March 28, 2024 • 40 mins
In this episode, John breaks teaches us the 5 things we need to succeed! Get your pen and notepads out!
To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio, Yo Yo,
John O'Brien and this is Money and Wealth on the
iHeart Network, the Black Effect Podcast Network, my weekly series.
(00:24):
And I'm talking about Taraji Henson and her saying she
was underpaid by Oprah. And in comparison, you have Terry
Crews who says he's worked for a minimum wage and
no pay to land big gigs. And those are very
(00:46):
popular movies that in one training day, I believe with
Denzel Washington he was paid zero and Friday he was
paid four thousand dollars and Taraji was paid in comparison
big Bucks. In comparison. Now she says she was underpaid,
(01:07):
which one is correct? Well, I'm with Terry Crews. Terry
Crews says, don't say yes, and you really meant no.
And he says, look, I read the contract. I knew
what it said. Nobody forced me to sign this contract.
(01:28):
Time is money. I could have used my time somewhere else.
I could have gone and worked somewhere else. I could
have gone and worked at a grocery store. I guess
he didn't say this I'm inferring this. I could have
gone and taken a corporate gig or an endorsement deal,
or try to find a different movie to be in.
This was my choice to sign up. I thought this
(01:48):
would be a good move for my career and it was.
And Taraji was asked by Oprah Winfrey and I think
Tyler Perry to do a project. And she looked at
that contract. She knew what it said and she accepted it.
End of subject. Let me say something to you. I
need you to hear me here. Business is not personal.
This is not emotional. It's not my job as a
(02:11):
capitalist to pay you top dollar. It's my job, if
I'm the producer of a project, to actually pay you
the least I can afford to get away with. Yes,
I said it. It's my job to make a profit
for that project, to give a return to my investors.
Everybody's got a boss. You don't think Oprah's got a boss.
You don't think Tyler Perry as a boss on a project.
(02:31):
Who's funding that project, who's putting the money up for
that project, who's distributing that project? What agreements do they
have for that project to hit a certain budget and
not to exceed it. So she's a baller, no doubt
about it. But she's got to speak to her partners
and investors, and she's got to deliver a project that's
under budget and hopefully exceeds on revenue. And that comes
(02:54):
from trying to squeeze every dime you can out of
cost without being cruel. Now, did she underpay based on
what was on the piece of paper to Taraji? That's
not the claim. Miss Henson's not saying she charged. She
promised me five dollars and she paid me to She's
saying what she promised me and what I agreed to,
(03:16):
I think is a travesty. No, it's a travesty for
you not to get a job and your talent. It's
a travesty not for them not to be an Oprah Winfrey.
Thank god, there's an Oprah Winfrey and a Tyler Perry
who can hire somebody. Hello, do you think the creators
of Motown paid their talent top dollars? No, they tried
(03:36):
to negotiate the best deals they could for themselves and
hope to god the talent didn't read the contract. And
then if the talent was literate and could read the contract,
negotiated themselves up, then they would probably say, yeah, if
they really believe in that talent, yes, let's negotiate. But
my job as a capitalist you may not like this episode.
I'm telling you way this world, this world works. My job,
sitting on the other side of that that table is
(03:57):
to pay you the least I can afford to pay
without being upset. And your job is a talent in
this example, is to try to negotiate the most that
you can get from me without without creating friction in
the relationship. Did you hear me? You can't grow without
constructive friction. Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a
rainbow without a storm first. Everything grows through constructive friction.
(04:21):
You can disagree without being disagreeable. So is your job
to negotiate and advocate saying, Hey, I'm worth X, Y
and Z and here's a non emotional reasons for that.
My last product to produce X Y and Z, and
I'm making this up. That's tenfold of what you're paying me,
or twenty fold of what you're paying me what I'm
proposing you paying me. So I think if you pay
me this, I think I can deliver a project that
will produce this other outcome and if I don't, I'll
(04:43):
give you a refund or whatever, or how about you
pay me a baseline. But if I exceed this and Mark,
we agree with profit sharing, like be creative. But to
say that I am this great talent and because of that,
and because i'm this and i'm that, you should be
paying me more because you're black and I'm black, that's crazy. Green.
The color of currency is green. And Oprah's job is
(05:03):
to pay you what she can get away with, to
negotiate every call saving she can in that project, delivered
on time and on budget or under budget, and to
make listen to me now a profit for her investors
and her partners. The talent is not the end all
be all of this project. The talent is one of
many components of a film project. Don't get emotional about
(05:26):
it again. Terry Crews had it right, Hey man, give
me the right project. I'll work for free. I'll pay you.
And for anybody who's saying with John, how do you
have a right to say this again? I don't talk
about things I don't know. I've worked for free, right,
I've worked severely underpaid. I remember this billionaire he'd be
a billion here today is worth two hundred million. Back then,
(05:47):
his name was Harvey Baskin, and I worked as a
waiter and his restaurant, Jeoffrey's Malibu in Hollywood, I mean
in Malibu, California. I worked there, pay minimum wage and tips.
Hired me for a Monday, which means they didn't think
I was a very good waiter. But I wanted to
be in that environment. I wanted to be around those ballers.
(06:08):
So I drove from Compton, California, to Malibu. I think
I started taking the bus initially, and I showed up
and showed out. I showed up early, stayed late, worked hard,
and when I saw Harvey Baskin and Geoffrey at Tienne,
his partner for whom the restaurant was named after, at
the bar, I went up and took the opportunity to
go talk to him, build a relationship, build a rapport.
(06:31):
I pressed them as more than a waiter. Started as
a busboy, actually more than a busboy, more than a waiter.
I was an average bus boy and an average waiter,
but I knew I was a great leader. I had
the potential to be one, and over time, sure enough
I build relationships, build rapport. It cost me money probably
to work there as a waiter and a bus boy.
I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to my short
(06:52):
term economic gain through a paycheck. Again, we obsessed about
the wrong thing. I'm gonna do a whole podcast on
this whole getting paid, getting his dollar, getting his money,
and you end up broke because you're not building wealth. Well,
you bill wealth in your name. The biggest asset you've
got is you, not what's on your ass not your clothes,
not your jewelry, not your whatever, it's you, the inside
(07:14):
of you. So anyway, I got up job working as
the assistant for Harvey Baskin for also was underpaid twenty
one thousand dollars a year or something like that. But
I got to work in his home in Malibu. Watch
how he moved, listened to his phone calls. I went
to I asked him to go to dinner with me
one day, and he said yes. It was like driving
(07:35):
mister Daisy because he was broke his leg or his ankle,
and so he was sitting in the back seat of
my Audi and he had his leg up the fronts.
The passenger front seat was pushed forward. He had his
leg up on the passenger front seat, sitting in the back.
I'm the driver, I'm sure like I was his chauffeur.
I could care less not went outs of my self
(07:56):
esteem and self worth. Its dependent upon your acceptance of me.
I was cool with it because he is the multi
millionaire back and now be a billionaire who was going
to give me knowledge and insight that no one else
could know what else could give me. So we went
to dinner. He found he made this very expensive restaurant reservation.
We went to dinner. We had dinner, great dinner in Venice, California.
The bill comes and it's one hundred dollars. Now. One
(08:19):
hundred dollars is not cheap now, but back then, and
this is going back thirty some years now, that was like,
I mean, call it one thousand dollars, right, And I
didn't want to pay it. I'm like, the bill came
to me, I slid it to Harvey. Harvey slid the
bill back to me. I slid back to Harvey. Harvey
slid the bill back to me. I slid it back
(08:42):
to Harvey. He said, hey, hey, hey, slow down. You
got to decide John, what you want. Do you want
to pick my brain or pick my pocket? One lasts longer. Now,
you were asked me to come to this dinner, and
you've been plying me with questions all night. I've get
basically given you free consulting. That's invaluable. I put you
in the driver's sept literally, and you can talk my
(09:02):
head off. And you want to punk me for one
hundred dollars bill, I'm willing to pay the bill. Nope.
I grabbed the bill, paid it, gave the guy twenty
percent tip, shut my mouth and said thank you, and
then plied in with questions all the way home, and
sure enough, Harvey put his arms around me, said this
was my guy introduced me to countless people, many relationships
I have to this day, and it was an invaluable experience.
(09:23):
When you show up at a corporate office as an intern,
who cares where they're paying you a fee? You're in
the light of sight, of power and wealth and opportunity.
People can see you, they can hear you, they can
watch you. I mean, folks are like, oh, I want
to work remotely, okay, great, cool, Well you won't get promoted.
You may not lose your job by the way. If
there are cutbacks, guess who they're gonna cut first, right.
(09:47):
We tend to be the last hire and the first
fired anyway, But they're gonna cut you first because there's
no connective tissue and you're not getting a promotion, not
a big one. But if I were you, I'd show
up in the office. I'd get right in my boss's face.
I would have walked from front to back, front, the back, front,
the back, front, the back, eight times a day in
front of my boss's office or my boss's boss's boss's office,
(10:08):
until the boss says, excuse me, come here, young man.
What's your name? I mean, what do you do here? Like?
And then like, are you busy? No, sir, not too busy.
I have a project. It's not very interesting. I'll take
it right. And that's how you get in the game.
So Taraji did this great film for Oprah Winfrey. I'd
be wearing that out. She wants Over once her going
on a tour and not pay her for it. I
(10:29):
don't care. I got that gives me more exposure. At
least Over is gonna pay for the expenses for me traveling. Now,
you give me a trip around the world, I'm want
to take a trip around the world on your dime.
I'm gonna make producers and TV shows on your dime.
I'm gonna get excused to talk to take my brand
globally on your dime. I'm gonna meet all kinds of
people and expand my territory on your dime. I'm gonna
(10:49):
build my brand on your dime. I'm going to impress people,
maybe future investors in my own projects on your dime.
I'm gonna make this project extremely successful on your dime
with your investment, and when it does extraordinarily well, I
may come back and say, this has exceeded everybody's expectations.
I know you don't owe me this, Oprah and Tyler.
(11:09):
You don't. You paid me what I asked for, what
I agreed to, and it's unfair for me to say
yes and then later say no and then drag you
in the media after the fact. But I didn't do
that in this example. I didn't do that, and I
will honor my contract. But I told you if I
hit a certain mark, I would come back and ask
you if you would mind considering profit sharing or points
in the back end or something. And maybe now we
(11:31):
can have that conversation, and if you've treated that relationship right,
I'd be surprised if they didn't say, yeah, let's let's
figure something out or not on this project, because maybe
you've already I've already paid out all proceeds to my investors,
and there's nothing left less unless I take it out
of my own pocket, she might say, and she might,
by the way, but tell you what you've done so
well on this let me let me bake you into
my next project and maybe make you an associate producer.
(11:53):
Now you're talking, But listen to this whole interview, because
he says it better than me. He's in the business.
Terry Crews says it right. He didn't work for a
small fee, not even a big paycheck. I mean, tryge
you talking about I can't pay my assistance and all
my bills on these paychecks, then go do something else.
You can't live on a million dollar paycheck. Maybe you
(12:15):
need to be speak to one of my financial coaches.
Now I'm not jamming her up. I'm trying to. Actually
I'm but you know, she made herself. She brought this
out in the public. I'm not going looking for this.
I'm not getting into somebody's business. I'm not trying to
embarrass her. I'm saying I think she's wrong. And I
waited a while for the hoopletter calmed down and everybody's
jump saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, Oprah should pay more, Tyler
(12:36):
should pay more? Why Hello? Why Eve? And if you
want to distribute money like a socialist, you've got to
first collect it like a capitalist. You guys have got
this backwards. You don't give it away on the front end,
you give it away on the back end. You can't
give away my money as an investor, a shareholder. You
can't give somebody my money. You can't pay somebody a
million dollars and a half million dollars more because they say
(12:58):
they don't have enough caveat for their dinner. You can't
do that on my dime. That's not your money, that's
my money. And every billionaire in the world built their
billions on the back of good debt. Please hear me.
They didn't do it on their own, and they're not
doing it on their own. Every billionaire, every multimillionaire, has
partners and investors, and there are agreements to that, and
(13:20):
you got to honor those agreements. And if you are
seeing somebody who throws away money, you're not getting another investor.
So she had no responsibility to overpay Taraji. She's said
just the opposite again, what can I pay this fair
and reasonable and bring this project in at budget or
below and deliver outsize results. That's the goal. And Taraji,
(13:41):
you should be honored to be in the project with
Oprah and Tyler. I would be all right, let me
know what you think. I'm sure you will, but I've
brought this is my opinion on this point. I'm not
really I'm curious what you have to say. See if
you've learned anything. But I'm telling you this is how
the game works. This is not an opinion poll. I'm
telling you this is the way capitalism works. And we
have got this can used. We com boozed and we
(14:02):
need to start getting a memo. And Terry Crews has
it right. Don't take business personally? All right, John O'Brien,
I'm out. This is money and wealth. Let's go yo,
(14:24):
yo is John Hope Bryant. This is money and wealth.
And this week's episode is pretty hot because I'm gonna
tell you something that is a cheat sheet on success.
More than that it's something that literally is a formula
that if you follow it, no one can mess with you. Yes,
I said it. People tell you all kinds of things
(14:47):
that are nebulous and sound great, but Ashley, in practice,
they have no clue whether it's gonna work, because it's
not worked in their life. They tell you something they
read in a book, they tell you something they saw somewhere.
They may be trying to sell you books and tapes.
I made my wealth in entrepreneurship, in capitalism, in business,
(15:08):
I've built businesses. I've built several of them. Three of
my businesses are the largest in their sector in the country.
That includes the largest nonprofit financial literacy coaching organization in America,
Operation Hope. Three hundred offices for hundred employees, four billion
dollars invested in underserved neighborhoods, raising credit scores, lowering debt,
increasing savings, the only non profit allowed to operates out
(15:29):
of a bank branch in the US history. I built
in sold a company called the Promise Homes Company, largest
minority owner of single family rental homes in America seven
hundred homes, give or take sold it. And I'm now
as part of a joint venture where I'm a principal
shareholder and still involved with it, and there are other
things that I'm doing. I'm just telling you I'm an operator,
(15:50):
I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman, and yes I faced discrimination
and bias and all those things over to rounded through it.
Let's get to it. You don't want to rearrange the
deck chairs on the Ti Tanic. The ship is sinking
and you're picking drapes. You don't want to be focused
on what's going on with the right, and really all
the action is here on the left. As Malcolm X
says said, We're been bamboozled, We've been tricked, We've been fooled.
(16:13):
I want you to now have enlightenment. I want you
to understand that I understand racism is real. It's like rain.
It's either fall in someplace or it's gathering. But you've
got to get out in that rain and an umbrella,
with an umbrella and the color you like, and start
strolling through the rain because it's not going to change.
So you must, and you can and you will. So
(16:35):
here as a formula that I guarantee you you follow this,
You're going to succeed. This is from my last book,
Up from Nothing, The Five Pillars of Success. I also
have a new book called Financial Literacy for All that
comes out April sixteenth. I want you to pre order
it and help me make it a national best seller,
(16:56):
maybe even a global bestseller. That book is is me
sitting with you at the kitchen table. But this is
a primer on success. It's my story and it's about
my failures, not my successes. This book Up from Nothing,
The Untold Story of how We All Succeed with a
Ford by Ambassador Andrew Young. Five Pillars of Success. So
here are the five pillars of success. You do this.
(17:19):
If you have less than three of these things, anything's
possible with God's grace. But less than three of these
things is really hard to succeed. You have four or
five of these things, I can guarantee you're gonna kill it. Now.
I want you to tell me after I walk through
it whether you think I'm correct. Here we go. Take
out your pen and paper, pencil, digital ink, iPad, iPhone,
(17:43):
whatever you use. Write this down. It's time to go
to school. This is a masterclass now on mindset and success.
No matter who's standing in your way, success is going
from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm over to
rounded through it. I want you to get to it.
Life is ten percent what life does to you and
(18:04):
ninety percent how you choose to respond to it. I
did a ninety minute masterclass for my friend Bishop TD
Jakes at his ILS summit in Dallas, and I told
the audience, who paid money and traveled to be there
investing in themselves, what I'm telling you now for free.
Here you go. I'm condensed ninety minutes into this podcast
(18:28):
where you can listen to it on the way to
work or on your way home, or gardening or cooking
or whatever, and literally write this down step by step
five pillars. You do three of these, you'll at least survive,
maybe thrive. You do four of these. Five of these,
you'll go from thriving to building. From survival to thriving
(18:49):
to building. You do five of these, I guarantee you
you'll be building. You're a builder winner. Here we go.
Pillar number one. As much education as you can shove
down your throat. Education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool.
When you know better, you do better. No one can
take it from you. Once you have it. Pillar number
two understanding the money, financial literacy. That's why I wrote
(19:13):
the book Financial Literacy for all this is just coming
out financial literacy, understanding capitalism, free enterprise economics, ownership and opportunity,
and those things are different, but they're tied together. We
live in a free enterprise democracy in America. There's never
been a global economy. There's never been a superpower. Listen
to me now that wasn't also an economic power. I'll
(19:35):
repeat that, There's never been a superpower in the world
that wasn't also an economic power. Think about Rome, think
about Italy, Think about France. These were all superpowers in
the world at one time. Think about Germany, all right.
Think about Argentina. Even Argentina at one time he had
the largest economy in the world. Think about Great Britain. Right,
(19:57):
these were the largest economies at that time in the world.
They were the sole superpower. America is now the sole
superpower in the world. And guess what, it has the
largest economy in the world. Well, what happened with those
formerly enslaved? In eighteen sixty five, Abraham Lincoln was inspired
by Frederick Douglass and others to create a Freedman's Bank
chartered to quote, teach free slaves about money. And then
(20:19):
Abrahamligan was assassinated the next month. It was forty acres
January eighteen sixty five, The Mule February eighteen sixty five. Savannah,
Georgia a Bank March third, eighteen sixty five. I'm I'm
the only American citizen. I'm told to inspire the government
to rename a building on the White House campus. It
was renamed the Freedmen's Bank Building in twenty sixteen, I believe,
(20:43):
and it stands as the Freeman's Bank Building today. And
then Abrahamlincoln was assassinated in April when he promised blacks
the right to vote. So we it's not like we're
dumb and we're stupid. We're brilliant. When the rules are
published in the playing fields level, we succeed. Think about
the arts now, think about professional sports, where the room
rules are published and the playing fielders level, we kill it.
We succeed. Think about public office, think about government service,
(21:07):
think about the church. We understand these rules, we've applied them.
We work hard, and we succeed. But no one ever
told you the lessons of free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership,
and opportunity. No one gave you a lesson in financial literacy,
and so you can't master that game. You're hustling at
it and you've got You're even confused about it because
you think that making money is building wealth and it's not.
(21:28):
That's another podcast episode for another day. Understand the Memo.
That's my third book. Get the Memo is what you
don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But
you think you know in a blind town, a one
eyed man's king. If you don't know better, you can't
do better. Please now listen to this as an old
Southern saying, no matter how much I love you, my
(21:50):
son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I
can only give you my own ignorance. I'll repeat that.
Think about now, all the people who love you, who
say they love you you, who keep giving you bad
advice with good intentions, no matter how much I love you.
That's a rap there, that's a word. My rap friends
would say. That's a word. No matter how much I
love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't
(22:12):
have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance.
I can only give you what I've got. So out
of love. We passed down bad habits from generation to generation.
The third pillar, family structure and resiliency. Family structure and resiliency,
what it got broken up during enslavement? Family structure. We
(22:34):
don't have time to go into this. I may do
a separate podcast episode just on breaking down the business
plan of slavery. It was a business plan. It wasn't emotional,
it wasn't personal, It was business. But they broke up
the family as a short lesson here because they couldn't
afford for the big burly guy from Africa to fight
for his family. They couldn't afford for the mother to
(22:57):
fight for her children, so they sold them off and directions,
so you were a hopeless family structure and resiliency. Okay,
And just so you know this is not racial. And
come back to this. There are three groups that are
left behind by this system that succeeded, and I'm going
to name those groups. Is going to surprise you which
three groups I name? And it's more than just black people.
(23:20):
Fourth pillar self esteem and confidence. And yes, those two
things are different. Self esteem and confidence. You can have
high self esteem and low confidence. You can have high
confidence in low self esteem whatever you generalize, you discriminate,
but generalizations sometimes strike a nerve. I'm about to strike
one for you. There are exceptions to this rule. But
(23:42):
here's a rule. I've been to one hundred countries. I
can say this with confidence. If you're black and you're
from the Caribbean, or you're black and you're from Africa,
and you've seen intact families, you've seen a doctor or
a lawyer who's black, and the mayor was black and
the premier was black or whatever, the people around you
look like you. You probably have as a result of that,
high self esteem. You esteem your self, You love yourself,
(24:05):
You respect yourself, You admire your family and yourself. You
know you're good with you, but you may have low
levels of confidence even though you may be competent. You
train in school, you got an education, but you never
been had that put to test, that skilled, to test
in what I call a leading market economy. So you
don't really know if that thing you've got is gonna work.
(24:28):
And the people around you, maybe the former colonialists who
are now in that area, are telling you you can't
do it, so they got you in these low level jobs. Maybe,
so you have high self esteem, you got low confidence.
But if you're in America, you're in the biggest economy
in the world. So African Americans here have been tested
in the largest economy in the world and gone from
nothing like myself to something, from owning nothing to being
(24:51):
multi millionaires in some cases billionaires. So we have high confidence.
But because of our experience in this country, we may
have low self esteem. I think that seventy percent of
African Americans before the pandemic were clinically undiagnosed depressed. Now
the podcast for another time. But I'm touching some nerves
because you were told you were nobody for three hundred years.
(25:14):
And so 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 love me,
I'm not gonna love you. If I don't respect me,
I'm not gonna respect you. If I don't have a
purpose in my life, I will make your life a
living hell. Whatever goes around hello comes around. I can
only treat you what I know. And hurt people hurt people,
(25:35):
and we've been hurt, but we can heal. So we
tend to have high confidence we've killed it in the
market economy. That confidence has leaned in and created confidence
because we succeeded in the market economy, but we still
may have low self esteem, which equates for a lot
of things like crab and the barrel mentality. Okay, so
(25:55):
I've dealt with number four, the fourth pillar, the fifth pillar,
role models and environment. You heard me say this, I'll
say it again here. If you hang around nine broke people,
you'll be the tenth Hello. And the opposite is also true.
Why do people go to Harvard? Because Harvard is ten
(26:15):
times better than the state university in Boston or some
other universities in Boston where it's located. It's a great university.
I've got a certificate degree from Harvard. I'm proud to
be associated. I love going to speak at Harvard and
hang out. And when I see somebody with a degree
from Harvard, I know that they are from a top
tier university. If it's not that it's the best in
(26:35):
the world, why do people go to Harvard and pay
much more? Because the class of twenty twenty four in
Harvard is going to hook each other up for the
next forty years. It's a club of success. Why do
you join a country club, Why do you join a
sorority or fraternity? Why do you join a private dinner
club or a private club of any sort. You're trying
(26:59):
to associate with other people who share your aspirations in
your success. You're mixing with people who have the same
mindset and mentality, and so success tends to hang around
success and it feeds on that, And povery tends to
hang around povery, and it feeds on that. I'm going
to do a separate podcast on how the streets want
to eat you. I mean that literally, but where I
(27:21):
grew up. If you got consumed by what was going
on in my neighborhood in competence South Central, with the
best of intentions, you just got consumed with things that
would consume you. And doctor King once said that I
refuse to finance my own oppression, right. But sometimes you're
in a toxic field environment and it looks normal. So
(27:43):
why our kids in underserved neighborhoods want to be rap stars,
athletes and drug dealers. They are dumb and they're not stupid.
You can't be as a business plan for a whole
race rap stars. You can't. You can't scale my brother
Killer Mink. You can't scale my brother Ti. You can't
scale these incredible artists, Jay Z and others. You can't.
They're not their personalities. They're unique in any of themselves.
(28:06):
Women and men. You can't scale. The female basketball players
are not killing it. You can't scale the Lebrons and
Tiger Woods and the Lewis Hamilton's. There is personalities, and
even when they succeed, they only have a few employees
in their group. We need to employ hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands of people and build wealth across
(28:27):
the spectrum of our society. But we want to be
what we see. We see successful rappers, successful professional athletes,
and unfortunately my neighborhood I grew up, you see drug dealers.
We want to be raps to ours, athletes and drug
leaders because we model what we see. And by the way,
drug dealers are not dumb and they're not stupid. They
have a horrible business plan, it's a moral it's unethical,
(28:48):
but they're not dumb. They understand import, exports, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail,
customer service, curatory security, territory logistics, etc. They just need
to be reset the right soil again, another podcast, another time.
I've thought about five podcasts episodes out of this one.
(29:09):
But your role modeling and your environment matters. You want
to be in able to remove yourself from toxicity and
toxic environments. And if you hang around broke people, you
tend to be one. You hang around successful people, you
tend to become one. It's not because you're a genius,
but it's relationship capital. That what you get your first job,
if you were in a career, not just in a job,
in a career, somebody probably put their arm around you say, look,
(29:31):
you know you're a bit a good intern. You know,
I know you are some of my friend told me
about you where I met you. I think you could
do this job. Would you like this job? Let me
make an email introduction, Let me make a phone call
for you. Go talk to this person that person. Think
about it. If you're in a career that's high five
figures or six figures, where did you get that hook up?
Did you get it spelling out an application or did
somebody tap you in the shoulder and say you can
(29:53):
do this and introduce you relationship capital? So here are
the five pillars of success. I'm wrapping this up. Now,
If you have three of these you may make it.
If you don't have three of these things, it's hard
to make it. Again. It's much education. You can shove
down your throat understanding the memo on money, financial literacy,
family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models
(30:15):
and environment. Three mindsets, surviving mindset, thriving mindset, winning mindset,
Winners of builders. That's another podcast, right, just keeping us
very focused. What three groups were denied three of these things?
Certainly more than three of these things? What three groups?
Just so you understand, this race is a problem, but
it's not the only problem in today, it's not even
(30:37):
the primary problem. Keeping from where you want to go.
Poor whites, and more poor whites in American than portybody else,
were denied these three things when they came to this country.
They still don't have more than three of these things.
By the way, picking any three that's how you know
something works. Pick any three of these five. Native American
Indians the largest group who suffer from alcoholism in this country.
Native American Indian and Native American reservations. Number one group
(30:59):
draw dyingpping dead in this country. Poor white men, high
school educated, dropping dead, and we call it drug abuse,
but it's really depression, lost hope. And then you have
African Americans, right, And there are no Ghanaian ghettos in America.
There are Ghanaan communities in America. There's no Jamaican ghettos
in America. There are no South African ghettos in America.
(31:19):
There are South African communities, there are Jamaican communities, Bheman communities.
There's only African American ghettos in America. Because our self
esteem was robbed from us again, another video for another time,
another podcast for another time. So it's not our fault,
is our responsibility to pick ourselves up. Here's the good news.
I just neutralized the race thing. I'm gonna do with
this as a separate issue. This whole racing is a
(31:40):
made up problem, yes I said it. The word white,
racial word white is a made up word, yes I
said it. And that I will have to deal with
that separately and unpack it for you. The world is
five billion years old, the organism life four billion years old.
Neanderthals a couple hundred million years old, Modern mankind, womankind
a couple hundred one thousand years old. Right, But the
(32:02):
word racial, word white was made up in the sixteen
hundreds in North America for a political purpose. So we'd
fight with each other, poor whites and poor blacks. We
were once friends, yes, blacks and whites and both in
dentury servants in sixteen hundreds. And unfortunately we got along,
and some people didn't like that we were getting along. Malcolm, Xay,
(32:25):
we've been bambooza, we've been tricked, we've been food. So
look at this. These three groups out of two hundred
ethnic groups, and these three groups did not follow these
five pillars. Pick any three or four of these, right,
pick let's just say three. That's a minimum. You need education,
financial literacy, and family structure and resiliency. Can you succeed?
(32:47):
Role model's an environment? Self esteem and confidence? Financial literacy,
can you succeed? I love this, It's so easy. Self
esteem and confidence, family structure and resiliency, the memo and money,
financial literacy. Can you succeed as much? Education and shut
down your throat? Self esteem and confidence? Role models an environment?
Can you succeed? See you're starting to get it. It
(33:09):
doesn't matter who's standing in your way now, it doesn't
matter what's going on with you? And if you have
four of these things out of the five, my god,
you'll kill it. Now you've a formula for success. Do that,
plus get your credit card to seven hundred hello, which
is part of memo number two, and bastiaror Andrew Young says,
it is entirely possible. The financial literacy. It's not only
the civil rights issue of this day. It's it's important.
It's the right to vote and a seven or the
(33:30):
credit score. It may be as important as a college
degree once you get it into the market economy of
we Okay, let's go by the way. I'm not telling
you how to get a college degree, so don't put
words in my mouth. I think it's important to have
a higher education. I just said it. It's number one pillar. Okay.
I hope you like this. This is John O'Brien. This
is money and wealth. It gave you the Five Pillars
(33:52):
micro version. You want to hear the full ninety minute
masterclass where I've laid it out and unpacked it, just
go to Tdjkes's site for the ILS Summit for twenty
twenty four and find the session I did once they
release it, and sit down with a cup of coffee,
cup of tea and take copious notes for now. This
is the micro class on taking back your Life and
(34:14):
go to Operation Hope today and get your free scholarship
financial coaching. It's worth between twenty five hundred and ten
thousand dollars per coaching. Engagement, love and Light. Let's go
change your life. This is a silver rights movement. Hea
(34:38):
John O'Brien, Money and Wealth. Okay, here's time for a
fan question. Don Neat dawn Ieedt on Instagram at don
Neat would you get a cash out reflance at a
higher rate to pay down debt? The answer is it
(34:59):
depends if you're paying off credit card debt and department
store debt that's twenty six percent anything with a two
in front of it, The answer is absolutely yes. It
fits in the teams the credit card debt, the answer
is probably yes. Uh. You want to make sure you've
(35:21):
got decent credit so that when you go to refinance
your home you're getting a decent rate. So you want
to get a rate on the refinance. Preferably it's an
equity line of credit. If you're going to refinance the
first trusting mortgage, we want a new first trusting mortgage.
If you have a two or three percent, if you've
got a first trusting mortgage in the last four years,
(35:42):
do not refinance that first trusted mortgage because one, two,
three percent, four percent, five percent interest rates are not
coming around anytime soon. That was an aberration. Hold on
to that fix rate. You want to fix rate by
the way, first trusting mortgage on your home. Then behind
that you can do a home equity line. That home
(36:02):
equity line is gonna have a higher return, higher rate,
but you know it should be below ten percent, so
eight percent, nine percent home equity line that you're going
to use expansively to consolidate and pay off debt for
things like home improvements. It's just sort of a security
blanket that you can pull on when you need it.
You can pay it down by the way, the right
(36:24):
home equity line, and you want that to be a
fixed rate also in that situation, Yes, it does make
a lot of sense in my opinion to get a
home equity line behind your first trustee mortgage sub ten
percent interest rate to payoff debt, credit card debt, regular
credit cards, Visa, MasterCard, etc. Et cetera, AMEX, discover et cetera.
(36:45):
Or department store credit card debt that it's in the
mid to high teens. Certainly anything with a two in
front of it, twenty percent, twenty five percent. Most of
these department credit cards are going to be in a
twenty percent range. You be shocked when you actually look
at the statement. You got twenty five interests, twenty eight
percent interest shiny, beautiful, looks really cool, got a nice
(37:08):
sexy name on a department store credit card. They just
it's just robbing you in broad daylight. But you can't
call it robbery because you agreed to it, right and
you enjoyed shopping. I guess I've been there, By the way,
I'm not blaming you. I've been I've done the same thing.
So it's a good question. Hopefully I gave you a cogent,
clear answer. But go to a whole financial coach at
(37:29):
operation hope. Let them pull your credit and hopefully your
credit report does not look like this toe up from
the flow up like mine used to. Hopefully you've got
credit that's in the mid six hundreds to high six hundreds.
Oh my god, if you're in the seven hundred, you
are living large and you should be able to get
a very good rate on that home equity line of credit,
(37:51):
so you can consolidate. If you can take ten credit
cards or five credit cards, credit obligations to have to
be just a credit card, just to be a credit obligation,
a term long whatever. Put those all together, pay them
all off. It will look greater in your credit by
the way. To pay them all off, roll them into
one loan at a fixed rate, right that is, actually
(38:14):
at a good rate and good terms. Your payments will
go down, all things being equal, Your credit score should
go up, your debt service, your cost of borrowing should
go down, and it should destress you. But again, talk
to one of my Hope financial coaches at Operation Hope.
Go to Hope dot Operation dot orger download the Hope
and handah app Our scholarshiped you into financial coaching and counseling,
(38:39):
so it won't cost you anything and they'll give you
the private banking experience. Youse will rightly to serve. Good
question at don Nete on Instagram on Love John Hope,
(39:04):
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.
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio, Yo Yo,
John O'Brien and this is Money and Wealth on the
iHeart Network, the Black Effect Podcast Network, my weekly series.
(00:24):
And I'm talking about Taraji Henson and her saying she
was underpaid by Oprah. And in comparison, you have Terry
Crews who says he's worked for a minimum wage and
no pay to land big gigs. And those are very
(00:46):
popular movies that in one training day, I believe with
Denzel Washington he was paid zero and Friday he was
paid four thousand dollars and Taraji was paid in comparison
big Bucks. In comparison. Now she says she was underpaid,
(01:07):
which one is correct? Well, I'm with Terry Crews. Terry
Crews says, don't say yes, and you really meant no.
And he says, look, I read the contract. I knew
what it said. Nobody forced me to sign this contract.
(01:28):
Time is money. I could have used my time somewhere else.
I could have gone and worked somewhere else. I could
have gone and worked at a grocery store. I guess
he didn't say this I'm inferring this. I could have
gone and taken a corporate gig or an endorsement deal,
or try to find a different movie to be in.
This was my choice to sign up. I thought this
(01:48):
would be a good move for my career and it was.
And Taraji was asked by Oprah Winfrey and I think
Tyler Perry to do a project. And she looked at
that contract. She knew what it said and she accepted it.
End of subject. Let me say something to you. I
need you to hear me here. Business is not personal.
This is not emotional. It's not my job as a
(02:11):
capitalist to pay you top dollar. It's my job, if
I'm the producer of a project, to actually pay you
the least I can afford to get away with. Yes,
I said it. It's my job to make a profit
for that project, to give a return to my investors.
Everybody's got a boss. You don't think Oprah's got a boss.
You don't think Tyler Perry as a boss on a project.
(02:31):
Who's funding that project, who's putting the money up for
that project, who's distributing that project? What agreements do they
have for that project to hit a certain budget and
not to exceed it. So she's a baller, no doubt
about it. But she's got to speak to her partners
and investors, and she's got to deliver a project that's
under budget and hopefully exceeds on revenue. And that comes
(02:54):
from trying to squeeze every dime you can out of
cost without being cruel. Now, did she underpay based on
what was on the piece of paper to Taraji? That's
not the claim. Miss Henson's not saying she charged. She
promised me five dollars and she paid me to She's
saying what she promised me and what I agreed to,
(03:16):
I think is a travesty. No, it's a travesty for
you not to get a job and your talent. It's
a travesty not for them not to be an Oprah Winfrey.
Thank god, there's an Oprah Winfrey and a Tyler Perry
who can hire somebody. Hello, do you think the creators
of Motown paid their talent top dollars? No, they tried
(03:36):
to negotiate the best deals they could for themselves and
hope to god the talent didn't read the contract. And
then if the talent was literate and could read the contract,
negotiated themselves up, then they would probably say, yeah, if
they really believe in that talent, yes, let's negotiate. But
my job as a capitalist you may not like this episode.
I'm telling you way this world, this world works. My job,
sitting on the other side of that that table is
(03:57):
to pay you the least I can afford to pay
without being upset. And your job is a talent in
this example, is to try to negotiate the most that
you can get from me without without creating friction in
the relationship. Did you hear me? You can't grow without
constructive friction. Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a
rainbow without a storm first. Everything grows through constructive friction.
(04:21):
You can disagree without being disagreeable. So is your job
to negotiate and advocate saying, Hey, I'm worth X, Y
and Z and here's a non emotional reasons for that.
My last product to produce X Y and Z, and
I'm making this up. That's tenfold of what you're paying me,
or twenty fold of what you're paying me what I'm
proposing you paying me. So I think if you pay
me this, I think I can deliver a project that
will produce this other outcome and if I don't, I'll
(04:43):
give you a refund or whatever, or how about you
pay me a baseline. But if I exceed this and Mark,
we agree with profit sharing, like be creative. But to
say that I am this great talent and because of that,
and because i'm this and i'm that, you should be
paying me more because you're black and I'm black, that's crazy. Green.
The color of currency is green. And Oprah's job is
(05:03):
to pay you what she can get away with, to
negotiate every call saving she can in that project, delivered
on time and on budget or under budget, and to
make listen to me now a profit for her investors
and her partners. The talent is not the end all
be all of this project. The talent is one of
many components of a film project. Don't get emotional about
(05:26):
it again. Terry Crews had it right, Hey man, give
me the right project. I'll work for free. I'll pay you.
And for anybody who's saying with John, how do you
have a right to say this again? I don't talk
about things I don't know. I've worked for free, right,
I've worked severely underpaid. I remember this billionaire he'd be
a billion here today is worth two hundred million. Back then,
(05:47):
his name was Harvey Baskin, and I worked as a
waiter and his restaurant, Jeoffrey's Malibu in Hollywood, I mean
in Malibu, California. I worked there, pay minimum wage and tips.
Hired me for a Monday, which means they didn't think
I was a very good waiter. But I wanted to
be in that environment. I wanted to be around those ballers.
(06:08):
So I drove from Compton, California, to Malibu. I think
I started taking the bus initially, and I showed up
and showed out. I showed up early, stayed late, worked hard,
and when I saw Harvey Baskin and Geoffrey at Tienne,
his partner for whom the restaurant was named after, at
the bar, I went up and took the opportunity to
go talk to him, build a relationship, build a rapport.
(06:31):
I pressed them as more than a waiter. Started as
a busboy, actually more than a busboy, more than a waiter.
I was an average bus boy and an average waiter,
but I knew I was a great leader. I had
the potential to be one, and over time, sure enough
I build relationships, build rapport. It cost me money probably
to work there as a waiter and a bus boy.
I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to my short
(06:52):
term economic gain through a paycheck. Again, we obsessed about
the wrong thing. I'm gonna do a whole podcast on
this whole getting paid, getting his dollar, getting his money,
and you end up broke because you're not building wealth. Well,
you bill wealth in your name. The biggest asset you've
got is you, not what's on your ass not your clothes,
not your jewelry, not your whatever, it's you, the inside
(07:14):
of you. So anyway, I got up job working as
the assistant for Harvey Baskin for also was underpaid twenty
one thousand dollars a year or something like that. But
I got to work in his home in Malibu. Watch
how he moved, listened to his phone calls. I went
to I asked him to go to dinner with me
one day, and he said yes. It was like driving
(07:35):
mister Daisy because he was broke his leg or his ankle,
and so he was sitting in the back seat of
my Audi and he had his leg up the fronts.
The passenger front seat was pushed forward. He had his
leg up on the passenger front seat, sitting in the back.
I'm the driver, I'm sure like I was his chauffeur.
I could care less not went outs of my self
(07:56):
esteem and self worth. Its dependent upon your acceptance of me.
I was cool with it because he is the multi
millionaire back and now be a billionaire who was going
to give me knowledge and insight that no one else
could know what else could give me. So we went
to dinner. He found he made this very expensive restaurant reservation.
We went to dinner. We had dinner, great dinner in Venice, California.
The bill comes and it's one hundred dollars. Now. One
(08:19):
hundred dollars is not cheap now, but back then, and
this is going back thirty some years now, that was like,
I mean, call it one thousand dollars, right, And I
didn't want to pay it. I'm like, the bill came
to me, I slid it to Harvey. Harvey slid the
bill back to me. I slid back to Harvey. Harvey
slid the bill back to me. I slid it back
(08:42):
to Harvey. He said, hey, hey, hey, slow down. You
got to decide John, what you want. Do you want
to pick my brain or pick my pocket? One lasts longer. Now,
you were asked me to come to this dinner, and
you've been plying me with questions all night. I've get
basically given you free consulting. That's invaluable. I put you
in the driver's sept literally, and you can talk my
(09:02):
head off. And you want to punk me for one
hundred dollars bill, I'm willing to pay the bill. Nope.
I grabbed the bill, paid it, gave the guy twenty
percent tip, shut my mouth and said thank you, and
then plied in with questions all the way home, and
sure enough, Harvey put his arms around me, said this
was my guy introduced me to countless people, many relationships
I have to this day, and it was an invaluable experience.
(09:23):
When you show up at a corporate office as an intern,
who cares where they're paying you a fee? You're in
the light of sight, of power and wealth and opportunity.
People can see you, they can hear you, they can
watch you. I mean, folks are like, oh, I want
to work remotely, okay, great, cool, Well you won't get promoted.
You may not lose your job by the way. If
there are cutbacks, guess who they're gonna cut first, right.
(09:47):
We tend to be the last hire and the first
fired anyway, But they're gonna cut you first because there's
no connective tissue and you're not getting a promotion, not
a big one. But if I were you, I'd show
up in the office. I'd get right in my boss's face.
I would have walked from front to back, front, the back, front,
the back, front, the back, eight times a day in
front of my boss's office or my boss's boss's boss's office,
(10:08):
until the boss says, excuse me, come here, young man.
What's your name? I mean, what do you do here? Like?
And then like, are you busy? No, sir, not too busy.
I have a project. It's not very interesting. I'll take
it right. And that's how you get in the game.
So Taraji did this great film for Oprah Winfrey. I'd
be wearing that out. She wants Over once her going
on a tour and not pay her for it. I
(10:29):
don't care. I got that gives me more exposure. At
least Over is gonna pay for the expenses for me traveling. Now,
you give me a trip around the world, I'm want
to take a trip around the world on your dime.
I'm gonna make producers and TV shows on your dime.
I'm gonna get excused to talk to take my brand
globally on your dime. I'm gonna meet all kinds of
people and expand my territory on your dime. I'm gonna
(10:49):
build my brand on your dime. I'm going to impress people,
maybe future investors in my own projects on your dime.
I'm gonna make this project extremely successful on your dime
with your investment, and when it does extraordinarily well, I
may come back and say, this has exceeded everybody's expectations.
I know you don't owe me this, Oprah and Tyler.
(11:09):
You don't. You paid me what I asked for, what
I agreed to, and it's unfair for me to say
yes and then later say no and then drag you
in the media after the fact. But I didn't do
that in this example. I didn't do that, and I
will honor my contract. But I told you if I
hit a certain mark, I would come back and ask
you if you would mind considering profit sharing or points
in the back end or something. And maybe now we
(11:31):
can have that conversation, and if you've treated that relationship right,
I'd be surprised if they didn't say, yeah, let's let's
figure something out or not on this project, because maybe
you've already I've already paid out all proceeds to my investors,
and there's nothing left less unless I take it out
of my own pocket, she might say, and she might,
by the way, but tell you what you've done so
well on this let me let me bake you into
my next project and maybe make you an associate producer.
(11:53):
Now you're talking, But listen to this whole interview, because
he says it better than me. He's in the business.
Terry Crews says it right. He didn't work for a
small fee, not even a big paycheck. I mean, tryge
you talking about I can't pay my assistance and all
my bills on these paychecks, then go do something else.
You can't live on a million dollar paycheck. Maybe you
(12:15):
need to be speak to one of my financial coaches.
Now I'm not jamming her up. I'm trying to. Actually
I'm but you know, she made herself. She brought this
out in the public. I'm not going looking for this.
I'm not getting into somebody's business. I'm not trying to
embarrass her. I'm saying I think she's wrong. And I
waited a while for the hoopletter calmed down and everybody's
jump saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, Oprah should pay more, Tyler
(12:36):
should pay more? Why Hello? Why Eve? And if you
want to distribute money like a socialist, you've got to
first collect it like a capitalist. You guys have got
this backwards. You don't give it away on the front end,
you give it away on the back end. You can't
give away my money as an investor, a shareholder. You
can't give somebody my money. You can't pay somebody a
million dollars and a half million dollars more because they say
(12:58):
they don't have enough caveat for their dinner. You can't
do that on my dime. That's not your money, that's
my money. And every billionaire in the world built their
billions on the back of good debt. Please hear me.
They didn't do it on their own, and they're not
doing it on their own. Every billionaire, every multimillionaire, has
partners and investors, and there are agreements to that, and
(13:20):
you got to honor those agreements. And if you are
seeing somebody who throws away money, you're not getting another investor.
So she had no responsibility to overpay Taraji. She's said
just the opposite again, what can I pay this fair
and reasonable and bring this project in at budget or
below and deliver outsize results. That's the goal. And Taraji,
(13:41):
you should be honored to be in the project with
Oprah and Tyler. I would be all right, let me
know what you think. I'm sure you will, but I've
brought this is my opinion on this point. I'm not
really I'm curious what you have to say. See if
you've learned anything. But I'm telling you this is how
the game works. This is not an opinion poll. I'm
telling you this is the way capitalism works. And we
have got this can used. We com boozed and we
(14:02):
need to start getting a memo. And Terry Crews has
it right. Don't take business personally? All right, John O'Brien,
I'm out. This is money and wealth. Let's go yo,
(14:24):
yo is John Hope Bryant. This is money and wealth.
And this week's episode is pretty hot because I'm gonna
tell you something that is a cheat sheet on success.
More than that it's something that literally is a formula
that if you follow it, no one can mess with you. Yes,
I said it. People tell you all kinds of things
(14:47):
that are nebulous and sound great, but Ashley, in practice,
they have no clue whether it's gonna work, because it's
not worked in their life. They tell you something they
read in a book, they tell you something they saw somewhere.
They may be trying to sell you books and tapes.
I made my wealth in entrepreneurship, in capitalism, in business,
(15:08):
I've built businesses. I've built several of them. Three of
my businesses are the largest in their sector in the country.
That includes the largest nonprofit financial literacy coaching organization in America,
Operation Hope. Three hundred offices for hundred employees, four billion
dollars invested in underserved neighborhoods, raising credit scores, lowering debt,
increasing savings, the only non profit allowed to operates out
(15:29):
of a bank branch in the US history. I built
in sold a company called the Promise Homes Company, largest
minority owner of single family rental homes in America seven
hundred homes, give or take sold it. And I'm now
as part of a joint venture where I'm a principal
shareholder and still involved with it, and there are other
things that I'm doing. I'm just telling you I'm an operator,
(15:50):
I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman, and yes I faced discrimination
and bias and all those things over to rounded through it.
Let's get to it. You don't want to rearrange the
deck chairs on the Ti Tanic. The ship is sinking
and you're picking drapes. You don't want to be focused
on what's going on with the right, and really all
the action is here on the left. As Malcolm X
says said, We're been bamboozled, We've been tricked, We've been fooled.
(16:13):
I want you to now have enlightenment. I want you
to understand that I understand racism is real. It's like rain.
It's either fall in someplace or it's gathering. But you've
got to get out in that rain and an umbrella,
with an umbrella and the color you like, and start
strolling through the rain because it's not going to change.
So you must, and you can and you will. So
(16:35):
here as a formula that I guarantee you you follow this,
You're going to succeed. This is from my last book,
Up from Nothing, The Five Pillars of Success. I also
have a new book called Financial Literacy for All that
comes out April sixteenth. I want you to pre order
it and help me make it a national best seller,
(16:56):
maybe even a global bestseller. That book is is me
sitting with you at the kitchen table. But this is
a primer on success. It's my story and it's about
my failures, not my successes. This book Up from Nothing,
The Untold Story of how We All Succeed with a
Ford by Ambassador Andrew Young. Five Pillars of Success. So
here are the five pillars of success. You do this.
(17:19):
If you have less than three of these things, anything's
possible with God's grace. But less than three of these
things is really hard to succeed. You have four or
five of these things, I can guarantee you're gonna kill it. Now.
I want you to tell me after I walk through
it whether you think I'm correct. Here we go. Take
out your pen and paper, pencil, digital ink, iPad, iPhone,
(17:43):
whatever you use. Write this down. It's time to go
to school. This is a masterclass now on mindset and success.
No matter who's standing in your way, success is going
from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm over to
rounded through it. I want you to get to it.
Life is ten percent what life does to you and
(18:04):
ninety percent how you choose to respond to it. I
did a ninety minute masterclass for my friend Bishop TD
Jakes at his ILS summit in Dallas, and I told
the audience, who paid money and traveled to be there
investing in themselves, what I'm telling you now for free.
Here you go. I'm condensed ninety minutes into this podcast
(18:28):
where you can listen to it on the way to
work or on your way home, or gardening or cooking
or whatever, and literally write this down step by step
five pillars. You do three of these, you'll at least survive,
maybe thrive. You do four of these. Five of these,
you'll go from thriving to building. From survival to thriving
(18:49):
to building. You do five of these, I guarantee you
you'll be building. You're a builder winner. Here we go.
Pillar number one. As much education as you can shove
down your throat. Education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool.
When you know better, you do better. No one can
take it from you. Once you have it. Pillar number
two understanding the money, financial literacy. That's why I wrote
(19:13):
the book Financial Literacy for all this is just coming
out financial literacy, understanding capitalism, free enterprise economics, ownership and opportunity,
and those things are different, but they're tied together. We
live in a free enterprise democracy in America. There's never
been a global economy. There's never been a superpower. Listen
to me now that wasn't also an economic power. I'll
(19:35):
repeat that, There's never been a superpower in the world
that wasn't also an economic power. Think about Rome, think
about Italy, Think about France. These were all superpowers in
the world at one time. Think about Germany, all right.
Think about Argentina. Even Argentina at one time he had
the largest economy in the world. Think about Great Britain. Right,
(19:57):
these were the largest economies at that time in the world.
They were the sole superpower. America is now the sole
superpower in the world. And guess what, it has the
largest economy in the world. Well, what happened with those
formerly enslaved? In eighteen sixty five, Abraham Lincoln was inspired
by Frederick Douglass and others to create a Freedman's Bank
chartered to quote, teach free slaves about money. And then
(20:19):
Abrahamligan was assassinated the next month. It was forty acres
January eighteen sixty five, The Mule February eighteen sixty five. Savannah,
Georgia a Bank March third, eighteen sixty five. I'm I'm
the only American citizen. I'm told to inspire the government
to rename a building on the White House campus. It
was renamed the Freedmen's Bank Building in twenty sixteen, I believe,
(20:43):
and it stands as the Freeman's Bank Building today. And
then Abrahamlincoln was assassinated in April when he promised blacks
the right to vote. So we it's not like we're
dumb and we're stupid. We're brilliant. When the rules are
published in the playing fields level, we succeed. Think about
the arts now, think about professional sports, where the room
rules are published and the playing fielders level, we kill it.
We succeed. Think about public office, think about government service,
(21:07):
think about the church. We understand these rules, we've applied them.
We work hard, and we succeed. But no one ever
told you the lessons of free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership,
and opportunity. No one gave you a lesson in financial literacy,
and so you can't master that game. You're hustling at
it and you've got You're even confused about it because
you think that making money is building wealth and it's not.
(21:28):
That's another podcast episode for another day. Understand the Memo.
That's my third book. Get the Memo is what you
don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But
you think you know in a blind town, a one
eyed man's king. If you don't know better, you can't
do better. Please now listen to this as an old
Southern saying, no matter how much I love you, my
(21:50):
son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I
can only give you my own ignorance. I'll repeat that.
Think about now, all the people who love you, who
say they love you you, who keep giving you bad
advice with good intentions, no matter how much I love you.
That's a rap there, that's a word. My rap friends
would say. That's a word. No matter how much I
love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't
(22:12):
have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance.
I can only give you what I've got. So out
of love. We passed down bad habits from generation to generation.
The third pillar, family structure and resiliency. Family structure and resiliency,
what it got broken up during enslavement? Family structure. We
(22:34):
don't have time to go into this. I may do
a separate podcast episode just on breaking down the business
plan of slavery. It was a business plan. It wasn't emotional,
it wasn't personal, It was business. But they broke up
the family as a short lesson here because they couldn't
afford for the big burly guy from Africa to fight
for his family. They couldn't afford for the mother to
(22:57):
fight for her children, so they sold them off and directions,
so you were a hopeless family structure and resiliency. Okay,
And just so you know this is not racial. And
come back to this. There are three groups that are
left behind by this system that succeeded, and I'm going
to name those groups. Is going to surprise you which
three groups I name? And it's more than just black people.
(23:20):
Fourth pillar self esteem and confidence. And yes, those two
things are different. Self esteem and confidence. You can have
high self esteem and low confidence. You can have high
confidence in low self esteem whatever you generalize, you discriminate,
but generalizations sometimes strike a nerve. I'm about to strike
one for you. There are exceptions to this rule. But
(23:42):
here's a rule. I've been to one hundred countries. I
can say this with confidence. If you're black and you're
from the Caribbean, or you're black and you're from Africa,
and you've seen intact families, you've seen a doctor or
a lawyer who's black, and the mayor was black and
the premier was black or whatever, the people around you
look like you. You probably have as a result of that,
high self esteem. You esteem your self, You love yourself,
(24:05):
You respect yourself, You admire your family and yourself. You
know you're good with you, but you may have low
levels of confidence even though you may be competent. You
train in school, you got an education, but you never
been had that put to test, that skilled, to test
in what I call a leading market economy. So you
don't really know if that thing you've got is gonna work.
(24:28):
And the people around you, maybe the former colonialists who
are now in that area, are telling you you can't
do it, so they got you in these low level jobs. Maybe,
so you have high self esteem, you got low confidence.
But if you're in America, you're in the biggest economy
in the world. So African Americans here have been tested
in the largest economy in the world and gone from
nothing like myself to something, from owning nothing to being
(24:51):
multi millionaires in some cases billionaires. So we have high confidence.
But because of our experience in this country, we may
have low self esteem. I think that seventy percent of
African Americans before the pandemic were clinically undiagnosed depressed. Now
the podcast for another time. But I'm touching some nerves
because you were told you were nobody for three hundred years.
(25:14):
And so 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 love me,
I'm not gonna love you. If I don't respect me,
I'm not gonna respect you. If I don't have a
purpose in my life, I will make your life a
living hell. Whatever goes around hello comes around. I can
only treat you what I know. And hurt people hurt people,
(25:35):
and we've been hurt, but we can heal. So we
tend to have high confidence we've killed it in the
market economy. That confidence has leaned in and created confidence
because we succeeded in the market economy, but we still
may have low self esteem, which equates for a lot
of things like crab and the barrel mentality. Okay, so
(25:55):
I've dealt with number four, the fourth pillar, the fifth pillar,
role models and environment. You heard me say this, I'll
say it again here. If you hang around nine broke people,
you'll be the tenth Hello. And the opposite is also true.
Why do people go to Harvard? Because Harvard is ten
(26:15):
times better than the state university in Boston or some
other universities in Boston where it's located. It's a great university.
I've got a certificate degree from Harvard. I'm proud to
be associated. I love going to speak at Harvard and
hang out. And when I see somebody with a degree
from Harvard, I know that they are from a top
tier university. If it's not that it's the best in
(26:35):
the world, why do people go to Harvard and pay
much more? Because the class of twenty twenty four in
Harvard is going to hook each other up for the
next forty years. It's a club of success. Why do
you join a country club, Why do you join a
sorority or fraternity? Why do you join a private dinner
club or a private club of any sort. You're trying
(26:59):
to associate with other people who share your aspirations in
your success. You're mixing with people who have the same
mindset and mentality, and so success tends to hang around
success and it feeds on that, And povery tends to
hang around povery, and it feeds on that. I'm going
to do a separate podcast on how the streets want
to eat you. I mean that literally, but where I
(27:21):
grew up. If you got consumed by what was going
on in my neighborhood in competence South Central, with the
best of intentions, you just got consumed with things that
would consume you. And doctor King once said that I
refuse to finance my own oppression, right. But sometimes you're
in a toxic field environment and it looks normal. So
(27:43):
why our kids in underserved neighborhoods want to be rap stars,
athletes and drug dealers. They are dumb and they're not stupid.
You can't be as a business plan for a whole
race rap stars. You can't. You can't scale my brother
Killer Mink. You can't scale my brother Ti. You can't
scale these incredible artists, Jay Z and others. You can't.
They're not their personalities. They're unique in any of themselves.
(28:06):
Women and men. You can't scale. The female basketball players
are not killing it. You can't scale the Lebrons and
Tiger Woods and the Lewis Hamilton's. There is personalities, and
even when they succeed, they only have a few employees
in their group. We need to employ hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands of people and build wealth across
(28:27):
the spectrum of our society. But we want to be
what we see. We see successful rappers, successful professional athletes,
and unfortunately my neighborhood I grew up, you see drug dealers.
We want to be raps to ours, athletes and drug
leaders because we model what we see. And by the way,
drug dealers are not dumb and they're not stupid. They
have a horrible business plan, it's a moral it's unethical,
(28:48):
but they're not dumb. They understand import, exports, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail,
customer service, curatory security, territory logistics, etc. They just need
to be reset the right soil again, another podcast, another time.
I've thought about five podcasts episodes out of this one.
(29:09):
But your role modeling and your environment matters. You want
to be in able to remove yourself from toxicity and
toxic environments. And if you hang around broke people, you
tend to be one. You hang around successful people, you
tend to become one. It's not because you're a genius,
but it's relationship capital. That what you get your first job,
if you were in a career, not just in a job,
in a career, somebody probably put their arm around you say, look,
(29:31):
you know you're a bit a good intern. You know,
I know you are some of my friend told me
about you where I met you. I think you could
do this job. Would you like this job? Let me
make an email introduction, Let me make a phone call
for you. Go talk to this person that person. Think
about it. If you're in a career that's high five
figures or six figures, where did you get that hook up?
Did you get it spelling out an application or did
somebody tap you in the shoulder and say you can
(29:53):
do this and introduce you relationship capital? So here are
the five pillars of success. I'm wrapping this up. Now,
If you have three of these you may make it.
If you don't have three of these things, it's hard
to make it. Again. It's much education. You can shove
down your throat understanding the memo on money, financial literacy,
family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models
(30:15):
and environment. Three mindsets, surviving mindset, thriving mindset, winning mindset,
Winners of builders. That's another podcast, right, just keeping us
very focused. What three groups were denied three of these things?
Certainly more than three of these things? What three groups?
Just so you understand, this race is a problem, but
it's not the only problem in today, it's not even
(30:37):
the primary problem. Keeping from where you want to go.
Poor whites, and more poor whites in American than portybody else,
were denied these three things when they came to this country.
They still don't have more than three of these things.
By the way, picking any three that's how you know
something works. Pick any three of these five. Native American
Indians the largest group who suffer from alcoholism in this country.
Native American Indian and Native American reservations. Number one group
(30:59):
draw dyingpping dead in this country. Poor white men, high
school educated, dropping dead, and we call it drug abuse,
but it's really depression, lost hope. And then you have
African Americans, right, And there are no Ghanaian ghettos in America.
There are Ghanaan communities in America. There's no Jamaican ghettos
in America. There are no South African ghettos in America.
(31:19):
There are South African communities, there are Jamaican communities, Bheman communities.
There's only African American ghettos in America. Because our self
esteem was robbed from us again, another video for another time,
another podcast for another time. So it's not our fault,
is our responsibility to pick ourselves up. Here's the good news.
I just neutralized the race thing. I'm gonna do with
this as a separate issue. This whole racing is a
(31:40):
made up problem, yes I said it. The word white,
racial word white is a made up word, yes I
said it. And that I will have to deal with
that separately and unpack it for you. The world is
five billion years old, the organism life four billion years old.
Neanderthals a couple hundred million years old, Modern mankind, womankind
a couple hundred one thousand years old. Right, But the
(32:02):
word racial, word white was made up in the sixteen
hundreds in North America for a political purpose. So we'd
fight with each other, poor whites and poor blacks. We
were once friends, yes, blacks and whites and both in
dentury servants in sixteen hundreds. And unfortunately we got along,
and some people didn't like that we were getting along. Malcolm, Xay,
(32:25):
we've been bambooza, we've been tricked, we've been food. So
look at this. These three groups out of two hundred
ethnic groups, and these three groups did not follow these
five pillars. Pick any three or four of these, right,
pick let's just say three. That's a minimum. You need education,
financial literacy, and family structure and resiliency. Can you succeed?
(32:47):
Role model's an environment? Self esteem and confidence? Financial literacy,
can you succeed? I love this, It's so easy. Self
esteem and confidence, family structure and resiliency, the memo and money,
financial literacy. Can you succeed as much? Education and shut
down your throat? Self esteem and confidence? Role models an environment?
Can you succeed? See you're starting to get it. It
(33:09):
doesn't matter who's standing in your way now, it doesn't
matter what's going on with you? And if you have
four of these things out of the five, my god,
you'll kill it. Now you've a formula for success. Do that,
plus get your credit card to seven hundred hello, which
is part of memo number two, and bastiaror Andrew Young says,
it is entirely possible. The financial literacy. It's not only
the civil rights issue of this day. It's it's important.
It's the right to vote and a seven or the
(33:30):
credit score. It may be as important as a college
degree once you get it into the market economy of
we Okay, let's go by the way. I'm not telling
you how to get a college degree, so don't put
words in my mouth. I think it's important to have
a higher education. I just said it. It's number one pillar. Okay.
I hope you like this. This is John O'Brien. This
is money and wealth. It gave you the Five Pillars
(33:52):
micro version. You want to hear the full ninety minute
masterclass where I've laid it out and unpacked it, just
go to Tdjkes's site for the ILS Summit for twenty
twenty four and find the session I did once they
release it, and sit down with a cup of coffee,
cup of tea and take copious notes for now. This
is the micro class on taking back your Life and
(34:14):
go to Operation Hope today and get your free scholarship
financial coaching. It's worth between twenty five hundred and ten
thousand dollars per coaching. Engagement, love and Light. Let's go
change your life. This is a silver rights movement. Hea
(34:38):
John O'Brien, Money and Wealth. Okay, here's time for a
fan question. Don Neat dawn Ieedt on Instagram at don
Neat would you get a cash out reflance at a
higher rate to pay down debt? The answer is it
(34:59):
depends if you're paying off credit card debt and department
store debt that's twenty six percent anything with a two
in front of it, The answer is absolutely yes. It
fits in the teams the credit card debt, the answer
is probably yes. Uh. You want to make sure you've
(35:21):
got decent credit so that when you go to refinance
your home you're getting a decent rate. So you want
to get a rate on the refinance. Preferably it's an
equity line of credit. If you're going to refinance the
first trusting mortgage, we want a new first trusting mortgage.
If you have a two or three percent, if you've
got a first trusting mortgage in the last four years,
(35:42):
do not refinance that first trusted mortgage because one, two,
three percent, four percent, five percent interest rates are not
coming around anytime soon. That was an aberration. Hold on
to that fix rate. You want to fix rate by
the way, first trusting mortgage on your home. Then behind
that you can do a home equity line. That home
(36:02):
equity line is gonna have a higher return, higher rate,
but you know it should be below ten percent, so
eight percent, nine percent home equity line that you're going
to use expansively to consolidate and pay off debt for
things like home improvements. It's just sort of a security
blanket that you can pull on when you need it.
You can pay it down by the way, the right
(36:24):
home equity line, and you want that to be a
fixed rate also in that situation, Yes, it does make
a lot of sense in my opinion to get a
home equity line behind your first trustee mortgage sub ten
percent interest rate to payoff debt, credit card debt, regular
credit cards, Visa, MasterCard, etc. Et cetera, AMEX, discover et cetera.
(36:45):
Or department store credit card debt that it's in the
mid to high teens. Certainly anything with a two in
front of it, twenty percent, twenty five percent. Most of
these department credit cards are going to be in a
twenty percent range. You be shocked when you actually look
at the statement. You got twenty five interests, twenty eight
percent interest shiny, beautiful, looks really cool, got a nice
(37:08):
sexy name on a department store credit card. They just
it's just robbing you in broad daylight. But you can't
call it robbery because you agreed to it, right and
you enjoyed shopping. I guess I've been there, By the way,
I'm not blaming you. I've been I've done the same thing.
So it's a good question. Hopefully I gave you a cogent,
clear answer. But go to a whole financial coach at
(37:29):
operation hope. Let them pull your credit and hopefully your
credit report does not look like this toe up from
the flow up like mine used to. Hopefully you've got
credit that's in the mid six hundreds to high six hundreds.
Oh my god, if you're in the seven hundred, you
are living large and you should be able to get
a very good rate on that home equity line of credit,
(37:51):
so you can consolidate. If you can take ten credit
cards or five credit cards, credit obligations to have to
be just a credit card, just to be a credit obligation,
a term long whatever. Put those all together, pay them
all off. It will look greater in your credit by
the way. To pay them all off, roll them into
one loan at a fixed rate, right that is, actually
(38:14):
at a good rate and good terms. Your payments will
go down, all things being equal, Your credit score should
go up, your debt service, your cost of borrowing should
go down, and it should destress you. But again, talk
to one of my Hope financial coaches at Operation Hope.
Go to Hope dot Operation dot orger download the Hope
and handah app Our scholarshiped you into financial coaching and counseling,
(38:39):
so it won't cost you anything and they'll give you
the private banking experience. Youse will rightly to serve. Good
question at don Nete on Instagram on Love John Hope,
(39:04):
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.
Host
John Hope Bryant
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