John Hope Bryant, Lamine Zarrad & Stacey Tisdale Talks Good Credit Score + More | Wealth Wednesday
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
All. It's a way up at Angela Yee and I'm
here with my partner for Wealth Wednesday, Stacy Tisdeal. Time
to go way up on Credit Education Month. And we
have some really amazing and important guests and I want
to thank them for taking the time to come and
talk about what we think is really important. We have
John Hopebrian who is the founder, chairman and CEO of
(00:23):
Operation Hope, and just your friend and just my friend,
our friends you've heard me talk about on countless times.
And another friend, Lemie Zarade and you know him as
the founder and CEO of Stellar PI. So grateful to
be here. Yeah, listen, you're back again. And so, as
Stacy pointed out, this is a National Credit Education Month,
and you guys are the perfect people for us to
(00:44):
be speaking to about credit. Absolutely, and the purpose of
National Credit Education Month is to get people to start
thinking about credit and to take action. And we were
just talking about it before the interview started. There's so
much more in credit than just credit. There's a psychological stigma,
there's an emotional stigma. People feel badly about themselves. People
(01:07):
used to actually go to jail for having debt. So
I wanted to ask you both, what would you say
to people a way? Before we do that, let's talk
about what Operation Hope is, yeah, and what Stellify is
so they can know why you're why are you asking
these questions? So for John Hoe Bryan, let's talk about
Operation Hope and what you guys do. So. Operation Hope
is America's largest nonprofit financial literacy and financial inclusion organization.
(01:32):
We're America's financial coach. We have a fifty million dollars
annual operating budget. We have four billion dollars that we've
invested in underserved neighborhoods translation where we live, for homeownership,
small business ownership, entrepreneurship, etc. We created one hundred and
eighty five thousand black owned businesses since October twenty twenty two,
sorry twenty twenty during the pandemic, which is five percent
(01:53):
of all black businesses in America. Just through our nonprofit.
We have two hundred forty Hope inside offices in forty
six states. It's like the Starbucks of financial inclusion. We're
America's financial coach. We raise your credit score fifty four
points in six months, one hundred points a year and
a half. We lower your debt by three thousand dollars.
(02:14):
You make in forty eight fifty thousand dollars a year,
and on average, we increase your savings five hundred two
thousand dollars. Most people don't have forty dollars for an
unplanned event that makes you bankable. So we get we
help you get the bank out out of the no
business and back into the yes business so that you
can get access to credit. And we do that at scale.
And we think that we're sitting angel in a moment
in history here. But history doesn't feel historic when you're
(02:37):
sitting in it. You know, just was like another day.
But we think this is a third reconstruction. The first
reconstruction was freedom from slavery, and that was after the
Civil War. The second reconstruction was about access and that
was the twentieth century. That was a civil rights movement.
I was just down in Salma for Bloody Sunday Anniversary,
and Salma looks the way it did sixty five years ago,
(02:57):
like time stood still. But that was about access. Acts
to the ballot box, access to a facility, access to
a water fountain, you know, access to a job. But
we got to move from cashing a check to writing it,
and we got to move from just cash flow to
wealth creation mindset, an ownership mindset. In this third reconstruction
(03:17):
between twenty twenty and twenty thirty, I believe it's really
opportunity for all and the colors green. It's not black
or white or red or blue. It's green color us currency.
So that's what we do at scale. And I think
if doctor King was alive today, this is to be
the work he'd be doing, all right, So he clearly knows.
He's clearly the person to be talking to. And by
(03:38):
the way, somebody who I personally talk to when I
need advice when it comes to investing, and we'll get
into that in a second. Now, another person who I
talk to is Lemin. That Lemine, can you tell us
about Stellar Fi? Of course Stellfi. The big vision for
Stellifi is to redefine a relationship between a borrower and
a London right, completely redefining credit and its nature. For
(03:59):
you know, Trase really was it was a unilateral relationship
between someone and give somebody money and somebody's got to
pay that money back. We're doing now instead of you know,
having lenders rely on probabilistic models and sometimes make decisions
that are not optimal decisions, really connect with a consumer,
understand what's their availability when it comes to cash and
(04:20):
cash flows, and then make a decision based on real data.
And we have that data. But anyway, today what we
started with is something very near. It's a wedge. We
build the most effective credit builder in the market today.
What we do is we allow customers to link all
of their bills. We pay those bills on our behalf
using our money our balance sheet, and then we collect
the money in the back end, therefore creating a credit
(04:40):
relationship between us and a consumer. And now we can
report those bills. So we report everything from actual credit builds.
Because you can link a credit card or mortgage, but
you can also link your subscriptions. You can link Netflix,
you can link your child support payments, we have folks,
gym memberships, anything you want, and as a result, build
credit for things that completely invisible to the industry before
(05:03):
to the system, so to speak. So our customers on
average build thirty two points in first thirty days, which
is unheard of. There's not another tool that does that,
and then five to ten points a month obviously depends
on your credit profile and so forth. But it is
truly most effective way to do it. So if you
think about if Operation Hope is YMCA, we're like Nautilus,
(05:23):
where the tool that can live within that you know
sort of sphere of you know, advising and coaching and
so forth. Let me ask you guys this, because we
had this conversation before the mics came on. There are
different types of credit scores though, right, and so let's
talk about that because sometimes you feel like, Okay, my
credit score is this, and then you go and apply
for our mortgage or you want to get a car
or do something like that, and you find out that's
not really what you thought your credit score was. So yeah,
(05:45):
we're gonna use the boss. We're gonna talk about whatever
you want to talk about. But I think we need
to drop the mic on something that Stacy mentioned at
the top, which is that you know, we need people
to act on this. We need to do this. People
are acting too much like we got It's just been
reported that we have more consumer debt now this country
than in any time in history. What are those numbers?
(06:08):
I mean, it's it's it's eye popping, it's it's a
trillion something and and but but the number theirself doesn't
bother me. Because GDP grows, domestic prowler continues to increase
as well. The problem I have is that you have
you had a three percent surgeon retail sales in January.
You have people who believe credit cards are cash right,
and these luxury retailers are doing amazing. And Marcus said,
(06:32):
we see Ferrari is like, okay, we did not even
anticipate sales being like this. We see Channel raising their
prices yet again. So young, so young people who are
not buying a mortgage, who are not buying buying a house,
they're delaying that the home purchases and staying with their
parents until they're thirty, think that the money they're saving
on rent or whatever is actually money. They may no, no, no, no,
you should be saving them money, but they're using that
(06:53):
to go floss out. One of my guys who worked
for me was in LA this weekend and he's running
a car and these young twenty five year old kids
in LA rented the biggest BMW luxury car they could
at a thousand dollars a day. They think they rented
it for five days. That's that's that's nuts. But they
(07:14):
were trying to floss. They wanted, they wanted, and my
wife says they do. This is big in Miami as well.
And the problem is that these people look like us
that there's just between making money and building wealth, but
we're obsessed with I want to make that money, want
to get that dollar one, get that bag, when get
that cash. You know, anybody can make money and anybody
can lose it. That's why you can get one hundred
million dollars NBA contract and be dead broken five years.
(07:37):
You build wealth in your sleep, and so we've got it. Yeah,
let's talk about credit. There's a I love good credit.
I don't like bad credit. I don't like bad debt.
I love good debt. We'll talk about that in a minute.
But I just wanted to frame like, we're then the
fans trying to get inflation down because of the pandemic,
right right, But we are offsetting that because we're keep
(07:58):
we keep spending, because because we think the party is
like nineteen ninety nine and we need consumer confidence. We
need This economy is consumer spending. But without financial literacy,
this is a bomb. But do you really have to
expand what the definition of what financial literacy is it's
a lot more than dollars and cents, And when you
(08:20):
look at it's a total mindset. And when it comes
to debt, I was getting at is financial debt as
a leading cause of financial stress. It's impacts decision making,
all of these things. And a lot of people look
at their credit card debt and they bury their heads
in the sand because they think this is something I
can never get myself around, I can never manage this.
(08:41):
So what would you tell people to make it make
them realize that this is a part of their financial
life that they can take control of me. I can
speak from experience as an immigrant and starting at the
very bottom after immigrating to this country. I mean, my
family is undocumented for many years. It was it feels,
you know, felt unattainable. And when if something feel unattainable,
you know it's not real. And if it's not real,
(09:03):
then you kind of live in a moment, right, You're
not going to worry about you're spending dat under control anyway.
It's a different perspective on life in general, and the
timeline is compressed, and so what you gotta do is
you got to realize that every day is the day
that you live, and every day sort of compounds, and
every decision you make in that day will compound, meaning
that it will build on itself. And so if you
(09:23):
make a right decision like save, sometimes doesn't feel like
the right thing to do right, you know, sometimes buying
something nice and make that makes you feel good, feel
it feels much better, a little therapeutic, but you got
to you gotta really, like my victim, pull it together.
It's just like working out. It's about discipline and it's
about a long term vision. Understanding that you're starting here,
that's point A, there's going to be a point B,
(09:44):
point C and so forth, and kind of planning it
out and that requires not just discipline, but requires coaching.
It requires mentorship. And that's why, you know, Operation Hope
is excellent, excellent opportunity to kind of connect with someone
where you know where they can give you that sort
of a roadmap. You need a roadmap as an individual,
and frankly, like our product doesn't give you the roadmap.
(10:04):
That product gives you a tool that you can bring
along the roadmap. But there's there's got to be human
components to it. So let's just have a real talk
conversation because I know that, I know you speak to
all audiences. You speak to every race, every place, every culture,
and they should listen to you. But just real talk
about like black and brown America, particularly Black America. We
(10:24):
have a lot of issues that other populations don't that
are emotional in nature. I think depression in nature. I
think PTSD almost in nature. And that impacts how we spent. Yeah,
We're like, we're this huge consumer spending force because we
in some ways I think of medicating, moderating, trying to
deal with our the fact that we're not happy on
other stuff. So we go and spend and people know that. Okay,
(10:48):
So Andrew Young, the civil rights leader, my mentor said,
to live in a system of free enterprise and not
to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the
very definition of slavery. So now you have in our
neighborhood that a cashier next to a payday alone enter,
next to a writ our own store, next to a
tighter lending, next to a check cash next to a
pawn shop. I probably missed a few things the liquor
(11:10):
store if I didn't mention that. And down the street
is a church which is a local psychologist trying to
make you feel better once a week, because we won't
go see a shrink because we don't want anybody think
we're crazy. If you're black and you don't think you're crazy,
you are crazy. So because we've gone through so much,
but we've been doing so much with so little for
so long, we'd almost do anything with nothing. We are
true survivors. But no one gave us The memo on
(11:30):
free enterprise, Capitalism, Economics, and an Opportunity. It's my third book,
the Memo. It's not that we're dumb or we're stupid,
and it's what we don't know. That we don't know,
but we think we know. So when the rules are
published and the playing fielders level, think about the arts,
think about entertainment, think about professional sports, your son, think
about politics. Rules are published. Playing folds level, we kill it.
(11:52):
We excel absolutely, think about now all levels of sports
were gone. An attendants, we got on the f one racing,
I mean, golf, everything. But but no one publishes rules
in capitalism and free enterprise. And after the Civil War,
the bank that was created to teach us about money,
the Freedom's Bank, was shuttered when Lincoln was assassinated sixty
million dollars we had the community had gotten in that bank,
(12:15):
and that would have been about seven billion, billion gazillion
dollars in the economy today. And let mean, I know
this is a point that you often make that the
credit system really affects our ability to create generational wealth.
Indeed it does. I mean, this country is built on
a credit system, right, It's it's built on credit specific
(12:36):
not every economy is build on credit. Credit is an
amplifier of sorts. It gives you the leverage, meaning that
it gives you the opportunity to access capital of money
that you don't have. And if you have more money
than or if you can access more money that you
currently have, and if you make a right decision with
that money, then you can access more money. Right, So
it's truly is an amplifier. And what's interesting is if
(12:59):
you don't have the right profile, you can't access that capital.
And you won't have a right profile if you don't
know the rules. Fundamentally, have to know the rules. To me,
I learned. But the beautiful thing about it it's linear,
It is it is very it's formulaic, and if you
understand the formula you can play by those rules. That's
what we're trying to do. We're trying to sort of
explain the formula, not through you know, education, because sometimes
(13:22):
people don't have the talent for education or even the
appetite for it, but through kind of a widgetized way,
an app that breaks it down for you. We take
step one, step two, step three, and next thing, you know,
you understand this thing at a very sort of human level.
Let me ask you guys this because I had a
conversation with Remy Maa. I love Remy Maa, but we
had a conversation about she won't buy something unless she
(13:45):
has the cash to buy it, like a house even right,
And so for her, she was talking about when she
got locked up, she realized she didn't have anything, and
then she came home and was like, you know, I'm
not gonna buy anything unless I have the money to
do it. She has. And I think a lot of
us this. We don't want to We don't want to
feel like we owe money. We don't want to get
a mortgage. So I want you guys to explain why
(14:07):
credit and the good debt versus bad debt. What we
were just discussing earlier just for that conversation, because a
lot of people feel that way. First of all, want
to echoities just said. What you just said, It is
completely correct. And this this country was built. The first
entity in this country was a corporation. We don't have
time with this conversation, but you back to the sixteen hundreds,
it was these are trading corporations. So democracy came out
(14:29):
of out of trading corporations, not the other way around.
Our corporate democracy came out out of out of a corporation,
not a corporation came out of a democracy in America.
But we don't realize we live in a free enterprise
economy and all billionaires used it. You got to begin
a billionaire based on good debt. So that put that
aside for a minute. Let's go back now to your
your core question. What did I say to you before
(14:51):
we were on Mike never making a decision emotionally. Yeah, right,
So if somebody has said I was locked up or whatever.
People are coming out of the depression, all I don't
want to ever have any debt anymore. So now you're
making an emotional decision. You need to use leverage. A mortgage.
A mortgage is one of the best instruments for wealth
creation and expense death range expense reimbursement that's ever been
(15:18):
created in America. You get to write off if you
have a thirty year mortgage, you write off two thirds
of that in interest payments. Is you get back against
your income? Right? Why would I do that deal? And
and and I'm gonna take I'm gonna at thirty percent down,
so I have equity in it. But I'm gonna use
the bank's good debt to give me thirty year money
(15:40):
where I'm gonna get I'm gonna compound my interest on
their debt. So you want good debt to allow you
to build wealth on top of that good debt. But
if all you have is equity, you're gonna grow your
equity at a much lower rate. Now you have safety
because I guess unless you redefaulting your taxes, no one
can take it from you. But that is not the
(16:01):
way you build wealth. You good so good debt and
bad debt. Good debt is where is where you finance
something that appreciates, Okay, bad debt when you finance fake jewelry, okay,
you finance something that depreciates. Are you finance a h
hurts rental car? Are you financing I'm not touching that.
(16:25):
I'm not going in. I'm not going in and call you.
I'm not going into that. I'm not arguing with black
women or women. I mean, that's so systemic. Though I
have a rolex on but I didn't. I didn't finance it,
not something like this. This is this is a this
is a If I ever need twenty five thousand dollars,
(16:47):
you can sell. That's what this is, all right, but
it's also it's it's practical. I like it whatever, but
I didn't. There's no debt on this because watch values
like are jewelry uh go up and down. We don't
want to get into how much we get pimped on
financing jewelry. The profit margin on jury is not it's insane.
All these rappers or whatever I want to get into
(17:08):
how much they get in absolutely just fleased on this
so called about one hundred thousand dollars. No, you didn't.
You bought a ten thousand dollars chain, you spend one
hundred thousand dollars on it, right, that's true. So, I mean,
this conversation can go in so many different directions. But
I mean, even what you've just done, what we've done
up into now is somebody just hits replaying on this
(17:30):
ten times. You know this is more you ever get
taught in school. Yeah, let's bringing it back to credit
education month. Given a little credit one oh one. Let
mean tell people what is actually in a credit score?
What comprises a credit score? And why is what Stellar
fies doing the on time bill payments so important for sure? Look,
let me kind of zoom out quickly because we started
(17:50):
this conversation talking about different types of scores. So what
is a credit score? There are two entities in this
country today that dictate what the credit score is, generally
consumer credit score for people, not for businesses. You have
Fico and you have Vantage Score, right, so Fico Fair
ISAAC they started a long time ago. There's basically an
independent organization started a couple engineers in San Francisco. I thought, hey,
(18:12):
we can predict whether someone is a good bar or
a bad barrow, right, and it was it was a
smart idea. Back then. They went to banks and sold
this concept and they said we can take those inputs
various different you know, activities that a person engages in,
mostly how they repay their debt and then we can
tell you if this is going to be a good
barrow for you or not. Right, And so they kind
of had this monopoly, and then the bureaus, the Big
(18:34):
three I said look, we need we need another competitor
to FICO. So they built this vantage thing and so
FICO over the years have been developing and refining that
model that predicts whether you're a good barrow or not.
And so you now have different models, and certain models
have different weighting on different activities like paying paying off
your you know, your mortgage, for example. And because of that,
(18:55):
certain industries prefer some of the older models we you know,
for example, to borrow money for a house, most likely
the mortgage industry is going to be looking at Phyco four,
which is the preferred model for them. Auto industry looks
at things like Phyco six Auto and few others times.
Psycho two that kind of predict better whether you're gonna
be a good repay or of that specific kind of
(19:16):
loan advantage does something very similar, but they're much younger.
They have they have three models at the moment they're
developing the fourth that's they're about to release. And so
imagine this you have this complexity. You have all these
models by these two organizations. You have three major bureaus
that take those models and then using their own data
generates scores. So now you can multiply I don't know
(19:38):
how many of them, like twenty models by three, but
within those models, it's like on time bill payment is
thirty five percent generally exactly. So to generalize across all
of those models different models. Generally speaking, one of the
most important factors that affects any of those models is
whether you're paying your bills on time. Fundamentally, that is
(20:00):
the you know, the factual you know truth here. If
you are not laid on your bills, you're you know,
if you're laid on your bills is gonna bad score.
If you're not laid on your bills, you're gonna have
a good score. Generally speaking, there are other things and
that model that the you know, lenders like to see.
They also want to see the mixed What that means
is what kind of loans a you got, Do you
have loans, you have credit cards? They also want to
(20:20):
see how much credit is available to you. That means
it's called credit utilization. Uh So, if I have one
credit card with a five hundred dollar limit and I
maxed it out, I have zero credit available to me, right,
and that's a bad thing. So if I go to
borrow money for for really any purpose, a lender sees
that and they'll they'll say, hey, he doesn't have any credits.
So if he's in trouble, you know, there's no where
(20:42):
to go. But if I have a one five hundred
dollar credit card that doesn't have a balance on it,
you'd be good. I'm good because I can I can
offset you know, any situation. So it's important to remember that.
So utilization is really really important, uh on time payment history, utilization, credit,
it mix. There are a few other things credit age.
(21:02):
You've had credit cards and certain lines of credit. Credit
age is important, but not as much, right. It kind
of goes in and it tapers away. The things like
how many times people pulled up your profile. They always
tell you that, they're like, oh, my credit score went
down because people were pulling up my credit score. Yeah,
it has, in fact, but it's it's sort of a diminishing,
tapering effect on the credit score. But remember like the
(21:23):
number one thing on time payments and then credit utilization,
because that on time payment matters a lot because it
stays in your credit score for so long. I'm gonna
be honest, and I was just talking about this behind
the scenes. I have one late payment from like twenty sixteen,
and it finally just dropped off of one of my
credit agencies reporting, but not the other ones. I guess
soon it will. But I'm like, come on, guys, I
(21:44):
was like so long ago. But the very fact that
you know that is a success. The very fact that
you're obsessed about that. I definitely sent to letter to
try to get it off, Like, come on, that's proactive.
And that's what we were talking about at the beginning.
So many people are just like, I don't even want
to know. I don't even want to know. They bury
their head in the sand. In fact, one hundred over
one hundred and fifty million Americans we're not talking about
(22:06):
something small have poor or no credit. And I want
you both to talk about, Okay, they need community, they
need handholding, they need guidance. What tell us, what hope
does that can help them through that? Yeah? So uh.
He mentioned that there's these formulas basically for credit and
(22:26):
full disclosure. The president of the CEO of files on
my board. Also also the spirit the CEO of Experience
on my board. Um, there are three credit bureaus also Experience,
TransUnion and Equifax, four and so. But then there's sub
there's sub stacks. You can go. There's a bunch of
other folks who get in the data credit business. But
(22:47):
I mean some of the major portals, and these folks
have errors often, all right. So what we do at
Operation Hope is you walk in the front door and
the bank we're in this example, we're in a bank branch.
The bank pulls your credit report. You're applying for a mortgage.
They know the minute that they pull your credit report
you're not gonna get that mortgage, but for fear of
(23:08):
you suing them for discrimination, they can't tell you. They
won't tell you. I'm sorry, you're you know this is
not gonna work. They gotta They take your application, they
pull your they do an appraisal, they go through forty
five days of a process, and then they send you
a notice saying I'm sorry, blah blah blah blah. If
you want further information, go to your credit bureau. What
(23:30):
we do now is we're sitting in that bank branch,
the bank manager goes, look, missus Jones, would you mind
going over and talk to those people over there. They
don't work. They work with us, but not for us.
They canna be straight with you. They walk over, missus Jones,
we put we pull your credit report. Sure, this is
like a bus accident. We've all have a nice little
laugh because she knows his toe up from the flow up.
(23:51):
What's says? I don't know. Great, that's called an error.
So let's let's write you and me a letter to
the credit bureaus because eighty to nine percent at the
time that you them, the law states that they can't
remove within thirty days, they can't prove it within thirty days,
they must remove it. Okay, when they remove it as
a thirty point pop in your credit score, twenty to
thirty points. So the first when we get with the
(24:12):
people who are emotional, who are depressed, who don't have it,
who had a lot of shame, is give them a wine.
So we give them an early win. They go, oh
my god, my credit went from five eighty to six twenty.
That's fantastic. How'd you do that? I didn't do that?
You did that? Okay? What else? Okay? My God, Well,
what's this charge off on my credit report? Oh? I
got divorced ten years ago. I didn't pay the phone bill.
I can't pay a thousand dollars. Don't worry. SBC Solder,
(24:35):
the pack bell pack Bell solder, the AT and t
AT and D chased Solder to a josephinance company. They
chased your rear end and couldn't find you. They sold
it to a to a charge it off Solder to
a debt collection agency for five cents on the dollar
fifty bucks. You can make a deal. They want one
hundred There you go. They want a hundred bucks, right,
so let's call them Joseph Vance Company. We got married
Sue here and missus Jones. We're looking for her, she's
(24:56):
looking for you. We want to make a deal. We
want one hundred bucks. We're gonna pay you too bucks right,
Why are you paying me two hundred bucks. I'm gonna
make you like a star because I'm gonna call you
the next three months and tell you to keep taking
this off her credit report because it keeps showing up.
So we're gonna overpay you. You get a two hundred
percent of properit. She's gonna get an eighty percent discount.
Everybody won CREDI score goes up under the twenty points
maybe thirty points. So now she's at six forty in
(25:18):
this example. And then now she's got Now missus Jones
has got an incredible confidence. She's like, I'm in the game.
Right mindsets, mindset? There you go. So now now we're
talking about her budget. Now we're talking about the earning
gum test credit where she doesn't no clue about right. Uh, people,
who if you're anybody listening to this, you make sixty
thousand dollars a year or less and you don't know
what the heck I just said. Angelis gave you a
(25:39):
check because you qualify in America, if you make sixty
thousand dollars a year or less, you get you get
a check in the government for working three children thirty
five thousand dollars a year, you get seven thousand dollars.
You never fouled as retroactive for three years. There's your
financial literacy moment. So so where can people get So
(26:00):
by the time we finish ORG and look for this
coach in your in your in your area, it's free.
I was going to say, how much free this is free.
Stop going to these companies talking about then they charge
you to file bankruptcy. They charge you to this stuff.
We don't charge the dying right, this is this is now.
We have partners who finance it, but we're not. But
(26:20):
they want what do they want? They want? They want
one hundred million Americans to to to Tidal's point, they
want a hundred men Americans to be rehabilitated so they
can become customers. Absolutely fair. Exchange is no robbery. This
is a beautiful thing if we can rehabilitate folks at
scale who are ashamed, who have all this these problems.
By the way, numbering calls for heart attacks, so says
American Heart Association stress stress. There were calls for stress, money,
(26:43):
money number calls, a divorce money money number calls, domestic abuse, money.
It's all around us, but we're not talking about it.
And you also have this whole zip code and credit
score just to show how that's related. Yeah, yeah, So
you tell me your credit score, I'll tell you how
you're living. You tell me your zip code. I'm sorry,
I'll tell your credit score and tell you how you're living.
And you know, I don't want to dominate the conversation.
(27:04):
We can go on to something else, come back to this,
but I can pull up credits, your credits a zip code,
two zip codes in any city within ten minutes of Chicago. Okay,
let's do Chicago. Let's see some neighborhoods in Chicago with
that list. So this is a community credit score index.
You can go to anybody listening to this, go to
Operation Hope or just type in Community Credit Score Index
Hopes Credit Score Index. It will come up. Put your
credit score in. So here's guard anybody listening to Chicago.
(27:26):
Check this out. Garfield Park Lincoln Park. They're ten minutes
away from each other. Garfield Park and five ninety seven
credit score. That's six h six two four zip code
Lincoln Part six six one four, ten minutes away, seven
thirty nine credit score. That's a big difference. What's the
unemployment rate in Garfield eleven point eight percent on Lincoln
(27:46):
Part two point three percent? Homeownership rate twenty seven percent
in Garfield Park. What's the vine crimes per thousand, seventy five?
What's it in Lincoln Park? Five? What's the graduation rate
sixty three percent in Garfield ninety two percent? Call it
one hundred because they're going on to college in Lincoln
(28:08):
life expectancy, you lived at sixty nine years in a
five eighty credit score neighborhood, you lived to eighty one
years a longer in a in Lincoln Park, or a
seven the credit score neighborhood you lived ten to twenty
years longer. If your credit score pops one hundred points,
that's Nashville all across this country. You can see how
(28:29):
all those things are related. And these numbers are unimpeachable,
and it doesn't matter whether you're black and brown urban
or your white rule. Yes. And then, by the way,
what did I say earlier? Where do the chick cashes go?
Where do the payday loan lenders go? Whether the rental score,
They're going to this five ninety seven credit score neighborhood
because they know that people depressed, distress, financially literate and
(28:49):
living from hand to mouth and have a surviving mentality.
I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired
of being sick and tired. I'm tired, as Malcolm Mex said,
have been bamboos or been tricked, been fooled. And so
it's what we don't know that we don't know. And
I love what you and space you're doing by empowering
people with knowledge. This is the new silverl rights movement
right and civil rights, civil rights, actionable things that you
(29:12):
can do with stellar Fy, with Operation Hope in order
to improve your credit. And one thing I always tell
people and Lemine, you know, I told my mom I
have her signing up for stellar fy to fix her
credit because it can be a really difficult thing to
even you know, I had to tell. I was like,
what's your information and what's your credit score? She didn't
know any of those things. And it is important, like
(29:33):
John Hope said, like Lemine will tell you to know
your credit score and then let's work on it, like
to face those things who le me talk about why
you got involved in this mission in the first place,
so how people can access stellar fy. And I know
you have something special because of your That's right, it's
something very special for his friend Angela here. Look, I mentioned,
you know it's very personal to me immigrating to this country,
(29:55):
not understanding the credit system, learning all of the lessons
the wrong way, and then meandering for most of my life.
I'm a late bloomer for that reason because I had
to learn a lot a lot of those lessons late
in life. I wanted to productize them. I'm a product guy.
I wanted to build something and I want to give
it to people. And that's fundamenting why we're doing it.
And you know, I have experiences that you know have
a wide range, everything from being an immigrant to being
(30:17):
a young marine. For example, you're mentioning pawn shops station
in Jacksonville, North Carolina and walking outside the gate and
it's nothing but pawn shops, right, because they know the demographic,
they know who's going to do this. I want to
make sure that you know people could use an app.
And I know you know technology doesn't solve everything, right,
but technology does solve certain things. It creates a bridge.
I want to create that bridge and that's what we're doing.
(30:38):
And so Stellify is available to anyone. We don't have
an underwriting process. We don't decline people based on We
don't even look at your credit score in terms of
you know, approving you, disapproving you. We just want you
to sign up, link all of your bills. And by
the way, because we're doing this today, this is an amazing,
exciting moment. We do have a promo code way up,
So go to stellify dot com and put in a
(31:00):
up and um. It's also not tell them the prices
of stellar fied dot com. Typically that's right. So Stellify
has two live plans today and we're working on a
third plan. We have a five four ninety nine plants,
a five dollar plan and a nine ninety nine plan. Okay,
the difference between two there's a bunch of different features,
you know, different calculators, analytics tools and stuff like that
(31:23):
for you. But the primary difference. With a five dollar
plan of four ninety nine, you get up to five
hundred dollars in bills that you can link to the
to the to the product. With a nine ninety nine plan,
you can link up to twenty five thousand dollars in bills.
So we are, you know, hypothetically can give you a
line of credit credit account that is twenty five thousand,
which could be completely you know, radical to your profile
(31:45):
because of the credit utilization part. Naturally, you have to
have that many bills that you link that we pay
for you, and then two you also have to pay
you get it over time. You don't get the whole
twenty five thousand right away. We want to make sure
that we align your interest as a consumer using building
credit with our interest right want to men sure that
we don't lose money in a process too, So that's
how it works with a twenty dollars plan on nineteen
nine nine plan you can link on limited number bills obviously,
(32:08):
but what we want to give you there is a
bunch of identity protection tools, cybersecurity insurance. You know, we
live in the world where people steal identities old time
and if someone uses your ideenta we've seen customers which
is really important. You know how hard that is to
get up your credit score when somebody steals your identity. Yeah,
it's important to be proactively and nightmare identity thu. Yeah,
I had the same issue. That's why I ended up
(32:29):
doing it. You rather be proactive and do that before
it happens, because it happens all the time. That it
is a hassle, and I mean it really is. And
sometimes you don't even know someone still young because they
don't always use a tool to take out a loan, right,
the sometimes use it to duel kinds of the fairiest
stuff opened another accouncil and money laundering on a light.
Sometimes your old family members. Sometimes it's it's your we
(32:50):
know people. We a lot of our customers come to
us because a family member took their They didn't steal it,
they just took it right and uh and then used it.
And the thing is they knew about it. They were dren.
They had no idea what they were. You know, why
why mom was in a lot of people are using
their children's yes as well. Yeah, it really is. It's
I mean, it's it's sad for so many reasons. Anyways,
that's why we build those you know, those features too.
(33:12):
It's kind to help people along the way. So uh yeah,
definitely go to stellifi dot com and when you sign up,
put way Up as your promo code. I believe it's
a five dollar code. The last thing I will ask
both of you is, um, we've been talking on this
a lot about this a lot the mindset and now
people have all the shame and blame around credit just
very quickly so that even a fifty ten year old
(33:35):
could understand it. There's a lot of policy failures that
have led to the situation of this one hundred and
fifty million American plus Americans getting into this no doubt.
I mean I can speak to that. So before I
started my very first company, I'm three neo banks into this,
I was a treasury regulator, a bank examiner, and I
(33:57):
would walk into banks, look at their books and say, hey,
you do want to go job bad job? You know
you can improve here, Please don't do this right and uh.
And you know, policy and its implementation is very complicated.
It's complex. You have to understand the government generally has
good intention, the government wants to help consumers, but implementation
is very difficult. We always sit down, you know, we
sit around the table and we say, hey, these you know,
(34:19):
private companies, entities, you know, they're not doing good enough
of a job, or they being predatory, straight up predatory
and just abusing people. Let's prevent them from doing X.
But by the time this thing is you know, goes
from an idea into law and not law into regulation,
it's usually so convoluted, it's so complicated, and it rarely
rarely impacts consumers in a positive way. And so we
(34:41):
feel that, you know, it's up to the industry. It's
not just you know, Stelifi, but you know, you're talking
about experience. You know, Equifax, TransUnion, big banks. It really
is up to the industry to kind of come together
and say, hey, we have to do this the right way.
Not because you know, we want to be good citizens,
per sae, because businesses are motivated by one thing, right,
it's money, but to be sustainable, to sustain our operation,
(35:02):
because ultimately we will get disrupted. We are not going
to be around the next fifty years. So that's that's
kind of might take on, you know, policy failures and
what we can do to address us policy failies in
the community. You want the good news of the bad
news first, I'm a bad news first person. So the
bad news is that the number one riches city in
(35:25):
the world in eighteen fifty eighteen forty was notches in Mississippi.
Riches in the world. Guess what business they were in
the guess yeah, and all of its related It was
right along the coast. The bad news is that slavery
was the largest reverse transfer of wealth in the US
(35:47):
history because we worked for free for two hundred and
fifty years when you couldn't create assets because you were
an asset, they bought, traded insured. It financed the number one,
the number one, the first millionaire in America was here
in Manhattan. He traded cotton. Guess who were manufacturing the
cotton for free? So we were the largest We represent
(36:08):
the largest reverse transfer of wealth in US history for
the largest economy now in the world. So you literally
cannot calculate the value that we we were to the
American economy. Along with by the way, poor whites who
came along as indentured service, but we were the only
ones working for free. They got they got a slightly
better deal, much better deal than we did. Actually. Um,
(36:30):
and you fast forward to where white's got the new
Deal and black's got FHA federal government redlining in black neighborhoods.
So why why does a black home worth worth ten
percent or twenty percent of a black of a white
home Because the FHA said, we can't ensure homes for
(36:50):
mortgages in these neighborhoods. That's where redlining came from. Didn't
come from banks, came from the government. Okay, it was delivered.
So banks could not would not finance a home in
a red line neighborhood. The federal government wouldn't insure, which
meant that homes in those neighborhoods were worth less. That
gen affects your net worth. You fast forward to today
and blacks have a net worth a ten percent or
(37:12):
less of their white counterparts, so you have knock on effects.
We talked about the Freedman's bank. You know, financial literacy
have to coming from Selman. Yesterday it just hit me
over the head. Financial literacy has to be the cheapest
economic development tool on the planet. Because I don't. I
can't keep you from I can't decide what somebody's racist
against me, or if this police brutality or hatred or whatever.
(37:34):
But I can't move my credit score. Okay, I can't
teach myself how the free enterprise system works. I can
be decided to become a homeowner or a small business owner,
an entrepreneur and decided to take control of my life
once I understand the system. No one ever taught us.
And then, unfortunately also things were done negatively against us.
Here's the good news. So that's the historic piece do
(37:56):
I call the groundwater effects? And the good news is
that the city recently issued report during the pandemic that
showed that discrimination against blacks alone costs economy in the
last twenty years sixteen trillion dollars. As he just said,
at the end of the day, this is about money.
So for the first time, the demographics and everything you
have changed to a point where the country cannot afford
(38:18):
to discriminate against Blacks, Latinos, women, Asians, Indians. I mean,
we need everybody in this boat rowing this boat in
the same direction because we now realized we're actually better
together and you can and so you can take no
pleasure in the fact there's a hole in my end
of our boat. My rich friendzee my poor friends to
do better, if only to stay rich. So the new
(38:39):
economy is going to be built on all of us,
and you cannot have dumb investors, dumb consumers at scale
over time. That only works in short periods of time.
So I really believe that there's a moment here to
change the narrative because it's actually now and everybody's enlightened
self interests for people of color to come up, but
(39:01):
we have got to give them the tools to do that.
That's why I've dedicated my life to this work. I
really believe that financial literacy is a civil rights issue
of this generation, because if you don't know better, you
can't do better. We can't have this show without financial literacy,
without capitalism, freenterprise and sponsors and all. You can't. You
can't have my heart, you can't have I couldn't be
here unless I'm financially independent talking the way I talk. Yeah,
(39:25):
I owned seven hundred homes. I'm the largest minority owner
of single feller rental homes in America. That's separate from
my operation hope. That has given me the financial freedom
that and other things to say what I want to say,
how I want to say it, when I want to
say it. Frederick Dulas did that in eighteen sixty five.
He owned sixty meds with the real estate in Baltimore, Maryland,
rented it out to working class blacks. That gave him
the financial freedom and the wealth and the cash flow
(39:47):
to be able to be an abolitionist, to run the
Freedman's bank, to put them ten thousands of his own
money into it. We don't really want to hand out.
We want to hand up. And now what we want
is a James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door,
get it myself. Well, here we have it, guys. It's
a national credit education men, and we are bringing this
(40:08):
to you because We want everybody to just do what
John Hopebrian is telling you. Just do what Lemine is
telling you. Take control absolutely and go to Stellar Fi
dot com, Operation Hope dot org and on our site
Teamwealth Wednesdays dot com. You can sign up for our
free weekly wealth Builder newsletter. We have a lot of
free resources for everyone. We sat next to each other
(40:30):
in a show about six years ago and said, let's
do something significant for financial empowerment, and Angela EE has
inspired me to try to give you all our best.
And we really are proud of what Wealth Wednesdays is
doing and proud of having guests like you both and
to give the tangible tools to be able to do it.
Not just talk about it, not just complain about it,
(40:51):
but what can we do? I want the audience to
know that these two people, angel and Stacey, you're authentic,
that they're good people, that what you hear is not
some game like we talk, We're talking to you here.
We have the same conversation, just more more down home,
even more vulnerable off ofm no custom but I mean,
but the point is there. We didn't talk about the
(41:12):
transactions that Angela has done. She has now she has
no problem talking about it or my vulnerabilities and my
mistakes or stay season. And I've I've just met let
mean and I and I you know, I don't know you,
and so I can't say I endorse or don't with
his product, but I will say from what I have heard,
what I heard, it sounds like it can be useful
to people. I'm not endorsing it, but I'm say do
(41:34):
your own research. But it sounds to me like like
a like a working man's version of a family office.
People who research what a family office is before I
have a family office is what the wealthy people do
where people pay your bills. All this stuff. It has
to be combined with tools of financial literacy so that
people don't get taken advantage of somebody with less integrity,
uh than let mean. But I like seeing conscious with
(41:54):
a capitalism like our capitalists with a conscious. And I
like seeing people who want to do well and do good.
And it appears to be that that's your spirit. So
I want to encourage other people to have this sign
of spirit of not trying to dig on people or
trying to, as I say, pimp people. But you can
make money and do it wealth and do well. And
do good at the same time. And it appears that
(42:17):
your model is one that is attempting to do that.
And I commence you for that. Thank you for that. Yes, well,
I love it, guys, and I love the fact that
I could talk to all of you and you guys
will give it to me real and straight and sometimes
and I tell you, John O'Brien does not mince his words.
He does not shook a coat anything when it comes
to me. But soft talking about that, because he's definitely
(42:40):
helped me with this transaction that I just did. That
could have went left, but he went right on up.
It's on the way up. Everything is Lemine. You know,
it's always been a pleasure of working with you with Celify.
And you know, I know you guys just met, but
Stacy and I can't say that, Lemine. The reason we
do work with you is because of your intentions and
(43:02):
the experience that you have also that we bring to people. Yea,
thank you so much, Angela. And when you were building
Stellar Fi, it was you actually came to us when
it was an idea and said I wanted to do
this with you. You were there from day one. That's
that's the amazing things just from the idea, from the
inception of the idea. All right, well, welcome Wednesdays and
of course Mesa where y'all
All. It's a way up at Angela Yee and I'm
here with my partner for Wealth Wednesday, Stacy Tisdeal. Time
to go way up on Credit Education Month. And we
have some really amazing and important guests and I want
to thank them for taking the time to come and
talk about what we think is really important. We have
John Hopebrian who is the founder, chairman and CEO of
(00:23):
Operation Hope, and just your friend and just my friend,
our friends you've heard me talk about on countless times.
And another friend, Lemie Zarade and you know him as
the founder and CEO of Stellar PI. So grateful to
be here. Yeah, listen, you're back again. And so, as
Stacy pointed out, this is a National Credit Education Month,
and you guys are the perfect people for us to
(00:44):
be speaking to about credit. Absolutely, and the purpose of
National Credit Education Month is to get people to start
thinking about credit and to take action. And we were
just talking about it before the interview started. There's so
much more in credit than just credit. There's a psychological stigma,
there's an emotional stigma. People feel badly about themselves. People
(01:07):
used to actually go to jail for having debt. So
I wanted to ask you both, what would you say
to people a way? Before we do that, let's talk
about what Operation Hope is, yeah, and what Stellify is
so they can know why you're why are you asking
these questions? So for John Hoe Bryan, let's talk about
Operation Hope and what you guys do. So. Operation Hope
is America's largest nonprofit financial literacy and financial inclusion organization.
(01:32):
We're America's financial coach. We have a fifty million dollars
annual operating budget. We have four billion dollars that we've
invested in underserved neighborhoods translation where we live, for homeownership,
small business ownership, entrepreneurship, etc. We created one hundred and
eighty five thousand black owned businesses since October twenty twenty two,
sorry twenty twenty during the pandemic, which is five percent
(01:53):
of all black businesses in America. Just through our nonprofit.
We have two hundred forty Hope inside offices in forty
six states. It's like the Starbucks of financial inclusion. We're
America's financial coach. We raise your credit score fifty four
points in six months, one hundred points a year and
a half. We lower your debt by three thousand dollars.
(02:14):
You make in forty eight fifty thousand dollars a year,
and on average, we increase your savings five hundred two
thousand dollars. Most people don't have forty dollars for an
unplanned event that makes you bankable. So we get we
help you get the bank out out of the no
business and back into the yes business so that you
can get access to credit. And we do that at scale.
And we think that we're sitting angel in a moment
in history here. But history doesn't feel historic when you're
(02:37):
sitting in it. You know, just was like another day.
But we think this is a third reconstruction. The first
reconstruction was freedom from slavery, and that was after the
Civil War. The second reconstruction was about access and that
was the twentieth century. That was a civil rights movement.
I was just down in Salma for Bloody Sunday Anniversary,
and Salma looks the way it did sixty five years ago,
(02:57):
like time stood still. But that was about access. Acts
to the ballot box, access to a facility, access to
a water fountain, you know, access to a job. But
we got to move from cashing a check to writing it,
and we got to move from just cash flow to
wealth creation mindset, an ownership mindset. In this third reconstruction
(03:17):
between twenty twenty and twenty thirty, I believe it's really
opportunity for all and the colors green. It's not black
or white or red or blue. It's green color us currency.
So that's what we do at scale. And I think
if doctor King was alive today, this is to be
the work he'd be doing, all right, So he clearly knows.
He's clearly the person to be talking to. And by
(03:38):
the way, somebody who I personally talk to when I
need advice when it comes to investing, and we'll get
into that in a second. Now, another person who I
talk to is Lemin. That Lemine, can you tell us
about Stellar Fi? Of course Stellfi. The big vision for
Stellifi is to redefine a relationship between a borrower and
a London right, completely redefining credit and its nature. For
(03:59):
you know, Trase really was it was a unilateral relationship
between someone and give somebody money and somebody's got to
pay that money back. We're doing now instead of you know,
having lenders rely on probabilistic models and sometimes make decisions
that are not optimal decisions, really connect with a consumer,
understand what's their availability when it comes to cash and
(04:20):
cash flows, and then make a decision based on real data.
And we have that data. But anyway, today what we
started with is something very near. It's a wedge. We
build the most effective credit builder in the market today.
What we do is we allow customers to link all
of their bills. We pay those bills on our behalf
using our money our balance sheet, and then we collect
the money in the back end, therefore creating a credit
(04:40):
relationship between us and a consumer. And now we can
report those bills. So we report everything from actual credit builds.
Because you can link a credit card or mortgage, but
you can also link your subscriptions. You can link Netflix,
you can link your child support payments, we have folks,
gym memberships, anything you want, and as a result, build
credit for things that completely invisible to the industry before
(05:03):
to the system, so to speak. So our customers on
average build thirty two points in first thirty days, which
is unheard of. There's not another tool that does that,
and then five to ten points a month obviously depends
on your credit profile and so forth. But it is
truly most effective way to do it. So if you
think about if Operation Hope is YMCA, we're like Nautilus,
(05:23):
where the tool that can live within that you know
sort of sphere of you know, advising and coaching and
so forth. Let me ask you guys this, because we
had this conversation before the mics came on. There are
different types of credit scores though, right, and so let's
talk about that because sometimes you feel like, Okay, my
credit score is this, and then you go and apply
for our mortgage or you want to get a car
or do something like that, and you find out that's
not really what you thought your credit score was. So yeah,
(05:45):
we're gonna use the boss. We're gonna talk about whatever
you want to talk about. But I think we need
to drop the mic on something that Stacy mentioned at
the top, which is that you know, we need people
to act on this. We need to do this. People
are acting too much like we got It's just been
reported that we have more consumer debt now this country
than in any time in history. What are those numbers?
(06:08):
I mean, it's it's it's eye popping, it's it's a
trillion something and and but but the number theirself doesn't
bother me. Because GDP grows, domestic prowler continues to increase
as well. The problem I have is that you have
you had a three percent surgeon retail sales in January.
You have people who believe credit cards are cash right,
and these luxury retailers are doing amazing. And Marcus said,
(06:32):
we see Ferrari is like, okay, we did not even
anticipate sales being like this. We see Channel raising their
prices yet again. So young, so young people who are
not buying a mortgage, who are not buying buying a house,
they're delaying that the home purchases and staying with their
parents until they're thirty, think that the money they're saving
on rent or whatever is actually money. They may no, no, no, no,
you should be saving them money, but they're using that
(06:53):
to go floss out. One of my guys who worked
for me was in LA this weekend and he's running
a car and these young twenty five year old kids
in LA rented the biggest BMW luxury car they could
at a thousand dollars a day. They think they rented
it for five days. That's that's that's nuts. But they
(07:14):
were trying to floss. They wanted, they wanted, and my
wife says they do. This is big in Miami as well.
And the problem is that these people look like us
that there's just between making money and building wealth, but
we're obsessed with I want to make that money, want
to get that dollar one, get that bag, when get
that cash. You know, anybody can make money and anybody
can lose it. That's why you can get one hundred
million dollars NBA contract and be dead broken five years.
(07:37):
You build wealth in your sleep, and so we've got it. Yeah,
let's talk about credit. There's a I love good credit.
I don't like bad credit. I don't like bad debt.
I love good debt. We'll talk about that in a minute.
But I just wanted to frame like, we're then the
fans trying to get inflation down because of the pandemic,
right right, But we are offsetting that because we're keep
(07:58):
we keep spending, because because we think the party is
like nineteen ninety nine and we need consumer confidence. We
need This economy is consumer spending. But without financial literacy,
this is a bomb. But do you really have to
expand what the definition of what financial literacy is it's
a lot more than dollars and cents, And when you
(08:20):
look at it's a total mindset. And when it comes
to debt, I was getting at is financial debt as
a leading cause of financial stress. It's impacts decision making,
all of these things. And a lot of people look
at their credit card debt and they bury their heads
in the sand because they think this is something I
can never get myself around, I can never manage this.
(08:41):
So what would you tell people to make it make
them realize that this is a part of their financial
life that they can take control of me. I can
speak from experience as an immigrant and starting at the
very bottom after immigrating to this country. I mean, my
family is undocumented for many years. It was it feels,
you know, felt unattainable. And when if something feel unattainable,
you know it's not real. And if it's not real,
(09:03):
then you kind of live in a moment, right, You're
not going to worry about you're spending dat under control anyway.
It's a different perspective on life in general, and the
timeline is compressed, and so what you gotta do is
you got to realize that every day is the day
that you live, and every day sort of compounds, and
every decision you make in that day will compound, meaning
that it will build on itself. And so if you
(09:23):
make a right decision like save, sometimes doesn't feel like
the right thing to do right, you know, sometimes buying
something nice and make that makes you feel good, feel
it feels much better, a little therapeutic, but you got
to you gotta really, like my victim, pull it together.
It's just like working out. It's about discipline and it's
about a long term vision. Understanding that you're starting here,
that's point A, there's going to be a point B,
(09:44):
point C and so forth, and kind of planning it
out and that requires not just discipline, but requires coaching.
It requires mentorship. And that's why, you know, Operation Hope
is excellent, excellent opportunity to kind of connect with someone
where you know where they can give you that sort
of a roadmap. You need a roadmap as an individual,
and frankly, like our product doesn't give you the roadmap.
(10:04):
That product gives you a tool that you can bring
along the roadmap. But there's there's got to be human
components to it. So let's just have a real talk
conversation because I know that, I know you speak to
all audiences. You speak to every race, every place, every culture,
and they should listen to you. But just real talk
about like black and brown America, particularly Black America. We
(10:24):
have a lot of issues that other populations don't that
are emotional in nature. I think depression in nature. I
think PTSD almost in nature. And that impacts how we spent. Yeah,
We're like, we're this huge consumer spending force because we
in some ways I think of medicating, moderating, trying to
deal with our the fact that we're not happy on
other stuff. So we go and spend and people know that. Okay,
(10:48):
So Andrew Young, the civil rights leader, my mentor said,
to live in a system of free enterprise and not
to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the
very definition of slavery. So now you have in our
neighborhood that a cashier next to a payday alone enter,
next to a writ our own store, next to a
tighter lending, next to a check cash next to a
pawn shop. I probably missed a few things the liquor
(11:10):
store if I didn't mention that. And down the street
is a church which is a local psychologist trying to
make you feel better once a week, because we won't
go see a shrink because we don't want anybody think
we're crazy. If you're black and you don't think you're crazy,
you are crazy. So because we've gone through so much,
but we've been doing so much with so little for
so long, we'd almost do anything with nothing. We are
true survivors. But no one gave us The memo on
(11:30):
free enterprise, Capitalism, Economics, and an Opportunity. It's my third book,
the Memo. It's not that we're dumb or we're stupid,
and it's what we don't know. That we don't know,
but we think we know. So when the rules are
published and the playing fielders level, think about the arts,
think about entertainment, think about professional sports, your son, think
about politics. Rules are published. Playing folds level, we kill it.
(11:52):
We excel absolutely, think about now all levels of sports
were gone. An attendants, we got on the f one racing,
I mean, golf, everything. But but no one publishes rules
in capitalism and free enterprise. And after the Civil War,
the bank that was created to teach us about money,
the Freedom's Bank, was shuttered when Lincoln was assassinated sixty
million dollars we had the community had gotten in that bank,
(12:15):
and that would have been about seven billion, billion gazillion
dollars in the economy today. And let mean, I know
this is a point that you often make that the
credit system really affects our ability to create generational wealth.
Indeed it does. I mean, this country is built on
a credit system, right, It's it's built on credit specific
(12:36):
not every economy is build on credit. Credit is an
amplifier of sorts. It gives you the leverage, meaning that
it gives you the opportunity to access capital of money
that you don't have. And if you have more money
than or if you can access more money that you
currently have, and if you make a right decision with
that money, then you can access more money. Right, So
it's truly is an amplifier. And what's interesting is if
(12:59):
you don't have the right profile, you can't access that capital.
And you won't have a right profile if you don't
know the rules. Fundamentally, have to know the rules. To me,
I learned. But the beautiful thing about it it's linear,
It is it is very it's formulaic, and if you
understand the formula you can play by those rules. That's
what we're trying to do. We're trying to sort of
explain the formula, not through you know, education, because sometimes
(13:22):
people don't have the talent for education or even the
appetite for it, but through kind of a widgetized way,
an app that breaks it down for you. We take
step one, step two, step three, and next thing, you know,
you understand this thing at a very sort of human level.
Let me ask you guys this because I had a
conversation with Remy Maa. I love Remy Maa, but we
had a conversation about she won't buy something unless she
(13:45):
has the cash to buy it, like a house even right,
And so for her, she was talking about when she
got locked up, she realized she didn't have anything, and
then she came home and was like, you know, I'm
not gonna buy anything unless I have the money to
do it. She has. And I think a lot of
us this. We don't want to We don't want to
feel like we owe money. We don't want to get
a mortgage. So I want you guys to explain why
(14:07):
credit and the good debt versus bad debt. What we
were just discussing earlier just for that conversation, because a
lot of people feel that way. First of all, want
to echoities just said. What you just said, It is
completely correct. And this this country was built. The first
entity in this country was a corporation. We don't have
time with this conversation, but you back to the sixteen hundreds,
it was these are trading corporations. So democracy came out
(14:29):
of out of trading corporations, not the other way around.
Our corporate democracy came out out of out of a corporation,
not a corporation came out of a democracy in America.
But we don't realize we live in a free enterprise
economy and all billionaires used it. You got to begin
a billionaire based on good debt. So that put that
aside for a minute. Let's go back now to your
your core question. What did I say to you before
(14:51):
we were on Mike never making a decision emotionally. Yeah, right,
So if somebody has said I was locked up or whatever.
People are coming out of the depression, all I don't
want to ever have any debt anymore. So now you're
making an emotional decision. You need to use leverage. A mortgage.
A mortgage is one of the best instruments for wealth
creation and expense death range expense reimbursement that's ever been
(15:18):
created in America. You get to write off if you
have a thirty year mortgage, you write off two thirds
of that in interest payments. Is you get back against
your income? Right? Why would I do that deal? And
and and I'm gonna take I'm gonna at thirty percent down,
so I have equity in it. But I'm gonna use
the bank's good debt to give me thirty year money
(15:40):
where I'm gonna get I'm gonna compound my interest on
their debt. So you want good debt to allow you
to build wealth on top of that good debt. But
if all you have is equity, you're gonna grow your
equity at a much lower rate. Now you have safety
because I guess unless you redefaulting your taxes, no one
can take it from you. But that is not the
(16:01):
way you build wealth. You good so good debt and
bad debt. Good debt is where is where you finance
something that appreciates, Okay, bad debt when you finance fake jewelry, okay,
you finance something that depreciates. Are you finance a h
hurts rental car? Are you financing I'm not touching that.
(16:25):
I'm not going in. I'm not going in and call you.
I'm not going into that. I'm not arguing with black
women or women. I mean, that's so systemic. Though I
have a rolex on but I didn't. I didn't finance it,
not something like this. This is this is a this
is a If I ever need twenty five thousand dollars,
(16:47):
you can sell. That's what this is, all right, but
it's also it's it's practical. I like it whatever, but
I didn't. There's no debt on this because watch values
like are jewelry uh go up and down. We don't
want to get into how much we get pimped on
financing jewelry. The profit margin on jury is not it's insane.
All these rappers or whatever I want to get into
(17:08):
how much they get in absolutely just fleased on this
so called about one hundred thousand dollars. No, you didn't.
You bought a ten thousand dollars chain, you spend one
hundred thousand dollars on it, right, that's true. So, I mean,
this conversation can go in so many different directions. But
I mean, even what you've just done, what we've done
up into now is somebody just hits replaying on this
(17:30):
ten times. You know this is more you ever get
taught in school. Yeah, let's bringing it back to credit
education month. Given a little credit one oh one. Let
mean tell people what is actually in a credit score?
What comprises a credit score? And why is what Stellar
fies doing the on time bill payments so important for sure? Look,
let me kind of zoom out quickly because we started
(17:50):
this conversation talking about different types of scores. So what
is a credit score? There are two entities in this
country today that dictate what the credit score is, generally
consumer credit score for people, not for businesses. You have
Fico and you have Vantage Score, right, so Fico Fair
ISAAC they started a long time ago. There's basically an
independent organization started a couple engineers in San Francisco. I thought, hey,
(18:12):
we can predict whether someone is a good bar or
a bad barrow, right, and it was it was a
smart idea. Back then. They went to banks and sold
this concept and they said we can take those inputs
various different you know, activities that a person engages in,
mostly how they repay their debt and then we can
tell you if this is going to be a good
barrow for you or not. Right, And so they kind
of had this monopoly, and then the bureaus, the Big
(18:34):
three I said look, we need we need another competitor
to FICO. So they built this vantage thing and so
FICO over the years have been developing and refining that
model that predicts whether you're a good barrow or not.
And so you now have different models, and certain models
have different weighting on different activities like paying paying off
your you know, your mortgage, for example. And because of that,
(18:55):
certain industries prefer some of the older models we you know,
for example, to borrow money for a house, most likely
the mortgage industry is going to be looking at Phyco four,
which is the preferred model for them. Auto industry looks
at things like Phyco six Auto and few others times.
Psycho two that kind of predict better whether you're gonna
be a good repay or of that specific kind of
(19:16):
loan advantage does something very similar, but they're much younger.
They have they have three models at the moment they're
developing the fourth that's they're about to release. And so
imagine this you have this complexity. You have all these
models by these two organizations. You have three major bureaus
that take those models and then using their own data
generates scores. So now you can multiply I don't know
(19:38):
how many of them, like twenty models by three, but
within those models, it's like on time bill payment is
thirty five percent generally exactly. So to generalize across all
of those models different models. Generally speaking, one of the
most important factors that affects any of those models is
whether you're paying your bills on time. Fundamentally, that is
(20:00):
the you know, the factual you know truth here. If
you are not laid on your bills, you're you know,
if you're laid on your bills is gonna bad score.
If you're not laid on your bills, you're gonna have
a good score. Generally speaking, there are other things and
that model that the you know, lenders like to see.
They also want to see the mixed What that means
is what kind of loans a you got, Do you
have loans, you have credit cards? They also want to
(20:20):
see how much credit is available to you. That means
it's called credit utilization. Uh So, if I have one
credit card with a five hundred dollar limit and I
maxed it out, I have zero credit available to me, right,
and that's a bad thing. So if I go to
borrow money for for really any purpose, a lender sees
that and they'll they'll say, hey, he doesn't have any credits.
So if he's in trouble, you know, there's no where
(20:42):
to go. But if I have a one five hundred
dollar credit card that doesn't have a balance on it,
you'd be good. I'm good because I can I can
offset you know, any situation. So it's important to remember that.
So utilization is really really important, uh on time payment history, utilization, credit,
it mix. There are a few other things credit age.
(21:02):
You've had credit cards and certain lines of credit. Credit
age is important, but not as much, right. It kind
of goes in and it tapers away. The things like
how many times people pulled up your profile. They always
tell you that, they're like, oh, my credit score went
down because people were pulling up my credit score. Yeah,
it has, in fact, but it's it's sort of a diminishing,
tapering effect on the credit score. But remember like the
(21:23):
number one thing on time payments and then credit utilization,
because that on time payment matters a lot because it
stays in your credit score for so long. I'm gonna
be honest, and I was just talking about this behind
the scenes. I have one late payment from like twenty sixteen,
and it finally just dropped off of one of my
credit agencies reporting, but not the other ones. I guess
soon it will. But I'm like, come on, guys, I
(21:44):
was like so long ago. But the very fact that
you know that is a success. The very fact that
you're obsessed about that. I definitely sent to letter to
try to get it off, Like, come on, that's proactive.
And that's what we were talking about at the beginning.
So many people are just like, I don't even want
to know. I don't even want to know. They bury
their head in the sand. In fact, one hundred over
one hundred and fifty million Americans we're not talking about
(22:06):
something small have poor or no credit. And I want
you both to talk about, Okay, they need community, they
need handholding, they need guidance. What tell us, what hope
does that can help them through that? Yeah? So uh.
He mentioned that there's these formulas basically for credit and
(22:26):
full disclosure. The president of the CEO of files on
my board. Also also the spirit the CEO of Experience
on my board. Um, there are three credit bureaus also Experience,
TransUnion and Equifax, four and so. But then there's sub
there's sub stacks. You can go. There's a bunch of
other folks who get in the data credit business. But
(22:47):
I mean some of the major portals, and these folks
have errors often, all right. So what we do at
Operation Hope is you walk in the front door and
the bank we're in this example, we're in a bank branch.
The bank pulls your credit report. You're applying for a mortgage.
They know the minute that they pull your credit report
you're not gonna get that mortgage, but for fear of
(23:08):
you suing them for discrimination, they can't tell you. They
won't tell you. I'm sorry, you're you know this is
not gonna work. They gotta They take your application, they
pull your they do an appraisal, they go through forty
five days of a process, and then they send you
a notice saying I'm sorry, blah blah blah blah. If
you want further information, go to your credit bureau. What
(23:30):
we do now is we're sitting in that bank branch,
the bank manager goes, look, missus Jones, would you mind
going over and talk to those people over there. They
don't work. They work with us, but not for us.
They canna be straight with you. They walk over, missus Jones,
we put we pull your credit report. Sure, this is
like a bus accident. We've all have a nice little
laugh because she knows his toe up from the flow up.
(23:51):
What's says? I don't know. Great, that's called an error.
So let's let's write you and me a letter to
the credit bureaus because eighty to nine percent at the
time that you them, the law states that they can't
remove within thirty days, they can't prove it within thirty days,
they must remove it. Okay, when they remove it as
a thirty point pop in your credit score, twenty to
thirty points. So the first when we get with the
(24:12):
people who are emotional, who are depressed, who don't have it,
who had a lot of shame, is give them a wine.
So we give them an early win. They go, oh
my god, my credit went from five eighty to six twenty.
That's fantastic. How'd you do that? I didn't do that?
You did that? Okay? What else? Okay? My God, Well,
what's this charge off on my credit report? Oh? I
got divorced ten years ago. I didn't pay the phone bill.
I can't pay a thousand dollars. Don't worry. SBC Solder,
(24:35):
the pack bell pack Bell solder, the AT and t
AT and D chased Solder to a josephinance company. They
chased your rear end and couldn't find you. They sold
it to a to a charge it off Solder to
a debt collection agency for five cents on the dollar
fifty bucks. You can make a deal. They want one
hundred There you go. They want a hundred bucks, right,
so let's call them Joseph Vance Company. We got married
Sue here and missus Jones. We're looking for her, she's
(24:56):
looking for you. We want to make a deal. We
want one hundred bucks. We're gonna pay you too bucks right,
Why are you paying me two hundred bucks. I'm gonna
make you like a star because I'm gonna call you
the next three months and tell you to keep taking
this off her credit report because it keeps showing up.
So we're gonna overpay you. You get a two hundred
percent of properit. She's gonna get an eighty percent discount.
Everybody won CREDI score goes up under the twenty points
maybe thirty points. So now she's at six forty in
(25:18):
this example. And then now she's got Now missus Jones
has got an incredible confidence. She's like, I'm in the game.
Right mindsets, mindset? There you go. So now now we're
talking about her budget. Now we're talking about the earning
gum test credit where she doesn't no clue about right. Uh, people,
who if you're anybody listening to this, you make sixty
thousand dollars a year or less and you don't know
what the heck I just said. Angelis gave you a
(25:39):
check because you qualify in America, if you make sixty
thousand dollars a year or less, you get you get
a check in the government for working three children thirty
five thousand dollars a year, you get seven thousand dollars.
You never fouled as retroactive for three years. There's your
financial literacy moment. So so where can people get So
(26:00):
by the time we finish ORG and look for this
coach in your in your in your area, it's free.
I was going to say, how much free this is free.
Stop going to these companies talking about then they charge
you to file bankruptcy. They charge you to this stuff.
We don't charge the dying right, this is this is now.
We have partners who finance it, but we're not. But
(26:20):
they want what do they want? They want? They want
one hundred million Americans to to to Tidal's point, they
want a hundred men Americans to be rehabilitated so they
can become customers. Absolutely fair. Exchange is no robbery. This
is a beautiful thing if we can rehabilitate folks at
scale who are ashamed, who have all this these problems.
By the way, numbering calls for heart attacks, so says
American Heart Association stress stress. There were calls for stress, money,
(26:43):
money number calls, a divorce money money number calls, domestic abuse, money.
It's all around us, but we're not talking about it.
And you also have this whole zip code and credit
score just to show how that's related. Yeah, yeah, So
you tell me your credit score, I'll tell you how
you're living. You tell me your zip code. I'm sorry,
I'll tell your credit score and tell you how you're living.
And you know, I don't want to dominate the conversation.
(27:04):
We can go on to something else, come back to this,
but I can pull up credits, your credits a zip code,
two zip codes in any city within ten minutes of Chicago. Okay,
let's do Chicago. Let's see some neighborhoods in Chicago with
that list. So this is a community credit score index.
You can go to anybody listening to this, go to
Operation Hope or just type in Community Credit Score Index
Hopes Credit Score Index. It will come up. Put your
credit score in. So here's guard anybody listening to Chicago.
(27:26):
Check this out. Garfield Park Lincoln Park. They're ten minutes
away from each other. Garfield Park and five ninety seven
credit score. That's six h six two four zip code
Lincoln Part six six one four, ten minutes away, seven
thirty nine credit score. That's a big difference. What's the
unemployment rate in Garfield eleven point eight percent on Lincoln
(27:46):
Part two point three percent? Homeownership rate twenty seven percent
in Garfield Park. What's the vine crimes per thousand, seventy five?
What's it in Lincoln Park? Five? What's the graduation rate
sixty three percent in Garfield ninety two percent? Call it
one hundred because they're going on to college in Lincoln
(28:08):
life expectancy, you lived at sixty nine years in a
five eighty credit score neighborhood, you lived to eighty one
years a longer in a in Lincoln Park, or a
seven the credit score neighborhood you lived ten to twenty
years longer. If your credit score pops one hundred points,
that's Nashville all across this country. You can see how
(28:29):
all those things are related. And these numbers are unimpeachable,
and it doesn't matter whether you're black and brown urban
or your white rule. Yes. And then, by the way,
what did I say earlier? Where do the chick cashes go?
Where do the payday loan lenders go? Whether the rental score,
They're going to this five ninety seven credit score neighborhood
because they know that people depressed, distress, financially literate and
(28:49):
living from hand to mouth and have a surviving mentality.
I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired
of being sick and tired. I'm tired, as Malcolm Mex said,
have been bamboos or been tricked, been fooled. And so
it's what we don't know that we don't know. And
I love what you and space you're doing by empowering
people with knowledge. This is the new silverl rights movement
right and civil rights, civil rights, actionable things that you
(29:12):
can do with stellar Fy, with Operation Hope in order
to improve your credit. And one thing I always tell
people and Lemine, you know, I told my mom I
have her signing up for stellar fy to fix her
credit because it can be a really difficult thing to
even you know, I had to tell. I was like,
what's your information and what's your credit score? She didn't
know any of those things. And it is important, like
(29:33):
John Hope said, like Lemine will tell you to know
your credit score and then let's work on it, like
to face those things who le me talk about why
you got involved in this mission in the first place,
so how people can access stellar fy. And I know
you have something special because of your That's right, it's
something very special for his friend Angela here. Look, I mentioned,
you know it's very personal to me immigrating to this country,
(29:55):
not understanding the credit system, learning all of the lessons
the wrong way, and then meandering for most of my life.
I'm a late bloomer for that reason because I had
to learn a lot a lot of those lessons late
in life. I wanted to productize them. I'm a product guy.
I wanted to build something and I want to give
it to people. And that's fundamenting why we're doing it.
And you know, I have experiences that you know have
a wide range, everything from being an immigrant to being
(30:17):
a young marine. For example, you're mentioning pawn shops station
in Jacksonville, North Carolina and walking outside the gate and
it's nothing but pawn shops, right, because they know the demographic,
they know who's going to do this. I want to
make sure that you know people could use an app.
And I know you know technology doesn't solve everything, right,
but technology does solve certain things. It creates a bridge.
I want to create that bridge and that's what we're doing.
(30:38):
And so Stellify is available to anyone. We don't have
an underwriting process. We don't decline people based on We
don't even look at your credit score in terms of
you know, approving you, disapproving you. We just want you
to sign up, link all of your bills. And by
the way, because we're doing this today, this is an amazing,
exciting moment. We do have a promo code way up,
So go to stellify dot com and put in a
(31:00):
up and um. It's also not tell them the prices
of stellar fied dot com. Typically that's right. So Stellify
has two live plans today and we're working on a
third plan. We have a five four ninety nine plants,
a five dollar plan and a nine ninety nine plan. Okay,
the difference between two there's a bunch of different features,
you know, different calculators, analytics tools and stuff like that
(31:23):
for you. But the primary difference. With a five dollar
plan of four ninety nine, you get up to five
hundred dollars in bills that you can link to the
to the to the product. With a nine ninety nine plan,
you can link up to twenty five thousand dollars in bills.
So we are, you know, hypothetically can give you a
line of credit credit account that is twenty five thousand,
which could be completely you know, radical to your profile
(31:45):
because of the credit utilization part. Naturally, you have to
have that many bills that you link that we pay
for you, and then two you also have to pay
you get it over time. You don't get the whole
twenty five thousand right away. We want to make sure
that we align your interest as a consumer using building
credit with our interest right want to men sure that
we don't lose money in a process too, So that's
how it works with a twenty dollars plan on nineteen
nine nine plan you can link on limited number bills obviously,
(32:08):
but what we want to give you there is a
bunch of identity protection tools, cybersecurity insurance. You know, we
live in the world where people steal identities old time
and if someone uses your ideenta we've seen customers which
is really important. You know how hard that is to
get up your credit score when somebody steals your identity. Yeah,
it's important to be proactively and nightmare identity thu. Yeah,
I had the same issue. That's why I ended up
(32:29):
doing it. You rather be proactive and do that before
it happens, because it happens all the time. That it
is a hassle, and I mean it really is. And
sometimes you don't even know someone still young because they
don't always use a tool to take out a loan, right,
the sometimes use it to duel kinds of the fairiest
stuff opened another accouncil and money laundering on a light.
Sometimes your old family members. Sometimes it's it's your we
(32:50):
know people. We a lot of our customers come to
us because a family member took their They didn't steal it,
they just took it right and uh and then used it.
And the thing is they knew about it. They were dren.
They had no idea what they were. You know, why
why mom was in a lot of people are using
their children's yes as well. Yeah, it really is. It's
I mean, it's it's sad for so many reasons. Anyways,
that's why we build those you know, those features too.
(33:12):
It's kind to help people along the way. So uh yeah,
definitely go to stellifi dot com and when you sign up,
put way Up as your promo code. I believe it's
a five dollar code. The last thing I will ask
both of you is, um, we've been talking on this
a lot about this a lot the mindset and now
people have all the shame and blame around credit just
very quickly so that even a fifty ten year old
(33:35):
could understand it. There's a lot of policy failures that
have led to the situation of this one hundred and
fifty million American plus Americans getting into this no doubt.
I mean I can speak to that. So before I
started my very first company, I'm three neo banks into this,
I was a treasury regulator, a bank examiner, and I
(33:57):
would walk into banks, look at their books and say, hey,
you do want to go job bad job? You know
you can improve here, Please don't do this right and uh.
And you know, policy and its implementation is very complicated.
It's complex. You have to understand the government generally has
good intention, the government wants to help consumers, but implementation
is very difficult. We always sit down, you know, we
sit around the table and we say, hey, these you know,
(34:19):
private companies, entities, you know, they're not doing good enough
of a job, or they being predatory, straight up predatory
and just abusing people. Let's prevent them from doing X.
But by the time this thing is you know, goes
from an idea into law and not law into regulation,
it's usually so convoluted, it's so complicated, and it rarely
rarely impacts consumers in a positive way. And so we
(34:41):
feel that, you know, it's up to the industry. It's
not just you know, Stelifi, but you know, you're talking
about experience. You know, Equifax, TransUnion, big banks. It really
is up to the industry to kind of come together
and say, hey, we have to do this the right way.
Not because you know, we want to be good citizens,
per sae, because businesses are motivated by one thing, right,
it's money, but to be sustainable, to sustain our operation,
(35:02):
because ultimately we will get disrupted. We are not going
to be around the next fifty years. So that's that's
kind of might take on, you know, policy failures and
what we can do to address us policy failies in
the community. You want the good news of the bad
news first, I'm a bad news first person. So the
bad news is that the number one riches city in
(35:25):
the world in eighteen fifty eighteen forty was notches in Mississippi.
Riches in the world. Guess what business they were in
the guess yeah, and all of its related It was
right along the coast. The bad news is that slavery
was the largest reverse transfer of wealth in the US
(35:47):
history because we worked for free for two hundred and
fifty years when you couldn't create assets because you were
an asset, they bought, traded insured. It financed the number one,
the number one, the first millionaire in America was here
in Manhattan. He traded cotton. Guess who were manufacturing the
cotton for free? So we were the largest We represent
(36:08):
the largest reverse transfer of wealth in US history for
the largest economy now in the world. So you literally
cannot calculate the value that we we were to the
American economy. Along with by the way, poor whites who
came along as indentured service, but we were the only
ones working for free. They got they got a slightly
better deal, much better deal than we did. Actually. Um,
(36:30):
and you fast forward to where white's got the new
Deal and black's got FHA federal government redlining in black neighborhoods.
So why why does a black home worth worth ten
percent or twenty percent of a black of a white
home Because the FHA said, we can't ensure homes for
(36:50):
mortgages in these neighborhoods. That's where redlining came from. Didn't
come from banks, came from the government. Okay, it was delivered.
So banks could not would not finance a home in
a red line neighborhood. The federal government wouldn't insure, which
meant that homes in those neighborhoods were worth less. That
gen affects your net worth. You fast forward to today
and blacks have a net worth a ten percent or
(37:12):
less of their white counterparts, so you have knock on effects.
We talked about the Freedman's bank. You know, financial literacy
have to coming from Selman. Yesterday it just hit me
over the head. Financial literacy has to be the cheapest
economic development tool on the planet. Because I don't. I
can't keep you from I can't decide what somebody's racist
against me, or if this police brutality or hatred or whatever.
(37:34):
But I can't move my credit score. Okay, I can't
teach myself how the free enterprise system works. I can
be decided to become a homeowner or a small business owner,
an entrepreneur and decided to take control of my life
once I understand the system. No one ever taught us.
And then, unfortunately also things were done negatively against us.
Here's the good news. So that's the historic piece do
(37:56):
I call the groundwater effects? And the good news is
that the city recently issued report during the pandemic that
showed that discrimination against blacks alone costs economy in the
last twenty years sixteen trillion dollars. As he just said,
at the end of the day, this is about money.
So for the first time, the demographics and everything you
have changed to a point where the country cannot afford
(38:18):
to discriminate against Blacks, Latinos, women, Asians, Indians. I mean,
we need everybody in this boat rowing this boat in
the same direction because we now realized we're actually better
together and you can and so you can take no
pleasure in the fact there's a hole in my end
of our boat. My rich friendzee my poor friends to
do better, if only to stay rich. So the new
(38:39):
economy is going to be built on all of us,
and you cannot have dumb investors, dumb consumers at scale
over time. That only works in short periods of time.
So I really believe that there's a moment here to
change the narrative because it's actually now and everybody's enlightened
self interests for people of color to come up, but
(39:01):
we have got to give them the tools to do that.
That's why I've dedicated my life to this work. I
really believe that financial literacy is a civil rights issue
of this generation, because if you don't know better, you
can't do better. We can't have this show without financial literacy,
without capitalism, freenterprise and sponsors and all. You can't. You
can't have my heart, you can't have I couldn't be
here unless I'm financially independent talking the way I talk. Yeah,
(39:25):
I owned seven hundred homes. I'm the largest minority owner
of single feller rental homes in America. That's separate from
my operation hope. That has given me the financial freedom
that and other things to say what I want to say,
how I want to say it, when I want to
say it. Frederick Dulas did that in eighteen sixty five.
He owned sixty meds with the real estate in Baltimore, Maryland,
rented it out to working class blacks. That gave him
the financial freedom and the wealth and the cash flow
(39:47):
to be able to be an abolitionist, to run the
Freedman's bank, to put them ten thousands of his own
money into it. We don't really want to hand out.
We want to hand up. And now what we want
is a James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door,
get it myself. Well, here we have it, guys. It's
a national credit education men, and we are bringing this
(40:08):
to you because We want everybody to just do what
John Hopebrian is telling you. Just do what Lemine is
telling you. Take control absolutely and go to Stellar Fi
dot com, Operation Hope dot org and on our site
Teamwealth Wednesdays dot com. You can sign up for our
free weekly wealth Builder newsletter. We have a lot of
free resources for everyone. We sat next to each other
(40:30):
in a show about six years ago and said, let's
do something significant for financial empowerment, and Angela EE has
inspired me to try to give you all our best.
And we really are proud of what Wealth Wednesdays is
doing and proud of having guests like you both and
to give the tangible tools to be able to do it.
Not just talk about it, not just complain about it,
(40:51):
but what can we do? I want the audience to
know that these two people, angel and Stacey, you're authentic,
that they're good people, that what you hear is not
some game like we talk, We're talking to you here.
We have the same conversation, just more more down home,
even more vulnerable off ofm no custom but I mean,
but the point is there. We didn't talk about the
(41:12):
transactions that Angela has done. She has now she has
no problem talking about it or my vulnerabilities and my
mistakes or stay season. And I've I've just met let
mean and I and I you know, I don't know you,
and so I can't say I endorse or don't with
his product, but I will say from what I have heard,
what I heard, it sounds like it can be useful
to people. I'm not endorsing it, but I'm say do
(41:34):
your own research. But it sounds to me like like
a like a working man's version of a family office.
People who research what a family office is before I
have a family office is what the wealthy people do
where people pay your bills. All this stuff. It has
to be combined with tools of financial literacy so that
people don't get taken advantage of somebody with less integrity,
uh than let mean. But I like seeing conscious with
(41:54):
a capitalism like our capitalists with a conscious. And I
like seeing people who want to do well and do good.
And it appears to be that that's your spirit. So
I want to encourage other people to have this sign
of spirit of not trying to dig on people or
trying to, as I say, pimp people. But you can
make money and do it wealth and do well. And
do good at the same time. And it appears that
(42:17):
your model is one that is attempting to do that.
And I commence you for that. Thank you for that. Yes, well,
I love it, guys, and I love the fact that
I could talk to all of you and you guys
will give it to me real and straight and sometimes
and I tell you, John O'Brien does not mince his words.
He does not shook a coat anything when it comes
to me. But soft talking about that, because he's definitely
(42:40):
helped me with this transaction that I just did. That
could have went left, but he went right on up.
It's on the way up. Everything is Lemine. You know,
it's always been a pleasure of working with you with Celify.
And you know, I know you guys just met, but
Stacy and I can't say that, Lemine. The reason we
do work with you is because of your intentions and
(43:02):
the experience that you have also that we bring to people. Yea,
thank you so much, Angela. And when you were building
Stellar Fi, it was you actually came to us when
it was an idea and said I wanted to do
this with you. You were there from day one. That's
that's the amazing things just from the idea, from the
inception of the idea. All right, well, welcome Wednesdays and
of course Mesa where y'all
Way Up With Angela Yee News
Host
Angela Yee
Show Links
Official WebsitePopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.