Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey, hey,
Speaker 1: this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and
Speaker 1: Wealth on the Black Effect Network.
Speaker 2: As you know, I normally don't have guests.
Speaker 1: I'm having a conversation directly with you about the things
Speaker 1: that I believe matter most. Every now and then I
Speaker 1: bring in somebody who I believe is not only a
Speaker 1: value add but a game changer.
Speaker 2: That's the case today my brother from another mother.
Speaker 1: A bad boy. He doesn't walk on water, but he
Speaker 1: knows who the stones are. I'm introducing everybody, well, you
Speaker 1: already know who he is. It's Will Packer. Will honored
Speaker 1: to have you with us. But to say having you
Speaker 1: with us is to really talk about your mom and
Speaker 1: your dad.
Speaker 2: Mister and missus Packer.
Speaker 1: From Saint Petersburg, Florida, who raised you your whole life.
Speaker 1: Is mom and dad, not baby daddy, not baby mama.
Speaker 1: Mom and dad who took no prisoners, who were excellent,
Speaker 1: who don't probably get like most of our mom and
Speaker 1: Dad's the credit that they deserve. But I think that
Speaker 1: you would want to underscore as we're talking about where
Speaker 1: you are now and how you're moving forward in this
Speaker 1: great book that you have coming out very soon here
Speaker 1: that I encourage everybody to go pick up the Art
Speaker 1: of Healthy Arrogance and Dreaming Big. And that's a big title.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get into why and the who.
Speaker 1: But my guess is, in many ways you are breathing
Speaker 1: life and everything you do as a direct reflection of
Speaker 1: growing up in Saint Petersburg with your mom and your dad.
Speaker 1: So I want to get into that in a second.
Speaker 1: For the audience who loves potentials, I got some. This
Speaker 1: is money and well, so let's talk about the money first.
Speaker 1: His combined filmmaking collection that he's produced himself responsible for
Speaker 1: over a billion dollars in receivables worldwide. That's US currency, that's.
Speaker 3: Not pay those. Will Packer.
Speaker 1: Is a graduate Magnicum Lottie not thank your Lottie, Magnetic
Speaker 1: Cool Lot, Florida A and M University in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: Bachelors of Science degree get this now in electrical engineering. So,
Speaker 1: following his dad's footsteps, which we'll get into in a moment,
Speaker 1: he had a vision that he fulfilled and that vision
Speaker 1: you see in films and television shows. You've Got Chocolate
Speaker 1: City in nineteen ninety four that he did through rain
Speaker 1: Forest Films. You've got Will Packard Productions, which did films
Speaker 1: that you remember like Think Like a Man, Ride Along,
Speaker 1: Girls Trip. You know, these are iconic films that you
Speaker 1: may not have known the guy behind them. He has
Speaker 1: produced the Academy Awards. That was the ninety fourth annual
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. He has most recently become one
Speaker 1: of four limited partners in an NFL team, the Atlanta Falcons.
Speaker 2: He's deeply involved in his community.
Speaker 1: He is a philanthropist, let's just call it that way.
Speaker 1: At the HPCUS, most notably his home university where he
Speaker 1: graduated from. He's always shown up, showing out and giving back.
Speaker 1: If I recall Will, You've had a tenure run of
Speaker 1: a TV series as well, I'm.
Speaker 3: Ready to Love.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, the longest running African American dating show on television.
Speaker 3: Ready to Love on own on Oprah's network. That's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, just the other day, who's an icon in
Speaker 2: our world?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so your credentials are bona fides. And this is
Speaker 1: just a small collection of what you have done. I
Speaker 1: just did the high water mark. But a lot of
Speaker 1: this goes back to mom and dad. Is that right,
Speaker 1: no question, no question.
Speaker 3: First of all, thank you so much for having me,
Speaker 3: the fact that you allow me to come on. You're
Speaker 3: using your platform, You always use your pla PM for
Speaker 3: good and strengthening our community with knowledge, especially when it
Speaker 3: comes to the financial literacy piece. Part of what you
Speaker 3: always push, John is.
Speaker 4: The positive cycle and the positivity of how the cyclical
Speaker 4: effect of knowledge and equity can benefit a community, not
Speaker 4: just an individual, but a community.
Speaker 3: You're very big on community. Well, it's important that you
Speaker 3: started where you did because you're absolutely right. It is
Speaker 3: by no mistake that I sit here. I'm very proud
Speaker 3: to you know, be successful by any metric, certainly the
Speaker 3: financial ones. But for me, I measure success, you know,
Speaker 3: on health and well being, mental health, and what I
Speaker 3: give back to the community. I'm successful in those ways
Speaker 3: because I had an incredible foundation. I did have two parents,
Speaker 3: Glad you pointed that out. Not a lot of people do,
Speaker 3: but I had a two parent household, right, and a
Speaker 3: dad and a mom loved each other work together. I
Speaker 3: was born into a world where I knew I had
Speaker 3: a dual foundation of support from Mom from Dad, balancing
Speaker 3: each other out and telling me. I always like to say,
Speaker 3: when I came into the world, my parents lifted me
Speaker 3: into the air like Simba and the lion king, and
Speaker 3: they said, you see that, they took me to the
Speaker 3: highest point they can find. Say, everything the sun touches
Speaker 3: is yours. We have to start doing that to our children.
Speaker 3: We have to start doing that to that next generation.
Speaker 3: Everything that you see is possible. And I had the
Speaker 3: audacity to believe my parents when they told me that,
Speaker 3: when they told me you can go out and you
Speaker 3: can do anything. That's the only way A little black
Speaker 3: kid from Saint Pete, Florida, about as far as you
Speaker 3: can get from Hollywood on a map. Yep. I didn't
Speaker 3: know where Hollywood was. I didn't know anything about the entertainment.
Speaker 3: But that little kid was told you can do and
Speaker 3: be anything you want if you set your mind to
Speaker 3: it and you're willing to work. And I believe that.
Speaker 3: I believe it.
Speaker 1: When I think about you, I actually find the title
Speaker 1: of your book interesting because I think people in our
Speaker 1: community confuse arrogance with confidence. We're so used to not
Speaker 1: seeing real confidence that we can confuse it with arrogance,
Speaker 1: and so I want you to unpack the title because
Speaker 1: I know you did it intentionally and you did it provocatively.
Speaker 1: But one thing I like about you, one of the
Speaker 1: many things, is and we never talked about this, but
Speaker 1: I absolutely believe that it's our shared philosophy.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of love in the word.
Speaker 3: No. You rather respect.
Speaker 1: People respect you or learning to like you than like
Speaker 1: you never respect you. An entrepreneur works eighteen hours day
Speaker 1: of keeping getting a job, so you're committed to the
Speaker 1: work and so no one's going to deny you on excellence.
Speaker 1: Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: You've doubled down, you've tripled down, You've you've achieved it,
Speaker 1: so there's no reason to not believe it. That is
Speaker 1: not one answer your self esteem, to quote Quincy Jones,
Speaker 1: that depends on someone else's acceptance of you.
Speaker 3: So you're reasonably comfortable in your own.
Speaker 1: Skin, which is to me, it goes back to your
Speaker 1: parents saying you are somebody, you can do anything you
Speaker 1: want to do, and again lifting you up.
Speaker 3: So again, we all start from someplace.
Speaker 1: And I want to really underscore for this audience and
Speaker 1: part of wealth is culture and perspective, and we model
Speaker 1: what we see.
Speaker 2: And and your kids, and when.
Speaker 1: You have bring a childness in this world, you want
Speaker 1: to be more than a sperm donor, right. You want
Speaker 1: to be a positive influence in their life. And when
Speaker 1: you succeed, you need to understand whether you succeeding or
Speaker 1: you're failing. Is an old Southern quote. No matter how
Speaker 1: much I love you, my son and my I don't
Speaker 1: have wisdom, I can give you is my own ignorance.
Speaker 1: And that watch how you live your life. And maybe
Speaker 1: only Bible anybody else reads. So all of those quotes
Speaker 1: that I just used to me embody your spirit. So
Speaker 1: when you write a book call the Art of Healthy
Speaker 1: Arrogance and Dreaming Big, I know every word was intentional.
Speaker 1: Some of them had to trigger a little bit. So
Speaker 1: the book comes out by the way, February eighteen. I
Speaker 1: want everybody to go buy it. I want you to
Speaker 1: send Will a note on social media saying that you
Speaker 1: purchased it. I want you to leave a review once
Speaker 1: you read it, or listen to it online where you
Speaker 1: bought it. We've got to as people a color. I
Speaker 1: want everybody to buy the book, but I certainly people
Speaker 1: are color.
Speaker 3: We've got to.
Speaker 1: Make smart sexy again. I'm way too long. We've done that,
Speaker 1: celebrated it. It's time to make smart sexy again. The
Speaker 1: biggest group of buyers of books in this country are
Speaker 1: black women. I want to buy this book. I want
Speaker 1: you to leave or review, don't boycott somebody. I want
Speaker 1: you to clear the shelves. I don't want you to
Speaker 1: buy everything that they got this from a black man
Speaker 1: or a black woman to show that we have power.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, it's interesting you talk about that power the
Speaker 5: working in Hollywood, right, And one of the reasons I
Speaker 5: even wrote the book is because I've had a three
Speaker 5: decade career in Hollywood, and over.
Speaker 3: Those thirty years, I've been able to work with some
Speaker 3: of the most famous people, some of the most well known, powerful,
Speaker 3: some of the richest folks, also some of the most
Speaker 3: topsic people, some of the people that are the most insecure,
Speaker 3: some of the people that have got a lot of
Speaker 3: negativity that swirls around them all the time. Having to
Speaker 3: deal with the people in that environment, I learned a
Speaker 3: set of skills that I believe is transferable to any industry.
Speaker 3: The other thing I learned is that what you just
Speaker 3: said about the power belonging to the consumer. Hollywood, like
Speaker 3: any consumer facing industry, operates under an economic comparative. People
Speaker 3: get it confused. Sometimes they think, oh, well, Hollywood is
Speaker 3: trying to promote a particular agenda. They only want to
Speaker 3: see this type of person win or that type of person.
Speaker 3: Hollywood is a business. Hollywood is driven by its consumers,
Speaker 3: not the other way around. Hollywood is reactive, not proactive,
Speaker 3: and so the power always is in the consumer. And
Speaker 3: I tell people all the time, there's content out there
Speaker 3: that's being made, and you don't like it, or you
Speaker 3: want to see more of a different type of content,
Speaker 3: Go find that content and spread the work problytized like
Speaker 3: you would something that is very important to you in
Speaker 3: another area. Let people know. Because when you do that,
Speaker 3: folks like myself and also the people that are financing
Speaker 3: projects in Hollywood, they have to pay attention. They have to.
Speaker 3: So you're absolutely right about that. I title the book
Speaker 3: so the title of the book is who Better Than You?
Speaker 3: And then the subtitle is the Art of healthy arrogance
Speaker 3: and Dreaming Big? And the title who Better than You
Speaker 3: clearly states, clearly states the question that each of us
Speaker 3: need to ask ourselves, not once a year, not once
Speaker 3: a month, not once a week, every day, every day,
Speaker 3: ask yourself, look yourself right in the mirror, and affirm
Speaker 3: that there is no one better than you to achieve.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean achieve like mediocre dreams, right, I
Speaker 3: don't mean achieve things that are kind of good. I
Speaker 3: mean great, I mean huge, outsized John. At the end
Speaker 3: of the day, the folks in this world that you
Speaker 3: and I know that have been extremely successful are people
Speaker 3: that believe not only that they could do it, but
Speaker 3: that they were going to do it and that they
Speaker 3: were meant to do And when you walk into a
Speaker 3: room and I've been right there with you, you and
Speaker 3: I've been in some powerful rooms, brother, in those rooms, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't believe that. In those rooms sometimes I'm like, what
Speaker 3: am I doing here? And then I see you. I said, well,
Speaker 3: let me go talk to my friend John, because he's
Speaker 3: the only what I know here and everybody else knows him.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? What I will say is
Speaker 3: that you walk into those rooms and we've all been
Speaker 3: in those positions, and you're around people, and you know,
Speaker 3: you may have a little bit of trepidation. What am
Speaker 3: I doing? Here do I belong? Once you have that confidence,
Speaker 3: you walk into the room, and that confidence manifests itself
Speaker 3: in ways that you don't even realize. You don't walk
Speaker 3: in and say what am I doing here? You walk
Speaker 3: in and say what can I add to this room?
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 3: This room is better because I'm in it and I'm
Speaker 3: out to show people. See when I say healthy arrogance,
Speaker 3: make no mistake, that is very important, very important, because
Speaker 3: we associate arrogance and most times it is toxic arrogance.
Speaker 3: Arrogance and toxic arrogance is about tearing people down. It
Speaker 3: is about I'm better than you. Right, I'm going to
Speaker 3: beat you. Look at me, everybody look at me, and
Speaker 3: don't look at them. Right. That is what typical arrogance is.
Speaker 3: And I know I work in Hollywood. I'm I'm tired
Speaker 3: talking about me. Now you talk about me exactly exactly right, Nutherboue,
Speaker 3: you were about me. I work in an industry that
Speaker 3: created unsubstantiated humors, right, I'm not talking about that. Healthy
Speaker 3: arrogance is that supreme confidence in yourself that helps you
Speaker 3: to understand what true leaders understand, which is that I'm
Speaker 3: successful when I can get you and the other persons
Speaker 3: around us to realize that our success is tied together. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's not about tearing anybody else down. It is
Speaker 3: about lifting yourself and everybody else around you up. True
Speaker 3: leaders are able to get people to row in the
Speaker 3: same direction. It is not until you get the folks
Speaker 3: that are either on your team and your network and
Speaker 3: your family and your relationships to understand that your success
Speaker 3: benefits them and vice versa. That's what true leaders do,
Speaker 3: and that's when you get people saying, oh, you know what,
Speaker 3: I need John Hope Framing to win because I don't
Speaker 3: rind the win because I'm working with him, because his
Speaker 3: success is my success right because he is the person
Speaker 3: that is helping to unlock success for all of us.
Speaker 3: And so too many times we get in these silos
Speaker 3: and that's where that arrogance comes in, tearing everybody else down.
Speaker 3: If you win it, I'm losing. No, you can't think
Speaker 3: like that. It's about first that internal self confidence, and
Speaker 3: that self confidence is a muscle that you can build
Speaker 3: over time, you can build up right. I know there
Speaker 3: are people that may be watching that aren't you know,
Speaker 3: work born with the outside as confidence that that maybe
Speaker 3: John and myself have That's that's okay. You can build
Speaker 3: it up, and you do it by doing small things
Speaker 3: and by succeeding at small things, and by looking yourself
Speaker 3: in that mirror every day and giving yourself the credit
Speaker 3: for it. And you go on to something bigger, and
Speaker 3: then something bigger, and before you know what, you got
Speaker 3: some momentum. So that's that's where my concept of healthy
Speaker 3: arrogance came.
Speaker 1: I want people to slow down and and rewind this
Speaker 1: and listen slowly to what he said. Take it to
Speaker 1: half speed, and listen to what he said. How he
Speaker 1: impact that is very important, his differentiation. How do I
Speaker 1: describe him? I said, he's reasonably comfortable in his own skin.
Speaker 1: No one's comfortable in their own skin. That's a lie,
Speaker 1: he acknowledged when he wants when he comes into the room.
Speaker 1: When I go into a room, I'm acknowledging sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a of a wondering whether you're
Speaker 1: worthy of being in that room, a little bit of insecurity.
Speaker 1: That's that's okay. It goes away as natural. It keeps
Speaker 1: you from being obnoxious, right, It is a humility. But
Speaker 1: then you with rainbow's after storms, then you buck up
Speaker 1: and you say, yeah, I really, I'm God's child, I
Speaker 1: am somebody. I'm different from everybody here, and I add
Speaker 1: value and all of a sudden, that warmth, that authenticity
Speaker 1: attracts people to you. And you look up and Will's
Speaker 1: got ten people around him, pulling seats around him, as
Speaker 1: we were at the last I saw of the Magic
Speaker 1: Johnson reception in Atlanta. You look up and there's a
Speaker 1: half dozen people centering around him, trying to pull off
Speaker 1: of his energy because he's the strongest energy in that room.
Speaker 1: That healthy, I'm gonna call it at the moment, confidence
Speaker 1: that comes from self esteem.
Speaker 2: If I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you.
Speaker 1: If I don't feel good about me, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: feel good about you, That is right me. Don't expect
Speaker 1: me to respect you if I don't love me, I
Speaker 1: don't have a clue how to love you. Don't have
Speaker 1: a clue because in my life, will make your life
Speaker 1: a living hell.
Speaker 3: And hurt people, hurt people here.
Speaker 2: So he is trying to get you to adopt yourself.
Speaker 3: Huh, how about that? How about that? And and and
Speaker 3: just to go a little bit further with that, when
Speaker 3: you realize that the most important voice that you're going
Speaker 3: to hear all day is yours, and you start off
Speaker 3: with that voice telling you you're qualified, you're prepared, you
Speaker 3: have the skills, you are ready for whatever may come today.
Speaker 3: That's the most important voice. You probably aren't gonna hear
Speaker 3: it any more the rest of that day. But when
Speaker 3: you hear it from the most important voice first, you
Speaker 3: are better prepared. You are undergirded to go out and
Speaker 3: face the challenges of the day. Too often we give
Speaker 3: our power away to people because they may have a
Speaker 3: fancy title, they may have access to resources. Nothing wrong
Speaker 3: with interfacing with folks that are in positions of power
Speaker 3: at all, Nothing wrong with taking in what they said,
Speaker 3: what they say in their perspectives. You said is a
Speaker 3: little love in every note. Right. What I see people doing,
Speaker 3: especially in my industry, John, is they're giving their power
Speaker 3: to people who aren't them. I sent my script to
Speaker 3: Will Packer and Will Packer said no, he said he's
Speaker 3: not going to produce it. I said it to Sony
Speaker 3: and they said no. I said Paramount and they said no.
Speaker 3: All right. Audition for a Will Packer movie and I
Speaker 3: didn't get the role. That's just that person's perspective opinion
Speaker 3: in this decision being made based on their unique set
Speaker 3: of experience.
Speaker 2: It's that a value on you.
Speaker 3: You gotta remember that even though this person is all
Speaker 3: those fancy things that John said about me at the
Speaker 3: beginning of this all that's true, that still doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that I have the right to assign value to you
Speaker 3: your life or your dream. I may say, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to hire you as an actress. Or
Speaker 3: you may have somebody saying they're not going to invest
Speaker 3: in your new business. Min you may have a new
Speaker 3: boss that you apply for a job, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to hire you. That's okay, that's that person's opinion. But
Speaker 3: don't give your power to say that your dream is
Speaker 3: not over until you say it's over. Don't get that
Speaker 3: to anybody. I don't care what their timele is. I
Speaker 3: don't care what access to resource they have a rich
Speaker 3: day are, I don't care. That is your power. That's
Speaker 3: why you're the most important person. You gotta affirm that daily,
Speaker 3: you really really do, because that's the thing that gets
Speaker 3: you get used to hearing, and then you start to
Speaker 3: expect yourself to perform that way, just like it works
Speaker 3: in the opposite direction. If you have that drum beat
Speaker 3: and negativity always tell you I'm not ready, I'm not worthy,
Speaker 3: I don't have it, I'm not prepared. If you're constantly
Speaker 3: telling yourself that, that drum beat gets louder and louder,
Speaker 3: it works the other way. It's the positive cycle, just
Speaker 3: like we talked about before, Just like John you talk
Speaker 3: about all the time. That's that positive cycle, that cycle
Speaker 3: of positivity that you can create within yourself. We're talking
Speaker 3: about you having an internal conversation. You don't need anybody
Speaker 3: else to help you with this. You don't need any money,
Speaker 3: you don't need any mentor. This is something that you
Speaker 3: can do. Start with yourself. Don just said adopt yourself.
Speaker 3: I love that mantra. I love that right because it
Speaker 3: requires you to love yourself. It requires you to nurture yourself.
Speaker 3: It requires you to take care of yourself and give
Speaker 3: yourself what you need. That's where you gotta start, and
Speaker 3: not enough of us do that. That's where that question
Speaker 3: who better than you? Come from.
Speaker 1: I don't think this applies to you now, but twenty
Speaker 1: years ago I would say one of your greatest assets
Speaker 1: was there's a lot of I mean, you take no
Speaker 1: for vitamins. I mean, I know that was also one
Speaker 1: of my greatest answers. You didn't you ignore the noise
Speaker 1: and you didn't let a know define you take no
Speaker 1: for vitamins. And it's a little bit of what you're
Speaker 1: telling people coming at you now and others who are
Speaker 1: getting rejected, not rejecting you.
Speaker 2: We're just saying this is.
Speaker 1: Not that, this doesn't work for what I'm doing right
Speaker 1: now has no identity. I'm not identifying you at all.
Speaker 1: I'm not even thinking about you think about my project.
Speaker 1: So you early on have to as you're building this up,
Speaker 1: you have to take no for vitamins and believe in
Speaker 1: yourself and say, focus on the rare yes you got,
Speaker 1: not the nose you didn't get. The glass was half
Speaker 1: flip full, not half empty. The way I see you
Speaker 1: now is and we share this trait and never said
Speaker 1: this to you publicly, but we're both ruthless about our time.
Speaker 3: MM we'll give away the money. I don't be don't.
Speaker 2: Mess with our time. I say no to things.
Speaker 1: Hey will no, No, No, I'm sorry, brother, I can't do that. Hey,
Speaker 1: well I got to be in Central Pei.
Speaker 2: Can't do that.
Speaker 1: No, that doesn't work right now, good luck with that.
Speaker 1: You're focused, You're absolutely laser focused on the thing you
Speaker 1: want to achieve. No shade to anybody else, but you
Speaker 1: can't be successful in life unless you're focused on what
Speaker 1: you're trying to achieve. So what are some what are
Speaker 1: some want you give to drop some some some I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get into some tactical stuff from the book. But
Speaker 1: once you drop a few girls of wisdom that people
Speaker 1: can expect from this book that are tied to your
Speaker 1: or they won't Maybe they won't get it in this
Speaker 1: book your life philosophy, What are half of the rules two, three, four,
Speaker 1: six that you'll packer lives by that comes that was
Speaker 1: between your parents raising you and becoming massively successful. That
Speaker 1: piece in the middle is what people's people are missing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what we're going to give them the day in
Speaker 1: this podcast is hope with the business plan. So if
Speaker 1: we get into tactical questions about that, that are that
Speaker 1: are lessons from the book and lessons for life and
Speaker 1: people listening? What are those values that differentiate you that
Speaker 1: have made you thrive and not just survive?
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. So one of the
Speaker 3: things that I talk about is a big belief of
Speaker 3: mine that sometimes you have to go out and climb
Speaker 3: the mountain. What do I mean by it? Many of
Speaker 3: us have what I call preparation paralysis. Hmmm, I want
Speaker 3: to hear this. I am so fortunate John to have
Speaker 3: been naive when I started off trying to become a filmmaker.
Speaker 3: The power of what I didn't know help propel me.
Speaker 3: Because if I knew then what I knew now what
Speaker 3: I know now, I wouldn't have done it. Because I'm
Speaker 3: I'm analytical, I'm intelligent, and I would have said this
Speaker 3: is an unlikely The aperture for success is too small.
Speaker 3: I need to find something else to do, and I
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 2: The audience please listen to me. His degree is an
Speaker 2: engineering and.
Speaker 1: Engineering and they're extremely specific, extremely tactile. They are very
Speaker 1: detailed and with all the respect are rigid. So an
Speaker 1: electrial engineer is scientific and they need to know the
Speaker 1: mapping before they start to work. So what he's saying
Speaker 1: here is a game changer for you. He did not
Speaker 1: over analyze, Otherwise he never would have even got off.
Speaker 3: The mark continued, You got it, you got it, you
Speaker 3: got it, and that engineering discipline is anethentical to the
Speaker 3: creative field in which I work. So when I talk
Speaker 3: about preparation paralysis, so many of us say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go and I'm going to do this thing. I'm
Speaker 3: going to initiate this pivot. I'm going to start to
Speaker 3: embark on this challenge. I'm going to climb this mountain,
Speaker 3: whatever your mountain is. And they say, I gotta be
Speaker 3: prepared though, because I'm climbing a mountain. Mountain is big,
Speaker 3: and you spend all your time and all your energy
Speaker 3: preparing to climb the mountain and you never climb the mountain.
Speaker 3: We all know somebody like that. It's natural. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: just gotta climb the mountain. See what happens is we
Speaker 3: go out and it is that fear of the unknown
Speaker 3: and that fear of failure that allows us to settle
Speaker 3: into a comfort level. How many of us know folks
Speaker 3: that are like I'm about to. They're always about to.
Speaker 3: I'm about to. I'm about to write next year. Next
Speaker 3: year's the year I'm gonna start the business. Next year
Speaker 3: is the year I'm gonna get the master's degree. Next
Speaker 3: year's right about to Because they feel like I'm not
Speaker 3: ready yet, I'm just not ready. That's preparation paralysis. What
Speaker 3: you have to do is realize that you can go
Speaker 3: out and you can have the right shoes to climb
Speaker 3: that mountain. You can have the repelling gear, you got
Speaker 3: the rope, you got your backpack, you got the canteen
Speaker 3: you know, fill with your water, and I can have
Speaker 3: all that. But until you actually get up on the
Speaker 3: side of that mountain and you plan to go right
Speaker 3: and you reach your hand up in the rock slips,
Speaker 3: now you got to go left. You get up there,
Speaker 3: you feel the sting of the cold air on your face.
Speaker 3: Right until you're actually there climbing the mountain, you don't
Speaker 3: know what to expect. You don't know what it's going
Speaker 3: to be like because you never climbed the mountain before.
Speaker 3: So sometimes you actually got to get out there and
Speaker 3: just start climbing the mountain in order to do that.
Speaker 3: Climbing the mountain is just like swallowing a whale, one
Speaker 3: bite at a time. The first thing you have to do,
Speaker 3: and this is the second thing, So don't allow yourself
Speaker 3: to have preparation paralysis. Get out there and climb the mountain. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the second thing, death of the good. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: The second thing that I described subscribe to is the
Speaker 3: belief that when you are getting ready to do something
Speaker 3: big right, don't care what it is, sometimes you have
Speaker 3: to fabricate momentum. He follow me. Okay, So many times
Speaker 3: folks get stuck on that first wrong, John. When I
Speaker 3: was making my very first movie after college, I said,
Speaker 3: We're going to raise seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: A lot of money for a movie, especially back then.
Speaker 3: Seven hundred and fifty would give us what we needed
Speaker 3: to go out and get the cameras and lights and
Speaker 3: go and shoot this movie. John, for the life of me,
Speaker 3: I could not raise. I couldn't get anywhere close to
Speaker 3: raising that money. I wasn't rich, I didn't know anybody
Speaker 3: rich to know anybody in Hollywood. I was out banging
Speaker 3: my hand on doors trying to raise seven hundred fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars right, So I said, Okay, instead of a
Speaker 3: financial goal, I'm going to set a date goal, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to say whatever I'm able to raise at
Speaker 3: the end of three months, give myself three months. Whatever
Speaker 3: I raised the end of those three months, that's gonna
Speaker 3: be the budget. Of the film. That's how much I praised.
Speaker 3: At the end of those three months, I did not
Speaker 3: It wasn't seven hundre fillion dollars, but it sure wasn't
Speaker 3: seven thousand dollars. I raised seventy five thousand dollars. That's
Speaker 3: what we were able to raise. Guess what. We shot
Speaker 3: a tiny movie for seventy five thousand dollars. That was
Speaker 3: the budget of the movie. Okay, very small, but we
Speaker 3: did it. We completed that movie, and it said to
Speaker 3: other people that I could do it. But you know
Speaker 3: what it did most importantly, it said to me that
Speaker 3: you could do it, that I could do it, that
Speaker 3: I could do it. So many times people are going, okay,
Speaker 3: step one, complete the task. No, if the task is monumental,
Speaker 3: that's not step one. Going back to climbing the mountain analogy,
Speaker 3: Step one is buying the shoes. Just buy the shoes right.
Speaker 3: Step two, just get the rope. Step three, don't clout
Speaker 3: them out, drive by the mountain. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Do those because before you know what, you've accomplished five
Speaker 3: things towards your goal. Now you're telling yourself, I can
Speaker 3: do it. I can do things towards my goal. Sometimes
Speaker 3: you've got to fabricate that momentum for yourself because it's hard.
Speaker 3: Don't allow yourself to get stuck on that first rung.
Speaker 3: Get going just doing something, Just do it. Give yourself
Speaker 3: an opportunity to get some momentum. That has worked well
Speaker 3: for me, and.
Speaker 1: Those two values work together. Because there's a famous person
Speaker 1: that I've got in the back of my mind. I
Speaker 1: won't mention their name because audience would would then make
Speaker 1: a judgment. But and I try not to judge people.
Speaker 1: People are where they are. But this famous person, who
Speaker 1: is the child of a famous person, always wants to
Speaker 1: do things perfect. And I've tried to tell them, let
Speaker 1: all that parous of analysis go, stop navel gazing. Right
Speaker 1: is the perfect become the death of the good. Just
Speaker 1: get out there and do it. By the time you
Speaker 1: figure out what the perfect is, the opportunity is gone.
Speaker 2: And the situation is completely changed. Right you know not?
Speaker 1: Not only are you not perfect, I tell them, the
Speaker 1: other people out of here aren't perfect. The people you're
Speaker 1: who you're chasing aren't perfect. These folks are mediocre at best.
Speaker 1: And if you and the devil's lazy. So if you
Speaker 1: got to hustle. Yes, you got God behind, Yeah you
Speaker 1: got haven.
Speaker 3: Was just showing up with good heavens. And remember that
Speaker 3: is the one that you can control. One of the
Speaker 3: other things that that that one of the other tenants
Speaker 3: is what you just said. If you got a hostle,
Speaker 3: you say the devil is lazy, right, That is the
Speaker 3: one thing that you can control. There's so many things
Speaker 3: that you you can't control in your world. You can't
Speaker 3: control what other people are gonna do, how they're going
Speaker 3: to receive you, how they're gonna perceive you. But you
Speaker 3: can control how hard you are working, right, So you've
Speaker 3: got to put the energy into the things you can control.
Speaker 3: So many times we spend we each have a finite
Speaker 3: amount of energy. You can't forget that, Okay, none of
Speaker 3: us have limitless energy. Got a finite amount of energy,
Speaker 3: So up to you where you decide to expend that energy.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes we're spending the energy on things we can't control
Speaker 3: because I am worrying, I am feeling myself with anxiety
Speaker 3: about things that I cannot control that people are doing
Speaker 3: around me. You know what you can't control the work,
Speaker 3: put your head down and grind, and especially in today's world,
Speaker 3: we're so consumed with letting everybody know what we're doing
Speaker 3: every step of the way. One of my mautras is
Speaker 3: is the work you put in when nobody is watching
Speaker 3: that makes everybody pay attention later. The work you put
Speaker 3: in when nobody's watching makes everybody pay attention later. And
Speaker 3: so you've got to put your head down and grind
Speaker 3: and don't worry about what everybody else is doing because
Speaker 3: you can't control it. You know what you can't control
Speaker 3: your work ethic can control how much energy and effort
Speaker 3: you're putting into whatever that goal is that you're trying
Speaker 3: to accomplish. I mean, you're going to accomplish it right away,
Speaker 3: but you still got to make sure that that energy
Speaker 3: that you got, that finite amount of energy, you're putting
Speaker 3: it towards something that you can control.
Speaker 2: Brilliant.
Speaker 1: I think you're making, as an old Southern saying, put
Speaker 1: it whether goats can get it. You're the sales the
Speaker 1: way that allow people to approach success. You're putting it
Speaker 1: within reach, which is what I like to do with
Speaker 1: all of my work. Don't use twenty words when two
Speaker 1: will do. People already feel bad, they already feel depressed
Speaker 1: and distressed and the worn out. They don't need us
Speaker 1: to help them by making something unattainable. So you've made
Speaker 1: success attainable. Now this show is Money and Wealth. Before
Speaker 1: I pivot to some practical questions in the book, I
Speaker 1: want to give some folks here a bit of a
Speaker 1: cheat sheet. I've talked about some real estate, real estate
Speaker 1: deals I've done, some that did well, some that were
Speaker 1: a bust. I talked about business deals. I've talked about
Speaker 1: building brands. At some point I'm going to walk through
Speaker 1: how to build a global nonprofit and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I try to to show people how they can build
Speaker 1: wealth and not just give them a bunch of happy talk.
Speaker 2: Is there are there?
Speaker 1: Is there an example you can give will in your
Speaker 1: personal life, good news are bad? Some cheats you can
Speaker 1: have that you can give folks about. Some insight into
Speaker 1: the music and the entertainment business, which actually is music also,
Speaker 1: by the way, because you've got you've got soundtracks and
Speaker 1: things like that that come out of the movies and
Speaker 1: the TV shows. But it like it's publishing the Golden
Speaker 1: Goose or what is is it being?
Speaker 2: Is it not being?
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to be on stage, Everyone wants to start
Speaker 1: they want to lock the mic. I keep telling them
Speaker 1: all the damn mic, right, RiPP, Yeah, what is the aha?
Speaker 1: Then will Packer can present to this audience that is
Speaker 1: not told or understood about how to make money and
Speaker 1: or build wealth in Hollywood?
Speaker 3: Okay, so it is. It is understood, but it is misconstrued.
Speaker 3: It is about your personal brand. Okay. We live in
Speaker 3: an environment where there's an oversaturation of content. All right,
Speaker 3: there's more content out there than ever before. There's more
Speaker 3: platforms everybody has now you know, got got this device
Speaker 3: where you can go and you can create your own content. Right,
Speaker 3: everybody's a star. Everybody's got a social media platform. Hollywood,
Speaker 3: the music industry, media companies at large are all trying
Speaker 3: to find brands that have an authentic connection to audiences.
Speaker 3: Because they don't. They need you. You are the conduit
Speaker 3: to get to those audiences. Here's where people mess up
Speaker 3: and misstep. You think that you need the support of
Speaker 3: a major media brand in order to reach those consumers,
Speaker 3: and you really don't, especially now right now, because everybody's
Speaker 3: got a YouTube channel, and everybody's got to Instagram, everybody's
Speaker 3: got TikTok. You got to have scale, You have to
Speaker 3: be able to build a brand that has not just hundreds,
Speaker 3: not just thousands. You got to have millions of folks
Speaker 3: that are subscribing to whatever it is that you are pitching,
Speaker 3: selling and presenting. Right, So what I say to people is,
Speaker 3: you make money without Hollywood, That's when Hollywood will come knocking.
Speaker 3: You make money without the music industry, That's when the
Speaker 3: music industry will come knock. So what you should focus
Speaker 3: on is what is the thing that you have that
Speaker 3: connects authentically with audience? Right, Don't worry. Don't spend that
Speaker 3: time trying to knock on a Hollywood door. I literally
Speaker 3: could not get a return call from Hollywood until I
Speaker 3: had independently distributed my own film, all my own. I
Speaker 3: drove from city to city to city, right, I literally,
Speaker 3: I remember I went from Atlanta to Jackson, Mississippi, to Birmingham, Alabama,
Speaker 3: to Charlotte, North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, the Memphids, Tennessee,
Speaker 3: the National Tennessee. I can keep going, I remember, because
Speaker 3: I drove every one of my I stayed in a
Speaker 3: little Motel six or Super eight, whatever I could afford
Speaker 3: to every market. That was my version. Absolute hustle, that
Speaker 3: was my version of building my brand at that time
Speaker 3: was my early movie project. You ain't have to do
Speaker 3: that right now because you can hit sin, you can
Speaker 3: hit post, but everybody can hit sin, everybody can post.
Speaker 3: So you got to do something that stands out. Focus
Speaker 3: your time and energy on building that personal brand. That
Speaker 3: is where you can derive wealth from within the media landscape.
Speaker 3: Everybody's trying to knock on the door to major media
Speaker 3: companies to say, yeah, but I just need to I
Speaker 3: need a bigger platform, I need to be in theaters,
Speaker 3: I need to be on streaming. No, what you need
Speaker 3: is a brand that is valuable enough so that the
Speaker 3: folks that have those platforms say, come on over here,
Speaker 3: let me use your platform and your connection to an
Speaker 3: audience to help enrich my platform. That I've invested all
Speaker 3: this money in over here and I need you in
Speaker 3: order to help sustain my platform. So spin that energy,
Speaker 3: honing whatever that is that boys, and I'm not selling
Speaker 3: everybody go out and be an influencer, because that's these days.
Speaker 3: That's like you know, being an NBA you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. I'm not saying that, but they're gonna be
Speaker 3: folks that need to manage those influencers they're gonna be
Speaker 3: folks that need to facilitate what they're doing with their money, right,
Speaker 3: because these folks are very focused on being in front
Speaker 3: of the camera. I've never been in front of the
Speaker 3: camera person. I mean very successful because I have been
Speaker 3: good at going out and finding Kevin Hart when he
Speaker 3: was finally ready to break out and give him his
Speaker 3: first movie, right, just breakout movie Indris elba Its first
Speaker 3: movie after the Wire was my movie Tiffany Hatch or
Speaker 3: breakout role in Girls Trip. That is what I have
Speaker 3: been able to do. So that absolutely and that's what
Speaker 3: you need, right. It's just just like you mentioned the
Speaker 3: Atlanta Falcons and the ownership. It's not just about who
Speaker 3: can run the fastest or jump the highest. It's not
Speaker 3: just success on the field. There are levels to this, right,
Speaker 3: That is what you talk about, Dohn, So understand because
Speaker 3: there are levels to this. I have been fortunate enough
Speaker 3: to work hard build my own personal brand to the
Speaker 3: point when Arthur Blank, the majority owner of the Falcons,
Speaker 3: was looking for people to bring into his inner circle,
Speaker 3: my name rang out. I made that cut, right. So
Speaker 3: now I am in sports without my jump shot. Ain't nothing,
Speaker 3: I tell you that right now, I ain't getting enough
Speaker 3: to spencerman eastify ye old knees. It ain't happening. Brother.
Speaker 3: I'm not racing anybody, but I am now in sports,
Speaker 3: so there's other opportunities to do it. So I'm not
Speaker 3: saying you have to just be in front of the camera.
Speaker 3: The aspects around the folks that are do you know,
Speaker 3: people who are talented know how to do it. And
Speaker 3: you go in and say, I'm gonna manage you. I'm
Speaker 3: going to help you before we go to Hollywood. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna help you go from a thousand subscribers to ten
Speaker 3: thousand suscribers to a million subscribers. Then we'll go and
Speaker 3: see who's interested in talking to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all these folks think about in every city
Speaker 1: they need some place to go and record their content.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a little a little shop people can open
Speaker 1: uh and and produce podcasts and and and create the
Speaker 1: settings for them to come in.
Speaker 2: And you know, in China an Asia, this is very big.
Speaker 1: To go into shared spaces to record content, you can
Speaker 1: the equipment is very expensive. Somebody could be renting that
Speaker 1: equipment to influencers and and and and managing platforms.
Speaker 2: So you're getting people to think outside the box.
Speaker 1: Uh, and not just to be seen by the box,
Speaker 1: as in uh, rocking the mic, being in front of
Speaker 1: reading the script. Maybe write the script, Maybe sell the
Speaker 1: paper that scripts are on. Yeah, owner of your self.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that what you said resonates with me. It
Speaker 1: hit me like a ton of bricks when you were
Speaker 1: talking about bring value to value to a two plus
Speaker 1: two equals six, eight or ten. Bring value to value
Speaker 1: so they see that you're better together. In banking, the
Speaker 1: joke is the bank will lend you money when you
Speaker 1: prove you don't need it.
Speaker 3: It's a joke, but it's serious.
Speaker 1: And those who are you go far enough of the
Speaker 1: economic stratosphere. You stop signing personal guarantees. They give you
Speaker 1: what's called, you know, basically unsecured debt. And I've signed
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars deal that I don't have a
Speaker 1: guarantee on. But when I signed a sixty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a lot of credit, I personally guarantee that. So your
Speaker 1: analogy works in every example, that when you bring value
Speaker 1: to a situation, and that people want to be associated
Speaker 1: with those who have value that bring to the association
Speaker 1: versus somebody come and begging and saying will you hook
Speaker 1: me up? You just sell like everybody else correctly, So
Speaker 1: life is about selling. We just talked about selling without selling.
Speaker 1: That's the example we just gave. You're presenting yourself. You're
Speaker 1: not selling yourself. But in your book Healthy Arrogance, How
Speaker 1: does the approach you have with this book help people
Speaker 1: make the sale?
Speaker 3: First by realizing what you just said, that everything is sales. Okay,
Speaker 3: so when you say who better than you, it's also
Speaker 3: who better than you? To sell yourself. Realize, no matter what,
Speaker 3: from the time you were born to the time you die,
Speaker 3: you are selling yourself. You're selling yourself, You're selling your brand.
Speaker 3: You're getting other people to recognize a particular and assign
Speaker 3: a particular value to you. Right, this person is important.
Speaker 3: I need to go talk to them. I need to
Speaker 3: answer their calls. I need to pick up you know,
Speaker 3: respond to their text. I need to invest in them.
Speaker 3: Could be various levels of value, but you're doing that
Speaker 3: from day one. That's important because, especially now, a lot
Speaker 3: of gen z will say, you know what, I haven't
Speaker 3: found my passion yet. I'm not into this thing. I
Speaker 3: don't want to work at this particular job. I haven't
Speaker 3: found the thing that's going to really kind of ignite
Speaker 3: my spirit, you know, awaken the internal voice in me
Speaker 3: that says, I wake up every day and I go
Speaker 3: do this. I don't subscribe to the belief that you know,
Speaker 3: you find the thing you love and then you never
Speaker 3: work another day in your life. That's not how things work.
Speaker 3: My opinion. What you do is you go out number one.
Speaker 3: If you're doing it, you're putting your name on it.
Speaker 3: You're busting your ass. You work hard. I don't care.
Speaker 3: Like I I before the movie stuff was happening, I
Speaker 3: was delivering newspapers for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I was
Speaker 3: answering phones on the weekend for Chlorox. I was selling
Speaker 3: newspapers door to door. Like I was working hard. It
Speaker 3: wasn't something I was passionate about. But my name was
Speaker 3: on it, so I was kilding my boy free time.
Speaker 3: If your name is on it, you gotta work hard
Speaker 3: and give it one hundred and ten percent period, absolute
Speaker 3: pride in your name. It's all you have at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. That is your personal brand. That
Speaker 3: is what you have. Is the most valuable thing that
Speaker 3: you own is your brand, right, So you gotta work hard,
Speaker 3: no matter what it is. Don't wait to find the
Speaker 3: thing that you are passionate about. Work hard today. Whatever
Speaker 3: you put your name is on it, If my name
Speaker 3: is on it, some respect percent period. If you don't
Speaker 3: put respect on it, nobody else is. Nobody else is
Speaker 3: going to put respect on.
Speaker 2: Watch Instagram post people.
Speaker 1: He's not talking about TikTok LinkedIn Facebook spreads.
Speaker 3: He's not talking about YouTube.
Speaker 1: He's talking about wherever you show up, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: show up to show out.
Speaker 3: Correct. I'm talking about going. When you got the part
Speaker 3: time job at you know, CBS or Ralph or Kroger
Speaker 3: or wherever it is, whatever that's doing, you be the
Speaker 3: best at it. When I first graduated from college, when
Speaker 3: I graduated Florida and University, I was, I was student
Speaker 3: Supreme Court justice. I had made a little student film,
Speaker 3: you know, I was. I was a big time alpha
Speaker 3: on campus. I was a DJ. And then I went
Speaker 3: and I got an opportunity to intern under the Huntland
Speaker 3: Brothers on a movie they were shooting in Jacksonville. Floor Wow.
Speaker 3: I immediately immediately went from being big man on campus
Speaker 3: to me the lowest on the total. Immediately, my job
Speaker 3: was to unwrangle the cables, make sure the cable cords
Speaker 3: never got twisted. So I was running around set all
Speaker 3: day untangling cable cords, and then I was also getting
Speaker 3: people coffee and tea and whatever they wanted on set, right,
Speaker 3: everybody told me what to do. I was the lowest
Speaker 3: of the low, but I also busted my ass and
Speaker 3: I was the hardest working intern on that set because
Speaker 3: my name was on I was building my player. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to do that. I'm want to unrangled cables
Speaker 3: for the rest of my life, but at the time,
Speaker 3: and that was my job to do it. Guess what,
Speaker 3: I was going to be the best damn cable wrangler
Speaker 3: you ever saw. And that's what I did. And that
Speaker 3: was my mentality. And some people on that set treated
Speaker 3: me like I was just a young brother that was
Speaker 3: chasing my dream, trying to come up and do something,
Speaker 3: and they would encourage me. Other people on that same
Speaker 3: movie set would treat me like I was the lowest
Speaker 3: of the low and in the way, and would yell
Speaker 3: at me and you know, say mean things and all
Speaker 3: of that almost to a man john and a woman.
Speaker 3: Since that time, and I've had the success I've had
Speaker 3: in this business. Almost every person on that set has
Speaker 3: asked me for a job. And I remember, I remember
Speaker 3: those that treated me with respect. I remember those that
Speaker 3: treated me like I was the lowest of the low.
Speaker 3: So you just never know. But the point is you're
Speaker 3: building your brand, so you're putting your name on it.
Speaker 3: You go hard. There's no excuse, right. So if you
Speaker 3: work and you continue to stack those bricks right, one
Speaker 3: by one, no matter what it is, whether you found
Speaker 3: your passion or not, you continue to stack your bricks
Speaker 3: because you're putting your name on it. That is selling,
Speaker 3: That is building your brand. Everything is selling. I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: I graduated from college and I told my dad, you
Speaker 3: know I didn't I had an engineering degree. I went
Speaker 3: going into corporate America because I wanted to chase this
Speaker 3: film dream. And I had this opportunity to be selling
Speaker 3: Atlanta Journal Constitution newspapers door to door. And I said,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do sales. Sales sound like people
Speaker 3: that's flying across the country selling copy machines, the people
Speaker 3: that don't need copy machines. And my dad said, and
Speaker 3: it stuck with me. He said, son, everything is sales. Everything,
Speaker 3: he said, World leaders are selling themselves all the time.
Speaker 3: They're selling their agendas, they're selling to their constituents, they're
Speaker 3: selling to the to the governmental bodies. They're always selling.
Speaker 3: Everything is sales. He said, he you're good at it.
Speaker 3: You're good at it. So lean into what you're good at.
Speaker 3: Go out there and until you're able to make this
Speaker 3: Hollywood dream come true, do this so that you can
Speaker 3: feed yourself. And I used to go out there and
Speaker 3: I knock on people's doors and try not to get
Speaker 3: shot in the face, and I would offer them an
Speaker 3: amazing deal on a Friday, Saturday Sunday version of the
Speaker 3: Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper. That's what it.
Speaker 1: Took, you know, for a book that has the word
Speaker 1: arrogance in it, there's a lot of humility in this message,
Speaker 1: and it's really quite inspired. Ashley, and I think you
Speaker 1: may be reintroducing for people a new understanding of things
Speaker 1: that they might have previously thought they understood. Like I
Speaker 1: will tell people people say, oh, capitalism is bad. No, no,
Speaker 1: people are bad. Right, there's good capitalism and there's bad capitalism, right,
Speaker 1: and good capitalism is where I benefit you benefit more,
Speaker 1: and bad is where I benefit you Bad A price
Speaker 1: for it, and you're saying it's healthy arrogance, and there's
Speaker 1: toxic arrogance. There's healthy self esteem, healthy self confidence, healthy
Speaker 1: set which it allows you to become the product. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm hearing you say. Yes, deliver yourself with confidence
Speaker 1: to the marketplace. The marketplace finds value in you. You've
Speaker 1: been the first in many sectors, which is both good
Speaker 1: news and bad news because you've got to be pioneering.
Speaker 2: How has that felt? How did you do it?
Speaker 1: And how did you manage difficult people, arrogant truly toxic
Speaker 1: and arrogant people.
Speaker 2: How did you manage around that and still succeed?
Speaker 1: Because that's going to be something that's a lot of
Speaker 1: Black people are emotional. We get arrogant, we get emotional,
Speaker 1: we get angry, and whenever you make an emotional decision
Speaker 1: is going to be a bad one.
Speaker 2: And so how did you with You.
Speaker 1: Got the conference, Now you've got the self esteem, you
Speaker 1: got all that stuff, but not someis just to deliver
Speaker 1: some crap and put it right on your lap theoretically,
Speaker 1: and you got to manage around that. How did you
Speaker 1: step over messing not in it?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being passionate in business,
Speaker 3: but you can't let passion rule your business decisions. And
Speaker 3: you are right, John, it is a cultural thing. Black
Speaker 3: folks are passionate people. You know. Mama was is passionate,
Speaker 3: Daddy's passionate, Grandma's passionate. You come in the house, Aunty
Speaker 3: with dancing and yelling and screaming at the TV, and
Speaker 3: it was just, you know, for no real reason, nothing
Speaker 3: just was happy in the moment, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You know, soul trade was on, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: But we grew up a lot of us in homes
Speaker 3: that were very passionate, right, passionate with a lot of energy,
Speaker 3: and many of us learn that and it gets ingrained
Speaker 3: in us, and it holds us back when it comes
Speaker 3: to business. Okay, at the end of the day, Hollywood
Speaker 3: is one of the most adversarial, topsy, loud, yelling in
Speaker 3: your face industries out there. I have a practice that
Speaker 3: I call taking the thunder out. When I am in
Speaker 3: an adversarial situation. Oftentimes I'm going to get somebody day
Speaker 3: yelling the other person's yelling. I might be yell everybody's yelling. Right.
Speaker 3: Nobody is accomplishing anything as a producer My job is
Speaker 3: not to win arguments and win fights. My job is
Speaker 3: to keep my eye on the main thing, which is
Speaker 3: getting the project done. My secret to that is take
Speaker 3: the thunder out. So the first thing I do I
Speaker 3: tell the story in my book about a movie that
Speaker 3: I made, and it was called Takers, and Takers was
Speaker 3: about a heightst crew, good looking guys that all dressed up.
Speaker 3: It had interest Celba, Paul Walker, God bless him, t
Speaker 3: I was in it, Matt Dillon, Michael Eely, Haiti Christiansen,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, great, great, great cats. And the first day
Speaker 3: on set this movie almost didn't happen because you look
Speaker 3: at the movie Takers, all the guys they got on
Speaker 3: suits and ties and they wear pocket squares, and everybody
Speaker 3: is very well dressed. Because part of our thesis was
Speaker 3: that even though it was an action movie, a heist movie,
Speaker 3: we want to also get young women. And we had
Speaker 3: all these good looking guys, you know, Paul Walker and
Speaker 3: inter Selden, Hey, Christiansen and Michael Ealy come on right,
Speaker 3: Chris Brown, right, So we wanted these good looking guys
Speaker 3: to be dressed to the knives. And Paul Walker showed
Speaker 3: up the first day all said God bless him and
Speaker 3: Paul Walker some of other hippie and he showed up
Speaker 3: and he had his hair long, and he had on
Speaker 3: his ripped jeans. And that's fine because listen, let me
Speaker 3: tell you, people actors on a movie said they show
Speaker 3: up looking all kinds of crazy before y'all see them.
Speaker 3: Trust me, ifore I had my whole team get their
Speaker 3: hands on they you would not recognize some of your
Speaker 3: favorite starts. So Paul showed up, you know, dingy jeans,
Speaker 3: long hair, you know, scruffy. The problem was that Paul
Speaker 3: wanted that to be his look for the film. He
Speaker 3: did not want to change. He said, this is my
Speaker 3: best look. And the head of the studio was there
Speaker 3: because it was day one, and the head of studio
Speaker 3: immediately tore into him. This is not what we talked about.
Speaker 3: We talked about this and we had a plan, and
Speaker 3: you're gonna mess it up and you can't look like that.
Speaker 3: Get in there. They gotta cut your hair. They got it,
Speaker 3: and Paul, who was an easy, soft spoken guy, he
Speaker 3: stood his ground. He said, no, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm not doing that. That's not the look.
Speaker 3: I don't like that. And they were going at it.
Speaker 3: So here I am day one of Takers. I got
Speaker 3: my studio head where my major stars they're arguing right
Speaker 3: outside the hair and makeup trailer. The rest of the
Speaker 3: actors are on set with my director, and my director's
Speaker 3: calling me saying, will what do you want me to do?
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to shoot this team?
Speaker 2: And how big is the budget?
Speaker 3: I said, how much money is on the line? Takers
Speaker 3: was about a between twenty five to thirty.
Speaker 2: Million dollars, So it was a big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, especially for me at that time. Yes, so
Speaker 3: not early price for Hollywood, but it wasn't you know
Speaker 3: it was. It wasn't cheap by any name, right around
Speaker 3: thirty actually, know how I think about it.
Speaker 2: You had to succeed. It had to work, had.
Speaker 3: To see it had to work. And in Hollywood, like
Speaker 3: a lot of places, time is money. So I told
Speaker 3: the director, I said, hey, shoot the first scene without Paul.
Speaker 3: I said, don't make it a big deal, right because
Speaker 3: I didn't want to have a full revote on my
Speaker 3: set with my other actors because quite honestly, many of
Speaker 3: them felt like that they really weren't that comfort with
Speaker 3: the suitent tie look. I had had a behind the
Speaker 3: scenes argument with Indrew Celbook, but I had handled it
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, and so it just had agreed, all right,
Speaker 3: I'll wear it, I wear a suit, I'll be clean shaven.
Speaker 3: He agreed to do it. But I knew if word
Speaker 3: got out that Paul was fighting back, everybody's gonna fight back, right,
Speaker 3: So I said the director's name of John. I said, John,
Speaker 3: go shoot the first scene. Don't make it seem like
Speaker 3: Paul was ever supposed to be in it, continue as it.
Speaker 3: By this time, Paul Walker had left the trailer and
Speaker 3: gone to his own personal trailer because he was about
Speaker 3: to find the next fight in Hawaii. He was like,
Speaker 3: I'm out of here. I'm not doing the movie. I
Speaker 3: walk in the trailer and I knock on the door.
Speaker 3: I can hit a gruff, Yeah, yeah, what do you want?
Speaker 3: I come in, And the first thing I did was
Speaker 3: I apologize. I said, Paul, I am so sorry. I said,
Speaker 3: you are here, this is your first day on the
Speaker 3: Willpacker set. You are clearly very unhappy. Something has been miscommunicated.
Speaker 3: You thought one thing, the studio thought something else, and
Speaker 3: now you are here in an uncomfortable and tenable situation.
Speaker 3: And I take full responsibility to that because this is
Speaker 3: my production. I am sorry I should ever mint it.
Speaker 3: I took because he was ready. He was ready for
Speaker 3: somebody come in and tell him how I was wrong
Speaker 3: and how the emails have been exchanged all that. I
Speaker 3: came in and immediately said, I gave him somebody to
Speaker 3: blame for it. I said, I'm sorry, blame me, and
Speaker 3: I meant it right, you got to be real, don't
Speaker 3: be superficial with it, right. But in that moment, it
Speaker 3: was not about me saying what Paul we told you
Speaker 3: was it was gonna look like. And it wasn't about
Speaker 3: me saying, well, studio heads, you should have made sure
Speaker 3: that Paul knew. And it wasn't about that. What was
Speaker 3: we trying to get done? What were we trying to
Speaker 3: get done? So I walked there and immediately said this
Speaker 3: is on me. I said, if you stay with us
Speaker 3: in this production, I will work every day to make
Speaker 3: sure that you do not feel like this again. Because
Speaker 3: on a Will Packer production, you should be able to
Speaker 3: concentrate on what you're doing. You should not be have
Speaker 3: to be emotional about anything. And he took there, he
Speaker 3: breathed a second, and he said, he said I get it,
Speaker 3: he said. You're the good he said, but you're a
Speaker 3: damn good one. He said, I'm gonna do it, really
Speaker 3: do the movie. Yep, he said, just give me a second.
Speaker 3: But what I did in that moment was I took
Speaker 3: the thunder out of the situation. And so so many times,
Speaker 3: like you said, John, we're trying to win the battles.
Speaker 3: We're over here trying to win the battle. Somebody said
Speaker 3: something about me on social media, somebody looked at me
Speaker 3: the wrong way, somebody just something that was disrespectful. You're
Speaker 3: trying to win a battle.
Speaker 2: Let me respond.
Speaker 3: I know exactly what I'm gonna say. I know how
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get my revenge. I'm gonna know what my
Speaker 3: retort is gonna be. You're so focused on winning the battle,
Speaker 3: and there's a war going on. Oh, business is a war.
Speaker 3: Business is macro, Business is big picture. We get too
Speaker 3: caught up into minute ship. Take the thunder out. Want somebody.
Speaker 3: Everybody's ready to tell you how you're wrong, and they're
Speaker 3: right every especially when you got to disagreement. Everybody's got
Speaker 3: there all this stuff. I can't wait till John comes
Speaker 3: in here. I'm ready. I'm ready for him. I got
Speaker 3: a whole list of things because John know he messed up,
Speaker 3: and I'm ready to do all this. I'm ready to
Speaker 3: tell him. And if John walks in and says, you
Speaker 3: know what, I apologize my part in this, because everybody
Speaker 3: has a part is never one way I'm part. I
Speaker 3: apologize because my part of this helped exacerbate the situation.
Speaker 3: I'm wrong, and you start off like that, they got
Speaker 3: this whole list of thing that was read and run down.
Speaker 3: Wait what you said? You said you were wrong? What?
Speaker 3: But wait a minute, I was waiting for you to
Speaker 3: I'm ready for you to argue with me, because I
Speaker 3: got retorts, I got stuff to come back with. Nope,
Speaker 3: I apologize. I apologize. How can we move forward? Take
Speaker 3: that thunder out? Take it out because you keep your
Speaker 3: eye on the bigger prize. I've learned that that has
Speaker 3: served me well multiple multiple times in Hollywood, and it
Speaker 3: will serve you right in whatever industry. Because we all
Speaker 3: fall victim to that moment where we get so hot,
Speaker 3: so angry, and focused on the battle, and we lose
Speaker 3: in the war.
Speaker 1: So I owe you an apology. I was focusing on
Speaker 1: the wrong part of this book. I was so thrown off,
Speaker 1: and I thought so provocative about the art of healthy
Speaker 1: arrogance and dreaming big that I thought that that was
Speaker 1: really the part that we need to unpack.
Speaker 2: And now I understand.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, who better than you?
Speaker 3: You? That's the subtitle who better? Again?
Speaker 1: This is what we tend to focus on. The noise
Speaker 1: I was healthy arrogance. No no, no no, that's a side
Speaker 1: show you to lead?
Speaker 3: Who better than you? To be a father?
Speaker 1: Who better than you?
Speaker 3: To be a mother? Who better than you? To be excellent?
Speaker 3: Who better you? Be? God's child? Who better you? Show up?
Speaker 2: And show out in the most positive way?
Speaker 1: So no talk about this, but he just in this example,
Speaker 1: and you guys need to rewind.
Speaker 3: This, show it, share, share it with your weekly girls
Speaker 3: meet and show it.
Speaker 1: You get your boys in the sidewalk and listen to
Speaker 1: this life lesson because what he just described is how
Speaker 1: I lived my life. Talk without being offensive, listen without
Speaker 1: being defensive, and always leave even your adversary with their
Speaker 1: dignity because if you don't, they'll spend the rest of
Speaker 1: their life working to make you miserable.
Speaker 3: It becomes personal. You got a over mess and not.
Speaker 1: In it, And that's essentially what he just told you
Speaker 1: in this story. He had every right to be offended.
Speaker 1: He is twenty five million. The line thirty million. The
Speaker 1: line is his name on the door. Everybody had an
Speaker 1: agreement in advance. They read the contract and it's like
Speaker 1: being married. You got to decide whether you want to
Speaker 1: be married or you want to be right. Those are
Speaker 1: two different things. And so the wisdom and maturity of
Speaker 1: who better than you? He's given you a life lesson.
Speaker 1: He's given you thirty years in business, forty something years
Speaker 1: on this planet. He now owns an island in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: He's an part owner in a professional football team. He's
Speaker 1: got nine NCP Image Awards, he's got all this success
Speaker 1: to his credit, billion dollars in ticket sales.
Speaker 3: But what he's telling you is the basic stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you do this, it's a cheat sheet for success,
Speaker 1: That's right. What So, in addition of I want them
Speaker 1: to go by the book, I do. But what do
Speaker 1: you want to leave this audience with? Will they had
Speaker 1: a chance now to get inside your heart and your
Speaker 1: head and your office life and your experiences for a minute.
Speaker 1: They've had an hour with you. Yeah, what's one thing?
Speaker 1: Is your favorite needs, your favorite nephew or the knucklehead
Speaker 1: nephew you've been trying to talk to for twenty years,
Speaker 1: wouldn't listen to you. They're leaving your house, they can't visit,
Speaker 1: they're leaving you. How they're walking away. You won't see
Speaker 1: them again, or at least for a long time. You
Speaker 1: want to leave them with a nugget that they can
Speaker 1: hold on to, that they can hopefully, in time become
Speaker 1: to appreciate. What's that thing or things that you'd like
Speaker 1: to leave the audience with. That's a Will Packer special.
Speaker 3: Remember that no one, no one on this planet is
Speaker 3: more deserving of success than you are. And once you
Speaker 3: realize that, and you own that in your heart and
Speaker 3: your soul, you will start to act accordingly. There no
Speaker 3: one on this planet more deserving of success than you.
Speaker 3: That's what I would leave them with.
Speaker 2: And I agree with that.
Speaker 1: And as a final thought, on a show that's about
Speaker 1: money and wealth yep we didn't talk about your net worth,
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about income, we didn't talk about what
Speaker 1: actors get paid. We don't get we didn't we didn't
Speaker 1: cover any financial stuff. But I believe we talked about
Speaker 1: wealth building from.
Speaker 3: Question the end, No question?
Speaker 2: So what I got to say? Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2: Or do you think that?
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 2: I don't focus on money.
Speaker 1: It comes by focusing on purpose, passion, executing, delivering, giving,
Speaker 1: keeping my word being that brand, showing out, showing up
Speaker 1: and showing out being excellent.
Speaker 3: The money, the investors, that it attracts capital. Yes, is
Speaker 3: that the way it right? Does that work? You have?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? Because everything we've talked about is wealth building.
Speaker 3: We get too focused as a community at large, we
Speaker 3: get too focused on trying to chase money. And I
Speaker 3: know this is money and wealth, but I want to
Speaker 3: focus on the wealth part. Yes, because the money will
Speaker 3: come everything we've talked about, these things that manifest themselves
Speaker 3: in ways that allow you to become more successful and
Speaker 3: live a more fulfilled life. That's wealth. I have been
Speaker 3: blessed beyond my dreams in terms of material success. What
Speaker 3: I'm very very happy and proud of and what sustains
Speaker 3: me is the wealth that I have that is inclusive
Speaker 3: of not just the material success, but also balancing that
Speaker 3: with my family, my mental health, and my well being.
Speaker 3: I'm a happy person. Listen, I get it. It's hard
Speaker 3: to be happy. When you're broken. It's hard to be
Speaker 3: happy when your stomach is drumping. I get it. I'm
Speaker 3: not somebody that says, no, no, I don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: Just be happy. No, don't worry, be happy. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that. What I'm saying is, when you're going out
Speaker 3: and you're realizing the value that you have within yourself,
Speaker 3: and you're acting according number one, place that value on
Speaker 3: yourself and don't give that power to anybody else. The
Speaker 3: wealth that you will accumulate successful people attract successful people.
Speaker 3: The wealth that you will accumulate will surprise even you
Speaker 3: because you will be out there building your brand and
Speaker 3: you will be presenting to the world just like them.
Speaker 3: John told you. The banks, right, they give them money
Speaker 3: to people who don't need it. Trust me. I know
Speaker 3: that is the truth, and that is that's just, that's
Speaker 3: what it is. I just I was telling I gotta
Speaker 3: I was telling my kids the other day because I
Speaker 3: have some really big retail sponsors, brands that send me
Speaker 3: stuff because they want me to wear it or they
Speaker 3: want me to put in movies and what have you.
Speaker 3: And they'll call me and be like, hey, you get
Speaker 3: any more shoes from so and so you got any
Speaker 3: more hoodies? I said, listen. They said to that, y'all
Speaker 3: stop trying to trying to leach off of my gifts
Speaker 3: that I'm getting. But I said, how ironic is it?
Speaker 3: Because I could buy any one of these things. There
Speaker 3: are people that can't buy them, but the people that
Speaker 3: get it for free are those that could. That is
Speaker 3: the point of it. The way that manifests itself in
Speaker 3: your life is the fact that you got to understand
Speaker 3: continue to work on being successful and other successful people
Speaker 3: will come. Money will come, and wealth will come. We
Speaker 3: have absolutely spent this last hour talking about wealth building
Speaker 3: because we talked about the traits and we talked about
Speaker 3: the skill set and the mentality that you have to
Speaker 3: have to be successful.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: That is literally what wealth building is.
Speaker 1: So if you see will lie on the street and
Speaker 1: you walk up to us, I got a script I
Speaker 1: gotta do and you're selling a product, you're transitional, You're
Speaker 1: going to turn us off. Yeah, if you come and
Speaker 1: you present yourself and we feel your authenticity, there you
Speaker 1: go and you know, selling a product, you're not trying
Speaker 1: to not You're trying to build a relationship and a
Speaker 1: rapport in forty five seconds, and you improve us. Forty
Speaker 1: five seconds may turn into four or five minutes, and
Speaker 1: four or five minutes my turn into here's my number
Speaker 1: or here's my email address, and then follow up and
Speaker 1: send a note. Don't ask for anything. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for your time, even if you even by the way,
Speaker 1: no one ever does this. You meet me in an airport, whatever,
Speaker 1: you meet him in the airport, just send a note it's
Speaker 1: really nice to meet you, a handwritten note, really nice
Speaker 1: to meet you. Honored, respect what your flow, appreciate you.
Speaker 1: You know your your wife. You know Heather Packer is beautiful.
Speaker 1: You know by behind every successful man is an exhausted woman.
Speaker 1: She's beautiful.
Speaker 3: All I.
Speaker 1: And I would love to have fifteen minutes with you
Speaker 1: at some point, just to listen, yep. And then three months,
Speaker 1: wait six months, and then say I'm coming to LA.
Speaker 1: I love to have fifteen minutes if you have time.
Speaker 1: There's no way he wouldn't give you fifteen minutes. There's
Speaker 1: no way I wouldn't give you.
Speaker 2: But you got to handle it the right way.
Speaker 1: That's building and making money. Getting that as getting that
Speaker 1: dollar is highly overrated. That's what we have sess with
Speaker 1: so he just gave you a master class in relationship
Speaker 1: capital and I'm gonna drop the mic. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: what Will won't say he's because he's got kids at
Speaker 1: home who are listening to this.
Speaker 2: The kids were like, give.
Speaker 3: Me that those Nike shoes.
Speaker 1: Give me so Shaq Shaq was recently said Jack's kids
Speaker 1: were like, hey, Dad, why are we working so hard?
Speaker 2: What we rich? Shack's like, no, no, we ain't rich.
Speaker 3: I'm rich. I'm rich. A. You better go to work,
Speaker 3: you better believe it.
Speaker 2: Get this book.
Speaker 1: Uh, I want you to go purchase who better than you?
Speaker 1: The art of healthy arrogance and dreaming big. Take a
Speaker 1: little bit of Will Packer wherever you go. It'll make
Speaker 1: you better.
Speaker 3: Thank you, my friend, my friend, and my brother. I
Speaker 3: appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Loving life.
Speaker 1: This is John O'Brien Money and Wealth with the great
Speaker 1: Will Packer. Go become your best version of yourself. It
Speaker 1: pays dividends.
Speaker 2: I'm out.
Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.