John Hope Bryant (3:22)

Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hey, hey, it's John o'. Brien. This is Money and Wealth and I owe you a bit of an apology. I sometimes assume, and you should never assume, you make an ass out of you and me when you do that. Literally spelled that way. You should never assume that somebody knows something or that they understand something, because it's what we don't know that we don't know that's killing us. But we think we know and that creates disconnection from society and we start hanging around our comfort zones. That's why I say if you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. And the opposite is also true. You don't have to be brilliant if you hang around wealthy people. Hanging around wealthy people will just lift you up in many cases to their level. So I assumed that people understood my background. And as I explained on some social media posts about being homeless at 18, people were shocked. I explained a little bit about my background here and there. People were stunned. I don't know, I guess assumed that I had a silver spoon in my mouth or that life wasn't so tough for me and the more I shared, the more they could relate. The other side of the story is, and these are bookends, the reason I did this podcast is because I have so much respect for my brother Charlemagne. His real name is Leonard and he is really, really smart. And Leonard, who you know as Charlemagne of the Breakfast Club, Lenard, told me one day that he respected a lot of the financial influencers for their game and what they've achieved. But he really wanted me to do a financial literacy podcast because I was a real businessman, a real business person who makes a payroll, who built a business, who bought and sold assets, who had to work through issues, who ran a balance sheet, an income statement. I wasn't acting like I was a business person. I wasn't succeeding by selling books and tapes. No Disrespect to those who sell books and tapes. That is a form of business, by the way. But if you're going to teach something, you need to be something. So let me unpack how I became this person. So those are the bookends. One, I came from somewhere. And that story, I think, is more aligned with the typical listener of this podcast than the children of the wealthiest people in the world and most privileged. And two, I'm more PhD than PhD and I still do it every day. I meet a payroll of seven figures every two weeks. I'm one of the largest employers in America who happens to be black. So let's talk about the topic today, the making of a wealth creator. Lessons from my early life. Let me walk you through this. So you see that anybody can do most. Anybody can do most. Anybody can do some, if not all, if not at the very least a lot of what I have done. You can take a lane of what I'm doing, because maybe I'm just crazy. I'm an entrepreneur, relentless in my creative energy. But you can take a lane of what I have done and kill it, succeed at it, maybe beyond what I have done. But you're not. You don't just say, oh, well, John was born brilliant or Jordan rich, or he was grown. No, no, no, no, no. I was born a hustler, right? But the difference between a hustler and a businessman or a businesswoman is payroll. Can I get an amen? I'm sorry? Not. Let me rephrase that. I'm thinking about payroll, my own payroll. The difference between a hustler and a businessman or a businesswoman is paperwork, not payroll. Payroll is part of paperwork, but financial literacy is the paperwork. It's understanding how this whole thing works. So you can just be half as brilliant as a person next to you, but you got your paperwork right, right? And you understand the system works. You're willing to work hard, get up early, stay late, succeed by hard work and resiliency. You're going to do better than the person that's just smarter than you that's next door. So let's unpack my story. I'm going to jump now to when I was about 4 or 5, my, my mother and my father. Now, this is in my book, Financial Literacy for All. It's my book. Some of it's in my book, the Memo and Up From Nothing. I'm not going to literally walk you through what you can read, but let me. Let me do something I've never done before, tell you the what of how to become a wealth creator in your mind and let your legs and feet follow those. That new thought process. Why is that important? As I said on social media, if I give a homeless man a million dollars and that's all I do, I don't do anything else, he'll be broke in six months. And people thought that I was being callous or whatever. No, no, I'm being factual. That my. That money is just a transfer. It's just a, you know, it's just a transfer of value. It's just, you know, but mindset. Wealth is a mindset. So I can give all the money in the world to all the people of the world. Sorry. If all the wealth of the world was transferred to all the people of the world, but nothing else was done to help them, then the wealthy people in the world would have the money back within three to five years. Because it's a mindset, right? So hustling is not enough. Money certainly is not enough. That's why 70% of all those who win the lottery are bankrupt in five years. 70% of NFL players, NBA players, on average, bankrupt within five years and then divorced within that same period of time because they run out of money. They thought they lived, thought it would last forever. No, no, no. Wealth last. Money will dissipate. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. My mom and my dad, my dad was a hustler, grew up in Alabama. My grandfather, R.B. smith, was a sharecropper. My second great grandmother, grandfather George Young, was a. Was in the Union army. And the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln protected Memphis, Tennessee. Born into slavery George Young. Because of slavery, my generational story sort of ends in the fourth generation. But I'm still investigating all of that, unpacking it and documenting it. But I do know my grandfather, certainly my second great grandfather was a fighter for justice in the Union army, the Emancipation Proclamation, black troops, One of those, one of 7,000 officers who represented and defended Memphis. So he's a fighter for justice. My second great grandmother on my mother's side was born into slavery, became free in her lifetime, owned her own house with no mortgage on it, so says the documentation, and had a border, a renter. So I had this fighter for justice and this freedom fighter of independence in my spiritual bloodstream, even in slavery. My grandmother on my mother's side, Vesta Murray, owned her own house. It was a shotgun shack, meaning you open the front door, shoot through the shotgun, through the. From the front to the back, and not hit anything. No walls. Anything. And there was an outhouse where you did your Business in East St. Louis on Pigot Street, Pickett Street, I believe it's called doing that. From memory, my mother, Juanita Smith and her sisters and brothers lived there. And my mother went from that shotgun shack, marrying my father who was a businessman. My second. My grandfather was a sharecropper on my dad's side. My dad, a businessman, owned a cement contracting business and owned his own home. At that point, he marries my mother. They come together because two plus two in a good relationship, she equals six, eight or 10. Not just two plus two equals four. It should be multiplication, not just addition. They come together, marry, move to South Central la, build a little conglomerate. They both had a high school education. I'm making, I'm saying, I'm breaking this down so you understand this can be you, this is you high school education, lots of hustle. My mother becomes really smart in saving, in investment and side hustles. She had a lot of those side hustles and she worked mostly at McDonald Douglas aircraft for most of her life. Making plane seats, stitching plane seats that I fly in a day, maybe. Some of the seats I sit in on these airlines, they are seats my mother one stitched, who knows. But she, you know, was great at investing, great at hustling and great at saving. My dad was great at hustling, great at producing income. But my dad was financially illiterate. So every dollar he made we he'd spend A$50. The more money he made, the broker we got. But we owned at some point a gas station at Western and Vernon, I believe in Los Angeles. We owned an 8 unit apartment building we bought for $18,000 and was worth 8. Is worth more than $8 million today. We own. We lived in the one unit, rented the rest of them out. We owned our own home at some point. We owned a nursery business taking care of kids. Yes, I was one of the clients. We owned a cement contracting business and did that with his own hands. My mom and dad fought over money. My mother moved out, did not take anything with her except her kids in California community property state could have taken everything from my dad. Leaves my dad with all these physical assets, these income producing assets. But my dad did not have the financial literacy. Years later, my mother's bought and sold seven homes. Worked an hourly job. Is worth a million dollars. Credit score of 854. I'm her trustee. When she passed. I know the numbers. My dad dies dead broke. Even though he was brilliant and I had to Take care of him. He lost everything because he was financially illiterate, even though he was brilliant in many ways. So if you outflow exceeds your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. Even the Bible says we grow through legitimate suffering. Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. So the first thing embedded in my brain was my mother and my father fighting over money. When I was four or five, my sister Mara Hoskins says, you know, I think it was four. I thought it was six years old. She said it was four or five. How would I know? I was very young. But she passed me the phone to call the police. I don't know why she had passed me the phone. She dialed the number. Back then. It was a rotary phone. Come, come, come. My daddy is meeting up with my mother. They're arguing about money. And again, the backstory is in my book, so I won't bore you with that. It's not relevant to this particular conversation, but that was about my brother, Donnie Smith. Dave Darnell Harris. Donnie Smith, or Dave Harris is his name, but Dave Darnell Harris is his real name because he had a different father than I did, even though my dad took care of him and my sister like they were his own. I give him credit for that. My dad. Dad's brain, in many ways, just not money. Anyway, they fight over money. Number one cause for divorce in America is money. My mother splits, goes to live with a. With a girlfriend. So now we've broken up the family structure. Right. If you want to build wealth, stick together.

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John Hope Bryant (16:05)

If you're going to get married, first of all, you'll make more money, you'll build more wealth married than you will single. That's just statistically true. Are there exceptions to that rule? Of course there are. Somebody I'm honored to call a friend, Oprah Winfrey, who I incredibly admire is single but has done incredibly well. So I'm not saying you can't be single, not do well. There's many, many, many examples of that. But statistically speaking, you're going to do better married. If you can stay married, get married, stay married, and work as a team again, it's compounding because it's just more people working at something. And certainly if one person makes the money and the other person takes and invests the money. So one. Both people are working. One person making a. The other person's building a life. That's another podcast for another day. One person's making a living paying and then paying bills. The other person's Building a life by taking the money they make and investing for the future. My mom and dad didn't do that.

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John Hope Bryant (21:25)

So first thing I witnessed was the destruction of our family structure. Later on obviously the net worth poof. So our generational wealth disappeared. We should have had $8 million, we should have had $10 million worth of assets me and my brother, my sister to pass to to share as we grew up it from because of just the apartment building, the gas station alone and the home that was owned. But my father lost it all. Fast forward now I I'm staying with my mother's girlfriend who she told me was her my aunt. Something black parents do. How's your auntie baby? She was just my mother's girlfriend and I I witnessed the murder of the guy who saved my life there again over money drugs. So that's embedded in my brain. Then again that's in the details are in my book. And then I then around nine years of age my mother buys her first house 15502 South Fraley Avenue in Compton, California and I'd go make a good friend. I knew a friend, very smart guy, George was his name and unfortunately George did not have Good parents like I did. Even though they were divorced, they still loved me and showed it. My mother told me she loved me every day of my life. So I had many problems, but self esteem, not one of them. George did not have that benefit. He did not have loving parents, even though he was wicked smart, much smarter than me on the books. That's why I wanted to be like him. He was really smart. Well, I want to be like George. George wanted to be like the next door neighbor, Tweet, who was a drug dealer. And George and Twee got murdered on the same street corner. So by the time I was nine years old, I was done. And I'm looking for a way out of this. I don't want prison, probation, parole, or death, which is what I saw in my neighborhood in Compton. I knew we were smart. I knew we were enterprising people. But no one ever gave us a memo on money, on capitalism, on free enterprise, like every other culture has. Every other culture was given this memo on how to succeed. Literally every other culture. The only three groups that did not give this memo, African Americans, not African Caribbeans, not African Africans. African Americans who were enslaved, poor whites who were brought here as indentured servants and never obviously escaped from that. That's the largest group of poverty in this country. If race was the only issue in this country, racism is real, as we're unfortunately seeing in today's society. But if racism was the only factor holding you back, then you would not have poor whites. You'd have only rich whites, okay? And then Native American Indians. These three groups out of 200 ethnic groups in America never got the memo. You know, I didn't know that back then. So I've been studying this my whole life. But back then I just knew I had to get out of there and only be only doing well in my neighborhood were drug dealers and gangsters, and they didn't have a retirement plan, and most of them didn't live long. So I'm looking for a way out. I go to class, go to school. Elementary school. It was called Escondo Elementary School. Renamed it Colin P. Kelly Elementary School in Compton. And I would sell stuff to teachers. Well, a guy comes, of course, to class, a white banker, to teach financial literacy. He was a banker from bank of America. He would come once a week for six weeks tied to the community reinvestment act, which still exists to this day. And he would teach financial literacy in home economics class, which doesn't exist anymore. And most of my classroom friends were just joking when he was there. It was like free time for them. I was focused. I'm trying to figure out how to get out of the hood alive and prosperous. And I don't want to work for somebody. Like, with all due respect, my mother was doing, um. So I'm. These guys got my attention. And the first, you know, week it was a, you know, tense situation because he didn't want to be there and we didn't want him there. The second week he comes back, you know, you kids aren't so bad. You remind me of my own kids. We're like, well, you're not so bad for a white dude. So we're building a relationship. We have a nice little joke and humor. Humor breaks down all kinds of barriers. And he's like, you kids are okay. We're like, you're okay too. So by the third week, we're talking about real stuff. And now I'm selling stuff. I'm selling mail order Stacy Adams shoes. I'm selling mail order jewelry. I couldn't afford inventory, but I had a mouth, I could talk. And I would go sell it stuff to my teachers and to my principal, who were white and black, by the way, in Compton at that time. And that would sort of build my confidence. Every time I got a sale and I would take the deposit and deposit I would use to buy the product. I'd get the product in, it was mail order. And then I would deliver the product and I'd get the second part of the sale that was my profit. Then I'd reinvest. And that's why I learned how to reinvest in me and that I was really the product. I was a salesman in that example. I was a spokesman for the company. And around the fourth or fifth week, you know, I'm. I'm just all in. And I wanted to wear a suit like this banker. So I asked my mother if I could wear a suit and she's like, I'm not buying you a suit. I can't afford that. But I made you a suit for. For Sunday churches. You wear that. So it was a crushed velvet purple velour three piece suit with a ruffled shirt and a big, big, big bow tie. And I wore that suit to school. It had a little briefcase with nothing my dreams in it. That's where I used to have my mail order forms in. And I got beat up every day, right? And ridiculed and. But I didn't care. An eagle don't fly in packs. You've never seen a flock of eagles. You're starting to see the beginning, the beginnings of the makings of a wealth creator. Right? So I'm walking my own walk. I'm doing my own thing. I'm going to school, and I'm focused. And I asked this banker, what do you do for a living? And how'd you get rich legally? And I was dead serious. And this banker said, I'm a banker, and I finance entrepreneurs. And I said, I don't know what an entrepreneur is. I've never heard that word my entire life. I'm nine years old, and I'm nosy, and I looked it up in the dictionary. That would be a Google search today. But I went home. We bought an entire wall of Encyclopedia Britannica. Anybody older than 40 knows what I'm talking about. If you were balling in the inner city, your parents showed it by buying Encyclopedia Britannica and put them on display. Most people never even opened them, but they were on display. I went home and opened one to the word, to the letter E and found the word entrepreneur, a French word. Build. Create value. Build something from nothing. I'm like, I'm in. That's legal. And I can spy. I can finally see my way out of the hood. I go back to the banker. I got more questions. Now I know how I'm gonna get out of this mess. This. The great place I live that you can't seem to get out of here unless you're in prison or in a box, as in dead. Are there more people like you? This banker thing that you're talking about that lends money. He said, oh, yeah, there's hundreds of thousands of bankers. There's 10,000 banks back then. It might be a million or 2 million or 3 million bankers. He said. And I said, wait a minute. Slow down. Hold on. You mean to tell me I've said this in speeches, but I've never said it on the podcast? So I'm breaking this down for you. You mean to tell me so you know, there's only an audience of a couple, a few hundred people have ever heard me say this. You mean to tell me that your job, Your job is to lend poor people money? He's like, yep. And all. All I have to do is prove I can pay it back. Yep. And you take money from depositors like my mother at 3% or whatever, you put on some administrative costs and profit. You call it the spread. Interest rate spread. You loan it back out at double that, whatever. And you just want the money paid back? Yep. Now I can prove to you that I will Pay the money back, which is a credit score and all that stuff. You'll loan me money? Yep. And if I don't pay the money back, I don't get dead. And he laughed and he's like, why would I kill you? Of course not. That's ridiculous. You know, middle class white man from a beautiful, stable community. He's like this, what's wrong with this kid? Because Pookie and them around the corner on the back street from where I live, if you didn't return the money they borrowed, that you borrowed from them, they loaned you. You don't come back from that street, they jack you up, they might kill you. They would disappear you to send a message to the next borrower. You got to repay this money. By the way, a gangster did me a real favor. I was later on in my life and I was a real hustler. I had borrowed some money from one of the local gangsters and I went to pay him back, and he's like, you don't pay me back. No, I'm like, no, I'm paying you back plus interest. He's no, no, no, you don't understand this game. You don't pay me back. You work for me for life. So you can pay me back the principal. But the interest, I mean, you, you know, the interest keeps going up so much that I just give you another job and you just, you're working for the family now. The family quotation marks. And I didn't understand any of that. And he looked at me like, you know, kid, you're not supposed to be here. Like, I can see you have real potential. Give my principal back my money. Now get out of here. And never. I never want to see you again. If you see, if I see you again, I'm going to kill you. Right? And I, I was gone. But anyway, back to the story. He really saved my life because I didn't understand what I was getting into by borrowing money from this guy. So back to when I'm nine, This guy. No. Why would I kill you? No, no. We just give you a notice of default. I said, wait a minute. You give me a piece of paper. If I don't repay your loan, you give me a piece of paper. Yes. And we report you to the credit bureaus. What's that? Right? I mean, there's all these awesome. Blowing my mind. So I said, wait a minute, hold on, slow down. And this is why I'm so excited about this topic of financial literacy and why I founded Operation Hope and Slow down. There are Millions of bankers in America. White people like you. White people, Asian people, whatever. Black people. And your job? It's the loan. Poor people. Money. And all we have to do is prove we can pay it back. And you want to return. You want profit. Return on your interest. And if we don't pay it back, things go wrong. You don't kill us. You don't break our legs. You just give us a notice of default. You harm our credit, not our body. Yes, sign me up. And what I didn't realize is not only that, was I signing up to become an entrepreneur at that time, which I certainly realized that's what I wanted to do at nine years old. Ten years at that point. Well, nine and a half, because I started my first business at 10. I didn't realize I was also writing this, the. The lyrics for the rest of my. For the song of the rest of my life. Because later on, you know, two decades later. Yeah, little less than that. I was founding Operation Hope. And what does Operation Hope do? Teach people, poor people, struggling families, how to unleash untapped human potential. At scale. How to meet the criteria of banks, where the only nonprofit allowed to operate inside of a bank branch in U.S. history allows people to raise their credit score. We're raising credit scores. 54 points in six months. Lowering debt. $3,800. Raising savings. $1,200 for somebody making 48, $50,000 a year, which is most Americans with too much money into their money allows them to go into the bank, get the bank out of the no business, which they don't want to be in. They need to make profit, which means they need to make loans to get paid back and get the bank back into the yes. Business at scale. That's what we're doing across the country. $4.5 billion invested to date. 1500 offices, 350 of which have my staff in them inside of banks. Mostly partnering with the guys and ladies who taught me financial literacy as a kid. Can't make this up. Full circle, back to the story, the making of a wealth creator. So now I've got the entrepreneurship piece right in the dream in my head right now. I'm walking down the street from school, right? And now I'm looking at the muffler shop. That's a business. There's a capitalist in there. People say, oh, I hate rich people. No, you don't. You don't hate rich people. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that no Matter how hard you work, you cannot succeed. I'm going to teach you the system. I'm going to master it. But anyway, that muffler shop was a business, a for profit business, organized, that pays sales tax to the city and the state, that has employees, hopefully files a tax return, pays their expenses, takes home a profit, just like the banker. And inside that business is a capitalist. People say, oh, I want to be a socialist. Get the heck out of here. Even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to first collect it like a capitalist. Can I get an amen all cap? All socialism is, by the way, is a taxing system. I'll break that down in another podcast. The Nordic countries who specialize in socialism, these are capitalists who just pay more taxes. But that's a whole nother podcast. So that muffler shop owner was a capitalist. The nail salon owner, she's a capitalist and she's in business. That is a business. The barbershop owner, males, barbershop or whatever, he's a capitalist, right? And he's in business. The donut shop owner, he's a capitalist, or she's a capitalist. That's a business. You starting to get it. The gas station, that's a business and that's a capitalist that owns it. And they have insurance and payroll and a loan corporation. I'm just fascinated. My mind is just exploding with opportunity. I'm seeing the building of a new mindset in me. So now my mother told me she loved me every day of my life. So now the sense of yes, I am. My dad showed me how to build something. I didn't know he was financially illiterate. I just saw he was out there making a payroll. He believed in the James Brown version of affirmative action. I opened the door, I'll get it myself. So that was my dude. Still my dude. Even though he's financially illiterate. I'm a businessman because he was. My grandfather was a sharecropper. My daddy, Johnny Will Smith was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. I would never be me without him. And you can't grow except through legitimate suffering. So thank God he made mistakes so I don't have to make those same mistakes. He made a mistake, he wasn't a mistake. Wonderful human being, my dad, who took care of my sister and brother and didn't have to, and even my mother, even though they had problems, he genuinely loved her. He just didn't know any better. We're gonna fix that with this generation. So I'm walking through, through the neighborhood. I'm like, oh, my God, there's a way out, a legal way out. So I go to the liquor store. I'm 10 years old now. There's a guy named black guy, owned the liquor store. Mr. Mac, sir, you're selling the wrong kind of candy. He said, go away, little boy. I've got a college degree. I said, that's nice. I've got cavities, right? I'm a kid. I'm 10 years old. You're selling the wrong kind of candy. And I didn't know what a joint venture meant then. And by the way, I have a at John o' Brien Enterprises, JHB Enterprises, which includes Brian Group Ventures and Brian Group Digital Media, and my newest joint venture, bgv cim, BGV Impact Ventures, which I'll talk more about in the next podcast, Brian Group Publishing. And anyway, all the stuff I'm involved in, that environment of joint ventures, which I love today, has ground rules for me. And my basic ground rules for doing business with anybody is the Oprah rule on the one hand and the joint venture rule on the other. Oprah rule is I don't put my arm around anybody who does not have as much reputationally to lose as I do. That's the Oprah rule, and I love it. She taught me that, and I use it. She gave me the use Your Life Award 25 years ago, and I am indebted to her to this day for teaching me and not just rewarding me or acknowledging me. She's still teaching, by the way. And then my joint venture rule on the business side is I don't joint venture with anybody who doesn't have as much reputationally to lose as I do. They're not bigger than me also. So the only time I've ever made a business mistake that I'm aware of or the only time it's ever cost me anything is when I didn't follow that rule. And it was a good reason why I didn't follow the rule. I can't get into it at the moment, but a little bit of a shotgun marriage. But whenever I've had time to think about it, I've never had a problem. I've not had a I've only had one business problem dispute in 40 years of business, and it's because I didn't follow those booking rules of starting a business.

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John Hope Bryant (40:04)

Mmm.

Coca-Cola Announcer (40:05)

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State Farm Insurance Announcer (40:23)

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Wasabi Cloud Storage Announcer (42:18)

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Ryan Seacrest (43:18)

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John Hope Bryant (43:54)

So the reason I say this joint venture is I didn't know what a joint venture was. I didn't know what a partnership was. But what I was telling the owner of the Mac's liquor store, Mr. Mac, this black man of six two on this business was, I want to be your partner. I want to help you succeed, continue to succeed in business and to thrive and get more market share. And I'm a kid. I know what kids are buying. And he just, he just wrote me off. He, he laughed. And I'm like, look, I'm trying to save your business, man. You need to partner with me. He laughed at me. He's like, look, you got good gift for gab, kid. I'm gonna hire you. He was very presumptuous. I'm going to hire you as a salesman for candy in my candy store. My candy counter. It was a candy counter, glass counter inside of the liquor store. I don't want to work for you in your candy. This candy shop, Max Liquor store was at I think Atlantic, Atlantic Boulevard. And I think Mirth. I think it was the cross streets. I think it's a muffler shop there now. But anyway, so I told him I didn't want to work for him. I didn't realize how wise this was. Like, I didn't want to rock the mic. I wanted to own it. I Didn't want to be a performer. I wanted to be the guy who owned the publishing in the music business vernacular. Quincy Jones once told me, if you think you're in the music business and you don't own music rights or licensing rights or publishing rights or some kind of rights, you're not in the music business. You're just a temporary performer. Whoa, that's wisdom. God rest Quincy's soul. He also told me, I asked him, how did he get so smart? He said, I'm just nosy as hell. I want to know everything about everything. I got that from him. I got two ears and one mouth because God gave it to us because he wanted to know that we wanted us to listen twice as much as we talk. Most of us do the opposite. We talk and don't listen. That's why. No wonder you don't learn anything. Anyway, I'm nosy. I'm looking at his liquor store and his candy counter. I'm saying, you sell them. That's all the candy we don't like. But you're the only. You have no competition in town. So of course we're buying candy. You're not even in a good location. We're going out of the way to come to your. You're out of the way for the elementary school, and you're out of the way to the middle school, which is Whaley Junior High. I've already mentioned my elementary school was El Segundo elementary, which is now Colin P. Kelly elementary today in Compton. And he just sort of keeps dismissing me, but he's impressed with my confidence and my gift for Gap. So I said, look, I don't. He said, I'm gonna hire you and pay you. He was getting presumptuous. I'm gonna hire you, pay you top dollar. Come here after, after school, and I'm gonna hire you. I said, I don't want to work for you, sir. I don't care what you want to pay me. He said, well, then what do you want? I said, well, actually, I do want to be a box boy. You know what a box boy is that? Somebody who breaks the boxes up of inventory. It's the worst job I've got. It's the lowest paying job. Yep, I want that one. If you work at a corporation, I don't want you to stay at home. I want you to go to the office and I want you to walk past the boss's office five times a day until the boss says, when everybody's trying to stay at home and work remotely and you're there, and you come in early, you stay late. Who are you? What are you doing? And whatever assignment they have that nobody wants, take that one, Okay? A wealth mindset. Now, you just got a promotion anyway, so I'm. I'm taking this job as a box boy. I go into the cold box, where you take inventory, open the boxes, and you put them in the back of the co. Box for liquor and milk. And this, when you open a. You go to a convenience store, and you open the front, you pull that drink out the front. I'm the person pushing inventory from the back. It was cold. It was not glamorous, but I loved it because I got to see inventory for the candy. I opened the box. There was an inventory list in. On the inventory list was the address where he bought his candy. It was Iris Food store and Smart and final, owned by a little Jewish family that, oddly enough, 40 years later, 45 years later, I'm on the board of a company called Aries Management, which is a private equity firm in. Based in New York City that has today $600 billion of assets that my friends Michael Righetti and Tony Ressler run together along with others, but they bought that company. 40 years later, 45 years later, unbeknownst to me, I'm on the board, and I see this list of assets. I can't believe they own this company. That gave me my life, my starting business. Anyway, back to the story. So this Jewish couple. Very nice. I went to go. So I saw that that's where he bought his inventory. I saw the wholesale rate. I saw the retail rate. I saw the markup, which was the. I learned all this in the financial literacy course that that banker taught me. Now it's all clicking. This is like, I'm going from PhD to PhD. I'm building a wealth mindset step by step, brick by brick, and frostbite by frostbite, because I'm in this code box. So now I got it. I got where he bought it. I got where he. Where what his source is. I got his wholesale rate, his retail rate. I'm done. I quit. I was only there for a few weeks. Go home. Go to my mother. I have this idea. I'm gonna start this business. Neighborhood candy house. Where are you gonna start it? In your den? Please don't charge me rent. My mother was a capitalist through and through. She. But she said, I'm like, okay, but how much you need to start it? 40 bucks. Okay, I'm not gonna charge you rent, but I will. I'm gonna rent you the money. You gotta pay this money back to me. I got $40 loan from my mother, Juanita Smith, God rest her soul. We went to Smart and Final, an Iris Food store. I think Smart and Final was the wholesaler that was inside of or tied to Ira's Food Store, which was a retailer that sold retail food to the neighborhood consumers, neighborhood residents. But I think it was Smart and Final that sold wholesale to Mac's Liquor Store. And so I went there like it was a school project with my mother with the $40 in my hand. And they were so impressed with me. Oh, yeah, let's give this kid some. Buy his kids. Let's kid buy some candy for his school project. Thank God that was a school project because I did not have a business permit, which you needed to be a proper business. Sorry. Mayor of Compton. I just visited. I apologize to the mayor when I went to go visit her in person last week. A very, very nice lady, by the way, I might add, that couldn't be more gracious and kind to me. And we're going to be doing some stuff together coming up. That's Mayor Emma Sharif in Compton. I apologize to her for robbing the city of city funds. So they. They get me this stuff, I go home, set up the neighbor candy house and ate through half the inventory. Never eat your product. And. But what the miracle was, I sold the other half of the inventory and still had made a profit. So I'm abusing the business model, abusing my lessons in financial literacy, and I still made a profit. That's how I amazing this capitalism thing was. And it was legal and I got cavities because of it.

State Farm Insurance Announcer (51:05)

Right.

John Hope Bryant (51:06)

I hate candy to this day. Don't hate. But I'm not addicted to it because I got overdosed as a kid. So I go back to Smart and Final now with a. With a focus, get a new set of inventory, go back, they give me some free racks because they're now impressed with me in my chutzpah. Only in the dictionary does the word success come before the word work. Because it's alphabetical, by the way. Hello. Every place else, work comes first. So I'm putting in the work. I'm putting the hours. I'm on the way to school for my friends. Of course, I'm the marketing agent. So the neighbor Candy House makes 300 a week at its height. And I put the liquor store out of the candy business. Then I found girls. Loss of business became a recurring theme in my life, but which is why I got really focused on being serious about business and not being emotional about it. But I learned a lot of lessons there. Imagine what happened to my self esteem as a result of that win. I put the liquor store this grown man with a college degree with a successful business, I put him out of the candy business. He could sell liquor but he couldn't sell candy. I was his competition. He should have partnered with me. Never underestimate me or I have a sign on my wall that says underestimate me at your own risk. That'll be nice. You want to make it so when you when your feet hit the ground in the morning, the devil says oh crap, he or she's up. So this is the phase one version of this story. There is a phase two that I can do in another episode, but I sort of bore myself when I talk about myself. So you have to tell me whether this was important to you and if it's important to you. I'm the one when you put in comments when he puts pieces of this podcast are go on social media, I'm the one responding. If you see a response on in the comments, that's me. I do it between business meetings and all this stuff when I'm traveling. So tell me in those comments if you want me to do part two of this and take you from age 10 to age 20 and tell you about my successes and my failures and the continued growth of my wealth creation mindset. But it's really started the essence of me becoming an entrepreneur and the essence of the future founding of Operation Hope, which is now the biggest in the country and one of the best biggest in the world by extension. It all started there with that kid who was nosy and who had these loving parents who were divorced and too much month in their money and all the other problems that you can relate to. And still I rose. And I'll just tell you that that was the beginning of everything. And I started a bunch of businesses. Probably a hundred business ideas from age 10, age 20, probably a hundred. Most of them, the vast majority of them failed. And so failure was not a thing. It was an outcome to an experiment. I was not a failure. I just felt it something. It just didn't work. And here's what I found out about failure and success. Success has a thousand mothers and fathers. Everybody will claim you when you succeed. But failure is a bastard child. You can fail 99 times, no one will say a word about it. And in America you can fail and get back up all over again, no problem. It's different than in Europe, where it's stigmatized. But you have to succeed just once, just fall forward. Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. An entrepreneur works 18 hours a day to keep from getting a job. Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't. You're absolutely right. The glass is half full or it's half empty. Depends who's looking at the glass. I can't guarantee you that making that, being positive is going to make you a success, but I absolutely guarantee you that being negative is going to make you fail. Mindset matters. You can mess with my money, you can't mess with my time, and you can't mess with my mind. I walk through life today consciously oblivious of most things around me because it just doesn't matter. Here's what I learned, but too late. I spent a lot of time because I was not the cool kid. I was a dorky kid. I spent a lot of time trying to impress people, the six square block celebrity in my neighborhood trying to impress people that I ultimately did not want to be like. I'm gonna repeat that. I spent a lot of time trying to impress people I really didn't want to be like. They were the six square block celebrity. They were the drug dealer or the gangster or the guy who had the woman or whatever, most of which later on asked me for a job if they were still alive or not in prison, and I'm not joking, they would ask me for jobs, for contracts, but they were not. Their storyline didn't work out for them like it worked out for me. And there was nothing special about me. I just had a business plan for my life and I focus on things that built things that mattered. And I didn't have wealth, so I had to create. I had to take Hustle and turn it into a business plan and hustle on muscle on. Hustle with a business plan creates compounded hustle, which creates energy. And at some point, you outrun your problems. That's why I say, the devil's a punk. He's a fallen angel. God gives the devil permission to exist. Darkness is defined by light, not the other way around. Devil's a punk. When I get up in the morning, the devil says, oh, shit, he's up. He's a punk. And a quote that I can't quite say. The way he says it for my friend Tony Ressler is, if you don't quit, you can't fail. I'll tell you the way he says it. This is a podcast. It's my podcast. I can say this. If you don't fucking quit, you won't fucking fail. So there you go, you can delete that part. You're going to give. Let the young person listen to this podcast. But I want to say it just as strongly as he says it. And he's a 200th richest man in the world and he came from a working class family. If you don't quit, you can't fail. Just don't give up. And not giving up is a mindset which I cover in my book the Memo. Surviving mindset, Throbbing mindset, Thriving Winning mindset relationships. A giver and a giver is exotic. Give her a taker is neurotic. Take her. To take her is psychotic. The first relationship I want you to have is with yourself. I want you to learn to love yourself. Not be in love with yourself, but to love yourself. To be consciously become consciously comfortable in your unconscious. Well, consciously, unconsciously. Meaning I'm consciously going at it, but unconsciously. And I'm not thinking about it every day. But I am reasonably comfortable in my own skin. No one's comfortable in their own skin. Right. But I'm as good as. I'm not as good as my compliments, I'm not as bad as my criticisms. I am who I am. But I am God's child and I am unique and different as you are. And that is my real asset, that I'm just reasonably comfortable in my own skin. I learned to love myself, not be in love with myself, love myself whole and complete. And I am the product and so are you. You can do anything, anything you set your mind to. Just punch through it, over, around it, through it. We're going to get to it. If you're black listening to this, you're born on probation in America. You've been doing so much with so little for so long. You know I'm gonna do anything with nothing. My podcast is for everybody. But if you're black, brown, Indian, Latino, women held back, stepped on, looked over, ignored, then this is really a message for you. Because when mainstream America has a headache, black and brown folks have pneumonia. But we're all sick. But you can get medicine for a sickness, and I just gave you some medicine for depression. It's called your aspirational dream. And I just gave you part of the ladder to get there. This is John o'. Brien. This is money and wealth. This is the making of a wealth creator. Lessons from my life early on. Let me know if you want me to do part two and part three, and I will. I'M out. Money and wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ah, greetings from my bath festive friends.

Ryan Seacrest (61:32)

The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

John Hope Bryant (61:40)

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Ryan Seacrest (61:42)

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John Hope Bryant (61:46)

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Ryan Seacrest (61:48)

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John Hope Bryant (61:53)

See paypal.com promoter points can be redeemed for cash and more. Paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc. And MLS 910457 okay, only.

Annabe Sofa Advertiser (62:01)

10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.

John Hope Bryant (62:30)

You know what a girl's best friend is not diamonds. Her lawyers. From executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a fiery new legal drama.

Annabe Sofa Advertiser (62:38)

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John Hope Bryant (62:41)

You can't afford to miss.

Annabe Sofa Advertiser (62:43)

Make it ring Showtime, ladies. Stand up straight, then breeze into that room like a storm no one saw coming.

John Hope Bryant (62:53)

Hulu Original Series All's Fair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Wasabi Cloud Storage Announcer (62:59)

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John Hope Bryant (63:47)

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Annabe Sofa Advertiser (63:49)

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John Hope Bryant (63:54)

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Annabe Sofa Advertiser (64:01)

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John Hope Bryant (64:04)

Now'S the perfect time to find something Special. Shop@pandora.net or your local Pandora store. Exclusions apply. This is an iHeart podcast.