MM #268: Best Time to Buy Bitcoin? Magic Number to Invest & What John Hope Bryant Says We MUST Do to Get Rich

Summary

Market Mondays Episode #268 Summary: Best Time to Buy Bitcoin? Magic Number to Invest & What John Hope Bryant Says We MUST Do to Get Rich

Release Date: July 22, 2025
Hosts: Earn Your Leisure (EYL) Network - Ian Dunlap and Rashad Bilal
Special Guest: John Hope Bryant

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1. Cryptocurrency Market Insights

Bitcoin's Trajectory and Market Dynamics
Ian Dunlap and Rashad Bilal delve into the current state of Bitcoin, noting its recent peak around the $119,000-$120,000 range. They discuss whether the recent movements in Bitcoin and the broader crypto market reflect sustainable institutional investments or are merely speculative maneuvers influenced by Federal Reserve policies.

• Rashad Bilal (MM:08:47): "Crypto is here to stay. Bitcoin will continue to rise as institutional forces take control."

Ethereum and Regulatory Impacts
The hosts examine Ethereum's performance, currently trading around $3,800, and its reaction to the newly signed GENIUS Act, which aims to regulate stablecoins. They highlight how regulatory measures have influenced Ethereum's recent movements and its impact on the crypto ecosystem.

• Ian Dunlap (MM:10:05): "With the GENIUS Act and stablecoin regulations, Ethereum's position in the crypto space has been strengthened, contributing to its steady growth."

Bitcoin Dominance and Market Inflows
Attention is given to Bitcoin dominance metrics (40-60%) and net inflows into crypto, suggesting a steady growth trajectory despite market volatility. The discussion touches on historical patterns, such as Bitcoin's correlation with Federal Reserve interest rates and inflation rates.

• Rashad Bilal (MM:11:52): "If rates don't get reduced, Bitcoin's upward trajectory could continue unabated."

2. Stock Market Analysis

Netflix's Performance and Future Outlook
A significant portion of the discussion centers on Netflix, highlighting its impressive stock performance—nearly a 300% increase over the past few years. The hosts analyze Netflix's strategy of doubling revenue through its ad-supported tier and its expansion into live sports, such as the Max Killer boxing events.

• Rashad Bilal (MM:13:44): "Netflix has run this business incredibly well. With their new ad-supported tier and live sports, I don't see a correction dipping into full-blown territory."

Potential Stock Splits and Valuation Concerns
The possibility of a stock split for Netflix is debated, considering its soaring valuation and historical price extremes. The hosts discuss optimal entry points for investors and the role of ETFs like FDN as alternative investment vehicles.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:17:46): "A split would be helpful, especially as Netflix approaches the $2,000 range."

3. Economic Outlook and Federal Reserve Policies

Interest Rates and Market Impact
Ian Dunlap predicts a potential rate cut in September, discussing historical trends where August has been a weak month for the S&P 500. The hosts anticipate market volatility driven by Federal Reserve decisions, tariffs, and global economic conditions.

• Ian Dunlap (MM:22:18): "August is traditionally a weak month for the S&P, and with the upcoming rate decisions, we should brace for volatility."

Long-Term Investment Strategies
Emphasizing a long-term investment horizon, Dunlap and Bilal advocate for holding quality assets for 10 years to weather short-term market fluctuations. They cite examples like Broadcom, QQQ, Bitcoin, and major tech stocks as resilient investments.

• Rashad Bilal (MM:24:32): "Hold every asset class for five to ten years. This long-term approach nullifies short-term concerns and capitalizes on sustained growth."

4. Entrepreneurship and Artificial Intelligence

AI as a Disruptive Force and Opportunity
Special guest John Hope Bryant discusses the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on entrepreneurship. He emphasizes the urgent need for AI literacy and financial education within the Black community to harness AI's potential for economic empowerment.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:67:10): "By 2030, AI will have reshaped our world. We must equip our youth with AI literacy to stay ahead."

Education and Skill Development
Bryant highlights initiatives like the AI Ethics Council and partnerships with HBCUs to cultivate AI talent. He underscores the importance of transitioning from traditional education models to more agile, technology-focused learning pathways.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:77:21): "We're launching the AI LP3 in Atlanta with Georgia State University to cultivate a pipeline of AI talent from middle school through college."

5. Real Estate Investments and Financing Strategies

Seller Financing and Non-Recourse Debt
The discussion shifts to real estate investment strategies, particularly seller financing and non-recourse debt. Bryant explains how institutional relationships and strong credit scores are crucial for securing favorable financing terms without personal guarantees.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:80:39): "With institutional non-recourse debt, your personal assets remain protected, allowing businesses to grow without personal financial risk."

Building Community Wealth through Real Estate
Bryant advocates for investing in local communities by purchasing and rehabilitating properties. This approach not only generates stable cash flows but also fosters economic growth within underserved areas.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:94:22): "Build wealth in your own community by buying and rehabbing properties. This creates an economic engine that benefits everyone involved."

6. Relationship Capital and Networking

Importance of Building Authentic Relationships
Bryant emphasizes the significance of relationship capital in business success. He advises entrepreneurs to build genuine rapports with key decision-makers, such as chief credit officers at regional banks, to unlock valuable financing opportunities.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:85:15): "Build a personal rapport with chief lending officers. Authentic relationships open doors that formal applications can't."

Leveraging Institutional Connections
The conversation highlights the value of institutional connections and how they can provide access to mentorship, capital, and business growth opportunities. Bryant shares his experiences and strategies for cultivating these essential relationships.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:90:00): "Institutional relationships are everything. They provide the trust and capital needed to scale your business effectively."

7. Invest Fest 2025 Announcement

Operation Hope Giveaway and Mentorship Program
The hosts announce an exciting opportunity for entrepreneurs attending Invest Fest 2025. Five winners will receive a $25,000 mentorship package from John Hope Bryant, including one-on-one financial coaching, access to capital, business plan development, and more.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:127:33): "At Invest Fest, five entrepreneurs will be chosen to receive a $25,000 mentorship package, providing invaluable resources to elevate their businesses."

Participation Details and Benefits
Listeners are encouraged to visit investfest.com/operationhope to apply for the giveaway. The program aims to support black-owned businesses by offering comprehensive training and access to professional networks.

• Earn Your Leisure Hosts (MM:130:21): "Don't miss this opportunity. Apply at investfest.com/operationhope for a chance to transform your business."

8. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

Emphasizing Financial and AI Literacy
The episode concludes with a passionate call to action for financial and AI literacy within the Black community. Bryant stresses that mastering these areas is crucial for economic empowerment and adapting to the rapidly evolving technological landscape.

• John Hope Bryant (MM:100:25): "Financial literacy and AI literacy are civil rights issues of this generation. We must prioritize education to ensure our community thrives."

Encouraging Community Engagement and Investment
Dunlap and Bilal reinforce the importance of community engagement, disciplined investing, and strategic networking to build lasting wealth and resilience against economic challenges.

• Ian Dunlap (MM:125:10): "Stay disciplined, invest wisely, and build genuine relationships. Together, we can create lasting wealth and transform our communities."

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Notable Quotes:

• John Hope Bryant (MM:67:10): "By 2030, AI will have reshaped our world. We must equip our youth with AI literacy to stay ahead."

• Rashad Bilal (MM:24:32): "Hold every asset class for five to ten years. This long-term approach nullifies short-term concerns and capitalizes on sustained growth."

• Ian Dunlap (MM:85:15): "Build a personal rapport with chief lending officers. Authentic relationships open doors that formal applications can't."

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This episode of Market Mondays offers a comprehensive analysis of the current investment landscape, emphasizing the enduring potential of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the strategic growth of tech giants like Netflix, and the transformative role of AI in entrepreneurship. With actionable insights and inspiring discussions, listeners gain valuable knowledge to navigate the complexities of modern investing and build sustainable wealth.

Transcript

[Ian Dunlap]

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[Ian Dunlap]

The biggest event of the year is four weeks away. What's up, y'? All? We back, we back, we back. Market Mondays. What's the deal? What's the deal? 21st of July, man. Every Monday is a multiple of seven this month. Just so you. Just so you know.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, okay. Mathematics.

[Ian Dunlap]

Hopefully everybody's had a great weekend. Shout out to everybody that has invested. Shout out to everybody that's sharing information. Love it all. Yeah. We hear back, man. Healthy, which is most important. I see everybody out there getting their exercise on. Shout out to everybody.

[Rashad Bilal]

Health is on that bike.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh, I'm out there. If you see me out there, you know, you got, you know, I mean, don't be chuck a deuce. Some people like hit their horns. Just don't distract me, man. I'm trying to. I'm trying to hit some all time highs here. Appreciate y' all so shot it yesterday. He's out in that track. Yo, bro, it's like 96 out here.

[Rashad Bilal]

Gotta get it done.

[Ian Dunlap]

Said perfect conditions.

[Rashad Bilal]

Remember guy on Warrior bro, he got the Olympic Jordan beard. He was all you got there. Hooping boy everywhere at the Rucker. Like a shoddy outside. I'm like, I see my boy everywhere.

[Ian Dunlap]

You're gonna see us for sure.

[John Hope Bryant]

But yeah. Thank you to everybody that's tapping in a lot to talk about. We have a special guest, John o', Brien, who's gonna be joining us shortly.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[John Hope Bryant]

Earn your Leisure. We got a big episode this. This Thursday at 6:00'. Clock. Shout out to 85 South. Hey, it will be in the building. We gotta be a sit down conversation with 85South. Very good conversation. Entertaining as always. Ah, yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

You call them in, Ross, and repair or whatever. I hurt my heart.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, that's. I. I don't like what's going on.

[Rashad Bilal]

If anybody can do it, y' all can do it.

[Ian Dunlap]

I don't like what's going on.

[Rashad Bilal]

You gotta have a sit down.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I only like it. Shout out to the guys, though. That's home team.

[John Hope Bryant]

I seen him in dc was going back and forth, but yeah, shout out to Carlos dc, shout out to Chico Bean. Shout out to the whole. The whole crew, man. So, yeah, check that out. Six o' clock on Earn your Leisure's YouTube channel, 85 South.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And then Wednesday we back with Blackout. Ten o' clock Eastern Standard Time. We got a lot to talk about, for sure. It's been an eventful week last week. It's a lot going on.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a fact. Shout out to Alicia Little. If anybody didn't check out that episode, man, just a phenomenal. I got a few DMS about that. Like, I had to watch that a few times, take notes and actually apply it in real time. So if you didn't check out that episode, go. Go back and run that, man. That's a big one. It should be at Invest Fest too. So make sure y' all tap in.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let's get it, let's get it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh, wait, wait. We gotta congratulations in order.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, my God.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yo, yo, yo, yo. We in the presence of the Stock Trader of the Year Decade.

[Rashad Bilal]

For the record, we might have to.

[Ian Dunlap]

Change the award to the decade, right? But like, yo, congratulations, my brother. So you some awards this weekend.

[John Hope Bryant]

Congratulations.

[Rashad Bilal]

And congratulations y' all too. Hey, shout out to the squad. Xander, that Podcast of the year award came up, right? Earn your leisure. Market Mondays, high level. Blackout Xander's like, all your friends are up there.

[Ian Dunlap]

He will be accepting award on our behalf.

[Rashad Bilal]

For real. Shout to everybody. I saw there. I had a really great time, but I had a blast with Xander and embarrassing him. He didn't want to come on stage, so that's always fun.

[John Hope Bryant]

Shout out to Melon and Money. They did. If people don't know who we're referring to. Melon and Money did a award show. And they'll be at Invest Fest too. Speaking.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep, yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Good. Guys.

[John Hope Bryant]

They did an award showing. Ian. Ian One Investor of the year. And then Market Mondays won podcast of the year, so. Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

George Mellow Ward, please. So I can.

[Ian Dunlap]

We'll see you in a few.

[Rashad Bilal]

We'll see you in a few. Pull up.

[Ian Dunlap]

What's up, bro?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, but, yeah, congratulations, man. For sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Thank you, man. Gracia.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well deserved. Well deserved.

[Ian Dunlap]

Everything earned for sure.

[John Hope Bryant]

Any. Any announcements?

[Rashad Bilal]

I have one, but I' ma be nice tuning the black. Oh, wish Rachel, participate in this message Anyway. If you want to get rich from the market, go to universe.com where to get in, where to get out. The stocks to invest in that are going to free you now and. And all the way to 2040. If I made you money, please put yes in chat. Tune into Blackout this Wednesday and I'm ready for investors. Oh, no. Stock up call this week because I will be prepping for Invest Festival. I won't be answering calls about anything. So unless Sam Allman call or my dad call or y' all call. No, I'm sorry. So getting ready. Get your tickets to Invest Fest. If you miss out, you deserve to be broke. I love you. Sorry, sorry. Somebody told me I made $4 million off Nvidia. Like, yo, when you come to stock club, he like, for what? High achievement. Yeah, I got it.

[Ian Dunlap]

I got it from here. Oh, man. Yeah. Y' all know how this works. I might actually change the disclaimer, man. Our content is intended to be used and must be used for informational.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And motivational purposes only.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a professional connection with or independently research and verify any information that you find on the show and wish to rely upon whether for the purpose of making it, investment decision or otherwise. This is a message brought to you by the good brothers at Earn your leisure and a good brother, Ian Dunlap, the master investor himself. Continue to do the research. Share the research. Let's make money. Let's spread wealth. Let's spread knowledge. Let's share resources, y'. All. Let's. Let's do this together. Love is love.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let's get it.

[Rashad Bilal]

And public service announcements. I want to be clear. I'm not speaking for Rashad or I'm gonna speak and me. We have not changed. Let's. That little poster I put on the Internet last week shook up the Internet. Put in 2017 Bitcoin Litecoin, who didn't go so well. Ethereum XRP hold. For 10 years, Rashad been holding. The name of the game is to hold every Asset class. Stop arguing for content, please, please. The name of the game is just to hold every asset on earth that matters. I love you.

[John Hope Bryant]

So let's get into it. Okay, so bitcoin briefly touching over123,000. You know, last week was crypto week. That so that's in the past now. So we, we've seen the results of crypto week, right? We see bitcoin peaked all time highs back down a little bit. But you know, hovering around that, that 119, 120 mark, you see Ethereum around $3,800. We see XRP 33.6 cents. So the crypto boom is happening again. So what can, what can we expect this time? And do the moves genuinely reflect sustainable institutional flows or simply fed speculation?

[Rashad Bilal]

I think of course crypto is here to stay. I think what crypto week really signified was them taking it over from the people and being an asset class that they're going to own to make sure that they remain in power. And they all once again even the decision to own every asset class on earth that matters. I learned that from reading what banking institutions do. So we can't say that it's speculative. I stated before I thought the banks are going to take it over. This confirms it. It also confirms that people don't care about decentralization. When there's gains to be had and it being centralized or it being controlled by certain forces, Bitcoin will continue to rise. I think they are the leader. I know some of you who love Ethereum were mad at my hair mind to take. I'll say Coke.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Say that again.

[Rashad Bilal]

So tired of y' all yo yo part on Ethereum all year. To David Sacks. Got an office.

[Ian Dunlap]

Cool.

[Rashad Bilal]

Nice bounce. It's still not bitcoin, but good run. Hold every asset class for five to 10 years, the big four in crypto. And I think you'll be a. Okay. It's a message we've been screaming forever.

[Ian Dunlap]

So yeah, I, I think I'll just add to that. Just watching where the money's going, right? So one of the things that we talk about is watching the, the net inflows into crypto and if you've been watching them over the past six months, you've seen a steady, steady growth. Steady growth. Nothing explosive but a steady growth. And that has continued, obviously. Crypto week was, was huge. The President signed into law the Genius act which is help regulating st, which is kind of why we saw Ethereum move the way it moved, right? It had been like you said, I never. I told you, Harold, mining was just completely disrespectful. But it's, it's time though. You know what, when y' all clipped, it got clipped up. It stopped right there. It was like. I was like, damn. Yeah. But you can see why in terms of what Ethereum brings and what it means to the crypto space, why having the genius act and having the stablecoin act being signed into law would help it move. And obviously we know bitcoin dominance, and so that is something. And shout out to our, our boy Austin, keeping track of bitcoin dominance, Right. When you see it in between 40 to 60%, it means something about the entire market. When you start to see the altcoins start to rot, that tells you something about the market. So watch your inflows. And watching dominance inside the space will tell you where we're headed. And we've seen it. We've seen it. And then of course you have like federal policy and you have interest rates and how that affects or what We've seen how, how it affected bitcoin over the past few years. Obviously we're talking about raising rates and we're talking about inflation and how bitcoin has been used as a storage place for, for people to park money. And so if rates don't get reduced, we could see this thing keep going.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

I know all, all signs are pointing to September as the first rate cut. We'll see what happens. But yeah, it's not going to stop here. I think we're still on that upward trajectory for bitcoin and potentially the entire space.

[Rashad Bilal]

I want to see the crypto movement have an Occupy Wall street moment though. Like I want for audience. Does anyone care about all the government.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

Involvement in crypto? And they just took it away, the entire plan. And while they increase inflation and debts to GDP keeps rising, they then come in with the investment at which I'm happy to Vlad. Got to make sure every newborn gets a thousand dollars invested into the market. Then stable coins are initiated and now everyone's all of a sudden pro crypto, pro xrp, pro ethereum. Everyone's doing their Michael Saylor derivative strategy now as a result.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, that, that's a great point. So when you, when you speak Occupy, I'm thinking like, how do we take it back? So here's the real question. It's like an inflection point. Do you try to take it back when you're making money?

[Rashad Bilal]

It's too late. I already sold out.

[Ian Dunlap]

People gonna want the Money every time.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. And the banks know that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Exactly, exactly.

[Rashad Bilal]

So.

[John Hope Bryant]

All right. All right. Well, talking about another hot investment, Netflix, one of the best performing stocks this year said that in 2025. Well, it said that their ad supported tier will double revenue this year. So is that a signal that the stock will have a continuous run or will we see some pullback? Because it's already gone up almost 300 in the last couple of years.

[Rashad Bilal]

I mean, they are the preeminent platform to have content on. They are the HBO of our era and I don't think they get enough credit for how well they have run that business. The fight was pretty good. That was on last weekend. The WWE Edition, possibly the UFC edition has helped a lot. I just think they've run this business incredibly well. And then if they can find a way to double and then maybe even triple in three or four years, that ad supported tier while having premium content and a premium price, I don't see even. I have all the other subscriptions to have prime and Max or HBO Max, whatever it's called now. No one's better. The only competition probably is Google, slash YouTube. And I think there are leaps and bounds in terms of quality of content. So more. They have a pullback for sure. But I don't think it's a pullback that will go into correction territory. If I can get them at, I don't know, probably a 10 drop from here, I'll be happy. But this stock has done incredibly well and that management has to get a lot of credit for doing well and just kicking apples back in on that side of the business as well.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, I know people were a little confused. And we've gone over this a few times. A company reports its earnings, it beats on every line, revenue, earnings per share, free cash flow, operating income. And the Phil, you beat on all those lines and the company still sees the. So the, the stop pullback are like 5%. What you have to take into account is where it came from. And so if you look at December when it was sitting around 8:49, currently trading over $1200, it's had a nice run up here. The problem is it might have run up too high.

[Rashad Bilal]

Too fast.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, too fast. And so what you'll see is people take profit and that's fine. That's part of the game. I don't see a correction happening for it. Like you said, it's the leader in the space. It's going to continue to be the leader in the space. And I still think it has room for Expansion in, in terms of, yes, America is the dominant market, but there's still countries, there's still areas and regions that do not have this service. And you could try to replicate it, but nobody's done it successfully. In terms of competitors, yes, Disney has been there in terms of the amount of subscribers. I know Netflix is no longer sharing their subscriber count, but Disney has a problem and we talked about it and hopefully they'll solve it in terms of live sports and ESPN and how that was a debt trap for them and Netflix has solved it. In fact, they've actually added sports. Like I said, that absolutely it. And you know, they just signed, they just signed Max Killer, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

No way.

[Ian Dunlap]

What? Yeah, so Max Killerman is now on Netflix for boxing and they're gonna have the number one.

[Guest Speaker]

Smart.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, we're just months away from it. This, it's gonna be by far the most watched fight of all time. They have that under their belt. Obviously they're doing football. We'll see what they can do. In terms of college sports. I know TNT signed a college football, but who knows what happens with college basketball the way things are looking. So, yeah, Netflix is here to stay. I'd be surprised if over the next year they don't split.

[Rashad Bilal]

I was just gonna ask, is it time for a split? I mean, because their 52 week low was what, 588? 587. Yeah. Highest 1341. I think it may be time for a split. I'm sure the shareholders who have been there for 10 to 15 years may not want it, but it may be time. It may be time.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, it's run that hot. And so now that the, the valuation for the company has risen to a point where. Who else in the space has that type of valuation? Nobody's near them. Yeah, it might be a time. It might be time.

[Rashad Bilal]

Rashad, do you think that's your split or they should keep the price where it is currently?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, I think, I think a split would be helpful, especially if it gets close to that two thousand dollar range. Fifteen hundred.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Gotta look at that for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Just a couple steps on Netflix. Free cash flow. 8.5 billion. Let's see. Altman Z score, which I've talked about at Invest Fest last year. But it's the probability of them going out of business or bankrupt is 13 out of a hundred. Almost impossible. Beta is 1.62. 52 week high. Like I said, it's 1341. The stock has just been on a absolute tear. What would, especially in that industry, gross margin is 48. Their operating margin is 29. They're netting 24 for a cost heavy. And I remember when the conversation was is investing in premium Evergreen content going to collapse them? And they just found a way. They figured it out to be better.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. They figured out how to get content at a lower price there. You know what it reminds me of? And it's starting to feel like when we were watching video report and is good. Good is not good enough anymore. Like great is not good enough.

[Rashad Bilal]

They're so great. Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And it. To see it pulled back after it beat on everything is one of those times where it's like, hey, yeah, they beat. I know operating cash flow is something that they were big on. And it still beat it. Yeah, it only beat it by 300 million, 400 million, but it's still a beat.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

If you're not, if you're not growing, then you're declining and they've grown. And so it's just one of those cases. Is good good enough. It's great. Good enough that I'm with them long term.

[Rashad Bilal]

Good sign. Fidelity added 1.3 million shares in March as well too. So if you want to see what the whales are doing them in State street of added shares. So yeah, maybe a pullback if it ever gets back to definitely 900 range. But if we get to, I don't know, 1188, which sounds crazy, it should be a good entry point into the stock.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

If you have not been investing into.

[Ian Dunlap]

It and I gave a great ETF and everybody shout out to everybody in eyo, you shout out to everybody that. That was with us in the class on Thursday. If you look up which ETF has the largest allocation to Netflix, you will find that FDN is a good, a good ETF performed well for us this year. If you can't get a share of Netflix at 1200, that would be a nice alternative.

[Rashad Bilal]

Look at you giving back to the people after.

[Ian Dunlap]

You see what I'm saying, man?

[Rashad Bilal]

Keep going.

[Ian Dunlap]

I'm just trying to get nominated for stock trade of the year, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shy. What's the Chinese etf?

[Ian Dunlap]

Tbd. That's the ticket.

[Rashad Bilal]

Invest with Invesco.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yes, yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

You should roll through online. I saw the building.

[Ian Dunlap]

I said, oh, invest with Invesco.

[John Hope Bryant]

Do you still think that we, we will see a pullback in, in the summer or no.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes. It may not be as dramatic as last year, but this is the thing. Even with pullback. So like when a pullback happened in April, I'll call the time in which we'll recover. Recovered quicker than that. My advice is for when we get the pullbacks. I think we have a preponderance of evidence to show the returns are going to be there. Invest in a pullback, though. A lot of times how many people do you know who watch the show and like, well, I saw the move in April but then I missed out. So I don't think that the move will be as dramatic as it was last year. But do I think we will get a pullback as a result? And what's not being talked about in some of the the mismanagement of things that he may do in office. The bright side to Trump being in office is the volatility that he will give to the markets. I've seen him in office twice. Trading is dramatically different and more volatile with him in office, but man, the returns are way higher. You can say it's nefarious or even the push in crypto. I, I don't know if under another administration we would have gotten this and even the idea to have kids automatically invested into the stock market is a brilliant idea. I don't know if another administration would have done that. So will it be as steep? I don't think so, but we definitely will have a pullback in August.

[Ian Dunlap]

He's putting his name on that thousand dollars too. You see it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Rashad talked about this before like he everything money was.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. From a historical standpoint, since 1980, August ranks as the weakest month for the S and P with a flat to negative average return. August 1st is the deadline for tariffs for the EU and I think a few other regions of the world. And so depending on how that goes, they said they're not going to push the, the, you know, push the goal line any further. August is going to be the hard deadline and so we will see if that is true then this will hold true as well. We saw pullbacks in April. I like I you said I don't think it'll be as drastic.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And then from another historical standpoint, post July strength. So we've had a positive July this year thus far that often leads to mid or mild. Mid and mild August mean reversion pullback of 3 to 5% especially when the sentiment evaluations are strengthened. So we keep talking about, hey, valuations are running high. We're going to see what happens because of the tariffs that were enacted in second quarter. When we're not seeing it, we're starting it. This is a big week. Obviously tech for sure. Companies are going to be reporting this their second quarter earnings reports. So we'll see. But historically August has been that month and over the past five years we've seen it happen in late August, mid to late August and then it runs into September as well. Yeah, a few times it's gone into October but by the end of the year we usually we have seen a great appreciation at the end. So yeah, man, when we say the time is amongst us in the next few weeks we should see some volatility.

[Rashad Bilal]

Historically once again, one of the main talking points at Invest Fest, hold it for 10 years. Go look at the return of Broadcom, QQQ, Bitcoin, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix. All of these issues go away if you hold for a 10 year period. It's not the sexy advice that you want to hear, but if you want to get rich, that is definitely the advice that I'm going to give to you. Even if you think you don't have 10 years left, make sure that you have the trust set up so it rolls over to your family. But all the short term concern that goes away with holding the quality asset for a long period of time.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, no.

[John Hope Bryant]

All right. So do you think that talking about crypto, do you think that a digital asset will ever dethrone the US dollar as the world's reserve currency?

[Rashad Bilal]

No, but I think it will help stabilize our dollar as the, the value of it has decreased. I don't know because my little banking friends won't tell me nothing no more because they don't want me to run and tell it on here. But I do think the implementation of stable coins at some point and how they're involved in crypto is going to be done to help stabilize the dollar. I don't know because of the oil and petrodollar regime. If they can transfer the petrodollar agreement into crypto. But I don't think a country can afford to make a digital currency its primary currency if it's been running this long shot. You're a historian, so I don't know. You would know more than I. I just think politically that can send some shock waves. And then I think other countries could pose and posture themselves. Like hypothetically, if we went to bitcoin as a national reserve, wouldn't that make Michael Saylor automatically king to fight amongst the king makers already it's tough. So these like those are the parts and that's above my pay grade. I want to smoke, but those are conversations you have to think about if we're going to change the Entire structure of what currency looks like and how we exchange. Even if it should be done, if other people own more of that asset more than the Federal Reserve, which is problem.

[Ian Dunlap]

You want to take it?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, well, we, we. At some point in time, the American dollar is not going to be the world's reserve currency. It's not going to do that forever, right? Yeah, it might be 10 years, it might be a thousand years. Who knows? But that's what we, that's what we know. Right. Like the reason why it's the world's reserved currency now is that it was agreed upon and America, superpower, world's strongest nation. Right. So bully pulpit. So when America is no longer the world's strongest nation, that's when it will no longer have the reserve currency? Probably. So who will have the reserve currency at that point in time? I don't know.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, I don't know.

[John Hope Bryant]

Probably. Probably won't be Bitcoin because Bitcoin is not tied to any one particular country and. But it may be another form of digital asset crypto currency that, you know, is more tied to Pacific specific country. Perhaps, but it'll be interesting to see. But yeah, the, the dollar will not be the reserved currency for the world forever.

[Rashad Bilal]

Forever.

[Ian Dunlap]

Forever is a, Is a long time. I, I'm with y'.

[John Hope Bryant]

All.

[Ian Dunlap]

I don't, I don't see it happen. Ian, to your point of the, the fact that the amount of financial reshaping that you would have to do globally, that's a great term political reshaping that you'd have to do globally, I don't, I don't think it's a replace situation. I agree with you. Shoddy. I don't. It's not a forever thing. I think in the short term and I guess maybe in our lifetime, who knows, maybe we'll be here for another 150 years. I think it's a mixture. I think it's a dollar plus a digital ecosystem. I think it's a long width. Because even if you think about stable coins, what makes it stable? The dollar.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

So even inside of that system, the dollar is still hold strong. And so we'll, we'll see what, what happens. I think it'll be a coexist. I think, yes, you have the dollar, but you also have digital ecosystems. Until that point where it's like it's not the dollar anymore, then we're talking about complete change, complete global change.

[Rashad Bilal]

Was Web3 a failure?

[Ian Dunlap]

You know what somebody was talking about Web2, Web3, the definitions have changed. I don't know if it's a failure. That's it.

[Rashad Bilal]

See that? The reshaping, the reimagining recession, that's the tricky part. It's like we're just in interesting times. And to your point, when the forces were stronger and we had a, still have a great or strongest military presence on earth, but if bricks adopts a, or creates a digital currency, how does that look? A lot of this has to do with timing. But I think it's interesting all the banks, institutions, and even in business, everyone hedging that with crypto when they hated it. It's definitely a sign of something to come.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I think that the new idea of Web3, and maybe it's the old idea and it's been reshaped, is the fact that today, presently we interact with the Internet and going forward we'll have AI agents that will interact with the Internet on our behalf. It won't be us typing and it won't be us hitting, typing in searches. And those things will be created for us through AI. So if that is the web3, I can't say we failed yet because we didn't get there yet. But we're on the cusp of it for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

To Chris Johnson's point, the value of the dollar is falling 96 since 1913. So it's not that much room left for it to go to.

[Ian Dunlap]

Fire.

[Guest Speaker]

Pow.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's like, bro.

[Ian Dunlap]

So you're saying with the chance.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let'S talk about Block. Yeah, that's the company obviously used to be Square. It was a lot surrounding that. At one point in time you, you said that Square was going to be the next JP Morgan.

[Rashad Bilal]

They killed my career with it. And.

[John Hope Bryant]

So one shot.

[Ian Dunlap]

Listen, get everything else.

[John Hope Bryant]

We have Jack Dorsey. We have Jack Dorsey coming, speaking at Invest Fest. So maybe that's a question that we can ask him as far as like, you know, the road map of what happened to the stock. But.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay, going to build a burger. I don't know if you can tell the truth. Listen, I was on the phone with some people at JP Morgan when they left, when I said that, and they told their plan how they're going to take over crypto and did it. It's a dirty game. Shout out to everybody. J.P. morgan, James Purpont, one and two.

[John Hope Bryant]

Okay, so yeah, so let's, let's talk about that. You know, Block had an interesting time for sure, to say the least. But yeah, it's, it's kind of been on the move recently at least and almost at like $80 a share. So what's the deal with that?

[Rashad Bilal]

I think they're catching some of the tailwind success of crypto. One good important lesson that I've learned early, those pioneers use usually end up with the arrows in the back and not the gold. I think they were early innovators in the adoption of bitcoin and tried to make it mainstream. I just think it was a little bit too early and time and this is really important. Michael Saylor is beloved now and but Cathie Wood and Jack face some opposition from trying to run this strategy. So I know they've been on the move as of recent. Definitely want to ask him where does he think the stock will go over the next few four or five years. But they're far from their highs. All time highs 289. So I think they were trying to reshape the way the banking looks and I think that is still needed for sure because banking infrastructure has not changed and it hasn't greatly benefited the people that they serve. And that's why I think you see an ethereum come in, bitcoin come in Michael Saylor. And all this is really arbitrage on. You're not getting enough return for the people that you're serving. That's the outcry with like if banks took care of like I remember when CDs were given 10% long time ago. But I remember there was a time where like a CD was a safe investment and you can get a good return. I think the desire for NFTs, meme coins, crypto is that the returns are not high enough while the job market is falling, falling apart, while inflation is running at an all time high. So I think the core of all of this is banking not doing what they're supposed to do and not taking care of their consensuals the way that they should. But I think block was the first combatant to that banking space and they paid an ultimate price for it. But I hope they can't rebound.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, they, the news of them being added into the S P has obviously helped the stock. Yeah, they replaced Hess whose deal, I mean remember they announced that deal like two years ago. It finally got through. So Hess has been removed, been brought in. It isn't even just a block story. I think it's a fintech story. If you look at all the fintech companies, you know they've taken a hit and a lot of it I think primarily, I think you're spot on with that.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

When you think about where they were headed in Terms of Bitcoin, in terms of actually accepting it on the platform two to three years ago and now to see like hey, Visa, Stable, Coin, mastercard, stablecoin, hello. You can kind of see how they were a bit derailed and it would be interesting to ask him some of these questions and I'm sure he'll have insight that nobody else has for sure. But yeah, I mean it's far from its all time highs. The fintech space is still a space. I'm not touching fintech just because of.

[Rashad Bilal]

Obviously wait, none of fintech, Visa, technically it's a laggard.

[Ian Dunlap]

Is it a fintech? I mean it has, it has fintech.

[Rashad Bilal]

Tendencies components to it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yes, that. I mean.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, like pure fintech.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so we, I mean definitely still on the watch list. It's been on the watch list since you, you've spoken about it in, in 2020. Watching it carefully. Just not invested in it. Yeah, yet.

[John Hope Bryant]

So what happened? What, what, what's the real story of what happened with the Square situation?

[Rashad Bilal]

Bilderberg issue that would you say? Nobody bigger than the program? Me not bigger than that program. They love banking. No, for our conference call, they were laughing, bro. I'm like oh, you think square gonna overtake off? We've we own and they start listing all assets they own. Like wait, did I do something wrong? She like bro, just do the little chase events. Chill.

[Ian Dunlap]

MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover. At the time I'm sure all of them had a role in making sure that this didn't work.

[Rashad Bilal]

Capital One, Capital.

[Ian Dunlap]

This can't work. Not now. Not till we figure out how we have implementation ready.

[Rashad Bilal]

Which is a great lesson in learning if you're building because everyone talks about disruption, but disruption to some is a threat to others. You have to know who you're going to sell off board to. That conversation goes dramatically different. If they have a partnership with MasterCard or Visa and they're going to be a facilitator, a gateway into that ecosystem, all that. We're going to take over the banking infrastructure. No, it does not. The world does not work like that. Regardless of what they say on the.

[Ian Dunlap]

Interwebs, it's a Web3 conversation.

[Rashad Bilal]

Gary Webb Rest assault so. But if they come back, I'll be the first one applauding.

[Ian Dunlap]

I said we're calling it ISO that day.

[Rashad Bilal]

For sure. For sure.

[John Hope Bryant]

So years ago you said that 20,000 was a good price to buy bitcoin. What's the next low the both price for bitcoin?

[Rashad Bilal]

I don't do this. I don't want the crypto. It's a great question. The twenty thousand dollar price is never coming back. I want to be very clear. If this gets clipped up April levels, I mean I would like it at 79, 285 and then probably at, to be honest, a hundred thousand 121. That banking institution and hedge fund institution buying in and microstrategy being a, not saying a small institution but in comparison to Vanguard and Vesco State street, they're smaller. They provide a level of liquidity and price discovery that will. I don't think bitcoin will ever go to55,000 ever again. You have too many whales in it. It's impossible. Like the mathematical probability of it getting to 55 given all the banks and institutions that it is less than 3% chance. So like the 7980 area is going to be like the new buy in price if we, if we get there.

[John Hope Bryant]

Like a few months ago I put on Instagram that you gotta like Bitcoin 85, 000.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, we was going back and forth about that. He's like 85, like 79, 85.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'm like, yeah, same range.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep, yeah, just grab it there. So here's another question. I guess it's kind of based off that question. That's for depreciation, right. To load the bull price as the Fed rate. And I know there's a lot of pressure on power and they call, I saw some of the memes, they, they're crazy. They call them up in the, the Coldplay joint.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's hilarious.

[Ian Dunlap]

The Coldplay mean if he doesn't lower rates, how, how can we get here the next couple months?

[Guest Speaker]

Right?

[Ian Dunlap]

We've seen appreciation when he doesn't do it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, first stop, 129, 634. And then I think ultimate price is like 153, 155 if he doesn't. Because the argument is even I know what, okay, Trump wants the rates lowered, I get it. But we had quantitative easing for 13 years, 14 years. Look what has cost the country and how much has put debt to gdp. And to be honest, look how many terrible companies were built off zero interest financing. If I can be very honest, if rates had not been adjusted we wouldn't have had room for Broadcom and Nvidia and AMD and Palantir go up the way. Like these are real businesses that solve real issues, not Tinder for dogs. It's a lot of that got built when it was zero interest Rates and all that money was slushing around. We got spatched it like I remember Virgin Galactic. It's like you're not beating Elon and Bezos with that. I love Richard Branson. Virgin is that was yesteryear? No. You're facing some serious competition and you think Katy Perry was. Anyway, it's a lot of that got built in that environment. And I think we have a cleaner environment for businesses to get built. And we saw even in our space how many people popped up talking about investing and we knew they had no investing acumen or nothing invested in the market. And the interest rates go up, the market resets. All this Covid money is not flying around. You get. You get to separate the real from the fake. So I just think we just need to focus more quality. And with inflation being the way that it is and interest being the way it is, bitcoin is a great way to go. And my question is still for the vanguards of the world, what are you going to do with your indexes? Because people are watching the news and 6 to 9% is great, but if they're seeing 40 and 60% return, why are they not going to go chase that? And everybody can't make a big bitcoin etf.

[Ian Dunlap]

They're going for it. Yeah, yeah. That Generation Z is going for it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes. And they're going to force the parents into it as a result, which will adjust the mutual fund. And I talked to some advisors this weekend about my take on the 6040 portfolio being dead. I'm not saying it as a hot take. There's no hedge in the bond market anymore. No one. They let the bond market die. So crypto could fly. No one will even address it. I get once you scale past a certain point, you have to deal in bonds. I get that. But the bond market has been negative for five years. If you have a uncle or grandma who's 60, 40 and has $5 million in it and she lives in upstate New York, it's really hard to tell her to stay invested in that when crypto is taken off the way that it has or just what 25 exposure would have done. So what I do know, if you want the best prices on the market, go to iAnvest.com and join the stock club. If you want to know where to get in and where to get out. If you want to know the load, the boat price, ch. Swing trade price, quick entry price, go to enivest.com, join the stock club. And I give you prices for over 30 different companies. 90 different prices. If I made you money, please put yes in check. Get your tickets to Invest Fest. It is the most important year for sure. That's a fact in the history of Invest Fest. For you to be there.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's a fact. That is a fact. Okay, so what is the pathway that people should do as far as putting money away into the stock market? Like how much of their check should they be putting into the stock market?

[Rashad Bilal]

You want the safe answer or the real answer? The safe answer is whatever you can afford to do. The real answer is if you don't do 25, they're going to inflate away any possibility of you being wealthy or free. They want a soft serfdom. Even the universal basic income idea, that's being floated around, I think that is going to be available for only certain citizens. Then the same way welfare has been taken away, but corporate welfare is running rampant. You can't even depend on that because we don't have the money to do so. It's an act of financial terrorism against yourself to not put at least 25 of your money into the market. Especially as a business owner. I want to be very clear. Your clients and customers don't give a damn about you.

[John Hope Bryant]

What if. What if somebody's not in a financial position? I'll put a 25 of their money away.

[Rashad Bilal]

Do 10. But a lot of y' all blow 80 of y' all money on bad relationships. Tune in to blackout on Wednesdays. Yeah, I've been with that same bird that would in the hatchlings for seven years with no return. I get tired of hearing that and then you hit me on Monday. Yo, can I borrow 67, 000? No, the. You don't watch the show, you don't clip up the content clippers.

[Guest Speaker]

Where you at?

[Rashad Bilal]

You'll repost nothing. Yo, on the wake up shot you on the wake up. Yo, my g, you got 16,000 for me in arrears and child support?

[Ian Dunlap]

What? Yo, if you can you call me bro. It's an emergency. Please.

[Rashad Bilal]

Facts got PTSD from all you guys. Want to check on you. No, you want to check? Invest in Nvidia.

[Ian Dunlap]

There goes my advice.

[Rashad Bilal]

For real. So that's a percentage you can stick with whether it's 10, 15, 20. But you should. I think 25. Like, okay, 25 of your income invested into Nvidia over the last two years would have given you what return? I'll talk to people all the time. Yo, you don't spend money on it. You got a stock power the money. Because at Some point after the government fully takes over the semi space and crypto, the gains are going to be throttled. Every time that that bill for can Congress, women and congressmen should not be able to front trade stocks and that should get batted down. Mutumbo. Every time. Why they getting all the games off the market? Nancy Pelosi isn't even number one.

[Ian Dunlap]

She's not.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's the crazy part. They always pick on her.

[John Hope Bryant]

Man.

[Rashad Bilal]

There's some people out there who. What? Yeah, she's not one of the greatest.

[Ian Dunlap]

Though, but definitely a hall of famer.

[Rashad Bilal]

So 25. And if not, I find it interesting. In America, they tell us it's too expensive to invest 25 of your income, but every company on earth finds a way for you to run negative sale on Saturday, Amazon sale, Prime day sale. Only fan sale, Instagram ever. Y' all gotta sell for every. Which is a way to siphon money out of your account, which is more than 25. But you actually making money for you is an issue. Then you get mad at Rashad for being fly. That's because you ain't invested the way you should.

[Ian Dunlap]

You've been hoodwinked, you've been bamboozled.

[Rashad Bilal]

Bamboozled financially. So. But if you.5%. But I think most people spend more. If people acted on what they spent on dating or getting ready for the dates, it's way over 25. I'm talking to the man.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I mean, so like, imagine it today. Like you were the financial advisor, obviously. I mean, you practice for years, 13, 14 years. Like, what would you say to the client today?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, same thing. I mean, you know, you do what you can afford, you know, but you gotta do something. So you gotta have discipline. I think 10 is probably something that most people can strive for because 25 is not going to be realistic for the average person.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'm talking to those who want to be exceptional.

[John Hope Bryant]

No, I'm just saying as far as the average person, as far as how much money they're making versus the amount of money that they're spending. Most people living paycheck to paycheck. So 25 of your paycheck, that's going to be difficult.

[Rashad Bilal]

I agree.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's difficult.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sacrifice comes. Gotta either pay it in the front or the back.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's true. You gotta have sacrifices. But I think everybody could at least try to start with 10 for sure and then do the lump sums when you have lump sum. So tax return for sure to put at least half of that. Like put half of that. Or if the whole thing into investment. Also, if you have a bonus at the end of the year, try to put that into it. Then try to look to see where you can save money Christmas or not.

[Rashad Bilal]

Go out for two years. I know that seems like a hard sacrifice. That. That helps. Hold on. I'm getting lit. Y' all not having that much fun. Y' all don't be having that much fun. The Miami trips be trapped. I'll be seeing y'. All. Y' all don't be having a blast.

[Ian Dunlap]

No, it's over. Do you. Do you mention like, let's say you sit down with a client. Do you mention bitcoin in this conversation?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Have to.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. But I don't think the average person is not going to go out for two years.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's why they are going to. Can we have a real. I'm tired today. Can we have a real conversation? You either are going to sacrifice to be great now or you're going to be up forever, dog.

[Ian Dunlap]

Forever.

[Rashad Bilal]

For perspective, Trump is still selling while in office.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, he's working, Hustler.

[Rashad Bilal]

He's working regardless what the Democrats think. And y' all shadow government came down. He's in office. You push Trump coin. He sold a $5 million mastermind card. You get a meeting with Ivanka when he's working that hard. Kicked Elon out of office after Elon and Eli. I'm going to take the kids with the baby. My mom in office 7. The richest person on earth that's public is in office. That scares the out of me. But yo, yo, y' all don't be having fun when y' all out.

[Guest Speaker]

I see y'.

[John Hope Bryant]

All.

[Rashad Bilal]

You don't have no money to have no fun. Y' all reclipping the summer clips and take me back. I bet. Sacrifice two years, yo.

[Ian Dunlap]

Two weeks.

[Rashad Bilal]

You go get all that Louie and still don't get no women. No more sacrifice for two years. Come on, man. I'm tired, bro. No sacrifice, please. And then don't call me on the wake up with 17, 000.

[Ian Dunlap]

A hell of a call. Can y' all sacrifice, man?

[Rashad Bilal]

Are we gonna talk about y' all painters too on blackout?

[Ian Dunlap]

They parents painters. Oh, paint you bosky otters. Yeah, we got the. Yeah, we got receipts.

[Rashad Bilal]

I know, but you're right. Most people aren't going to sacrifice not going out. But it's going to be the biggest mistake that you make is not setting down for at least a year.

[Ian Dunlap]

You know what they could the two year thing. I'm with you like that's that's tough. What they could sacrifice though, bro, I'll be honest with you. Eating out, that's. That is something that you can sacrifice.

[John Hope Bryant]

I mean, it's a lot of things that you could say.

[Ian Dunlap]

I'm just like, I look at some of these Uber eats, I'm like, yo, damn. This is, this is, this adds up. So I'm, if I'm doing, I'm sure other people are doing this at this rate. And some people are doing it on more than two or three times a week. You start adding people. But people don't know their budget. They don't know how much they they're making versus how much they're spending a month. But that could be a line item that is just like, all right, this is where we could cut.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay, let me ask you a question, Rashad. What time we go to sleep last night?

[John Hope Bryant]

12:30.

[Rashad Bilal]

What time you wake up?

[John Hope Bryant]

Six. Something like that.

[Rashad Bilal]

See, and you lit waking up late. Y' all just, Y' all was in Connecticut. Where's you at? You in Connecticut speaking. Then you turn around, you at the basketball game, you gotta make a. What's your secret to success? You don't have to take my path, but at some point you gotta sacrifice, Sacrifice. Even in the league, the people who sacrifice and just stayed on that craft, there may be players that are better, but they're outside a whole lot and they're out of the league or not doing as well.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, I will say this when you talking about Christmas. 36% of Americans took out holiday related debt in 2024 season, averaging 1100, almost $1200, up from $11,000 in 2023. Among parents with young children, that rate is 48%. And six figure earners carried the highest average debt of 1500 dollars. According to debt.com 66% of surveyed Americans expected to go into debt this holiday season, compared to 50% in previous year. And then there's a whole bunch of other stats. So I think it's a matter of having discipline to say, okay, I'm gonna put away X amount of money every single month. When I get my tax return, I'm going to dedicate half the whole thing to that. I'm going to cut back on things that I know I can cut back on. Yeah, going out, restaurants, Christmas, that's important.

[Rashad Bilal]

Crazy. Then you get the Van Cleef and she leave for Van Lathing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Christmas, Valentine's Day. All of these things, all of these things are causing financial graduation.

[Rashad Bilal]

Then the vacation. Trying to flex.

[John Hope Bryant]

Clothing.

[Ian Dunlap]

Another one.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And then like the CEO got caught up. Then you paying with. For the extras, the Coldplay tickets. You two can get caught up and then lose half your fortune.

[Ian Dunlap]

Lose it all. Lose half your fortune. Lose your job.

[Rashad Bilal]

Crazy.

[Ian Dunlap]

Lose your family.

[Rashad Bilal]

Y' all contract. Y' all gotta have them that has certain waivers out.

[Ian Dunlap]

They said, nah. Leave of absence, no resign.

[John Hope Bryant]

So, yeah, I think it's a matter of just a variety of different things. But, yeah, cutting back on what you can. Alcohol consumption. That's costly.

[Rashad Bilal]

And I'm just saying this because I have a couple dollars and I don't spend on all the. That I could spend on. I told you two years ago, when Kyrie said, yo, I'm broke. I don't have enough money. Me and Dom looking. Hollywood Hills is eagles and fly. I'm like, how you broke?

[Ian Dunlap]

No, what? Alcohol consumption. And we just had this conversation the other day. The amount of trees that people are smoking. Yo, wait, I'm in the vials. I'm like, yo, bro, this is a lot of smoke in the air.

[Rashad Bilal]

Like a lot of premium.

[Ian Dunlap]

How much are we spending on the daily. How much are we spending on.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. No, not.

[Ian Dunlap]

I'm just saying it. It is expensive.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

It adds up.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah. But the butt app definitely is. Is. That's a major expense. So. Yeah, you gotta look at it. Sneakers. That's.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a major expensive expense that's on my item line. I'm just gonna be honest.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. But go to Ghana. Way cheaper. Arbitrage is more international. I'm seeing a lot of people talking about going to Spain.

[John Hope Bryant]

To Spain?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. Cost of living.

[Ian Dunlap]

So we just saw. Oh, man, I forget her name. She just moved the whole family there. We actually spoke at her event in Puerto Rico. Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

So I'm going. Something going on over there. Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

But at some point, you decide to make you to make the sacrifice early or when you're older. But the. The hard part with that, and we've talked about it last week, even when you get to whatever golden amount that you think is the amount that you need to be okay, they inflate that away. So let's say you wait five or six more years. Maybe there won't be in a video to get you 5 or 600 return. Maybe it's Andrew at that point. But what if Andrew IPOs at 350 a year because of Palantir success. It's not even as many IPOs. It's been a dry IPO market. It's tough.

[Ian Dunlap]

And the ones that are making it through did I mean, like you said, we saw a circle, we saw a core weave. I'm sure Andrew will be in that same line. Open AI. Eventually. Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Taking off.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. BS. Whatever you can afford. 10, 5%.

[Ian Dunlap]

What happened to Stripes?

[Rashad Bilal]

IPO missed the window.

[Ian Dunlap]

Damn.

[Rashad Bilal]

Generation or miss, they had them valued.

[Ian Dunlap]

At over 130 billion. And now timing.

[Rashad Bilal]

A lot. Every. A lot of things in business is time. And that's why I'd be so big on execution. Like, okay, imagine if we tried to wait three years after the idea to do this show. Would it have been a successful. Yes. As successful? Probably not. You got to decide. Okay. You posted the clip of when you were doing broadcasting on early Access, that all that prep helped you for the Steve Harvey interview. You sacrificed in. You could have been at LA Marina and you're having a time.

[Ian Dunlap]

I'm just trying to figure out why my episode didn't make it up there, bro.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's the first I posted.

[Rashad Bilal]

First one.

[Ian Dunlap]

No, that was rift. That was the first interview that I had ever.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sacrifice.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

No, it's facts you gotta sacrifice that's important. The Treasury Secretary has said that he's calling for a review of the entire Federal Reserve System.

[Ian Dunlap]

No, guy, see.

[Rashad Bilal]

You. Whoever you got to call on from the Federal Reserve in St. Louis or wherever, just call and apologize. Listen, a couple names. FDR, FR. Them FRs, Frank Lucas. The FR. That's above my pay grade. All I will say, that's not a opponent that you want to have. It is not fair for anyone who's won against it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Is this. I mean, are they just going to try to force Powell out after they're the ones who appointed them? Is that what. I mean? What are we doing?

[Rashad Bilal]

Maybe we need a reimagining of who the Fed chair is. Yeah, but I think Paul's done a great job. Given all he's had to handle since he's been in. It's a lot that was put on his plate. I don't think there's a playbook. I know Bernanke had a lot to deal with with the financial crisis, but I think we've had evolving enrolling crises since COVID And he's handled them pretty well.

[Guest Speaker]

He's.

[Ian Dunlap]

He's done a phenomenal job, for sure. Yeah, there was. I mean, think about the conditions that he's had to face. You talking about a pandemic. You're talking about a brief recession. Yeah. You're talking about administration change. He's handled all these things. You talked about inflation, stagflation, soft landing. And here we are S P all time high. Like he's, he's managed this pretty well. Now the pressure is on his back because he's not acting fast enough.

[Rashad Bilal]

I mean that's, there's global conditions that you have to factor in when you make those kind of policy decisions. Like I know Trump is a cut first dead measure kind of person. You can't do that when it comes to interest rates. It adjusts entire like the tariff thing halted businesses. And if we look the level where we're at in 2025 is kind of similar to where we were in 2007 and 6 and briefly in 2000 it's like the average for this decade is around 5 and some change. It's not like how we were in the 1980s. Like you can't. And once again from 2000 what, 8 till 2015, the interest rate was at 0.01. You can't have that forever.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, let's talk about two companies that's reporting tomorrow. Capital One and Texas Instruments. How do you, what's the, what's the outlook for that?

[Rashad Bilal]

I really like Capital One. It's say slept on business but the merger with them and Discover has helped them a lot. In April they were at 1414658. They're currently at 218. If they fall to 192.58, that's a place I would like to get in. But I definitely like Capital One a lot. And then Texas Instruments is a classic company that I don't think is talked about enough. Not one of my top 50 companies that I would look to invest in. But I would keep them on the watch list if you are looking for like a safer return, if you will. But I want to be clear, it's not in my top 50. I like the company overall. I just think there's better companies to invest in, especially in that semiconductor space. Unappreciated though.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I like that you said that they're not in your top. Yeah, I mean all semis. And I said that is the number one space. All semis are not the same but equal. They're not creative. But if you look at the returns for Texas Instrument over the, especially since April, like when we had that for sure it hit its all time high. It's, it's not sitting far from it. And so like the thing is again I'm more concerned that people know what Texas Instrument does in terms of semi. So they, they, they control analog semiconductors and so any medical device sensors, voltage regulators, H. Vac radio frequencies. Everything is not gpus and cpu's. Some of these things are for industrial and automation. Right. So like when we talk about auto vehicles actually so sensors inside your cars, this is what Texas Instrument does. It's a, it's a, it's a stable semi.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

Even in inside of SMH they have it at in the top 10. It's number six. Okay, so you got Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, Broadcom, AMD, Applied Materials, Lamb, and then Texas Instruments is right there. And so it's the top six holdings inside of smh.

[Rashad Bilal]

Are they like the stable coin of the semiconductor space?

[Ian Dunlap]

It feels like it. I feel like when we grew up with the only thing we knew Texas Instruments for was for calculators.

[Rashad Bilal]

The calculator.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, that was it. And it was the fact that they were a company that was publicly traded was like oh yeah, really?

[Guest Speaker]

The calculator company.

[Ian Dunlap]

And then you realize more and more what they're doing, where the revenue comes from. Yeah, but it is one of those, I guess it would fit in the stable solid company.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Semiconductor.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I like that.

[Rashad Bilal]

In 2015 the stock was at the lowest 43.49 currently at 215.79. For the tech space they kind of under delivered in returns but like you said it's more of a stable investment. But great, great organization and great management. I just don't think that they are talked about in that ilk of AMD. Nvidia.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Broadcom, TSM. So like over five years they've given 59 return, the sector's given 600. Like they've underperformed. But if you're looking for stability, very little drawdown, reliable returns, that's a good company to invest in, but it's not in my top 50.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah. Should I run down some of the companies that are going to be reporting this week?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right, let's do that. Let's do that. So Coca Cola will be reporting before opening tomorrow. RTX we've been talking about in terms of defense AI and defense tech killing RTX is amazing. We just talked about Texas Instrument. Big week. Tesla. Tesla's be reporting on Wednesday after close. Google, ServiceNow, IBM, Chipotle, GE, Vernova. When we talked about who's creating the energy for the data center economy, those are one of the companies that you should know. So we'll be seeing what they are doing.

[Rashad Bilal]

They're on fire.

[Ian Dunlap]

We got Thursday, Ian's favorite, Intel.

[Rashad Bilal]

I hope they have a good quarter, I really do.

[Ian Dunlap]

We'll be reporting American Airlines, we got Honeywell as well on there. And then on Friday, anything huge? Well, charter, charter communications.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay.

[Ian Dunlap]

We'll be reporting. So this is kind of that, that kickoff to the Mag 7 and I know there's a new acronym that's been going around, but the Max 7 kickoff with Google starting this week happens and then the next week we'll start with the Microsofts and Apples of the world, Amazon as well.

[Rashad Bilal]

What do you think of Jim Kramer's Park Palantir app loving Robin Hood Coinbase.

[Ian Dunlap]

We, you know, we, we talked about companies I think maybe in early January that have just had great returns in 2024. App Lovin was part of that. They took a hit and now they're starting to rebound. I'm, I like the acronym.

[John Hope Bryant]

I like acronym.

[Rashad Bilal]

Solid.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's a solid. Yeah. Robin Hood cross over 100. We already know about Palantir.

[Rashad Bilal]

Good lead. Yep. It depends on allocation too. Percentage allocation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

All right. Monitor the situation. Okay. We have our guest here that's about to join us. Let's, let's get to it. All right, guys, we have a special guest that has joined us, John Hope Bryant, friend of the show, legend in the game. And we had a big announcement for Invest Fest, but we're going to talk about that a little later first, you know, anytime that we get John on market Mondays, it's always an honor and a pleasure. So.

[Rashad Bilal]

Absolutely.

[John Hope Bryant]

There's a lot going on in the world. So I think it'd be appropriate if we asked him a few questions, get some insight on how, how he's seeing things, if that's okay. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.

[Guest Speaker]

My honor. And kudos to you. As I said to you offline, kudos to both of you for going to the motherland, to Africa. I've got Mandela's prison number right here. I wear it every day. And going to China thereafter, you got to go to know you have to go there and all that stuff. I'm sure that once you went there, your mind was like, okay, this is a whole nother thing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Very, very eye opening experience. For sure. For sure. Well, okay, so the question I have to ask you is that we've talked about this a lot, but for entrepreneurs, specifically in our community, right. AI technology is, is, is disruptive. Right. And a lot of people are scared and nervous, but it's also created, it's creating a lot of opportunities as well. How do you think entrepreneurs should be using artificial intelligence right now in 2025?

[Guest Speaker]

Like breathing somewhere below. God Parallel to your most important love, relationships, consistent with breathing, wellness in your body. Well above entertainment, well above what you like or what you don't like. It is essential. This is Van Jones, who you should have on your show is very underrated.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, Friend of the show.

[Guest Speaker]

Okay, good. But people don't understand Van Jones. Van Jones is a genius and they see him on cnn, but they don't understand his brain. And Jeff Bezos didn't give him $100 million because he had nothing else to do with his money. I just saw Jeff last week actually with Van. But a lot of the guys you were talking about before, I just saw, we just saw him last week. Van says is for basically intelligence. And I agree with him. God, the supreme intelligence, nature, biology, artificial intelligence. These are not. This is not some new technology. This is not the Internet, you know, this is not some app. This is not, you know, going from cassette tapes to DVD keys. This is not Blockbuster to Netflix. This is the closest I can give. The closest analogy I can give is it took 60 years to go from the horse and buggy to the automobile. And it was, you know, horse centric to automobile century or animal centric to machinery. Now you better go from labor to technology not in 60 years, but in six. And we're already one year into it. By 2030, you won't recognize the world we're living in. And it's already happening. Go to CVS, go to Walgreens, go to the grocery store. Five years ago it was 10 people on the checkout line and there was a test thing called self checkout. Now you go to the same place and it's 10 self checkout. One person trying to make sure you're not stealing. Sorry, oversight, sorry. Customer service and the checkout lanes for humans are basically shut down. You go to a fast food restaurant and by the way, we don't get credit for that drive through window, which it indirectly came from us because we in, I mean Uber and Lyft really, one could argue, came from black taxis in the 50s when Dr. King in the 60s would shut down an economy and tell people, get off the bus because you couldn't sit in the front. They had our own series of black taxi drivers. My man knows the story where we just transported ourselves around with private automobiles. That is, that's Uber and Lyft did, by the way. But anyway, the, the drive thru windows, we had to go through the side window in the back to get the food. I can't prove it. We certainly get the patent. But one could argue that, that is a legacy of us. Anyway, these fast food restaurants, you go to them, used to be 20 people there, 10 people there, eight people working in there. Now it's three. Right. And is it robotics and you? I was in Amsterdam going somewhere three months ago. And you know, you go to our, you go to Atlanta Airport and you got too many of us with a high school education and a phone and a smartphone being used as a dumb phone. And we're sitting in the corner where the, where the wheelchair drop. You know, you push the wheelchair and they're sitting in the corner between wheelchair pushers doing this, scrolling their phone on entertainment that you're whistling past the graveyard. Your job is, your job is dead. You just don't know it. I mean, I'm in Amsterdam. Come right next to me. A human voice. Excuse me. I turn around, there's nobody there. I look down, it's a wheelchair. The wheelchair comes past me, just drops somebody off at a gate, comes back to the self parking area for automated wheelchairs, pulls itself in and waits for the next person and says, can I help you? What gate would you like to go to? No humans. This is now within, within five years, by 2030, you can have 300 million virtual humanoid robots. Which means you're on the phone with them and you can't tell that it's not the earn your leisure guys. You can't tell. And with, within 20 years, and I think they'll do it faster, you're going to have 300 million humanoid robots. Did you hear me walking amongst you? 300 million, 300 million humanoid robots. I mean this, this, there's so much, there's so many directions we can go with this. Like I probably shouldn't be saying this.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

But like there's certain trades, certain human trades that just might go away. I'll let you figure out what I'm saying.

[Ian Dunlap]

I mean what you're talking about is the urgency. That's kind of the work that we've been doing. I know that's the work you've been doing is trying to express the am of urgency about this time from an investing standpoint, but from an innovation standpoint, I think the root of it, and maybe we can start there, is the education point. Right. Like when we talk about other parts of the world in the educational process around this space, around agentic AI, around artificial intelligence is far superior to what we're doing here. How do we get, how do we change that? Like where do we start with the educational part for the youth and obviously for a Lot of the adults. Because even the adults our age have no clue.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, they know. Chad.

[Ian Dunlap]

BBC. That's it.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah. So by the way, I'm co chair of the AI Ethics Council which I know you know that but the audience may not with Sam Altman who I believe is the Steve Jobs of this generation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

I made sure to put all the HBCU presidents here on the on that board along with Dr. King's daughter Bernice King. Ambassador Andrew Young in 93 is on it by the way. He's interested in AI. Van Jones is on it. Reid Hoffman is on it. And so we just launched the AI LP3 last week in Atlanta with Georgia State University. All HBCUs. Atlanta Public Schools. Mayor Dickens really cultivating a pipeline of prosperity of AI talent from kindergarten, sorry from middle school, high school and college. Precisely because what you're talking about and it's best I can tell it's the only model like that in the country. Press release just issued this morning if you want to read about it. We had 50 kids. I think this will be 500 kids within two years or 5,000 kids. And every city I think will be doing this. Here's the good news. China's good at copying stuff, not at innovating it from scratch. The greater copying. This is going to be a technology that in the short term copying is a cheat sheet which as you so China has has moved ahead in that regard. Last late last year there were four months behind us. So I'm sure they've caught up. But what's going to happen is you're gonna have a disruption of jobs about if you're have a 30 efficiency ratio the first thing's going to happen is costs are going to come out of the capitalist system. Free enterprises, removal of cost. Nobody knows figuring out how to make money. They know they're figuring out how to reduce costs. That's you and me. But it's not just you and me. Not just you black people now it's professionals. Lawyers, accountants, assurance professionals. Anything can be processed. Mortgage professionals. It's gone. Now the problem is that there's a new new iteration of jobs coming. But it's. But my guess is going to be a three year lag between the old jobs and the new plan for new jobs. They should be by the way a government shouldn't be destroying the part of education. They should be retooling it for financial literacy and AI literacy at scale like the new Marshall Plan. All right. Because that's what happened after World War II. A Marshall Plan which A mortgage for a new home, a trade for a new job, as much education shoved down your throat. For at that point, people were 99 Caucasian coming back from the military. Even though we were there, they didn't get the benefits they need. Now all of us, our white rural brothers and sisters are in the same spot that we're in, by the way. White professionals are in the same spot that we're in. But we have a creativity. When, as you know, black folks, when we say something's cool, it's cool in Taipei, it's cool in Taiwan, it's cool in North Korea, when we say it's a dud, it's a dud in Russia. We just need to go from creativity in, in, in cool and culture to capitalism and commerce. This is what we have to master now. And if we bring our creativity to this, because the playing field is now level. 99 of black folks don't know a thing about AI, but 99 of white folks don't know a thing about A.I. either.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right?

[Guest Speaker]

It's mutual opportunity, discrimination and everything. Please audience, hear me when I say this. Everything's about to be remade. This chair AI and chairs AI and the mic that my brother's using, AI and graphics manufacturing behind you AI and T shirt manufacturing. Like literally AI and NBA sports AI in sports AI, Literally everything's gonna be remade. So we have an opportunity on a level playing field to do two things. One, to go into artificial intelligence using our innovation, our creativity, our ability to, the ability to, to AI is not going to replace your job. You're going to be placed, replaced by somebody who understands how to control and run AI. If you can control and run AI, by the way, you don't need a four year education for this. You'll need a two year education for this. I don't know what's going to four year colleges. It's a whole nother conversation. Yeah, you can do this in a two week, not block. Okay, four week, four months, certainly one year certification by the way. Coding gone.

[Rashad Bilal]

They don't want to hear it, but yep, gone.

[Guest Speaker]

Right? We were talking about, and I loved, I love, you know, you know all the coding discussion and I had a coding lab, but AI does it for you. So we, with our creativity and our, our post in our, in our, in our cultural progressiveness can get on the back end of AI, get skilled in this really quickly and become thought leaders, cultural leaders, product leaders, brand leaders, post leaders, business leaders. Now you combine that with the hundred trillion dollars of wealth is going to transfer the next 10 years. In fact, you've got more people over 65 than under age 18. And those under 18 look like you and me. And those over 65 look like are my white brothers and sisters who are all trying to go play golf at the same time. And 15 trillion of that hundred trillion dollar wealth transfer over the next 10 years are businesses. So the. Am I going too fast?

[Rashad Bilal]

No, you're doing great.

[Ian Dunlap]

Keep cooking.

[Guest Speaker]

So, so the inheritance was going to go the stocks, the bonds, the cash, the houses, the. That's going to go to wives, husbands, children, nieces, nephews. They don't want the businesses. Businesses. It's too much work.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

You have $15 trillion worth. Please, audience, please hear me. You have $15 trillion worth of stable, successful. Nothing wrong with them businesses. They have cash flows, they have real estate, they got client lists. So. And now let's go from high tech now to just no tech. Because by the way, you can't AI plumbers, you can't electrician.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

There are trades that we can master that are going to be in an enormous supply. You need 50, 000 plumbers a year today. That's there's a deficit. It's about same for electricians. So if we take the trades plus we take the trade, we go and buy these businesses. Now this is a low tech solution. Go to Booby, ubi Iowa. Go to, I don't know, Tulsa, Oklahoma. It doesn't matter where it is. Find the biggest dentist franchise in, in Tulsa, I mean Cincinnati. It doesn't matter where it is. Find the biggest plumbing. The, you know, oh, you're in, you gotta go, you gotta go to Joe's Plumbing. Oh yeah. You can only go to this dentist. They have three, three, six, eight offices. Go in there. That guy or that lady is 60 years old, 65. Hang around them, become their friend. They have no place, no. They've got no succession plan. Buy that business from them. They might do it in part for seller financing. You got stocks, you got, you got real estate, you got cash flow, you have a customer list. Why are we buying, why are we starting a pizza tray, a pizza restaurant with a $50,000 GoFundMe campaign with a 78% possible failure rate as a startup. When you can go buy a 5 or 10 million dollar business that's proven to be successful, that has assets and by the way, Wall street will finance the majority of that for you and non recourse financing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, can you. All right, let's break. Can you talk about seller financing? Can you talk about non Recourse finance. Like explain that to the audience if you can.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, so some people heard that I sold, I sold the Promise Homes company two years ago, Christmas Eve, yes, I work on Christmas Eve. And I sold it for $121 million. And then immediately I became a partner in the new joint venture. I'm trying to get out of that now, but I came a part of the new joint venture that bought the company and we got a 200 million dollar facility from bearings which is an institutional provider. I'm told it's one of the largest facility, non entertainment, non publicly traded in the country. That's non recourse debt. I didn't guarantee it. The $100 million that came after that from Citigroup, non recourse debt, no guarantee. So once you get to a point where you're doing instant. So if you're buying a small, if you're buying one small nail salon, it's, it's a personal guarantee. If you're doing a mortgage on your house, it's a personal guarantee. The house that I'm in now, it's in the llc, but I had to personally guarantee it, it's my personal home. So if you're doing something small and boutique, it's personal, you're going to have to sign a personal guarantee. But if you do something that has institutional pedigree to it. I own 700 homes, owned 700 homes, I still own part of it that was institutional. And as a result of that I was able to access lower cost institutional debt where they're banking on the cash flows for the business. It's secured by the assets of the enterprise, which in this case was the homes. All the equity was more than sufficient. So I, you know, when I get into details, let's just say I had double the equity for the debt that I was procuring. But even 70 would work in this example we're giving here. And, and I was selling the company below market rate. In this particular example. This would also relate to the dentist office and all the stuff that you're buying from because you'll probably get, if it's worth 2 million, they'll probably sell you for a million. 8 if it's worth 5 million and they're going to sell it to you for a multiple of, of cash flow, a multiple of cash flow or multiple of profits. That's how you calculate what, what it's worth. And if you go to a bank or you go to a Wall street firm like private equity firm or a family office, let me Know if I need to break that down, if it's a big enough transaction. Seven, eight figures. Mid seven, mid seven figures, you know, like $5 million, $8 million, $10 million. And you've got a franchise of whatever it is in that city and it's been busy, been going for five or 10 years successfully. You can probably access institutional non recourse debt, which means essentially no personal guarantee. If it goes sideways, they don't come after you personally. They're not coming after your house. Did I explain that? Okay?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes. For the average person listening tonight that may not have those relationships. Can you talk about how you talk to us? Like with your sons or daughters, though for those who are watching, this is.

[Guest Speaker]

How I talk to my sons and my daughter. But go ahead.

[Rashad Bilal]

How do you.

[Guest Speaker]

Real quick, real quick. Mike Maples. Who you wouldn't know that name. He's on my board. He's a venture capitalist, one of top 20 in the country. He's in Silicon Valley. Do this real quick. His dad was. Worked for Microsoft. So I asked him, how'd you get into this thing? What am I, you know? Tell me about your family. Oh, my dad worked for Microsoft. What did he do? Oh, he worked with Bill Gates. Well, let everybody technically work for Bill Gates. Well, he ran products. You mean he was the president of products? Yes, I'm doing this real quick. I said, okay, so your dad was like a baller in Microsoft? Yes, Mike Maple Senior. Okay. He had a business. He was 10 years old. He sold a candy or whatever it was. And he, and he said, daddy, Daddy, Daddy. I'm. I'm selling this company to Joe Blow. To Disney. I'm selling this company to Disney. Aren't you excited? And the father said, I'm very disappointed in you. We don't do that in our household. We don't think like that in this household. I didn't raise you to build a company to sell to Disney. I raised you to build a company to buy Disney. So this is how we should be talking to our children. This is how should we be talking to our mates, our friends, our partners with a level of sophistication and, and helping people to bring their frequency. Elevate the elevate. Because we can do it where the rules are published and the playing field is level. We kill it. Which is why I love what you guys do. But you gotta go from the streets to the suites in this conversation.

[Rashad Bilal]

So.

[Guest Speaker]

So now I will translate though. Talk. You said you're about to say talk to me. Talk to the audience. Like I Would talk to my son, daughter, nephew about what? Because I.

[Rashad Bilal]

About how to build these institutional relationships if they don't have them.

[Guest Speaker]

First thing you gotta do is get your credit score up to 700. Otherwise you can't even. It's like somebody going to lunch with you and saying they want to do a 5 million dollar deal but they can't pay for the 50 lunch. I can't tell you many times I've had people broke, people come to me talking about they have a 5 million dollar or 5 billion dollar line of credit from, excuse me, China or Russia or someplace they get from China. I'm like come on, knock this up. That I said if you had a 5 billion dollar or five 100 million dollar line of credit, do you really think you'd be talking to me at lunch? Don't you think that JB Morgan Chase would have that? Don't you think the Wells Fargo would have that? KKR would have that? Some investment banker would get that deal? Why are you so special? It's because it's a scam, right? So, and it, and it unravels. So first of all, get your credit score up so you're. So you actually can walk the talk. If you can't do a fifty thousand dollar deal. Don't be trying to talk about a five million dollar deal. Knock it off. So get your credit score up to 700. The average credit score for black folks is 620 across the country. I've done that through our Hope Financial Wellness index. You put your zip code in, I'll tell you your credit score wherever you live. Get your credit score up, get your vibration up. Go to the, don't go to the local bank branch. Find the regional credit officer for the bank. Don't, don't go to a money center bank. Go to a regional bank or community bank. That's. That has a billion. 2 billion in assets. 5 billion in assets. But you can still get to the chief credit officer. You still get to the chief lending officer. If you can get a no, why would you want to get a no from the branch manager? No disrespect intended from the branch manager. If I'm gonna get a no, I want to know from a boss. So, so I'm gonna go find. We're great at storytelling. Go find who the chief lending officer. Chief credit officer is these people who make credit decisions. At a mid sized bank, midsize is something with a B on top of it. Billion in assets. It's not very big for a bank but you can you can still access these people. Their email is on their website in most cases. Send them an email. Don't be crazy. Send an email. Hey, I'd like to buy a business in town. I. I've read your resume, your background. You seem like a very interesting person. I'd love to meet you. Here's a little bit about me. We're great storyteller. Most people will give you 15 minutes. So either do it virtually. Do it in person. Build a report. Don't go in there and ask for a transaction. Don't go in there bragging about yourself. Don't go there with it. Don't go there with your hand. Go there and find something personal about that person. Look at their, look at the photos behind their desk. Ask them about their wife, their husband, about them. No one asks them about them. Build a personal rapport, a warmth. And before the end of that meeting, that person will say, hey, hey. By the way, thank you. This has been a great meeting. What were you here for? What do you need? What do you need? Now the door is open and you say, well, actually, thanks for asking. I really enjoyed meeting you, by the way. You got to be authentic about this. Can't be a game. I really enjoy meeting you. Yes. In addition to that, I'm trying to buy the dentist office or whatever. Okay, well, let's get you with somebody. Now that's changed everything because this person's job is to say yes. The person in the. The branch manager. I'm not picking the person in middle underwriting, middle management at a, at a corporation or a bank or a lender. Their job is to say no. Why? They don't get fired with saying no. They get fired saying yes or the wrong thing. So the answer is no. You need to go to somebody whose business it is to say yes. That's a C suite executive. I'm just doing this quick because we don't have a lot of time. So you go to because. Because again, I want to get a no. I get to know from the top. So relationship capital is everything. Why does somebody go to Harvard? Because Harvard's gonna make you three times more smart as a state university. No, it's because the class of 2025 at Harvard is going to hook each other up for the next 50 years. Yeah, that's why you go to Harvard. Country clubs, fraternity sororities, universities. It's a club. I can't, you know, I can't mention where I was last week, but that's a club. You guys probably know what I'm Talking about it was an Idaho milking conference. It's a club. Clinton Global Initiative. It's a club. You want to be part of that club? If you want to. You want a relationship capital because they're going to hook up their friends. If you see a white, if you see a board of directors with all white 65 year old men, don't, don't assume that's, that's racism. It might be discrimination. Discrimination is I'm discriminating against you to do something else. But if I grew up with these guys and went to college with them, we chased girls together and we lied together, whatever, in school. And I need to hire somebody who's a treasurer. I'm the chief financial officer. I need a treasurer. And I got three applications on my desk. One's black, eminently experienced. One's a white woman. Emily qualified. And then the, the third one's a white dude I went to college with who chased women. And he, and he, and he didn't tell me when I, when I cheated on a test. Which one gets higher? This is a white male. Now in this example, the third. Yeah, that's discrimination. It's not racism, by the way. That's the way the world works. You have a barbecue, you invite black people to your barbecue. Are you, are you racist? No. Are you discriminating a little bit. That means your friends. So you're, you're doing what's comfortable with you. We got to break up the comfort and insert us. That's why I loved you guys going to China and Africa. I've been to 100 countries. You don't go. You can't know. So this AI thing and this capital markets thing and the financial literacy thing, which I believe is a civil rights issue of this generation. Financial literacy and AI literacy is everything. 100%. These pieces plus relationship capital can transform black America in five years. This is the third reconstruction we're in right now, in my opinion.

[John Hope Bryant]

So. Okay, so with that being said, okay, well, let me ask you this because I never really asked you about real estate. You, you, like you said, do you still own those properties? Or you said that you, you've offloaded them.

[Guest Speaker]

So I, so I, I was a 100 owner, okay, of the problem. I built it from zero to $150 million. I was 100 owner. I paid off $88 million of debt and equity. Christmas Eve 2021, I owned 38 of the new joint venture. I was the largest shareholder after I sold. So I sold it for less than it was worth. It was worth 150. Sold it for 121. I was a 38, owner of the new joint venture. But I know. I realized very quickly I'm a control freak. I didn't have control of the new entity. And so I was chairman or whatever. I resigned as chairman and, you know, graciously. And I've decided. I decided to let them do their thing because that's just not the way a camel's a horse designed by committee, and I don't do committees very well. And I have a very distinct view of how I want to do something. So God bless them and wish them well, and I have an interest in their success. Right. If they succeed. But I no longer control the enterprise, by the way. Businesses are meant to be grown and sold. And sold.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

You want. You want to look. You want a liquidity moment, you want to monetize it. Right. So I did that, and I. What they call clip my coupon on Wall Street. Right. And I did that $100 million plus deal. $200 million of finance, blah, blah, blah. So I'm still a. But now. Now what's called an lp. You guys know I'm a limited partner.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

I'm no longer the general partner. I'm. So I got to go along with whatever happens. But it's not personal, by the way. How can I be mad? I sold the cup. I made it, I built it, I succeeded. I fulfilled my mission in phase one. I sold it. So now I'm gonna go do something else. I can't announce it yet, but I can tell you that what will happen next will start larger than what I finished Promise Homes with, so that this will be institutional. This was boutique. So I started a small business, essentially got it to a point where I really couldn't grow it anymore by myself. And now I'm going to do something that's institutional in nature that will allow me to hopefully go it. You know, get it to a billion dollars of assets pretty quickly and help more of our people. One of the reasons I love what I was doing at Promise Homes when I controlled it was 50% of the. Of the vendors were black, brown, and women. So, I mean, I got to do plumbing, heating, landscaping, roofing, lighting, painting. I got to do that anyway. But if I'm a person of. If I'm a person of color, guess who I'd be more sensitive to? Okay. People of color. But if you're white and you're in a. It's not a racist comment. If you're Caucasian and you don't know any black people. And you're in a. You own this and you're on Wall Street. You're behind a computer screen. You got no context or sense of responsibility about the community.

[Rashad Bilal]

You're trying to hit your community.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, there you go. What he just said. He just. See, he just ended my sentence. Because it's just common sense, right? So I had to learn to take emotions and personal out of business. It was a big. That was a big lesson. It's not personal. Capitalism is a gladiator sport. And we. It's not like we did this and failed, gentlemen. No one ever gave us a memo. That was my fourth or fifth book. No one ever gave us a memo on how this stuff works. This is what gets me so excited about what you're doing and what I'm trying to do. And what I think is a new movement from the streets to the suites, from civil rights to civil rights. Is. I think this is now our time to. I'm gonna say something controversial here. Finally give black people a black Jewish business plan.

[Rashad Bilal]

I've been watching for a long time, brother, but it feels like the last two years like you're on a mission to get these lessons out. I want to ask what's driving you and also see that. That bookshelf behind you. What are like five books that have had the most impact on you that you can share with our audience tonight?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, you know, I'm gonna say mention my own books. I mean, otherwise, of course. Yeah. So Ancient Literacy for all is the bestseller for the last 18 months. And, you know, not black history, not black. What it just economics. Because I believe we can succeed on the main stage. So look, may surprise you. The books I'm gonna recommend. The Road Less Travel by Scott Peck. That's 40 years old. Mere Christianity by C. S Lewis. That's 1940s. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. Yeah. 70 pages. Everybody can read it. You can read it like that or listen to it. The people of the. The power. The power of Now, I believe is.

[Rashad Bilal]

Called by Eckhart Tolle toe. Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

Don't listen to it. It'll drive you crazy. You want to shoot them.

[Ian Dunlap]

But.

[Guest Speaker]

But, but read it as a big book. But it's worth the read. So none of these are money. None of these are business books. So we're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. The word capital comes from the Latin root word capitas. Knowledge in the head. Books. What did Chris Rock said on the Greenholm Bring home the pain. You want to make sure that you don't get robbed, Put your money in your books. Because some folks don't read. I won't say what he said, right? Nobody's gonna go in there and steal your books, right? They'll still not your books. Put your money and your jewelry in a book, carve out the book and put your stuff in the book. No one would ever touch it. No one's ever touched these books with me. So I just believe that we're looking for love in all the wrong places. If you're looking at banking, it's a trust business, not a money business. You're looking the word credit, it comes from the Latin word credito, which means credibility. And capital comes from copy toss, knowledge in the head. So here you go. Capital, knowledge, credit, credibility, banking, trust. So why are we. Why are we obsessing about. I want to get this bag, I want to get this $1, get this cash, I want to get this. That's that short term, all it is, is trading. All money is. All currency is bitcoin. It don't matter. You're just trading forms of payment. I could write a check on your T shirt with a routing number and the checking account number in my signature and take that T shirt to the bank and challenge them not to cash it. But you build wealth in your sleep, which includes knowledge, stock, bonds, homeownership, real estate, businesses that compound. You make money during the day. It's called making a living. You build wealth in your sleep. So I'm on a tear now because I think that we're at a tipping point and we've already missed one mark. I think reconstruction started the third one, 2020. It was pandemic, which caused everybody to slow down and look at tv. George Floyd's murder. Without the pandemic, folks would not be looking at George Floyd getting murdered on TV. That was God to me. So then came a €400 social justice reckoning of black America. A hundred billion dollars flowed from corporate America to black people. I don't think we were ready. We missed the mark.

[Rashad Bilal]

Why do you say we weren't ready?

[Guest Speaker]

Because we. We didn't have the business plan. We didn't have the strategic plan.

[Rashad Bilal]

Infrastructure.

[Guest Speaker]

We have the infrastructure. We didn't have the credit. We now have the access. We didn't know who to call. We knew who to protest. We didn't know who to partner with. All right? And we, we, the folks, issued a press release who called the folks with the press, who called the people who Issued the press release and said, here's my business plan. I'm talking to these people. I'm telling you, they, they got a free, they got a free whatever. We, they issued the press release and no one ever called most of them with a solution. Now, charity was a very small part of that. A lot of that was mortgages, business loans, things like that. And I've already told you, the average credit score for Black people is 620 is the lowest of the country. So is somebody being racist when they don't give you credit, or are they just making a good credit decision? If you're a 500 credit score, I'm not giving you a loan at 500 credit score.

[Ian Dunlap]

You.

[Guest Speaker]

I'm not. I love you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, we, we do have to address the systemic issues, like, because I don't want them to, you know, the systemic pressures that have caused it though, as well.

[Guest Speaker]

Which, which thing, which, which thing are.

[Rashad Bilal]

We talking about the credit?

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, without question. I've already said racism is real. Look, redlining was real. That was the fha. We didn't get the GI Bill. We, we didn't, you know, we didn't get the Homestead act. That was 270 million acres, 10 of all American land. I'm not denying the story. I'm saying today if your credit score is 500, you don't pay your bill.

[Ian Dunlap]

Straight up.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

Did I miss something at this point?

[Guest Speaker]

Pookie. Hey, Pookie didn't pay. You pay your car. No, don't. Don't be chasing the, the, the tow truck down the street, calling and cursing them, cursing them out. Did you make, are you four months behind or not?

[Rashad Bilal]

It's hard to be at 500 these days. I'm not.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I mean.

[Guest Speaker]

You look at the neighbors that we care about. We drive by this every day. We normalize it. Listen, check casher next to a payday loan lender next to a rental owned store next to a title lender next to a liquor store, next to a pawn shop. That's a 500 credit score neighborhood. And it's 15 minutes away from a 700 credit score neighborhood. By the way, Lincoln Park, 700 credit score, I think in Chicago, Garfield Park, 500 credit score neighborhood, 15 minutes apart.

[Rashad Bilal]

13 minutes. Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

I mean, Atlanta, I can do the same thing. Louisiana could do the same thing. You, you tell me the city, 15 minutes apart, you live 20 year longer life. Gentlemen, 15 minutes apart, you live at 61 years of age. You don't even get the Social Security in the hood. The hood d A hyphen, H, O D.

[Ian Dunlap]

Not to be confused.

[Guest Speaker]

Huh?

[Ian Dunlap]

I said not to be confused with the hood.

[Guest Speaker]

81 years of age, 15 minutes away. Because the credit score, it's not about the credit scores. The trending indicators of hope, well, being, belief, confidence, joy, optimism, whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't. You're right. I can't guarantee you that being positive is going to make you a success, but I absolutely guarantee you that being negative is going to make you fail. So when they have us depressed, distressed, pissed off, frustrated, upset and anger, they won. So. So, yeah, racism is real. But did you pay them? Did you pay the car note or not?

[Ian Dunlap]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

Am I missing something?

[Rashad Bilal]

You're right.

[Guest Speaker]

So you say, what piece of it? Oh, banks were racist. No, that was in 1920-1920-1930-1940, 1950. The family owned the bank. And yes, the family was racist. Look, now I own the bank. I own stock in Wells Fargo, bank of America, Citigroup, I own all these. This are publicly traded companies. You know what they want good law. They want loans that pay back. They don't care what color you are unless you produce some green. So, so I, I, I, I got so passionate, I missed the dang on question you're asking. I think we got the point.

[Rashad Bilal]

I think we got the point, though. The mission, the mission that you've been on.

[John Hope Bryant]

We got the point.

[Guest Speaker]

Yo, I think, I just think that, like, I just got to a point where I'm like, look, I don't care whether you like me. I like me. I'd rather you respect me and learn to like me than like me. Never respect me. I would feel horrible if I, if, if I didn't give everything I could to try to make sure we didn't miss this next moment. So look, look, when I say that I missed, we missed the moment. I gave you half the story. What? What? What? One of the worst things that this administration is doing, in my opinion, economically, is this tariff strategy and the immigration strategy is you're going to be, you'll see a lowering of gdp. It's not my opinion, it's math.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. I think they're winning the battle and losing the war. Conversely, I think that Democrats saying defund the police was stupid. If, if, if my mother is getting knocked over the head in on the south side of Chicago, you know who I'm calling? The police.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, I think, I think, I think the defund the police thing, to play God's advocate here, I think that was to say, like, we've militarized our police to a point where we spend more money on policing than any country in the, in the world. Right. Like the police. Oh, they're okay. Let's spend some money on community centers. Let's spend some money on prevention as opposed to reaction.

[Guest Speaker]

I can't believe I'm saying this to you because you're a marketing genius. I can't believe I'm saying this to you. But you know, have a success in life is marketing and messaging.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's a fact.

[Guest Speaker]

So the only problem with what you just said is that you're rational. People don't really. People markets don't respond to just facts. It's sentiment.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

On the show it's sentiment.

[John Hope Bryant]

And narrative. And narratives.

[Guest Speaker]

Cryptocurrency is sentiment.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

Now bitcoin's locking in. But a lot of these things, which is, I mean, crazy stuff. It's. It's emotions. And so Dr. King was not just a brilliant preacher, he was a brilliant marketer. He wouldn't, he wouldn't march below before 10 or after 3pm because he needed the media not be pissed off. They're getting up early and they needed to get that film to New York City before 6 o' clock news. He was a brilliant marketer. You know how to frame the issue. And he was. And he and the Marshalls had a beginning, a middle and an end. And, and he actually wanted the pro. He wanted the white folks to win just like he wanted black folks to win. You cannot have a situation where it's win, lose, not win, win. So yes, I agree with you about militarism all. But you know what? No police jacking me up at my house. In fact, when I hold a party, the police are stopping. Stop directing traffic outside my house at my request. They couldn't, they couldn't be kinder.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, you're also, you're also.

[Rashad Bilal]

You're also in a place of privilege.

[John Hope Bryant]

You're a very wealthy.

[Guest Speaker]

That's exactly my point. You're very wealthy. I'm trying to get us to a place of privilege. When you're in the hood. D a hyphen H O O D is exactly what you just said. I'm trying to get. I'm trying to transform the hood to the community. Do you know what an inner city is in Paris? I'm sorry, I just gave it away. In France, it's Paris. An inner city in the UK is called London. And you're seeing the. In Turkey is called Istanbul. And we have gold mines. Our inner city are gold mines. But, but we own 44 of homes. Black people on 44 of homes compared to 75 of our mainstream counterparts. Just buy the dang on house. Stop renting uptown people with money. You don't have to impress people. You don't know about stuff that don't matter in a place that don't want you. Buy hood adjacent. Buy it, rent it, buy it, rehab it and rent it. Buy it, rehab it and live in it. Build wealth in your own community. Then hire the lawyer. Not hire the lawyer, hire the, the, the title company. But hire the, the, the, the maintenance companies and start creating an economic engine in our own communities. And then all of a sudden start demanding as a homeowner that police start doing policing versus versus something else they're doing, which is, you know, praying or whatever it is. I agree with your analogy completely, by the way. Poor whites have the same analogy. The five critical neighborhood I just told you about poor blacks. So it's equal opportunity jacked up. Now what we. So what I'm saying is that when we say, when we said defund the police, folks already have an opinion about us. It's not good. Markets already have an opinion about us. It's not positive. So when we say that, it's signaling a sentiment. What we have got to do is surprise people and say, not just black lives matter, black capitalists matter. We got to become capitalists at scale. We've got to become stakeholders. We have got. This country is. This country is center slightly right. I hate to, I hate to break this to people. This is a capitalist democracy. And even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you got to first collect it like a capitalist.

[Rashad Bilal]

Capitalist. Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

The people running around talking about socialism are worth millions of dollars. I hate to break it to you, I don't want to name names, but I can. I know their net worth. They're not nobody. They're not giving their paycheck to the poor. They're not living in a tent. Chanel purses, town car services, car notes, mortgages. The people telling you not to own.

[Rashad Bilal]

A home owner, quite a few of them.

[Guest Speaker]

So I got to a point where I'm like, I'm gonna tell the truth. Like it, don't like it. I don't really care. I'm a free agent.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, let's talk about that before you leave because, you know, we do need to create more entrepreneurs and definitely appreciate you coming on, But Invest Fest 2025 a few weeks away and we met in New York, actually was in New York for the time dinner And I was saying that, you know, we definitely need you this year for Invest Fest. And you kind of said like, okay, I'll come if you, but I want it to be impactful. I'm paraphrasing. Not just like, you know, sit on a panel and have a fireside chat. So we thought about something that we thought was impactful and we got to your team. So. And you guys like that idea. So what we're gonna do at Invest Fest, this is the first time we're announcing it, is that you have a, you have a. It's, it's like a mentorship program that's valued at $25,000, I believe. Correct. And it comes with eight weeks small business development training. It comes with one on one financial coaching. It comes with access to master masterclass webinar. It comes with access to capital. It comes with mentorship. It comes with business plan development, Shopify E Commerce platform and tech support. So pretty much it's like a business incubator of sorts, right. To get, to get an entrepreneur to get a business to that next level. And like I said, the value is 25, 000. I think it's probably even worth more than that if it was on just the free market. Okay. So what we're going to do is that we're going to have a competition. So at Invest Fest, by the way.

[Guest Speaker]

It also comes with two hours with, with an attorney, two hours with an account, two hours with a marketing professional, two hours with Shopify E Commerce executives. So you're right, it's worth well more than $25,000. And it is, you know, and, and, and what? And, and it. Give it. Even if you have an existing business, you can have a sister business that's E Commerce. You can have a restaurant and E commerce sister business. You'd have a nail salon and E Commerce sister, a barber shop, an E commerce partner business that is online 24 hours a day.

[John Hope Bryant]

And so we're going to open it up to all the entrepreneurs that's coming to Invest Fest. You can go to invest fest.com backslash operation hope giveaway. But the tab is on investfest.com fill out the form. Because there is a submission form and there's, there's some requirements that you have to meet. Like you have to be in business, I think for six months. You have to have an LLC or some type of legal document to say that you actually have a business. But the winner, there's going to be five winners chosen and those winners will make it to be on stage with Mr. John Hope Bryant himself. And it's going to be like a mentorship actually happening in real time where they're going to tell him about business, he's going to give real time feedback, and then he's gonna pick one of those five people. They're gonna be like the grand prize winner and they're gonna get that whole mentorship package that we just talked about. So it's great opportunity for a variety.

[Rashad Bilal]

More than 25, 000 right there just.

[John Hope Bryant]

To get the advice right exactly on stage. And that I thought it was great because a lot of times people say like, okay, how can I actually meet people? How can I connect with the person I'm trying to connect? So at least, at the very least, five people will be on stage.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And that's a connection right there. And then you're getting real time feedback. Like I said, he's gonna hear your business, hear your, hear your pain points, give you real time feedback in, in the moment. And then it's gonna be fun too, because you got thousands of people in the crowd also. So I'm sure that the crowd will probably be engaged sentiment. And John's a great entertainer for sure. That's an underrated quality that is important. It's important. You got to be a great. You got to be engaging and entertaining. So I'm sure he's going to have fun with the crowd and, and gamify it. So, man, this, this is really, really, really great opportunity for any entrepreneur. All you have to do is just go to invest fest.com, fill out that information. I don't know why you would not at the very least apply. It doesn't cost any money to apply. If you're going to Invest Fest and you have a business, even if you're a vendor at Invest Fest, you should be applying to this. This is something that is very, very, very helpful and beneficial.

[Guest Speaker]

So first of all, I want to commend you brothers for doing this because it was a private conversation we had. No one would have ever known if you guys said, man, that's too much work. Never mind. We were in New York, it was just you and me.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yep.

[Guest Speaker]

And we talked, you know, no one heard it. And I, I whispered in your ear, essentially, and I basically said, you don't. You guys don't need me. You got ball. You got a baller alert. You got, you got everybody named Mama coming in the scene, you know, and my wife's going, everybody, everybody. Everybody's going. Charlamagne's going. Everybody's going. You don't need me. And, and you pushed and you said, no, no, we really want this to be special. And I really commend you from not just wanting to be PhD but PhD and wanting to deliver substance to people. And so you designed this and I, and, and you know, and I'll be honored. Me and my team are honored to deliver with you this content. Let me say this one MBB program, one million black business initiative, which is backed by $190 million from Shopify, relationship Capital as a story in and of itself how that came about, but it's real. And we've created, nurtured, supported450,000 black businesses since George Floyd's murder. There's only, I think, 3.1, 3.2 million black businesses in America. So what's that? 10, 12%, give or take. And so this is a very real thing. It's transforming for people. Shopify. If you, after your first sale, they'll finance your second sale and there's, I mean there's just something they'll get to give you, a payment system.

[John Hope Bryant]

Shopify give loans too.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And avoids the credit score, by the way. Anybody doesn't like credit score? There's no credit, there's no credit score. They're saying if you made a sale then they, then they're willing to finance your second sale. And as you grow and folks have created, you know, our people, if created multi million dollar businesses on this platform. Some. I was on, I was on a show and I think it was Roland Martin and people like, well, why is Shopify doing this? Like, what's, what's the, what's, what's the hitch? What's the catch? I'm like, they want more customers, right? So 3% of, of their shops are black. They want 10 of shops. That's black. I love that. I don't want, I don't want charity or handouts. If I could avoid it from anybody. I want a hand up, not a handout. And I think that's what we want. And we, and this goes back to the original comment about Relationship Capital because I'm going to agree to meet, this is a bonus separate from your conference. I'm gonna agree to meet with all five of the selectees individually on a one on one, on one meeting. I'm gonna give each one of them 45 minutes in person if they want it. If they're not that and, and that's separate from the conference. And I'm happy to do that. And they're Going to be now integrated. Integrated within the Shopify world. E commerce goes back to AI, by the way, and technology. They're going to be integrated. They're going to meet lawyers, accountants, top professionals. They're gonna. They're gonna build a new culture. Because the other thing is also true, man, is that you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the 10th for sure. We have got to start getting better company. Right? I love that. You guys are great. I don't know anybody else can do it. You're bringing tens of thousands of people together at one time on financial literacy. It's brilliant. And we should all be supporting that.

[Ian Dunlap]

We appreciate you, my brother.

[John Hope Bryant]

Appreciate it, my brother. Always fun, entertaining, and education.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sure.

[John Hope Bryant]

Every time.

[Guest Speaker]

Can I say one last thing? Because I want to clarify something. Somebody's gonna say that I'm jamming up, you know, Democrats or whatever. No, I'm tr. I'm just trying to tell you the truth so you can win. Right?

[Rashad Bilal]

The.

[Guest Speaker]

The president didn't lo. Didn't win the last election. Democrats lost. That's my point.

[Rashad Bilal]

By landslide. Y.

[Guest Speaker]

By landslide. Many people. Just the fact the third Charlemagne told me there was a third candidate. It was the couch.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

People just sat at home and. What I'm saying is, if you. If you. If I. I can't. I don't want to talk out of school. I told somebody who matters that they just. If they became the. The. Bill Clinton. Yes, Bill Clinton. He had. He had low unemployment, gdp, high matters, surplus. Not a deficit, a surplus. All the. All the. All the economics were going in the right direction. He could talk to the lowest of these. The highest of these. He was a capitalist. He was a capitalist Democrat. Right. And my ideal politician has a Republican head and a Democratic heart. If we can just get back to that. Why wouldn't Democrats embrace capitalism? I don't get this. Like, we're all living in this world of money, but we're acting like it doesn't exist.

[John Hope Bryant]

Do you think that it was cap. Do you think that it was economic issues or more social issues? Because I felt like they ran on abortion, they ran on dei. They. They, like the Republicans, did a good job of targeting emotional issues that their base really, you know, like transgender rights, for instance. Right. Like that. Like, they really, really hammered that. And. And the Democrats could. Couldn't pivot away from it. But that doesn't even affect. That affects probably less than 1% of the population. But that was like, one of their main talking points. I don't think that they really targeted the Economy too much so.

[Guest Speaker]

I love this conversation. I love talking to you guys. You're so wicked smart. And I love. They do these, like, hard, good questions. There's triggering and there's transformation. We get confused and distracted by the triggering because we're an emotional people and we get so wound up in the triggering. We're not missing. We're missing the transformation. There's so much I could say, but I'm trying to. I'm trying to consolidate because we don't have a lot of time. I'm happy to come back and have this conversation because I think this is a really important conversation. We missed this by a mile. I would. By the way, I encourage all of your viewers, listeners to listen to Go watch on Netflix Mr. McMahon documentary about WWE.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's great.

[Guest Speaker]

It is disgusting and amazing in the same breath. And by the fifth episode, you'll get an aha. By the fifth, you were like, oh, my God, I figured this out. They turned this guy into a WWE character. Same suit, same shirt, same same suit color, same tie color, same shoes, same hair color, same pen, same place.

[Rashad Bilal]

Same with Floyd, Same with Mayweather. He up shape.

[John Hope Bryant]

Who you talking about? You.

[Guest Speaker]

You saying I didn't want to mention his name. The presidential animate turned into a WWE character. Billionaire, tough talking underdog. Always attacking the big dog. Always, you know, fighting for the outing from the outside. This whole narrative. So by people talking about his character, talking about this and he's this and that, you're just feeding in to his narrative of the population he was really trying to get to. White men felt emasculated. He triggered that and then transformed them. Poor whites felt left out. He said, I'm going to be here for you. The opposite of that is the trigger. That's dei, is a signal that says black people. Urban America got too much. So he's going, but it's really. But he's really talking to poor rural whites. I did credit score. I get analysis of all the swing states. They're all stuck in the middle. They're stuck in the middle and they had too much month at the end of their money. That was an economic liberation conversation for them. Why does a woman stay with an abusive man? If you have three children and the husband's abusing them, why do they stay with them? Financial issue, financial head, food on the table. Okay, I got, he's abusing me, but he's taking care of my kids. I think that was a message from again, I hope I'm not, I'm not. I'm probably Saying too much. But I think that some women saw this guy and said, you know what? I don't like this. I don't like that. But economically, I'm gonna be okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

He's a more viable option.

[Guest Speaker]

Black men who didn't trust government in the first place said, well, I got a check from him before financial illiteracy, right? Because he was against it before. Until he was a for it, he was against it. It passed. And then he was. He's marketing. He didn't put his name on it. And because we're not financially literate, we thought the check came from him. They said, well, at least I'm gonna get paid. That hasn't worked out very well now, has it? Latino. Latino men are traditionalists, and they think that their man should be head of the household. The last person they're gonna work, they're gonna vote for in a traditional household probably is a woman.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'm just saying, being honest.

[Guest Speaker]

So, I mean, I can. So this was like 10 ones equal 20 strategy. It was economic in nature with triggering all over the place to get people to say, you know what? I don't like this. I don't like that. But I really don't like this other thing. And then they can. And then we helped by talking about everything, but I'm going to improve your tabletop economics. I don't know how you get $9 trillion of money. America's never had a trillion dollars of aid. Sorry. No country has ever had a trillion dollars of stimulus. No country's ever had a T in front of it. Gentlemen. Of stimulus. In the history of the world. We had, what, 6, 7, 8, 9 trillion since the pandemic. That was a Democratic administration. How do you screw that up?

[Rashad Bilal]

It's hard to do.

[Guest Speaker]

You had an infrastructure bill that built roads, and you could put people to high school education to work. Black and brown, urban and white, rural. Why did that. Wait, what? I never. I haven't seen one announcement. I didn't see one announcement about a bridge, a road, a. A project. I mean, we're just horrible markers. And not we. I'm not. I mean, I'm an independent. I just think that they were horrible marketers. Like, just horrible.

[Rashad Bilal]

Wrong issues and were horrible on messaging.

[Ian Dunlap]

You left out the 13 million people that elected the couch as well.

[Guest Speaker]

Repeat that.

[Ian Dunlap]

I said you left out the 13 million people that elected the couch.

[Guest Speaker]

That's part. That part. Who. Who voted in the last election?

[Ian Dunlap]

Exactly.

[Guest Speaker]

Look, again, I like math. Who doesn't have an opinion? I had an opinion about how this is going to turn out. I try to give some advice, they listen until they didn't and it didn't turn out so well. And I, I think that this is all economic. I think, I think that this, at the end of the day, people want to, I mean it's about the, it's about the economy. One of the presidents said it's the economy, stupid. I forget which election. So, yes, you're not wrong in the, in the triggering points, but I think you're, you're living in the biggest reality TV show in the history of the world and we're all extras. That's a Charlemagne quote.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, my brother, thank you for coming. I appreciate it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Appreciate you.

[John Hope Bryant]

Thank you. Yeah, get that fly.

[Guest Speaker]

I'm eyeballing that.

[Rashad Bilal]

Making a blowtorch.

[Guest Speaker]

He hasn't got me off my game.

[Rashad Bilal]

Locked in. Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Keep John safe.

[Guest Speaker]

I hope this has been useful. But look, we got to save our country, man. We, we're, we're, we, we need each other and everybody needs us to succeed and we need for them to succeed. I need white men to succeed. We need everybody in this game. We just want our share of it. We want to participate. And the, and the world needs us to participate. I think God needs us. We're the post of decency in the world.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's a fact.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yes. Amen.

[John Hope Bryant]

Always have me.

[Ian Dunlap]

Appreciate you, my brother.

[John Hope Bryant]

Thank you.

[Guest Speaker]

Talk to you soon.

[John Hope Bryant]

All right. Okay.

[Ian Dunlap]

Wow.

[Rashad Bilal]

Spirit of conversation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Absolutely, yes.

[John Hope Bryant]

Never a dull moment. John Hope Bryant. Always, always a pleasure when you get a chance to talk to John Hope. Right?

[Rashad Bilal]

For sure.

[John Hope Bryant]

Take advantage of that opportunity.

[Rashad Bilal]

Like I said, the giveaway is amazing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes, for sure. Anybody that has an Invest Fest ticket, you're, you're free to apply. Go to investfest.com and hit the, hit the link for the the John Hope Bryant giveaway Operation Hope giveaway. And as I said, it's going to be five people chosen and they're going to go on stage with him at Invest Fest live, tell you, tell him about your business. He's going to give you real time feedback and then he's going to pick one of those people to actually be the grand prize. Winning the grand Prize winner gets the 25000 mentorship package which includes one on one financial coaching, access to capital mentorship, business plan development, access to the master class webinar, eight weeks small business development training, access to self plan placed online business learning management system, Shopify e commerce platform and tech support. I mean the whole night is going to throw everything at you as far as if you can't be successful with that. It's just not going to happen.

[Rashad Bilal]

And if y' all see me on stage. I applied.

[Ian Dunlap]

Every large business started as a small one.

[John Hope Bryant]

Vendors. Vendors can apply also.

[Ian Dunlap]

But I think that that be a prime audience. You're already there. You already have a business. Why wouldn't you want to 10 exit.

[Rashad Bilal]

So we 45 minutes with him is.

[Guest Speaker]

Doing a lot for y', all.

[Ian Dunlap]

Man.

[John Hope Bryant]

We got the pitch competition with and this is all stuff that we've taken ourselves out of. By the way, for all you youtubians that always like to have something to say. The pitch competition with Paul Judge proven in the space. This John Hope Bryant. His. His op team. His team is going to run this $25,000 mentorship program and he said he's gonna give everybody a one on one even after investors.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's amazing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Improving in the space. We got some other stuff. Bevel.

[Ian Dunlap]

They'll be back this year.

[John Hope Bryant]

$25,000 to a vendor.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[John Hope Bryant]

They're gonna pick a vendor in the vendor Marketplace. Give them $25,000 for their business. Make a review video about that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Please. Please do that.

[Rashad Bilal]

That'd be great. Sponsor by Bev. We may be able to get you a sponsor for the AdSense boost.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Listen. Make sure you tell them that. Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shout out to John for being fearless and not.

[Ian Dunlap]

He said some things. Right?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. At a point. What is it? Control V. What's the cut partner Cap cut immediately.

[Guest Speaker]

What? Oh, I think we. I think we went over time.

[Ian Dunlap]

We definitely did. We definitely did, man. Shout out for y'. All rocking with us.

[Guest Speaker]

Stand up.

[Ian Dunlap]

Appreciate that.

[Guest Speaker]

Stand.

[John Hope Bryant]

Stay tuned. Blackout.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Hold on. Before that. And what can they learn from the way because him budget needs to. It's a few who have that they don't even almost need. The question what can they take from that? When networking at Invest Fest or the pitch competition.

[Ian Dunlap]

I think he started by saying I'm always ready. Right before you're. I'm always ready.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

He's always ready.

[Ian Dunlap]

He understands. He's a master of his content. He's a master.

[Guest Speaker]

Sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

In his space. He understands it. He doesn't. It doesn't matter what the question is. This is his space. He's dedicated his life to it. This is his life's work. And when he speaks you can feel it. Right. This is. This is a passion for him. This is his purpose driven stuff. And so he's always ready at any moment. And so I would encourage everybody. You never know who you're going to run into. You Never know who you're going to see. You never know what moment is going to present itself. Always be ready.

[John Hope Bryant]

And the good thing about Market Mondays too is that in Invest Fest and anything that we do is that's very eclectic group of people. Like, you know, like John's a capitalist so you know when he talks it's not emotional, it's a capitalistic standpoint. But we might bring somebody like 19 keys on and they might have some, some differences, they might have some similarities in some regards as well.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right.

[John Hope Bryant]

Or we might bring somebody. You know, it's just like you get different every, everybody's not going to think the same way.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

So it's up to you to, to take different things from different people and make your own life thesis your life path out of. But you know, you got to bring different people on from different walks of life. But definitely blackout, 10 o'. Clock. Earn your leisure. We got 85 south on 6 o' clock on Thursday. Get your ticket to invest fest. Ian invest.com. join stock club.

[Rashad Bilal]

No Stock club call this week. That's good.

[Ian Dunlap]

Shout out to the six. Shout out to Toronto. Shout out to sga. Shout out to his entire family. I know his pop skies his camp this week. So they're doing like they got a whole weekend that's, that's playing. They got financial literacy, they doing pro am games up in the six and who knows man, you never know, you, you're favorite show might just happen to pop up there. So shout out to them, man. Shout out to all our team in the six. Shout out to Daniel who was on.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shout out to Daniel Blackout last week.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, he was in Atlanta with y'. All. Yeah man, Toronto, you know that's our favorite place. So yeah, make sure y' all pop.

[Rashad Bilal]

Up overdue for a trip.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, that's a fact.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let's get it, let's get it.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right y'.

[John Hope Bryant]

All.

[Ian Dunlap]

Love is love. We'll see y' all Wednesday. Be good to each other. Peace.

[Rashad Bilal]

Peace.

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