John Hope Bryant (2:54)

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' Bryant and this is Money and Wealth on the Black effect Network on iHeartRadio. This is season two. And this is a special bonus episode that I really thought I would never do, in part because, well, I was just wrong. I assumed you knew all this stuff about Operation Hope, and I don't know where I got that from. I don't know why I would have assumed that you would know all that Operation Hope does. I've never taken the time to actually unpack and explain it to you. I just assume because you know me, you know it. And for that I'm wrong. Because when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me, that's literally what it spells out. And so you should never assume anything. And I tell people that all the time. But I didn't practice what I preach. So for that, I apologize. So today we're going to, well, set the record straight and we're going to get on a whole new trajectory here by breaking down the tools and shovels of Operation Hope because really, the world owes you an apology. People will say, often I hear them say I hate capitalism or I hate. I hate rich people. And my response often is, well, no, you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that is. Seems to be somehow rigged against you. That no how hard? No how. No matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, you can't seem to get ahead. You got too much month at the end of your money. Can I get an amen? So it's not you. The system is sort of rigged against you because you never got the memo. That was my fourth book. I also assume you read all my books, by the way. There was Banking Our Future. There's Love Leadership. There's how the Poor Can Save Capitalism, a bestseller. There is the memo bestseller. There's Up From Nothing that was a bestseller. And then the sort of the rocket ship bestseller, the one that's out now, is Financial Literacy for All, which has been a bestseller for going on 15 months now on hardcover and now paper, book, paperback, and you can get it at Walmart or Amazon or your local black bookstore. Your local bookstore. If you have a black bookstore in your neighborhood, you should support it. By the way, if you, if a person of color or a woman's own store, a minority, a small Business bookstore, you should support it. So anyway that I've outlined this in and unpacked sort of the how to of how we got here in, in my books I've described how we never got the memo. Why in many ways we make assumptions about this. That is what we don't know, that we don't know. The killing is what we think we know. We assume that we've got the memo. We assume that we understand how the system works. We shouldn't assume anything. Again, I've the. The society assumes that about us. And I assumed, by the way, as I said earlier, that you knew all about Operation Hope. Both of those things are wrong. And you should not feel ashamed. As I keep saying in this podcast episode and series over the last two years, you should not be ashamed because it's. Because you don't know is what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But you think you know, but no one ever taught you to know better. If you knew better, you do better. How do I know that? Because you've already proven it. Where the rules are published and the playing field is level. You kill it, you succeed. Let's give some examples. The arts, professional sports, faith, politics. The rules are published. The playing doors level. You killed it, you succeeded. Now, about 6,000 years ago, we had a choice to make and for a range of reasons. Our season was culture. We decided to, to. To become an expert in culture. And that became the definition of cool. And we are the definition of cool all around the world. Well, our mainstream friends, and this includes our Jewish brothers and sisters, by the way, kudos on them, they decided to major in capitalism. And so you, you have commerce and capitalism on the one side and commerce in kosher and cool on the other. They're all good. None of, none of this is bad stuff. They're good in different ways. But the problem is that if you're rocking the mic but you don't own the stage, then you're renting your future. If you're rocking the mic but you don't own the stage right, then you're renting your future. And that has been the storyline of all these achievers who confuse making money with building wealth. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. Because again, no one taught us how this system works. No one taught us this game of capitalism. So, so we about getting that ball, get that dollar, getting that bag in that cash, getting paid. Okay, great. That's called a contract, an opportunity. And you may get rich For a moment. But you won't be wealthy. And if your outflow exceeds your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. So if you're making money, I don't care how much money you make, how little or much you make, if the income stops because the contract or the agreement stops and your expenses continue and you don't have something offsetting that, which is a level of wealth you've been able to create, then you're going to go broke slowly, or in some cases when it's a lot of money, you'll go broke very fast and very. In a spectacular fashion. So there's nothing wrong with us. We're not dumb. We're not stupid. We have too much month at the end of our money. 70% of this country is living from paycheck to paycheck. That's everybody. But half of black folks have a credit score below 620. We're the lowest in the country on average. And again, we're not dumb and we're not stupid. We were enslaved on American soil. It was illegal to teach how to read. Forget teaching essential literacy. That was a big no, no. And capitalism, forget about it altogether. We were, in fact, we were capital. So I don't want you, I want, I don't want you thinking there's something wrong with why you don't know this. And I don't want you ashamed to have these conversations. And that is in part why I'm doing this episode. Because not only do I want to inspire you with the, the, the lessons every week about how the systems work, and I want you to master the system, don't be upset by it, because once you understand the rules, I think that you will kill it in this area as well. I mean, I joke that black folks, you know, found tennis and killed it. The Williams sisters, we found F1 racing, you know, Lewis Hamilton and killed it. Right? We, we found, you know, soccer killed it. I mean, all these areas where we golf, you know, Tiger woods, we're not normally at. We found these areas. We figured out the rules of engagement and playing the rules, playing by the rules. We killed it. And you're now seeing blacks in nascar raising. You're seeing black. Okay, so we can, we've proven we can do. Do it this success thing everywhere. Why couldn't we do it in capitalism and free enterprise? It makes no sense that we cannot. It makes every sense that we can. That's the system that I want to teach you. I also want to create a network of resources and services and programs to Help you not giving you a handout, but a hand up. And by the way, our services are available to everybody, black, white, red, brown and yellow. I'm going to show you how to produce some green. Whether you're black and brown, urban or you're poor, white and rural and you live in a 500 credit score neighborhood, you've got the same problem. You have a check casher next to a payday loan lender next to a rental own store next to a title lender next to a liquor store next to a pawn shop, right? And a church down the street trying to make you feel a little bit better. Once a week you're at the military, you're at a military installation and military base. All these predators are right there, the at the gates of the military base waiting for you to come out because they realize, they know, they nothing realize. They know, they're hoping you don't realize that you cannot have defaults on your, your financial picture if you want to keep your military credentials and your security clearances. So they are going to do. They know you're going to do anything you can have to to clear up your debts and they're going to try to help clear out your pockets as you're doing that. So we're all in this thing together. I believe that the new movements in this in the suites, not the streets. The work in the streets continues. Civil rights as we can see clearly now is still very much needed. But civil rights has to have a partner. And I believe that silver rights S I L V E R I believe the work in the streets have to now move to the suites. The protesting has to transition to partnership that we've got to go from just cashing the check to writing them. And we've got to not just focus on red rooms which are rooms designed to stop discrimination, racism, bias, all the bad things, but to point toward and hope, open up and support and encourage and develop new green rooms, internships, apprenticeships, places to create enterprise and entrepreneurship. Places of education that connects education with aspiration. Giving people the tools and the shovels to come up from nothing. You can't bootstrap yourself if you don't have shoelaces. We want to give you those shoelaces so that you can add to the American tapestry, so you can complete the American dream. I believe this is the third reconstruction. The first reconstruction was freedom, Civil War right after it, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, etc. All of the heroes and sheroes of that, of that era. Second Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My mentor, Hero, Andrew Young, Ambassador Andrew Young, who's a global spokesman of Operation Hope and who the man who created, effectively, the only international city in the south, which is the 10th largest economy in the country, which is built on diversity and inclusion. Atlanta, Georgia, and we're Operation Hope and my companies, Brian Group companies, Brian Group Ventures, et cetera, our headquarters. And then the promise in the promise of the future, I believe, is this third reconstruction that we're in now, which is about moving you from the streets to the suites, expanding the table, adding a chair, including yourself, ended as opportunity. Growing GDP for all of us and new colors, not black or white as in race or red or blue as in politics, that define the first and second reconstructions. This third one, I believe the color is green. Where we go from a history of bad capitalism, slavery being a really good, bad example of that, to a history of good capitalism, where bad capitalism is where I benefit and you benefit. Sorry, I benefit and you pay a price for it. And good capitalism is where I benefit and you benefit more. Can I get an amen? So we can do well and do good too, right? We can have this system of good capitalism, but you've got to understand the rules of the game. Somebody's got to give you the memo. Somebody's got to lay the framework out for you. And beyond that, education and an aspiration. You need tools, services and a platform. So when I said I want to become the Federal Reserve of the hood, that was no disrespect to the Federal Reserve. I think the Federal Reserve is fantastic. And it's not lacking in any way. It's a standard, a gold standard for the world. No pun intended, gold standard. But there is another America that seem to can't even get to the benefits of the Federal Reserve because they live in another hood. They've been left behind by the neighborhood, by the systems. You're not broken. The system is. And so I decided to create economic plumbing for underserved America. That is the vision of Operation Hope. So if you're looking at this on your video feed or you're listening to this on your podcast network, you're listening to this on your way to work, or you're jogging or you're cooking, or you're with the girlfriend or your buddies and you don't have a lot of time, or you want to send this to somebody else and they have short periods of time, tell them to go to the minute 13. And that's where John Bryan goes in on the what? Because when, when you finish this podcast, I want you to have the tools and the shovels you need to literally empower your life with the information that I'm giving you. So I'm going to punch through this pretty quickly because you're really smart and you don't need me to handhold you. So we're not just helping people, we're rebuilding the operating system of American capitalism. Inclusive economics, I call it. Inclusive capitalism, I call is expanding the lens of free enterprise. It is, to quote my friend Stephanie Rule, expanding the table exp and adding a chair. So Operation Hope that I founded 33 years ago in South Central Los Angeles after the Rodney king riots of 1992. Operation Hope is leading the civil rights movement, S I L V E R and now the third reconstruction, in my opinion, along with other noteworthy and important organizations that are doing great work in this country. By the way, Bishop T.D. jakes and his Good Soil Organization. There's so many more. Van Jones and all, all the heroes and sheroes. Susan Taylor. There's so many people who are doing really important work. It's not just us, but leading this, helping to lead this important work at this important time that that's platforming economic growth for this next generation, for this country. Because literally this country cannot continue to be the leader of the free world without the least of these God's children joining the party. And this is an old story, by the way. In other words, the country's always had the bottom lift up from the, from the bottom to the top. The ladder has just broken now and we need to rebuild it for us. So Main street needs the same resources as Wall Street. Okay. And, and, and so Operation Hope is this, this economic plumbing, this Walmart for financial literacy, this starbuck of financial inclusions for the country. 1500 offices. It will be 15,000 by 2030, but we currently have today 1500 offices in 42 plus states. We're opening an office on average every two weeks. Think about the major banks in this corporation. Most all of them are for our partners. And they're not doing one office or two. In the case of Truist bank, they're doing 800. Almost half of all their branches. That's not charity. I don't want to get wrong the number off top of my head, but I think at this point we're well over 50. Bank of America, same thing. US bank on board. I mean, you name the institution, we have a relationship with them.

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (18:50)

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John Hope Bryant (22:36)

Major corporations. We have relationships with them. The Fortune 500. This is not charities. Major cities in the city, state and federal government. I've worked with 12 U.S. secretaries of the Treasury. I've known nine U.S. presidents. We've been recognized by five U.S. presidents by both parties. I've been a credentialed advisor with a security clearance for three presidents from both parties. I've advised officially and unofficially, President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama. Been the Vice Chairman of the U.S. president's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy and the chairman of the Committee on the Underserved. We created Federal policy for financial literacy for the federal government. Now we need to extend that policy to include the people in communities. Hopefully this means legislation sometime soon that will be K college, at least K through 12 should be mandatory. Financial literacy, I believe, is a civil rights issue this generation. We inspired the renaming of the building on the White House campus called the Freedmen's Bank. No organization or individual has ever done that in the history of this country. All up from South Central A in Compton, California to now, the largest on the ground footprint for economic empowerment in this country. 1500 physical offices, 300 offices that are manned by my employees and then the rest are helped. 1200 are through our partners who help us with their employees and with volunteers and through technology. So by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to download hope into your life, your business, your school or your community. And we, we're not selling a dream. We're helping you build yours. So here are the tools and the shovels of your life. So for individuals and families, I'm literally going to break this down. So pull out your pen, your pencil, your digital platform, your your Your iPhone, notes, whatever, and let's get at this. Hope inside we have, this is where we have 1500 offices. Hope inside of bank branches, Hope inside. Hope inside of churches, Hope inside of. Of grocery stores, Hope inside of community centers, Hope inside of government offices, Hope inside of the fire department. I believe we're doing that in Atlanta, folks. Hope inside a police department. Hope inside. Yeah. So these hope inside offices, to make simple, make things really simple, are doing some straightforward things. They're raising Your credit score 54 points in six months, lowering your debt $3,800, increasing your savings $1200 between six and 12 months. If you're making $48,000 a year or $50,000 in this example, this just changed your life and made you bankable. Did you get that point right? Just doing that transforms your life. So the bank can't tell you. Yes, you think the bank is racist. They just might think you're a credit risk. By the way, the bank, who knows, the banker might be racist. I don't know. All I know is if you go to that computer at midnight and you punch in your information, you have a 720 credit score and you're asking for a sub $100,000 credit line, mortgage line, credit card, whatever the likelihood of that computer saying yes to you, irrespective of your color, your gender or your geography is, is, is very, very high. Like above 80%. So the color is green, not black or white or red or blue. And we're going to help you to access some of that green by making yourself attractive. There's a joke in banking. A banker will lend you money when you prove you don't need it. It's a joke, but it's not far from it. In other words, it's a joke that every banker recognizes because bankers are not in the risk business. They're in the risk mitigation business, the risk management business. And you need to show that you're managing risk your own and those you're associated with very well so they can trust you with loaning you money because they have got to get it back. Because, because most of their money is depositor money. And if you fail, they fail. So they only, they only benefit if they make you a loan and you pay it back. And they, and they cannot profit unless they're making loans. So anybody says, well, the bank is, just doesn't make loans. That's not right. That's not true. The, the bank wants to say yes, but they're forced to say no. If your credit score stinks. If your debt to income ratio stinks, if your credit is tore up from the flow up. My daddy used to say he doesn't have credit, he had credit. He said his credit was bad. Right? And no banker wanted to live and lend him money. He was a nice guy, but didn't matter. You go to church every Sunday and be the nicest person on the planet, but your credit is toe up and you have a 500 credit score. They're not giving you a loan. It's not racist. It's. It's just a smart credit decision. So my credit score used to be 800. Now it's in the high seven hundreds because I'm an entrepreneur and I use my profile, my platform to support operational out of my ventures. So it moves around. But anything above 700 is, is, is smooth sailing. So we're going to help you get to a point where the bank can be in the yes business. Yes, we want to make, make you a homeowner. Yes, we want to make you a provide your consumer credit card and so on and so forth versus turning you down. So we got to turn the green lights on in underserved communities so that, so that we can say yes. So I wrote the business plan for America. I wrote the this tide to dream for Dr. King's the anniversary of his, of his assassination, 57th anniversary, April 4th. Wrote a series of business plans. Business Plan for America everybody. Business plan for Black America. A business plan for rural America. A business plan for women. A business plan for Latino Americans. A business plan for Asian Americans. A business plan for Native American Indians. I promised a group off the top of my head, but they're all online. Go to Dream Forward. Everything I'm telling you right now is downloadable, searchable. While we're, while I'm talking to you, go online and just type in Dream Forward Business plan for America or John Hope Bryant Business Plan for America. Our operation Hope Dream Forward any of these iterations or, or John Hope Bryant Business Plan for Black America or Business Plan for Women Business plan for Rural America which, which includes my poor white brothers and sisters. All of these will pull up these business plans. I want you to read them, I want you to print them, I want you to share them with everybody. This is open source, not hiding anything from anybody, right? And then I want you to tie those business plans into this. If, if, if you go to a Hope inside location and you raise your credit score and then everybody in your block raise your credit score in your neighborhood or your family. Here's what you find out if you hang around nine broke people, you're going to be the tenth. The opposite is also true. You hang around nine rich people, you're likely to be rich and wealthy too. At least rich. You hang around nine aspirational people, you tend to be aspirational. See, you model what you see. Let's change what we see and who we model and who we hang around. So if we infect everybody with an increased credit score, what we found is over 20 years time, if we do nothing in black America, our net worth will be about zero by 2053. Okay, so that's a little bit more than 20 years time of course, but you get the point. By 2053, well within, before you know, within 30 years, the net worth, if we do nothing, what we're doing now, the net worth of black America will be zero. If we raise credit scores 100 points to an average of 700. As I'm suggesting you pick up $750 billion in wealth creation just by doing that. You then use that credit score to then access home ownership. Because now you, because now you're prime credit risk. That's $800 billion. Right? So just those two acts which doesn't require any government intervention. That's $1.5-ish trillion of wealth creation in 25 some odd years. So this is the power what I'm talking about. So these Hope inside locations are helping you to raise your credit score, lower your debt, increase your savings on an individual basis to making you, making you bankable. So the bank can get in the yes business and out of the no business. And if somebody discriminates against you after you've done all this, you come see me, right? In fact, we have a rule at Operation Hope. If the bank turns you down, we'll fund your loan. In other words, we'll approve you subject to the resolution of your primary denial factors. That's right. We operational will approve you. We've approved, we have facilitated $4.5 billion plus of investments in underserved communities primarily through, through major banks that I'm talking about here at prime rates. And we've never had to fund a loan. But our promise is if the bank, if we, if you do what we tell you to do and the bank does not fund your loan, one will approve you. The bank doesn't fund it. We will fund it. We'll put up our own balance sheet and the, and I'm the largest m black male founded community based nonprofit ever stood up and operated in American history on a sustainable basis. Best you know based on our, our annual budget and based on the investments that we've made in communities. So I'm, I'm, I'm not selling wolf tickets here. I'm telling you what we've done for 33 years and I've never had to write a check because the banks always want to make a good loan and if they don't, again, somebody discriminates against you. We'll be staying right there with you to walk you through, back through a relook at your file number two. So we're doing free financial coaching. It's not really free, it's sponsored or scholarship. So we have Hope scholarship. So it cost us money to, to and our partners cost us money to do this. But we will give you a thousand dollar scholarship good for 12 months to do your refinancial coaching, get your credit score debt savings in line, create a budget for you, things like that just by calling Operation Hope or downloading the Hope in Hand app or calling 1-800number or going to our website, right? So this is the first gift to you. Now I want you to go to the Hope Financial Wellness index and type in your zip code because I'm going to tell you what your credit score is and you tell me your zip code, I'm going to tell you your credit score, I'm going to tell you how you're living, you tell me your zip code, I'm going to then tell you your credit score and then I'll tell you how you're living. So if you, if you type in that zip, you type in your zip code and it tells you that you're in a 610 credit score neighborhood, it's not horrible, but that will tell you a lot of things about what's going on in that neighborhood. If you live in a, a 500 credit score neighborhood, you lived at 61 years of age, by the way, retirement's not until 65. Okay. You're paying all this money in the system and you're dying before you even, you even retire and can, can benefit from it because you're in a surviving mindset. To cover that in the book, my book up from Nothing. See how these things are all ti. My books, my speeches, my, the podcast, the working operation, obviously other stuff, civil rights movement, the third reconstruction, all these things are tying in together. It's all one mosaic. So uh, and if you live to, if you have a 700 credit score, by the way, you live to 81 years of age. So we found that across this country about 15 minutes apart from, in this example, Chicago, from you know, Garfield Park I believe it's called. And then you have Lincoln Park 15 minutes apart between a 500 credit score and a 700 plus credit score. Night and day, like the tell of two cities. Same thing in Atlanta, same thing in LA. Same thing in New York, same thing, same thing in, you know, Detroit. Doesn't matter. Right. And you lived 81 years of age in a 700 credit score neighborhood across the country and 61 years of age on average in a 500 credit score credit, credit score neighborhood. So it's, it's like for, it's, it's, it's not an exact science where like for every 50 point increase in your credit score, you know, you get five years more of, of, of length of life. So 20, 61 years of age versus 81 years of age. Right. And, and Operation Hope is helping you to, to resolve something like this on your own. You don't need anybody else to do this. You can do it by yourself. So what happens when you walk into a hope inside location? Let's be specific about this. You're, you're a, a single mother. You've had a divorce. You got divorced 10 years ago. You walk in the bank, the bank manager pulls your credit report. He or she knows if they pull that application, file that application, which is your right, you're going to get a decline notice. They don't want to issue a decline notice. It's bad for their record and you're going to be upset with them. So if there's a hope inside, inside that bank branch they like. Look, you see that guy over there? He said, lady over there, why don't you go see them? Can't tell you to do it, can't force you to do it. But they don't work for us. They work for Operation Hope. They're not a bank employee. They can do things we can't. You come over to see us. Another example, and let's say the lady's name is Mary, Mary Jones. In this example, Mary Jones comes and meets with one of the coaches, maybe that coaches me. In this example, Mary Jones sits down. In the old days, opera show. That was the coach by the way, was me or Lance Triggs or one of the historic legacy employees, Rachel Doth other thing. Other, other folks were around a long time ago. So you sit down with us and we pull your credit report and we go, oh baby, that looks like a bus accident. Now the banker can't do that, but I can. I don't work for the bank. You know, I've asked you for permission to have a candid conversation with you. You said yes. Whoa, my Lord. This is tore up and a blow up. What's going on here? And we both have a nice laugh because there's no, no mystery to you that your credit is probably tore up. In fact, in this example, Mary Jones, she hasn't checked her credit in 10 years or five years because she was ashamed to look at it. She said, yeah, I got divorced and it was horrible and it didn't work out very well. And, and, and what, what's on there? Well, I don't know. There's a, there's here a $1,000 charge off from PAC Bail. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, I lived in Oakland, California and we had a phone bill and my husband didn't pay. It was in our, both of our names. And, and yes, it's $1,000. I can't pay it. Well, Pac Bell sold their company at SBC. SBC Communications sold that company to AT&T. AT&T chased you for that money and could not get ahold of you because to quote Chris Rock, I don't. You said, I don't know nobody with a 1-800number. When somebody was calling from the 1-800-collection agency for AT&T. You like, I don't know anybody with 1,800number. I'm not answering the phone. So went to voicemail for 10 years or 5 years, however long, and they sold. They got tired of chasing you and they sold. That was called bad debt. For 5 cents on the dollar. They sold it for 50 bucks to Joe's Bad Debt Company. And I know it's Joe's Bad Debt Company because it says it in the memo under the record. So we call, we said, let's call Joe's Bad Debt Company. So Mary Jones gives us permission. We call Joe's Bad Debt Company. Joe answers the phone. What can I do for you? I've got, you know, Ms. Jones here. We're looking for you. We're looking for her. Well, she's looking for you. What do you want? Well, we, we want our, we want our 100 bucks. Now, he didn't say $1,000, right? He said, I want my 100 bucks. Why did he say a hundred bucks? Because he bought the debt for 50 bucks and he won 100 profit. So fair exchange, no robbery. We say, we're not going to pay you a hundred dollars. I knew this is a problem. No, no, no. We're not going to pay you $100. We're going to pay you $200. What? Yep. We're going to pay you double. We're going to pay you $200 for Mrs. Jones debt because I need your cooperation. And I want to speak to your supervisor, let them know that you were cooperative in working with us. And I want a letter in writing saying that she is. She's resolved this debt. Once we come to agreement, you receive payment and that you're going to do everything in your power to make sure this is removed from her credit record. Because we know that it's been there for 10 years. It's going to stick you to take it off. It's going to come back. Take it off. These public records are very stubborn. It's going to come back. There's nobody doing it to you. It's just. It's just stagnant databases. Credit reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. They don't hate you. Right? It's not personal. These are repositories. These are databases of your credit files. And it's going to take a while to modernize that information and get it up to speed, particularly when it's been bad for a long time. So anyway, the credit agent, the credit debt, bad debt company says, sure, that's a great deal. In this example, you got. Ms. Jones got an 80% discount. You and, and the company got a hundred, 100 profit. Fair exchange is no robbery. Everybody won. I've already told you, a good negotiation is. In a prior podcast, I said a good negotiation is where everybody leaves the table slightly annoyed. Okay, again, I'm bringing all these, these lessons together here with Operation Hope. What's capitalism? A table. You got a consumer on the one side and a seller on the other side. The seller is trying to get as much from you as they can while giving you the least value. That's the seller's job. Your job as a consumer is to pay the least by getting the most from the seller. Everybody's doing their job. Don't be mad at. Capitalism is not personal. It's just business. So you get that everybody's doing their job. So, so this is example of the bad debt company. They bought it for, for 50 bucks. They want 100 bucks. Great. Well, you owed $1,000 ten years ago. Your credit's been toe up. And you've certainly paid a price for having horrible credit. You paid well, you've paid a price for it. Now you're getting an 80% discount because it's not $1,000 debt obligation. It's $100 obligation, but we're going to pay $200 so that we can get the absolute cooperation from this capitalist money charging company, this debt, this debt collection company who is used to chasing people and not used to cooperating. And so now once we get that filed with the credit bureau, your credit report goes up, your credit score goes up, you know, 40 points. So you know you got from 580 to 620. Well what happens to Mrs. Jones self esteem? It increases. Her shoulders go back, her head comes up, she's, she's proud. Oh my God, this is great. I finally control of my life. Okay, what else can we do? We say, well what's this on here, Mr. Jones? I don't know what that is. Great. That's called an error. You haven't checked your credit since Methuselah was told in Fables, right? You haven't checked your credit since they were dinosaurs roaming the earth. So you don't know what's on there. If you haven't checked your credit in five years, I guarantee there's an error on your credit report. So Mr. Jones, what's this? I don't know. Great. If you don't know what that is, that's called an error. Let's, let's contact the credit bureaus, let's write a letter to each of the credit bureaus. And we write that with Mrs. Jones assistance. And the law states civil rights knowledge now, not civil rights, civil rights knowledge. S I L V E R. You know better, you do better. The law states if the credit bureaus cannot confirm that that is yours, they must remove it within 30 days. We write the letter. Typically in this example that I'm giving you, 80% of the time, the credit bureaus cannot confirm that that is Mrs. Jones. And so it gets removed. That's a 30 point pop in your credit score. So now you've gone from 580 to 620. An example because we resolved the bad debt charge off issue. Which is, which is one of the worst things you have on your credit report. We did it legitimately. Don't go to all these companies ask you to pay them money to do some illegal stuff or people wiping your credit report. If it looks like, if something looks like a free lunch, it probably is. It's probably stale. Also, it's probably illegitimate. It's probably some frauds thing. Just stay away from it. Just do it right handle. You never go wrong doing right. Just do it the right way. And then in this example you can you gone to six from 580 to 620 and now you've gone from 620 to what, another 30 point pot? Hello, 650, right?

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (42:51)

If you're not watching BMF on Stars, you're seriously missing out from executive producer Curtis 50 Cent Jackson. The highly anticipated new season is coming and Meech and Terry are leveling up. They're expanding their empire, launching a music label and making major moves in hip hop culture, even hitting the 1995 Source Awards. Oh, and did I mention Lamar is back. You already know that means trouble. The rest of the Flannery family is also feeling the pressure. Charles and Lucille are facing the consequences of Meech and Terry's actions, and Nicole is caught in the middle, dealing with her own growing pains. This season brings more drama, more heat and more star power. Get ready for guest stars like Kofi Cerebo, Skai Jackson, Tyler Lepley, Clifton Powell, Rockman Dunbar, Saweetie, Miles Truitt and more. The cast is stacked and the storyline's next level. BMF is where drama, hustle and hip hop collide. And this season the stakes are higher than ever. Believe me, this is the season everyone's going to be talking about. Don't miss the explosive season premiere June 6 only on Starz and the Starz app.

Unknown (possibly a voiceover artist) (44:11)

If you own a home, here's an interesting fact for you today. American homeowners are sitting on a record amount of home equity. That's the part of your home you own outright. Rocket Mortgage can help you turn that home equity into cash and that can help you fund a home renovation, pay for your kids college tuition or pay off consolidated high interest debt. To learn more, just call 800 for Rocket or visit Rocket.com today. Rocket Mortgage LLC. Licensed in 50 states. Nmlsconsumeraccess.org Number 3030 hey, it's Ryan Seacrest.

Ryan Seacrest (44:42)

For Albertsons and Safeway this spring. Stock up on all your personal care favorites and earn 4 times points. Now through June 17th. Shop in store online for deals on all your favorite personal care items like Pantene Shampoo, Native Body Spray Deodorant, Secret Body Spray, Venus Razors, Always Pads, Head and Shoulder Shampoo and Native deodorant and earn 4 times points. Then use those points for discounts on groceries or fuel. You don't want to miss these deals. Offer ends June 17th. Promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

Unknown (possibly a voiceover artist) (45:12)

You're great at protecting your own personal information. You probably even use things like two factor authentication, strong passwords and a vpn. But as much as you try to be in control of how your information is protected, there are lots of places that also have it and they might not be as careful as you are. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second for identity threats. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft, you might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it. With Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off. Terms apply.

John Hope Bryant (46:15)

So now you're in the sweet spot, your prime credit adjacent. Now we start working in your budget. And in this example, you make $45,000. And we find that you, you go to Starbucks three, four times a week and you smoke cigarettes. We do some simple math and figure out you're spending $6,000 a year on fancy coffees and no disrespect to Starbucks, fancy coffees and cigarettes, which the box says this stuff will kill you. So if we could get that, get you to get a Keurig machine at home, make your own coffee and, and, and commit yourself to wellness and maybe go back and watch the health and wealth episode that Shade and I did on, on, on your well being. All right, that $6,000 that you're saving off of your. Let's make this, I'm gonna make this really simple math. 35 or $30,000 of income. Let's say you're just starting out in life. $6,000, that's 20% of your income. So there's two ways to make money. Make more, spend less. In this example, you did both. Now you can reprogram that money to do something useful with it, which is pay down some bad credit card debt or, you know, and we combine that with the earned income tax credit where you might get it back as much if you have three children. All my coaches do all this stuff, I'm telling you, by the way. I'm just giving an example of what happens when somebody walks into an open side office. In this example, you've got three kids. I hope you don't, you know, at this early in life, but you have three kids, at some point you make $38,000 a year. In this example, the government owes you about $7,500, give or take, through something called the Earned Income Tax Credit. If you don't have a tax pro, you probably never heard of eitc. One out of four Americans who qualify for it, never ask for it. Read black brown people in underserved communities. So if you've never asked for it, you didn't know about it, it's retroactive for three years. That's right. That's a check to you of almost $20,000. Now we're talking about real money you save. We reprogram this example, $6,000, 20% of your income. You now got a check for $20,000. More money you've ever seen at one time in your life. If you are living in a rural area or, or a hockey puck city, which means a city that you want to go where the puck is going on economic growth. It's not in L. A, it's not in New York, but it's, it's not even in Atlanta. Maybe it's outside of Atlanta, you know, 40 minutes or whatever. You can buy a house in the, in the Southeast for, you know, let's just say $150,000. So in this example, you now have 10% down payment to buy a house. And what's the number where you build wealth in America? Homeownership. So we just put you in the sweet spot to get you. By the time we finish with you now, you're in a 680 credit score or better. You can get prime credit, 680, 700 range. You might qualify for Community Reinvestment act or FHA or Fannie or Freddie or one of these special programs. One of the few times where it counts being black or brown or underserved is these. There are special programs that are set aside for people who are aspirational and who, who, who, who are underserved. So now you got to get a really good mortgage product, maybe some down payment assistance grants that are available from banks and city, state and federal government. Did you know that you got the. In other words, we're like a financial concierge. In this example, we're putting together, restructuring a solution for you so that you, you can take control of your life and get some ownership in your, in your world. And that's an example of what Hope Inside does. I'm going to go through the rest of the stuff pretty quickly because we're running out of time on the, on this episode, and I want to get through all of the services we're providing. You want me to go? If you think I'm talking too fast, it's because Operation Hope does a lot and I want to make sure there's at least this one episode. You're getting a taste of it. You want me to go deeper? Please tell me in the comments where you see me on, on social media, whatever, and I read the comments. If you see responses, by the way, that is from me, tell me, John, please do this episode, part two, part three and go deeper on this part of operational services. I feel a little bad because I'm the founder of Operation Hope. I don't want to feel like I'm selling you something or shoving it down your throat. So I'm talking really fast because I think, you know, of course, I'm a founder. I undervalue it. If you think, oh my God, no, this is gold. Slow it down, John. Go back, repeat, drill down. I'll do an episode just on the topics that you want. This is like a treetop thing. I'm just giving you. I'm going. I'm just giving you the broad strokes. Hope Inside. I've talked about that. 1500 offices in over 40 states. Hope inside the workplace. We do that same work inside of Delta Airlines. All 100,000 employees of Delta Airlines. The time you're on a Delta flight, ask them about financial well being, coaching and counseling and the thousand dollar emergency emergency savings grant they get from their employer, my brother, Ed Bash, and they're the CEO because his biggest asset is not as planes as his people. And he realized that that's why they're the biggest, wealthiest, most profitable airline in the world. And they do profit sharing with them as well. But anyway, we do that with Delta. We do it, we start doing it now with Walmart employees, UPS employees, Venetian Hotel employees in Las Vegas through Apollo, who owns it, KKR is one of our partners and etc. Etc. Etc. Hope Inside the Workplace. Hope Inside Disaster. By the way, Hope Inside also is with the. The Birmingham police. I'm sorry, Birmingham City Government. The mayor there, who's a great guy and doing a great job, and we're doing that in the city of Atlanta as well in Mayor Andre Dickens here. Okay. Hope Inside the Workplace. Covered. Covered that. Hope Inside Disaster. It is what it sounds like. We're partnered with Homeland Security and fema. You can download the efac, the emergency financial first Aid Kit. It's free from the FEMA website. And it is a way to put all your financial records together. God forbid, in times of a disaster strike. So you put that someplace other than your home. Put it in a safe, put in a safe deposit box, put it in your mother's home, your sister's home, somebody you trust. So God forbid disaster strikes and you can digitize it too, by the way, put it in the cloud. You can pull the records you're going to need for your insurance agent for, you know, the financial institutions you're trying to access if disaster strikes. The emergency financial first aid kit that's typed to Hope Inside Disaster. We're right now responding to the Altadena fires, LA fires as but one example of how we're here to help Hope Inside for kids. We have Hope Business in a box academies where we help young people start businesses. We have Hope Child savings accounts for every kindergarten kid in Atlanta public schools. Through Mayor Andre Dickens, former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose original idea Andre Dickens continued it the city council, the Atlanta public Schools. It's been a Great partnership over 10,500 accounts for kindergarten kids. And now we're about to launch financial literacy around that. Studies have proven that if a kid gets a bank account at kindergarten, they're 50% more likely to go to college. If you put a couple hundred bucks in that account, there's 75% more likely to graduate from college. Isn't that remarkable? So this, I mean, you should, you know, and I'll go one step further. Don't just give your kid a toy that they're going to destroy very quickly. Give that kid a buy the kid a share of stock. Dude, this company called Buy, I think it's literally called Buy a share that gives you can buy a share of stock and they, they frame it, right? Send it to you for the kid as a gift wrap. It's not only a nice gift, the kid can see it. It's real. It's legitimate like. And by the way, when you get one share of stock of any publicly traded company, you have the rights to get access to all of their financials. Did you know that? Isn't that cool to give something to your kid that's going to grow over time and literally is a living document and is a living financial literacy tool. So Hope Inside for kids is multifaceted. But Hopes our child savings accounts and Hope is in the Box is but two of the examples of what we do there. Banking on our future as financial literacy. We teach in schools. We taught over a million kids financial literacy. We be partnering with Dr. Bernice A. King soon, Dr. King's daughter to open up counts in 100 cities to mark the 100th birthday of Dr. King. I believe that is a 2029 is his hundredth. Would be his hundredth birthday. So working. You'll be hearing about that soon. For entrepreneurs and business owners. 1MBB, the 1 million Black business initiative that was launched in 2020, it goes to 2030. It's a partnership with Shopify who put up $190 million to help us create new, new black businesses. It's. Why do they do it? It's real simple. They, let's say they own 2 to 3. Let's, let's say they have 2 to 3% of shops under Shopify that are black owned businesses. They want 10% of their shops that are black owned businesses. It's more profit for them. They want more customers, they want new customers. It's smart business. So we're helping them to get new customers. It's also doing well and doing good at the same time. But by the way, if you're white, poor, rural and you want you to want help, we have a program for you. You're a woman, you want to help. Anybody can call Operation Hope and access our small business services. But this was something we created because of course blacks are the bottom of the economic pyramid and 96% of black businesses don't have an employee and almost none of them are on E commerce. So the second largest e commerce company in the world and the number one for shops when they said they want to help, we like what time and when, right? So thank you Harley. Thank you Toby. Thanks everybody. Cass and everybody at Shopify. We're at 450,000 black businesses and counting by, you know, and we're halfway through this experiment 2020-20, 2030, we're at 2025, at 450,000 businesses. We're about. Well, I think it was like 12% of all black businesses in this country. I've got to look at the numbers again, but I think there's like, like, I think there like 3.1 million black business in this country. And so you know, we're at 450,000, so not bad. And we're not the government, we're just a nonprofit over killing it, killing the game. And you can access through that through 1mbb.org or through the operational website to already told you about the small business empowerment programs which are available for everybody. And we, we work with the sba, we work with banks, a range of capital providers where we get you prepared, getting your business plan, getting your credit score up, getting your budget in place so that you can be a first class business person. Right. For schools, governments and community leaders. Financial Literacy for All initiatives. This is co chaired by me and the CEO of Walmart, Doug McMillan. If you know a major company, if you are a major company, you're a CEO. Listening to this podcast. You can now join this movement as we seek to embed financial literacy into. 80% of the Fortune 500 in this country believe financial literacy is a civil rights issue. This generation, it's like what healthcare was 40 years ago. And if you work for a major employer, go into your HR department or send a note to your CEO and suggest they become a member of Financial Literacy for All once again. It's available on the Financial Literacy for All website. We're easy to find. The AI Ethics Council. This is a partnership between me, co chaired me and Sam Altman who I think is a Steve Jobs in this generation. I think AI and financial literacy, AI literacy and financial literacy are like the big headlights for the future and you need both of them. And we have the AI LP3 project. Again, all that you can access online, just Simply search it. AIOP3 is a pipeline for AI literacy in Atlanta K through college. And we're honored to partner with Georgia State University and Dean Phillips there to pipeline this program that also includes the Atlanta Public Schools and who's our partner there and the mayor of Atlanta and the chair of the Atlanta Public School and all the HBCUs and Clark Atlanta, Dr. French and others. So we're really excited about this Pipeline of Prosperity project. We've got around artificial intelligence. It's called AI LP3 tied to the AI Ethics Council Hope Corporate Inclusion Initiative works to get people of color and underserved populations on boards of directors. That's coming soon. Yes, even in the current environment we are because it's just good for America. It's not about minorities. It's about demographics or destiny. And 40% of this country are black. Is black and brown, period. And within 10 years it'll be a majority of minorities. It's just, it's just demographics. And we need to make sure that those at the bottom can get to the top. Because my rich friends need my poor friends to do better, if only to stay rich. We're all in this thing together. We have four now. Everyone who's interested in a stake in capitalism. We have the Investors Bill of Rights. And this is for to help retail investors to protect their cons, their, their rights to make sure they don't get trampled upon by very aggressive Wall street players. And so we've got major brokerage firms, including Robinhood, to sign our investor bill of rights, and we work with them around a series of best practices and you. And you'll see more on that coming in the next year or two. HOPE Global Forum is the Davos meeting, the annual meeting. Hope Global Forum meeting for Operation Hope. It's the Davos for the rest of us. If you've never heard of Davos, look it up. Davos is a meeting of the most powerful people in the world. Every year in Switzerland, I've been there, you know, eight, ten times as a speaker, et cetera, the young global leader. But you don't see many of us at Davos. I remember I saw my brother Chris Tucker there and I was like, I was joking. Oh, what's up, Chris Rock? He said, hey, what's up, Jamie Foxx? So I'm like, okay, good one. So we're, we met and became friends by going to Davos, but most people don't go to Davos. So this is Davos for the, for the. For the rest of the world. And it is held in Atlanta every year. This year, December 1st through the 3rd, I believe. You can't invite yourself. You'd have to be invited. No amount of money will get you in the door, even though each ticket is probably worth $10,000 each. And you can, but we sponsor everybody in, so it doesn't cost you to be there. Billionaires next to millionaires next to thousandaires because somebody trying to buy some there. But it's about relationship capital and opportunity, aspiration and the right culture. And it's people who want. Who are in it to win it.

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (61:53)

If you're not watching BMF on Stars, you're seriously missing out from executive producer Curtis 50 Cent Jackson. The highly anticipated new season is coming and Meech and Terry are leveling up. They're expanding their empire, launching a music label and making major moves in hip hop culture, even hitting the 1995 Source Awards. Oh, and did I mention Lamar is back. You already know that means trouble. The rest of the Flannery family is also feeling the pressure. Charles and Lucille are facing the consequences of Meech and Terry's actions. And Nicole is caught in the middle, dealing with her own growing pains. This season brings more drama, more heat, and more star power. Get ready for guest stars like Kofi Cerebo, Skai Jackson, Tyler Lepley, Clifton Powell, Rockman Dunbar Saweetie, Miles Truitt and more. The cast is stacked and the storyline's next level Bmf is where drama, hustle and hip hop collide. And this season, the stakes are higher than ever. Believe me, this is the season everyone's going to be talking about. Don't miss the explosive season premiere June 6 only on Starz and the Starz app.

Unknown (possibly a voiceover artist) (63:13)

If you own a home, here's an interesting fact for you today. American homeowners are sitting on a record amount of home equity. That's the part of your home you own outright. Rocket Mortgage can help you turn that home equity into cash and that can help you fund a home renovation, pay for your kids college tuition or pay off consolidated high interest debt. To learn more, just call 800 for Rocket or visit Rocket.com today. Rocket Mortgage LLC licensed in 50 states. Nmlsconsumeraccess.org Number 3030 hey, it's Ryan Seacrest.

Ryan Seacrest (63:44)

For Albertsons and safeway now through June 17th. Shop in store or online for your favorite personal care Items and save $5 when you spend $15 or more. Stock up on items like Dove Body Wash, Degree Motion Sense Deodorant, Tresemme Hairspray, Dove Shampoo, Dove Bar Soap, Dove Men's Body and face Wash and Dollar Shave Club blades and save $5 when you spend $15 or more. Hurry in before these deals are gone. Offer ends June 17. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

Unknown (possibly a voiceover artist) (64:15)

You guys know I'm always up for a good MVP story and one of the best is the story of Wasabi Technologies. Wasabi is purpose built to free businesses from skyrocketing storage costs and unpredictable egress fees from old and top heavy legacy providers. You know the big guys. Wasabi is the world's hottest cloud storage company, becoming the go to provider for professional and collegiate sports teams and leagues around the world. And here's why. From Wasabi's AI enabled intelligent media storage, Wasabi Air to the industry's only cloud storage service with triple protection against cybercriminals, data deletion and ransomware. Wasabi's taken the lead in driving innovation in data storage, eliminating overhead where it matters to deliver you results you can count on and won't break the bank. In fact, Wasabi is up to 80% less than those other guys and doesn't charge a cent for for businesses to access their own data. Wasabi Another championship story. Check them out for free@wasabi.com.

John Hope Bryant (65:18)

You can also create a little Not a little. You can create a a viewing party for global forum in your community anywhere in the world, the country. Endorsed by Operation hope. You can go online, the whole global forum to submit your application for that. You can also make a HOPE commitment to start a financial literacy club or a viewing party or any of these initiatives in your local community. And it's a HOPE commitment. Go on the website for Operation hope, Look up for HOPE commitments. Make a commitment, you, your friends, your church, your sorority, your fraternity, whatever, and take your own initiative to make financial literacy a civil rights movement in your local community. Again, this, I've already paid for all this stuff. All this plumbing already exists. You just need to access it and operationalize it. So now let's talk about the Blueprint for America. I've written a business plan called the Business Plan for America. The Blueprint for America is our series of business plans I wrote on Dr. King's the anniversary of Dr. King's assassination on April 4th of 2025. And you can look, look up Dream Forward John O' Brien Dream Forward, Operation Hope, Dream Forward, business Plan for America, Business Plan for America. JOHN o' Brien Business Plan for America, Operation Hope doesn't matter how you search it. And there's a business plan for black America. There's a business plan for rural America, the business plan for women, veterans, Native American Indians, Latino Americans. These are all individual business plans, Asian Americans. I want you to download them, look at them, criticize them if you like, and let's start a conversation in our communities about these business plans. Print them out and then start mapping your own plan against the community plan, against the societal plan. And then use my network of offices, which is the Starbucks of financial inclusion, Walmart of financial literacy, to begin to operationalize this vision for yourself. So, okay, so now let's make this very personal. This is we're coming up on 55 minutes here in a minute and I want to really cut to the. Have you enjoyed this, by the way? I'm trying to jam a lot into an hour. Let me know. So here for individuals, here's your take, how you take action. Visit a local HOPE inside location or a workplace location. Use a Hope in Hand app, okay? On your Android phone or your Apple phone. Download the app, it's free. Hope in Hand is what it's called. And sign up for coaching. You'll get a thousand dollar HOPE scholarship to start, good for one year for financial coaching. Get your credit score up, debt down, savings up. Pull your credit, take control of your life and get your financial literacy on the move. Get the book Financial Literacy for All, which I authored in hardcover or paper book, paperback or digital. Tell your friends to subscribe to this podcast Money and Wealth. It's free new episodes every Thursday. By the way, thanks for you all from helping to make it top 100 business podcasts in America on Apple top 50 for entrepreneurship and in in his top 200 in the UK for business top 200 in Saudi Arabia, top top 200 in Chile, Latin America top 200 in South America, Africa. So on every continent it's it's top 200 in the UK if I didn't mention that it's top 200 top 100 podcast. So thanks for that. Tell everybody to get their subscription. It's free episodes every Thursday. Call for free financial coaching service a financial coach assigned to you. If you don't have a a smartphone, you can call on the phone to our 1, 800 number. The the call doesn't even cost you any money. Even the call doesn't cost you any money. Enroll your child in HOPE Business Box Academy if we are in a city near you, open a child savings account in Atlanta or Aurora, Illinois just signed up but we have cities that will be signing up every month to child savings account. If you're an entrepreneur or desire to be one or a small business owner, you want an E commerce business that's a standalone business or one that's complimentary to your existing business because it can be something that complement your existing business. Then you contact one of our 1MBB partners we made we made allocations to them to help them help their local communities. The partners are listed on the 1MBB website and the Opera Soap website. Go to 1MBB.org to try to sign up directly. We'll help you get an LLC format formed, an EIN number your nonprofit created I'm sorry your banking created your EIN number. Your website, your your payment systems, your delivery systems, e commerce systems of Shopify account. I mean it's pretty dang on cool. 22 hours with an attorney 2 hours with an accountant 2 hours with a lawyer lawyer attorney. Same thing 22 hours with with tech professionals at Shopify. It is really a incredibly powerful program for business owners. We'll schedule a business credit review for nonprofit leaders. Go to your HOPE inside in your city and your church or your nonprofit and we will help you partner with HOPE through financial literacy for all and give you the tools to HOPE commitments to operationalize our work in your local community through a non financial MoU with Operation Hope. If you're a corporate leader you can you can help your work your workforce through HOPE inside the workforce corporate leader or government leader you can Join the HOPE Corporate Inclusion initiative. You can be part of HOPE Global Forum in sponsoring people to come there as delegates so we don't have to charge anybody any money. So this isn't charity, folks. This is smart economics and it's where we all win. You're not broken. The system is. You don't need a million dollars to have a million dollar mindset. A million dollar state of mind. By the way, I did not wear this T shirt on purpose. Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. As an Andrew Young quote. I just happen to have the T shirt on. It fits the moment, doesn't it? You don't need a handout. You just need the right tools and shovels. You need a hand up. It's the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door. I'll get it my dang self. Right. This is your call to action. Let's dream forward, not backwards. Let's build America 2.0 together. We don't have to destroy capitalism, we can improve it. Capitalism is like democracy. It's a horrible system. Except for every other system. I've been to 100 countries and as much as I love these other places, there's no place I'd actually rather live or aspire or try to thrive or succeed than this place. The biggest economy in the world. Soul superpower in the world. And my second great grandfather and second great grandmother were slaves. And look at me now. My grandfather RB Smith was a sharecropper. Sharecropper. And look at me now. And I got my first financial literacy course when I was 9 years old in that classroom taught by a white man banker from B of A Bank of America who taught me financial literacy. I will never forget that and thankful to him and sorry I never got his business card so I could say thank you to him or his children today for what he did to change my life. And it made me not resentful of white people. My black friends who had negative experiences. A police officer throwing up against a patrol car never got over that slight and that interaction. And so then they had an attitude with white people. I didn't have such an experience. I got lucky. And so race was just never a big thing with me other than we were just different. And once somebody taught me the language of money and financial literacy and I started my first business when I was 10 years old. Neighborhood candy house. You can read about it in up from nothing and put. And I put the liquor store out of the candy business. I was 10 years old. There was no stopping me. And I was homeless when I was 18 years old for believing a little bit of my own press and, and pressing too hard on the possibilities button. But I didn't have a budget. I didn't have financial literacy under wraps by then. Not sophisticated financial literacy, not business financial literacy. So anyway, I was homeless. I lost everything. Lived at latier and airport, buying an old Italian restaurant in my car. But once I got over that, I'm like, I take no for vitamins. What are you going to do to me now? Tell me. No. I had no one. I walked in the door like, yes, I was homeless. And it was, it was embarrassing, all that stuff. But once you go through that, what are you going to do to me now? Tell me. No. Give me a rejection letter. No. No. Success is a thousand mothers and failure is a bastard child. Like no one remembers your failures. Stop. So I want you to stop obsessing about it. A failure doesn't mean anything about you. It's just the outcome to an experiment. So Operation Hope is not just an organization, it's a movement. And today it belongs to you. Right? I've given it to you. I've empowered you to take it and, and use it for your own purposes. My mother, Juanita Smith, God rest her soul, would tell me she loved me every day of my life. And so I never had many problems with self esteem was not one of them. And one of the quotes I gave to Operation Hope was there's a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke was economic, but being poor was a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of your spirit. And you must vow never ever, ever to be poor again. It's not what people call you, it's what you answer to that's important. And never ever, ever answer out of your name. And if you do argue with a fool, it only proves there are two. My brother Quincy Jones once said, God rest his soul, that not one ounce of my self esteem depends on your acceptance of me. So you have to know who you are. You've got to know that you're God's child. You're not as good as your compliments. You're not as bad as your criticism. You are somebody, though. You are the somebody that he made and not. Your hand prints are not duplicated anywhere unique to you. So let's make everything else unique to you and let's make your aspirational success a reality to you. Not just a Ph.D. but a Ph due to. All right, I'm preaching. I'm out. John O' Brien. This has been an episode of Money and Wealth. Let me know if you liked it. Let me know if you want me to continue or stop. Tell your friends to subscribe to the podcast. Get to book Financial Literacy for all. Go to get your coaching scholarship at Operation Hope. Download your app Hope in Hand. This is a civil rights movement. 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.

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (78:10)

If you're not watching BMF on Stars, you're seriously missing out from executive producer Curtis 50 Cent Jackson. The new season is coming and Meech and Terry are leveling up. They're expanding their empire, launching a music label, and even hitting the 1995 Source Awards. Oh, and did I mention Lamar is back. BMF is where drama, hustle and hip hop collide. The drama top tier, the stakes higher than ever. This is the season everyone's going to be talking about. Don't miss the season premiere June 6th only on Starz and the Starz app.

Ryan Seacrest (78:49)

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway this spring. Stock up on all your personal care favorites and earn 4 times points. Now through June 17th. Shop in store online for deals on all your favorite personal care items like Pantene Shampoo, Native Body Spray, Deodorant, Secret Body Spray, Venus Razors, Always Pads, Head and Shoulder shampoo and Native deodorant and earn 4 times points. Then use those points for discounts on groceries or fuel. You don't want to miss these deals. Offer ends June 17th. Promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson (79:20)

Add dry eye relief to your routine with Refresh Opti Mega 3, a lubricating eye drop with a moisture rich, preservative free formula enhanced with inactive ingredients like flaxseed oil and antioxidants. This formula support supports all three tear film layers and provides advanced hydration to instantly moisturize and soothe dry eyes. Refresh Optive Mega 3 is safe to use as often as needed so you can make it part of your wellness routine. Find Refresh online or in the Eye Drop section at all major retailers. FSA and HSA eligible.

Ryan Seacrest (79:54)

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report, this is an iHeart pod.