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- [00:00]
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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- [01:05]
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- [01:37]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is hot out there this summer, right? But don't sweat it. We got tons of ways to save on your family's favorite personal care items to keep yourself feeling cool and smelling good. Now through September 9th, earn four times points when you shop for items from your favorite brands like Right Guard, Raw Sugar, Dove Soft Soap and Olay. Then use your points for discounts on groceries or gas on future purchases. Offer end September 9th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [02:08]
John Hope Bryant
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iheartradio. Yo yo yo. This is John o' Brien and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series season two on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio and I wanted in this episode which is being recorded during Black Business Month. It's not well known that August is Black Business Month. And I want to commend iheart and Black Effect Network for focusing on it. I wanted to address the obvious and I also owe you an apology. As an entrepreneur and a businessman, I think I've taken some things for granted and many others have taken it for granted. I think we take for granted that people open the Wall Street Journal and know what's being said in it. These phrases, these euphemisms, these, you know, what's the sec, what's the fdic, what's a spec, what's a, you know, what's, what's a leverage buyout. So I've tried to break down some of these myths. If you go to season one, I go through a lot of the basics, right, about how what does this mean and what does that mean? And you're going to start seeing me go from industry to industry and break this down. But one thing I've never broken down, and it just dawned on me that I needed to do this because I never really broken down how to start a business like the basics. And one of the reasons this became so powerfully important was recently I was having a discussion with somebody I love and care for and respect who is highly intelligent. And we had an actual debate about what they thought they were doing in building a business. And it took me a while to understand that they didn't understand what I was saying. And it was my fault. I had never explained, no one's ever explained it to even successful black people, educated black people, what these terms are again. And so this individual is incredibly, incredibly smart. One of the most smartest people I know had a history of running up really professional services contract enterprise where they got contracts for their talent, but they weren't on a payroll with someone. They were effectively a self employment project. They had no employees, they in most cases had no contractors. It might be episodic from time to time when there was an event or something. They had no health insurance responsibilities, they had no payroll responsibilities, they had no property tax responsibilities. They had no balance sheet and income statement other than make sure their inflow exceeded their outflow. They had a contract with in many cases a corporation or government to provide a service. And the presumption was that's a business. Well, it is a form of business, but that's not building a business that you can sell, right? And the whole point of building a business, please hear me, is to monetize it, create value and to have a liquidity event to sell it. Right now somebody's going to say no, no, no, no. John Walmart never sold or Amazon never sold, or Microsoft Bill Gates never sold or Meta Facebook never. So they'll come up with these examples. But the very fact that those companies have gone public means that they sell every day. They sold when they went public. The founder got, our founders or founding family got a check. Probably a big one. Probably they got a big one and they're still getting checks. Their families do dividend payments, et cetera. They still own shares. But the public is buying and selling that company every day based on its perception of its continuing success. So whether you're a small business and it's private equity, private equity, literally your cousin, your father, your friend or, or, or a firm that's in the private equity business giving you an investment, private equity or it's the public equity market going public, right? The whole point is there is they're backing this enterprise to grow it so that the leader of the enterprise prize can sell it. So everybody wins. Right now you can't do that. You make money during the day, you build walls in your sleep. In order to do that you need compounding, you need employees, you need infrastructure, you need real estate, you need locations, you need something other than you running around with a personal service contract. So I'm not today talking about what most black businesses are comprised of.95% plus of all black businesses are effectively self employment projects. They have no employees. And so when you wonder why we are not building wealth and I'm also going to break down in a separate podcast how to own and buy a home, that's another presumption I think we make that's incorrect. We should not assume people know the hows here or the whys or the what's. So I'm breaking this down. And by the way, being a small business owner, which is incredibly important, is very different from being an entrepreneur. They're first cousins but they're different. And I go through that also in season one. This is season two of Money and Wealth. So tell all your friends to download Money and Wealth and go back to season one. I'm giving you an entire university, a library, a ministry of finance if you will, in free enterprise and entrepreneurship and capitalism, even in bite sized chunks. So now before I get into how do you start a business, whether it's a self employment project, a personal services contract fulfillment firm of one, or whether it's a business with that has scale, employees and infrastructure, I'm going to walk you through literally the steps of taking your dream and Making it real, okay? Because that should not be presumed that people know how to do that. And that doesn't mean that somebody's unintelligent because they don't know how to do that. It means no one's taught you. It's what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But you think you know. By the way, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a. I'm a business owner and I used to be a small business owner. I grew a small business into a boutique business, into a reasonably sized business. I would think it's a big business because one of my businesses I sold for $120 million. Maybe it's a mid sized business by big boy standards. And then one of my enterprises is a large enterprise because that budget is north of $65 million a year. So I have experience from the smallest to the largest. But an entrepreneur is somebody who creates something from whole clothes. Whereas a businessman or businesswoman takes an existing business plan and scales it and operationalizes. So a businessman, businesswoman is taking basically an existing concept, a dentist's office, chiropractor office, a healthcare office, whatever, right? A service and making that thing work. Franchise businesses are good examples of existing business plans. An entrepreneur like me is nuts. Creating new ideas from nothing and backing, backing them with, in my case, my own and others, private equity. Okay? And so in some cases I'm my own venture capital firm, if you will. For myself at least, that's what I have been. So let me now give you first a brief history of business and why this is relevant to you, particularly during Black Business Month. Business has always been one of the most powerful ways to build wealth and independence in America and around the world. I'm thinking about my friend, my brother Strive Masiyiwa, who is the Bill Gates of Africa, who's a billionaire and an up from nothing entrepreneur from Zimbabwe. So successful in Zimbabwe, they don't. The government is afraid, I think that he wants to run for political office there. So he can't even go back to his own country. Not because he's a criminal, but because he's so successful, folks are intimidated by him. But he is doing fiber optic cables throughout the African continent. He was one of the first to bring cell phones to the African continent. I believe the first cell phone provider in Nigeria. And he runs a multiplicity of businesses there. Is enormously successful. You find your hero, your she roll, whatever continent you live on and study them. Okay? So this is a way for independence. All money is Is freedom right in the and and you cannot have freedom without self determination. And you can easily understand financial literacy. Hello. What we're talking about here. Financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. Why I founded Operation Hope and why I want you to go get financial coaching and counseling. Why I've raised and deployed $50 million plus a year in in money used for scholarships for coaching is building economic infrastructure. 1500 offices across the country for you to plug into the one million black business initiative. One MBB as an example, is a resource for you to plug into in partnership in that example with Shopify. Okay. In early America, immigrants, settlers and free and freedmen alike often turned to business when other doors were closed. Owning a shop, a farm or trade gave families not just income, but dignity and independence. For black Americans, business was often the only path after slavery. Many could not access land ownership or fair wages. We literally worked for free. That was sort of the whole point of slavery. It was bad capitalism, wasn't personal, became personal later on. But it started. It didn't start out personal. Started out as just bad capitalism, free labor. So they built their own when they could not get that opportunity from others for their own barbershops, beauty salons, insurance companies, newspapers and banks. And because no one else would serve our community, people didn't want to cut our hair. So we had to cut our own hair. They didn't want to give us medical services. We had to do that for ourselves. That closed market, okay, that segregated market created wealth for those who serve with excellence the black community in that example, because no one else would serve them. And so people who did well were looking for quality services. And smart black businessmen and women fulfilled that. And so thus you had black Wall street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is cited often, which became a symbol of this power. And there are other places, by the way, places in the Carolinas and others and of course Harlem later on. But the entire communities, one in South Central, by the way, that was very impressive and little, little well known on Central Avenue. Entire communities built on ownership. Ownership that happened to be black. Globally. The story is the same from Jewish merchants in Europe, by the way, it was illegal for Jews to own land in Europe. They were discriminated against. It ran all around the world for most of 6,000 years. So they had to learn finance and financial literacy because they couldn't own land. So they figured if they financed the land and understood how to. Banking was not a dignified business back then. Investment banking less so. Being a merchant banker even less so. These folks took these Businesses that nobody else wanted and became experts at that through financial literacy and through finance controlled land and businesses. And it's one of the great success stories in the world for a group that was and continue unfortunately to be hunted around the world and discriminated against. But still they rose and I commend them for that. Goldman Sachs. By the way, did you know that half of all Jews are dark? It's a whole nother conversation another time. That's literally true. Goldman Sachs was a guy named Goldman and a guy named Sachs who could not get a job on Wall street. No one would hire them. So they literally just went door to door selling financial services and build that up slow by slow, little by little. And that became, well, Goldman Sachs, the firm you know of today as an institution. Every big business was once a small one. So you have the example of Jewish merchants in, in in Europe. By the way, blacks and Jews share a shared history, even a shared DNA going back 6,000 years. And I will do a separate podcast just on the history of business and trade and commerce and capitalism. So come back for that and how it crosses with culture and how some folks want us to all be in a constant argument with each other.
- [16:16]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
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- [16:46]
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- [17:34]
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- [18:23]
Ryan Seacrest
It'S Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is hot out there this summer, right? But don't sweat it. We got tons of ways to save on your family's favorite personal care items to keep yourself feeling cool and smelling good now through September 9th, earn four times points when you shop for items from your favorite brands like Right Guard Raw Sugar, Dove Soft Soap and Olay. Then use your points for discounts on groceries or gas on future purchases. Offer end September 9th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [18:59]
John Hope Bryant
So you had that example. You had Indian traders in East Africa. It has to be noted that here that bad capitalism I promote good capitalism. Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a price for it. Good capitalism is where I benefit. You you benefit more in bad capitalism. Slavery, by the way, wasn't just white European slave traders. It was Indian slave traders from India. The East Indian company, I believe it was. There were Asian slave traders. There were, believe it or not, African folks who not slave traded from the coast, but who captured folks in other tribes in the central part of Africa and traded them monetarily. They didn't like each other. These are warring tribes. Think about gangs today. They didn't realize they were trading them in slavery, but because no one had gone beyond the coast really. So Europeans, unfortunately were best at a horrible business model. But bad capitalism is something no different than our communities today. You see everybody engaging in bad capitalism. I want to see more good capitalism. That's what this podcast is about. The color is green by the way. That white, black or red? Blue. It's green. I want everybody to be able to get your share of it so you can build some wealth and build some independence and some freedom, so you can say what you like and do as you please and empower who you choose. So again, you have these entire communities that were built up and these examples from again, Jewish merchants in Europe, Indian traders in East Africa, Chinese family businesses across southern Southeast Asia. Business ownership has been the latter out of poverty into the middle class and often into lasting generational wealth. The reason is simple. A job gives you a paycheck, but a business gives you freedom. A real business, it can scale, which is what I've been discussing so far in this podcast, it can be passed down. It creates assets, not just income. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. That's why today, when we talk about financial literacy, wealth building and independence, we can't leave business out. Starting a business, even a small one, is still one of the most proven ways to move from surviving to thriving, to winning, to controlling your narrative. And in my case, we're at 400 employees, employing others and empowering others. So now let's get into, let's get into the substance of this. So every big business started small. Amazon started with books in a garage for you by you. Fubu started with $40 and a sewing machine. Brother who founded that just called me great guy. Operational started with a man with a mission. That's me. You don't need a million dollars, a fancy office or even investors. Right? You don't. You just need clarity, courage and the first step. I never started with business loans by the way. I have some, well I have lines of credit, things like that facilitation is for which is facility is facilitating cash flow payment haven't come in yet. So I have a credit line that pays the bills until the payments from a growing business comes in. Yeah and I, and I had even a, I had one facility, a couple hundred million dollar facility for business that I had recapitalized with some other partners. That was $200 million. The largest credit facility that was done for a person of color for more than a couple decades. So said black enterprise. And that was non recourse debt, meaning there was no personal guarantee. But when I started businesses, I did not start businesses with loans. Sorry, I, I did have credit cards and things like that. But I didn't get like a proper, a proper loan. I didn't grow it based on debt, I grew it based on hustle. So the, the step one is, is, is the idea in the mindset. So Damon John, who I decided FUBU's founder who I just traded message with this weekend. Really great guy. He started selling hats he made with a $40 budget. The hustle you have in your neighborhood can become your blueprint for entrepreneurship or small or indoor small business. You know, don't wait for the perfect idea. Start where you are with what you know. Search and research. The Daymond John story is quite inspiring. He's still growing and building businesses to this day. Step number two, research and validation. So step number one was the idea and the mindset. Okay. And the Bible says when there is no vision, the people perish. And I love that. I have a whole thing I do for myself. I have a graph that created that's vision, mission, purpose, passion, strategy, plan, execution of the plan, tactics to do's to dones, assessment, evaluation, reimagination based on the recess based on the assessment of what just happened and whether it needs to be improved or not. Like a software upgrade, reset, refine the business plan, wake up the next day and execute on a refined business plan. So you should never just be getting up and doing what you did yesterday. You should always be trying to improve yourself. You should be in a constant state of software upgrades, active software upgrades. When you got the phone, if you have an iPhone like I do, when you got the phone, my phone is a 16 Pro. Within a couple weeks, iPhone was pushing you a software upgrade of 16.1, 16.5. I'm now at 18 something, I believe software, software series. Even though the phone is a 16 Pro, iPhone realizes there is no perfect and. And so they gotta don't wait for something's perfect. Get it out there in the marketplace, get people to buy into it and keep upgrading your software as you go. And so the current software is 18.6.2. 18. All right. Not 18.18.6.2. What's your personal software upgrade and are you keeping track of it? Are you constantly obsessed with Kaizen as they say in Japan? Constantly improving? I am. I'm obsessed with knowledge and I'm nosy. God gave you two ears and one mouth. You listen twice as much as you talk. I'm nosy. I want to know everything about everything. Just like my friend Quincy Jones. The late Quincy Jones shared with me one of his gifts. So all of my businesses started with being nosy, doing research, having a vision, not being emotional, being passionate and purposeful. Whenever you make an emotional decision, it's going to be a bad one. So don't make a business. Business is not personal, okay? Capitalism is a gladiator sport. I want you to Take the emotions out of it. Yes, passion is going to be necessary, but take the emotions out of it. Step number two, research and validation. A fruit prep service. One woman began asking church members if they pay 10 or $15 for home cooked meals. She had 15 orders the first week and grew from there. Now, if you ask 10 or 20 real people, not just family, if they would actually pay for what you're offering, and then if they say yes, you might have a business. But a business, an innovation, an idea without a customer, a paying customer next to it is not a business. That's my friend Jim Clifton of Gallup's quote, okay, an innovation or a cool idea without a customer, a paying customer next to it is not a business. A lot of people running around I see with business cards and lease, for lease Mercedes and a leased office space and nice clothes and, and going to lunches and dinners and again, the business card says CEO on it. And they're going to cocktail receptions and they make some phone calls and have some meetings and they, they have a PowerPoint presentation and they think that that's business and that's not. That's business. That's not business. That's business. You gotta be the chief hustle officer. Chief. Get it done. Officer. Chief. I get up in the morning and stay up late at night, and I outwork you, outrun you, and out and out hustle you. Officer. Right. An entrepreneur works 18 hours a day to keep from getting a job. So, and, and there's the last one paid and the last one to walk out and turn the lights off. I mean, I used to sleep in my office, quite literally, the sheriff's department when I lived in Los Angeles and while I worked in Los Angeles and lived in Malibu, California, The Sheriff's Department, L.A. county Sheriff's Department, they told me one day when they saw me in the convenience location, the convenience store A and P and mini market, where I got gas on my way home. When I finally finished my day of work and drove home, which is often 2, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, the sheriff saw me one day go in the amp and mini market, and they said, oh, there's the sleeper. I'm like, excuse me. Yeah, we call you the sleeper. What does that mean? As you're the guy who pulls his car off the side of the road, it is very dangerous to do this. And you go to sleep in your car and we come and check on you. I'd be so tired from working all day and doing meetings all night. And then sometimes I wouldn't take a nap in my office. I'd get in my car and I drive home. I would sleep in my office overnight. I'd want to convey. I want to go home and take a shower and put on fresh set of clothes. I drive from West Los Angeles where my office was at the Westwood Gate, the Westwood Gateway complex at Little Santa Monica and Sepulveda Boulevard. The building is still there. I was on the eighth floor. Bryant Group Companies was where we were located. I drive from there down the 405 freeway to the Santa Monica freeway, up PCH Pacific Coast highway to Malibu and on the halfway there, I'd get exhausted, have to pull off the side of the road. You know, you start seeing three, three lanes when there's only two and you remember you roll down the window and you have to wet your, wet your, your finger and put it on your eyelids with some saliva on your eyelids and then open the window and put your head outside the window. That was me. All right, don't laugh. You know you did that. You know you've done that. It just, I just did it coming home from my office. You might end up coming home from a club, who knows? But, and I was completely sober. Like I've never, I don't do drugs, I don't drink. So it's that those are not my things. But I worked. I was a workaholic. I was an alcoholic. I workedaholic. I was a passionaholic. Anyway, these, these sheriff's officers said they, they knew me by reputation. I was a sleeper. I knew I had to change some things, that either a robber was going to kill me or I was going to kill myself by working myself to death. So I'd need some more balance. But that is what an entrepreneur. That's an example of an entrepreneur's commitment. I didn't get a paycheck back then. Everybody got paid but me. I just had. I was fueled by my vision and my passion and my non stop hustle. And again, an entrepreneur or small business owner takes no for vitamins. Okay, let's now get into number three, business structure and legal basis. Right. And I go through details of this in another podcast when I do discuss the different legal structures for starting a business. So please go there and check that out. Cleaning service founder started with just supplies. But an llc, a limited liability corporation gave her contracts with offices and property managers. So filing an LLC turned her hustle into a business others could trust. My point is the difference between somebody with a good idea and good hustle and a proper businessman or businesswoman is paperwork, proper paperwork. I want you to be, I want you to get obsessed with the details, right? I want you to get obsessed with your accountant. Get obsessed with, to figure out what an income statement is in a balance sheet. I remember we had this young man who wanted to come in and start a business at Operation Hope and we were helping him. He asked for help. He used to be a drug dealer, to be really blunt. And he was trying to transition his life and I commended him for that and wanted to help him with this transition. And he had already paid money to lease a restaurant location and had already bought a burner for the restaurant. So he was already all in. He leased the facility, had bought some of the equipment, stoves, burners, et cetera. And then I asked him, okay, so tell me about, tell me about your, your balance sheet. And he's like, what's that? I was like, excuse me. Like he, he, he had the hustle. But no one told him the business basics, right? So you need, if you're going to be a proper business person, you need an accountant. You need at least access to a lawyer. You need somebody to review your contracts. You can use artificial intelligence, by the way, in the short, short term. But don't just rely on AI. You can have AI for 80% of the work and get a lawyer to sign off on what AI is telling you to make sure that it's tight and right. You need an accountant, you need a bookkeeper and, or accountant and, or a bookkeeper. At some point you'll need a controller, somebody to run the money with your oversight inside the business at some point. I have a chief financial officer. I've audited financial statements. That's people, people can trust my businesses because I've audited financial statements just like this lady. This LLC limited liability corporation gave her respectability because it gave her struct paperwork independently reviewed that people can trust. You really need to have your books and records and a budget in place for your business. Otherwise again, it's not a business, it's busyness. You need to make boring sexy like you need to have. If your accountant's trying to hang out with you at the club or at social events, you need to get rid of, get a new accountant. You don't want people who want to hang out with you. You want people who want you to be set up, they don't want to hang out. Set up properly I meant. So a limited liability corporation is cheap and easy and quick and even if you want to do business with your family members, you should have a limited liability corporation and everybody should sign the dotted line because when things get messy, when things don't go well, there's two times when mess happens in a business when things go incredibly well. Money out of the blue changes people. It's a lot of money and unfortunately I've seen it in my own situation. People I thought I knew, I realized I didn't know it all when money showed up and they think they should have a piece of it, even though I made it sense of entitlement. But, but also when things go badly, folks get amnesia. I didn't say that. I didn't do that. I didn't guarantee that. I didn't promise that. Or when you loan somebody some money, they, they get amnesia. They don't want to pay it back, right? But they certainly want some of the profit. So you just want to have this all documented. So it's again, a friend of mine told me she likes math because it doesn't have an opinion, right? And, and so I want you to to just be not emotional and mathematical and businesslike and have your paperwork in place so you don't have these petty arguments with anybody or disagreements.
- [35:35]
iHeart Podcast Announcer
Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the way ways they want with PayPal, Venmo pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations.
- [36:05]
Samsung TV Advertiser
As a football fan, you want the best way to watch your favorite team at home. And now you can experience game day in all its glory with a Samsung Super Big tv. It's super big and super clear, giving you a closer view than being on the sideline. And you can go big without the blur thanks to the super Sized Picture Enhancer on our biggest TVs. So get ready for your game day with the ultimate fan worthy tv@samsung.com super sized picture enhancer utilizes AI based formulas available on 85 inch and larger TVs on models QN70F and above.
- [36:37]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It is hot out there this summer, right? But don't sweat it. We got tons of ways to save on your family's favorite personal care items to keep yourself feeling cool and smelling good. Now through September 9th earn four times points when you shop for items from your favorite brands like Right Guard, Raw Sugar, Dove Soft Soap and Olay. Then use your points for discounts on groceries or gas on future purchases. Offer end September 9th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [37:08]
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- [38:14]
John Hope Bryant
Step 4 Plan and money A mobile car wash entrepreneur started with buckets, soap rags and under $300 investment. By the way, so did I. This is also my example. I started 100 business ideas between age 20 from age 10, age 2020. Most of them failed spectacularly. Let me give you a news flash by the way. Don't be embarrassed. Get embarrassment out of your dictionary, right? All that failure is is an outcome. It's just an outcome to an experiment. It's not a defining anything about you. It's just this thing didn't work. Take no for vitamins and understand this. Success has a thousand mothers and failures of bastard child. Like no one claims the failure but no one remembers it either. Once you succeed, everybody wants to own that, right? I mean so just don't obsess about your failures. It's just the outcome to an experiment. It's just a moment in time. Keep it moving. It's hard to hit a moving target. Just keep it moving. And so this mobile detailing business clearly didn't work out. I would be still doing it, but it was something I did at a moment and it's something you do to start out. It's a whole bunch of stuff you can read my different books I go through up from nothing and the memo these different books I explain financial literacy for all some of the books that I business that I started. So the key is that this person kept their plan simple. Wash 10 cars per weekend, charge $25 each, earn $250 extra cash flow. Eventually this grew into a mobile detailing business with employees like don't overcomplicate it. It's just that simple. There's no flossing you notice in any of this, right? Number five, branding and presence. So Etsy jewelry seller invested in a $12 domain name. Domain name is the is what you select. As you know, Joe's jewelry company is what uses your online presence. It's real estate on the Internet. Okay, so domain name a $20 logo on a local production service. Right? And you probably do that on AI now for free and free Instagram customers found her online, not in a store. Shopify is where I recommend. By the way, our partner for one mbb. A simple professional look built instant credibility and voila. She had a business. And she's on the platform of Etsy which is trusted and respected. And she had her business, her business and documentation proper properly done. Because well, in this example she went through operation Hope. Step six, sales and marketing. Right? So tutor turned a small business owner. They posted free math tips on TikTok build trust. Then offered $25 an hour tutoring lessons. Within months had 20 clients. Right? Your first customers will often come from your network people you know, relationship capital is what I call it. Then you can expand with digital tools from there. Again, keep this simple. Number seven, operations and customer service. A barber working from home. All right. My barber is Keith Williams who's a mobile barber, used to have a shop. Now he's a full time firefighter, but he also does a part time business. I'm and I'm one of his clients and I pay him a premium. Come to my house and he's so dependable, I wouldn't go with anybody else. So focusing on showing up on time, clean cuts, clean and clean, proper hygiene, clean equipment, consistent pricing. Right? Never try to gouge your clients. Any consistency and they need to believe they're getting a value. And his in this example his clients referred others because of his utter professionalism. So consistency is a superpower in business. Please write that down. Consistency is a superpower in business. People will pay for what they can count on. Now some people are now listening to this and saying what's the price that I am now stopping at Step se, Step seven. Before I go to step eight, some people are saying, well, what's the right price I should set my product for? And how do I know what the right price is and all that? And oh, I don't want to overcharge somebody. Don't worry about overcharging somebody. The market will tell you when enough is enough. When you set a price and people throw their nose up and start rolling their eyes at you and go, girl, you got your mind. You can, you know you've charged too much, back it down a little again, do, do some test discussions. But again, you're not taking advantage of people. You're selling a product of service which alleviates a pain, creates a solution. All capitalism is is solving problems. Let me tell you what a cap table is. A capitalism table is right, Not a cap table. A capitalism table is in negotiations so you feel better about getting to the right price. So you don't feel like you're gorging people or taking advantage of people or they're taking advantage of you. Let me explain this to you. So on the one side of the table, in this negotiating table is the capitalist, the producer of the product. The other side of this table is the consumer, the buyer of the product. Typically, black people are unfortunately just the consumers. The capitalist job, please hear me. The business owner's job is to extract as much money as they can in negotiations from the person sitting at the table on the consumer side while giving them the least value in return. That's the capitalist, the business owner, the entrepreneur's job. They've got a product or service, something they've created, something they control, something they're offering. Their job is to get the most value out of that that they can from a paying customer while giving the least value in return so they can earn the biggest profit. Now, somebody's gonna go, oh, John, that's so. That's so ruthless. That's, that's horrible. No, it's just business. But let me. Here's another. The second part of this story. On the other side of this is the consumer. Guess what their job is. Consumer's job is to pay the least amount that they can from this capitalist producer in negotiations while extracting the most value from that capitalist in return. Now, is that person predatory? Is that person unfair? And here's what happens in most good negotiations, right? Everybody leaves that table slightly annoyed. That's a great negotiation. Everybody leaves the negotiating table slightly annoyed because nobody got everything they wanted. So in Africa and developing countries, in Latin America and Asia, in India for sure. Trying to think if I missed someplace in the back country of Australia, I'm sure you'll tell me if I'm Caribbean, I missed in maybe Eastern Europe. Small shop owners, all they do is haggle over prices. They negotiate. They literally think about when you're someplace traveling and you're haggling over prices with some merchant and it's sport for them. It's like they've got the thing down to a science and they're trying to figure out what the price, pain, promise, value proposition, sweet spot is with the customer. When you go to Walmart or you go to Amazon or wherever it is you shop, the price is already predetermined. The market researchers have already figured out, here's a brush, it solves a problem. A nappy hair, kinky hair or whatever. Here's a brush, a comb, whatever, a toothbrush. And here's what the market has already said. It's going to pay for that. So that the price is printed on the. Isn't this fascinating? Printed on the product or now you have a barcode, but it already knows that, okay, the average person is willing to pay this because the promise, the value is much more than the pain of the cost. And so the transaction happens. But in developing countries, it's an active negotiation. Now give you a funny little story. I'm doing a deal which I can't talk about at the moment, but one of the major investors in this deal, a very big financial institution, very sophisticated, like a huge, huge institution. And my partners were negotiating with them if I introduce them on the rates of return on this investment. And it got back to me that my part, my new partners in, in this new business were just mortified. They thought they'd offended the, the, their new new investors. And they really thought this deal was done, like this was going to fall apart. We're talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars and more importantly, a really important partner and friend of mine. And like John, we know we don't want to offend you. We didn't want to offend them. We can't do what they're saying. And what they're saying is around the edge of, you know, lunacy, whatever. And so I said, I. Slow down. I know these people let me call, right? But I was prepared, prepared. I was prepared for this all to fall apart. So I called, well, emailed first. Hey, can I talk to you? Called my friend, got, got him on the phone and I explained, I explained, I explained, I explained the situation very delicately, diplomatically. This is one or two times I can remember where I'm glad I didn't pop off. I'm glad I listened before I decided to pop off. And I'm glad I didn't get emotional about this because. Because I would have been wrong, and I would have destroyed a great business. So the guy listened to me and he. And he laughed. I said, what? Why are you laughing? He said, john, we were just playing with him. I said, what do you mean? He's like, oh, just negotiation. Like, we're just. We're just messing with him. Like, we're just trying to figure out what we can get. Of course we're committed. We just, you know, we're in. We just want to figure out how much we can get out of them to our advantage. I mean, it's just. It's business and sport. These guys were just bored. This is what they do. Like I said, come on, you should be ashamed of yourself. You petrified these folks. I went back and patched it up, got out of the way, and they finished negotiating their deal. And it wasn't personal. Right. And these were rich people on both sides of this negotiation. Right. There's another time that I almost screwed a big business deal up. I had asked the founder of Shopify. I can tell this story with. I've said it publicly before. Toby Lutke. Great guy. Second richest man I believe in, in Canada. Really great guy. Good friend. I had asked him after George Floyd's murder. I'm sorry, I had spoken for him for free. Doing it during town hall. Relationship capital. Sometimes what you get is less important than what you give. In fact, I've always felt that. That giving is more important than getting. In fact, whatever goes around comes around. If you give, you tend to get. And if you just focus on getting, you don't get anything except showing the door at some point, because you're transactional. You're a taker. Okay. So at the end of this presentation by one of the wealthiest men in the world, I didn't. He, like, he realized I did this for free. I just gave a town hall to his employees about what happened with George Floyd's murder. And he really appreciated that. This was, of course, 2020. And he's like, what can I do to be helpful to, you know, black America? I'm like, well, I don't know. Help me create a million. A million new black businesses in America. And he's like, send me something on that. So I said, okay. So I hung up the phone and went. Typed up something. Never let his business truth. Here's a golden rule. Never let the perfect be the death of the good. Don't let the perfect be the death of the good. I didn't wait three months, three weeks to write a proposal. Have it written, have it. No, I just knocked it out quickly and it was good enough and sent it to him before you forgot about me and start focusing on something else. Don't let the perfect death of the good. Don't navel gays. Don't. Don't admire the problem forever. Right? Get to it. Right. This is the end of the story. Can we please start there? So I sent this, this proposal to him. Heard nothing. Days go by, a week goes by almost two weeks. So I sent him an email. Hey Toby. Dear Toby, I really appreciated the time I enjoyed our time together in the town hall. Appreciate you asking how you what you can do to help. You probably got busy distracted running a global business. Thank you so much for even offering and being interested in trying to help black America to come up from self determination. I realize you didn't get back to me and you probably just didn't you want to be uncomfortable so you want to tell me no, don't worry about it. We'll do something down the road but thanks for being consistent, considerate and caring. Dear signed John Bryant sent the note by email. He responds and says john what are you talking about? I said yes. Excuse me? Yeah, I said yes. I said we'd do it. Well I went it was in my spam folder. Always check your spam folder. His commitment two lines you know was in my spam folder that was became then I started working with his his right arm Toby, I call him Toby I this Toby Y Toby who now is on the board of Shopify. Great guy. And Harley Finkelstein who's the president of Shopify and all these heroes and sheroes at Shopify who I now count as friends and who are great people helped me to develop a and Cass is also another guy great guy there working as helped me develop $130 million business on that two line email from Toby and then they came back and committed another $60 million last December because it was going so well we've created, nurtured, supported advance through the One Million Black Business Initiative. 450,000 black businesses since George Floyd's murder which there's only 3.2 million black businesses in America. So that's about 12% of all black business businesses which is fantastic. And why they're doing this is they're doing it out of some charity or some goodwill or some crazy, you know. No, they're doing it because it's good business, right that they've got 2, 3% of black shops, had black shops on the Shopify platform and they want 10% of black shops. They want to grow their platform. They see this as a legitimate, profitable emerging market and they can do well and do good at the same time. Good capitalism. That's exactly what we want, isn't it? We don't want charity, we don't want handouts, right. We want hand ups. So there's an example of I'm glad number two I didn't pop off and get emotional and go yeah you're a racist and oh you don't want to do anything in the first place and I'm just wasting my time. I mean I would have just tore my whole rear end. I'm glad I shut up and just was gracious and remember how my mother raised me and said thank you to the man for being considerate. Now we're dear friends by the way and Harley's on my board and Kaz and I work all together all the time and me and Toby y are good friends and Toby, Toby and I race cars together. We will be racing cars together and one MBB is a great partnership with Shopify and Operation Hope and we're helping a lot of people and doing well and doing good. I'm fulfilling my mission and they're getting a good feeling for what they're doing but they're also getting the prospect of Future customers because 5 or 10% of all all these Shopify candidates who get a free account become long term customers of Shopify. Wouldn't that isn't that a win win situation? In fact Invest Fest we just gave $25,000 1MBB scholarship packages which includes legal support, accounting support with professionals for a couple hours, marketing support, technical support, Shopify account for free. So I think it's a dollar a month for six months basically for free if you get your first sale those financial second one by the way assistance with setting up your a free domain name, free website, payment systems, delivery systems, a business plan, financial coaching from Operation Hope. I'm just stuff like a member at the moment. It's a complete package worth $25,000 program grant we designed for those we appointed. We allocated four of those to earn your leisure at their Invest Fest recently and people went wild and it was wonderful to be able to do that for folks who wanted just wanted a shot at self determination but all that came from me, making sure I read my spam folder. Back to how to start a business. Step number eight. So we just covered operations and customer service. Step number eight, growth and scaling. Right? So the lawn care business. Start with a lawnmower. Hello, a used lawnmower. Don't go buy a new one from. Well, if you can find a use lawnmower, go, you know, go on one of these online marketplaces and find a used dependable lawnmower if you can. Go buy one if you want to for Home Depot, for, for that's new. Get a warranty on it if you do that. But you can start with a used lawnmower. After six months, reinvest the reinvested profits into a second mower hire. You can hire a teenager in the neighborhood. Within two years you have five on your crew. Right? See, it's compounding, right? Don't chase flash scale what works. Reinvest profits, build and repeat. Ritz and repeat. Keep compounding. All right, so with real people, they all started small and they built big. Your idea doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be started. One step at a time turns a dream into a business. Dr. Dorothy Height once told me, john, I like you because you're a dreamer with a shovel in your hands. Here's my challenge to you. Write down one business idea today and take one action this week. Just those two things. Whether it's registering the name, calling 10 people, setting up a free website, or calling Operation Hope and signing up to 1MBB and or Hope Financial Coaching and counseling or smart business program. Just start somewhere. Okay, so I'm going to give you now a peek into 10 businesses that you can start for under a thousand dollars. Again, I'm really trying to make this really practical for you and getting in a level where you can pick it up no matter who you are, where you are, whether you have full time, part time, you have a job. By the way, don't go quitting your job. Start a business. Being all this emotional stuff again. Don't give up your old shoes. You get some new ones and make sure, make sure the new shoes fit. Let your 9 to 5, if you're lucky to have a great job, let your 9 to 5 which has health insurance and benefits and all that stuff that you're nine to five. Job finance your five to nine dream. Write that down. Okay, Businesses you start for under thousand dollars. Examples. Here's some AI leveraged future focused businesses. Content plus AI micro agency use ChatGPT which my I'm the co chair of the AI Ethics Council with my buddy Sam Altman, who's the CEO of ChatGPT. I use ChatGPT mostly. I love it. Use ChatGPT, Canva and Cap Cut to help small businesses create social media posts, captions and videos. Startup costs 200 bucks. Laptop, software, subscriptions. AI enhanced enhances productivity, but human creativity plus local relationships make this valuable. You're not going to be put out of business, by the way, by AI. You're going to be put out of business by somebody who can run AI out of business or out of your job. That's another podcast for another day. I help do a whole series on AI. Number two, AI resume and career coaching services. Help job seekers use AI tools to rewrite resumes, cover letters and prep with mock interview bots. Startup costs basically free. Just marketing and your time. AI is a tool, but people still want human guidance and encouragement. This is a really good business ledge. That one's like almost anybody can do that. Everybody. And it's going to be so needed. People are willing to accept AI. They really have no clue what it is, right? As my friend Van Jones would say, 99% of black folks don't know a thing about AI, but 99% of white folks don't know a thing about AI either. There's equal opportunity discrimination. We're all a little bit lost. But the curious and the nosy in those who execute on that nosiness win. Number three, E Commerce Micro store with AI marketing. Start a drop shipping biz. Drop shipping shop business or Etsy. Digital production or product store. Use AI to design product descriptions, logos and ads. Startup costs about $500 for samples, website and marketing. Number four AI powered tutoring. Math writing, ESL coding. Parents want tutors, but you can pair your teaching with AI practice worksheets and quizzes. By the way, just if you're in the hood, go to the suburbs, right? Just find folks who go to places where there's a 700 credit score community, upwardly mobile community. Not saying that doesn't exist where you live, by the way. I'm just saying this is the easy thing for you to do. Go someplace where people. People who have have stable families, high credit scores, jobs, careers, but don't have a lot of time. But they want the excellence for their kids and become a tutor for their kids. Startup costs virtually zero. Zoom, zoom marketing, et cetera. You can do this virtually. That's also another great business. Number five, AI driven research and data assistance for local businesses. Example, help a local realtor or contractor pull Neighborhood trends pole. Neighborhood trends, right. Market reports and Customer insights with AI tools. Startup costs 300 bucks. Just marketing yourself. Basically. AI resistant. Immune trades and services. Okay, These are things that you can do that AI won't put you out of business doing in three to five years. Mobile car detailing and car wash. I mentioned that earlier. AI cannot wash a car. Or at least not yet. Robots aren't here yet. Always in demand, hard to automate scale. And it's scalable. Startup cost, as I said earlier, about $500 for supplies. Seven, residential cleaning services. I love this business. AI can, can schedule but can't scrub toilets. And it's immune to automation. Okay. Starter cost, 200 bucks for supplies. My mother did this business, by the way, back in growing up in Compton. She, she was a janitor, right? She had a janitorial, little janitorial business. And then she was a, she was a contract janitor for the school I grew up in. I, I like, come on, mom, I see you at home. Why are you here? She's like, when she got laid off from McDonald Douglas aircraft between contracts, she was a fabricator for seats. And in airplanes, seats I fly on today, by the way. When she got laid off because she was between contracts, she wouldn't go and get on welfare. She'd go to my school and find out whatever job was available and she'd take it because she wanted to be near me. Drove me nuts, but my God, I'm so thankful. My mother loved me into excellence. She was a security guard. She was a janitor. She was like, mom, you just, you had a different uniform every week. She's like, yeah, but I'm still your mother. I'm going to kick your butt. You mess up. Imagine. Can't get her out. Can't get away from your mom. I just love my mother. She told me she loved me every day. Make sure you tell your kid they're loved every day. Number eight, lawn care, yard work, service, mowing, hedge trimming, snow shoveling, depending on the region. Starter costs about a thousand dollars with used equipment. Number nine. This was a great business. I know a good person who did like $27,000 a month on this business. Mobile notary service with remote work and legal paperwork still require requiring signatures. Notaries are in demand. Startup cost. I just used notary two weeks ago, by the way. Startup cost, 200 bucks. $300 for certification and supplies. This is a great business, by the way. Notaries number 10, personal fitness and wellness coaches. My wife is a wellness expert, by the way. Shaitra this is a hybrid model, so AI can give exercise plans, but it can't motivate people like human coaches. Right. I get a lot of knowledge from AI, but my wife is the absolute expert that I trust because I know she cares about me and she's able to communicate in a way that I'm that I can hear and listen again. Once again, AI is not going to replace you. Somebody who's using AI and technology will add AI, can give AI generated custom plans as a bonus for clients startup costs, which is certifications which are really optional and mostly marketing. So some of these ideas lean into the AI future. Some are immune to AI. Either way, you can start these with less than $1,000 and build something sustainable. The key isn't just choosing, the idea is taking the first step today. This is John o'. Brien. This is money and wealth. This has been how do you build a business? Just start. PhDs are good. PhD's are better. This is a civil rights movement. From civil rights to civil rights, from the streets to the suites, from protesting to partnering. I'll see you at the finish line. I'm so inspired by this time and your place in it. Let's go tell your friends about this podcast. Subscribe today. 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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