The Power of Access with Joe Baratta

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

Episode: The Power of Access with Joe Baratta

Host: John Hope Bryant
Guest: Joe Baratta (Global Head of Private Equity, Blackstone)
Original Air Date: December 11, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores the concept of access—particularly financial, social, and professional access—as a critical lever in wealth-building and economic mobility. John Hope Bryant and his guest, Joe Baratta, Global Head of Private Equity at Blackstone, break down what private equity is, how it functions, and how it can benefit everyday people, not just financial insiders. The conversation is rich with personal stories about overcoming humble beginnings, the importance of confidence and relationship capital, and concrete examples of capitalism done right—emphasizing inclusion, opportunity, and broad-based employee ownership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Breaking Down Private Equity (19:12–23:04)

• Private Equity Defined:
  • Joe Baratta clarifies private equity as “owning companies that are private” using funds primarily from large pension plans and institutional investors (CalSTRS, social security funds, etc.), not just from the ultra-wealthy.
  • Quote: “We take that money, retiree money. It’s a sacred obligation…to buy, in our case, control of companies, help make them better, and then ultimately sell.” (19:48, Joe Baratta)
• Main Street and Wall Street are Connected:
  • Pension return funds benefit “average everyday people and their retirement accounts” (21:05, Bryant), debunking myths that private equity only serves the wealthy.

2. The Power of Access & Relationship Capital (16:20–18:43, 45:13–49:00)

• Access Over Heritage:
  • Both Bryant and Baratta reveal they are from non-elite backgrounds—neither of Baratta’s parents were college graduates.
  • The idea: showing up, believing in yourself, and leveraging relationships are key to breaking through barriers.
  • Quote: "If you hang around nine broke people, you’ll be the tenth. And the opposite is also true." (17:44, Bryant)
• Access as the Great Enabler:
  • Baratta: "You can’t have a meritocracy if not if you don’t have equal access to opportunity." (45:35, Baratta)

3. Personal Stories: Social Mobility in Practice (07:24–14:39)

• Joe's path: Grew up in Sacramento, neither parent college-educated, dad an entrepreneur (gym owner), mom from a Dust Bowl migrant farming family.
• John’s path: Working-class roots in South Central LA, first in family to attend college.
• Both credit their parents for instilling confidence, optimism, and self-esteem.

4. Private Equity Success Stories & Real-Life Cases (27:56–41:13)

• Merlin Entertainments & Legoland (27:56–31:28):
  • Private equity enabled a small attractions company to expand, acquire Legoland, and go public—creating employee ownership and opportunity.
  • Quote (Bryant): "Now it has employees... they're taking home a salary... 88% of all jobs in America are private sector... most of the growth comes from entrepreneurs and small business owners." (30:58)
• Copeland Compressors (37:05–41:13):
  • Large industrial firm made more focused, competitive through private equity. Notably, “every full-time employee at Copeland will participate in the value creation”—the largest employee ownership program (39:59, Baratta).
• Jersey Mike’s (40:26–41:13):
  • A family-owned business scaled globally thanks to PE partnership, professionalization, and management development.

5. Capitalism as a Force for Good (34:46–36:42)

• Countering the Bad Rap:
  • Bryant and Baratta stress that “good capitalism” grows economies, increases social mobility, and delivers real value to real people.
  • Quote (Baratta): "Look how innovative the US economy is. Is capitalism a force for good? The US has the most dynamic, most innovative, most growth-oriented...there is in the world." (35:06)
• Social Mobility:
  • American stories of “rising from the bottom” remain possible and more common than in Europe or Asia, according to Baratta.

6. Increasing Access: Internal Programs and Year Up (45:13–50:21)

• Baratta’s initiative at Blackstone and Year Up:
  • Started reviewing hiring/recruiting practices across Blackstone’s 100+ controlled companies.
  • Focused on expanding access for “people from the wrong zip codes, didn’t go to the right colleges, veterans, new immigrants,” and others historically excluded.
  • Quote: “What’s more fundamental and transformational for the people is getting the job in the first place. That allows them to fundamentally change their lives.” (50:14, Baratta)

7. Hope for Rising Entrepreneurs (55:51–57:50)

• Advice for Aspiring PE Entrepreneurs:
  • The landscape has drastically changed; “now there are thousands of firms…looking for great ideas and great entrepreneurs.”
  • The importance of hustle and perseverance: “If you have a great idea…you can go find funding. It’s a lot of work, but you can do it.” (57:28, Baratta)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Access & Self-Belief:
  • “Half of this is just showing up. ... You have to believe in yourself and you have to believe there’s a place for you.” (10:51, Bryant)
• On Relationship Capital:
  • "Environment matters, and we all live in relationship capital.” (17:03, Bryant)
• On Employee Ownership:
  • “Literally every full-time employee at Copeland will participate in the value creation.” (40:05, Baratta)
• On Good vs. Bad Capitalism:
  • “Capitalism is not evil, it’s bad capitalism. There’s good capitalism.” (34:46, Bryant)
• On Expanding Opportunity:
  • "If we can do it, so can all these other companies—not just owned by private equity, but family-owned businesses, public companies.” (49:29, Baratta)
• On Doing Well and Doing Good:
  • “Even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to first collect it like a capitalist.” (57:50, Bryant)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• 03:06 — John and Joe’s introduction and their unlikely friendship
• 07:24 — Joe Baratta’s backstory and family background
• 10:51 — Discussion on confidence, access, and ambition
• 16:20 — Early career, the power of referral/relationship capital
• 19:12 — Private equity explained simply
• 27:56 — Merlin/Legoland case study: scaling, employee ownership
• 37:05 — Copeland: Large-scale employee ownership and industrial strength
• 41:13 — Jersey Mike’s: Entrepreneurship, professionalization, and PE partnership
• 45:13 — Expanding access, “Year Up” program, hiring reform
• 55:51 — Advice for newcomers; hope for the next generation
• 58:40 — Final reflections on capitalism, impact, and opportunity

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Flow & Tone

This episode is conversational, warm, and passionate—full of real talk and optimism without glossing over systemic challenges. Both speakers are candid about their origins, forthright about the need for both hustle and relationship capital, and focused on practical advice that’s actionable for listeners regardless of background.

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Conclusion

Bryant and Baratta offer a rare inside look at how private equity works and why access matters, reinforcing that personal ambition, strategic relationships, and inclusive business practices can turn capitalism into a force for good. Their stories encourage aspiring entrepreneurs—especially those from overlooked backgrounds—to believe in their potential, seek out relationships, and be proactive about shaping their own destinies.

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For further exploration:

• Research Blackstone and its initiatives
• Look into organizations like Year Up and Alt Finance
• Replay segments around 19:12, 27:56, and 45:13 for deep-dive examples

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Next Steps:
Tell the podcast team if you'd like a part two with Joe Baratta to explore more subtopics!
Go live your dreams—starting today.

Transcript

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Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio.

Hey.

[Sports Announcer]

Hey.

[John Hope Bryant]

This is John o', Brien, and this is the Money and Wealth podcast on iHeartRadio Black Effect Network. I want to thank you all for helping to make this podcast top podcast in the North America and around the world for business and entrepreneurship. I am here today. As you know, I normally do my podcast solo, so if I have a guest, they're pretty special. I've had Michael Milken on. I've had a bunch of heroes and sheroes I really respect on. This is one of them. This is a new friend, but a friend. You meet with a friend from the very first time. An acquaintance remains an acquaintance for a lifetime, and they were quite comfortable with an acquaintance. Joe and I hit it off almost instantly.

The first time I met him. He thought I was accosting him. We were at a conference and he didn't know who the heck I was. Like, no, we don't do private equity in the streets. But that's not what he said. That's not what he said. But he was moving and he was gracious. He had places to go. He stopped and we talked and we met through mutual friend and actually, Michael Milken.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And we got together and instantly hit it off. And I really do consider him a friend. He's a great human being, which is my most important credential today. I don't deal with jerks. It's nice when somebody has influence and power. They're also decent. They also care. And Joe has a feel from the streets to the suites.

And he just so happens to be the head of private equity at one of the biggest firms in the world, Blackstone. The offices with which we are in today. I want you, while you listen to this podcast, but not while you're driving to do a little research on Blackstone. You think you know who they are, but they are multifaceted and probably bigger and more substantial than you consider them to be. Joe, the first thing I want to break down in this podcast, private equity. That's the big. We've got to not presume and assume that people know all these fancy terms. People are ashamed to acknowledge that they don't know what the Wall Street Journal say. They have no idea what FDIC means, sec, all these phrases that we throw around, ebitda, all this stuff people have not a clue, but they're ashamed to acknowledge it. So oftentimes people will say, in underserved communities of all races.

We hate rich people. I respond, no, you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that no matter how hard you work, you can't seem to get ahead. And so there's been this disconnect, in my opinion, between.

Hustle and aspiration. And the difference between a hustler and a businessman or businesswoman, to me is paperwork.

There's a disconnect between that aspirational achievement and the achievement that people who seem to have made it have figured out the language. And what I want to do in sessions like this, in addition to introducing you as a human being and talk about things that are mutually of interest, like human development and what you're doing here. Around that. One of our initial conversations, I want to unpack private equity itself in a way that people can feel comfortable with it and feel that this is a ladder that actually touches the ground near them and they can get on it one day and be successful themselves. Now, Joe, I think you. From a personal story, I think you come out of Washington.

[Joe Barrada]

Sacramento.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, Sacramento. But you had. You had an education.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

To Georgetown.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

So I'm sorry, I jumped ahead. My apologies. But you. You grew up in Sacramento.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Which I think no one would assume. So tell us a little about. Yeah. And then you went to London and you built a business there. But let's get. Let's step back for a minute. Tell us a little bit about Sacramento and why that was an important touchstone for you.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah. Well, Sacramento is like any suburban community across America. It's definitely not LA or New York, even though it's in California.

I was neither. My parents graduated from college. My dad was slowing it down.

[John Hope Bryant]

Did you guys hear that? Okay. He's the head of private equity, the whole firm, globally for Blackstone, and neither of his parents graduated from college. So we're breaking a lot of eggs here and a lot of presumptions.

[Joe Barrada]

My dad was an entrepreneur. He moved when he was 19 from Cleveland, Ohio, to Southern California. He was a bodybuilder in the early 1950s. And this was before Arnold Schwarzenegger and all that.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

And he needed. He needed a job, so he opened the gym.

And he was. He was. He was a fitness enthusiast. He loved weightlifting and bodybuilding, kept care of himself. He wasn't really focused on the business necessarily. He wanted to do something that he loved, where he could make a living and provide for his family, and that's exactly what he did. And my mom worked in one of my dad's gyms. And, you know, they got married. They had me. I grew up in a Family that valued being healthy, valued education. But my parents didn't have that language. They didn't know where I applied to college. They weren't, hey, Joe, the SAT is coming up. Go take the SAT prep course.

[John Hope Bryant]

They were not saying that.

[Joe Barrada]

They were not saying that. I mean, they didn't because it just wasn't there.

[John Hope Bryant]

It wasn't their language, by the way, either.

[Joe Barrada]

But they made sure that I went to the best schools I could. I went to an all boys Jesuit high school in Sacramento, got a great education, understood the importance of college, certainly wanted to go to college. I wanted a profession. I didn't want to work in the gyms.

You know, for my dad, maybe much to his chagrin, but I wanted to have a profession and I wanted. And that's probably why I went east and didn't stay west. It was not common in the 1980s to go from a suburban high school in Sacramento to the east coast for college, but I wanted to see what that was about and pursue a profession. And I got into Georgetown, which itself is a funny story. We probably don't have enough time to go through that. But sight unseen. I'd never seen the school before I applied. First time I went was the early decision weekend in February. After you got in, you go see the school. And I said, yep, these. Check all the boxes. Beautiful old Gothic style building, east coast, great school. Well, I did my, my wife there, so.

[John Hope Bryant]

Wasn'T far off.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah. And so that's where I went. They had an undergraduate business school, which I thought was interesting because, you know, my dad was a business person and I was really interested in politics and political science and of course Georgetown's great for that, sitting in the nation's capital. So that's why I went there. So that was the origin story.

[John Hope Bryant]

So it wasn't obvious that you were going to go into finance.

[Joe Barrada]

I didn't even know what that was. I mean, to me, like a stockbroker was. That was, that was finance. And that's all I knew about it really, till my junior year in college.

[John Hope Bryant]

So the first thing that I need you guys to understand is half of this is just showing up. Like, showing up and believing in yourself. And you don't have to have all the right credentials or all the right family environment or support team, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to believe there's a place for you. And you got to show up and, you know, no one washes rental cars. You got to own your own story. And so the first thing that you gained from your Parents was some confidence and some self esteem for sure. So confidence from your dad?

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, my dad always, he was an optimist and he believed fundamentally in the American dream. Like you can, if you can think it, you can be it. And there is no. He'd always say, you know, you're limited only by your own imagination and aspiration.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. And he firmly believed that. And he had, I mean, he had far more confidence in me than I had in me as a 17, 18 year old, including like where I get into college and everything else. He's like, all these schools will be. I'm like, not really, dad. I'm not sure it's gonna work that way. And he, he was wrong about that, but he was right about if you can dream it, you can achieve it. And he, you know, he so. And I always used to think like, somebody's got to do these jobs.

[John Hope Bryant]

Like, that's right.

[Joe Barrada]

What.

[John Hope Bryant]

Why not me?

[Joe Barrada]

Why not me? Why not? I mean, maybe I'll get there and I'll realize I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not. But at least let's try it.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Joe Barrada]

And see if we can survive, see if we can play at that level.

[John Hope Bryant]

Fall forward. Yeah. And mom, does she give you a measure of self esteem?

[Joe Barrada]

Oh, yeah, no, my mom is. I, I will say if my mom was born into different family services.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let's give them some credit. What's her names?

[Joe Barrada]

Joe Senior.

[John Hope Bryant]

Right.

[Joe Barrada]

And sadly he's not with us. He died in 2015. My mom has been promoted very much with us. She's 86 and picture of health. Jill.

[John Hope Bryant]

Hi, Jill.

[Joe Barrada]

She lives in Oregon.

[John Hope Bryant]

Very cool. Hi, mom.

[Joe Barrada]

She did, right, Jill, she was born sort of. I don't know if anybody's read the Grapes of Wrath. Great book by John Steinbeck about the Dust bowl that literally didn't rain for like a year and a half or two years. And all the, all the farms kind of couldn't grow stuff. So everybody was migrating west. This was in the 40s, 30s and 40s. And she ended up, she was born in Oklahoma, ended up being raised in the Central Valley of California where there wasn't a drought in. You could grow stuff. And her father was a farmer.

[John Hope Bryant]

So that's how you got to Sacramento.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, that's how I got to Sacramento.

[John Hope Bryant]

Rainbows after storms and literally.

[Joe Barrada]

And I'll tell you, had my mom been born in different circumstances to different family, I think she'd be, if not president of the United States. Clepson. She is one talented human being.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's brilliant. Everybody should love their mother like that. By the way, Joe and I, and my story is very similar. I grew up in a working class family. Mom and dad didn't go to college. South Central Los Angeles. My dad owned a business.

Never left a local community. I had big dreams. I was on in South Central LA. I went east to Washington D.C. to I was, you know, President Reagan recognized me. President George W. George H.W. bush recognized me for my town. Jack Kemp, secretary of, then secretary of Hook, I rest his soul, and Bill Clinton. But I was nosy and I didn't know whether I could succeed, but I knew I was going to try. I can't guarantee that being positive is going to make you success, but I absolutely guarantee you being negative is going to make you feel you can't even.

[Joe Barrada]

Get started unless you believe that's right.

[John Hope Bryant]

And my mother gave me self esteem, told me she loved me every day of my life.

My dad owned his own business, so it gave me confidence. So it's very similar stories. So, so you end up now in Georgetown and you plant your flag in your future. Now, you thought it was initially tied to Washington. How'd you pivot to finance? Or is that even important?

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, and I ended up majoring in finance and I was good at it. You know, I did well in school and I liked it. Most importantly, I liked it. I worked one summer on Capitol Hill for a senator and I saw what those recent college grads were doing. I said, well, maybe, maybe I'd rather pursue this, this business thing. So I really doubled down on that track. And you know, back then it was hard to get internships. Now if you don't have an internship when you're a sophomore in college, it's hard. Back then they didn't really do a lot of college internships. And my path to, to at least getting an interview at one of these investment banks was to get good grades. So I'm like, I'm gonna get good grades. And so I did that. I had a high gpa, I did as much as I could. I actually worked for a stockbroker one summer I had a job like where I was in an actual job, getting paid, working a clothing store. And I did everything I could to position myself self well, to get an interview. And I did. I interviewed, you know, three or four firms when senior year on campus.

And I got a job at Morgan Stanley, which I would have worked anywhere. And I was surprised. And actually it was A friend who's known now, no longer with us, very sadly died of brain cancer. But he. He actually was interviewed early by Morgan Stanley, and they said, hey, is there anybody else at Georgetown who maybe has got an offer somewhere else that we should talk to? And he's like, you should talk to my friend Joe. We actually weren't that close, but we had a lot of mutual respect for each other. And they called me up over my Christmas break and said, hey, would you come in? And I did, and they gave me a job. And that was the beginning of my career. So thanks to this to JP Barela. And that's why. That's why I ended up there.

[John Hope Bryant]

So first lesson or second lesson? First one was you can come from any place and do anything. You have to show up and believe in yourself. But here's another lesson for you, that environment matters, and we all live in relationship capital. So I want you to be successful because I need for you to do for somebody else what this gentleman did for Joe and what somebody did for me, which is to vouch for, if you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. And the opposite is also true there. There are brilliant people in the world, Joe. And I will tell you, there's a lot of people who are pretty mediocre, who've succeeded pretty spectacularly because they have the right relationship capital. Just real talk. Like, why do you go to a major university? That's a club.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

They're going to hook each other up for the rest of their lives. And by the way, the whole life is filled with clubs, private clubs, tennis clubs, social clubs. And what I want you to be part of is an aspirational club. And so Joe just sort of unpacked some of that without even knowing. And again, that also we share that. Joe did internships, and I went and joined committees for Mayor Tom Bradley in la, because that's where power brokers would come to give back. And I could never meet these people. If I went to their office, their gatekeepers would never let me pass the front desk. But there I'm sitting right next to them in the boardroom, very much like this. And we build a relationship and rapport. And at some point they're like, oh, you seem like a nice young man. Let's do something together. Let's have lunch. Okay, I want to get into the meat because Joe has limited time. I want to get in the meat of this. He went to London to build a business. Was that at Blackstone?

[Joe Barrada]

At Blackstone.

[John Hope Bryant]

Let's get into the meat of what private equity is. At some point here, I want to really get into, and I think it's connected to your early story of internship and people sponsoring you, this thing you're doing. It really inspires and nurtures human capital to put them, to give them a seat at the table. And maybe it's a connected story, but let's first unpack for people who just, they're curious and nosy, no one's ever explained it to them. What is private equity?

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, and it's hard to really understand it because it's not, you know, part of the public discourse. We own companies that are private.

At its simplest, we raise money from large pension plans and institutions. So the California state teachers, for example, are big investor with us. This is the pension plan for the many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of retirees and current employees who are teachers in the state of California. They give us some of their money. We invest it in buying companies.

[John Hope Bryant]

So Main street and Wall street are already connected.

[Joe Barrada]

So we're not. This isn't sort of a bunch of wealthy people's money. This is retirement savings of, I think the number is almost 40 million workers across the country in the world. We manage money on behalf of other nations, you know, for their Social Security, like Canada, country Canada, government of Singapore. We manage money for.

You know, other states, state of Washington, Oregon. So we take that money, retiree money. It's a sacred obligation to be responsible and ethical with this money to do a certain thing, which is to buy, in our case, control of companies, help make them, give them the capital they need to grow, help make them better and then ultimately sell. Take them public, sell them to another strategic buyer, we call them another company.

[John Hope Bryant]

I keep telling you, the whole purpose of building a company is to sell it, right?

[Joe Barrada]

Well, we do. It's like we. We don't have the money forever and they expect a return. They give us a dollar, they want a couple dollars back. And that's, that's what we're in the business of doing. We have a long time to do it, five years, six years. But that's. But we don't own these businesses forever.

[John Hope Bryant]

And again, in this example, the return is going not back to fat cats or bigwigs, as people would say. This going to average everyday people and their retirement accounts. That's right. The pension funds, the public. That's right, municipalities, et cetera, that who happen to be some of your. By the way, how big is Blackstone?

[Joe Barrada]

Asset wise, we have $1.2 trillion of assets, which is a lot.

[John Hope Bryant]

One point. How much? $1.2 trillion.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And let that simmer very slowly.

[Joe Barrada]

In what I do, we manage about $400 billion of. Of equity investments in companies big and.

[John Hope Bryant]

Small, which is almost as big as Singapore itself as a GDP. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Singapore's 5. 5 billion, 500 billion and change. So 400 billion is a lot of. That's a lot of power.

[Joe Barrada]

Yes. That money's invested on behalf of these pension plans and Social Security funds. If we do a good job. Meaning if we make a return greater than 8%.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

Across most of the funds, then we get to keep a percentage of the profits, which varies, but somewhere between 10 and 20%, depending on the fund and the vehicle and the strategy.

[John Hope Bryant]

10 to 20% of the 8% of.

[Joe Barrada]

The total return above and 8%.

[John Hope Bryant]

So we're not talking about folks making 80% of the money or some crazy thing is 8%, right. 8, 9, 10, 12%. And so you take a company that is doing reasonably well, you'll tell me what the size of the company is and you buck it up, you give it some capital and some. Also some management expertise is my guess as well.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And then you prepare it maybe for an exit on.

[Joe Barrada]

Correct.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's even going public or some other strategic transformation.

[Joe Barrada]

Exactly.

[John Hope Bryant]

But going public is. The audience would know, you know, listed on NASDAQ or listed on New York Stock Exchange and so on and so forth. Is a more traditional example of a company that has been nurtured enough.

[Joe Barrada]

Well, let me give you two types of things we do and I'll use real life examples.

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[Joe Barrada]

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[Joe Barrada]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means playing in a football game.

[Sports Announcer]

Boom.

[John Hope Bryant]

42.

[Sports Announcer]

You're going down, Doug.

[John Hope Bryant]

Oh yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

Your price on car insurance when you customize and save is going down.

[John Hope Bryant]

Hey.

[Joe Barrada]

Limu.

[Ad Voice]

What are you doing on their team?

[Joe Barrada]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

When I was a young partner, this is probably 2005 in London, because I started Blackstone in 90. Take a step back. I started Blackstone in 98. Back then, we didn't have a trillion dollars of assets.

[John Hope Bryant]

We had about 100 billion.

[Joe Barrada]

10 billion?

[John Hope Bryant]

No, no. Yeah, 10 billion, maybe. Yeah. Which sounds like a lot of money. Everybody, but not in this space.

[Joe Barrada]

And we had maybe 150 employees. Today, we're 1.2 trillion and almost 5,000 employees.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's fantastic.

[Joe Barrada]

Across a bunch of different businesses and all over the world. And it's global and it's spread.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah. So you're one of the top five companies in the world that does this.

[Joe Barrada]

I think we're the largest. We're for sure the largest alternative asset manager. And I think arguably we're also the largest manager of private equity assets.

[John Hope Bryant]

The largest manager of private equity.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah. I mean, we can.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's Ballin, by the way. You can translate.

[Joe Barrada]

And there's some great guys doing it. KKR and CVC in Europe and others.

[John Hope Bryant]

By the way, whenever you're really successful, you always give it. You're always fast. To give everybody else credit. Oh, yeah. This person. That person right here. When you got the power, you don't.

[Sports Announcer]

Need to use it.

[Joe Barrada]

So when I was young partner in London in 2005, we found this little company, it's called Merlin, and it owned some aquariums, the London Dungeon, which is just kind of funny. It's still in existence. You go to London, you got to go there. Kind of a historical tour thing. And a great young CEO who said, there are all these theme parks and visitor attractions across Europe owned by people who shouldn't own them long term. A publishing company owned Madame Tussaudsaus in the largest theme parks in the UK and Germany.

That LEGO owned four theme parks called Legoland.

[John Hope Bryant]

I love lego.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, well, Lego's great. And actually Merlin owns Legoland. That's part of the story. So we, we said, let's back. Let's back this young entrepreneur. Let's back. This company, which was pretty small, had maybe $15 million of annual cash flow.

[John Hope Bryant]

Which is small for small business, which consider.

[Joe Barrada]

And. And he said, I think if I had the right partner, I could operate these things better that are not in the hands of real operators of visitor attractions. If you back me, we'll go buy these things and we'll make a big company. And I said, this sounds like a great idea.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And he was great. And we backed him. The first thing we did was bought buy from Lego the four Legoland theme parks. Now there's, now there's 10, plus other things. Lego has been a partner now they took back 30 stake.

[John Hope Bryant]

I think I saw one of your LEGO lands yesterday. LEGO experience in Atlanta, in the mall.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, that'll be. Yeah, that's owned by lego, the toy company. But if you go to Florida.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

Legoland Orlando, there's a Legoland here in New York, there's Legoland in California, there's one in the uk.

[John Hope Bryant]

I got a little LEGO Land in my house because I've got 10, 10 boxes of, of the techniques, LEGO techniques where I put together lego.

[Sports Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Race cars.

[Joe Barrada]

I do it with my daughter still. She's 15. I love it.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's my, one of my passions.

[Joe Barrada]

For those of you who haven't gone to Legoland, if you have kids under the age of 15, for sure go. Because it's a great experience.

[John Hope Bryant]

So you wrote this company and we.

[Joe Barrada]

Bought another thing and another thing and then it became global. And we took the company public in London on the. It was FTSE 100 company, which is 100 largest companies listed in London in 2013. 14, we took it public.

[John Hope Bryant]

So the FTSE 100 are the largest 100 companies in the UK. The UK.

[Joe Barrada]

And it had something like a 3, 4 billion pound market cap.

[John Hope Bryant]

So that would be.

For us, translation, $5 billion.

[Joe Barrada]

So we took a company that was really small, worth maybe $100 million, and through acquisition and growth and capital deployment, we made it.

[John Hope Bryant]

Strategic Council.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, Strategic Council capital. We made it. We and the management team and our partners at Lego made it worth $3 billion. So that is a great example of that company without private equity would never have exist. Gotten to that scale.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes. And now it has employees. And those employees are taking home a salary and they've got a life insurance, they got health insurance. Correct. And they're buying a house, hopefully. And they're going on vacations and all this stuff trickles down because 88% of all jobs in America are private sector jobs. And most of the growth comes in the world from entrepreneurs and small business owners. So you don't get credit for this because nobody sees you guys doing this. But this is an example of the benefits of private equity. Just one example.

[Joe Barrada]

Correct. And there's many, many, many other examples, both in our portfolio and in the portfolios of other great private equity firms that have taken Businesses and grown them and created companies that really wouldn't have existed without the efficient capital allocation, the efficient decision making and the alignment between shareholder, management team, board of directors. Sometimes the problem with public companies is that the CEO and the board members aren't perfectly aligned with the shareholders. Yeah, they want the share price to go up, but they don't own much of the stock. Right here we own the company, control the company. The management team really is only going and the employee base. And Merlin's actually a great example of one of the early companies where nearly every full time employee at Merlin owned equity in the company. So when it went public, there were many hundreds, if not, I think there were maybe almost 2,000 people who owned stock in Merlin at the time it went public in 2014. Now we talk about broad based stakeholder capitalism. Yeah, broad based employee ownership private equity companies is now much more of a thing that's talked about, but it wasn't invented three or four years ago. I mean we, we've been doing this for a long time. And Merlin's a great, you're one of.

[John Hope Bryant]

The pioneers in that space. And now our, there's other folks who are doing as well. Our friend Pete Stavros, great guy and.

[Joe Barrada]

Frankly, I was really elevated that conversation and the profile that he deserves a lot of credit.

[John Hope Bryant]

And as a company Ed Bastion at Delta Airlines does profit sharing with his employees and they happen to be the biggest market cap airline in the world. Most profitable going back to, to private equity. In this role, my audience would be familiar. By the way, any term you've heard you don't understand, just search it like the Internet's free. People just search it. And, and, and by the way, AI is a step up on that and it'll tell you. Just write the herm down and search it. Later you can replay the interview, but my audience would know of what we call the Martin Luther King Jr. Of Wall street is Reginald Lewis. And Reginald Lewis was the first black man ever to acquire a billion dollar firm on Wall Street. He was a lawyer from Harvard, highly educated, but didn't have relationship capital, did not have access to capital. And there's a guy that you and I both know who backed him when no one else would. His name is Michael Milken.

[Joe Barrada]

Yep.

[John Hope Bryant]

And Mike was told, well, Reginald Lewis was told that you can't buy this company when Wall street said we're, we don't know you and we're not going to back you and you don't have support. And Michael Milken said, well, he's got My support. And Michael put together alternative financial instruments and rolled it up to a billion dollars. He bought this company called Beatrice International in 47 countries and had operations and it still took parts of it, still exist to this very day. He unfortunately died of brain cancer, but a legend. And that was only possible because private equity and Wall street, something other than traditional finance, decided this person had talent. By the way, for those of you who know Reginald Lewis is an African American. Was. And that created philanthropy. That there's a Reginald Lewis Museum in Baltimore, Maryland that lives on today because of an endowment and so on and so forth. So the hidden hand of capitalism.

Is really a horrible marketer of itself and it's not good at storytelling. So I think it's really important to unpack this so that people understand that money's not evil, it's a love of money. Capitalism is not evil, it's bad capitalism. There's good capitalism. And that's really largely what we're talking about.

[Joe Barrada]

Look how innovative the US economy is. Is capitalism a force for good?

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Joe Barrada]

The US has the most dynamic, most innovative, most growth oriented for a mature developed economy. Economy there is in the world.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And it's because of the capitalist structure. It's, there's definitely some inherent injustices along with it. But it's been a great driver of innovation and wealth creation and standard of living in the United States over the last 100 plus years.

[John Hope Bryant]

And it's allowed for people like you and me to come from relatively the bottom to relatively the top. And then we look back and try to bring somebody up with us. That doesn't happen.

[Joe Barrada]

When I tell my story to people in Europe, they're literally dumbfounded.

[John Hope Bryant]

They're stuck.

[Joe Barrada]

That doesn't happen.

[John Hope Bryant]

That doesn't happen here.

[Joe Barrada]

People are like, oh, wow, that's interesting.

[John Hope Bryant]

In Europe you got to have the right name, you got to have the, you got to go to the right schools and all this stuff here.

[Joe Barrada]

And I mean, there's a lot of success stories here. But I'm just saying that I still think social mobility is intact.

In this country and hear stories like yours and stories like mine.

Are commonplace. I mean, there's a lot of people who've lifted themselves up and didn't have all the inbuilt advantages of network and access that were able to, you know, change their fate. And I think that happens much more frequently here in the US than it does elsewhere.

[John Hope Bryant]

I agree with that. I don't think I could have been me.

In Germany or France or Japan or I mean almost China. I couldn't. My story would not have been possible up to go from the. From the poor zip code in Southern California to the top 01%. Okay. So is there another example you want to talk about a private equity?

[Sports Announcer]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

I mean then there's bigger companies that.

About three years ago we bought a business that was a division of a large industrial business called Emerson. This division makes compressors that are used in cooling and heating all of our homes. If you have an air conditioning system, there's a very high probability you have a Copeland compressor in the box. Emerson was changing its business to be more of industrial technology, software automation equipment because they wanted to have a higher growth rate. This business we bought, Copeland was lower growth but super high quality and enormously important to the US economy. If Copeland went around and your air conditioning breaks and you know how often your air conditioning breaks more than you want. It's almost always the wear parts. One of which is the compressor air.

[John Hope Bryant]

Conditioning integrated the south because of air conditioning. Everybody wanted to come to the south without air conditioning wouldn't work.

[Joe Barrada]

So this is an important company in the US it just wasn't super high growth and it became non core for the corporate parent. So that's another area where we can come in, bring in a great management team that's super aligned with the performance of the business. Invest more, build product, align.

[John Hope Bryant]

Align meaning all the interests are shared, the interest and the upside is shared.

[Joe Barrada]

And the CEO running the business. Both really want to see this business get better.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

They're perfectly aligned.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah. And hopefully someday they'll include the management team and the employer.

[Joe Barrada]

Well, I'm going to get to that. Copeland's a good example of that. 15,000 employees. So this is a big company. This isn't Merlin small little $15 million cash flow company. This company had a billion 3 of cash flows.

[John Hope Bryant]

Wow.

[Joe Barrada]

When we bought it big company and we were able to bring to bear focused management, more investment in new products.

More investment in the manufacturing footprint. And the nice thing about this company is it largely manufactures in the United States which itself is a competitive advantage.

Particularly now.

And focus to this business because it was sort of unloved in the large corporate parent. We can bring more focus, more capital, more management talent and better alignment. And the business is doing great.

[Commercial Narrator]

Yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

We took it out.

[John Hope Bryant]

Okay, I got it.

[Joe Barrada]

We took it out. Emerson retained a minority stake in the business which actually we've subsequently purchased back from them because they're still on their journey and their company's doing great. So it was a Win for Emerson shareholders, It's a win for Copeland, the company. It's a win for Blackstone investors, and it's a win for Copeland employees because this was one of the.

This, I think, is the largest employee ownership program. 15,000.

Full time Copeland employees are participants in the equity value creation.

[John Hope Bryant]

They're shareholders, they get part of the.

[Joe Barrada]

Upside correct in this company. And that was. We implemented that a couple of years ago. And so to the point of broad based employee ownership, Copeland is a great example of literally every full time employee.

At Copeland will participate in the value creation. And so that's the other example. We have already a big business that just doesn't have the right level of focus, care, attention, alignment, and we make that business better. And so those are. And then there's, you know, here's another good example. We bought a company called Jersey Mike's. Most of you will have heard of Jersey Mike's. Great business. We believe it has huge potential to grow both in the US and outside of the US where it is very limited exposure, outside of maybe six restaurants in Canada. Family owned business. Talk about the American dream. One guy built this company from scratch. He was one, he and his family, one shareholder built it to something worth $8 billion.

[Sports Announcer]

Wow.

[John Hope Bryant]

From nothing.

[Joe Barrada]

From nothing. And he was a high school football player. Peter Cancero, great guy. He's retained, he continues to be on the board of this company. So with that company, what he understood is that he needed a professional investor to come in and build the process and structure and hire a professional management team. And so that'll be another. And that was a, you know, so Copeland and Jersey Mike's are big. You start with a big company, we make them better. Maryland was small and we made it big through capital allocation, backing great management teams. And when private equity is done right, 90% of the time, we do it well. It adds enormous value to the economy, to the people who are working there, to the management teams, to the underlying investors.

[John Hope Bryant]

So let me tell you why I'm here. I've never said this to you before. So one of my friends, I'm honored to call her a friend, is somebody who gave me an award 15 years ago, 20 years ago, Oprah Winfrey, she gave me a use your life award. And she sent an investigator to have lunch with me. This is why I lived in Los Angeles maybe 25 years ago. And the investigator said, look, I'm not trying to offend you, but we're gonna go all into your underwear like we're everything about you. So is there anything we need to know. No. And he said, look, no disrespect intended, but Oprah has a rule we call the Oprah rule. She doesn't put her arm around anybody who doesn't have as much reputationally to lose as she does. And that stuck with me. She was putting her credibility into me, and she wanted to make sure I didn't blow up, because if I imploded, it destroys everything else. She's trying to do with what was then called the use your life awards. I passed the test, and she gave me an award, and we're actually now friends, which I'm deeply honored by. But I stuck. Reputation and brand and credibility means a lot. I also have another rule that I don't partner with anybody who's not larger than me because I want to make sure they're adding value. Those are my personal benchmarks. But that first one, that first one, that was being a kind, decent, authentic person.

That integrity, not just money, not all money is good money. And being in which lines with authenticity, that matters to me. When I met you, it was in a private room, a private meeting. No one, no one would have ever known if you were just talking about me, me, me. I'm trying to talk about me. You talk about me. If you were breaking your arm, trying to pat yourself on the back, nobody would have said a word because you are the largest in your space. You were frustrated because you were trying to get the word out about something you were. That that was doing good in the world, and you couldn't seem to figure out what no one was interested in talking about. They want to talk about the bad, not the good stuff. And. And I was fascinated how preoccupied and obsessed you were with being a decent human being. I didn't know you back then. I said, that's my kind of person. And so I wasn't impressed with how big Blackstone was. I wasn't impressed with your job. I wasn't impressed with any of that stuff. I meet. You meet fancy people all the time that are underwhelming. I was impressed with your authenticity, and that has borne to be 100% true. And so I'm here because I want to. You're the kind of private equity example, and by extension, the firm that I want to profile. No one's perfect. We all fall short of the grace of God. We're all saint. You know, an angel is. You know, we all wake up with sort of a saint with dirty faces. You know, we wake up and we brush our. The dirt off and we try to be the best version of ourselves we can. So there's no perfect. But from what I've seen, you've been a force for good in the world. You personally and the firm talk to us in the remaining moments we have about this thing, this program that you have.

[Joe Barrada]

So.

[John Hope Bryant]

And then I want to come back because we've got to do part two and product.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah. Not.

Not coming from.

A background that, that gave me easy access. I mean I had much easier access than you because the zip code I was born in, the color of my skin.

[John Hope Bryant]

Thanks for acknowledging that. But authenticity.

[Joe Barrada]

I didn't have easy access. Like my dad wasn't going to call his friend at Goldman Sachs put my son up.

[John Hope Bryant]

Right.

[Joe Barrada]

So I sort of understood through my life that what the access is what's important. Like you can't have a meritocracy if not if you don't have equal access to opportunity. And there's tons of people with great skills and ambition who don't, who just don't have the access and that. I sort of, I think I understood that as a young person and I was able, I got lucky. The ball bounced my way.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And so. And I didn't really understand it until I moved back from London 2012 and one of my colleagues here got me involved in an organization called Year Up.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, it's great.

[Joe Barrada]

Year up was the, I think that the original and I think today still the best organization that takes kids who've got all the skills, all the ambition, all the capability. But for whatever reason in that kind of high school to early college transitional years, they got derailed. Something happened in their family, something happened to them.

And they just couldn't stay on that linear path that you kind of need to be on to have the access. And it gives them a year of training in technical skills and in soft skills. How do you operate in a room like this, like how do you dress?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And then the technical skills that's required for career sustaining.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes. Which nobody teaches you jobs.

[Joe Barrada]

And then it gets some internships at places like bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet and Salesforce.

And those people are able to convert those internships at a very high percentage to full time jobs. And their lives are fundamentally changed. These are people who come from under accessed communities. They come from.

The wrong zip codes.

It'S tons of different ethnicities and they just were derailed and they didn't have access. And when I saw.

The quality of these people, like what they were capable of and their ambition.

I said wow, we have to try to do something about this at more scale. And it took me a while because when I came back, I was put in charge of our private equity business. I was focused on making sure I knew how to do that and that our business was growing. But maybe five or six years into the job, I said, geez, I need to start thinking about what else can we do to be a force for good. And I said, well, we employ hundreds of thousands of people. We own control of about 100 businesses and equity stakes and maybe 200.

We should look at the recruiting practices across all of our companies and look at educational requirements and the educational institutions from which they're recruiting. And can we increase access to groups that have been understood, people from the wrong zip codes, people who didn't go to the right colleges, people who are veterans of wars, people who are new immigrants to this country, who for whatever reason didn't have access. And we piloted it with six companies. We now have I think 50. This probably all started maybe five years ago, five, six years ago.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's pretty amazing.

No government program, no mandate, just right thing to do.

[Joe Barrada]

And what's frustrating about it, and the reason I was expressing this in the, in that Milken thing was we've tried to get mainstream media to cover like what we're doing because we think it's important to amplify the message. Like if we can do it, so can all these other companies. Not just owned by private equity firms, but privately owned businesses, all over, family owned businesses, yes, Public companies.

[John Hope Bryant]

Everybody can do this.

[Joe Barrada]

Everybody.

[John Hope Bryant]

And it.

[Joe Barrada]

And it's not, by the way, Alt.

[John Hope Bryant]

Finance, my friend, our friend Tony Wessler is doing with Aries, is doing Alt Finance with a bunch of other companies. And so their version of coming up folks up from nothing, what you're doing, it's really important.

[Joe Barrada]

So it's frustrating to me that this, yeah, great, great guy, great, great firm. What was frustrating is that this effort isn't getting anywhere near as much coverage as the effort on employee ownership. So somebody sells a company, employees make, each employee makes 10 grand, 15 grand. That's amazing. And that should happen. But what's I think more fundamental and transformational for the people is getting the job in the first place. That allows them to fundamentally change their lives.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Joe Barrada]

And that should have equal billing in my opinion, with the broad based employee ownership.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Joe Barrada]

And it hasn't. And maybe because we're not good storytellers, maybe because it's harder to quantify.

I don't know what. But that, that was the frustration you were sensing. And I think we've been doing a better job. We have an opportunity summit. There was one at.

Walmart that I was at.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes, I was at a couple of weeks ago. I just wanted to Talk to Doug McMillan on the way here. Yeah, he invited me to come back. Then this relationship, capital of forces for good. Doug McMillan, Michael Araghetti, Tony Reser, Michael Milken, our friend, you know, our friends at kkr, folks at Apollo. These are all, you know, these are all folks who are found a way to succeed themselves. Yes. But they want to do well and do good also because they also see this in their enlightened self interest. It's, it's, it's in everybody's best interest to expand the table and add a chair to grow the economy for a number of reasons. We're going to run out of time today. I want to respect the fact you got a global company to run. By the way, how many, how many countries are you in? As the head of Global Equity, how many countries are you responsible for?

[Joe Barrada]

I mean, it's wherever we invest in private equity, which is, you know, us, Europe, Asia, Asia, Middle East.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah. I want you, I want to get you in Africa.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

It's a huge opportunity for sure.

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[Commercial Narrator]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30, shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

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[Joe Barrada]

Are in the rough.

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[Commercial Narrator]

And Doug, there's nowhere.

[Joe Barrada]

I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means playing in a football game.

[Sports Announcer]

Boom.

[John Hope Bryant]

42.

[Sports Announcer]

You're going down, Doug.

[John Hope Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Joe Barrada]

Your price on car insurance when you customize and save is going down.

[Sports Announcer]

Hey.

[Joe Barrada]

Limu, what are you doing on their team? Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[John Hope Bryant]

So, look, we could talk all day. I hope people got a. A tone and a texture for and a foothold into what private equity is. They understand maybe banking and they understand that they heard of investment banking. They might have heard of venture capital. This is a bit of a mystery. Yeah, a bit of a black box. And there's no sign outside it says private equity here. Question as we wrap up. There's somebody listening to this.

A young Joe, a young John with incredible potential, incredible hoots. What they call it? Ambition. Male, female.

They'Re wondering if they can do a roll up. Roll up is to take an industry and find commonality in other markets and buy these companies and roll them up. Is there hope for some dreamer out there who's. Who is sitting there thinking, because your private equity is big with you, but you also have small private equity. There are small private equity firms all across. So is there hope for, in this current environment for a young lady or a young man, urban or rural, black or white, it doesn't matter who have a dream. And they want to be part of the American dream. They want to. They've found some niche, they found some business or industry and they think it can be rolled up and grown. Can they still in this day feel they can get the attention of a private equity firm and be their partner?

[Joe Barrada]

I think so. I think it's easier today than it was 30 odd years ago because there are just. Private equity is a much more accepted asset class. It's become an institutional asset class. There are thousands of firms, thousands, thousands who are doing this and looking for great ideas and great entrepreneurs. Now you got to find them. But I think also you can now find them because there's the Internet.

[John Hope Bryant]

The Internet and artificial intelligence.

[Joe Barrada]

It takes, if you have a great idea, like I go roll up, you know, some professional services or home services or whatever, and you've got a relationship with a family that owns a small business and you want to use it as a platform and they want to do business with you and you can go find funding. It's, you know, it's a lot of work, but you can do it.

[John Hope Bryant]

So. Last couple thoughts. PhDs are good. PhD's are better or at least as good. Right. So hustle, which is what we really have, more than degrees, gives you a leg up, gives you an opportunity to get in the game. And for those who were questioning capitalism and there are really crooks and bad people out there, we both acknowledge that, but they get all the attention. The folks who are doing it right need to be your light on the hill. And I say to people all the time, even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to first collect it like a capitalist. Right. And this is a good example of doing well by doing good. I liked that you said you became you had to focus on your job as leading private equity because if you didn't do that job, you'd be out. Yeah. You had to perform. Before you can help anybody else, you have to help yourself.

[Joe Barrada]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And then you said, okay, now that I've done well, maybe I'll do a little good. That's the right tone and texture. Joe, I want to thank you. Thanks again. I want to respect the time, the fact that you're busy. If you want him to come back, let us know in the comments. He's already said he's self volunteer, but that's cool. But if you want to come back and you know, let us know what you think, I'm sure I'd love to come back because I think that just listening to this, there's probably a half dozen of subtopics we could have gotten into, gone down this route, down that route to really unpack this for people so they can get their hands around it and believe that they can do it too. But if this is the only time we get together, it's been incredibly valuable and exactly what I had in mind.

[Joe Barrada]

Great. Thank you. That was great.

[John Hope Bryant]

Thank you, Joe.

[Joe Barrada]

I appreciate it.

[John Hope Bryant]

And we were teasing earlier about it. Say his name is Joe Barrada and he's a great guy. He's the head of global private equity for Blackstone, which is a $1.2 trillion.

Transformational platform for capitalism for good in the world. Look them up and attach their dream making with your dream planning. John o' Brien is Joe Burratta. This is Money and wealth on iHeartRadio and the black Effect Network. Go live your dreams starting today.

Money and wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Joe Barrada]

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[Sports Announcer]

What a matchup. We got y'.

[John Hope Bryant]

All.

[Sports Announcer]

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[Joe Barrada]

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