John Hope Bryant (35:54)
Follow the Big Take podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I want you to understand that you might be broke, but you're not poor. That God made you unique and powerful and special and different and he made you to win. I want you to learn to manage all kinds of things coming at you in an age of radical indifference. I want you to see opportunity everywhere. There's $100 trillion worth of opportunities coming your way. I'll cover this in the Future podcast. $100 trillion of economic opportunity coming your way and no one's paying attention to it. And I'm going to give you the roadmap in future episodes of how to get at it yourself. It's going to be easy to go after a 30 million dollar opportunity in the next few years, the next 10 years for sure than it is to going after a. A $20,000 opportunity. Yes, I said that easy to go after $20 million. That an opportunity. The way I going to tell you how to pursue it than going after a $20,000 or $200,000 startup opportunity. But we'll get to that in successive episodes. Tell all your friends to follow this episode series for 2025. I want you to become obsessed. This, this is why I became obsessed absolutely focused on financial literacy. I believe it's a civil rights issue of this generation. That's why I think it's one of the most radical thing I could do was to teach you financial literacy. And now I think that financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. And I believe that AI literacy, artificial intelligence, AI literacy is the silver rights issue of this generation. And I want you to go from the streets to the suite, from the streets to the business suites. I want you to cut deals. I want you to get on that aspirational ladder. I want you to be the aspiration generation that I know you can be. But you're going to have to be obsessively focused on from a technical perspective, financial literacy. Because we live in an economic democracy, a capitalist democracy. The United States of America, the largest economy in the world, the sole superpower in the world is a capitalist democracy and a free enterprise democracy. Please hear me. And if you don't understand money. Pastor Andrew young, my mentor, Dr. King's right arm, the civil rights movement, the guy who built the biggest economy in the traditional south, the only international city in the south, the only mayor ever mentored by Dr. Martin King Jr said to live in a system of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. Can I get an amen? And what I've said is what you. It's what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you, but you think you know. Hello. So here we go. I'm going to now tell you why most people will never be successful. Now this is something that I've been. That I've had in my file since 2004. I believe it's a poem, if you will, a memo to self that was written by a gentleman by the name of Dr. Ben Hardy. Okay? And I want you to listen very carefully to this because this is how I live my life. When I say I want you to become reasonably comfortable in your own skin. When I talk about being high frequency, this is a phrase that I really first heard from, from my wife, Shaytra Bryant. But I want you to. I didn't living. I just didn't know what the phrase was, did not describe it. So I'm about to explain this to you. Please listen to this. Go back make notes and write this down. Listen to this podcast and hit reverse rewind. That's great thing about podcast, you can go back and listen to it again. Talk to your friends about this and unpack what I'm about to tell you. Success isn't just having lots of money. Many people with lots of money have horribly unhappy and radically imbalanced lives. Success is continuously improving who you are, how you live, how you serve, how you relate. So why won't most people be successful? Why don't most people evolve? The more evolved you become, the more focused you must be on those few things which matter most. Now I'm gonna pause here and say, this is me talking, not Dr. Harding. Please remember now. I think I really do believe people are dumb on purpose. Yes, I said it. I think you're stupid and dumb on purpose. You have a smartphone in your. In your hand. You never had more access to data and information easily obtainable in your life. Before you had a smartphone and AI, you had an Internet search, Google search. The library of the world is open to you. You. If I'm nosy about everything, Quincy Jones, how'd you get so smart? I'm just nosy as hell. I want to know everything about everything. Well, John O'Brien is nosy. God give you two ears and one mouth, so you listen twice as much as you talk. So if you. If you. If you're not successful today, you're, well, not successful. Sorry, that's separate. Because that is about choice, luck and opportunity and a few other things. But if you're dumb today, if you're stupid, you're stupid on purpose. Unless you have a mental illness or something that you can't control, you have some kind of a chemical imbalance, that's a different thing. But if you're a reasonable, sound mind. That's what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. So what am I saying? Love is work. Non, love is laziness. Anti, love is evil. Evil exists, but it's very rare. Most people are just lazy. Intellectually lazy, financially lazy, spiritually lazy, emotionally lazy. They don't want to do the work. They want somebody else to do it for them. They want to subcontract the work. Well, only in the dictionary does the word success come before the word work, because it's alphabetical. Can I get an amen? You've got to do the work. There's no excuse for the work. There's no way around it. So doing the work's tough. Doing the work may be dealing with your pain, your drama, unhealing, unhealed nature of your 18 year old self or your 12 year old self whenever somebody abused or took advantage of you. You've got to make peace with that pain and turn it into promise. You've got to be committed to evolving every day and waking up tomorrow better than you were yesterday when you went to bed. That is my commitment to myself. I'm obsessed with it. That's why I love books and learning. Because once you learn and you can't, no one can take that from you. You don't unlearn it. Right. And once the Riverband is expanded, it never returns to its original size. The more involved you become, the more focused you must be on those few things which matter most. Yet as Jim Rohn has said, quote, a lot of people don't do well simply because they major in minor things. In quote, to be successful, you can't continue being with low frequency people long periods of time. I'm going to repeat that. To be successful, you can't continue being around low frequency people for long periods of time. I'm not judging anybody. It is what it is. I'm just, I'm not saying somebody's better or worse. I'm saying they're either high frequency, low frequency, a medium frequency. They're either highly evolved in critical thinking and do the work and all that stuff or they just. You figure out what low frequency is, you define it yourself. I think you got good common sense. Look around you. Eagles, buzzards, turkeys. Hello. You can't continue eating crappy food regardless of your spouse's or colleague's food choices. There's an old southern saying. No matter how much I love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. Hello. I'll say it again. No matter how much I love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. I can only give you what I've got. So out of. Please listen to me now. Out of love we pass down bad habits from generation to generation. Out of love we do that. Because what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But you think you know it's what you don't know that you don't know that maybe killing you, but you think you know so somebody can love you and give you bad advice. Hello. You can't continue eating crappy food regardless of who your spouse or colleagues foods choices may be. What they may be. Your day must consistently be spent on high quality activities. The more successful you become, which is balancing the few essential things parentheses, spiritual, relational, financial, physical in parentheses. This is balancing the few essential things in your life and removing everything else. The less you can justify low quality. I'll repeat that the more successful you become, the less you can justify low quality in your life before you evolve. By the way, it's a whole another I just love Quincy Jones. Again, he said the only worse than being alone is wishing that you were you can do better all by yourself. Before you evolve, you can. You can reasonably spend time with just about anyone. This is called youth. Young being a young person growing up having fun. Before you evolve as a child, you say you can reasonably spend time and justify spending time with about anyone you like. You can reasonably eat anything placed in front of you. Again, this is what children often do. Young people who are immature and not evolved. You know your body can absorb anything. At a young age, it appears you can reasonably justify activities and behaviors that are frankly mediocre. As your vision for yourself expands, you realize you have to make certain adjustments. You need to cut back on spending all of your money and time on crap and entertainment. You have to save more hello financial literacy and invest more in your education and your future. The more successful you become, the less you can justify low quality, the more focused you must become. The more consistently your daily behaviors must be high quality and increasingly higher quality. This isn't about perfection. It's definitely not about being busy all the time. Actually, the balance of true success involves what Tim Ferriss calls mini retirements or regular sabbaticals. I love this by the way, and I was doing this long before I read this. Just told me I was on the right track. Yet if your daily behaviors are consistently low quality, what do you expect your life's output to be? Let me go back now to these mini retirements or regular sabbaticals for a second. So I work my tail off. I work from can't see in the morning, I can't see at night. I. I believe an entrepreneur works 18 hours a day to keep from getting a job, frankly. Right. My middle name is work, but I've learned that my body and my brain needs a rest. I'm on travel now doing this podcast in Las Vegas because my friend Ed Bashen, the CEO of Delta, invited me and my wife to come out to support them as they support their as they celebrate their 100th anniversary and so and so forth. He's a friend. He supported Opera Chult's work. And I'm proud of him. So we left our sabbatical, we left our retreat, but with the family. Me and Shakespeare were on a family retreat, which I go on every six months to recharge. Because the world is discharging itself on you. Your world is maybe refueling you, but it can't re energize you. Okay, because the world, because gas comes from fuel, right? But you need energy source material, which means you need to step off the field sometimes and get quiet with yourself and recharge. I hope this is making sense. So I step off the field so I can re energize myself, read, reflect, go to the left side of my brain, analytical and dealing with tactics and strategies and doing things and the urgent. And I go from the urgent to the important. Important. I switch from the left brain to the right brain. Creativity and hope, well being, faith, you know, wellness, inner thought, consciousness exist and I. And I heal myself and I read books and I sleep long, take long naps and play in the water, the ocean, and let my body and soul heal so I can go back into the battle. Because capitalism is. Is a gladiator sport and I need full force to be able to deal with all that. So I step off for a retreat, which in this example is called a sabbatical. But I take mini retirements every night when I read a book or watch something silly on YouTube for 15 or 20 minutes before I go to bed. I take a mini retirement when I meditate at a stoplight or 15 minutes between meetings and I just go and sit of myself. I become quiet. But in order to do that, you got to love yourself. You've got to be reasonably comfortable in your own skin so that you enjoy your own company. You don't need everybody around you in order to justify who you are or to make you comfortable. I don't even know what the word, but I don't even know what people say when they're bored or they don't have time. I've got more things I'm interested in. I've got time to allocate to it. And I enjoy my own company, even though I really enjoy everybody else's company. Sweet. In this example I gave you of my friend Ed Bastion, we were on a retreat. He asked for us. He invited us to come to this. We stepped away from our retreat because we felt this was important. To come to spend a couple days with him and then in Las Vegas and we're out of here and we're back on a Retreat back on schedule, good habits, back into a quiet space. Because I know that once this year gets going, it won't stop. The light will come on, it won't go off. And the world will use you. And till you know, you say no. There's a lot of love in the word no. Love is not just yes. Love is also no. So that you can say yes later to the right things. High quality things. If your daily behaviors are consistently low quality, what do you expect your life's output to be? Your choices must become higher quality. Again, there's nothing this is about better or worse than somebody else. Everybody's equal, everybody's God's child. This is about you making quality choices and getting the toxicity out your life. Can I get an amen? This is about you saying, I can do better by my dang on self. If 2 plus 2 in a relationship does not equal 4, then what? Sorry? If 2 plus 2 does not equal more than 4, 6, 8 or 10, then what are you doing? What are you doing? You can do bad all by yourself. This is not in a relationship. It's not addition, it's multiplication. Two plus two should equal six, eight or 10. I've said it before, I'll say it now. A giver and a giver is exotic. A giver and a taker is neurotic and a taker and a taker is psychotic. And you want to ruin your, your potential to build income or create wealth. Hook up with somebody who's a leech, who's a. Who's sapping you and sucking you of energy and taking, taking, taking, taking, taking. And the Chief Criticism Officer, Chief Negativity Officer, Chief Toxicity Officer has nothing to give and nothing to offer. How draining can that be? How draining is that? Hello. Hopefully you're not looking to the left and the right of you right now going, hmm. Your choices must become higher quality. Your relationships must become higher quality. Quality. Every area of your life affects every other area of your life. Please hear me. I'm going to say it again. Every area of your life affects every other area of your life. Hence the saying, how you do anything is how you do everything. This is very high level thinking. It only makes sense for people who have removed everything from their lives they hate. I will repeat that this only makes sense for people who have removed everything from their lives that they hate, which includes toxic people too. Which means you may have that with your family. I'm not saying discard your family. I'm saying separate yourself from them on critical decisions and don't let them create a cancer in the core of your life. You can love your cousins and your family members without letting them overtake your thinking or make decisions for you. How can somebody make a decision for you when they're unqualified to do it? Are they successful? Do they have the relationships you like? Again, it goes back to trying to model that four square block celebrity that you admired and wanted to be thought to be cool by. I mean, what is it's cool paying you a mortgage or car note? Do you know there are no ugly billionaires? Don't get me started. This kind of thinking. I'm going to say again, this high level thinking only makes sense for people who have removed everything from their lives that they hate. To actually live this principle, your daily and normal life can only be filled with those things you highly value. I want this to be your aspiration when your days are filled with only those core essentials that means the world to you and is valued by you and you're succeeding in those few areas. Quality over quantity. You absolutely will dominate in all areas of your life because you're focusing on few areas of your life because the only things in your life are the things you highly value. Everything else has slowly been weeded out. You're living intentionally and congruently. You have momentum and balance. You're being who you truly want to be every single day. To actually do this not only takes time, but it is extremely hard to live and practice. I'm going to give you, I'm going to acknowledge that this is extraordinarily hard. What did I say? Love is work. Non love is laziness. Anti love is evil. Whatever you love is going to drive you absolutely crazy. You love your kids. You want to strangle them once, once a month. You love your husband wants a divorce. You know, once a year. You love your job, you love, you hate, you love your career. You love it. Okay, you want to quit, you know, once, once, at least once a year. Whatever you love is going to drive you a little nuts. It's okay. You love your country. You want to strangle your country. You want to divorce from your country sometimes, but you can't. You're stuck with it because it's all we got. We got to make it work. And we will. Because rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First. You can't grow except through legitimate suffering. By the way, that's biblical. Saying no to great but irrelevant opportunities is hard. It's maybe a great opportunity, but may not be relevant to you, getting up bad habits is hard. Changing your belief system and expanding your vision takes courage. I said in my book Love Leadership. The courage is nothing more than your faith reaching through your fear. Displaying a selfless action emotional your life. Faith is courage is nothing more than your faith reaching through your fear. Display the selfish action in your life. Changing your belief system and expanding your vision takes courage. It's so easy to revert back to small and mediocre thinking. However, as you come closer to living on a daily basis with your values and ideals, amazing things start to happen. Happen. You'll feel happier. You'll be more present with those you love. I try to be again present at all times is what I call the present a gift. Yesterday's a memory. This is the work. The book the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. His philosophy Yesterday's a memory doesn't exist. Tomorrow's the future hasn't happened. Most people have one foot in yesterday, one foot in tomorrow, which is why they're not present, which is why they have anxiety in their lives. Once you have a presence in your life, once you live in the presence of your life, peace comes over you and you create more time. That's a whole other discussion for another time. You'll be more present with those you love. You spend more time. You spend your time better. You'll actually start investing your time versus just spending it. You'll pursue bigger dreams and ambitions. You'll be more resilient during challenges. You'll live at a higher frequency and everything around you will reflect that. But to repeat Jim Rohn's quote, a lot of people don't do well simply because they major in minor things. Said another way, most people are caught in the thick of thin things. Hence, most people won't be successful. Most people won't evolve and progress. But you will. You know it and you can feel it. You've already begun, and every day you're taking one step closer. Soon enough, you'll fully commit to being who you know you can be. Once you pass that point of no return, nothing will stop you. I want you to get up from this podcast with a renewed sense of somebodyness. I want you to know that you're God's child. I want you to know that he made you great. You don't approve it to anybody else. It's already there. What you've got to do is become reasonably comfortable in your own skin. Settle down and saddle up. Buckle up, because it's going to be a ride in your life. People thought they did you some disservice by not giving you attention, by ignoring you, by being indifferent to you. And what they did was set you free. Because it's a great thing to be underestimated and ignored. No one's paying attention to you. People for years didn't pay attention to me. They threw their nose up at me. They disrespected me. They said, oh, John Bryan, that capitalism, financial literacy. I'd go to the White House and White House officials, four honey. Administrations ago. I've known nine presidents, probably six presidents ago. Black men. Even though as Hambassadors. John Bryant, who's a Hambassador, I'd been made a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Conference Retreat and Development under Geneva, Switzerland. So I was very proud of that. But he called me Hambassador. In other words, I'm just a ham. I'm just talking. It hurt my feelings. It was intended to hurt my feelings. That's okay. Haters just make you better again. Rambles after storms. Do you know that people call it Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther Kuhn, Uncle Tom, sellout wannabe. And those were his friends talking. He ignored the noise. And I'm telling you to ignore the noise. I'm telling you that I ignored the noise. I'm not gonna lie to you. It hurt my feelings. I put it in books. I've acknowledged it. It hurt my feelings. But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And it made me stronger. It made me resilient. I'd rather you respect me and learn to like me than like me and never respect me. So then when you like me, it's great, but it doesn't define who I am. And I want you to wake up tomorrow knowing that you can do anything you set your mind to. I want you to be a giver. I want you to be about. I want you to what you have to give, not what you have to get. I want you to be about relationships and not transactions. I want you to wake up and figure out what you have to uniquely give and contribute in this world and go about doing that thing. And when you do that thing, you become the best at it in the world. And that will create income and generate brand equity, meaning what your name is worth. And that will then create wealth. And wealth compounds or is created when you sleep. More education, more knowledge, more insight, better, you know, compounding stocks, bonds, investments, a growing organization, more employees, which will then ultimately in time set you free and give you opportunity to, well, have more high frequency conversations like this and get out of the urgent and deal with what's important. Don't never let the urgent crowd out the important. That's another conversation for another day. But today, take your life back. This is John Hope Bryant and this has been my discussion to you on becoming the transformational you in 2025 so you can live a life of wealth from the inside out. Tell all your friends about this podcast. Share this with everybody you know. Tell me. Go get the book Financial Literacy for all my other five books with them. Tell them to subscribe to this podcast and watch it outtakes on YouTube subscribe to my YouTube channel. Follow me on social media. Certainly subscribe to Money and Wealth and the Black Effect Network, other podcasts and on iHeartradio. Support those who are supporting you. Let's start a movement. Let's build ourselves from the shoulders up. Let's make smart sexy again. We've been making dumb sexy for way too long. We've dumbed down and celebrated it. It's time to make smart sexy again. Love and light John O'Brien I'm out money and wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartrade radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show. SA.
