← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
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- [00:00]
Coca Cola Advertiser
You could sit there and listen to ads or you could take a moment to have a Diet Coke break. First, grab a chilled diet Coke because if you want it to be perfect, it needs to be crispy. Next, get a big cup of ice because everyone knows Diet Coke is best served swimming in ice. Then sip it slowly, feel that burn and enjoy your break for as long as possible. When you need a break, don't forget to grab an ice cold Diet Coke and take a diet Coke break break.
- [00:30]
John Hope Bryant
What's it like to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with 18T? Next up anytime it's like when you first light up the grill and think of all the mouth watering possibilities. Learn how to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on AT&T and the latest iPhone every year with AT and T. Next up anytime at&t connecting changes everything. Apple Intelligence coming fall 2024 with Siri and device language set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. $0 offer may not be available on future iPhones. Next up Anytime feature may be discontinued at any time. Subject to change additional fees. Terms and restrictions apply. The this Christmas so you're her, right? You're the boxer.
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Clarissa Shields
Experience the Incredible True Story as long.
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John Hope Bryant
As I'm boxing, I'm gonna be okay.
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Clarissa Shields
Of Clarissa Shields.
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John Hope Bryant
My baby going to the Olympics. Let's go.
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Clarissa Shields
Critics are calling the Fire Inside an inspirational knockout crowd pleaser.
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John Hope Bryant
If I'm gonna train for this gold medal, I'm gonna need exactly what the man gets.
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Clarissa Shields
It's a monumental achievement.
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John Hope Bryant
I've been working my whole life for this.
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Clarissa Shields
The Fire Inside Based on the Incredible True Story rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters everywhere. Christmas Day the holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories that will last a lifetime. So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company.
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John Hope Bryant
The.
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Ulta Beauty Advertiser
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John Hope Bryant
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hey. Hey. This is John O'Brien, and this is the Money and Wealth podcast, coming to you every Thursday, dropping new episodes. Tell all your friends about it. Financial literacy is a mindset. It's not just about money. And my mother had the right mindset. This is a episode dedicated to my mother, Juanita Smith, a bad sister, grew up in the Deep south. And very much like this bandage I have on my hand supporting my wrists, which I'm like an athlete of the brain, always working those, writing the books. So wore my muscles out here, also recuperating. My mother just wore out her hustle. She wore out her dreams. She wore out her life for her children. But, you know, rainbows only follow storms. You know that you cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. And so she went through stuff in order to become someone just like you're going to do. And this is dedicated to single mothers everywhere who want to know, you can make it. You can come up from nothing. My mother is the definition of legitimate hustle. Became a millionaire working, just like you, many of you, an hourly job. Born in a small town in Alabama, moved to East St. Louis with her sisters and her brother. And her dad died before she was five. Before there was Social Security, there was no social safety net, as we call it today. So her mother had to make a choice, right? And the choice was, do I send my kids everywhere? Like, break them up, break the family up? And because there was no welfare, there was no public assistance to take care of the family, There was no father at home anymore, right? Or do we all find a way because we're better together to make this. To make this work? And so grandmother Vesta Murray decided that they were going to make it work, and nobody cares. Work harder. Everybody had to work. So they went to go work as domestics because they did not have back then, you know, options that we had today. And they did not have higher education. So they went to go work for white families in private homes. And my mother, she made $5 a day for the whole day, not an hour for the whole day. And when she come home from working, my grandmother, her mother would say, what'd you make today, baby? And my mother would say, I made $5, Mom. And so, Lester, my grandmother would say, well, give me that $5. I'm going to the casino. Well, she didn't tell my mother that. She just went to the casino and she lost the money. Their money. Now, I'm about to give you a big definition here in financial literacy. One of these lessons is not what you make is what you keep, right? And if your outflow exceeds your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. And sometimes we save our worst behavior family for those we care the most about real talk. So just because somebody says they love you doesn't mean they know how to love. And there's an old southern saying again, no matter how much I love you, if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. I'll repeat that. 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. In the blind town of one eyed man's king, if you don't know better, you can't do better. So my grandmother knew enough when my grandfather passed to not break the family up and send the kids hither and there and there around the country. And that's cool, but she did not know enough to encourage my mother and her sisters and brothers to go get higher education, which was really the way out back then. Today we're trying to educate you that you can go write a check, start a business. That's an option. Back then it was just they thought cash a check, get and get a job. But they didn't think, with the exception of my uncle, by the way, Buddy, uncle buddy, who did create his own business, sanitation business, amongst others. But generally speaking, the mindset was low frequency. Let me just go work for somebody and that I'll never make it out of this. So the only way to make it out was to get lucky to gamble. So my grandmother took my mother's hard earned money and went to the casino and lost it all every day. So once my mother got wind that that was what was going on, she didn't want to talk back to grandma or be disrespectful. But grandma had short term memory. So luckily for my mother, grandma was like, well, what you make today? This is, you know, a few weeks after. And my mother's got the memo now of like, what's really going on. So my mother's like, oh, I made $252.50, give me that baby. So my mother gave her the 250 and she saved $2 and 50 cents. She had made $5 just like she did before. But she now knew that she had to help grandmother help herself. Because she, she was financially illiterate, she didn't know any better, couldn't do any better. So my mother learned the value of savings at an early age in, I guess, a survival mindset. And there's three mindsets, surviving mindset, a thriving mindset and a winning mindset. And these three mindsets are in my book up from Nothing, by the way. So initially my mother had a surviving mindset and she ultimately got to a thriving mindset. But part of her, that surviving mindset never left my mother. And the winning mindset, the builder mindset, that she blessed that my parents were able to give me the optionality, I guess, to bless me with when I say I guess meaning they didn't give it to me, they gave me the platform and I wouldn't took it for myself because they didn't know how to build. That was not how they were built, it wasn't how they were oriented. My wife Shachar would say that all behaviors, learned behavior. I absolutely believe that. Right. If you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth once again. Grandma loved everybody, but all she knew is what she knew. So all she could give was the ignorance she had, the lack of knowledge in the area of financial literacy. So mom decided she needed to save and protect that and not share that information because, you know, ignorance was bliss in the household. So mom gained a habit of savings. My mom's mom did not value education. Unfortunately, she did not see that as a way out for the family. And so nobody in the family went to college. In fact, most girls, and because there are girls, they're women, unfortunately, they would live in a chauvinistic world even to this day. And back then, expectations were not high for women, unfortunately, and certainly not black women. Thank God things have changed. And so most of my aunties and my uncle, they didn't go to higher education and they were smart ladies, they just were not encouraged to finish high school. And my mother didn't finish high school, she worked. And that's when she went back to high school at age 62 and marched in. I mean, this was amazing. I didn't know my mother was in school, she was going to work and she was in school part time after work. I didn't know it until one day I was asked did I want to go to her graduation and like graduation from what? Graduated from high school. And she marched with cap and gown on with 18 year olds who were graduating high school. This was when we were in California. I couldn't be more proud of my Mother then and now. I mean, just an extraordinary woman. Do you know how much courage and how much confidence and self belief and self esteem and individuality it takes to go back to high school and to finish and to not be ashamed, but be proud of marching with 18 year olds as a 62 year old? Do you imagine the ridicule and the cutting of the eyes that some people must have had about my mother when she was going through that process? She didn't care, right? My mother was an eagle surrounded by buzzers and turkeys. My mother was an amazing individual and she graduated and I got to find that high school diploma and put it up on the wall. She graduated and then at Boeing aircraft McDonnell Douglas, she would sometimes get laid off because contracts with the government would not get renewed or there was some issue with the federal government having the budget not be approved or whatever. And so they would not fire my mother. They'd lay her off until new business came. At the aircraft manufacturing company that she worked at as a senior, she was a fabricator. She fabricated interiors of airplanes and which then led to a side hustle by the way of her making handicrafts, which she made with her hand in a sewing machine or with needles and crocheting things that were low cost and high quality. And she would sell those handicrafts, not after work. She'd do it boldly at work, at lunch, on breaks. And then she'd make food and she'd sell that and she would ride a bicycle around the plant in Long Beach, McDonald's aircraft, and she would market her wares. And that's where I got some of my early hustle from, is looking at my mother. And she makes sure her 9 to 5 finance, her 5 to 9. She had a part time hustle for the entirety of her working life. And when that. And the supervisors couldn't fire her because the supervisors were often buying product from her, right? So they could not fire her. They had to tolerate and even support her because they were buying food and, and handicraft. And my mother would, would go and purchase terry cloth towels from the handicraft store and she would turn those towels, you know, towels that we wash our bodies off with or dry our bodies off with when we come out of the shower or out of the bath. She create bathrobes out of that custom bathrobes made out of towels. And she had different designs and different approaches. In fact, it was so successful that Walmart is so odd that I'm being the CEO of Walmart are good Friends today and I co chair financial literacy for all with him today at Operation Hope. But back in the day, my mother's products were so well, were so good that Walmart offered to purchase her products and put them in their stores. They wanted to put them in, test them in a Walmart store in I believe it was Compton or Long Beach. My mother said the one financial literacy mistake she made was they offered her 1% of sales. And she said that's ridiculous, why would I make anything for 1%? And she realized today that she passed up a gold mine because 1% of whatever sales might have been at what we now know to be or what was even then Walmart would have been a pretty big number. She learned then that she rather have 10% of something than 100% of nothing. But that was a lesson she learned later in life. So when she got laid off at McDonald Douglas Aircraft and couldn't getting the hourly wage and couldn't then have her side hustle there, she brought her side hustle home. But she also didn't want to go on welfare. No different than when she was a child. And there was no Social Security, it was no welfare. Whether welfare, they barely didn't want to go on it. State assistance, her grandmother didn't want to go on it. And she always wanted to do for herself, be self reliant, the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door, I'll get it my dang self, right? And so she would just go find a job in wherever I was and irritate the heck out of me. So I was at, of course school, I was at Colin P. Kelly Elementary School, El Segundo. It was actually El Seondo, I believe, and it was renamed Colin P. Kelly Elementary School, if I got that correct, in Compton, California. And she had time on her hands. So she went to and befriended the principal. Hello, relationship capital. Became friends with the principal and initially she became the janitor. Yes, my dignified mother who worked as a, as a trained seamstress at fabricating interiors of commercial airplanes at a major airplane manufacturer when laid off, went and became a janitor at my elementary school so she could keep an eye on me. Of course it drove me nuts. The last thing I wanted with my mother around me all day and all night. But my mother was in the fight. She's like, I'm in the fight to save my child, my kid's life. That's just, there's no negotiable. She was all in. And so it didn't matter what I wanted. In fact that's where I learned that I tell parents today you should whether your kids respect you and learn to like you, then like you and never respect you. My mother wanted me to like her, but it didn't matter, right? She was like you going to respect me. And so she was a janitor and that job ran its course. She was called back to McDonald's aircraft as a seamstress. So another contract, then she's relayed off again. And she became a security guard in my school. I think she was. Three different jobs she took at my school to stay close to me. And I had many problems growing up, but self esteem was not one of them. I learned early on there's a lot of love in the word no. My mother would tell me no when it was appropriate. But she also made sure I had high self esteem. So I now know also there's a difference between being broken, being poor. Being broke is economic, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of your spirit. And you must vow never, ever, ever to be poor again. I still use this quote at Operation Hope. And it resonates with people. It probably resonates with you as you're listening to this now. It's so common sense. Opportunity is a radical movement of common sense. But I got that common sense from my mother because common sense is not so common. It has to be taught. And so she taught me to love myself and that became the real wealth we had because we didn't have financial resources, so we had to have inner resources, right? And I went to go on to sell mail order Stacey Adams shoes and mail order jewelry and things like that to my teachers and my. In the principal at school. In part because of that self esteem and confidence that my mother generated in me and through her, the relationship capital I had with the personnel of the school. And I leveraged that to get paid, right? And I thank my mother for that. I mean, there's so many other lessons I got. I remember there was a law passed where you couldn't, you couldn't beat your kids and you could spank your kids, but you couldn't beat them. And child abuse, of course, but it was a broadly defined rule. And you know, teachers could spank you with a ruler back in my day, and I think they got outlawed as well. So I came home one day and I'd done something wrong and my mother wanted to spam me. She wanted to go get a switch, you know, off the branch from the tree in the back. I'm like, oh, no, you can't spank me. That day is over. Laws changed. I'm free. And my mother's like, oh, you free, right? I can't spank you. No, no, you go to jail. I'll call the police on you. My mother's like, okay, that's cool. Tell you what, here's the phone. I want you to call. Pick up the phone, dial. I want you to call the folks with the red light on me, the police, and call the folks then with the blue light for you, that's the morgue. Because I brought you in this world, I damn sure can take you out, right? Like I said, I respected my mother. And I was afraid. I was slightly afraid of her, right? And it was important because in my neighborhood, in the hood, or d. Hood d I D A hyphen, H O D. The street behind me was so dangerous that if you went on that street, you may not make it back. Like my neighborhood, it wasn't, you know, getting home, going to school and getting home was not a foregone conclusion like you. You might get murdered. You certainly could have got jumped. And I was jumped several times. So my mother. And my mother wasn't. Wasn't at home during the day. She was at work. So I had to fear her. And I did. I remember one day my mother was going to spank me again, and I said, I'm going to call my daddy. And they had divorced, of course. And she's like, oh, you gonna call your daddy? And she got a switch from the back. She's like, no, this was a build, actually. He ain't. Every word was a lick from the belt. He ain't paid child support in all these years. You want to. I mean, she spanked me up one side and down the other. I never made that mistake again. It was actually good discipline. I mean, we. Today, you have too many people raising their daughters and loving their sons, right? You got to raise a young black man differently. And he needs love, but he needs discipline. Straight up. He needs to be. To know what the boundaries are, and he needs to know the word no. And that discipline may need. May have an exclamation mark and an underline next to it. And. And I needed everything my mom and dad gave me. I am who I am because of what they put into me. But there's too many parents today who want to be the best friend of their children. And the children are buck wild. They're crazy. They're off the chain. They have no discipline, no respect. And if I don't like me, I'm not going to like you. If I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me, I don't have a clue how to love you. And if I don't have a purpose in my life, I'll make your life a living hell. My mother solved all of that with all these life lessons I'm trying to pour into you.
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Amazon Advertiser
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Coca Cola Advertiser
You could sit there and listen to ads or you could take a moment to have a Diet Coke break. First, grab a chilled Diet Coke because if you want it to be perfect, it needs to be crispy. Next, get a big cup of ice because everyone knows Diet Coke is best served swimming in ice. Then sip it slowly, feel that burn and enjoy your break for as long as possible. When you need a break, don't forget to grab an ice cold Diet Coke and take a Diet Coke break.
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- [24:23]
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Clarissa Shields
The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories that will last a lifetime. So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while or those who you see all the time share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company.
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John Hope Bryant
Now let's fast forward. My mother married a man who abused her and then we're cause a divorce. By the way. Is money the number one reason why police respond to calls in the household is domestic abuse. And the number one cause of domestic abuse is money. Number one reason for heart attacks says, you know, American Heart association is stress. Number one reason for stress is money. So my mother married this man. They had two children, my brother and my sister together they were stressed about money. Their outflow exceeded their inflow so their overhead was bound to be their downfall. And he took it out of my mother and so domestic abuse going on in the household and he hit her and tried to humiliate her and she kept saving a little bit on the side for herself and trying to figure out how she gonna get out of this situation. Ladies, does any of this sound familiar? By the way, why does a woman stay with an abusive man? All right. I mean, just real talk, like why is a woman on a stripper pole at 3 in the morning with some 300 pound guy throwing cash at her? Because she likes it. Because she likes it. Because she's attracted to this dude. Of course not. It's economics. It's money. Right? So just real talk here. Financial literacy and the need for it is everywhere. It is entirely possible that the only true freedom is financial freedom. And I want you to be free. My mother, God rest her soul, who passed on the glory. September 10, 2023 so this, this episode is dedicated to her. She wanted you to be free. Her credit score was 850 when she was still in the workforce and it was over 700 after she retired several years later, she wasn't doing financial transactions anymore. But she understood that she wasn't black, she was green. Economic, right? She was free, she could do what she wanted. But when she put that, her credit, her Social Security number in the computer, whatever she was applying for, the computer look at her and see what color she was. The computer realized that her credit score was extraordinary, outstanding and above average and just said yes, whatever it is she wanted. So she ever later in her life, she got credit access to whatever she wanted because she knew better and could do better. Unlike grandmother, her mother. Back to the story. So I want you to understand that rainbows only follow storms. I want you understand that you can't grow except through legitimate suffering. I want you to understand that people don't change in good times. Why would you? Right? You only change in bad times. And so my mother had bad times. She realized that this was not working for her. This being the situation with her mother, even though her mother loved her. Right? And there'll be people who love you, who say they love you, who don't know how to love you, don't know how to live a successful life. And you're going to need to be bilingual, love them and do something else. Do something different. To argue with a fool proves there are two. So I don't want you getting in stupid arguments with people because they say they love you. I want you to accept what they have to give that's beneficial to you and then make a move that's different for your life in the situations that require a different set of choices and frankly, intellect. Right? A software upgrade. My mother was able to get this software upgrade initially on her own. And then she was with again my Brother and sister's father. I won't mention his name because it's not positive what I'm saying here. I don't want to. I'm not trying to jam up his legacy, but I didn't like him beating my mother. Hello. So my mother had one last insult too many. And she poured some hot coffee on homeboy. He was sleeping and demanded some coffee. And so she said, I got some coffee for you. And he said, I'm gonna kill you. And so she knew she had. She had to go. And she prayed to God, you know, she said, look, Lord, please just get me. Just get me out of here with my children. And she had a premonition from God. She told me that God told her that you'll be delivered 2,000 miles from here. And my father, the guy who became my father, Johnny Smith, came through town, East St. Louis, and saw a mother and went crazy. Just fell initially in lust with her and then in love with her and was like within a day, like, how do I marry you? And she said, well, you gotta take me and my kids if before we can have any kind of conversation. And he said, that's great. I live in California. Well, that's about 2,000 miles, right? Almost precisely from where my mother was. So my mother's like, okay, this is God speaking. And so she got out of town before Dave. I say, that's his name, my brother and sister's father, Dave, before he could find her and do harm to her self preservation. So she had to go, right, don't let the perfect become the death of the good. Like this was good enough at the start as a line. And she was out. My father was in town because he was back in the day if you were successful and prosperous. My dad owned a construction, a semic contracting business. I'll get into his story in a separate, separate podcast episode. Johnny Smith. But he was driving his car to go buy a new car in Detroit, Michigan, and he drove across the country and was seeing some relatives or some friends in East St. Louis, and he was going to the dealership, the manufacturer, to buy a car. That's what they did back in the day, I guess the profile. And so versus continuing on to Detroit. He met my mother, lost his mind. They turned around, packed up all the clothes, packed up my brother, my sister, and went back to California. And I was born February 6, 1966, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. And they ultimately bought a home on Santa Barbara Boulevard, now it's called Martin Luther King Boulevard. And started to build a life. And I was the youngest of three children. And I remember and they had done a great job. They built, they bought a home together. Only 41.41-45% of black folks own a home today, by the way, compared to 75% of our white counterparts. What's the number one way you build wealth in America? Home ownership. Hello. So they built a home, started building some wealth they had built. So I purchased an eight unit apartment building across the street, I believe it was. And they were at some point, and I may be getting my math, I think making the chronology here wrong. I think they bought the eight unit apartment building first, lived in one unit, rent it two out. That covered the mortgage payment. That was subbed to $300 a month. Yes, they built, they bought it for $18,000. For anybody you think in real estate, it's not magical. That apartment building is worth several million dollars today. Almost. Last time I checked, it was $6 million. That's that apartment building is worth. We bought it for $18,000. And the rest of the unit rents, it was eight units. So she. We lived in one unit, rented out two to cover the mortgage payment. The rest of the units, the five units that were left, were profit. And they used that profit, saved that extra money to then put a down payment on their home, the home I'm talking about on Santa Barbara Boulevard. And by the way, we lost the apartment building. I'll get to that in a minute. And I say we lost because that's generational wealth for our family. It wasn't just my mom and my dad. It wasn't just my dad. My dad didn't realize that they had to be better together. Ambassador Andrew Young. My dad was a great hustler, by the way. A great hustler. But there's a difference between making money and building wealth. I'll get into that in a separate podcast. We're really focused on that. But like a lot of black strivers, we think that making that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting that buck, getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right. You can win the battle and lose the war. And that's exactly what my mother or my father did and wouldn't listen to my mother. So. But here's the positive part. They were smart enough to buy that apartment building for $18,000 and they did nothing else but buy that and just hold it. The whole family would be set today. More set than ultimately, we ended up being with my mother by at least six times more set. My mother Ended up being technically a millionaire when she passed on. But that one apartment building again will be worth $6 million today. We only owed $18,000 when we purchased it, when they purchased it. And when you buy a piece of real estate, you get the benefit of the depreciation, a tax benefit. You get the benefit of the appreciation, the equity, and you write off most of the mortgage payments against your income. So it was really win, win, win. Anyway, so we moved from the apartment building, owned it, then moved it, got a house. Great, good job. Then we bought a gas station. I believe it's at Normandy and Vernon, south east corner. For those who know Los Angeles geography, you know that that gas station is still there today. Just last time I was in la, it was still there and functioning. We own that gas station. We own a cement contracting business, we owned a little nursery business, taking care of knucklehead kids like me. Before and after school, mom and dad really argued over money because my dad could make it but couldn't keep, as I mentioned earlier, and he was a great hustler, but he was not financially literate. And Pastor Young says that men and women fail for three reasons, arrogance, pride and greed. My dad was not greedy, but he was full of pride and slightly arrogant. And he wouldn't ask my mother for advice. And only in a relationship do I think that the math should not work. I love math. To quote my friend Melody Hobson, I love math because it doesn't have an opinion. Right? But only in a relationship should the math not work. Two plus two, if it doesn't equal four, sorry, equals six, eight or ten, meaning more than four, what are you doing right? You can do better all by yourself. If you're not better together, what are you doing right? So dad and mom had the building blocks, right, but they didn't have the strategy right. They didn't have the mindset right. They still had a surviving mindset. They didn't together move to a thriving mindset again. My mother finally got to thriving mindset. We're not there yet. And unfortunately, they thought they were builders, but they had. They still had a surviving hustling mindset and approach and so end up winning the battle and losing the war. Crossing bridges ahead of time, picking up a. Stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime. What do I mean by that? They argued over money. Dad wouldn't listen to Mother. He would bid jobs as a senior cement contractor. He wanted to win the bid. I respect the hustle, but again, not financially literate. So the job was, if the Last contract to bid with a client for $1,000. My dad would go in and bid at 900 where the materials might be 950. My dad didn't think about that. He thought the cash flow was profit. Wrong. So the more money he made, the broker we got, he made a dollar and spent A$50. And we lost everything. We lost the gas station, we lost the apartment building. We lost our home. And on the verge of losing our home, my mother again, she. She was a master at savings. Remember this going back to the grandma story. And she would put those seed corns to the side and ladies and gentlemen, get married. I want you to trust each other. I want you to be in each other's lives. I want you to all that, but understand that you're meeting a business partner here and not just a mate. And when you go to the club and you, you, you. You see the dude? Oh, he's. He's handsome. The lady, guys, you see the lady? Oh, she's mind. Don't just ask their name, ask their credit score. Right? And I'm. I'm joking, but I'm serious, right, because this is a business partner for the rest of your life. So you want to have a joint account, right? And you want to have a separate account to make sure that, you know, if you find out this person is actually not financially literate, that they tear their own rear end. They're not tearing yours, the collective, yours. At the same time, you need to have be the backup plan for your family. So my mother had a separate little account that she had set up. And she wasn't hiding from my father. My father knew it was there. And she had saved $4,000, which was a lot of money back then. This is 1968. No, this was 1970. I was four. Four or five years old. Between three and five years old, if I get the math right. So sometime between 60. I was born in 66, 68, 69, 70, 71. That time period. Anyway, $4,000, a lot of money. My mother saved this $4,000 to send my brother to a college of his choice because she wanted him to move from a surviving mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, and thriving mindset. So surviving mindsets. Free first reconstruction. Free slavery. Out of slavery, you're free. Second Reconstruction, civil rights movement. Getting, you know, access to jobs, access to careers, access to education, access to the polling booth, access to, you know, public facilities, restrooms of your choice, all that stuff. Being able to have access. Of course, Third reconstruction, which we're in today, that Opry shop is helping to lead is the movement from the streets to the suites, from civil rights to silver rights. Right? The third reconstruction. The color is not black or white. It's green. It's not red or blue, it's green. It's economics, it's opportunity for all. It's about writing checks, not just cashing them.
- [39:35]
Amazon Advertiser
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- [40:30]
Coca Cola Advertiser
You could sit there and listen to ads or you could take a moment to have a Diet Coke break. First, grab a chilled Diet Coke because if you want it to be perfect, it needs to be crispy. Next, get a big cup of ice because everyone knows Diet Coke is best served swimming in ice. Then sip it slowly, feel that burn and enjoy your break for as long as possible. When you need a break, don't forget to grab an ice cold Diet Coke and take a Diet Coke break this Christmas.
- [41:00]
John Hope Bryant
So you're her, right? You're the boxer.
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Clarissa Shields
Experience the incredible true story.
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John Hope Bryant
As long as I'm boxing, I'm gonna be okay.
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Clarissa Shields
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John Hope Bryant
My baby going to the Olympics. Let's go.
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Clarissa Shields
Critics are calling the Fire Inside an inspirational knockout crowd pleaser.
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John Hope Bryant
If I'm in train for this goal metal, I'm gonna need exactly what the man gets.
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Clarissa Shields
It's a monumental achievement.
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John Hope Bryant
I've been working my whole life for this.
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Clarissa Shields
The Fire Inside, based on the incredible True Story rated PG 13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters everywhere. Christmas Day.
- [41:29]
Ulta Beauty Advertiser
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- [42:01]
Clarissa Shields
Spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories that will last a lifetime. So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company.
- [42:25]
John Hope Bryant
So we're in the second reconstruction now. We're in the 60s and the 70s. And my mother knew that for my brother to do better, he needed a higher education. And when you know better, you do better. And to give you a little bit of inspiration, I had a GED degree, which Chris Rock calls a good enough diploma. Now I've got honorary doctorate degrees from several universities and colleges, and I'm on the board of Clark Atlanta University. Most people who work for me have a college degree. I think actually everybody works for me as a college degree, advanced degrees. So I'm obsessed with education around my library right now. It's nothing but books. I love making smart sexy, right? I think we've been making dumb sexy for way too long. We've dumbed down and celebrated it, and now we've got to make smart sexy again. So my brother was set to go to a college of his choice to be whoever he wanted. My father got to the bank first and took that $4,000. Unfortunately, my mother had him as a signer on the account. So you might want to have. Until you guys embed. Until you embed yourself, until, you know, going from we're about me to about we. It may take a minute for you guys to come together as one. And you trust each other not just romantically, but about money and business decisions. And you're on the same accord. You might want to have an account, just your own name on it. And then he has an account or she has an account with their name on it. Then you have a joint account until things evolve. So I'll do a whole podcast on marriage. So don't, don't in the history of marriage and all that stuff. So don't worry about that. So he got the money and wasted it on some hair brain idea he had to get a bag, my dad did and of course he lost it just like my grandmother lost it because they were both financially illiterate, good people but financially illiterate. And my brother could not go to a college of his choice. And it broke my mother's heart. And the first thing she was that's how my brother ended up going to the Navy. And he went to the Navy because he could get a four year education if he signed up for military service. He thought he signed up for four years. Of course they know the psychology in the military. Once you're there, you probably stay there. Be had a good experience. So he signed up for four years, resigned up, resigned up and had a career in the Navy, became a non commissioned officer, a great career in intelligence there and end up retiring to Hawaii, marrying somebody who lives in Hawaii he works for retire from the Navy, works for the Navy as a private contractor with his, with his family. And it's a beautiful story, but it wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by that $4,000 moment where he did not have self determination, right? But what would his life be? How would it be different if he had gone to a college of his choice and become a dentist or a doctor or a banker or a business person or an engineer or whatever. It doesn't matter what it was but it could have been his choice. And he just didn't do that. And as a result of that, well, I just told you the story, right? He's a great, great life. But it wasn't his choice. And that was enough. My mother had had enough. And my mother said I'm out. And that became the fight of all fights. And my dad, they had domestic abuse, came to blows. End up calling the police to get my mother, my dad off my mother beating her up. And she put off a pump, a 3 inch pump popped him on the head. Hair didn't grow on the top of his head until his last dying days from that pop. So he learned how to do that with my mother again but she was out. She left. We left with the shirt on her back and her kids and we went to go to say with somebody she said with my uncle O.C. was really her girlfriend and his, her boyfriend whose name was O.C. but in order to make me feel comfortable, make the kids feel comfortable. She said it was that that was my uncle and I was playing on the. And she was staying there with her girlfriend and her boyfriend to save money for her to buy her first house on her own again. Here's that same lesson again. The basics, you know, spending less than you make, putting a little side for the future. So she's working as a SEAMSTRESS now at McDonald Douglas Aircraft, which later became Boeing, and making, you know, equivalent of today of $15, $18 an hour. And she worked, work, work, save, save, save. And while she was doing that, I built a relationship with the guy O.C. who again, I thought was my uncle. And I was, I was playing on the porch one day and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I was choking. And he cleared, he cleared my throat, you know, he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I adored this guy, right? And he got murdered in front of me in order to take care of his family and ours staying with him. He didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I can't afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's talk about this again. Bastard Jones quote, men and women fail. Three reasons, Arrogance, pride and greed. He could have just had a conversation with us. My mother would have contributed some money. But he decided he was going to go to work, his legit job. Then he was going to go out again and he was going to sell drugs part time. And it was marijuana, was in the wrong neighborhood. And those guys took it very seriously. They followed him home, they said, you're in the wrong territory. And they dropped. They dragged him. They hit him with a truck and dragged him. He's on a bicycle. And that was right in front of me, in front of the house. And I think they did it because I could see him send a message and they killed him right in front of me. And I still have an image in my, in my head. So I saw my first death and that was about money. So the first death was the death of our, of our parents, net worth or family structure, generational wealth. Second first murder was OC Getting murdered in front of me. All this is about money. And my best friend George got murdered over money selling drugs with the next door neighbor, Tweet, who we moved into. My mother bought our first home, 15502 South Fraley in Compton, California. And she bought that house and I became friends with George, who was real smarter than me, by the way. So intellect alone is not enough. But George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset, and got murdered hanging out with Tweet. So watch who you hang around again. You hang around nine broke people, you'll be the 10th. Whoever you hang around. Whatever you see is who you will be. And so I could go on and on and on about my mother, but the story here is that she bought that house. We lived in it. It was the beginning of our generational wealth. She built equity and then she sold that house, bought another house, sold that house, used the equity to buy another house. She did that seven times and she ended up with a net worth of a million dollars. And I know that because she gave some money to my sister, my brother, to buy a home a couple times. And of course, I'm the manager of her estate, trustee of her estate, because she had a will. I want everybody to have a will when she passed on the glory. So hopefully she's an inspiration to you. She lives on today. She has a fund in her name. Her legacy lives. And hopefully now you know that even if you're a single parent, you can still make it. You can work an hourly job and build a net worth of a million dollars and live a life of dignity and self reliance. You can be free. It is possible. The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom can be taken away from you. But my mother's story is a very simple one. She took a message from her grandmother. She loved. She loved her, but she did. My grandmother didn't know better, couldn't do better. And she used that lesson for the rest of her life to take an hourly income and turn it into generational wealth. And she passed it on to her kids so her kids would have optionality and choice. And now the three of us are living our truth. Because my mother lived her life not only for herself, not just for me, but for we. This is John O'Brien, and this is how you know not only you make some money, but you build some wealth. And you have that dignity inside of you that no one can take from you. All right, let's go. 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.
- [52:32]
Coca Cola Advertiser
You could sit there and listen to ads, or you could take a moment to have a Diet Coke break. First, grab a chilled Diet Coke because if you want it to be perfect, it needs to be crispy. Next, get a big cup of ice, because everyone knows Diet Coke is best served swimming in ice. Then sip it slowly, feel that burn, and enjoy your break for as long as possible. When you need a break, don't forget to grab an ice cold Diet Coke and take a Diet Coke break.
- [53:02]
John Hope Bryant
Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks, and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh yeah, because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from.
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Clarissa Shields
An enormous library of popular audiobook titles.
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John Hope Bryant
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Clarissa Shields
The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories that will last a lifetime. So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while, or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company.
- [54:24]
John Hope Bryant
With millions of books on Amazon, there's a reading feeling for everyone. For example, Raquel's Whoa. When she first entered the kingdom by Dragon back is different to Ari's Whoa. When he found out there was more than one crime scene. Which is also different to Ava's Whoa. The moment when the stable boy became a stable man. From Whoa. To Amazon Books, that reading feeling awaits.