Money & Wealth : A Master Class w/ Will Packer

In this episode, John has an informative conversation with Will Packer that we can all learn from!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey, hey,
this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and
Wealth on the Black Effect Network.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
As you know, I normally don't have guests.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm having a conversation directly with you about the things
that I believe matter most. Every now and then I
bring in somebody who I believe is not only a
value add but a game changer.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
That's the case today my brother from another mother.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
A bad boy. He doesn't walk on water, but he
knows who the stones are. I'm introducing everybody, well, you
already know who he is. It's Will Packer. Will honored
to have you with us. But to say having you
with us is to really talk about your mom and

(01:12):
your dad.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Mister and missus Packer.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
From Saint Petersburg, Florida, who raised you your whole life.
Is mom and dad, not baby daddy, not baby mama.
Mom and dad who took no prisoners, who were excellent,
who don't probably get like most of our mom and

(01:38):
Dad's the credit that they deserve. But I think that
you would want to underscore as we're talking about where
you are now and how you're moving forward in this
great book that you have coming out very soon here
that I encourage everybody to go pick up the Art
of Healthy Arrogance and Dreaming Big. And that's a big title.
And we're going to get into why and the who.

(02:00):
But my guess is, in many ways you are breathing
life and everything you do as a direct reflection of
growing up in Saint Petersburg with your mom and your dad.
So I want to get into that in a second.
For the audience who loves potentials, I got some. This

(02:24):
is money and well, so let's talk about the money first.
His combined filmmaking collection that he's produced himself responsible for
over a billion dollars in receivables worldwide. That's US currency, that's.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Not pay those. Will Packer.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Is a graduate Magnicum Lottie not thank your Lottie, Magnetic
Cool Lot, Florida A and M University in nineteen ninety six,
Bachelors of Science degree get this now in electrical engineering. So,
following his dad's footsteps, which we'll get into in a moment,

(03:05):
he had a vision that he fulfilled and that vision
you see in films and television shows. You've Got Chocolate
City in nineteen ninety four that he did through rain
Forest Films. You've got Will Packard Productions, which did films
that you remember like Think Like a Man, Ride Along,

(03:29):
Girls Trip. You know, these are iconic films that you
may not have known the guy behind them. He has
produced the Academy Awards. That was the ninety fourth annual
in twenty twenty two. He has most recently become one

(03:52):
of four limited partners in an NFL team, the Atlanta Falcons.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
He's deeply involved in his community.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
He is a philanthropist, let's just call it that way.
At the HPCUS, most notably his home university where he
graduated from. He's always shown up, showing out and giving back.
If I recall Will, You've had a tenure run of
a TV series as well, I'm.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Ready to Love.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, Yeah, the longest running African American dating show on television.
Ready to Love on own on Oprah's network. That's correct.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, right, just the other day, who's an icon in
our world?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
And so your credentials are bona fides. And this is
just a small collection of what you have done. I
just did the high water mark. But a lot of
this goes back to mom and dad. Is that right,
no question, no question.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
First of all, thank you so much for having me,
the fact that you allow me to come on. You're
using your platform, You always use your pla PM for
good and strengthening our community with knowledge, especially when it
comes to the financial literacy piece. Part of what you
always push, John is.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
The positive cycle and the positivity of how the cyclical
effect of knowledge and equity can benefit a community, not
just an individual, but a community.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
You're very big on community. Well, it's important that you
started where you did because you're absolutely right. It is
by no mistake that I sit here. I'm very proud
to you know, be successful by any metric, certainly the
financial ones. But for me, I measure success, you know,

(05:45):
on health and well being, mental health, and what I
give back to the community. I'm successful in those ways
because I had an incredible foundation. I did have two parents,
Glad you pointed that out. Not a lot of people do,
but I had a two parent household, right, and a
dad and a mom loved each other work together. I

(06:05):
was born into a world where I knew I had
a dual foundation of support from Mom from Dad, balancing
each other out and telling me. I always like to say,
when I came into the world, my parents lifted me
into the air like Simba and the lion king, and
they said, you see that, they took me to the

(06:26):
highest point they can find. Say, everything the sun touches
is yours. We have to start doing that to our children.
We have to start doing that to that next generation.
Everything that you see is possible. And I had the
audacity to believe my parents when they told me that,
when they told me you can go out and you
can do anything. That's the only way A little black

(06:50):
kid from Saint Pete, Florida, about as far as you
can get from Hollywood on a map. Yep. I didn't
know where Hollywood was. I didn't know anything about the entertainment.
But that little kid was told you can do and
be anything you want if you set your mind to
it and you're willing to work. And I believe that.
I believe it.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
When I think about you, I actually find the title
of your book interesting because I think people in our
community confuse arrogance with confidence. We're so used to not
seeing real confidence that we can confuse it with arrogance,
and so I want you to unpack the title because

(07:30):
I know you did it intentionally and you did it provocatively.
But one thing I like about you, one of the
many things, is and we never talked about this, but
I absolutely believe that it's our shared philosophy.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
There's a lot of love in the word.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
No. You rather respect.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
People respect you or learning to like you than like
you never respect you. An entrepreneur works eighteen hours day
of keeping getting a job, so you're committed to the
work and so no one's going to deny you on excellence.
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
You've doubled down, you've tripled down, You've you've achieved it,
so there's no reason to not believe it. That is

(08:13):
not one answer your self esteem, to quote Quincy Jones,
that depends on someone else's acceptance of you.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
So you're reasonably comfortable in your own.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Skin, which is to me, it goes back to your
parents saying you are somebody, you can do anything you
want to do, and again lifting you up.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
So again, we all start from someplace.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
And I want to really underscore for this audience and
part of wealth is culture and perspective, and we model
what we see.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
And and your kids, and when.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
You have bring a childness in this world, you want
to be more than a sperm donor, right. You want
to be a positive influence in their life. And when
you succeed, you need to understand whether you succeeding or
you're failing. Is an old Southern quote. No matter how
much I love you, my son and my I don't
have wisdom, I can give you is my own ignorance.

(09:03):
And that watch how you live your life. And maybe
only Bible anybody else reads. So all of those quotes
that I just used to me embody your spirit. So
when you write a book call the Art of Healthy
Arrogance and Dreaming Big, I know every word was intentional.
Some of them had to trigger a little bit. So

(09:25):
the book comes out by the way, February eighteen. I
want everybody to go buy it. I want you to
send Will a note on social media saying that you
purchased it. I want you to leave a review once
you read it, or listen to it online where you
bought it. We've got to as people a color. I
want everybody to buy the book, but I certainly people
are color.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
We've got to.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Make smart sexy again. I'm way too long. We've done that,
celebrated it. It's time to make smart sexy again. The
biggest group of buyers of books in this country are
black women. I want to buy this book. I want
you to leave or review, don't boycott somebody. I want
you to clear the shelves. I don't want you to

(10:06):
buy everything that they got this from a black man
or a black woman to show that we have power.

Speaker 5 (10:12):
Yes, well, it's interesting you talk about that power the
working in Hollywood, right, And one of the reasons I
even wrote the book is because I've had a three
decade career in Hollywood, and over.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Those thirty years, I've been able to work with some
of the most famous people, some of the most well known, powerful,
some of the richest folks, also some of the most
topsic people, some of the people that are the most insecure,
some of the people that have got a lot of
negativity that swirls around them all the time. Having to
deal with the people in that environment, I learned a

(10:45):
set of skills that I believe is transferable to any industry.
The other thing I learned is that what you just
said about the power belonging to the consumer. Hollywood, like
any consumer facing industry, operates under an economic comparative. People
get it confused. Sometimes they think, oh, well, Hollywood is

(11:09):
trying to promote a particular agenda. They only want to
see this type of person win or that type of person.
Hollywood is a business. Hollywood is driven by its consumers,
not the other way around. Hollywood is reactive, not proactive,
and so the power always is in the consumer. And

(11:31):
I tell people all the time, there's content out there
that's being made, and you don't like it, or you
want to see more of a different type of content,
Go find that content and spread the work problytized like
you would something that is very important to you in
another area. Let people know. Because when you do that,

(11:51):
folks like myself and also the people that are financing
projects in Hollywood, they have to pay attention. They have to.
So you're absolutely right about that. I title the book
so the title of the book is who Better Than You?
And then the subtitle is the Art of healthy arrogance
and Dreaming Big? And the title who Better than You
clearly states, clearly states the question that each of us

(12:14):
need to ask ourselves, not once a year, not once
a month, not once a week, every day, every day,
ask yourself, look yourself right in the mirror, and affirm
that there is no one better than you to achieve.
And I don't mean achieve like mediocre dreams, right, I

(12:35):
don't mean achieve things that are kind of good. I
mean great, I mean huge, outsized John. At the end
of the day, the folks in this world that you
and I know that have been extremely successful are people
that believe not only that they could do it, but
that they were going to do it and that they

(12:55):
were meant to do And when you walk into a
room and I've been right there with you, you and
I've been in some powerful rooms, brother, in those rooms, yeah,
don't believe that. In those rooms sometimes I'm like, what
am I doing here? And then I see you. I said, well,
let me go talk to my friend John, because he's
the only what I know here and everybody else knows him.

(13:17):
You know what I mean? What I will say is
that you walk into those rooms and we've all been
in those positions, and you're around people, and you know,
you may have a little bit of trepidation. What am
I doing? Here do I belong? Once you have that confidence,
you walk into the room, and that confidence manifests itself

(13:39):
in ways that you don't even realize. You don't walk
in and say what am I doing here? You walk
in and say what can I add to this room?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's right?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
This room is better because I'm in it and I'm
out to show people. See when I say healthy arrogance,
make no mistake, that is very important, very important, because
we associate arrogance and most times it is toxic arrogance.
Arrogance and toxic arrogance is about tearing people down. It
is about I'm better than you. Right, I'm going to

(14:10):
beat you. Look at me, everybody look at me, and
don't look at them. Right. That is what typical arrogance is.
And I know I work in Hollywood. I'm I'm tired
talking about me. Now you talk about me exactly exactly right, Nutherboue,
you were about me. I work in an industry that
created unsubstantiated humors, right, I'm not talking about that. Healthy

(14:37):
arrogance is that supreme confidence in yourself that helps you
to understand what true leaders understand, which is that I'm
successful when I can get you and the other persons
around us to realize that our success is tied together. Right,
So it's not about tearing anybody else down. It is
about lifting yourself and everybody else around you up. True

(15:01):
leaders are able to get people to row in the
same direction. It is not until you get the folks
that are either on your team and your network and
your family and your relationships to understand that your success
benefits them and vice versa. That's what true leaders do,
and that's when you get people saying, oh, you know what,

(15:21):
I need John Hope Framing to win because I don't
rind the win because I'm working with him, because his
success is my success right because he is the person
that is helping to unlock success for all of us.
And so too many times we get in these silos
and that's where that arrogance comes in, tearing everybody else down.

(15:42):
If you win it, I'm losing. No, you can't think
like that. It's about first that internal self confidence, and
that self confidence is a muscle that you can build
over time, you can build up right. I know there
are people that may be watching that aren't you know,
work born with the outside as confidence that that maybe
John and myself have That's that's okay. You can build

(16:05):
it up, and you do it by doing small things
and by succeeding at small things, and by looking yourself
in that mirror every day and giving yourself the credit
for it. And you go on to something bigger, and
then something bigger, and before you know what, you got
some momentum. So that's that's where my concept of healthy
arrogance came.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
I want people to slow down and and rewind this
and listen slowly to what he said. Take it to
half speed, and listen to what he said. How he
impact that is very important, his differentiation. How do I
describe him? I said, he's reasonably comfortable in his own skin.
No one's comfortable in their own skin. That's a lie,

(16:56):
he acknowledged when he wants when he comes into the room.
When I go into a room, I'm acknowledging sometimes it's
a little bit of a of a wondering whether you're
worthy of being in that room, a little bit of insecurity.
That's that's okay. It goes away as natural. It keeps
you from being obnoxious, right, It is a humility. But

(17:20):
then you with rainbow's after storms, then you buck up
and you say, yeah, I really, I'm God's child, I
am somebody. I'm different from everybody here, and I add
value and all of a sudden, that warmth, that authenticity
attracts people to you. And you look up and Will's
got ten people around him, pulling seats around him, as
we were at the last I saw of the Magic
Johnson reception in Atlanta. You look up and there's a

(17:42):
half dozen people centering around him, trying to pull off
of his energy because he's the strongest energy in that room.
That healthy, I'm gonna call it at the moment, confidence
that comes from self esteem.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
If I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
If I don't feel good about me, I'm not gonna
feel good about you, That is right me. Don't expect
me to respect you if I don't love me, I
don't have a clue how to love you. Don't have
a clue because in my life, will make your life
a living hell.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
And hurt people, hurt people here.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
So he is trying to get you to adopt yourself.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Huh, how about that? How about that? And and and
just to go a little bit further with that, when
you realize that the most important voice that you're going
to hear all day is yours, and you start off

(18:38):
with that voice telling you you're qualified, you're prepared, you
have the skills, you are ready for whatever may come today.
That's the most important voice. You probably aren't gonna hear
it any more the rest of that day. But when
you hear it from the most important voice first, you

(19:01):
are better prepared. You are undergirded to go out and
face the challenges of the day. Too often we give
our power away to people because they may have a
fancy title, they may have access to resources. Nothing wrong
with interfacing with folks that are in positions of power
at all, Nothing wrong with taking in what they said,

(19:25):
what they say in their perspectives. You said is a
little love in every note. Right. What I see people doing,
especially in my industry, John, is they're giving their power
to people who aren't them. I sent my script to
Will Packer and Will Packer said no, he said he's

(19:45):
not going to produce it. I said it to Sony
and they said no. I said Paramount and they said no.
All right. Audition for a Will Packer movie and I
didn't get the role. That's just that person's perspective opinion
in this decision being made based on their unique set
of experience.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
It's that a value on you.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
You gotta remember that even though this person is all
those fancy things that John said about me at the
beginning of this all that's true, that still doesn't mean
that I have the right to assign value to you
your life or your dream. I may say, you know,
I'm not going to hire you as an actress. Or
you may have somebody saying they're not going to invest
in your new business. Min you may have a new

(20:27):
boss that you apply for a job, I'm not going
to hire you. That's okay, that's that person's opinion. But
don't give your power to say that your dream is
not over until you say it's over. Don't get that
to anybody. I don't care what their timele is. I
don't care what access to resource they have a rich
day are, I don't care. That is your power. That's

(20:47):
why you're the most important person. You gotta affirm that daily,
you really really do, because that's the thing that gets
you get used to hearing, and then you start to
expect yourself to perform that way, just like it works
in the opposite direction. If you have that drum beat
and negativity always tell you I'm not ready, I'm not worthy,
I don't have it, I'm not prepared. If you're constantly

(21:09):
telling yourself that, that drum beat gets louder and louder,
it works the other way. It's the positive cycle, just
like we talked about before, Just like John you talk
about all the time. That's that positive cycle, that cycle
of positivity that you can create within yourself. We're talking
about you having an internal conversation. You don't need anybody
else to help you with this. You don't need any money,
you don't need any mentor. This is something that you

(21:29):
can do. Start with yourself. Don just said adopt yourself.
I love that mantra. I love that right because it
requires you to love yourself. It requires you to nurture yourself.
It requires you to take care of yourself and give
yourself what you need. That's where you gotta start, and
not enough of us do that. That's where that question
who better than you? Come from.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
I don't think this applies to you now, but twenty
years ago I would say one of your greatest assets
was there's a lot of I mean, you take no
for vitamins. I mean, I know that was also one
of my greatest answers. You didn't you ignore the noise
and you didn't let a know define you take no
for vitamins. And it's a little bit of what you're
telling people coming at you now and others who are

(22:11):
getting rejected, not rejecting you.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
We're just saying this is.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Not that, this doesn't work for what I'm doing right
now has no identity. I'm not identifying you at all.
I'm not even thinking about you think about my project.
So you early on have to as you're building this up,
you have to take no for vitamins and believe in
yourself and say, focus on the rare yes you got,
not the nose you didn't get. The glass was half
flip full, not half empty. The way I see you

(22:35):
now is and we share this trait and never said
this to you publicly, but we're both ruthless about our time.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
MM we'll give away the money. I don't be don't.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Mess with our time. I say no to things.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Hey will no, No, No, I'm sorry, brother, I can't do that. Hey,
well I got to be in Central Pei.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Can't do that.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
No, that doesn't work right now, good luck with that.
You're focused, You're absolutely laser focused on the thing you
want to achieve. No shade to anybody else, but you
can't be successful in life unless you're focused on what
you're trying to achieve. So what are some what are
some want you give to drop some some some I'm

(23:20):
gonna get into some tactical stuff from the book. But
once you drop a few girls of wisdom that people
can expect from this book that are tied to your
or they won't Maybe they won't get it in this
book your life philosophy, What are half of the rules two, three, four,
six that you'll packer lives by that comes that was
between your parents raising you and becoming massively successful. That

(23:45):
piece in the middle is what people's people are missing. Yeah,
and what we're going to give them the day in
this podcast is hope with the business plan. So if
we get into tactical questions about that, that are that
are lessons from the book and lessons for life and
people listening? What are those values that differentiate you that
have made you thrive and not just survive?

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. So one of the
things that I talk about is a big belief of
mine that sometimes you have to go out and climb
the mountain. What do I mean by it? Many of
us have what I call preparation paralysis. Hmmm, I want

(24:28):
to hear this. I am so fortunate John to have
been naive when I started off trying to become a filmmaker.
The power of what I didn't know help propel me.
Because if I knew then what I knew now what
I know now, I wouldn't have done it. Because I'm

(24:49):
I'm analytical, I'm intelligent, and I would have said this
is an unlikely The aperture for success is too small.
I need to find something else to do, and I
want to.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
The audience please listen to me. His degree is an
engineering and.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Engineering and they're extremely specific, extremely tactile. They are very
detailed and with all the respect are rigid. So an
electrial engineer is scientific and they need to know the
mapping before they start to work. So what he's saying
here is a game changer for you. He did not

(25:25):
over analyze, Otherwise he never would have even got off.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
The mark continued, You got it, you got it, you
got it, and that engineering discipline is anethentical to the
creative field in which I work. So when I talk
about preparation paralysis, so many of us say, Okay, I'm
gonna go and I'm going to do this thing. I'm
going to initiate this pivot. I'm going to start to

(25:53):
embark on this challenge. I'm going to climb this mountain,
whatever your mountain is. And they say, I gotta be
prepared though, because I'm climbing a mountain. Mountain is big,
and you spend all your time and all your energy
preparing to climb the mountain and you never climb the mountain.

(26:16):
We all know somebody like that. It's natural. Sometimes you
just gotta climb the mountain. See what happens is we
go out and it is that fear of the unknown
and that fear of failure that allows us to settle
into a comfort level. How many of us know folks

(26:37):
that are like I'm about to. They're always about to.
I'm about to. I'm about to write next year. Next
year's the year I'm gonna start the business. Next year
is the year I'm gonna get the master's degree. Next
year's right about to Because they feel like I'm not
ready yet, I'm just not ready. That's preparation paralysis. What
you have to do is realize that you can go
out and you can have the right shoes to climb

(27:00):
that mountain. You can have the repelling gear, you got
the rope, you got your backpack, you got the canteen
you know, fill with your water, and I can have
all that. But until you actually get up on the
side of that mountain and you plan to go right
and you reach your hand up in the rock slips,
now you got to go left. You get up there,
you feel the sting of the cold air on your face.

(27:20):
Right until you're actually there climbing the mountain, you don't
know what to expect. You don't know what it's going
to be like because you never climbed the mountain before.
So sometimes you actually got to get out there and
just start climbing the mountain in order to do that.
Climbing the mountain is just like swallowing a whale, one

(27:40):
bite at a time. The first thing you have to do,
and this is the second thing, So don't allow yourself
to have preparation paralysis. Get out there and climb the mountain. Yeah,
the second thing, death of the good. That's right, that's right.
The second thing that I described subscribe to is the
belief that when you are getting ready to do something

(28:08):
big right, don't care what it is, sometimes you have
to fabricate momentum. He follow me. Okay, So many times
folks get stuck on that first wrong, John. When I
was making my very first movie after college, I said,

(28:29):
We're going to raise seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
A lot of money for a movie, especially back then.
Seven hundred and fifty would give us what we needed
to go out and get the cameras and lights and
go and shoot this movie. John, for the life of me,
I could not raise. I couldn't get anywhere close to
raising that money. I wasn't rich, I didn't know anybody

(28:50):
rich to know anybody in Hollywood. I was out banging
my hand on doors trying to raise seven hundred fifty
thousand dollars right, So I said, Okay, instead of a
financial goal, I'm going to set a date goal, and
I'm going to say whatever I'm able to raise at
the end of three months, give myself three months. Whatever
I raised the end of those three months, that's gonna
be the budget. Of the film. That's how much I praised.

(29:11):
At the end of those three months, I did not
It wasn't seven hundre fillion dollars, but it sure wasn't
seven thousand dollars. I raised seventy five thousand dollars. That's
what we were able to raise. Guess what. We shot
a tiny movie for seventy five thousand dollars. That was
the budget of the movie. Okay, very small, but we

(29:32):
did it. We completed that movie, and it said to
other people that I could do it. But you know
what it did most importantly, it said to me that
you could do it, that I could do it, that
I could do it. So many times people are going, okay,
step one, complete the task. No, if the task is monumental,
that's not step one. Going back to climbing the mountain analogy,

(29:55):
Step one is buying the shoes. Just buy the shoes right.
Step two, just get the rope. Step three, don't clout
them out, drive by the mountain. You know what I mean.
Do those because before you know what, you've accomplished five
things towards your goal. Now you're telling yourself, I can
do it. I can do things towards my goal. Sometimes

(30:18):
you've got to fabricate that momentum for yourself because it's hard.
Don't allow yourself to get stuck on that first rung.
Get going just doing something, Just do it. Give yourself
an opportunity to get some momentum. That has worked well
for me, and.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Those two values work together. Because there's a famous person
that I've got in the back of my mind. I
won't mention their name because audience would would then make
a judgment. But and I try not to judge people.
People are where they are. But this famous person, who
is the child of a famous person, always wants to

(30:55):
do things perfect. And I've tried to tell them, let
all that parous of analysis go, stop navel gazing. Right
is the perfect become the death of the good. Just
get out there and do it. By the time you
figure out what the perfect is, the opportunity is gone.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
And the situation is completely changed. Right you know not?

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Not only are you not perfect, I tell them, the
other people out of here aren't perfect. The people you're
who you're chasing aren't perfect. These folks are mediocre at best.
And if you and the devil's lazy. So if you
got to hustle. Yes, you got God behind, Yeah you
got haven.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Was just showing up with good heavens. And remember that
is the one that you can control. One of the
other things that that that one of the other tenants
is what you just said. If you got a hostle,
you say the devil is lazy, right, That is the
one thing that you can control. There's so many things
that you you can't control in your world. You can't
control what other people are gonna do, how they're going
to receive you, how they're gonna perceive you. But you

(31:53):
can control how hard you are working, right, So you've
got to put the energy into the things you can control.
So many times we spend we each have a finite
amount of energy. You can't forget that, Okay, none of
us have limitless energy. Got a finite amount of energy,
So up to you where you decide to expend that energy.
Oftentimes we're spending the energy on things we can't control

(32:15):
because I am worrying, I am feeling myself with anxiety
about things that I cannot control that people are doing
around me. You know what you can't control the work,
put your head down and grind, and especially in today's world,
we're so consumed with letting everybody know what we're doing
every step of the way. One of my mautras is

(32:38):
is the work you put in when nobody is watching
that makes everybody pay attention later. The work you put
in when nobody's watching makes everybody pay attention later. And
so you've got to put your head down and grind
and don't worry about what everybody else is doing because
you can't control it. You know what you can't control

(32:58):
your work ethic can control how much energy and effort
you're putting into whatever that goal is that you're trying
to accomplish. I mean, you're going to accomplish it right away,
but you still got to make sure that that energy
that you got, that finite amount of energy, you're putting
it towards something that you can control.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Brilliant.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
I think you're making, as an old Southern saying, put
it whether goats can get it. You're the sales the
way that allow people to approach success. You're putting it
within reach, which is what I like to do with
all of my work. Don't use twenty words when two
will do. People already feel bad, they already feel depressed

(33:49):
and distressed and the worn out. They don't need us
to help them by making something unattainable. So you've made
success attainable. Now this show is Money and Wealth. Before
I pivot to some practical questions in the book, I
want to give some folks here a bit of a
cheat sheet. I've talked about some real estate, real estate
deals I've done, some that did well, some that were

(34:10):
a bust. I talked about business deals. I've talked about
building brands. At some point I'm going to walk through
how to build a global nonprofit and all this stuff.
I try to to show people how they can build
wealth and not just give them a bunch of happy talk.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Is there are there?

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Is there an example you can give will in your
personal life, good news are bad? Some cheats you can
have that you can give folks about. Some insight into
the music and the entertainment business, which actually is music also,
by the way, because you've got you've got soundtracks and
things like that that come out of the movies and
the TV shows. But it like it's publishing the Golden

(34:50):
Goose or what is is it being?

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Is it not being?

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Everyone wants to be on stage, Everyone wants to start
they want to lock the mic. I keep telling them
all the damn mic, right, RiPP, Yeah, what is the aha?
Then will Packer can present to this audience that is
not told or understood about how to make money and
or build wealth in Hollywood?

Speaker 3 (35:12):
Okay, so it is. It is understood, but it is misconstrued.
It is about your personal brand. Okay. We live in
an environment where there's an oversaturation of content. All right,
there's more content out there than ever before. There's more
platforms everybody has now you know, got got this device
where you can go and you can create your own content. Right,

(35:33):
everybody's a star. Everybody's got a social media platform. Hollywood,
the music industry, media companies at large are all trying
to find brands that have an authentic connection to audiences.
Because they don't. They need you. You are the conduit

(35:55):
to get to those audiences. Here's where people mess up
and misstep. You think that you need the support of
a major media brand in order to reach those consumers,
and you really don't, especially now right now, because everybody's
got a YouTube channel, and everybody's got to Instagram, everybody's

(36:17):
got TikTok. You got to have scale, You have to
be able to build a brand that has not just hundreds,
not just thousands. You got to have millions of folks
that are subscribing to whatever it is that you are pitching,
selling and presenting. Right, So what I say to people is,
you make money without Hollywood, That's when Hollywood will come knocking.

(36:39):
You make money without the music industry, That's when the
music industry will come knock. So what you should focus
on is what is the thing that you have that
connects authentically with audience? Right, Don't worry. Don't spend that
time trying to knock on a Hollywood door. I literally
could not get a return call from Hollywood until I
had independently distributed my own film, all my own. I

(37:00):
drove from city to city to city, right, I literally,
I remember I went from Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi, to Birmingham, Alabama,
to Charlotte, North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, the Memphids, Tennessee,
the National Tennessee. I can keep going, I remember, because
I drove every one of my I stayed in a
little Motel six or Super eight, whatever I could afford
to every market. That was my version. Absolute hustle, that

(37:22):
was my version of building my brand at that time
was my early movie project. You ain't have to do
that right now because you can hit sin, you can
hit post, but everybody can hit sin, everybody can post.
So you got to do something that stands out. Focus
your time and energy on building that personal brand. That
is where you can derive wealth from within the media landscape.

(37:43):
Everybody's trying to knock on the door to major media
companies to say, yeah, but I just need to I
need a bigger platform, I need to be in theaters,
I need to be on streaming. No, what you need
is a brand that is valuable enough so that the
folks that have those platforms say, come on over here,
let me use your platform and your connection to an
audience to help enrich my platform. That I've invested all

(38:04):
this money in over here and I need you in
order to help sustain my platform. So spin that energy,
honing whatever that is that boys, and I'm not selling
everybody go out and be an influencer, because that's these days.
That's like you know, being an NBA you know what
I mean. I'm not saying that, but they're gonna be
folks that need to manage those influencers they're gonna be

(38:26):
folks that need to facilitate what they're doing with their money, right,
because these folks are very focused on being in front
of the camera. I've never been in front of the
camera person. I mean very successful because I have been
good at going out and finding Kevin Hart when he
was finally ready to break out and give him his
first movie, right, just breakout movie Indris elba Its first

(38:48):
movie after the Wire was my movie Tiffany Hatch or
breakout role in Girls Trip. That is what I have
been able to do. So that absolutely and that's what
you need, right. It's just just like you mentioned the
Atlanta Falcons and the ownership. It's not just about who
can run the fastest or jump the highest. It's not
just success on the field. There are levels to this, right,

(39:08):
That is what you talk about, Dohn, So understand because
there are levels to this. I have been fortunate enough
to work hard build my own personal brand to the
point when Arthur Blank, the majority owner of the Falcons,
was looking for people to bring into his inner circle,
my name rang out. I made that cut, right. So
now I am in sports without my jump shot. Ain't nothing,

(39:31):
I tell you that right now, I ain't getting enough
to spencerman eastify ye old knees. It ain't happening. Brother.
I'm not racing anybody, but I am now in sports,
so there's other opportunities to do it. So I'm not
saying you have to just be in front of the camera.
The aspects around the folks that are do you know,
people who are talented know how to do it. And
you go in and say, I'm gonna manage you. I'm
going to help you before we go to Hollywood. I'm
gonna help you go from a thousand subscribers to ten

(39:52):
thousand suscribers to a million subscribers. Then we'll go and
see who's interested in talking to.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah, and all these folks think about in every city
they need some place to go and record their content.
Maybe there's a little a little shop people can open
uh and and produce podcasts and and and create the
settings for them to come in.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
And you know, in China an Asia, this is very big.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
To go into shared spaces to record content, you can
the equipment is very expensive. Somebody could be renting that
equipment to influencers and and and and managing platforms.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
So you're getting people to think outside the box.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Uh, and not just to be seen by the box,
as in uh, rocking the mic, being in front of
reading the script. Maybe write the script, Maybe sell the
paper that scripts are on. Yeah, owner of your self.
It's interesting that what you said resonates with me. It

(40:50):
hit me like a ton of bricks when you were
talking about bring value to value to a two plus
two equals six, eight or ten. Bring value to value
so they see that you're better together. In banking, the
joke is the bank will lend you money when you
prove you don't need it.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's a joke, but it's serious.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
And those who are you go far enough of the
economic stratosphere. You stop signing personal guarantees. They give you
what's called, you know, basically unsecured debt. And I've signed
one hundred million dollars deal that I don't have a
guarantee on. But when I signed a sixty thousand dollars
a lot of credit, I personally guarantee that. So your

(41:31):
analogy works in every example, that when you bring value
to a situation, and that people want to be associated
with those who have value that bring to the association
versus somebody come and begging and saying will you hook
me up? You just sell like everybody else correctly, So
life is about selling. We just talked about selling without selling.

(41:55):
That's the example we just gave. You're presenting yourself. You're
not selling yourself. But in your book Healthy Arrogance, How
does the approach you have with this book help people
make the sale?

Speaker 3 (42:10):
First by realizing what you just said, that everything is sales. Okay,
so when you say who better than you, it's also
who better than you? To sell yourself. Realize, no matter what,
from the time you were born to the time you die,
you are selling yourself. You're selling yourself, You're selling your brand.
You're getting other people to recognize a particular and assign

(42:32):
a particular value to you. Right, this person is important.
I need to go talk to them. I need to
answer their calls. I need to pick up you know,
respond to their text. I need to invest in them.
Could be various levels of value, but you're doing that
from day one. That's important because, especially now, a lot
of gen z will say, you know what, I haven't

(42:53):
found my passion yet. I'm not into this thing. I
don't want to work at this particular job. I haven't
found the thing that's going to really kind of ignite
my spirit, you know, awaken the internal voice in me
that says, I wake up every day and I go
do this. I don't subscribe to the belief that you know,
you find the thing you love and then you never
work another day in your life. That's not how things work.

(43:15):
My opinion. What you do is you go out number one.
If you're doing it, you're putting your name on it.
You're busting your ass. You work hard. I don't care.
Like I I before the movie stuff was happening, I
was delivering newspapers for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I was
answering phones on the weekend for Chlorox. I was selling
newspapers door to door. Like I was working hard. It

(43:36):
wasn't something I was passionate about. But my name was
on it, so I was kilding my boy free time.
If your name is on it, you gotta work hard
and give it one hundred and ten percent period, absolute
pride in your name. It's all you have at the
end of the day. That is your personal brand. That
is what you have. Is the most valuable thing that
you own is your brand, right, So you gotta work hard,

(43:58):
no matter what it is. Don't wait to find the
thing that you are passionate about. Work hard today. Whatever
you put your name is on it, If my name
is on it, some respect percent period. If you don't
put respect on it, nobody else is. Nobody else is
going to put respect on.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Watch Instagram post people.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
He's not talking about TikTok LinkedIn Facebook spreads.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
He's not talking about YouTube.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
He's talking about wherever you show up, whatever you do,
show up to show out.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Correct. I'm talking about going. When you got the part
time job at you know, CBS or Ralph or Kroger
or wherever it is, whatever that's doing, you be the
best at it. When I first graduated from college, when
I graduated Florida and University, I was, I was student
Supreme Court justice. I had made a little student film,
you know, I was. I was a big time alpha

(44:49):
on campus. I was a DJ. And then I went
and I got an opportunity to intern under the Huntland
Brothers on a movie they were shooting in Jacksonville. Floor Wow.
I immediately immediately went from being big man on campus
to me the lowest on the total. Immediately, my job
was to unwrangle the cables, make sure the cable cords
never got twisted. So I was running around set all

(45:10):
day untangling cable cords, and then I was also getting
people coffee and tea and whatever they wanted on set, right,
everybody told me what to do. I was the lowest
of the low, but I also busted my ass and
I was the hardest working intern on that set because
my name was on I was building my player. I
didn't want to do that. I'm want to unrangled cables

(45:31):
for the rest of my life, but at the time,
and that was my job to do it. Guess what,
I was going to be the best damn cable wrangler
you ever saw. And that's what I did. And that
was my mentality. And some people on that set treated
me like I was just a young brother that was
chasing my dream, trying to come up and do something,
and they would encourage me. Other people on that same
movie set would treat me like I was the lowest

(45:52):
of the low and in the way, and would yell
at me and you know, say mean things and all
of that almost to a man john and a woman.
Since that time, and I've had the success I've had
in this business. Almost every person on that set has
asked me for a job. And I remember, I remember

(46:12):
those that treated me with respect. I remember those that
treated me like I was the lowest of the low.
So you just never know. But the point is you're
building your brand, so you're putting your name on it.
You go hard. There's no excuse, right. So if you
work and you continue to stack those bricks right, one
by one, no matter what it is, whether you found
your passion or not, you continue to stack your bricks

(46:34):
because you're putting your name on it. That is selling,
That is building your brand. Everything is selling. I'll never forget.
I graduated from college and I told my dad, you
know I didn't I had an engineering degree. I went
going into corporate America because I wanted to chase this
film dream. And I had this opportunity to be selling
Atlanta Journal Constitution newspapers door to door. And I said,

(46:56):
I don't want to do sales. Sales sound like people
that's flying across the country selling copy machines, the people
that don't need copy machines. And my dad said, and
it stuck with me. He said, son, everything is sales. Everything,
he said, World leaders are selling themselves all the time.
They're selling their agendas, they're selling to their constituents, they're
selling to the to the governmental bodies. They're always selling.

(47:17):
Everything is sales. He said, he you're good at it.
You're good at it. So lean into what you're good at.
Go out there and until you're able to make this
Hollywood dream come true, do this so that you can
feed yourself. And I used to go out there and
I knock on people's doors and try not to get
shot in the face, and I would offer them an
amazing deal on a Friday, Saturday Sunday version of the
Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper. That's what it.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Took, you know, for a book that has the word
arrogance in it, there's a lot of humility in this message,
and it's really quite inspired. Ashley, and I think you

(48:01):
may be reintroducing for people a new understanding of things
that they might have previously thought they understood. Like I
will tell people people say, oh, capitalism is bad. No, no,
people are bad. Right, there's good capitalism and there's bad capitalism, right,
and good capitalism is where I benefit you benefit more,

(48:21):
and bad is where I benefit you Bad A price
for it, and you're saying it's healthy arrogance, and there's
toxic arrogance. There's healthy self esteem, healthy self confidence, healthy
set which it allows you to become the product. That's
what I'm hearing you say. Yes, deliver yourself with confidence
to the marketplace. The marketplace finds value in you. You've

(48:44):
been the first in many sectors, which is both good
news and bad news because you've got to be pioneering.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
How has that felt? How did you do it?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
And how did you manage difficult people, arrogant truly toxic
and arrogant people.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
How did you manage around that and still succeed?

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Because that's going to be something that's a lot of
Black people are emotional. We get arrogant, we get emotional,
we get angry, and whenever you make an emotional decision
is going to be a bad one.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
And so how did you with You.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Got the conference, Now you've got the self esteem, you
got all that stuff, but not someis just to deliver
some crap and put it right on your lap theoretically,
and you got to manage around that. How did you
step over messing not in it?

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yes, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being passionate in business,
but you can't let passion rule your business decisions. And
you are right, John, it is a cultural thing. Black
folks are passionate people. You know. Mama was is passionate,
Daddy's passionate, Grandma's passionate. You come in the house, Aunty
with dancing and yelling and screaming at the TV, and

(49:52):
it was just, you know, for no real reason, nothing
just was happy in the moment, you know what I mean.
You know, soul trade was on, whatever it might be.
But we grew up a lot of us in homes
that were very passionate, right, passionate with a lot of energy,
and many of us learn that and it gets ingrained
in us, and it holds us back when it comes

(50:13):
to business. Okay, at the end of the day, Hollywood
is one of the most adversarial, topsy, loud, yelling in
your face industries out there. I have a practice that
I call taking the thunder out. When I am in
an adversarial situation. Oftentimes I'm going to get somebody day

(50:38):
yelling the other person's yelling. I might be yell everybody's yelling. Right.
Nobody is accomplishing anything as a producer My job is
not to win arguments and win fights. My job is
to keep my eye on the main thing, which is
getting the project done. My secret to that is take

(50:59):
the thunder out. So the first thing I do I
tell the story in my book about a movie that
I made, and it was called Takers, and Takers was
about a heightst crew, good looking guys that all dressed up.
It had interest Celba, Paul Walker, God bless him, t
I was in it, Matt Dillon, Michael Eely, Haiti Christiansen,

(51:22):
Oh yeah, great, great, great cats. And the first day
on set this movie almost didn't happen because you look
at the movie Takers, all the guys they got on
suits and ties and they wear pocket squares, and everybody
is very well dressed. Because part of our thesis was

(51:45):
that even though it was an action movie, a heist movie,
we want to also get young women. And we had
all these good looking guys, you know, Paul Walker and
inter Selden, Hey, Christiansen and Michael Ealy come on right,
Chris Brown, right, So we wanted these good looking guys
to be dressed to the knives. And Paul Walker showed
up the first day all said God bless him and

(52:06):
Paul Walker some of other hippie and he showed up
and he had his hair long, and he had on
his ripped jeans. And that's fine because listen, let me
tell you, people actors on a movie said they show
up looking all kinds of crazy before y'all see them.
Trust me, ifore I had my whole team get their
hands on they you would not recognize some of your
favorite starts. So Paul showed up, you know, dingy jeans,

(52:29):
long hair, you know, scruffy. The problem was that Paul
wanted that to be his look for the film. He
did not want to change. He said, this is my
best look. And the head of the studio was there
because it was day one, and the head of studio
immediately tore into him. This is not what we talked about.
We talked about this and we had a plan, and
you're gonna mess it up and you can't look like that.

(52:50):
Get in there. They gotta cut your hair. They got it,
and Paul, who was an easy, soft spoken guy, he
stood his ground. He said, no, I'm not doing that.
He said, I'm not doing that. That's not the look.
I don't like that. And they were going at it.
So here I am day one of Takers. I got
my studio head where my major stars they're arguing right
outside the hair and makeup trailer. The rest of the

(53:11):
actors are on set with my director, and my director's
calling me saying, will what do you want me to do?
I'm supposed to shoot this team?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
And how big is the budget?

Speaker 3 (53:19):
I said, how much money is on the line? Takers
was about a between twenty five to thirty.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Million dollars, So it was a big deal.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Yeah, yeah, especially for me at that time. Yes, so
not early price for Hollywood, but it wasn't you know
it was. It wasn't cheap by any name, right around
thirty actually, know how I think about it.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
You had to succeed. It had to work, had.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
To see it had to work. And in Hollywood, like
a lot of places, time is money. So I told
the director, I said, hey, shoot the first scene without Paul.
I said, don't make it a big deal, right because
I didn't want to have a full revote on my
set with my other actors because quite honestly, many of
them felt like that they really weren't that comfort with
the suitent tie look. I had had a behind the
scenes argument with Indrew Celbook, but I had handled it

(54:04):
behind the scenes, and so it just had agreed, all right,
I'll wear it, I wear a suit, I'll be clean shaven.
He agreed to do it. But I knew if word
got out that Paul was fighting back, everybody's gonna fight back, right,
So I said the director's name of John. I said, John,
go shoot the first scene. Don't make it seem like
Paul was ever supposed to be in it, continue as it.

(54:24):
By this time, Paul Walker had left the trailer and
gone to his own personal trailer because he was about
to find the next fight in Hawaii. He was like,
I'm out of here. I'm not doing the movie. I
walk in the trailer and I knock on the door.
I can hit a gruff, Yeah, yeah, what do you want?
I come in, And the first thing I did was

(54:45):
I apologize. I said, Paul, I am so sorry. I said,
you are here, this is your first day on the
Willpacker set. You are clearly very unhappy. Something has been miscommunicated.
You thought one thing, the studio thought something else, and
now you are here in an uncomfortable and tenable situation.
And I take full responsibility to that because this is

(55:07):
my production. I am sorry I should ever mint it.
I took because he was ready. He was ready for
somebody come in and tell him how I was wrong
and how the emails have been exchanged all that. I
came in and immediately said, I gave him somebody to
blame for it. I said, I'm sorry, blame me, and
I meant it right, you got to be real, don't
be superficial with it, right. But in that moment, it

(55:30):
was not about me saying what Paul we told you
was it was gonna look like. And it wasn't about
me saying, well, studio heads, you should have made sure
that Paul knew. And it wasn't about that. What was
we trying to get done? What were we trying to
get done? So I walked there and immediately said this
is on me. I said, if you stay with us
in this production, I will work every day to make
sure that you do not feel like this again. Because
on a Will Packer production, you should be able to

(55:51):
concentrate on what you're doing. You should not be have
to be emotional about anything. And he took there, he
breathed a second, and he said, he said I get it,
he said. You're the good he said, but you're a
damn good one. He said, I'm gonna do it, really
do the movie. Yep, he said, just give me a second.
But what I did in that moment was I took

(56:11):
the thunder out of the situation. And so so many times,
like you said, John, we're trying to win the battles.
We're over here trying to win the battle. Somebody said
something about me on social media, somebody looked at me
the wrong way, somebody just something that was disrespectful. You're
trying to win a battle.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Let me respond.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I know exactly what I'm gonna say. I know how
I'm gonna get my revenge. I'm gonna know what my
retort is gonna be. You're so focused on winning the battle,
and there's a war going on. Oh, business is a war.
Business is macro, Business is big picture. We get too
caught up into minute ship. Take the thunder out. Want somebody.
Everybody's ready to tell you how you're wrong, and they're

(56:47):
right every especially when you got to disagreement. Everybody's got
there all this stuff. I can't wait till John comes
in here. I'm ready. I'm ready for him. I got
a whole list of things because John know he messed up,
and I'm ready to do all this. I'm ready to
tell him. And if John walks in and says, you
know what, I apologize my part in this, because everybody
has a part is never one way I'm part. I

(57:09):
apologize because my part of this helped exacerbate the situation.
I'm wrong, and you start off like that, they got
this whole list of thing that was read and run down.
Wait what you said? You said you were wrong? What?
But wait a minute, I was waiting for you to
I'm ready for you to argue with me, because I
got retorts, I got stuff to come back with. Nope,

(57:29):
I apologize. I apologize. How can we move forward? Take
that thunder out? Take it out because you keep your
eye on the bigger prize. I've learned that that has
served me well multiple multiple times in Hollywood, and it
will serve you right in whatever industry. Because we all
fall victim to that moment where we get so hot,

(57:50):
so angry, and focused on the battle, and we lose
in the war.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
So I owe you an apology. I was focusing on
the wrong part of this book. I was so thrown off,
and I thought so provocative about the art of healthy
arrogance and dreaming big that I thought that that was
really the part that we need to unpack.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
And now I understand.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
No, no, no, who better than you?

Speaker 3 (58:15):
You? That's the subtitle who better? Again?

Speaker 1 (58:19):
This is what we tend to focus on. The noise
I was healthy arrogance. No no, no no, that's a side
show you to lead?

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Who better than you? To be a father?

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Who better than you?

Speaker 3 (58:29):
To be a mother? Who better than you? To be excellent?
Who better you? Be? God's child? Who better you? Show up?

Speaker 2 (58:35):
And show out in the most positive way?

Speaker 1 (58:37):
So no talk about this, but he just in this example,
and you guys need to rewind.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
This, show it, share, share it with your weekly girls
meet and show it.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
You get your boys in the sidewalk and listen to
this life lesson because what he just described is how
I lived my life. Talk without being offensive, listen without
being defensive, and always leave even your adversary with their
dignity because if you don't, they'll spend the rest of
their life working to make you miserable.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
It becomes personal. You got a over mess and not.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
In it, And that's essentially what he just told you
in this story. He had every right to be offended.
He is twenty five million. The line thirty million. The
line is his name on the door. Everybody had an
agreement in advance. They read the contract and it's like
being married. You got to decide whether you want to
be married or you want to be right. Those are
two different things. And so the wisdom and maturity of

(59:36):
who better than you? He's given you a life lesson.
He's given you thirty years in business, forty something years
on this planet. He now owns an island in the Caribbean.
He's an part owner in a professional football team. He's
got nine NCP Image Awards, he's got all this success
to his credit, billion dollars in ticket sales.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
But what he's telling you is the basic stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
And if you do this, it's a cheat sheet for success,
That's right. What So, in addition of I want them
to go by the book, I do. But what do
you want to leave this audience with? Will they had
a chance now to get inside your heart and your
head and your office life and your experiences for a minute.
They've had an hour with you. Yeah, what's one thing?

(01:00:23):
Is your favorite needs, your favorite nephew or the knucklehead
nephew you've been trying to talk to for twenty years,
wouldn't listen to you. They're leaving your house, they can't visit,
they're leaving you. How they're walking away. You won't see
them again, or at least for a long time. You
want to leave them with a nugget that they can
hold on to, that they can hopefully, in time become

(01:00:43):
to appreciate. What's that thing or things that you'd like
to leave the audience with. That's a Will Packer special.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
Remember that no one, no one on this planet is
more deserving of success than you are. And once you
realize that, and you own that in your heart and
your soul, you will start to act accordingly. There no
one on this planet more deserving of success than you.

(01:01:14):
That's what I would leave them with.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
And I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And as a final thought, on a show that's about
money and wealth yep we didn't talk about your net worth,
We didn't talk about income, we didn't talk about what
actors get paid. We don't get we didn't we didn't
cover any financial stuff. But I believe we talked about
wealth building from.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Question the end, No question?

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
So what I got to say? Am I wrong about that?
Or do you think that?

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
I don't focus on money.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
It comes by focusing on purpose, passion, executing, delivering, giving,
keeping my word being that brand, showing out, showing up
and showing out being excellent.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
The money, the investors, that it attracts capital. Yes, is
that the way it right? Does that work? You have?
One hundred percent? Because everything we've talked about is wealth building.
We get too focused as a community at large, we
get too focused on trying to chase money. And I

(01:02:15):
know this is money and wealth, but I want to
focus on the wealth part. Yes, because the money will
come everything we've talked about, these things that manifest themselves
in ways that allow you to become more successful and
live a more fulfilled life. That's wealth. I have been
blessed beyond my dreams in terms of material success. What
I'm very very happy and proud of and what sustains

(01:02:38):
me is the wealth that I have that is inclusive
of not just the material success, but also balancing that
with my family, my mental health, and my well being.
I'm a happy person. Listen, I get it. It's hard
to be happy. When you're broken. It's hard to be
happy when your stomach is drumping. I get it. I'm

(01:03:00):
not somebody that says, no, no, I don't worry about it.
Just be happy. No, don't worry, be happy. I'm not
saying that. What I'm saying is, when you're going out
and you're realizing the value that you have within yourself,
and you're acting according number one, place that value on
yourself and don't give that power to anybody else. The
wealth that you will accumulate successful people attract successful people.

(01:03:24):
The wealth that you will accumulate will surprise even you
because you will be out there building your brand and
you will be presenting to the world just like them.
John told you. The banks, right, they give them money
to people who don't need it. Trust me. I know
that is the truth, and that is that's just, that's
what it is. I just I was telling I gotta
I was telling my kids the other day because I

(01:03:45):
have some really big retail sponsors, brands that send me
stuff because they want me to wear it or they
want me to put in movies and what have you.
And they'll call me and be like, hey, you get
any more shoes from so and so you got any
more hoodies? I said, listen. They said to that, y'all
stop trying to trying to leach off of my gifts
that I'm getting. But I said, how ironic is it?

(01:04:06):
Because I could buy any one of these things. There
are people that can't buy them, but the people that
get it for free are those that could. That is
the point of it. The way that manifests itself in
your life is the fact that you got to understand
continue to work on being successful and other successful people
will come. Money will come, and wealth will come. We

(01:04:26):
have absolutely spent this last hour talking about wealth building
because we talked about the traits and we talked about
the skill set and the mentality that you have to
have to be successful.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
That is literally what wealth building is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
So if you see will lie on the street and
you walk up to us, I got a script I
gotta do and you're selling a product, you're transitional, You're
going to turn us off. Yeah, if you come and
you present yourself and we feel your authenticity, there you
go and you know, selling a product, you're not trying

(01:05:03):
to not You're trying to build a relationship and a
rapport in forty five seconds, and you improve us. Forty
five seconds may turn into four or five minutes, and
four or five minutes my turn into here's my number
or here's my email address, and then follow up and
send a note. Don't ask for anything. Yeah, thank you
for your time, even if you even by the way,
no one ever does this. You meet me in an airport, whatever,

(01:05:23):
you meet him in the airport, just send a note it's
really nice to meet you, a handwritten note, really nice
to meet you. Honored, respect what your flow, appreciate you.
You know your your wife. You know Heather Packer is beautiful.
You know by behind every successful man is an exhausted woman.
She's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
All I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
And I would love to have fifteen minutes with you
at some point, just to listen, yep. And then three months,
wait six months, and then say I'm coming to LA.
I love to have fifteen minutes if you have time.
There's no way he wouldn't give you fifteen minutes. There's
no way I wouldn't give you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
But you got to handle it the right way.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
That's building and making money. Getting that as getting that
dollar is highly overrated. That's what we have sess with
so he just gave you a master class in relationship
capital and I'm gonna drop the mic. I'm gonna say
what Will won't say he's because he's got kids at
home who are listening to this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
The kids were like, give.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
Me that those Nike shoes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Give me so Shaq Shaq was recently said Jack's kids
were like, hey, Dad, why are we working so hard?

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
What we rich? Shack's like, no, no, we ain't rich.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
I'm rich. I'm rich. A. You better go to work,
you better believe it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Get this book.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Uh, I want you to go purchase who better than you?
The art of healthy arrogance and dreaming big. Take a
little bit of Will Packer wherever you go. It'll make
you better.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Thank you, my friend, my friend, and my brother. I
appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Loving life.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
This is John O'Brien Money and Wealth with the great
Will Packer. Go become your best version of yourself. It
pays dividends.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
I'm out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.