When Smart People Fail

In this episode, John expresses the importance of not giving up! He shares several success stories that started with failure. Don't be defined by your setbacks and rejections. Just keep working towards the goal!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaks to the Plannet.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I go by the name of Charlamagne the God and
guess what, I can't wait to see y'all at the
third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right, We're coming
back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April twenty six at Poeman
Yards and it's hosted by none other than Decisions, Decisions Man,
D B and Wheezy. Okay, we got the R and
B Money podcast were taking Jay Valentine. We got the
Woman of All Podcasts with Saray Jake Roberts, we got

(00:22):
Good Mom, Bad Choices. Carrie Champion will be there with
her next sports podcast and the Trap Nerds podcast with
more to be announced. And of course it's bigger than podcasts.
We're bringing the Black Effect Marketplace with black owned businesses
plus the food truck court to keep you fed while
you visit us. All right, listen, you don't want to
miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at
Black Effect dot Com Flash Podcast Festival.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh Yo, this is.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
John O'Bryant and this is Money and wealth on the
Black Effect Network. Tell all your friends about it. It is
one of the top entrepreneurship podcasts in the nation last
of my check, number thirty two or so of all
entrepreneurship podcasts and top five percent of all podcasts in
the country. Let's keep it going. This is the opportunity economy,

(01:24):
and this is the aspiration generation. And you are the
people who are aspiring. And thanks for all the feedback
that you give me on social media about the podcast
or stopping me in airports or when you see me
in the street or in conference conference rooms, when you
pass by a conference room and see me there with
your boss or whoever, and you stopping by it and
give me some love. I appreciate that, and I love

(01:49):
the feedback, and I take the feedback and I put
it back into the podcast series and try to be
responsive to that, like literally. So if you want to
make sure that I I am listening to you, leave
comments when you see snippets from the podcast in social media.
In my Straight Top Live series I do every day,
leave comments. I'm the one who reads the comments and

(02:10):
respond to them. You're getting response. That's for me personally.
Let's get into this week's podcast, which I'm building on
the business plans that I created for America and I'll
be getting I did one called the business Plan, the
Economic business Plan for Black America last week, tied to
dream Ford, which was introduced on the fifty seventh anniversary

(02:33):
of doctor Martin King Junior's assassination, his memorial that we
did with doctor King's daughter, Bernici and Bernice A King
who's a board member of Operation Hope and a friend
and a partner in our work. And at Bastaror Andrew Young,
who was on that balcony with doctor King who was assassinated,
and the Memphis Mayor Paul Young. We did that and
launched it. And there are other business plans that we

(02:54):
will get to. The business Plan for Latino Hispanic America,
the Business Plan for Women business Plan. These are economic
business plans for Native Americans and Rural America and Asians,
et cetera. I'm going to map all these out. But
as I thought about the last business plan, that's very opportunity.
Rich people are hurting right now. They are in pain,

(03:17):
they're frustrated, they are sometimes lacking confidence, and that needs
to be spoken to that like that has to be
addressed like that's real, right, and there's nothing wrong with you.
If you're feeling a certain kind of way right now,
there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, if you're not
feeling a certain kind of way in the current environment,

(03:39):
then then something's wrong with you. If you're not feeling
a certain kind of way, there's reason if a bear
or a tiger is chasing you, or a lion is
chasing you and is within I don't know one hundred feet,
you should be petrified, like there's reason for that.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Fear is in your system. God put fear in your
system for a reason. Fight or flight your critical thinking skills.
But it should not overwhelm you. It should not paralyze you. Right,
It's something that should not define you. I take no
for vitamins.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's me.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
I've been doing so much with so little for so long.
I can almost do anything with nothing, right. I've said
over and over again, success is going from failure to
failure without loss of enthusiasm. My most prize trait that
I have of me, other than my spirituality, is my resiliency.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
And that I never give up.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
I just you know, I just brush it off, whatever
it is and know that God made me to win,
like God made you perfect and unique, perfectly unique. Right,
five fingers that you have on each hand are have
fingerprints which are not reproduced anywhere in the world. They're

(05:06):
unique to you. Is that amazing eight billion people on
the planet. There's nobody just like you. You just need
to find your specialness, find your gift, find your group.
Here's another one for you. And the title of this
podcast week episode is why smart people fail. Not When
smart people fail, you will fail. If you're if you're

(05:28):
trying to do anything, you're going to slip and fall.
You're going to fail. But failure is not a determination
of who you are. It's an outcome to an experiment,
that's all it is. So if you try anything, you're
gonna slip at fall, You're gonna fail. You're gonna fall
short of the glory of God. Because rainbows only follow storms.
You could not have a rainbow without a storm first.

(05:51):
It is a scientific fact. So I want you to
get used to failure, and I'm about to now show
you some examples and benefits of failure. You can't fall
from the floor, okay, and I'm going to share it
with you my own stories as I often do of
failure and why it has become something that I've ter,

(06:18):
I've interrelated, I've ingrained, I have I have you know,
interlaced into my life. Look, success is easy, going shopping
is easy. You know, Saluting you know your achievements is easy.
But you want to know what somebody's made of. Trip

(06:38):
them up, let them, let them fall, and see how
they get back up. Life is ten percent. This is
from my last book is Financial Literacy for all. Make
sure you get it. I've had six books. The book
Got from Nothing. It's all about my failures. But my book,
my first book was Love Leadership, and I talk about
indirectly failure. I say that, you know, believing in yourself

(07:03):
and not believing you're worthy.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
To be yourself.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
I talk about courage as being nothing more than your
faith reaching through your fear, displaying itself as action in
your life. I'm going to repeat that in this book,
Love Leadership. I talk about faith. The courage is nothing
more than your faith reaching through your fear, displaying itself
as action in your life. I go further and say

(07:31):
that vulnerability is not a weakness, it's a strength. But
very few of us are tough enough to be sold
like see, we have it backwards, right, And I want
to teach you courage, Okay, I want to teach you
the power of vulnerability, the power of transparency. It relieves

(07:53):
so much stress and pressure when you just acknowledge that
you're human and then you grow and build from there.
Like again, you can't fall from the floor. You can
mess up and screw up and not be a screw up.
So even the smartest people, here's the fact, number one,
even the smartest people in the world stumble. What separates

(08:17):
them is not the brains or are not the brains,
it's the bounce back. Okay, So we're going to dig
into some powerful truths. Smart people do fail, It's a fact,
and they fail a lot. The question isn't if you're

(08:38):
going to fail, it's what do you do after you
hit the ground. Let's get into that. So there's a myths.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
We live in a world and worships intelligence and degrees
and titles and IQ points intelligence. Perfect lives displayed on
say Instagram or or you know, TikTok or whatever. Okay,
seemingly perfect lives, but there is no perfect right, that's

(09:11):
a lie.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
The word person personality comes from the Latin word persona,
which literally translates quotation marks and in other words broadly speaking,
but translates into perform. So your personality is your performance
you're putting off for the world. It doesn't mean it's
a lie. It just means that it's separate from you.
It's it is, it is your character, it's your personality.

(09:34):
Yep again, to perform, Okay. And where when you meet somebody,
you're meeting them, you're meeting the best version of them often,
or you see somebody, you see seeing the very best, best,
best best version of them, right, and because they're going
to present to you the part of themselves that they

(09:56):
want you to be compelled by.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Right.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
I like showing you who I am. I think that
you're going to be more impressed with my authenticity than
any game that I might have of showing you a
version of me that's just not true. And everybody knows
perfection doesn't exist. Everybody knows that somebody who says that
everything is going right in their life is lying.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
We want to believe the hype, I guess, which is
why we keep falling for Charlatan's and fake and fake
this and fake that, But the reality is we're all
just trying the best we can. And I think the
real hero is the one that just keeps getting back up,
cannot get an amen. You hit me, you kick me,

(10:41):
you knock me down, and I just keep back. That's
why we always roote for that underdog in the fight,
in the prize fight, right, who just keeps getting back up.
So again, we live in this world the worst. Intelligence
and degrees and titles in IQ all important things, but
intelligence alone does not equal success. And Bassiar Andrew Young
want my personal hero. My mentor would say that he's met,

(11:06):
over the course of his life a whole series of
educated fools. They have all these degrees and can't do
anything and haven't done anything. They think that that being
smart enough and being smart is important, but they think
that that is enough, and it is not.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
So.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
There are Harvard graduates who are broke, and brilliant people
who are stuck in self doubt. The cemetery is full
of people with unfulfilled potential. I've met brilliant people who
are homeless, and I've met idiots and fools who are
massively successful. So intelligence alone is not enough. It's one

(11:47):
of the pieces. So here's one cheat sheet for you.
Success equals intelligence plus resilience plus agility plus grit.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Did you get that?

Speaker 3 (12:05):
So if you have that combination, you are amazing. Right,
It's hard to hit a moving target or one that
just never gives up. My brother and friend, the hyper
hugely successful businessman Tony Wrestler, who happens to own the
Atlanta Hawks, is how some of you might know him,

(12:26):
but I know him for his business successes and his humanity.
He would say, And I can't give this quote exactly
because it's got some French terms in it. You figure
that out on your own. But Tony would say, I'm
gonna clean this up. He would say, if you don't quit,
you can't fail. If you don't quit, you can't fail.

(12:49):
Just keep at it, just keep getting up. Let's now
get into some actual stories of success and failure.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Including my own.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
So let's talk about Steve Jobs, who I will add
and I didn't know Steve Jobs, but I've done enough
research to say one he was a genius, an absolute genius,
change the world for all of us. Two probably not
the greatest person on the planet, in other words, not
a really nice human being. It appears from all reports

(13:31):
not very philanthropic, did not believe in philanthropy, did not
have a personal foundation. His wife, his ex wife, is
now incredibly philanthropic, So God bless her for using his
large gest to heal the world. So, in other words,
I'm not advocating for Steve Jobs as a human being. Here,
I'm giving you an example of a faulty, maybe unhappy,

(13:55):
highly imperfect person who succeeded anyway and change the world.
But that's not the part of Steve Jobs that I
want you to focus on either. That's just I'm just
trying to break it down. So you get him off
of his idol perch, right, and you get him. I
want Steve Jobs to be approachable for you. I want
him to be somebody that you can reach out and

(14:16):
relate to. So the first thing I'll tell you about
Steve Jobs is he was fired from the company he started.
And I want you to think about that he created Apple.
Think about I mean I found an operation Hope, and
think about one day my board of directors, after thirty
years or whatever building this thing into a behemoth, they

(14:38):
just fire me. They have the right if with the
they have majority votes and I'm the founder, chairman, and
chief ejective officer. They could fire me, and the board
of directors of Apple did fire Steve Jobs. But it
was the best thing that ever happened him. And this
is only one or two parts of the Steve Jobs story.

(14:58):
This is the one that you don't hear, but you could,
you might know about. But I'm gonna tell you this
when first, I'm gonna tell you the story of that.
I'm absolutely convinced you've never heard of heard about. The
second story, in my important, in my view, is more
stunning than the first. The first is pretty amazing. So
he builds Apple, grows it from nothing with woesny Ak

(15:19):
his co founder, He had a co founder, and at
some point loses confidence from the board of directors and
they fire him. He's often the wilderness of self doubt.
And he picks up a new idea, a company called Next,

(15:41):
And for about a decade, Next underperforms like Next was Next.
The world begins to question the brallids of Steve Jobs,
and and and and he begins to question himself importantly, again,
he never gave up. He then found some massive success

(16:06):
that I believe even more important than his Apple success,
at least to his net worth, because he sold a
lot of the Apple stock when he was fired from Apple,
because he you know, he was personal and he I'm
sure felt some kind of a way about that, right,
not positive. So he starts Pixar, and Pixar becomes just

(16:29):
this absolutely massive, massive success story, and that in many
ways is the saving grace of Steve Jobs. Financially, it
reimagines him. In fact, let me give some credit, Steve

(16:53):
Jobs was not the only founder of Pixar. It appears
there were a couple of them, including Ed Mole Catmull,
who doesn't give the credit that he deserves. But it
appears that Steve Jobs takes this idea and grows it
beyond anybody's wildest dreams and including his own, and then

(17:18):
he comes back to Apple and kills it right. But
that's not the story of Steve Jobs. I want you
to obsess on. Here's a story I want you to
sit down for, because it's going to blow your mind.
Steve Jobs was the child of a Jordanian immigrant from

(17:41):
what we call the Middle East region North Africa quotation
marks that area.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
And a white mother.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
The parents of the white mother of Steve Jobs did
not approve of Steve Job's father mother, sorry, the father's
toe Jobs, the immigrant being in being part of his
daughter's life. The parents of the Caucasian woman who had
a child with this Jordanian immigrant, Okay, those the parents

(18:17):
did not approve of the Jordanian immigrant, and put I
wanted to put the child up for adoption. That that
child Steve, I'm a paraphrases. The parents decide they want
that Steve to go to a wealthy, well healed family.

(18:40):
As I understand it, that family selected Steve. And then
something happened, and uh, the adoption fell apart. And uh,
when the adoption fell apart, they the family had to
scramble to find a new suitor, a new adopt adoption

(19:05):
host for young Steve. That was not their best choice
or their first choice. It was a last choice. Well
that was his middle class family called the Jobs family.
Can't make this up in Silicon Valley. They adopt this
young man, bring him into their household and name him

(19:28):
Steve Jobs. And he wrote, you know hangs out in
the neighborhood and around the corner is this brilliant dude
named Wolseley. At the rest of the story, you may know,
they go in the garage and create this amazing idea
from nothing called.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Apple.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Now you can put the rest of this piece together.
Apple today is is one of the most valuable companies
in the world. Last time I checked over three trilliion
dollars of market cap and tons of cash on demand.
It's like they got a GDP of most that they've
got a wealth equation that's bigger than most countries. But
what would have happened if Steve Jobs and we don't

(20:14):
discount his genius, now, what would have happened if Steve
Jobs was instead adopted by a single parent mother on
the South Side of Chicago in that same period. Keep
in mind, Steve Jobs is brilliant. Now I'll tell you

(20:34):
what would have happened. He would have been He would
have become the biggest, most successful drug dealer the South
Side of Chicago had ever seen, because God's not going
to deny you your genius. And he would have found
a way to use that that brilliants and that genius
in a broken neighborhood to create enterprise for himself. I mean,

(20:56):
what do you think a drug dealer is if not
a an ethical, illegal, inappropriate business plan, structured entrepreneur. They
understand import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail, customer service, security,
territory logistics. Right, And what do you think of gang

(21:18):
leader is in those neighborhoods? Other than a frustrated union organizer.
These are genius, brilliant, amazing people with the wrong business plan,
the wrong relationship capital, the wrong environment, the wrong you
want to call it luck of the gene pool, but
they're not lacking intelligence, right, and you hang it. That's
why I say you hang around nine bro people, You'll

(21:40):
be the tenth. A lot of life is relationship capital.
It's either luck of your zip code or reimagining your environment.
And I keep trying to get you to reimagine your environment.
And what am I trying to do today? Reprogram your mindset?
If you can't change where you are, change how you
see where you are, and change what you do about
where you are, and what you going to do to

(22:01):
move away from the environment that may be keeping you
from being the best of who you are?

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Hello? Can I get a name? Man? This is the
church of what's happening? Now? What have you done for
me lately? So?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
Steve jobs, Uh that we all champion as a hero
who literally changed the world. Every device you're looking at
right now, whether it's an Apple device or a Samsung
or whatever it is you're using, or even an Android
that that's that uh glass like surface that is touchscreen,

(22:35):
right that you use. That was Steve Jobs. Everybody uses
that technology and that approach. Basically remember the some of
you remember the uhh the handheld device or device is
that were literally uh you had your you punched the keyboard.

(22:55):
You know, it was a little bit of a keyboard
on it. You little screen and you have these keep
these keys and you punch the keys on whatever the
device you were using. It was you know, tactile in
other words, you you literally you hit these little buttons,
right or the rotary dow the push button phone or
the rotary dill phone. Going too deep for some of

(23:17):
the people, what's a rotary doll phone? The point is
that this technology of of of of touchscreen technology is
is fairly new, and it's and it's and and he
he revolutionized that. He revolutionized, uh, music, books, all these
industries that uh, this guy transformed. And he was a

(23:41):
failure by he'd been written off by the world, and
he was a Jordanian minority immigrant Oprah Winfrey, who I
absolutely adore. I counter as I can't say she's a friend.
We're not like we hang out, but we her friendly.
She allows me to communicate with her, stay in touch.

(24:03):
Whether she gave me the Usual Life Award which helped
to set me on the world stage. You can still
go and watch that online from her show, The oper
Winfrey Show. I really thank her and appreciate her, and
she's amazing. Well, she was told she was unfit for TV.

(24:25):
In fact, she was fired, humiliated. She could have just
walked away. Instead, she leaned in. She was a local
broadcaster in Chicago, that's where I met her, which she
had the Oprah Winfrey Show there, still based in Chicago,
but she was started as a broadcaster. She started, she
got sort of made her first public acclaim as a

(24:46):
as a news broadcaster, a talk talk show host in Chicago.
And then she tried this new concept once she had
some success of this way, I describe it going spiritual
or becoming, you know, getting deeper about everything. And the
audience initially didn't know what to do with her, how
to deal with her, and so the audience, the ratings

(25:08):
did not support her ascension. In fact, the audience walked
away from her, and I'm sure she had questions about
I'm sure she questioned herself like can I do this?

Speaker 1 (25:18):
You know?

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And she
just stayed at it. She never gave up. And of
course the rest of the story is well known, and
she took off like a rocket once the audience clicked
into that. If she didn't if she didn't give up,
the audience didn't give up, see what I'm saying, And
it was once again resiliency. And today she's iconic and
singular in the world. President Barack Obama lost his first

(25:43):
race totally wasn't ready four years later US senator. That's
where I met him. I met him at the White
House when he was a US senator, four years after that.
And by the way, when I met him at the
White House, no one was paying him any attention. Hit
his assistant with him, and who assistant introduced to him
to me? And assistant said, this guy is really passionate
about financial literacy. And we talked very briefly. He didn't

(26:05):
seem very interested in me. By the way, mister Obama
at the time I ended up serving him as an advisor.
One of his advisors want to became president. But I
remember we met him. I met him at the Bush
White House, President Bush the Sun for Black History Month,
and I mean I wasn't blown away vying when I
met him. It didn't seem like it actually seemed like

(26:26):
we became president, he became taller. He just seemed much
more bold and audacious. Later on again, I guess his
confidence increased, right, his light increased, his confidence increase. It's natural,
and success begets more success. And so I met him
as a US senator, a very nice guy, very articulate,

(26:48):
very smart. Four years after that, first black president of
the United States of America, and I will add one
of a few presidents with no scandals.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Can you believe that?

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Pretty amazing President Abraham Lincoln, who is touted as one
of the most amazing success stories, failed at everything, I
mean at everything. The only thing he actually succeeded that
was being elected president of the United States of America.
And then once he did that, after the state said
you're not my president, walked to very room and that
started the Civil War.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
JK.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Rowling broke, depressed, rejected, twelve times. Harry Potter was her
last shot. Can you imagine this thing that is touted
around the world today, that was her last shot, right, Depressed,
broke and feeling like she had absolutely failed. Let me

(27:57):
now go to some other examples of success and failure
so that you can see that this is not a fluke,
that this is not Okay. John Brian has mentioned some

(28:17):
popular stories, but that can't be everything. Okay, let's go
deeper walk Disney fired for lack of imagination. I can't
make this up. Fired for lack of imagination, fired from
a newspaper job for not being creative enough. His turnaround

(28:39):
went bankrupt several times before launching Disney Studios. Today, Disney
is a global empire. Thomas Edison failed one thousand attempts
at his experiments one thousand times. Can you imagine trying
something a thousand times? This is not like casual I

(29:02):
mean documented failures of a thousand times. Took one thousand
tries to invent one thing. The light bulb that you
take for granted every day, tried one thousand times to
invent it, failed every time. His turnaround story, he said,
I've not failed, I've just found ten thousand ways this
won't work. His invention transformed, of course, modern life. Now

(29:28):
here's an untold story about Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison added
a little intern that he paid no attention to and
he rejected, named Tesla. No, not the car. Tesla's named
after an inventor. Right, So that's another story for another time.
But Tesla was a mentee of Thomas Edison, and Thomas

(29:51):
Edison just dismissed him. And they both created amazing inventions,
pioneered them, I think, going off memory, but I'm pretty
sure Thomas Edison. Of course the light bulb and so
you had one to created AC power, in one that
created DC power. But they were became competitors later on

(30:12):
in their life. Carl Sanders, Uh, this is the chicken dude, okay,
rejected one thousand and nine times. He kept a number,
He kept a log of this. His chicken recipe was rejected.
This is you know Kentucky for a chicken, right? His
chicken recipe was rejected over a thousand times before KFC

(30:35):
took off. Hold on now at age sixty two, Hello,
did you hear that? But tell you another one, because
by the way, most millionaires become millionaires in their mid
to late fifties. Right, that was my experience, by the way,
And get gonna get in my success story failure story
in a minute. It really my success story is my

(30:57):
failure story. I tell you one that is not obvious.
Nelson Mandela right, went to prison at forty seven years
of age, stayed in prison. Went to prison an angry
black man at forty seven years old, stayed there twenty
seven years in prison, turned it into Mandela University, unofficial

(31:18):
name for the prison. Because he was teaching everybody he
was an inspiration. He wasn't allowing them his captivation to
captivate and control his mind, his soul, the spirit. We're
not human beings having a spiritual experience, where spiritual beings
having a human experience and energy matters. He decided to
turn his jailer's into his pupils, and his jail into

(31:46):
a monastery of a place of education, inspiration, and an expression.
He stayed there twenty seven years. And really, what the
thing that we know to be his success Right he
went in at almost fifty years of age, right, I

(32:07):
mean he didn't do that too close to eighty years
of age. Really, you know, between mid seventies and mid
eighties years of age is when he did all the
stuff president of the country. You know, an inspiration for
the world. That basically decade period he changed the world.
I mean, Moses didn't know what he was even doing
until it was eighty That's biblical. If some of you

(32:30):
don't know what I'm talking about. Vera Owayne bringing his
back to Earth again. Vera Awayg the designer, failed her
Olympic dream, didn't make the US Olympic figure skating team.
She pivoted it into fashion. Now she's one of the

(32:51):
most recognized bridal designers in the world.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
What you know, I.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
Often say, if I got what I wanted in life,
I would not have wanted what I got. Be careful
what you asked for, you just might get it. Jeff
Bezos one hundred and seventy million dollar flop Amazon. Amazon's
firephone was a major failure. Did you know there was

(33:16):
a firephone? He used the lessons though, to help build
what we now call Alexa and Amazon Web Services, which
is now hold on a multi billion dollar success story.
Fred Smith, FedEx founder the company, almost died. He's Fred

(33:39):
still running the company to this day in Memphis outside
of Memphis. The failure, well, the business was failing, it
was not succeeding. Smith used the company's last five thousand
dollars to gamble in Vegas to keep it alive. What's
his turnaround story. FedEx is now a global logistics giant
valued in the tens of billion. And no, do not

(34:01):
take this advice that you think I'm giving you and
take your last five grand of Vegas. I'm not saying
doing that. I'm just telling you what he did and
is a symbol of just never giving up. Henry Ford
and Henry Ford's great great grandson, a great great great
grandson is a friend of mine. Henry for the third,
great guy who's on the board of my Motorsports Academy
and on Operation to Hope, and we were great friends.

(34:25):
I really love him and loved the story. Henry Ford
had two failed companies before the Ford Motor Company.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
His failure.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
His first two car companies failed investors pulled.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Out what was his turnaround?

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Built Ford Motor Company and revolutionized modern manufacturing. One step further,
there were about one hundred and ten give or take
car companies between the year nineteen hundred and nineteen ten.
I believe that started in this revolution of the automobile,
all the revolution of horses, very much like we're in

(35:02):
the AI revolution today. And all these companies jumping into
the fray and throwing billions of dollars tends to billion
of dollars, trying to be the first to market and
trying to distinguish themselves during this automobile situation this decade.
Most of these companies failed, and you're seeing the remnants
of some of those companies which are now brands in
other companies. Christ it was its own company, Dodge was
his own company. A lot of these, you know, Cadillac,

(35:27):
a lot of these things that you take for granted,
were standalone companies, and some of them just failed and
you don't even hear about them anymore. Well, one of
the problems was cost containment and efficiency, and Henry Ford
got an idea around manufacturing, which was his revolution, was

(35:49):
the assembly line. But he couldn't get workers to do this.
What was became not in this work on the assembly line,
so we had to pay them more to do this
monotonous work. Well, he ended up paying them enough to
buy the autobiles that they were actually making, which they
did aspirationally, and he ended up by accident birthing the

(36:10):
middle class in America. It came from that experiment. He
also then birthed a huge success with this growth of
the Ford Motor Company. By the way, the founder of
Motown Music Company, Barry Gordy, got the idea of his

(36:32):
Motown Music Company and how he was going to become
a production facility in house. Everything produced in house, writing, producing,
direct not directing, writing, producing, manufacturing, talent development, all the stuff,
the assembly line of talent came from him working at

(36:52):
the Ford Motor Company. That's a little known story. And
so out of failure came to successes Henry Ford and
Barry Gordy.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Is deep, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Arianna Huffington, who I know rejected thirty six times her failure.
Her second book was rejected by a publisher thirty six times.
Thirty six publishers said no, this is stupid, get it
away from me.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Her turnaround.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
She later founded the Huffington Post, one of the most
influential digital media brands in the world, and she's hugely
successful in a nice person. Sarah Brak Blakeley, who I
also know, failed her law career. Did you know she
had a law career. Her failure, scored low on the
LSAT and got rejected from law school. Her turnaround invented

(37:43):
spanks with five thousand dollars investment and no outside investment investors,
became the youngest self made female billionaire. And she's a
pretty cool person and her husband is also an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
You wouldn't know that from the story.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
You just assumed looking at her today, she's always been beautiful,
successful and her life is perfect.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
No, not true. She's had to.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Reinvent and reimagine every step of the way. Stephen King, Yes,
Stephen King. He threw the movie Carrie in the trash.
His first manuscript, Carrie, was rejected thirty times. He threw
it away. What's his turnaround story? Listen now? His wife

(38:31):
rescued it. Today. It sold over three hundred and fifty
million books worldwide. It was a book then, of course adapted.
And let me tell you now about my story. I
grew up in competence, south central LA. And if you
were listening to this podcast, you'd probably know most of this,

(38:53):
So I won't bore you with this. I want to
get you to get back around to some lessons I
want you to take from this podcast episode that are
practical and useful for you as regard to your mindset.
But you may or may not know I'm do this
with it clicked crib notes for me. I grew up
in south central LA in Compton. I. I was born
at Good Samaritan Hospital. My mom and dad created a little,

(39:14):
you know, conglomerate for a black family with a high
school education. My dad was from Alabama. Mother was effectively
well from Alabama also, but she grew up at Eas
Saint Louis. They got together, moved to South central LA,
where they had me at Good Samaritan Hospital. They owned
a gas station at Vernon in Normandy on the southeast corner.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
It's still there to this day.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
We owned a house on Santa Barbara Boulevard now called
Martina King Boulevard. We owned the eight unit apartment building
which we bought for eighteen thousand dollars. You could make
the mortgage payment of two hundred semi dollars on the
income of two of the units that were rented out
of the eight units, which and they lived in the
third one, which means the rest of it was profit.
They just did that. That won property today is worth

(39:59):
eight million dollars last time I checked. We owned our
own home, We owned a CMN contracting business, we owned
a nursery business. They were hustlers. My mother was a
seamstress part time. They lost everything, and that's another podcast.
You can go back and listen to the podcast I
did on my mother. I didn't want to, I think
on my father. I didn't want on my own failure story.

(40:22):
But they lost everything. And my mother could have taken
my dad to the cleaners because California's community property state
fifty to fifty, and she could have taken literally everything
he had because she had the children. She had me
and my brother Donnie, and my sister Monty Maria hot
Maa we call her, and originally Marra Hoskins.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
And she didn't.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
My mother chose to leave with the kids and her
own self determination and with the eight fifty four credit
score and hustled in her heart, working an hourly job,
became a millionaire later in her life, working in an
hourly job, buying and selling self and home, putting down
payments on my mos on a home for my sister,
down payments home for my brother, getting me out of

(41:05):
trouble when I had a dead eye oled of seventy
thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
She loaned me the money I paid her back.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
But she did all that just as a working class
woman with a high school education in a fifteen to
eighteen dollars an hour job for thirty two years, and
she made handicrafts part time, and so that to her work,
to her employees. She had a life insurance policy, a will,
and she had real estate that she just kept. She
died with the men now net worth up from nothing right,

(41:31):
and my dad unfortunately passed away. Even though he was
a businessman and very savvy as a businessman, he wasn't
savvy on money and financially literate and refused to learn
lessons and pride kills. I ended up having to take
care of my dad for the rest of his life. Anyway,
they're both been promoted on the glory. I learned these
lessons hard about money early on. My family network destroyed.

(41:54):
We lost that department building, by the way, destroyed by
financial literacy. That's why I'm so passionate about a date
Rainbows after storms.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
You know.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Operation Hope, which you all know about it by now,
is the biggest financial literacy organization in America. And by extension,
probably the world the largest black mail founded community based
nonprofit ever founded in America. Seventy five million dollars budget,
four point five billion dollars invested in communities, millions of clients,
fifteen hundred offices. You hear all this stuff, what you

(42:24):
may not know is that it almost went broke several times.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
In fact, what was really embarrassing was you had this
guy promoting financial literacy, but the organization was not financially
solvent for many, many, many years. And I was talking
about I mean people, I raised some early money as
media attention, but the world really wasn't ready for me
in nineteen ninety two and the nineties, and people laughed

(42:51):
at me. They dismissed me, and the organization struggled for
sustainable funding and buying from major major corporation and the
corporation companies you see now, they weren't there back then.
Nobody believed in me. People just sort of waved me away.
We were trying to sell financial literacy before anyone knew
what that even meant. People didn't. They just didn't get it.

(43:13):
Banks didn't fund it, governments didn't support it, and I
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
How to scale it.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Yet there were moments, a real low point where I
really almost went broke with Operation Hope. My personal credit
was shot. After I founded Operation Hope, I was trying
to save a nonprofit while losing grip on my own finances.
I let my own business drift away when I was

(43:40):
in my twenties, trying to do something for community. It
may not have been the best thing in the world,
but I was committed and I had a vision. Imagine
trying to teach America about money when you're struggling to
make rent. I had to decide whether the mission was
worth my last dollar. I bet on Hope, had to
start over several times, and I just never ever ever

(44:04):
gave up. I founded the Promise Homes Company, and you know,
that wasn't easy, and I had to learn the lesson
in the language of Wall Street, the structure of institutional capital,
the discipline of enterprising, building an enterprise and making it scalable. Yeah,
I had a major success and I built the company
and sold it. But that was not easy. I mean

(44:26):
I had I had miss deals, missteps, missed moments. I
mean I had times with my and my partners were
looking at me crazy when I you know, I was
growing the company, but you know, believed and turned it around.
And again I've done a Hope episode on that and

(44:47):
sold the company for north of one hundred million dollars
and had you know, a couple of hundred million dollars
credit facility tied to it, and I sold it into
a joint venture for which I own as a limited
partner at stake in and I'll probably be transitioning out
of that soon. I was resign as chairman last year
because I'm just not involved in the business and if

(45:09):
I can't control the narrative and know where it's going
and have some influence over it, I you know, I
don't have an ego about it. I'm like if if if,
if I know, been there, done that, have the T shirt?
I prove I could build a company and sell it
on Wall Street they call it clip a coupon on
Wall Street. I prove that I could build a company
from the streets and sell it to Wall Street institutional investors.

(45:31):
And so nothing that's enough to prove there. And so
I'm still a limited partner, but again I'm going to
probably transition out of that completely here soon. Let them
go do what they want to do, and I'm going
to do something else, and I'm good with that. Right,
So you don't fall. You just you just if you're
going to fall, fall forward, but you're not. It's not

(45:52):
a failure when something doesn't work out the way you
wanted to. It's the end of an experiment. That's all
it is.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
No one teaches you how to run a two hundre
a million dollar business in Compton, California. But I learned
by failing, by asking and by doing. See all these
books around me, I'm constantly learning. Quincy Jones, dear friend
of mine, how'd you get so smart?

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Quincy? Answer?

Speaker 3 (46:17):
I'm just nosy as hell. I want to know everything
about everything. God gave you two years and one mouth,
so you listen twice as much as you talk. So
from failures, you know, the failures became a blueprint in
many ways. Operation Hope today is a seventy five million
dollar give it take budget, one of the largest black
male founded and run nonprofits even to this day. Again sold,

(46:42):
you know, built and sold a major real estate business.
A co chair national initiatives including the AI Ethics Council
with Sam Autman and Financial Literacy for all with Doug
mc millan of Walmart CEO was a great guy. But
none of this would have happened without my failures. I've
been broke, I've been underestimated, I've been embarrassed, but I've
never been done. Failure didn't stop me, It shaped me.

(47:07):
Who I asked failure, What lessons you have to teach me?
And I was there to be the writer of my

(47:29):
last chapter?

Speaker 1 (47:30):
What about you?

Speaker 3 (47:31):
So going back now to your lessons? Okay, here's some
stuff I want you to spend some time on and understand.
Number one, well, here's some useless emotions. Guilt, shame, blame, judgment.
As Bible suggests, don't throw rocks in the grass glass house,

(47:52):
you might hit yourself. Right, So guilt, shame, blame, judgment.
Who is the right to judge you? That's between you
and God. There is no perfect I started out by
saying that, So, like people want to judge you, like,
consider the source who's talking to you? If somebody's going
to give you some critique or criticism, consider the source.
Are they successful?

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Right?

Speaker 3 (48:14):
We often spend our time trying to model and press somebody.
We don't even want to be, Like, who's telling you?
That you can't do it? Did they do it? Who's
telling you can't succeed? Did they succeed at a high level?
Who's telling you can't be a homeowner? Do they own
a home? Who's telling you can to be a business owner?
Have they had a successful business? Who's telling you can't

(48:34):
buy a business? Make a business and sell it on
Wall Street? Have they made a business and sold it
on Wall Street, or on Main Street, or on any street?
Consider the source. I tell people all the time, I
like what I'm doing much better than what you're not doing.
That's right. I like what I'm doing much better than
what you're not doing.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Right.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Criticism is a cheap sport. People standing on the sidelines
throwing rocks cannot get in the game and play themselves.
But they are professional critics. I don't need a chief
criticism officer. I need a partner. I need a contributor.
All right, hustle over everything, see my T shirt. Hustle
over everything. That's what I'm talking about. Perfectionism. Right, you're

(49:16):
waiting to be perfect, You'll wait forever. There is no perfectionism,
there is no perfect This is the best you can do.
So become perfect and you're in perfection and leave the
rest of that stuff alone. Just relax. I used to
walk around my rear end tight all the time I
wanted to be Trying to be perfect might give myself
high pertension and anxiety. Like, just chill, right, if you're
going to pray, why worry? You're gonna worry? Why pray?

(49:39):
Number two, you have fear of judgment. You care too
much about about what people think. That fear will trap you.
We have in church, yet come on now, talk to me,
Talk to me now. There are some people who have
an imposters syndrome, right, They fear that they really are

(50:04):
not who they purport to be. Well, without God, without
a higher power pouring into us, without us having the
humility of understanding that we are enlightened because we have
been set in the light. We've been given a gift
and we got to do something with it without help
from the universe. Yeah, you might be an impostor. But

(50:26):
if you know that you're God's child and you're special,
and you're here to make a difference, and you've got
gifts to share, you just catching up with your potential,
that's all you're doing. But imposter syndrome is real mentally,
particularly if you have depression and low self esteem, and
a lot of people will leave. I was sawing a
lady today when I came into the airport. She was
my greet and she was saying, she's in a relationship

(50:48):
and she just feels like her partner everything's going well.
Her partner's trying to almost like destroy the relationship. She
can't figure out why things are going so well. I
told her some imposter syndrome. That brother probably comes from
an unstable family, unstable situation, doesn't know what stable looks like,
and it scares him.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
And before you.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Can leave him, he's going to leave you, Before you
can leave him, He's going to create an environment where
that is unsustainable in a relationship. So he can't be disappointed,
so he can't be hurt, so his heart, his heart
is not broken. And that sound crazy, but people do
this all the time. Hurt people, hurt people, hurt people,
hurt people. As an old Southern saying, no matter how

(51:26):
much I love you, my son and my daughter, if
I don't have wisdom, all I can give you is
my own ignorance, And so out of love we pass
down habits from bad habits from generation to generation. If
I don't like me, if I don't like me, I'm
not gonna like you. But I don't feel good about me.
I'm not gonna feel good about you. But I don't
respect me. Don't respect me to respect you. I don't
love me. I don't have a clue how to love you.

(51:46):
And if I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around
comes around. So this dude who he loves her, but
he doesn't love himself.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Right.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
I asked a friend of mine years ago, why does
a genius like John Belushi or Marilyn Monroe? These were
for those who are not like movie buffs are entertainment
celebrity buffs. These are heroes. And she rose of you know,
the eighties and nineties or Maryland's before that sixties. Why

(52:20):
did Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi go out like that take
their own life? And she said she was a rose.
Catherine Pinkney was her name?

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Is her name?

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Friend of mine? She's at an executive at a studio.
She said, the same thing that gives them creative genius
tears them up on a sunny day. They just can't
handle normal. They need drama. It's deep. But when you're
emotionally unstable, you don't want things to be normal. You
need the drama of it all, which is going to
ultimately destroy you. So it gives you brilliance. But that candle,

(52:53):
that burning is going to burn you up too. So
I need you to get into your dharma head to
peel your pain. Number three over confidence. Smart folks believe
they can't lose, but they forget to prepare. They also
fail the Andrew Young tests of men and women fail

(53:13):
for three reasons, he said, arrogance, pride, and greed. I'm
dealing with some folks right now full of pride and
arrogance and probably agreed to and they can't help themselves.
They can't get out of their own way, and in
my opinion, they can't help but fail even though they're
really smart. So you got to step over mess and
not in it right and always treat people as you

(53:35):
want to be treated, and be gracious and kind and
loving even if it costs you something. Right, you want
to be able to look yourself in the mirror. And
I go to life, I go to bed, I go
to life. I go to life too. I go to
bed every night completely comfortable, well reasonably comfortable with my
own skin. But I sleep very well, and you should

(53:57):
want to do that too. So you only have confidence,
but you don't want to be overconfident. You want to
be arrogant or cocky, or you want to be light right,
to carry your gifts lightly right, and again treat others
as you have them as you want to be treated yourself.
That's actually biblical Number four, not asking for help. Pride

(54:20):
will bankrupt your progress. Number five ego and identity. Being
smart becomes your identity, So failing feels like you are
you are the failure, right because that is your identity.
And goes back to what I said before about low
self esteem. You can actually have high confidence and low
self esteem happens all the time. Or you have these
tech geniuses from the Silicon Valley where theirs some of

(54:42):
them some of them with a blind spy called people.
Or you have also financial geniuses, and they think because
they're tech geniuses are financial geniuses. They're literally geniuses. That
means they're successful or genius that that means that they
can translate that success in every other part of their life.
That because they're smart there. That means they know everything
else not true and they will they will fail massively.

(55:03):
You can have high IQ and not have a high EQ. Right,
Am I getting too deep here? So you have to
have you really have humility and knowing what you don't,
acknowledging that that you don't know some stuff actually brings
you credibility. My friend of mine is Sam Autman, who
I think is a modern day Steve Jobs. And when

(55:24):
we talk about artificial intelligence, you know, I asked him
about the upside and the downside, and so what the
upside is we make your cancer in ten years. The
downside is it's something really bad might happen and I
don't know what it is. He said, So that I
mean that was humility. That took humidity for him to
say that. That made me trust him more, not less.

(55:45):
He's a founder of open A, the CEO open AI.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Six.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
Overthinking analysis is paralysis. Right, action is the cure. Stop
overthinking stuff, Stop stop up nabl gazing, stop admiring the problem.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Right.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
So, smart people fail because they think their brain is
the tool. Right, But it's the bounce back that builds wealth,
power and purpose. So I tell people all the time
don't let the perfect become the death of the good.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Just get up and do something.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Why do you think your phone has My phone is
an iPhone and my phone is in the sixteen pro,
but the software upgrade that I'll last check was eighteen
points something, which means every time you get that phone,
within weeks of you getting it, there's a patch, a
software upgrade they're doing. Because it's not perfect, right, it's
just good. It's a good phone. It's good enough that

(56:45):
got in the market. They wait for it to be perfect.
They never would issue a phone. They issue the phone
it's really a computer, and then they send you a
software upgrade, a patch every few weeks, and you deal
without thinking about it. So why aren't you treating yourself
the same way? Understand you're in this world. God puts
you in this world, right, He put you in the game.
Don't wait for the perfect it's not coming right. Just

(57:07):
getting the game to the very best you can and
keep getting software upgrades, keep reading books, being nosy, keep learning.
Listening to the podcast like this, you know, realizing God
gave you two ears in one mouth, so you listen
twice as much as you talk. Be humble, be nosy,
Be curious, be fascinated, Be a contributor, be a net
giver in life, in life with opportunity. Okay, I'm almost

(57:36):
wrapped up here. I hope you're enjoying this. Here are
some practical tools and habits for you to build resiliency,
and I hope you're enjoying this. Normalize failure, expect it,
don't fear it, learn from it. Two reframe the story

(57:57):
instead of I failed, say that was a lesson?

Speaker 1 (58:01):
What next? Again?

Speaker 3 (58:03):
I take no for vitamins. Number three, Keep a learning journal.
A learning journal, track mistakes, extract value. Four Take micro risks,
small bets, daily discomfort. It builds confidence. Five share the journey, vulnerability,

(58:26):
Invite support. People want to help those who are real.
I ask for people all the time to help me.
I don't understand this, and I don't understand that. Can
you help me figure this thing out? I'm nosy, I'm curious.
I'm always trying to learn, and I go to experts
who may know something more than me, and that asking
if somebody told me to earlier day, friend of mine,
are I really respect? If you Phil Griffin's name, if

(58:48):
you ask for money from somebody, successful they'll give you advice,
but if you ask for advice, they may give you money.
And that is really true. Right, that's another the podcast
for another day, But that actually is a crib note.
That's like a cheat sheet. That's really true. People you
want to turn me off, come to me and ask

(59:09):
me for money, like just complete turn off. I mean
it's simplistic. Also, and also it anyway, and yeah, just
don't do it. Have genuine relationships and genuine interests. Number six.
Build a circle that checks, that checks you, iron sharpens iron.
Your brain needs a crew. Hello again, If you hang

(59:30):
around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. The opposite
is also true. Number seven. Detach your identity from your results.
You are not your resume. You are your resilience. Number eight.
Play the long game. I can't say, I can't stress
this enough. You make money during the day, you build
well in your sleep. It's another Tony Rest quote. Play

(59:52):
the long game. Zoom out of your life. Zoom out.
Stop obsessing on this thing in front of you. I
walk through life constantly oblivious to most things because most
things just don't matter. Zoom out. This failure you're obsessing
on won't even register. On your life's map in five
years if you keep going again making this Bringing this

(01:00:15):
back Home by friend Tony say, if you don't quit,
you can't fail. So you're listening to this right now
and you've failed recently, good, That means you're in the game.
The smartest thing you can do is to stay in
the ring, keep swinging and keep learning. Remember, the smartest
people don't win because they're smart. They win because they're stubborn.

(01:00:36):
They're stubborn about the vision and flexible in their approach.
I want you to tell people about this podcast, encourage
them to subscribe. Get my book, which is now I'm
now out in paperback, Financial Literacy for All. It's still
a number one best seller a year after it's issuing.
So thank you everybody for that. Financial Literacy for All.
I have six books in total. Go to Operation Hope

(01:00:58):
and tell them I sent you. They'll offer you a
one thousand dollars coaching scholarship good for twelve months at
an Operation Hope hoping side location near you or online.
This is one thousand dollars that will help you at
like a private banker, wrap around you, wrap all the
support around you. One on one coaching and counseling, get
your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up,

(01:01:20):
so a bank can tell you, yes, a bank, credit union,
a credit provider of prime credit to get you in
this game, in this opportunity economy. And I really run
out of time here, and I really should shut up
because I've talked way way too much. But I also
want to leave you with some practical hope. So let's
say you've been laid off from a job, or you've

(01:01:42):
been one of the people you know that's been fired
from the federal government or whatever, and you're trying to
figure out how you're going to replace that income and
how you reset your life at thirty or forty or
fifty years of age. I'm gonna give you some a
couple of real practical examples you may not be thinking of.
Did you know, and I'm gonna do a social media
post just on this, did you know that there's a
massive need in the age of artificial intelligence? There's a

(01:02:06):
massive need for by twenty thirty off almost a million
plumbers and electricians. And you're like, John, did you say
of all that your breath to tell me that hold on,
watch check this out. There's a six percent projected annual
growth rate for plumbers. There's a need of about forty
thousand plumbers a year because people are aging, they're leaving

(01:02:30):
the job. You know, there's enough, you know, there's not
enough immigrants and young people coming up to take the positions,
which is while we need diversity and immigration, that's a
whole other conversation. Electricians not a very similar story. Eleven
percent annual growth rate, eighty thousand job openings every year,
same sort of situation, and you're like, I'm not interested

(01:02:51):
being a plumber or an electrician. Really check this out,
because you can't AI, you're plumbing, can't AI electrically your
electrical grid. These are things that we're going to need
for ever, and these needs are going to expand, and
so check this out. Entry level plumber about fifty two
thousand dollars a year. Hello, you can get you can
get a trade certificate for this. You'll need to go

(01:03:12):
to a four year university or college and make fIF
twenty five dollars an hour. A journeyman plumber sixty four thousand,
sixty five thousand a year, a master plumber meeting income
hold on one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year.
Overall meeting income for a plumber, you know, sixty one
thousand dollars. I mean that's that's solid middle class electrician

(01:03:36):
entry level fifty eight thousand dollars a year, about twenty
eight bucks an hour. Intermediate plumber electrician two to four
years of experience, sixty eight thousand dollars sixty nine almost
sixty nine thousand dollars a year, a senior electrician forty
six years of experience. It's like going to college, right,
but this is a practical experience. You're making money while
you're learning. Seventy four thousand dollars a year. This is

(01:03:59):
like ball and class. Oh and you're your own person.
You set your own schedule. In many case, you have
your own own business. The overall median for electrician sixty
one thousand dollars a year. Now, it could be more
than that, less than that. But the point is there
are options everywhere. Just again, as my brother Tony said,
never ever ever give up. If you don't quit, you

(01:04:21):
can't fail. John O'Brien is Money and Wealth. I'm out
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of

(01:04:42):
the Black Effect podcast network. For more podcasts from the
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