Speaker 1: Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. We're all
Speaker 1: role modeling, right, so you know, we model what we see.
Speaker 1: This is this episode is dedicated to my father, Johnny
Speaker 1: will Smith. Without him, I wouldn't be me. Johnny will Smith,
Speaker 1: the son him, the son of my grandfather RB Smith.
Speaker 1: RB Smith was born in eighteen seventy one in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: which means, you know, they weren't passing out memos in
Speaker 1: Mississippi in eighteen seventy one. The Civil War was over
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five, they weren't passing out memos saying
Speaker 1: you're free. So it's at least fifty percent likely that
Speaker 1: RB Smith was born in the slavery in Mississippi. At
Speaker 1: the very least. I know he was a sharecropper in
Speaker 1: Mississippi and ultimately the farm that he owned, a small
Speaker 1: cropper land that he worked in Mississippi was worth seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, you know, as we went into the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: So he worked at land for thirty plus years, well
Speaker 1: at least twenty years, and you know, ended up with
Speaker 1: a seven hundred dollars asset that he might not have
Speaker 1: actually owned because he was a sharecropper, but the legacy
Speaker 1: of him and self determination led to my father, who
Speaker 1: was born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, population now about five thousand
Speaker 1: people and unfortunately declining. There's no industry there. Little town
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. And by the way, just fun fact here,
Speaker 1: some of the notable citizens of Aberdeen, Mississippi are James Phelan,
Speaker 1: Senior and Junior. James was a member of the Confederate Congress,
Speaker 1: the folks who are fighting to sustain slavery in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. He was a member of the Confederate Congress Congress,
Speaker 1: and then his son went on to become a member
Speaker 1: of the US Congress right after that. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: that there was some kind of a deathbed conversion between
Speaker 1: Senior and Junior is members of Congress. So my guess
Speaker 1: is that this legacy of Confederate philosophy carried on for
Speaker 1: quite some time, as both of these folks were members
Speaker 1: of Congress from Aberdeen. So that was an example of
Speaker 1: maybe Mississippi not being the most progressive. But my dad
Speaker 1: left there and because of my grandfather being a sharecropper,
Speaker 1: he became a businessman, and of course I became an entrepreneur. Hello,
Speaker 1: we are all role modeling, right, We're modeling what we see.
Speaker 1: And as an old Southern saying, no matter how much
Speaker 1: I love you, so my daughter, my son, and my daughter,
Speaker 1: if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
Speaker 1: my own ignorance out of love. We passed down bad
Speaker 1: habits and generation to generation. And you know there's another
Speaker 1: there's a biblical story fable that basically paraphrases, watch how
Speaker 1: you live your life, and maybe the only Bible that
Speaker 1: anybody else reads. So role models matter, right, And I'm
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur because my dad was a businessman. My dad
Speaker 1: was a businessman in part because he saw his dad
Speaker 1: pursuing self determination in the eighteen hundreds. And certainly my
Speaker 1: great grandfather was a slave, without questioning. So Johnny Smith,
Speaker 1: you know, was a great man. He's passed on to glory,
Speaker 1: but he had challenges, he had drama, he had you know,
Speaker 1: he would shoot himself in the proverbial foot because Massa
Speaker 1: Andrew Jung says that men and women fail for three
Speaker 1: reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. My daddy was not greedy,
Speaker 1: but he was full of pride and slightly arrogant. I
Speaker 1: understand some of it. He was successful, as you know.
Speaker 1: That story goes he met my mother because he was
Speaker 1: driving his fancy car from Los Angeles where he lived
Speaker 1: down south. I don't know the exact pathway, but for
Speaker 1: some reason, he came through East Saint Louis, I guess
Speaker 1: to visit family, friends, whatever, on his way to Detroit
Speaker 1: to go buy a new car. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: you bought cars if you were if you were highly
Speaker 1: successful like that, you wanted to go I guess to
Speaker 1: the manufacturer and buy it off the showroom floor in
Speaker 1: the manufacturer. I guess it was a thing, and he
Speaker 1: would drive the car back to Los Angeles. It was
Speaker 1: his way of showing his success. So on the way
Speaker 1: to buy his car and Detroit, he stopped in East
Speaker 1: Saint Louis and he was hit overhead with the love
Speaker 1: jones of my mother. He saw my mother and lost
Speaker 1: his mind, and the rest of that story, we say,
Speaker 1: is history. I did a separate podcast on my mother,
Speaker 1: so you can go listen to that and see how
Speaker 1: they came together and how their stories grew and then
Speaker 1: departed from each other. So he met my mother lost
Speaker 1: his mind. But the good news is they moved to
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles and they had me little known story.
Speaker 1: My birth certificate has three aliases on it because my
Speaker 1: dad kept thinking that I wasn't my mother's that he
Speaker 1: wasn't the father of my mother's child. He thought I
Speaker 1: was too young. This is who's this little yellow boy?
Speaker 1: My dad was darker. So who's this yellow boy? Who
Speaker 1: who you've been hanging out with? This is not my
Speaker 1: This is not my son. It looks like a Hispanic
Speaker 1: kid or whatever. Right, And so then my mother wanted
Speaker 1: to name him, name me Brian Keith after an actor.
Speaker 1: I'm told he's a Who's Brian Keith? I want my name,
Speaker 1: my son to be named Johnny Smith. There's not a
Speaker 1: more unimaginative, unimaginative name on the planet than Johnny Smith
Speaker 1: or John Smith. He wanted me to name John Smith.
Speaker 1: My mother's like, oh, not old, my dead body, are
Speaker 1: you naming our kid John Smith? So I had They
Speaker 1: changed my birth certificate three different times in the hospital
Speaker 1: the same day. Of course my mother won. Uh, So
Speaker 1: I ended up being John Bryant. The rest is history,
Speaker 1: as they say. So my dad went on to own
Speaker 1: a to start a Semen. Sorry, he already had a
Speaker 1: cemen contracting business in south central Los Angeles. Again, he
Speaker 1: was he was a computer. He was a community baller.
Speaker 1: I mean he was successful, highly successful by community famous standards. Right.
Speaker 1: The stories of my dad are legend. He wore these
Speaker 1: flashy suits with big collars, and he loved his brim
Speaker 1: and his hats, and he loved his fancy shoes. He
Speaker 1: looked like he looked like a pet. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say a classy pet. But he looked like
Speaker 1: a pip. Uh. Now, listeners, you need to translate, translate
Speaker 1: what a pep is. I guess he's put you know,
Speaker 1: leave me a commentat or something out or just ask
Speaker 1: a black friend. Right. So dad was a slick He
Speaker 1: was smooth, right, he was a smooth talker. And uh
Speaker 1: but my dad didn't know what he didn't though, So
Speaker 1: when my dad was going to go talk to just
Speaker 1: get money, he'd go. He thought the bank was the branch,
Speaker 1: like he thought that Bank of America or Wells Fargo.
Speaker 1: He thought that entire bank was representative of this branch.
Speaker 1: And he knew the branch manager. And when he was gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, write a check that wouldn't cover that couldn't
Speaker 1: be covered the money had in the bank. He thought
Speaker 1: his real credibility was going out of the bank. His
Speaker 1: time was less valuable than you know, other things. My
Speaker 1: time is the most valuable thing I have. You give
Speaker 1: me a choice today between more time and more money.
Speaker 1: As it give me more time, I'll make more money.
Speaker 1: But my dad value other things. So he would go
Speaker 1: down to the bank several times a week to let
Speaker 1: the branch manager know that he would not be you know,
Speaker 1: he needed him to cover this check. And this is
Speaker 1: what we did in the community. And this is what
Speaker 1: he did in the community was of common conversationation floating checks.
Speaker 1: Some of you listening who are old enough to know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, understand it was floating checks was
Speaker 1: a common situation, and that banker, as long as my
Speaker 1: dad knew the branch manager. It was the personal credibility
Speaker 1: he had with that banker that allowed him to feel
Speaker 1: that he had basically a line of credit. He didn't
Speaker 1: because he had bank fees. Every time he did that,
Speaker 1: they hit him with a bank fee over his head.
Speaker 1: But my dad valued respect over everything. So if a
Speaker 1: mortgage broker showed up in my neighborhood as an example,
Speaker 1: who was polite and talk and gave my dad respect
Speaker 1: and consideration and asked him about his family and complimented
Speaker 1: him on how he was dressing and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But he was. But what he had to offer for
Speaker 1: a refinance for the house was a broker, meaning didn't
Speaker 1: go directly to the financial source. It was through a
Speaker 1: financial broker, which added additional fee. It was a broker
Speaker 1: transaction that was let's say fifteen percent interest and fifteen
Speaker 1: points meaning one percent, two percent, three percent, fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of the loan amount, right, fifteen points fifteen percent interests.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these these loans were twenty points
Speaker 1: twenty percent interest. When you once it got loan, you
Speaker 1: got the loan, you would blind twenty twenty went to
Speaker 1: zero zero. But this was common in our neighbor hard
Speaker 1: money loans. So my my dad would take that loan
Speaker 1: because the guy was nice to him. Look, but if
Speaker 1: somebody came along was rude to my dad but had
Speaker 1: a three percent mortgage, he would send that guy packing. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just the opposite, right, you can curse me out,
Speaker 1: you can say everything you want, you can say you're
Speaker 1: a first cousin of James Felan from Alberdeen, Mississippi. And
Speaker 1: you your great great grandfather was part of the Confederacy.
Speaker 1: But if you got three percent money, I'm taking it.
Speaker 1: Not went out to my self esteem of self worth
Speaker 1: depends on your acceptance of me, right, Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1: If you don't like me, I like me, right or
Speaker 1: do you respect me and learn to like me, then
Speaker 1: like me and never respect me. So I went out
Speaker 1: emotional about money. I'm not emotional about business. Business is
Speaker 1: just business. But my dad, you know, respect went a
Speaker 1: long way with my dad. I'll come back to why
Speaker 1: that's so important in a moment. So my dad was,
Speaker 1: you know, in many ways, not only just a community
Speaker 1: success story. He was a bit of a you know,
Speaker 1: original freedom fighter in our family because he served as
Speaker 1: a deacon on the board of the church. It was
Speaker 1: a cavalry missionary Baptist church. I can't remember the reverend's
Speaker 1: name is probably good but his whole family, you know,
Speaker 1: owned the church. I mean literally owned the building and
Speaker 1: it was only like forty members in the pasta. The
Speaker 1: pasta was driven up in a limousine. The limousine was
Speaker 1: longer than the church was wide and my dad was
Speaker 1: a deacon in the church. And my dad wasn't really
Speaker 1: feeling all this stuff that the family of the pastor
Speaker 1: and his family were doing. But he was committed to
Speaker 1: the gospel, committed to God and and but when he
Speaker 1: discovered that there was fraud going on with the pastor,
Speaker 1: he approached him in church and the son of the
Speaker 1: now my dad, dad was a big guy. He was
Speaker 1: a construction guy. You on the construction cement masonry company
Speaker 1: johnny'son Network. It's a big guy. But you know, he
Speaker 1: was an older guy. He was shorter, stocky, and the
Speaker 1: son of the pastor was big and tall, and he
Speaker 1: clocked my dad to keep my dad from from spilling
Speaker 1: the beans on the you know, malfeasans going on to
Speaker 1: the church. He hit my dad and I believe knocked
Speaker 1: him out. Uh. And that wasn't the that wasn't the
Speaker 1: last time, because my dad wouldn't give up. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: give up, wouldn't give in. He was like, no, this
Speaker 1: is unethical, this is illegal. You can't do this in
Speaker 1: the house of Lord. So he was going to file
Speaker 1: formal charges and he was out of a construction site
Speaker 1: and this son showed up to the construction site. They
Speaker 1: had a fight. My dad had built it, dug a hole,
Speaker 1: a construction hole for something, and the guy ended up
Speaker 1: actually pushing my dad in that hole and filling that
Speaker 1: hole up with sayd up to my dad's neck. He
Speaker 1: was trying to kill my father, and luckily, you know,
Speaker 1: authorities and people interceded. But but, but by the grace
Speaker 1: of God, that moment could have been my dad's last.
Speaker 1: But he just wouldn't He just wouldn't ge give up
Speaker 1: or wouldn't give in. He fought for justice and not
Speaker 1: just us, and he and my mother ultimately built a
Speaker 1: little conglomerate, a little empire in south central LA. They've
Speaker 1: owned their own home on Santa Barbara Boulevard is now
Speaker 1: Martin the King Boulevard, west of western south side of
Speaker 1: the street. They owned an eight unit apartment building they
Speaker 1: owned which they bought for eighteen thousand dollars. I believe
Speaker 1: it will be worth several million dollars today. We owned
Speaker 1: a gas station at Veringdon in Normandy, I believe Southeast Corner.
Speaker 1: We owned the scenic contracting business. We owned a nursery
Speaker 1: business which my mother ran, and I was the first client.
Speaker 1: My mother pimped me. I mean, I mean leverage me
Speaker 1: as a client to get other clients. I was the
Speaker 1: marketing agent. Look well, I was treating my son. You
Speaker 1: need to come and be client too. It was all good,
Speaker 1: It's fine. My mother, my mother's was brilliant at managing
Speaker 1: money and building. As my dad was mister outside. She
Speaker 1: was missed inside. And a relationship is the only time
Speaker 1: the mass shouldn't work. Two plus two should equal more
Speaker 1: than four. The two plus who does not make equals six,
Speaker 1: eight or ten? What are you doing? Right? Yeah? Better together?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Uh? So we own all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But when my dad was financially I literate, right, So
Speaker 1: my dad didn't understand money. He thought that that cash
Speaker 1: flow was everything. So he go bid on a job.
Speaker 1: And so my dad wasn't dumb. He wasn't too. He
Speaker 1: was really really smart. Uh. But no one taught us
Speaker 1: financial literacy. You know. The Freeman's Bank failed, and that's
Speaker 1: what was supposed to teach free for all enslaved people
Speaker 1: about money and free enterprise and capitalist economics and opportunity.
Speaker 1: And we never got that memo. That's one of my books,
Speaker 1: the memo read it I'm for said capitalism. Read that
Speaker 1: up from nothing, read that, And so he just didn't
Speaker 1: know what he didn't know, but he thought he knew.
Speaker 1: It's what we don't know that we don't know this
Speaker 1: killing is, but we think we know. And so my
Speaker 1: dad confused cash flow with profit. And so somebody would
Speaker 1: go bid a job before him, for laying a cement driveway.
Speaker 1: They'd bid, let's say, one thousand dollars. One thousand dollars
Speaker 1: today would be a bargain for any kind of driveway,
Speaker 1: but it was one thousand dollars back then, and my
Speaker 1: dad would just go in and bid under him nine
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Well, the materials might be nine to twenty five,
Speaker 1: might be nine to fifty with the twoteriers and labor,
Speaker 1: who knows. My dad just would take a scratch pad
Speaker 1: and sort of scratch some stuff out, but he'd miss
Speaker 1: some stuff, but he got the job right. So the
Speaker 1: more money he made, the broker we got. He'd make
Speaker 1: a dollar and spend a dollar fifty. He thought, again,
Speaker 1: cash flow is profit? Hello, wrong, And so he started
Speaker 1: missing payments on the mortgages and missing payments on I
Speaker 1: remember my dad met people ask me sometimes why is
Speaker 1: it that I'm not racist? Like, why is it that
Speaker 1: I'm so comfortable with different races of people? And I
Speaker 1: would say that it doesn't matter whether your white, black, red, brown,
Speaker 1: or yellow, which is all wants some more. Green is
Speaker 1: in the color at least in the US of US currency.
Speaker 1: Because at the front door of my house on marton
Speaker 1: the King Boulevard before that Santa Barbara was the payroll center.
Speaker 1: My dad would open that door on Fridays at five
Speaker 1: o'clock and meet payroll. And the workers were white, they
Speaker 1: were black, they were Hispanic, they were Indian workers at
Speaker 1: Native American Indian. They all worked for my dad as
Speaker 1: day laborers. And some of them were, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: had worked for my dad four years and every Friday,
Speaker 1: no matter what, he met a payroll. Now he might
Speaker 1: have he wasn't. He didn't think he was broke. He
Speaker 1: had cash left over it on Friday night to go
Speaker 1: out to the juke joint or whatever and hang out
Speaker 1: and we will buy some clothes. But he might not
Speaker 1: have enough money for the mortgage payment or the car
Speaker 1: note or whatever, right, but he had enough money that moment,
Speaker 1: and so he thought he was rich. And he and
Speaker 1: we were actually broke. But but I had this comfort
Speaker 1: with race because at an early age, not only did
Speaker 1: I see bankers in my classroom and teachers who happen
Speaker 1: to be Caucasian, and we got alan they were decent
Speaker 1: to me, thank god, h versus my friends growing up
Speaker 1: who had this experience of white people who would throw
Speaker 1: them against a patrol car and and pat him down
Speaker 1: or worse. Uh and so they became resentful of white people.
Speaker 1: That wasn't, thank god, my experience. And then then I
Speaker 1: had this also, this experience of seeing my dad in
Speaker 1: a you know, a superior business position, not superior as
Speaker 1: a human being, superior as in the pecking order of
Speaker 1: the relationship to these other people who happened to be
Speaker 1: of other races as he was meeting pyrom and uh
Speaker 1: So I just remembered that very powerfully in my in
Speaker 1: my mind, and I was like, shoot, I want to,
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to write the check. I
Speaker 1: don't want to cash it, right, I want to be
Speaker 1: the business owner, right. Uh. And I and my dad
Speaker 1: used to force me to go to jobs with him,
Speaker 1: se him at contracting jobs. And I mean I remember
Speaker 1: I used to I hated that. I hated this this
Speaker 1: was this. This is probably why I was like, I know,
Speaker 1: I got to work for myself. I used to go
Speaker 1: to these jobs and it was so hot and my
Speaker 1: dad and my dad's truck had no air conditioning, and
Speaker 1: literally like my mouth in my face, inside of my face,
Speaker 1: stick to the side of the glass. You know, it
Speaker 1: was so hot. And I'd go to sleep and I
Speaker 1: had to peel my face off the glass. Uh. He'd
Speaker 1: stay inside talking to somebody for an hour and a half. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know whatever run in his mouth about something, and
Speaker 1: I got some like gift gift for gap and love
Speaker 1: for words from him. I'm sure and uh. And then
Speaker 1: he'd go, we'd go get a job and he and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm the boss's son. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a supervisor. Nope, So he put me to work with
Speaker 1: the other workers, uh and doing menial labor, and you know,
Speaker 1: he would mess with me dig a hole. Then he
Speaker 1: come back to where he was later fill in the hole.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm done. And I had callouses on
Speaker 1: my hand right and I'm like, no, no, only cut
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get going forward is a is a paper
Speaker 1: cut endorse that check and deposited in the bank. I'm
Speaker 1: not doing this for the rest of my life. But
Speaker 1: that's that taught me. Hard work. That taught me that
Speaker 1: just because you're the boss of sons, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't get a pass right that everybody's got a hustle.
Speaker 1: There's an old saying about wealth creation. The first generation
Speaker 1: makes it, second generation spends it, third generation loses it. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we didn't. We didn't get to three generations because my
Speaker 1: dad made it but couldn't keep it because he was
Speaker 1: financially literate, and because he didn't see my mother as
Speaker 1: a partner with him. He just saw her as his mate,
Speaker 1: and so she was a financial genius on savings. Please
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast I did just dedicated to her.
Speaker 1: I'll get it into her story. And you know, he
Speaker 1: could have made it, kicked it over to her. She
Speaker 1: could have saved it, invested it, you know, grew it,
Speaker 1: and it would have been a fantastic union. But that's
Speaker 1: not what happened. And you know, the number one calls
Speaker 1: for divorce in America, it's money. Number one reason for
Speaker 1: domestic abuse and households. Uh, it's money, number one reason
Speaker 1: for heart attacks, stress, number one of the reason for stress.
Speaker 1: It's money, and my mom and dad stressed over money,
Speaker 1: and they broke up over money, and we lost everything.
Speaker 1: We lost our generational wealth, and so we had to
Speaker 1: start over. My mother had to start over and my dad.
Speaker 1: And then here's the deep part, Now this is really deep.
Speaker 1: My dad owned his own business and again, you know,
Speaker 1: was self determined, and it clearly was not lazy. It
Speaker 1: was a hustler by every definition, irrespectful definition of that phrase.
Speaker 1: But my dad died broke. I'm gonna tell you the
Speaker 1: part of that, the rest part of that story, in
Speaker 1: a minute. My mother worked an hourly job listening now
Speaker 1: everybody who was employed somewhere. My mother worked an hourly
Speaker 1: job at McDonald Doalla's aircraft. And when she passed on,
Speaker 1: God rest both of their souls. She passed on September tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I just lost her. Recently, she's been promoted,
Speaker 1: gone to a better place with a great relationship. Thank god.
Speaker 1: I did the best I could to make her life
Speaker 1: comfortable and even joyful. But she know she when you
Speaker 1: look at how much she put in as a down
Speaker 1: payments to my mother's, my sister, and my brother to
Speaker 1: buy homes and helping her family members. And there was
Speaker 1: time she helped me coming up. You know, I'm proud
Speaker 1: to say I paid her back. I'd have to go
Speaker 1: to her to her I think, which is twice in
Speaker 1: my entire life, or for anything. It was monetary, but
Speaker 1: she you know, you look at their entire net worth,
Speaker 1: including you know, I'm an executive estate. And when she passed,
Speaker 1: it was a million dollars accumulated network for somebody making
Speaker 1: fifteen to eighteen dollars an hour on Can I get
Speaker 1: an amen? With a high school education? You know I'm
Speaker 1: talking about so so, So here's my mother worked a
Speaker 1: regular job. She died with an accumulation network networth of
Speaker 1: a million dollars, with a you know, an hourly job.
Speaker 1: She retired from Mcdonaldongan's Aircraft, you know. And my dad
Speaker 1: owned his own business to the day he died and
Speaker 1: it was broke. So there you go. You can do
Speaker 1: well working at a job somewhere, because now that you make,
Speaker 1: it's about what you keep. Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: It's the church of what's happening? Now? What have you
Speaker 1: done for me lately? So my dad fast forward now
Speaker 1: the story, I'm you know, I'm older, and I've gone out,
Speaker 1: gone out and done things and you know, achieved some
Speaker 1: level of success. I remember my dad, you know, I
Speaker 1: used to come I would come home and tell him, Oh, Dad,
Speaker 1: you know, my President of United States said my name
Speaker 1: at a you know, at a ceremony or I'm an
Speaker 1: appointee for the president United States? And he who is it?
Speaker 1: That particular time, it was it was a President Reagan
Speaker 1: or President Bush. I've served Republican and Democratic presidents, and
Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton's a friend. I've served Obama and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. But this was President Reagan, whose
Speaker 1: wife had mentioned my name, and President George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 1: who had mentioned my name and opened a few doors
Speaker 1: for me. Then the son President Bush pointed me to
Speaker 1: a commission or to actually that's more than that, but
Speaker 1: actually actually have to create financial literacy policy to executive
Speaker 1: order with the son. But that's another story for another time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I went to tell my dad and he was he
Speaker 1: just blew it off. He just he's like, he's a Republican.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to encourage you people like who
Speaker 1: have children, like if they screw up, say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really upset with you. And and you're like, I
Speaker 1: get away with this, you future lawyer. I'm really frustrated
Speaker 1: with you, and I'm going to hold you accountable, you
Speaker 1: future business person, hold you know, hold up their aspirations,
Speaker 1: because this stuff sticks with kids, right, they're modeling what
Speaker 1: they see. My dad didn't mean me and he harm.
Speaker 1: He was just talking, you know, he was just My
Speaker 1: dad was partisan, and he was straight up hardcore Democrat.
Speaker 1: I didn't respect it. I mean, I'm able to get
Speaker 1: it done party. I don't care, you know, don't care
Speaker 1: what party you from. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: get it done right. But you know, we had different
Speaker 1: approaches and we had different experiences. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: traveled with to work. My dad had never been out
Speaker 1: of the country, I don't believe. And I had by
Speaker 1: that time, traveled to I think twenty different countries. I've
Speaker 1: traveled to one hundred now. So I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: hold it against him. But I understand my dad had
Speaker 1: limited experiences and couldn't help me very much. So I
Speaker 1: didn't talk to him about anymore after that. What I
Speaker 1: was doing. I just tried to help him do what
Speaker 1: he was doing. Well. He had moved into a house
Speaker 1: that I found out he didn't own, and a young lady,
Speaker 1: an older lady owned the house and allowed him to
Speaker 1: stay there, but he had to be your girlfriend. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a true story. And so I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that can't happen. So I'm buying the house, right, But
Speaker 1: I'm a capitalist, so I'm like, I'm buying this house.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to just hear like, have this
Speaker 1: expense on my balance sheet, I'll buy the house was
Speaker 1: knocked down three walls, keep one wall up, get plans
Speaker 1: for a three or four unit apartment building, build three
Speaker 1: or four units around those three the one remaining wall,
Speaker 1: get permits, get a construction loan, and then let's rent
Speaker 1: out the three units. You live in the first unit,
Speaker 1: and let's have a positive experience in what we messed
Speaker 1: up when my parents bought at eight unit apartment building
Speaker 1: growing up. So Dad was like cool, and so I
Speaker 1: bought the house he was in from lady. We got
Speaker 1: a construction loan from Wells Fargo. And this is why
Speaker 1: I never hated on Wells Fargo. And Tom was my
Speaker 1: band's name. I gotta find his name, and I gotta
Speaker 1: give him credit. Tom at Wells Fargo, because if he had,
Speaker 1: Thoma Swanson, if he had defaulted on me, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here today because I got this construction loan. My
Speaker 1: father was in construction. So I said, okay, well I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you manage the construction loan. Wrong, I should remember,
Speaker 1: and I gave my dad, always with a marriage press card,
Speaker 1: a green card back then he maxed out the green
Speaker 1: card almost immediately. I remember six thousand dollars. Almost lost
Speaker 1: my mind and I couldn't pay it, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: pay it. He didn't know he charged it, and he
Speaker 1: had mismanaged a contruction loan, and we ended up with
Speaker 1: a half done project. Luckily for me, at this point
Speaker 1: in particular, time values were going up, and I went
Speaker 1: to the banker and I just admitted, Hey, my dad
Speaker 1: screwed this thing up. I'm responsible for it, but I
Speaker 1: got to get this building completed. And he refinanced that
Speaker 1: construction loan. Can you believe that the banker, white banker,
Speaker 1: Tom Swanson, God bless you man, he refinanced that construction loan.
Speaker 1: If he hadn't refinanced that construction loan into a new
Speaker 1: construction loans so I could finish that building. I'd be
Speaker 1: toe up from the flow up. I'd be broke poor.
Speaker 1: I'd be so poor I couldn't pay attention. I'd be
Speaker 1: so poor. This is to have a po not the
Speaker 1: r this pole po. I mean I'd be I had
Speaker 1: a file bankruptcy, it had been done. It was this
Speaker 1: was real money. It was you know back and then
Speaker 1: those days from my six hundred and seventy one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: I was everything, and I took the you know love now,
Speaker 1: I took the responsibility. I canceled the credit card my father,
Speaker 1: and I took the construction loan away from him and
Speaker 1: had another contractor to manage it. So here's a lesson
Speaker 1: for you. Don't make emotional decisions. Whatever decision you make emotionally,
Speaker 1: it is going to be the wrong decision. You can
Speaker 1: love your family and not do business with them. You
Speaker 1: can love your family and not put them in a
Speaker 1: situation where they don't they're not qualify, you're not doing
Speaker 1: them any favors, you're not doing yourself a favor. And
Speaker 1: when you go a half for your money, it's going
Speaker 1: to be drama. Uh So, just don't put yourself in
Speaker 1: that situation in the first place like, if it's charity,
Speaker 1: go make your money over here and then go give
Speaker 1: it to somebody if you want to. But don't expect
Speaker 1: somebody who is financially illiterate. If you know, it's not
Speaker 1: they're not dumb, and there's not stupid. It's they're not
Speaker 1: dumb or stupid. It's what they don't know that they
Speaker 1: don't know. This killing them, but they think they know.
Speaker 1: If I wanted to want some some knowledge about the Bible,
Speaker 1: go to my father. He was brilliant. He hit the
Speaker 1: Bible like memorize right. If I want to learn about
Speaker 1: you know, you know, fashion and styles in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: go to him. I wanted to learn about cement masonry, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, working in you know, hot temperatures outside. There
Speaker 1: was a whole bunch of things that my dad was
Speaker 1: really really good at. Could school me on how to
Speaker 1: float checks, right, But financial literacy is not one of them.
Speaker 1: Project management, business management was not one of them. It's
Speaker 1: not a knock. It just he didn't know what he
Speaker 1: didn't know. And you know what, we got to stop
Speaker 1: rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic in our lives
Speaker 1: and ship is sinking and we're picking drapes, so you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we finished the apartment building and he turned up his
Speaker 1: nose and me, but he got over it and he
Speaker 1: lived in that unit and dignity into the day he
Speaker 1: passed away. And I remember getting a call from Rachel,
Speaker 1: my chief of staff, Rachel daff, who was like a she.
Speaker 1: He considered her a surrogate darter and true, true, true conversation.
Speaker 1: He actually at least told her he you know, played
Speaker 1: like he was closer to her than me, because he was.
Speaker 1: He was knocking on me because I was an independent
Speaker 1: spirit like him, and I was out running around trying
Speaker 1: to make the money, so I couldn't be around l
Speaker 1: as he was spending it. But I was honored to
Speaker 1: be to take care of him, right, and all of
Speaker 1: us should want to take care of our parents as
Speaker 1: they took care of us. But that doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: going to agree on everything. So Rachel called me and
Speaker 1: I had to run home and my dad was on
Speaker 1: a ventilator at Cedar Sinai Hospital, and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I said to the doctor to what do you you know,
Speaker 1: how do you guys feel about playing God? Like we're
Speaker 1: not playing God? You are if we took your dad
Speaker 1: off of this machine, he probably will float and pass away.
Speaker 1: You know, in minutes, these machines, millions of dollars with
Speaker 1: the equipment are keeping him alive. We're not playing god.
Speaker 1: You are. This is your choice. And I had to
Speaker 1: you know, I'm the youngest in my family, but I
Speaker 1: had had to step up and have maturity. And I
Speaker 1: got everybody on the phone and we collectively as a family,
Speaker 1: said our goodbyes, and we said, look, either his body's
Speaker 1: given out, he's given up. Our God has called him.
Speaker 1: Either his body given out, he's given up, our God
Speaker 1: has called him. Or we're going to disconnect this equipment
Speaker 1: and he will somehow come back on his own relation.
Speaker 1: That will be fantastic. But you know, does he want
Speaker 1: to be in vestable for the rest of his life?
Speaker 1: Is this the way? This is a quality of life
Speaker 1: he wants? Probably not. And he should have had a will.
Speaker 1: He didn't. By the way, my mother died with a will.
Speaker 1: She wrote, what everybody listening to this, you need a
Speaker 1: will so people don't fight when somebody passes on and
Speaker 1: a will fight because money changes people's mental makeup. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that just money changes people. So Luckily here the
Speaker 1: money was mine, so there was not much of a fight,
Speaker 1: although people did find a way to have an attitude
Speaker 1: with me. I can't quite figure that out because they
Speaker 1: weren't anywhere around when Dad was sick. But okay, be gracious,
Speaker 1: but I just can't encourage it enough. To get your
Speaker 1: affairs in order and get a will, and if you
Speaker 1: can get a burial plot, and if you can get
Speaker 1: an insurance policy, because the insurance policy is the cheapest
Speaker 1: form of generational wealth creation that you can pass on
Speaker 1: to your children. You don't have much money, don't have
Speaker 1: to work as a young person twenty thirty forty years old,
Speaker 1: Go get you a term or whole life insurance policy
Speaker 1: and name your beneficial and when you and create a will,
Speaker 1: and then you change the will, change the beneficiaries on
Speaker 1: the insurance policy. So when you pass away, maybe you
Speaker 1: only made thirty or forty thousand dollars a year, but
Speaker 1: you could have a half million doile of life insurance policy,
Speaker 1: and your heirs get the benefits of that, and we're
Speaker 1: able to reset their life and go buy a house
Speaker 1: or start a business or whatever, you know, continue the
Speaker 1: legacy of the family. But my dad didn't do any
Speaker 1: of that, and I know I had to start from scratch,
Speaker 1: but we you know, we made the decision to let him,
Speaker 1: you know, pass on, or to let him float, as
Speaker 1: they said in the hospital, and I yuess he passed on.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we get upset and want to
Speaker 1: blame God for death. By the way, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't know how long we don't live, but we dang
Speaker 1: shouldn't know we're gonna die, Like, what's the mystery? You know,
Speaker 1: we salute and we celebrate children coming in this world,
Speaker 1: but we want to rail at God when elderly people transition.
Speaker 1: This is the ebb and flow of life. And we're
Speaker 1: not human beings having a spiritual experience of European profits
Speaker 1: at that's the European philosopher. Sorry, we're spiritual beings having
Speaker 1: a human experience. We're not human beings having a spiritual
Speaker 1: experien is where spiritual beings having a human experience, energy matters,
Speaker 1: and those people are going to be with you forever.
Speaker 1: My dad's still in me, my mother is still in me,
Speaker 1: and their legacy lives through me. It's just their physical
Speaker 1: body is falling away. And now I'm trying to give
Speaker 1: the benefits of their legacy and their lessons to you.
Speaker 1: This is John O'Bryant, and this is a silvil rights
Speaker 1: movement from the streets to the suites, from civil rights
Speaker 1: the silvil rights. This is the work of Operation Hope,
Speaker 1: where we are the private banker to the working class
Speaker 1: and the working middle class and folks with too much
Speaker 1: month at the end of their money. So you don't
Speaker 1: have to be like my father and scratch and script
Speaker 1: and scream and scrimp and make bad decisions like you
Speaker 1: can do better right where you are, and we can
Speaker 1: show you how. And we can go to one man
Speaker 1: black business Issuan. We will show you how to create
Speaker 1: a proper business with and even an e commerce business
Speaker 1: at no cost to you. By the way, rainbows only
Speaker 1: follow storms. This is my rainbow after the storm. And
Speaker 1: the reason that we have Operation Hope today is in
Speaker 1: part because of what my dad did for me at
Speaker 1: the positive and even the so called negatives. You can't
Speaker 1: grow except through legitimate suffering. Only do legitimate suffering do
Speaker 1: you grow. I learned many lessons from my dad and
Speaker 1: I love him forever and ever and ever, and I
Speaker 1: will try to make him proud, even though I deal
Speaker 1: with politicians from all sides of the aisle. Love and Light,
Speaker 1: I'm Out, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a
Speaker 1: production of the Black Effect podcast Network. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Step