Transcript
Charlamagne tha God (0:00)
Listen to me. This is Charlamagne tha God talking. If you're not on prime, you're missing out. Prime's not just fast free delivery, although that is definitely a big perk. It's a collection of excellent services that help you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Like right now I am really getting into past life regression therapy and there's so many books about it on Prime. So you can order books with prime or even listen to content on Amazon Music. Whether you're binge watching the latest on prime video, listening to music on Amazon Music or getting those last minute gifts dropped at your door with prime, same day free delivery with customers get closer to what they care about. Whatever you're into, it's all on Prime. Visit Amazon.comprime now.
Os Veloson (0:38)
Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
NPR Life Kit Host (1:09)
Here at Life Kit, NPR's Self Help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life kit podcast on iHeartradio.
Bobby Bones (1:33)
Calling all Yellowstone fans, let's go to work. Join Bobby Bones on the official Yellowstone Podcast for exclusive cast interviews, behind the scenes insights and a deep dive into the themes that have made Yellowstone a cultural phenomenon. Our family legacy is this ranch, not.
John Hope Bryant (1:53)
A protector of my life.
Bobby Bones (1:55)
Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
John Hope Bryant (2:03)
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Yo, yo, this is John Hope Bryant. This is Money and Wealth podcast series. I am honored in 2025 to bring you another exciting episode. This is going to be a bit of a master class I give you today. I'm calling in, I'm phoning this in. I'm recording this live from Poland. That's right halfway around the world. And it's appropriate that I'M doing this from Poland. I'm actually here. Shaja and I are here commemorating with Van Jones and Robert Smith and others, the only invited delegation that includes African Americans, oddly enough, or interestingly enough, should I say, for the 80th commemorative liberation of Auschwitz, the Jews who were murdered here 80 years ago in World War II. This is commemorating the liberation from Auschwitz and God bless the souls lost here. But when I'm on travel, I've got to run my businesses while I'm doing well. I have to do good too. Or in order to do good, I have to do well first. And so I have to find a way to continue to run my operations. I've got five divisions of John O'Brien Enterprises. You know me most from my work at Operation Hope, which is the largest financial literacy coaching organization in America. 1500 offices give or take in almost every state in the United States. We have thousands of volunteers. We have collaborative partnership offices. We have 400 full time employees in all of our operations. You have Operation Hope, you've got Brian Group Ventures, you've got Brian Group Ventures Advisors, Brian Group Digital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then all the projects within Operation Hope. I'm going to do a masterclass at some point on how to run an effective nonprofit and how to build one from scratch. Let me know if you like that idea, by the way. How to build one from scratch. How to take an idea and turn it into an operating entity. How to take an operating entity and turn it into a successful enterprise. How to take a successful enterprise that's boutique, our small business turned into a boutique boutique successful enterprise that's with a reputation but it is, you know, basically local and how to take something local and turning it into something that is known regionally, doing business regionally and nationally, etc. And how to turn that to from a personality driven activity into some an institution that is an upcoming podcast. You tell me whether you like that by the way. I'll do the same thing for a for profit. But I wanted to start with something that is a bit of a mystery with people, which is a non profit. But the larger issues, whether it's my real estate stuff or whether it's my non profit financial literacy stuff or whether it's my, you know, whatever the we're writing books and speaking and etc. Etc. How do I do it? People like how do you do this? And then you, you know, you have a family, you have a personal life. How do you do all this stuff? Well, I'm going to unpack some of that today. Today, no pun intended, unpack. I'm gonna tell you about also how I pack. I will put a couple photos in of this, actual photos of actually my suitcase on this trip to give you some sense of literally how I pack. But I'm going to most importantly tell you about my tech tools. People tell you to be successful, they don't tell you how. So part of my master class in 2025 is breaking down the how. This series, this session is my tech tools. John Bryant's tech tools. The how of how I do all this stuff and not go crazy. It Somebody told me a couple years ago, and it's completely true that if you don't have technology at the center of your business or enterprise or non profit or government agency or whatever it is you're running, if you don't have technology at the center of that I even believe in your personal life, then you're actually not succeeding, you're falling behind. I'll say that again. If you don't have technology, if technology is not centric, centered in the center of whatever it is you're doing, and I don't mean just having a iPhone or whatever the Samsung phone, whatever it is you use. I use iPhone, I use Apple products. But I don't just mean having a smartphone and treating it like it's a dumb device. I don't mean just having a phone and sending an email to somebody or sending a text to somebody or making a phone call. That's not what I'm talking about. If you don't have technology and use it intelligently, use it smartly and center that root that in the center of your life as a growing 21st century business enterprise entrepreneur doer, you're actually not going forward, you're going backwards in real time. You've got to be organized. It could be said that half of success is showing up and having good habits. Showing up and having good habits. It's time to take out your notepad and begin to take some notes. So let's go. I'll do the packing piece as a bit of a bonus here. How I pack, how do I travel, what do I use? Let's get into the technology and how I do it. Beyond the magic soft of how I think and how I lead, which our value propositions are assets that I have in my institutions have because. Because leadership is that outlier, unique asset that defines everything. And you have leaders, you have managers, you have tacticians, you have doers. Those are different categories of executives that you will have in your organization. You give somebody a title does not mean that they're a leader, by the way. But let's assume for the moment you got the right team in place. Many of my people have been with me for 20 or 30 years. My chief of staff, Rachel Duff, has been with me for 32 years. I think she was my second employee when I founded that Brian Group Ventures and Operation Hope. Lance Triggs been with me for, I think, going on 30 years. Mary Harrison, going on close to 30 years. Janae Roscoe, over 20 years. And goes on and goes on and goes on. So most of my people, if you're a, a, a newbie with me, you've been with me for a decade. So you got to have a special Forces team. It's been said, and I agree, that 80% of important work is done by 20% of your people. 80% of important work is done BY 20% of your people. But if you're going to have by and then the other people just complain and make your life miserable. But anyway, being an employer oftentimes is a babysitter. I actually have great employees, so I'm not complaining about my people. But even if you have a special Forces team, which is different from having a general army, that special Forces team, no different than a special forces in the military who has advanced weaponry to go be dropped behind enemy lines so they can have an outsized impact being outnumbered and outgunned, they've got to have the, you know, the element of surprise and they have to have superior training and be able to outsmart their adversary. They, they're playing, you know, chess and everybody else is playing checkers. But they have to have, you know, technology in their, again, example, weaponry, which is far superior than those that they are coming up against. I have technology. I, you know, I have weaponry. It's called technology. Tools that allow my, me and my special forces team to operate with outsized effectiveness. Because even though we have 400 people, it feels like somebody told me that we have 40,000 people. I don't know if they said 4,000 or 40,000, but you get the point. It feels like 10x or 20x or 100x of what we have in human capital actually on our payroll because we've been so effective. Okay, so start writing this down. You don't have to use these tools, but I think you should use something like it. So the first thing I do, and I have this graph, and I'm going to put this graph somewhere on the video version of this podcast so people can see it. I'm going to put this graph in, but it's by JB formula for achievement. So vision, mission, strategy, plan, business plan, execution, tactics to do's to DUNs assessment, readjustment, software grade back division. Now I haven't got to the technology tools per se. This is a techno. This is how I use mind mapping, which is the first piece of technology software that I'm going to suggest that you get for yourself. I don't care which software you use. There's a simple one that you can use called Mindly. It's very easy. M I N D L Y. There's I Thoughts, that's another one I've used before. What I use at the moment is Mind Meister Mindmeister. It's German mind mapping and I like it because it's collaborative and sophisticated and all that stuff. You can put links in it and, and I do a mind map for almost everything important in my life. I start with a mind map. And what you're doing in the mind map is getting all the, the jello and all of the, the wiring. You know, the, all the wiring of thoughts and ideas is going through your head at a million miles and hours, miles an hour. You drive down the street, you got all these ideas. There's no way to organize it. You give yourself a headache. Take all that stuff, clear the cobwebs out of your head and put it on a mind map. Literally it is a mapping of your mind as relates to the idea at hand. So the first thing I do is take my vision and make it real for my team because they can't get in my head. And if they even they could, they may not be able to understand what the heck's going on there. I've been told I'm just a different kind of guy. I'm operating on different juice. I operate three, four times faster than everybody else. When they get up in the morning, Marty down the street, around the blocks, you know, I've finished when they're starting and, and I'm also just, I'm just, I'm operating a different bit rate. But I'm also maybe operating. I'm just thinking differently than everybody else. I'm at 30,000 foot and they're at, you know, 3,000ft or 300ft because they're tactical. Most people are managers. They're just trying to get stuff done on their to do list in front of them. That's very different from executing against a vision. And the Bible says where there is no vision, the people perish. So you have to have a vision. You have to be. Have to be disciplined about keeping it. So I have. Mind mappings is my first suggestion for you. It works in my business life. Here's a success hack is a cheat sheet I'm giving you now. It also works in your personal life. Your personal life needs to be organized just like your business life. Use mind maps to map out a project, an initiative, your goals for 2025, whatever it is, a new startup, business restructuring, whatever it is, you know you're going to send your kids to college. You want to map that out over the next five years. How are you going to pay for it? Start with a mind map. Okay, so here's my map again. For achievement of anything again, I'll say one more time, Vision. What am I doing? Why mission. Why am I doing that thing? Like, what's the purpose behind that strategy? Okay, so my mission, to go back to my mission. So, you know, one of my missions is to un Is to unleash untapped human potential at scale. It's one of my missions. So my vision might be to change the world in my lifetime. My mission, my way to do that is to unleash untapped human potential at scale, to create an economic infrastructure for underserved America and so on and so forth. And so you can look through my vision. See, my mission and vision might also be to extend on the third reconstruction or do the work of the third reconstruction, which was the work that maybe Dr. King and Ambassador Andrew Young would be doing if Dr. King was still alive today. Andrew Young is very much alive. Or Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were still alive today. That was the first reconstruction. And the second one, I believe, is the third reconstruction. So my vision might be big, you know, and audacious, which is to, you know, X, Y and Z, whatever that big, bold Harry, big, bold, audacious idea is. That's your vision for yourself. My vision is crazy big. Your vision might be to become a business owner or have financial freedom or whatever. It's all. Everybody's vision is different. Your mission, okay, it's a bit more tangible. Right. And you heard just now what my mission is. Right. And the mission should align with your vision and then your strategy. Okay, how are you going to go about this? Like, what route are you going to take to get to this objective? And then you have a business plan. Okay, how does that strategy, that mission and vision get codified and run the ground? PhDs are good. PhD is a better.