The ripple effect of
all that, and then they're role modeling. Then they go
they go off as start a business and buy a business.
And now that you had a whole new mindset of
who you can be. You cannot have everybody trying to
be Ti or jay Z or Beyonce. It's not scalable.
Everybody can't be Oprah. Literally, that's a person with thirty
(49:13):
employees maximum. God bless what they're doing. You had forty
million black people, you know, probably the same amount of Latinos.
We need engineers, we need mathematicians, we need computer scientists.
We need stuff that's scalable and lasts over time. So
it's a complete mind shift, right. We need to We
(49:34):
need a business plan. We are the business plan for America.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
The future of America depends on diversity.
Speaker 5 (49:40):
Quite literally, And I'm not making them. I'm not trying
to pick a fight. I'm not trying to I'm not
getting emotion. I'm passionate. I'm not getting a motion. This
is to me is just math. That's what I love
about this. It's the math is undeniable. It's not even closed.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
There's not enough college educated.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
Oh yeah, not enough college educated successful white men the
drive GDP gross domestic product for the next thirty years.
I'll say it again, this is not in any way
anybody want to listen to this and take a little
piece of this and take it out and try to
manipulate my words and say that John Brian is race baiting.
I'm gonna say it again, slowly. This is not racial.
(50:21):
It's math. There are not enough college educated, successful white
men to drive gross domestic product for the largest economy
in the world for the next thirty years. That's never
happened in the history of the world. Never In nineteen
fifty two, you could ignore black people, you could ignore Latinos,
you couldnorm Native American Indians could you could ignore rich
(50:42):
white people, could ignore poor white people. What are poor
white people doing now riding at the ballot box? Think
about it. That's what's happening. It's never happened in the history,
the modern history of this country.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
So when you say God has a sense of humor,
it is simply because the institutional racism of this country
will ultimately cannibalize this country.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
Yes, and I think that COVID was a Noah's Ark moment.
I think that we were we were heading down a path.
We had a guy, we had his president, who, based
on the economy of twenty nineteen, would have got reelected
because we most people vote their pocketbooks. That would have
been disastrous for democracy. I think God's like, you know what,
(51:22):
I give you guys, free will. But every now and
then I got an intervene. And within a year, looking
about this, when a year you had, you had COVID
that shut down. We haven't been shut down for two weeks.
We were shut down for two years. You could look
down the street and there was literally nobody there. COVID
(51:44):
George Floyd. Now, wait a minute. Everybody was watching it,
rich and poor, black and white, conservative and liberal. Why
we watch it? Because COVID had us at home looking
at the news. If it wasn't for COVID, it'd be like,
come home, baby, what's going on? A horrible shooting in Minneapolis?
Did you see it? I didn't see it. What Time's dinner?
On to something else? But everybody was watching it. That
(52:06):
then created a social justice reckoning of black America. Sixty
three billion to a three hundred billion, depending on how you
look at the numbers funded by the private sector, right,
which where DEI and all this stuff came from. We
haven't seen that in fourty years. Then that led to
the January sixth. We haven't seen that since the British
attacked the Capitol, which has us all things about our
(52:27):
role in democracy. Then you had as a follow on that,
you had this row versus way. Now white women are
pissed off. Everybody's now re engaged in democracy, whether whether
you like it or not. The only thing I give
is former president credit for is he's got everybody focused
on democracy because before that nobody voted. So this year
is a colonic. This year is one huge colonic, Like
(52:50):
we're just flushing everything out, trying to figure out who
we're going to be when we grow up and if
we want to be the continue to be the superpower
in the world. We got to grow up and we
got to realize better together. And this is again, this
is got to me. This is God saying you want
to play a role in history. You want to be relevant,
you want to be important, you want to know the
world knew you were here. Here's your time. Everybody listening
(53:13):
to this has a role to play. This is the
third reconstruction in my opinion, and it's and it's about
the green listen.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
If y'all want more of this great information, man, go
get John hopbrien's new book, Financial Literacy for All, Disrupting Struggle,
advancing financial freedom, and building a New American middle Class.
And you can subscribe to John ho'brien's pop podcast, Money
and Wealth with John Hopebrian on The Black Effect. iHeartRadio
podcast network. John is also it's a privilege to have
(53:44):
him on the board of The Black Effect as well.
Speaker 5 (53:47):
I'm deeply honored by that. And I and I really Dolly,
I'm so sorry I should have been talking about my
podcast and I love my I love my podcast on
your platform. We this is my chance to have a
ministry of hope. This is my this is my ministry
of finance. Once a week on Thursdays. To make this
really approachable, like break it down, tell people how stuff works.
(54:08):
Once a week, calmly, simply take one topic. I mean, well,
we talked about the day this this interview is probably
thirty different topics, right, and a lot of people went
over their heads. They gotta do it on replay, right.
I have a million viewers a week on my videos
and people, most of them are just watching it over
and over again. People are shamed to admit they don't
(54:29):
understand money. They're shamed to understand that they don't. They
don't people. I've had adults tell me like, what's a stock?
What's equity? They're shamed. They don't know what fdi C
means Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. They don't know what SEC means,
security is exchanged, and no one taught them. And now
we feel dumb. We are not dumb. If you're making
it in America, you are a genius. And now through
(54:52):
this Money and Wealth podcast, you can you know, have
your own university in your pocket. I want to have
fifty two episodes that you can give to your daughter,
give to your child, get somebody getting married, give to
that new parent, that new couple who's about to buy
a home. Right, just look, just listen to this. Just listen,
you know, in your car, and make sure you are
(55:12):
building a legacy in a life and not just a
bunch of generational debt. Marriage came from business. It was
not a romantic concept marriage came from families trying to
figure out how to join their economic interests. The couples
even lived together, they lived in different castles, different rooms. Right,
(55:35):
we've made this all about romance. Right, And when you
so you people me and a marriage, girls from strip
clubs and don't.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Know nothing about them.
Speaker 5 (55:43):
And she might be beautiful, but you might want to
know something other than whether she's cute. When you got
here's my drop the mic for this. When folks go
to the club this weekend and you see somebody who's fine,
brothers and girls, you see a dude who's handsome, get
the name, get the number, and at some point say
(56:03):
what's your credit score?
Speaker 1 (56:06):
And I'm only partially kidding.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
John O'Brien brien follow him on Instagram, tour is on
the Gram.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
It's John O'Brien everywhere.
Speaker 4 (56:15):
At John O'Brien everywhere.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Man.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Make sure you download the Money and Wealth podcast on
the Black Effect I Heeart Radio podcast network. Get Financial
Literacy for all. This is who we should be listening
to in regard as the financial literacy man. John Hope Brian.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
That's right, it's the Breakfast Club, Good morning.
Speaker 1 (56:30):
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club News
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