← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
The Businessman Hustler vs. The Hourly Worker Investor
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Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats now through October 7th. You can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's Pumpkins, Snickers Miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, Raw Sugar, Milk Chocolate, Caramel Jack O Lanterns, Brock's Candy Corn Charms, Mini Pops and more offerings October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [02:11]
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John Hope Bryant
XBoom welcome to money and wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hey hey. This is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and Wealth podcast series season 2. Honored to be with you and to Come at you again with another very personal example of success and failure in order to be a teaching tool for you on your journey to be self reliant. I want to start off by thanking everyone for making this a top podcast in the world now. One of the top, I believe, 5% of all podcasts in the world. So thank you very much. Tell all your friends about it. Let's now get into this. The title of this podcast is the Businessman Hustler versus the Hourly Worker Investor. The Businessman Hustler versus the Hourly Worker Investor. Who do you bet on? Is a deeply personal episode. It contrasts two very powerful forces in my life. My father, Johnny Will Smith, hard working, hard driving businessman, self made, if you want to call it that. He owned multiple ventures by the time I was a young man and could recognize what was going on around me. But he lacked financial literacy, which I did not understand the value of it all at all as a young person, at least not at that time. I'm now talking about, you know, when I'm thinking about my life, my dad and seeing payroll. He meet a payroll out of the front door of our front screen door and then front metal door of our place on 35th street in Western. It was four or five years of age actually. I'm sorry, Santa Barbara Boulevard, which was now Martin Luther King Boulevard. And then later on 35th and Western. When I went to go live with him as a young man. He had a cement contracting business. He had a. At that time but before that when we, when they were. My mom and dad were together. They owned a cement contracting business. That was his cash flow business. They had a nursery business, took care of kids. I was the first client. They own their own home on Santa Barbara now Mart of the King Boulevard. Those in Los Angeles know these street names. We owned an eight unit apartment building that they bought for $18,000. You can make the payment on the note renting two units. They lived in one of the units. This is before they bought their own home. The rest was profit. That in an apartment building today is worth millions of dollars. Last time I checked, it was something north of $6 million. Six to $8 million. They owned a gas station at Western and Vernon, I believe. Southeast corner, still there to this day. They were balling. They were married, high school, education, up from the south, migrated to Los Angeles. I'll tell you a little bit about that story. It's also in my book up from Nothing. A little bit of my book, Financial Literacy for all. But Johnny Will Smith and Juanita Smith were for A minute, literally, the American dream. My mother, Juanita Smith, was an hourly worker. She had a side hustle making handicrafts, robes and things like that she made from terry cloth, basically bath towels. She turned that into little pieces of artwork that you wore, robes, kitchen covers for cooking, playful aprons that I can't explain in public now because it was pretty embarrassing. I'll just say I was a model, and my mother used to put the female parts in the male parts. She'd make those and stuff the male parts with stuffing. And we had to come out, walk in the living room, and we'd have to. We'd have to model the aprons that she made and then lift up, you know, lift up the private parts, make everybody laugh, and hopefully they buy something. I could probably sue my mother for it, looking back. Sued my mom and dad. My dad for child abuse or something, but at the time, we just thought it was cute. Actually, no idea. I was embarrassed back then, too, now that I recall it. But my mother was industrious. She. She was a. That was her side hustle, though. Her primary business. Her primary business was a paycheck, and she worked at McDonald Douglas Aircraft, which later was sold to Boeing Aircraft. But she had this side hustle, which I'll get to in a moment, because it's important. Because it's important. So she was an hourly worker and quietly built wealth through discipline, smart investing, and excellent credit. So when you don't have inheritance, when you don't have somebody to give you something, right, then you've got to find. And if life's about compounding, right, you make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep, okay? And if you don't have compounded cash, compounded financial capital, because daddy Mommy did well and handed it to you, which are. A lot of mainstream families have that legacy. Black families, typically black and brown families typically do not. Okay. Because this generation might be the first generation that made any real money, right? And putting a little bit aside now is how you build wealth for the next generation. So this might be the. This generation. You might feel stressed out because you're trying to do it all out of one pocket. Can I get an amen? Everybody listening to this can relate to this. You're trying to pay it back, spend it, finance the now, and pay it forward all out of one paycheck or out of one hustle. So if you feel stressed out and don't know why, that's the reason. It's the reason because you're in the season of doing it all. And if it's not, if it doesn't feel easy, that's because it's not right. You're doing generational legacy work and trying to live your best life. So I commend you. And so compounding education, compounding hustle, hustle on hustle creates more hustle. If you get up early, work later, get up earlier, stay late, short lunch. After a while you outrun your competitor. Because the devil's a lazy bastard. Yeah, I said it. The devil's lazy. The devil's a fallen angel. Right? So even God gives permission, the devil permission to exist. He likes shortcuts and he likes people who don't want to hustle and don't want to do the work. Love is work. Non love is laziness, Anti love is evil. Evil exists, but it's very rare. Most people are just lazy, intellectually lazy, physically lazy, financially lazy, spiritually lazy. Yeah, they just don't want to do the work. They want somebody to do it for them. So if you do the work, to quote my friend Tony Ressler, who's one of the 200th richest man and most successful, successful self made businessmen in the world today, Tony Ressler would say, if you don't quit, you can't fail. If you don't quit, you can't fail. I would say it differently and say you just have to take no for vitamins, that success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Older, rounded through it, you're going to get to it. So my mother had, my mother and my father had this sense of undying resiliency and hustle. They were not lazy. So let's check that box as a success feature I wrote in my book. I think it was, it was the memoir or up from Nothing about the five pillars of success. And I talk about as much education as you shove down your throat. Understanding, financial literacy, family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models and environment. If you have these five things, even with racism, bias, discrimination, an unpleasant political environment, unsupportive environment, period in the world, maybe even a repressive environment, leaning down on your world, you'll still succeed. If you need to write those five things down, replay this. Take the podcast back 30 seconds, replay it again, write it down on your iPhone or your Android or wherever you keep your notes. These five things. If you have these five things and you have this resiliency factor. I said, what did Tony say? If you don't quit, you can't fail. I told you. John Bryan says we're going to take no for vitamins. Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. We're never going to give up. You will in time. You will succeed. If you have three more, three of these things or more, you're going to go from surviving mode to thriving mode and maybe the building mode. But you'll at least go from surviving mode to thriving mode. You don't want to be in surviving mode. If you have less than these three things, any three of these things, you're in trouble again. As much as education shut down your throat. Family structure and resiliency. Well, financial literacy, self. Well, family education. Right. Financial literacy, family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models and environment. As you're going to hear from my example, my family had most of those things but then lost some critical elements. And I want you to tell me in the notes, when you see this in pieces in social media, which of the five things did my family, my mother and my father, mess up, screw up, miss out on, etc. Because they had it all and then it fell apart. So my mother again had compounded good credit. Right. Compounded self education, compounding discipline. Right. Compounding focus, compounding good values plus compounding hustle. The result. This is a real life case study in why hustle alone isn't enough to be successful, sustainably successful and how strategy, stewardship and financial literacy win the long game. So let's now get into this. Who do you bet on? The businessman who owns a gas station in an apartment building or the hourly worker who with good credit in a long term plan is betting on herself? My mother. Well my father made the money, but my mother built the wealth. Interesting. How is that possible? We're going to talk about these two people who I love, my parents and the very different money legacies they left behind. Let's talk about my mother. My and my father as a couple. Married my dad Johnny smith. His father R.B. smith was a sharecropper. My second great grandfather on my father's side, George Young was in the Civil War part of answered the call for the Emancipation Proclamation. That's maybe where I got my social justice bones from. Served in Memphis, Tennessee for the union cause. Fought for justice and freedom for those who never gave him justice or freedom or protection. Protected those who didn't protect him. Long list of self reliant doers. My father grandfather was a sharecropper, dad was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. So there's your role modeling example. I didn't know my dad Was financially illiterate. I just knew my dad hustled hard and worked hard. And so I'm following that. That write the check versus cash the check model. Write the check, meaning you're a business owner. My dad was very successful in a cement contracting business. He did it with his own hands. He would go to a job, he would guesstimate the cost of that job, which was the cost of cement. It's the products that make cement, the hourly worker wage for the workers. And he had all races of workers working for him. That's one of the reasons I have no problem with white people or Hispanics or Asians or anybody else, of course blacks, because everybody worked for my father. Everybody respected him as the boss, the boss man. They called him the employer, the guy who paid them their paycheck so they could then pay their bills. And they were lined up every Friday for payroll. He paid them in cash back in the day, but they all respected him. And I love that, seeing that respect they gave my. My dad. Well, he would just calculate in his head or on a piece of paper, a notebook he had what the job was to make this redo or to lay out for a first time a sidewalk or a driveway, which are typically his typical jobs. And I remember one day he was trying to beat out another contractor who had bid, let's just say, $1,200 for this job. My dad, not knowing what the hard costs were, but wanting the job. And he dragged me around to all these jobs. I sit in the passenger seat of his pickup truck, burning up to death in this hot truck with no air conditioning. My side of my head stuck to the window because it was so hot in South Central Los Angeles. I went to sleep trying to get through the 20 job estimates he went through. And it was really beautiful that he made me hang with him because my daddy was not a baby daddy. He was a father. So I want to commend him for that. We have to, I think, claim our kids. We shouldn't be saying baby mama or baby father. He's a father and a mother. You're. That's your child. You own them, you own their legacy in making. And they. They know what you give them, you know? And my dad gave me everything he had. It wasn't everything I needed, but it was everything he had. And for that I will forever be thankful to Johnny Will Smith, who, even, as you can hear in a minute, took care of my brother, my sister, who was not his children. So a very honorable man, Ambassador Andrew Young, would say that men and women fail for three reasons, arrogance, pride, and greed. My dad was not arrogant, not in a traditional sense. He was not greedy at all. But he was full of pride. And that pride might have bordered on a slight bit of arrogance because he wouldn't listen. He wouldn't take advice, Certainly not from my mother.
- [19:07]
Podcast Announcer
Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later, and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations. You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.
- [20:07]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats. Now through October 7th, you can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's Pumpkins, Snickers Miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, raw sugar, Milk Chocolate, Caramel, Jack O Lanterns, Brock's Candy Corn Charms, Mini Pops and more. Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [20:37]
LG X Boom Advertiser
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- [21:12]
John Hope Bryant
So anyway, he bid this job $4,000 and the problem was that the cost he found out later, or maybe worse, did not find out later. But it was obvious when he went broke, the cost of that job was at least $1,000, probably 1,050 or $1,100. So my dad confused cash flow with profit. Very important point, he thought. The cash flow getting that back. And again, what do we do in the black and brown community? Give me that bag. Give me that dollar. Give me that cash. You know, we think that we over index the importance of cash. Cash is nothing more than a transfer of value. That's all it is. But we think it's really more than that. And we think we have a bunch of cash, bunch of bills in our pocket, then that means something. It might mean you're going to go broke. When all that money disappears and it will disappear because if your outflow exceeds your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. And with my father, he would spend a dollar but he would make a dollar but spend A$50. So the more money he made, the broker we got. And I say we because as you'll hear in a minute, we lost everything. So my dad back up the story a little bit. My dad was doing very well as a senior contractor, would buy a new car from Detroit every couple years because that's how you profile back then, your success. Because black people could not buy cars like that directly from a car dealership or the, you know, anybody. I mean, you could not in the 60s just go buy a fancy new car. People wouldn't sell it to you, the dealers wouldn't sell it to you if you're a black man. My dad went full floss. He would drive the car to the manufacturer in Detroit and he had family in East St. Louis. And so he would go through East St. Louis to visit his family and then go to Detroit to sell the car and buy a new one, to trade it in and buy a new one. Well, this time he ran into my fine mom, Juanita Smith, and the rest is history. He fell in love. And my mother said, well, if you want me, you got to take my two children with me. It was my brother Donnie, Dave Darnell Harris and my sister Mara Hoskins, two brilliant, amazing people who were from a former marriage my mother had. And my mother was all about her kids. You and my mother grew up in a shotgun shack in East St. Louis. You want to know about more about her story, her backstory, you can read one of my last books, I believe is I detail it up from nothing. And so dad says yes, happy to do that. Honored to do that. So they packed up everything in my dad's car, including the two kids. I was not yet born, moved to la. That's where I was born at Good Samaritan Hospital. They start building, building, building together. And I'm now I come in this world, they get busy. They have me. I come in the world. And about four or five years of age, they're having some serious differences of opinion. But my mother's like, it's okay, you know, this is normal. I'll deal with whatever it is. He's a good man. He's taking care of my. My kids and me. And. But my mother had saved $4,000 to send my brother, Dave Darnell Harris, to a college of his choice. And $4,000 in 1968. 1970, I think it was. 1970 was a lot of moolah. And I was born in 66, so 1970, and I was about 4 or 5 years old. And she was saving that money so he could go become whoever he wanted to be. My dad found the money because my mother did not put the money in the bank account. She had it under a mattress or wherever she hit, she saved it. Please open a bank account, everybody. The bank account is FDIC insured, right, for your deposits. So this would not have. This whole story I'm about to tell you would be different if my mother put the money into a bank account. But black people don't trust banks because of the history of the Freedmen's bank and all the other stuff, which I understand, but this is a new world. I'm telling you to upgrade your software. Put your money into the bank in your own name. In this example, this bank, my mother, dad. Mom and dad probably had a joint account. I'm not sure, but she surely. She surely should have had a separate account for this money in her own name. He found the money, he wasted it on some hair brain thing, some investment or something he thought he assumed was going to be important or successful. And as usual, he was wrong about this. He was great at semen contracting. The rest of the stuff he's speculating on was not so great because my dad gave. Was financially illiterate. I found out later. So he wasted the money. And mom had had it. Mom was like, okay, I'm done. You can mess over me. You can't mess over my kids. And with my mother, what I was not thinking about then, but I now know. What I know now is that she's like, well, look, I got two more kids in the line here. This is. This is the oldest kid. If you're doing this to my oldest kid, then the rest of my kids, I'm just asking for pain. So at this point, we own. Keep in mind we. This is 1970. Now we own our own home. Cement on. On. On. On Santa Barbara Boulevard, now called Martin Luther King Boulevard. We Owned a, a gas station. The home we own was at 2014 West Santa Barbara Avenue in Los Angeles, now Martin Luther King Boulevard. We owned a eight unit apartment building. The gas station, nursery business, cement contracting business, which was cash flow. So nursery business and the contracting business were cash flow businesses. Right. The single family home was an asset that appreciated. The gas station was cash flow plus an asset that could appreciate. The apartment building was cash flow plus an asset that could appreciate. And we probably had a couple side hustles, but in my mother's side hustle of doing handicrafts, that came later. But just that alone would have made us multimillionaires and the whole family would have had generational wealth. Mom and dad, get over, get into this. I remember the fights. I had to call my mother, called my brother, my sister, sorry, Monty called the police. We called her Monty Mara, we called her Monty. She called the police and put somehow answered, somehow gave me the phone. I don't know how I got the phone. And policeman, come, come, come. My daddy's beating up on my mother. My mother took off that 3 inch pump. She was a church, it was a, it was a Sunday after church. And she, she's like, no man's going to ever put his hand on me again. That happened in her first or the, their first husband, by the way. Number one calls for domestic abuse money. Number one calls for divorce money. Number one calls for heart attacks, stress. Number one calls for stress money. Hello. Your day is not about God or love. Your day is about money. That's why we need to understand money. We live in a capitalist democracy, right? We gotta understand how this game is played. So they're getting into it. And she popped him over the side of his head with that little, that three inch pump hair. Didn't grow there for the rest of his life, right on the ball of his head. He stopped messing with her. But she's like, okay, I'm not gonna sit around here and get, get beat and I can't protect my kids. So my mother filed for divorce and left him. Now California is a community property state. Please hear me. My mother could have taken him for everything he had. Anybody listening to this? And you live in California. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I grew up there. It is a. California is a community property state. At least half. And she's got these kids also. It means she could have left them destitute. But she wanted, all she wanted was her freedom. All she wanted was the ability to go out and do for herself and create her own life. And, and she had enough confidence in herself, so she left with nothing. And it just dawned on me recently that this was how much courage she had because she could have, again, she could have take, left the house, left, kept at the house and everything else. And he had to go get an apartment or live with friends. She left with the kids, live, took, went to go stay. So now he's got all these assets. Now she goes to stay with her girlfriend. And you can listen to the, you know, again, check out the backstory of this in my book, Up From Nothing, I believe it is, and Financial Literacy for all, because it's an interesting backstory of the guy who I end up living with temporarily, guy named O.C. i believe, who saved my life while staying there temporarily, while my mother, what was her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend who saved my life. But my mother wanted to stay with her girlfriend so she could get a job, which she did working in McDonnell Douglas aircraft for, let's just say, the equivalent of 15 to 18 an hour. 15 an hour when she started, 18 an hour about that when she retired, plus benefits in a pension. My mother worked that job, did not have bills because she stayed with her girlfriend, used the money from not having bills to save a down payment. And mind you, the guy, her, the girl, her girlfriend's boyfriend saved my life when I fell on this porch. But again, that's the backstory not important to take up in this podcast. He was ultimately murdered over money, by the way, the guy who saved my life, mom then bounces from that house that she stayed with her girlfriend, moves to 15502 South Fraley, don't you? You know when you buy a house and you own it, you remember the address, right? My mother bought her first home, 15502 South Fraley in Compton, California. And I was in nirvana. I mean, it was our own home. It was me, my sister, my brother had. Okay, now check this out. So my brother, because he could not go to a college of his choice, he ended up having to go into the Navy to get his education. He wanted a four year education. So the Navy said, fine, we'll give you an education, but you're going to have to give us four years of military service. Well, the Navy understands its psychology, the psychology of people very well. And the chances are once you get in the Navy and you get that environment in your bloodstream, they know that there's at least a 50% chance, if not better, you're going to stay. Well, my brother stayed. My brother stayed 4 years, 8 years, 10 years, 20 years. He retired as a commissioned officer in the Navy as an intelligence officer. Very proud of him. Donnie David Don Harris. He married, moved to Hawaii. Married Hawaiian, have Hawaiian kids. You started getting the memo. All this changed his Life. This little $4,000 decision my dad made changed his entire. The trajectory of his entire life. You don't think money makes a difference? Money can be. I mean, as the Bible suggests. The Bible talks about money more than it talks about any other topic. More than 2000 mentions. Money is not evil. It's the love of money. What you need to do is understand how to use it before it uses you. So my brother goes to the military again. He's got a great life. He's retired. He's on his second retirement from naval contracting because he contracts with companies that do business with the Navy. So he's a real expert at what he does. But how his life had been different if he had that $4,000, could have gone to a college of his choice and did as he liked. So my mother then had the chance now to curate the life of my sister, who's older than me and me. And she did a fabulous job. None of these kids went to prison or jail or had any because we were more afraid of her than we were the streets. So far in the story, you like? Well, John, I don't understand. Like, your dad's winning. In fact, your dad won. How do you make some sense out of this? My dad was charismatic and driven, proud black businessman and era. This wasn't easy. But he had no financial literacy. He had no credit management, no systems around his business, no estate planning. And he didn't understand. My mother was a mathematical genius. Right? My mother, Juanita Smith, worked an hourly job for 32 years. Never flashy, focused on stability, had excellent credit, paid her bills on time, invested quietly and consistently, ultimately walked away when money became a point of contention. From the marriage. They owned real assets. But what they lacked together was a shared philosophy about money. Right? And 2 plus 2 in a relationship, it has to be 6, 8, or 10, or why are you doing it? If you're not better together, why are you doing it? Because marriage, when the. When the looks drop and the body falls away, that's your business partner for life, right? So it has to be more than. I like this person. Okay, so. So now let's fast forward in my dad's life. Johnny Will Smith is winning. He's got all these assets. He was left with everything. My mother got nothing. He's got Cash flow. He's got, he's got appreciable assets. He's got. Everybody in the city knows him. You know, he goes to the bank branch. They call him by his, you know, his first name. Hello, Johnny, Mr. Mr. Smith, whatever he's balling. He's got cement equipment, he's got a tractor, he's got a truck. He's got his name, a van. Johnny's, you know, cement work on the side of the van. He's got workers. He's got respectability in the neighborhood. I remember all of that right. It's as if it happened yesterday. So fast forward now, mind you, my mother's just now working a job. She's got this modest house in Compton. She's working this job, and she's got the little side hustle doing handicrafts. But so my mother's put it on sort of not rinse and repeat, but just remote control. By the way, if you do nothing, here's a little tip for you. If you do Nothing but save $200 a month into the stock market, and the stock market gauge you between 7 and 10% return every year between 33 years and 40 years from the time you start that, you'll be worth a million dollars. Okay, so that, Just put that aside, right? Yes, I. I said that pretty quickly. You're like, what? Yes, you put 200amonth. So whenever you start, just start. Just start right now if you need to done it half the time. Double up on the money. If you can. You put $200 in, in sort of, you know, premier stocks. Not, not. No homeboy shopping network stuff. No, no, no speculative stocks. I mean, you know, blue chip stocks that are returning you 7 to preferably 10% a year. If it's 10% a year, you'll be, you'll be worth a million dollars in 33 years. If it's 7% a year, it's about 40 years. But just, just put it on autopay, right? And you'll be.
- [36:53]
Podcast Announcer
Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations. You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit Oregon Home Care Jobs to learn more and apply. That's OregonHomeCareJobs.com.
- [37:53]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Spooky season is quickly approaching, so time to stock up on all your favorite treats now through October 7th. You can get early savings on your Halloween candy favorites when you shop in store and online. Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's Pumpkins, Snickers Miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, Raw sugar, Milk Chocolate, Caramel, Jack O' Lanterns, Brock's Candy Corn Charms, Mini Pops and more. Offer ends October 7th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [38:23]
LG X Boom Advertiser
Stop settling for weak sound. It's time to level up your game and bring the boom. Hit the town with the ultra durable LG X Boom portable speaker and enjoy vibrant sound wherever you go. Elevate your listening experience to new heights because, let's be real, your music deserves it. The future of sound is now with LG XBoom and for a limited time, save 25%@LG.com with code fall25. Bring the boom XBoom.
- [38:57]
John Hope Bryant
Okay, now that aside, my dad, I remember calling my dad one day and well, dad, what's going on? Well, you know, I wonder why his girlfriend was ugly because my mother was fine. But when I think back, because I was just traveling all around the country, around the world, I was hustling myself and life was a blur. I slept for six, five or six hours in the middle, or three hours in the middle of a day because it was just a blur. So I didn't really, wasn't really paying deep attention to what was going on. My dad. But when my dad told me that he was staying with this lady that is his girlfriend and she basically had control financially over his life and she was staying in a house that she owned, it got my attention. I'm like, what? What'd you say? Yeah, you know what I'm saying? With whatever her name was, she was ugly, unattractive physically and unattractive spiritually. I remember meeting her and she didn't treat my father very well, but he was like a, it was like a reverse sex toy situation. He would he because he played women for so long, now they're playing him. And she had this place and she let him stay there, but she, she, he had to be her girlfriend. This is a serious story. And I'm like, no, no, dad, you can't do that. Now, I was not in a place, financially, where I could afford to. To do what I'm about to tell you. But I knew that my dad could not be in this situation. So my first real estate lesson. I guess I was in my early 20s when this happened because I remember I had my. This is my. My first success in business. I bought the property, the home from the lady and a hundred thousand dollars, whatever it was, by the way, you can't find anything in Los Angeles for a hundred thousand dollars today. So that's why I say people, people just buy the property. You'll never think it's. The price is right, it's gonna. It's just gonna go up. Just, if you can afford it, buy the property and hold on to it. I bought this property. I knocked down the zoning was. I thought R4. It was R3, which is residential, which means I could put three or four units on it. But it was on a single family residential. A single family residential home was on this lot. So I thought, if I buy it, check this out with an account with an architect first. But I did not check the zoning. My father told me it was a C4. It was an R4. I just trusted him. I bought the property. I knocked down three walls, kept one wal, which made it the sustainable structure. I then got a construction loan for an apartment building. That's when the bank, Wells Fargo, I'm always thankful to them, told me that it was not zoned R4, it was zoned R3. Fine. That means I could put three units up. My dad stays in one unit rent from the other two, just pays enough to cover the mortgage and his living expenses. Because I couldn't afford to just. Just write a check out of my pocket every month to take care of my dad for the remainder of his life. I did a quick calculation, knew I'd be broke doing that. And I didn't want to make a promise to my dad I couldn't keep. So I got Wells Fargo to make this loan, a construction loan, and Tom Swanson. I want to be. Forever be thankful to Tom Swanson, because the story gets very interesting. I gave my dad the chance. My dad asked for the chance to construct his own home. I should have just said, no, he's not. He's not a general contractor. And the reason he went broke in the first place was he couldn't manage his money. Fine. Emotional. I have always said to you, don't make an emotional Decision, it's going to be a bad one. Out of love and emotions. I said yes when I, when my brain should have said no, I should have got an independent contractor to build this. I've already given him a place to live, already bought the place and I like I'm not doing enough. So he wanted to be seen as building his own place, profiling, whatever. I give him this construction loan, he runs through it, nothing left. I give him a Mercury Express green card. I didn't even have one, had a six thousand dollar limit on it. My dad ran through that in a month. I mean I was so upset, what am I going to do? He's my father. So I canceled the green card and had to pay it back over time. I mean it might as well have been $50,000 today, $6,000 back then or more. And luckily for me, Tom Swanson at Wells Fargo, he's since retired. I went back to him, told him the truth, told him exactly what happened. Luckily the market was going up at that time, values were going up. And he said, look, the property's worth more now than it was when you took out the construction loan. We're going to refinance a construction loan for you and allow you to take out the money to now finish this three unit apartment building. But now you got to get a proper contractor. We're going to have, you know, project insure, project construction insurance on this project in case you get weak need and trust your father again. And I learned so many lessons. I finished a project just barely and it's worth that, that, that three unit building is worth seven figures today without question. So anyway, and my dad lived in dignity there until the day he passed on. Broke. My dad died, God bless his soul, God rest his soul. Financially broke, lost everything. We lost the gas station, lost the single family residential home. If you, if you're in la, drive by Western and Vernon. I believe those are the, the, the, the, the near Rodeo Road, I think, I think those are, that's the corner, south east corner. That gas station still there is what we owned. Lost the apartment building worth millions. We lost it all. I don't know how he lost it, he just did. And the only thing was keeping him going until he couldn't do anymore was a cement contracting business and even lost the trucks or sold them or whatever the equipment. So by the time I got back around into the store the story, my dad was not in great health and didn't take good care of himself and wouldn't listen to me when I tried to it was a whole nother story. But I loved him and I was gonna do everything I could to let him live in dignity. And I'm proud that I did that. I want to thank Rachel Doff, my chief of staff, for being an honorary sister to my honorary daughter to my father and taking care of him when I was out on the road. My mother had a different story. So my mom and my dad had just two different worldviews, right? And they collided and the partnership dissolved. Over time, my dad lost it all. Every asset, gone. My mother worked that job, took that extra money that she was making part time. And by the way, if you're married, here's an ideal situation. If two people are working, one person earns the income and pays the living expenses. You live on one paycheck. Please hear me. The other person earns an income and invests it. Now that this is at the 40 minute mark of this podcast. You don't, you don't get to pick up anything else. Tell your friends to go to the 40 minute mark or whatever around 38 or 40 minute mark and mark this place and, and follow what I said. One person, usually you have two parent, two income household. One person makes the money and you live off that. You all your living expenses under this one person. The other person, take this money and invest it. What did I tell you earlier? $200 a month. A mere $200 a month over 33 to 40 years and you'll be a millionaire. What happens if you do 500amonth or $1,000 a month? Okay, you start to get the, get the, get the hint, get the memo. It's the magic of compounding in the marketplace. So my dad, Johnny Smith, had assets but no structure in his life. He was cash rich at times, but asset poor in the end. No diversification, no succession plan, no long term investment strategy. My mother hustled differently. Hustled smartly, used credit as leverage, not a crutch. My dad used to say his credit was bad. My dad's credit was so bad, he didn't call it credit. He said his credic was bad. My dad, I love him. My mother understood delayed gratification, believed in consistency over charisma. Invest, reinvest. Leave it alone, let it compound. Hustle gets you in the door. Literacy and stewardship keeps you in the room. It keeps a roof over your head that you own. Again, they fought over money. Two different worldviews. My mom, my mom left. You know, again, you can do bad all by yourself. She made a choice. So My mother ended up buying and selling seven homes. Just drop the mic here. She had a life insurance policy. She drew up a will with a poison pill in it. Anybody who contests this will, I want to thank Sir James Buchanan for helping her in the later years of her life. He works for me, became a real friend of my mother and he advised her to put this element in the will, which I agree with. Anybody who contests his will will be removed from the proceeds. Anybody who contests will removed from the inheritance. Boy. And I was, and I was the, you know, the, the trustee, whatever, for the will. So I didn't want the fight coming my way. But they, everybody got real quiet once they read the will and saw that in it that mom was gangster. Mom had a stock account, she had a bank account. Of course, she, she, she had a Mercedes. She paid cash for it. My mother ultimately converted the life insurance policy and the stock, I believe to cash. She bought. She helped her kids to buy houses, put their down payment in their homes, but they bought, sold seven homes. And when she passed away, she had a million dollar net worth. And my dad was broke and she worked an hourly job and she didn't get that million dollar net worth from the stock market. Like I just told you. She put a little bit of money in the stock market through her, through her, through her employer. But she did most of this through the real estate and making really smart credit moves. She had a credit of credit score of 854. Back when the credit score went that high, it was changed. 850 as a maximum. Whatever the maximum was, she had it. And then later on in her life, when she wasn't working and wasn't, wasn't cutting deals, her credit score went down to the high seven, to the low seven hundreds. But that's because she wasn't, she wasn't using credit at that time. But I'm just giving you an example of what really matters, right? And what doesn't. So I want to break the myth. You don't need to own a business to build wealth. You can be an hourly worker and build wealth. That is the situation for most people in this country. My, my mom's formula was good credit, equal access to capital, prime access to capital. And she went to computer at midnight, typed in her Social Security number and her name at midnight. Computer's not asking her, she black or female or whatever, if it's below $100,000 or whatever, the computer just says yes, because my mother's not black or white, she's green, right? Good credit. She had automatic savings. She looked at automatic savings as a long term gain. She had a modest lifestyle. She lived under a means she knew that equaled freedom. This is what millions of Americans would do as a business model. Imagine now if Johnny Will Smith, Juanita Smith, my mom and dad combine their strengths. Imagine, I mean that hustle they had, that net worth that they built. If they, if he made it and she invested it, oh my God, they'd be powerhouses. My life story would be different. Maybe there'd be no Operation Hope. I wouldn't be no financial literacy course. I wouldn't have been in Compton. My mother wouldn't have bought the house. I mean, you know, all these things. Rainbows after storms. Cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. I've been a very different person if it not been for the trauma and the drama in my life. And so I don't regret anything. I don't ask for anything to be different. But I would have wanted my mother to be happier. And she wasn't really all that happy. She was happy with her kids. She was happy about what she had done, her success. But she wasn't personally fulfilled from a love perspective. She wanted to be loved. She told me she loved me every day of my life. So I never had a self esteem problem. And that's where the quote for Operation Hope comes from. There's a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is economic, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind. A depressed condition of your spirit. Spirit. And you must vow never ever, ever to be poor again. That came from my mother. But my, but my mother told me she loved me every day of my life. No one ever told her that. Even her own mother was not somebody who effusively said, I love you, baby. So my mother was not loved by her family. She's loved by her kids and her sisters. But. But not really. Did not have a love interest. And that I think was the one sadness in her life. Now let's talk about my dad. Imagine if Johnny. By the way, my mother was my date for many, many, many years. I take her all around the world. I went to, I've been to 100 countries. I'm sure I've taken my mother to at least 10. And I'm so proud that we had a time together. And anyway, reminiscing. Sorry about that. What was my. What can the modern entrepreneur learn from? From this. Incorporate your business, build business credit, maintain personal credit. Because if you're, if you're a small business owner, your business Credit may rely on your personal credit rating. Separate hustle from household plan with your spouse or partner. Avoid silent wars over money. Again, have weekly meetings on on money or monthly or semi, quarterly or semiannually or annually. My family, we talk about money all the time when it, you know, when it comes up. It doesn't come up when it needs to come up, right? Keep a budget. I used to think a budget were boring. Budgets are, budgets are glorious. You should have one. Everybody should have one. Here's an action plan for business hustlers. Formalize your operations. And using a limited liability corporation. It's easy as quick and it's cheap. Use a proper accounting firm. Pay your taxes. My tax man was always after my dad, by the way. He was in a cash business. He didn't pay his taxes. Build your credit profile. Invest in something that pays you back over time. An apartment building. Again, the apartment building was cash flow and asset appreciation. So he was making money during the day, the week and when he's. And then, and then it was, it was appreciating because it's real estate and it's a business actually three, three times. It was a three times profit margin because he would have sold the business, he would have got paid. If he had sold the real estate, he would have got paid. And he was getting paid every week and every day and every month on the income from the gas station. Same was the case with the apartment building. So if, if he had just kept those. I mean, he bought an eight unit apartment building in Los Angeles for $18,000. I mean, my God, imagine you could just live on that for the rest of your life. And then when you sold it, well, heck, you're on easy street. But he didn't. So again, build your credit profile. Formalize your operations. Build your credit profile. Invest in something that pays you back over time. For hourly workers. Max out your retirement plans. If your employer has a 401k plan and they're giving you X dollars, match it. X dollars of your own money. It's free money. It's found money, it's yours. Why would you leave money on the table, right? Whatever your employer's giving you, match it immediately. You know, if you need it later, you always pull it out, right? Protect your credit score. Learn basic investing. You know, index funds, ETFs. But learn basic investing in the stock market and then put in at least 50 bucks, 100 bucks, 200 bucks a month. You can do fractional shares, by the way. There's no excuse for doing, for not doing nothing. And of course, you know me. I'm going to say you should invest in real estate. Buy a home, whatever you can. You don't have to own the block tomorrow, but you have to own your mindset today. My father gave me a fearless spirit, and I'll always be thankful for him for that. My mother gave me financial wisdom, and I'll always be grateful for that. My mom gave me a sense of yes, I am. My dad gave me a sense of yes, I can. But in the end, it was my mother who built a legacy. The sustainable legacy. Here's your call to action. Everybody share this with someone who you think is working harder in the same way that my mom and dad did, but not working smarter. And you want them to work smarter. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. Tell them to go to the HOPE Credit Score Index, the HOPE Operational Credit Score Index page on the Internet and look up the credit score for the neighborhood that you're living in. Because that neighborhood that you're living in, if, if you do nothing but follow the trends in that neighborhood, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna model everything about the neighborhood. So if you live in a 600 credit score, 500 credit score neighborhood, you're gonna live to about 61 years of age. For every 50 points we found, and we mapped every credit score in America by zip code at Operation Hope. And thank you, Experian for giving us the data in the US Census. For every increase in credit score of 50 points, you pick up five more years of life. Yes, that's what I said. I said it. Yes. I hope you didn't roll off the road when I said that. If you have a 700 credit score, you live to on average 81 years of age. You live to, you have a, a 500 credit score, you live to on Average 61 years of age. And you don't get Social Security until 65. Hello. Right. So a 20 year gap in wellness and well being, you live 20 year longer life with us with a 2200 different 200 point gap in your credit score. Is that about the credit scores? About hope, well being, faith, confidence, belief, optimism, mindset. It's about how you, it's your mindset. Do you believe? Is the glass half empty? Is the glass half full? It depends who's looking at the glass. Whether you believe you can, whether you believe you can't. You're absolutely right. Right. So you got to get your mind right, because I can give again. I'VE done on my Straight Talk Live series. I've talked about being homeless. I've talked about people win the lottery. I can give a homeless guy a million dollars. He'll be broke in six months. If nothing else changes in his mind, in his heart, that reflects what's in his pocket. Most people win the lottery. Bankrupt in five years, broke. Most NBA and NFL players bankrupt within five years of retirement and divorced. Because again, you got the money, but you didn't get the education. You can get the financial literacy. You don't understand what to do with it. So getting your mindset right is really important. Tell everybody listening to this. Go to download the Hope in Hand app. Tell them and John Bryant sent you. They'll offer you a $1,000 Hope Financial Scholarship for coaching and counseling. Get your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up. We're Getting credit scores up 54 points in six months, $1,200 up for savings, $3,800 down for debt in a year. You do that, you make 48 to $50,000 a year. In this example, we just made you bankable. We're the only nonprofit allowed to operate inside of a bank branch in U.S. history. And so we're moving you from a no answer at the bank to a yes answer in most cases. You have a job, you employ, you have a good credit score, your debt to income ratios are in place. The bank wants to make a good loan. If they don't make a good loan, they can't pay their bills. So they need the money to be working. They don't. They don't want to give the people they think are going to default on the debt. Right? So I need you to understand how the system works and where our job is to be economic plumbing for the entire country. I want you to tell your friends to subscribe to Money and Wealth podcast and get my book, Financial Literacy for All, which is the bestseller in the world. John O. Bryant this is Money and Wealth on the Black effect network on iHeartradio. This has been a special episode where I went deep into my own personal soul and told you some things are very private and personal to me. The example the businessman hustler versus the hourly worker investor. Which one wins? There you go. This is something everybody can do. This is John o'. Brien. This is the Silver rights movement. From civil rights to civil rights. From civil rights in the streets to civil rights in the suites. I'm out. Foreign 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 show. Those sa Sam.
- [61:53]
Ryan Seacrest
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Ryan Seacrest
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Ryan Seacrest
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There's a lot going on in Hollywood.
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John Hope Bryant
How are you supposed to stay on.
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John Hope Bryant
Podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives. Where do you see the business actually heading?
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John Hope Bryant
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Podcast Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.