Why Success and Failure Are On Purpose

In this episode, John Hope Bryant discusses why mindset matters! 

 

To get John's book, Financial Literacy for All, visit: https://johnhopebryantholdings.com/financial-literacy-for-all-book/

To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hope Bryant and this is the Money
and the Wealth podcast series on Black Effect Network and iHeartRadio.

(00:23):
It's my weekly ministry of Hope. I want you to
all get my book Financial Literacy for All now a
national bestseller and economics and Business. I want you to
use it as your textbook, as your weekly family meeting book.
I want you to read it from Indian and underline
it and mark it up. I want you to review
it online where you bought it. And then I'd like

(00:45):
to give you to write your name, your family name,
and the inside cover and donate it to a local
library or a title I school, an under serve school
in your neighborhood with your name on it, and go in.
After you even talk financial literacy yourself, please consider going
in and teaching it to young people. We model what

(01:05):
we see. A lot of what I'm going to talk
about the day is about exactly that. So we're going
to start out this podcast episode on why success and
failure are on purpose. Yes, it's a very provocative topic
and I'm an unpack a winning mindset and how to win.
But some people are going to be upset by the

(01:27):
topic title why success and failure are on purpose? How
could you dare say that failure is on purpose? Before
I talk about my own failure, first, let me first
say that I'm not talking about poverty on purpose, not
sustenance poverty. So sustenance poverty you can't do anything about.
That's a roof over your head, food on your table,

(01:51):
reasonable healthcare, what zip code you were born in, the
parents had you, well, what adults had you, and hopefully
they became parents and acted like parents. But you have
no control over that, right, And so I'm not talking
about sustenance poverty the ability to sustain yourself. But all
other forms of poverty outside of sustenance poverty are tied

(02:15):
to mindset. And that's what I'm talking about here, And
I'm not even talking about poverty. I am talking about
a poverty mindset, which I'm going to get really get
into is really important. There's nothing to do with a
bunch of money you make, and there's nothing to do
with your network. I know a lot of really poor
people with money who won't have it for very long.

(02:38):
But let me talk about first my own failure. I
love bringing in my personal experiences because, as you know,
everybody listening to this, if you don't, you should check
it out. I literally came up from nothing, literally was
in the bottom quartile of American society. Grew up in
south central Los Angeles, born in a good suburit in

(02:59):
the hospital, Born to a mom and dad who had
effectively a high school education. My mother got her high
school education, her high school graduation certificate at age sixty
two Wanita Smith in marsh with cap and gown eighteen
year olds. My father had a high school education at
both the traditional South built something, and they built a
lot of wealth relatively speaking, in south central LA. I

(03:19):
grew up in south central LA and Compton and lost it,
and my mom had to go live with friends. She
told me they were relatives, and went to go buy
her first house, working an hourly job. My point is
this is not some due with a silver spoon in
his mouth. But yet I have now concluded several transactions
of over one hundred million dollars. I sold a company

(03:42):
for one hundred and twenty million dollars in the last
few years, a private for profit company my nonprofit has
facilitated over four and a half billion dollars in capital
to underserve neighborhoods and people. I have millions of clients
and offices. I have fifteen hundred offices, three hundred which
are physical offices, and four hundred employers employees that are
full time. So imagine my payroll. Hello, ninety million dollars

(04:05):
of annual Turnover Act revenue for my operations in John
O'Brien Holding. So I know a little bit about the
topic that I'm articulating because I've gone from the bottom
quartelt to the bottom of the top one percent and
I'm not even I'm nowhere near done. And I have
no problem with, by the way, financial influencers who acknowledge that, Hey,

(04:28):
I'm a teacher, I'm an inspiration, I'm a motivator. I
have a real problem with so called financial influencers who
influence people and who tell them how to build wealth
or this or that, and they've never done any done
that themselves. They do it by selling their influence, and
I think that that's wrong. I think you need to
walk your talk, you know. I think somebody who's made

(04:50):
it and lost it has one hundred percent more credibility
than somebody who's never made it ever in their life.
I mean, I love professors. I love educators. I think
it's really an important job and task in life. And
they don't have to be experts. You don't have to
be an expert in business to teach it as a professor.
But I think when you start talking about risk and
reward and all these things and risk analysis, and you've

(05:13):
got to bring somebody in and talking about you know,
the opportunity costs and all these things. You got to
bring somebody in who actually has experienced that. Right, So many, many,
many people can teach the fundamentals of business and all that,
and as long as people acknowledge that, it's all good.
But as you're about to hear, I went through it. Well.
You read my book Financial Lucy for All. Read my

(05:35):
book From Nothing, Read my book The Memo, Read my
book How the Poor Can Save Capitalism. Read my book
Love Leadership, Banking on Our Future. Go to Operation Hope.
Listen to all my videos you know where I talk
very honestly about my ups and my downs. And you
know this is a dude who is not selling you
Wolf tickets. I have walked the talk and so this

(05:58):
is a minor league example of one of my losses,
but it still stings me because I actually just concluded
last week after thirty plus years of being in it,
and it is an absolute failure, business failure. I want
in other ways, but this is my only real estate
failure in my that I'm aware of in my life.

(06:22):
I got to think about it. Maybe I had another one,
but this is certainly the most stunning, And this is
where I was the most stupid. Yes I said that
about myself. Yes, I'm not stupid. The decision was stupid.
The way I behave was stupid. And that's one of
the things about a mindset as I'm beginning of this,
that you really got to get your hands around. But
the trending topic to today, the flossy talkic topic today

(06:44):
is me. So what concluded recently was the sale finally
of my time share. I've only owned one. I'll never
own another one again. They call them a timeshare on purpose,
and I hadn't thought of about this until recently. They
don't mean it's complete. It's right there in front of you,

(07:05):
when somebody's robbing you, when somebody's when somebody's trying to
separate you from your wallet. Sometimes legally they've got to
disclose like a pack of cigarettes, literally sales in the back.
This stuff's going to kill you, right, So some companies
and organizations and industries have to absolutely disclose the dangers
that you are under in partaking in what you're doing.

(07:28):
And I don't know the ins and outs of time shares.
I'm not that curious about it anymore. But it clearly
it doesn't say real estate share. So it strikes me
the government forced them to say what it is a
time share, Yet millions and millions and millions of people,
including me, thirty years ago, mistook it. I can't even

(07:50):
get my words out of them. So disappointed in myself
thirty years ago mistook it as a real estate share.
So this is how terrible this is thirty years ago.
This is really hard. To screw this up. At the
recommendation of a civil rights leader in Los Angeles who
I was trying to impress. But whenever you want to

(08:12):
make a bad decision, make an emotional one. Whatever decision
you make emotionally, it's going to be bad. Please write
that down. Unless you're driving, you're driving, or you're jogging.
You're listening to this on the run, just committed to memory,
write it down later. By the way, I'm do a
podcast on all of my business tools so you can
get a sense of all the tools I use to
win and to keep moving with all the stuff that's

(08:35):
going on around me and the fifty year. Some identities
that are as part of my overall holding company organization,
most of which are in my philanthropy. By the way,
I purchased a piece of property trying to impress this
civil rights leader in Los Angeles who I admire and
still admire. Wasn't his fault. It was mine. He got

(08:57):
I found out later a referral fee by getting me
to buy this time share. He'd already bought the timeshare.
So the way he got over or got more time
or whatever they did, or if he was to bring
somebody else in, and he knew I admired him, so
he used that, and I think we went to lunch

(09:18):
or something and I asked, I asked for the lunch,
and he said, you know, you should buy this thing,
So I said sure. I just wanted to impress them. Again.
Whatever decision you make emotionally is going to be a
bad one, and this timeshare was in Newport Beach, California. Now,
anybody who knows southern California, and anybody listening to this
watching this from southern California, you know, give me some

(09:40):
love in the comments if you know what I'm talking about.
I bought two weeks two separate ownership units. I got literally,
you know, percentage of the title of the land now
on the beach. Now it's not on the beach, but
Pacific Pacific Coast Highway. The beach in Pacific Coast Highway,

(10:01):
and then Newport Coast Highway, and there was Newport Coast Villas.
I won't say who the company is that owns this.
I don't need to get into a legal wrangle with them.
I'm done with them, so I don't need to reopen this.
But you can figure it out for yourself if you're
curious and nosy enough. I bought this property a right

(10:24):
acrossreey from the beach. You can see the water in
Newport Beach, California. It's the Gold Coast. I mean, it's
it's how do you make how do you lose money?
I bought it thirty semi years ago for thirty five
thousand dollars thirty years ago. Think about how much money
that was. I financed it through a finance company, maybe

(10:49):
a bank. It was a bank, made payments on it.
I ultimately paid it off about fifteen years after I've
started financing it. So you do that math. I had
to sell them individually, right, But I just sold these
units thirty years later real estate now on Pacifica's Highway.
This's why the details really matter in you know, southern California.

(11:14):
You got to be crazy for this real estate not
to go up in value. I just sold it for
I think my people told me when you add up
the net to me of both units costs you know, excluded,
I think I made eighteen thousand dollars, sorry, cleared eighteen
thousand dollars. So you say, well, John dang Man, you

(11:36):
you you bought this for thirty five thousand dollars and
you left out with eighteen thousand dollars. That's not so bad. No,
it's it's really really bad because it gets worse when
you do the math, and I did. I've spent over
one hundred thousand dollars in order to get to keep
this property. You have a maintenance fee. Right, the maintenance feed.

(11:57):
And keep in mind, now it's been thirty years the
maintenance fee. Get your calculator out if you're stable. The
maintenance fee was thirty five hundred dollars a year for
these two units. Okay, so let's do thirty five hundred
dollars times thirty years. Ok I need to do that again,
only because it hurt me so bad. I just have
to see it again. I need to keep doing the

(12:19):
number because I just can't leave it. That's one hundred
and five thousand dollars separate from the thirty five thousand
dollars that I spent to purchase the unit. Now you
add the finance fee from the bank of the fifteen
plus years that I financed it. Plus you add the
fact that there was a two hundred dollars annual Orange

(12:40):
County property tax fee. Yes, a product that just showed
that I owned real property. That if you didn't pay
this two hundred dollars property tax is my smallest property
tax in the history of me owning real estate. If
you didn't pay this property tax fee, it was a state.
I think the City of Newport Beach would lean your property.

(13:00):
They would put a tax line on it, as they
were right to do, and they would report you to
the to the credit bureaus. Do you know my credit
score took a dump and I had I mean, well,
what happened was the tax lines would show up on
my public on public records. It would say John Bryan's
a bum, he doesn't pay his bills. That would get
reported to the databases that then stream into the credit bureaus.

(13:24):
The three credit bureaus Experience, TransUnion and Nequi Fects primarily,
and those would then say, with John's a bomb, he
doesn't pay his bills, and so we're gonna whack his
credit score. And I'd get hit with a credit score
hit negative of you know, twenty thirty forty fifty points
down because I forgot to pay a I was running

(13:45):
so hard and so fast as an entrepreneur, entrepreneur back then,
I didn't have anybody like now helping with me with
all the paperwork. I did all myself, and the stuff
would just stack up and I'd get around to it.
By time I got around to it. I wasn't trying
to avoid it. By time I got around to it,
and I figured two hundred dollars, I mean I'll pay
it the city new word bichelog, you're gonna pay this
on this date, and then they hit me with a
late fee. I mean when I finally add up the

(14:07):
property taxes, the late fees, the tax abatement release fees,
the finance fees, the monthly the annual maintenance fee, and
the maintenance fee was a feed that the company charged
me to maintain my own property. And if you don't
pay the maintenance fee, they lean your property, which means
if you don't pay it for four years because you're

(14:29):
just like whatever. You add that up right, and you
basically don't own anything, and that plus fees, and you know,
they sell it, they take it back, they foreclose on it.
And I'm sure there was a stipulation in the agreement
that after two years of not paying a maintance feed,
they could just simply take it back in an executive foreclosure.
Dely need to go through the court process because they're
smart in their documentation, and you and it were nothing.

(14:53):
It making matters worse. I couldn't say when I wanted
to go see the place, I want to go stay
in it. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm not a post postal
war worker. God bless them. We need postal workers who
had you know, no every year when they're getting a
break of vacation and they go with their family to wherever.
I was an entrepreneur, so I'm running around and opportunities
come up and I got to go here, got to
go there. And so I'm like, well, I you know,

(15:15):
I scheduled this, I got to move it. And they're like,
you can't move it, that's it. Well, can I sell
it to somebody? Can I trade it? No? You know,
got to go through them, which means it really was
not a real estate This was just this was well
it was real estate, and it wasn't. It was primarily
me buying the me renting time usage on the beach,

(15:38):
and my dumber in I had actually thought for a
minute I was going to buy all, you know, every
week of the year. So I literally own the unit
there and go whenever I wanted, Thank God it and
do that. I got absolutely wiped out. That had been
ten times worse than what I originally had done. But
I do know of a guy who did it. He

(15:59):
wanted to stay there all the time, and so we
bought every month of the year. Hello You could have
just bought a unit on the beach or cross stream
in the beach, an apartment building, our condo, sorry, not an apartment,
but bought a condo, a townhouse or something back in
the day for four hundred thousand dollars back at thirty
years ago. You certainly could have done it, and that
would be worth today. I don't know two million dollars,

(16:19):
million dollars easy a condo or townhouse across rooms in
the beach, easy in Newport Beach. Yet we own something today,
owned something today that is not worth what we paid
for it because of how it was structured. Now, I
learned the lesson and I'm willing to acknowledge that I'm
messed up. And that's part of having the right mindset too.

(16:43):
God gave you two ears of one mouth. You listen
twice as much as you talk. You got to own
your mess You got to own your mess ups. You
got to realize that you screwed up, but you're not
how to screw up. That you've made a mistake, but
you're not a mistake that everybody's. Everybody falls down. The
question is can you get back up? Life is ten percent?
Life does to you and not even how you choose
to respond to it. Do you react or do you respond?

(17:06):
And rainbows only follow storms? Can I have a rainbow
without a storm? First? So I learned a lot and
I will never do it again. And it taught me
to read documents and be focused and understand nothing good
comes easy. How could I buy it a thirty thousand
dollars piece of property, sorry, a million dollar piece of
property back then was a half a million on the

(17:28):
beach for thirty thousand dollars Because you can't without a
lot of people in your pockets and your hands, and
your decision making and your telling you what you can do,
what you can't do, when you can do it, how
you can do it, and charging you every time you sneeze.
It was really smart business person business move and the
people who did it. It wasn't very smart for me

(17:48):
and I could again. I didn't even rent the play.
I end up giving the place away to my chief
of staff, Rachel died for my friend Rob McGrew or
whoever you know, because I couldn't use it, and so
I give it to them. Let go hang out there,
So I didn't get a chance to. Occasionally i'd go
check it out, and I didn't. I remember checking it
like at midnight one night, and then a business thing

(18:08):
came up and I had to leave like a day
or two later. And you know, anyway you can see it.
I'm rather traumatized by it. So let's now move on.

(18:29):
So why are success and failure on purpose? My wife,
Shaker once told me that most behavior, actually she said
all behaviors learned behavior, and I absolutely agree with that.
I've said differently, we model what we see. So why
does somebody want to be a rap star, an athlete
or a drug dealer in an underserved neighborhood? Right, there's

(18:50):
nothing wrong with being a rap star. But I can't.
I can't magnify my brother t I. I can't. You know,
it's a he's a singular superstar. I can't magnify my
the Killer Mike. I can't magnify jay Z. I can't
you know, you can't magnify Michael Jackson got risks. So
these are one offs, and maybe they had twenty thirty

(19:10):
employees in their organization, but they're built around a brand, right,
A person A personality you can't magnify like well entertainers
or athletes. So these are unique individuals in the world.
I need something that's scalable, and you shouldn't want to
be a drug dealer. But why people want these things
because they model what they see as symbols of success

(19:31):
in their neighborhood. So Shaye told me Shade and my
wife said that most actually said all behaviors is is
a learned behavior. I agree. I then said to her
that it's not about how smart you are, or how intelligent,
or how brilliant or how I didn't say to her,
I was just saying in generally because in Bastiat and

(19:52):
you young and I also have this conversation above that
man that you know, you have all these folks with
it is having to be talking to her about this topic.
You have all these folks with these degrees and PhDs,
and they got this and they got that, and they
seem resentful that somebody else who does not have those
things maybe maybe are more successful commercially, and they think

(20:16):
that because they have all these degrees. By the way,
and you should get a degree. You should get a
college degree. If you're a black and brown, or a woman,
or you're an underserved group in America today, you should
get as much education as you can shove down your throat.
So I'm not anti degreeing anything on the border Clark
Atlanta University. I've got honorary pH ds. I have two
of them, you know, and Basil Young has one hundred

(20:37):
and thirty of them. Hello, I give commencement speeches all
the time. Everybody who works for me as a college degree.
Be clear, I am pro education. But just because you
have a college degree or an advanced degree does not
necessarily mean that you're going to be successful and you're
in You're chosen endeavor. Intelligence and smarts comes from books,
but wisdom comes from experience and success listen now comes

(21:01):
from good habits. There you are, I just dropped the mic.
That's it. You want to tell your friends to listen
to the sweet spot here? Time to go to about
you know, the twenty minute mark twenty one minute mark
of this podcast and pick it up from there and
then you can get the backstory later. I'll say it
again that success is about good habits. Let me tell

(21:24):
you about some bad habits. I'm on Instagram, well, I'm
on all the platforms, about three million followers, so thank
you guys for your support. About two HUNDREDI video views.
I'm on all the platforms when I get a chance
orf to run my businesses, to take take care of
my family, do my thing. I'm on there checking out
comments and I try to comment myself. I'm stunned, stunned
how people who don't who's so poor they can't afford

(21:47):
the o R who so broke they can't pay it?
You know, so broke, the can't pay attention that clearly
are not clear to me for the reason I'm about
to tell you, are not succeeding in their life life,
and at least financially so, economically so, aspirationally so because
they argue with me over stuff I actually know and

(22:09):
they don't. The reason you're listening to me is not
because I'm you know, a man of the cloth or
a saint, or or a a profit or you know,
a basketball star or whatever. I'm the hopefully the Michael
Jordan of my Space. But you're listening to me. You're

(22:30):
watching me for I would hope a reason. And I
shouldn't have to tell you that I've been an advisor
for three US presidents. I should have to tell you
that I've been honored by five years presidents. I shouldn't
have been tell you all these credentials and blah blah
blah in order to get for me, get to get
you to listen to me about what I absolutely obviously know.
But these folks will argue with me back and forth,
tell me I'm wrong about about stuff I've already done.

(22:53):
Homeownership that ain't nothing. I mean, we don't own the home.
The bank owns the home. Yeah, you don't pay Oh
this is this can't be a good deal. I've owned
seven hundred homes, seven hundred. I was the largest minority
owner of single family rental homes in America that I
sold the company for one hundred and twenty million dollars.
By the way, two years ago. That's just one of

(23:14):
my ventures. I got a two hundred million dollars credit
facility death that I didn't have to personally guarantee. Hello,
who does this? But they want to argue with me,
We can have a conversation and we can go back
and forth. You can respectfully ask me this or certainly,
but if you want to literally argue with me, to

(23:35):
argue with the food proves of are too. I don't argue.
Now we can have a discussion. When you start getting rude,
you start using foul language. I just block you, right,
not because I don't like other opinions, but because this
is a ridiculous conversation that I refused to waste my time.
So one thing that you start to realize when you

(23:55):
become successful is not about the money. It's about your time.
Because time is tied to your focus. It's time to
your peace of mind. And I walk through life consciously
oblivious about most things around me because it just doesn't matter.
So you can't let anybody waste your time abuse your mind.
This is like the number one reason why broke people

(24:17):
stay broke is they argue over stupid stuff and refuse
to listen. God gave you two ears in one mouth
because they want you to listen twice as much as
you talk. Shut your mouth up sometimes and listen. Just listen.
You don't have to agree to it or agree with it.
You can, by the way, discard it later. But to

(24:38):
have a mentality of don't bother you with the truth
I've already made up my mind, it means you will
be broke for life. Let me now talk about how
mindset matters when you approach a certain business enterprise. I
generally speaking, don't like house flipping. Yes, I just said that,
I don't like house flipping because that's not wealth building,

(25:02):
that's revenue, that's a fee. So when you flip a house,
you buy it, you rehabit, you fix it up, you
paint it, you do whatever you do. By the way,
I'm not hating on house slippers. I'm about to tell
you about a successful house flipper that I do like,
so hold on. But I personally don't think is a
good use of my time my energy might whatever to
do house flipping because you're not building wealth, you're buying

(25:24):
the house, you're fixing the house up. You're one step
beyond just being a real estate agent. There's nothing wrong
with being a real estate agent either, I've been the
one before, but being a raised real estate agent in
New York City as an example, forty percent of all
real estate agents in New York City are about half
of them I believe, maybe it's a majority of them.
I checked my numbers. Make forty thousand dollars a year

(25:47):
in New York City. It's somewhere between forty percent and
the vast majority of agents in New York City. You
make forty thousand dollars a year. You know, the New
York City in Manhattan, that's broke broke, broke, broke, broke broke.
But you're going to fancy events, the fancy receptions. You're
living the visual life in somebody and you're showing off
somebody else's real estate. And maybe you aren't closed a

(26:08):
deal and get a fee, but you don't own You
didn't own it before, you didn't own it during it, and
you don't own it after. House Flipping is a version
of that. By the way, again, there's nothing wrong with
being a real estate agent, but I want you to
move from being a real estate agent fee income to
owning real estate. Okay, I want you to go from
being a house flipper to being a house owner. So

(26:29):
somebody who's flipping houses is just doing nothing but just
creating cash flow, just with bigger numbers. So you buy
the house for one hundred thousand, you put thirty thousand
in it, you keep it for you know, twelve months,
six months, whatever it is, you sell it for. I'm
making this up now, guys. You sell it for one
eighty you know, after your fees and everything, you've made

(26:51):
forty thousand dollars or whatever, thirty thousand dollars net net
to you. And you do that, you know, three times
a year you made about one hundred thousand dollars in
net income and probably a good return on the cash
that you put into the property. But your lifestyle, of
your lifestyles one hundred thousand dollars a year, you're broke
and you've got nothing to show for it. There's a

(27:13):
couple that I know, I'll leave their last names out
of this. Kat and Kevin do house slipping in Atlanta. Now.
The way they do it is they buy five homes,
they flip four, and they keep one. You get that.
So they use the profits from the foe to pay
for the fifth one, so they get a free house.

(27:36):
Get that. I'll say it again. They buy five homes,
they fix them up, they sell them, they keep the
fifth one, and now they have I think they told
me eight homes that they actually own outright. Most of
them own cash, by the way, I mean, they don't
have a mortgage note on it. Plus they have some duplexus,

(27:56):
so they're just they're rolling and so they're creating in
come in wealth. You make money, as my friend Tony
wrestler would say, you make money during the day, you
build wealth, and you sleep when I talk about you.
You know, I don't like check cash and payday loan
in theer's rental, owns, towards title learners, liquor stores. It's
not that I don't like those businesses. I don't like
the mindset behind what those businesses become. A check casher

(28:18):
came from a grocery store. Grocery stores used to just
cash convenience checks for customers, So why wouldn't you like that?
Then after a while they start charging a modest service
fee one percent two percent on the face value of
the check. Then they realized that the that they're only
making three percent on an average four percent of the

(28:39):
stuff on the shelves, and they got to pay inventory
for that in the grocery store. The grocery store margins
are very, very very thin for a small grocery store.
They're like, well, shoot, let me just be let me
just cast the checks for one or two to three percent.
There's no downside of that. If it's a government check,
big company check, whatever, I know that I know the
check going to clear, so I'm just paying. I'm just
getting paid I'm making the same my money. So anyway,

(29:00):
that's where check cashers came from. It start with as
an honorable thing. But then when people start charging you three,
four or five eight percent to cast check that they
know has little risk on it, or then doing you know,
I think there's nothing wrong with payday loans, but when
you get your loan to somebody who you know is
financially illiterate, and you refuse to let them make a
partial payment to pay it back, and you basically keep

(29:22):
them in bondage and they can never get out of it,
and an eight hundred dollars payday loan turns into a
thirty five hundred dollars obligation that you you keep rolling
over because you can't make a partial payment. That's not
helping you, that's enslaving you, and they know it. So
it's not about the business. It's the mentality in the
mindset behind it that I have problems with. Okay, let

(29:43):
me now move on to give you another example of
a mindset of a strategy that's really was really smart.
I'm gonna give you two examples. McDonald's. Now you say, okay,
well I got this one. This is a fast food restaurant. No,
it's not. It's a real estate play, that's it. They
own the ground lease all the real estate. They own
the real estate. In most cases in ground lease it

(30:05):
back to whomever franchises or whatever. But they but they
and they get the feel on that real estate, and
the real estate goes up in value. So at least
that's what the business plan used to be. The unlet's say,
changed it in recent years. You know, it used to
be they were in the real estate business, and they
made cool foods and really really tasty French fries. Something
recently just happened in the last week involves the founder

(30:28):
of Peloton, and this is again mindset matters. So this guy,
who I know, John Foley, I don't know him well,
but I've met him a couple of times. Nice guy
had was a billionaire on paper, founded Peloton. We have
him here in the house. Great product in my opinion,
And he recently did a bunch of interviews where he

(30:48):
acknowledged that he went from a billionaire to virtually penniless.
Now these are made up headlines, because when you're a billionaire,
broke means you have ten million dollars left. Okay, that's
what broke me. It's if you're a billionaire, did you
get that right? And your outfloats? He's your inflow, So
your overhead is now your downfall. You made a fall bankruptcy,

(31:10):
you got a downside. So we had to sell a
fifty five million dollar house in the Hamptons. He had
to sell a peeda tear town home in Manhattan. But
my man's not homeless. He's not living in a trash
band somewhere. He's not living in a flaphouse. My man's
living in New York City. And did he why did
he make this announcement and allow people to run with

(31:31):
these headlines? And now you got it's all over the internet,
It's all over YouTube, is everywhere social media. Why did
he do this to himself? Because he is smart. He
ran his course at Peloton. His bet worked until it didn't.
The wrong answer is the right when it didn't work,
And it worked until it didn't. He went through the
pandemic and over extended himself the company of Peloton during

(31:54):
the pandemic. Pandemic ended and people were like, Okay, I'm
tired of doing all stuff at home, get out again
and that, and he'd overinvested and had to leave the
company and most of his net worth left when the
stock dived, and he went quiet. And there were two
investors who believed in him, and they quietly worked with him.

(32:16):
Do you know this man, he just did all this press,
did all his publicity to talk about how he went broke.
It went about him going broke. It's about free publicity
for his new venture, which is called I'm gonna give
him some some publicity here Ernesta. It's a specialized interior
design firm that does custom made rugs, amongst other things
for high end families. And I think it's going to

(32:37):
do reasonably well. And he's given himself to twenty thirty
to hit. So he's given himself, you know, five six
years to truly make this thing hit. And he's got
patient money. But you know, he's not homeless. He's got
a proper office, he's got staff. He's just much smaller
than what it was at Peloton, and he's got he's
living in some place. He's living in one place in
manhattanver versus having three homes or four homes. I think

(33:00):
I met him in Sun Valley, so he had three
at least three homes. He probably had four homes at
that point a private jet who knows. So yeah, from
his perspective, he's broke, but he's not broke. He's just
on his reset. But what he brilliantly used mindset matters.
What he said, I'm going to respond to this. I'm
not going to react. I'm not gonna emotional. I'm gonna
get smart. I'm going to use this story that everybody's
gonna want to hear to then drive attention to this

(33:22):
thing that no one would otherwise pay attention to, which
is called Ernesta, which I had no idea about and
would never be telling you about on this Pods Games
of Plicity right now, it had not been the trigger
was billionaire wind broke? How what what do you mean? Yes?
I know him, Okay, hold on. Do I feel sorry
for him? I do feel sorry for him. He's a
nice guy. But you know, capitalism is a gladiator sport.

(33:44):
This is what happens when you take risk. Sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't. But my man is on his second round,
and I think he's going to be of opportunity. I
think he's going to be immensely successful. Mindset matters. So
now I told you about what makes you go broke,
and I've told you about what makes you win. Even

(34:04):
if you lose, you win. If you fall, you fall forward.
You got to acknowledge that you don't know everything. You
gotta acknowledge that yourew, that you miscrew up. You got
to acknowledge when you make a mistake. You got to
own your problems. You can't just you can't just own.
You can't say that that you're responsible for your successes
and God is the blame for your failures. That's not
the way this deal works. You got to own all

(34:24):
of it. God helps those it helps themselves. Hello, can
I get an amen? The Proverbs in the Bible says
that to be to be poor is not to not
have anything. To be poor as not to not do anything,
and lazy hands make a man poor. That's Proverbs. I'm
not a biblical scholar, but I know that's true. That's
the Lord being an empowerment leader. Good. Let me now

(34:55):
go to a couple quotes I want you to think about,
and then I'm gonna give you a powerful closing to
this podcast. There's a difference between being broken being poor.
Being broken is economic, but being poor as a disabling
frame of mind a depressed condition of your spirit, and
you must vow never ever ever to be poor again.

(35:15):
Success is intentional. Failure is on purpose. In other words,
if you do what I'm telling you do, look devil.
The Lucifer is a punk. He's a fallen angel. God
gives the devil permission to exist. That means if you
stay in the light you can't help but do right,
you'll never go do wrong doing right. Just keep running,

(35:36):
keep walking. The devil Lucifer is lazy. Failure is lazy.
All your hard work and your middle name is a
hustle up, around and through it. You're gonna get to
it right. You get up early, stay up late. You
believe in an entrepreneur works eighteen hours day to keeping
getting a job. You're gonna outrun failure. Success is not

(35:57):
about succeeding successes out running failure. Listen to me now.
Hank Aaron had the record for the most home runs. Yes,
and his wife was at our house a couple of
days ago, Billy Air and God bless her, but but
but but Hank also had the record for the most strikeouts.
Did you hear me? Hello? A lot of the leaders

(36:18):
in basketball and sports and whatever you love, go and
do that. Look read their backstory. It wasn't great all
the time and sometimes, and initially no one believed in
them half those stories. No one backed them, told them
they'd be a failure. You know, you can't hit a
ball you don't swing at and if you swing at
that ball, you're gonna you're gonna miss most of the time.
But it's not about how how how many times you miss,

(36:39):
it about the few times you connect. Success is a
thousand fathers and failures a bastard child. But no one
remember your success. Your failures are gonna remember your success is.
So just keep swinging at the bat. It's not about
home runs, about base hits and bunts. Just keep it
moving like it is hard to hit the moving target.

(37:01):
Keep it moving. Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever
ever ever give up. That's not my quote. I just
I just but I just use it. I love it.
It's time to make smart sexy again. We've been making
dumb sex even way too long. We've dumbed down and
celebrated it. We've got to make smart sexy again. And
I've already told you failure is on purposes. Because you

(37:21):
just give up, you just throw your hands up. You say,
whether again, whether you believe you can or whether you
believe you can't. You're right, you say, somehow you believe
that that success is your birthright. No, it's not. Nobody
owes you any except of chance. You should say, I
believe in the James James Brown version of affirmative action.
Open the door. I'll get it my dang self. So
you will succeed if you just keep pushing through your failures.

(37:46):
And then what happens with that is you start saying, well,
I take no for vitamins and there's nothing you can
do to stop me. And then ultimately the universe, the
negative force of the universe just you know, you want
the negative forces of the universes to when you get
up in the morning, crap, he's up. So you've got
to understand that this is about your mindset and whether

(38:10):
you believe you can and whether you believe you can.
As I said before, you're right, is a last half
full or is half empty? It depends who's looking at
the glass. John Foley is looking at that glasses half full.
Those those house flippers I told you about looking at
the looking at the transactions income right now and the
wealth down the road and then look to live for
the long term. Right. I was not focusing on this

(38:30):
one deal idea to make to impress this civil rights leader.
And if you got something out of it, that's fantastic.
But it gave me an incredible education that was priceless,
and I'll never make the mistake again. By the way,
I ended up making a crap load of money on
the real estate that I earn money on. And what
do I care about about this little thirty thousand dollars
deal to turn into one hundred and whatever sixty thousand

(38:52):
dollars that I lost over thirty two years. What do
I care about it other than it's a lesson. It's
an ego. It's an ego thing. I don't you know.
My egos is more damage than anything else. Here you go.
Here's how we're going to exit this podcast for this week.
If you enjoyed this, by the way, I hope you
have get my book Financial Literacy for all. Tell you
friends about this podcast. Comeing to tap in, subscribe tap

(39:12):
in every Thursday. New episode drops every Thursday. Tap into
the rest of what Charlomne's doing Black Effect Network. I'm
on the board, happy to do it at the Black
Effect Network. I think the only board member that actually
has a podcast at Black Effect Network. So I think
that's pretty cool. It's making smart sexy. I think go
to operation, get your whole financial coaching and counseling. It's
scholarship because of the seventy two million dollars that we

(39:33):
raise every year for you from our partners. So you
get it for free. Get one MBB, one me and
Black Business Initiative. Start your business. Okay, here it is
be an eagle. There are three types of birds, like
three types of people. There's eagles, there's buzzers in there's turkeys,
and eagles don't fly. I packs. You've never seen a
flock of the eagles. And eagle is a high altitude bird.
Eagle is regal, not erica, not pumped up, but they

(39:55):
are unique. They take the road, let's travel and eagles
on my being alone. But you know, eagles are flying
high until they're not until they get emotional and make
a mistake. So the egle's flying high and he sees
in this pig down the pigpin. The pig is talking
mess to him. You ain't nothing, your mom, ain't nothing,
your dadd ain't nothing. The Egle finally said, you know what,

(40:16):
I'm tired of you talking mess. I'm up here, way
up here, chilling, doing my thing, but I'm really talking.
I know who my family is, but I'm tired of
making I must show you a lesson mistake, emotional mistake.
Egles dives down below his level, dives down way down
the ditch, dives down way down in the valley, goes
down to that pigpin where that pig is, and went
to go slap that pig. That pig with a wing there,

(40:37):
this vast beautiful wing. And that pig looked up and said, yeah,
just where I needed you, and took some mud and
it's hoof and threw it over his shoulder and put
it on the eagles, wing, winging eagles. Now out of balance,
eagle crashes into the pig pin, and the pig said, yeah, now,

(40:57):
who's boss? Stay up there where the where the air
is light and right right. Because there's another kind of bird.
It's called a buzzer, and a buzzer loves packs. A
buzzer is a low altitude bird. Buzzes always playing, hating,
never player congratulating, always got something negative to say. About
somebody always stepping on your head to elevate themselves. Can

(41:21):
you think of somebody around you like that? You know,
I don't tell people. People say say, how you doing, John,
I'm doing fine? What are you doing? John? Oh, I'm
not doing anything. I'm good. If they're really curious and
can looking up on social media or something to reading
my book, I don't know. I'm not going to answer
that question because most people don't actually are not actually
sincere about it. People are happy for you until you
exceed their level. Hello, if they're insecure. Now, if they're secure,

(41:45):
a different thing. But if they're insecure, and most people
are insecure, if you exceed their level, then they resent you.
They're jealous of you, they're hating on you, and they
want you to fail just so they can feel better.
Because hurt people hurt people. We're getting some church in
here this week, so that buzzard admires you but resents
you the low altitude birds. But then the worst kind

(42:07):
of bird is a turkey, because the turkey's got wings
and can't even fly. All they do is profile translation,
trying to be something they are not. Be an eagle. Now,
what's an example of an Eagle. What's an example of
the road less travel? That's a book that's to this point,
thirty forty years old, Less Trouble by Scott Peck. I
love that book. He's read it. What's an example of

(42:29):
this beyond my own story of the world less travel?
You know, everybody when I was growing up, everybody told
me I never amount nothing. No John talking about the
financial literacy stuff and capitalism? Who cares this? Come parties,
gonna have some fun, John, you should be Anthony hanging
out with us. You should be partying with us. Now.
I'm cool, I'm working, I'm studying. Oh you ain't doing nothing.
That's great. He rollingizes in me. And thirty years later,

(42:51):
twenty years later, ten years later, guess who's knocking on
my door? Hey? John Man? Amen, you know you're doing
some cool stuff. You know, I just wait for it.
You know. So you think you hooked me up? Can
you give me a job? Can I get Alan? Can
you can introduce me to Joe? But no way, you
mean induce you to the person. I spent all that
time building that relationship with or. I went on trips,

(43:11):
and I went on business meetings, and I invested all
that time where you were out there party and it's
sleeping in or whatever. It said that I was wasting
my time. You mean that person you want me to
introduce you to using my relationship capital. Why would I
do that? I don't say that, but why would I
do that? So you can embarrass me because you show
up late for a meeting. I don't show up at
all because you wanted to have some fun in the
short term us doing the long work in the long term. Again,

(43:33):
mindset matters. You think money is everything. Really, I can
give a million dolls a homeless man. If I do
nothing else and he does nothing else, he would be
broken six months. Why do you think people who win
the lottery most of all, most of them are bankrupt
in five years, seventy percent of them bankrupt. Why? Because
it's more than money. It's mindset. Why have seventy percent
of all NFL and NBA players bankrupt five years after

(43:55):
they their career ends? And that woman typically the man
in the profession sports, a woman divorces him because it
was about the money, not about the means, not about
the mission, not about the mandate, not about the purpose,
not about the real love, not about the higher frequency.
It was about the money, the money, the money, money
which will come and will go. But it's really about

(44:18):
the mindset. I rather you waste my money than my time.
You waste my money. I make some more money, but
I cannot make more time. So ice Cube, this is
my last topic, ice cube, and put this on Instagram
and you want to watch it there. He did an
interview and talked about reparations. And it's a story the

(44:40):
topic that I don't talk about a lot because I
still the edits think it's messy. So I got way
to discuss it. Really because if the country really paid
the costs for slavery, which built this country for free,
the country will go bank bankrupt. So and then you
know the other part of it. If we okay, so
you just give people money, well, I already tell you
what happens. You just give people money, and and then

(45:00):
and then the country that was built on capitalism turns
into a company about social country about socialism, and the
country will fail anyway to either do bankruptcy or changing
culture anyway. So it's really a hard conversation. But do
people deserve something, Yeah, they deserve something, But for the
reasons that we all talked about slavery was horrible. Built
this country for free, and black people built it and
it weren't paid for it. It was horrible, horrible bad capitalism.

(45:22):
But what's a smart way of going about? So ice
Cube said something. He said, Wow, you said to help
with reparations, give me access to capital. I thought, let me,
I'm listening now he said, you know, we don't have
access to capital. He took explain how in the inner city.
So it says, why do you think they're only smart?
People are are robbing still of each other? You think
they're just you know, uh, you know, morally unfit. These

(45:44):
are good people who turn bad. There's no economy, there's
a way to take care of your family. So you
end up becoming a versus being a union organizer, you
become a Now I'm saying this's you become a gang
leader versus becoming an entrepreneur a small business only become
a drug dealer, which is which is what an a
legal entrepreneur is a drug dealer, import, exports, finance, marketing, hostsale, retail,
customer service, security, territory, logistics. You're not talking about a

(46:06):
dumb person. You're talking about a misdirected person. With a
bad business plan. So they go on under the kid.
That's underground economy because there is no capital to grow
a real economy. Man, we hustle. Black people, brown people,
we hustle. We've been doing so much with so little
for so long. We can almost do anything with nothing.
So imagine what happened. We had access to capital, education,
opportunity and low interest rate, low cost of capital, low

(46:29):
interest rate cost of capital, access to premier prime capital
in real numbers, the education and know how to how
to run a business. Financial literacy, and opportunity at scale.
My god, we kill it, and we will. That's what
I'm trying to build. That's where me and others are
working to build just that, the federal Reserve of the hood.

(46:50):
So I agreed with that that and I'll go once
to further. I said it on Instagram that I think
there should be like a ten thousand dollars scholarship for
higher education for every person who do who can prove
their descendants of slaves. I was at descendant of slaves.
I don't need the money, I'd wave it, but but
my relatives could and do need it. And because we

(47:10):
need a high education nation, a high education nation in
order to go to the to move in his artificial
intelligence and robotics and everything that's coming next. We need
a high education nation. And that's what this nation should do,
is to educate every black person for you know, with
a scholarship for ten thousand dollars, which is doing well
with the least they should do. And then there should
be structure access to capital programs. I won't get into

(47:33):
in this podcast, but I agree with him on that,
and I disagree where you talked about that he's not
voting for anybody because all the candidates are bumps. That's
not true. That's just not true. It's actually very good
candidate running. There's only one candidate running at the moment.
I won't get into that. As you know, I've advised
Republican and Democratic president, so I'm not partisan. But there's
only one. There's only one candidate running today that's legitimate

(47:55):
and ethical and actually cares about you, and you should vote.
You better vote. If you care about your democracy, and
you care about your children, you care about you, you
better vote. This is extraordinarily consequential. So I disagree on that,
and I think he's wrong on that. But we're going
to disagree without being disagreeable. I can say I applaud
him on one thing and again mindset, and not agree

(48:17):
with them on something else, and I'll leave you with
how I live my life. Talk without being offensive, listen
without being defensive, and always leave even my adversary with
their dignity because if you don't, that's been the rest
of their life trying to make you miserable. It becomes personal.
This is John O'Bryant. This is Money and Wealth on
the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. Go get your scholarship

(48:39):
and Operation Hope. We'll get your book and antial literacy
for all from wherever you buy your books. And tell
your friends about this podcast and tell them to follow.
Let's start a movement in silver rights from civil rights
to silver rights. And let me know what you think
about this podcast in this episode, Love and Light, I'm out.

(49:10):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
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