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,
Speaker 1: this is John O'Brien and this is the Money in
Speaker 1: Wealth podcast, coming to you every Thursday, dropping new episodes.
Speaker 1: Tell all your friends about it. Financial literacy is a mindset.
Speaker 1: It's not just about money, and my mother had the
Speaker 1: right mindset. This is an episode dedicated to my mother.
Speaker 1: Wanted to smith a bad sister. Grew up in the
Speaker 1: Deep South and very much like this bandage out of
Speaker 1: my hands, supporting my wrists, which I'm like an athlete
Speaker 1: of the brain, always work in those writing new books.
Speaker 1: So wore my muscles out here so recuperating. My mother
Speaker 1: just wore out her hustle. She wore out her dream,
Speaker 1: She wore out her life for her children. But you
Speaker 1: know Rainbold's only follow storms. You know that you cannot
Speaker 1: have rainbow without a storm first. And so she went
Speaker 1: through stuff in order to become someone just like you're
Speaker 1: going to do. And this is dedicated to single mothers
Speaker 1: everywhere who want to know you can make it. You
Speaker 1: can come up from nothing. My mother, it's a definition
Speaker 1: of legitimate hustle. Became a millionaire working just like you,
Speaker 1: many of you, an hourly job. Born in a small
Speaker 1: town in Alabama, moved to East Saint Louis with her
Speaker 1: sisters and her brother, and her dad died before she
Speaker 1: was five. Before there were social security, there was no
Speaker 1: social safety net as we call it today. So her
Speaker 1: mother had to make a choice, right, And the choice
Speaker 1: was do I send my kids everywhere like, break them up,
Speaker 1: break the family up. And because there was no welfare,
Speaker 1: there was no public assistance to take care of the family,
Speaker 1: there was no father at home anymore, right, or do
Speaker 1: we all find a way because we're better together to
Speaker 1: make this, to make this work. And so grandmother of
Speaker 1: Vester Murray decided that they were going to make it work.
Speaker 1: And nobody cares work harder. Everybody had to work. So
Speaker 1: they went to go work as domestics because they did
Speaker 1: not have back then, you know, options that we had today,
Speaker 1: and they did not have higher education. So they want
Speaker 1: to go work for white families in private homes. And
Speaker 1: my mother she made five dollars a day for the
Speaker 1: whole day, not an hour for the whole day. And
Speaker 1: when she come home from working, my grandmother, her mother
Speaker 1: would say, would you make the day baby, and my
Speaker 1: mother would say, I made five dollars, mom, and so
Speaker 1: Vestor my grandmother would say, would give me that five dollars,
Speaker 1: I'm going to the casino. Well, she didn't tell my
Speaker 1: mother that. She just went to the casino and she
Speaker 1: lost the money, their money. Now I'm about to give
Speaker 1: you a big definition here in financial literacy. One of
Speaker 1: these lessons is not what you make, is what you
Speaker 1: keep right. And if your outflow sees your inflow, then
Speaker 1: your overhead or be your downfall. And sometimes we save
Speaker 1: our worst behavior family for those we care the most about.
Speaker 1: Real talk. So just because somebody says they love you
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they know how to love. And there's an
Speaker 1: old Southern saying again, no matter how much I love you,
Speaker 1: if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
Speaker 1: my own ignorance. I'll repeat that, no matter how much
Speaker 1: I love you, my son or my daughter, if I
Speaker 1: don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance.
Speaker 1: I can only give you what I've got In the
Speaker 1: blind town of one eyed Man's King, if you don't
Speaker 1: know better, you can't do better. So my grandmother knew
Speaker 1: enough when my grandfather passed to not break the family
Speaker 1: up and send the kids hither and there and there
Speaker 1: around the country, and that's cool. But she did not
Speaker 1: know enough to encourage my mother and her sisters and
Speaker 1: brothers to go get higher education, which was really the
Speaker 1: way out back then. Today we're trying to educate you
Speaker 1: to you can go write a check, start a business.
Speaker 1: That's an option. Back then, it was just they thought
Speaker 1: cash a check and get a job. But they didn't
Speaker 1: think the exception of my uncle, by the way, Buddy
Speaker 1: Uncle Buddy, who did create his own business sanitation business,
Speaker 1: amongst others. But Germany speaking, the mindset was low frequency,
Speaker 1: let me just go work for somebody, and that I'll
Speaker 1: never make it out of this. So the only way
Speaker 1: to make it out was to get lucky, to gamble.
Speaker 1: So my grandmother took my mother's hard earn money and
Speaker 1: went to the casino and lost it all every day.
Speaker 1: So once my mother got win, that was what was
Speaker 1: going on. She didn't want to talk back to grandma,
Speaker 1: be disrespectful, but Grandma had short term memory, so luckily
Speaker 1: for my mother, Grandma's like, well what you make today?
Speaker 1: This is you know. A few weeks after and my
Speaker 1: mother's got the memo now of like, what's really going on?
Speaker 1: So my mother's like, well, I made two fifty two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents, give me that baby. So my
Speaker 1: mother gave her the two fifty and she saved two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents. She had made five dollars, just
Speaker 1: like she did before. But she now knew that that
Speaker 1: she had to help grandmother help herself because she she
Speaker 1: was financially illiterated and she didn't know any better, couldn't
Speaker 1: do any better. So my mother learned the value of
Speaker 1: savings at an early age. And I guess a survival mindset.
Speaker 1: And there's three mindset surviving mindset, a thriving mindset, and
Speaker 1: a winning mindset, And these three mindsets in my book
Speaker 1: Up from Nothing, by the way, So initially my mother
Speaker 1: had a surviving mindset, and she ultimately got to a
Speaker 1: thriving mindset, but part of her that surviving mindset never
Speaker 1: left my mother and the winning mindset, the builder mindset
Speaker 1: that she blessed that my parents were able to give
Speaker 1: me the optionality I guess to bless me with. When
Speaker 1: I said I guess, meaning they didn't give it to me.
Speaker 1: They gave me the platform, and I would and took
Speaker 1: it for myself because they didn't know how to build.
Speaker 1: That was not how they were built, It wasn't how
Speaker 1: they were oriented. My wife, Shacher would say that all
Speaker 1: behaviors learned behavior. I absolutely believe that. Right if you
Speaker 1: hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. Once again,
Speaker 1: Grandma loved everybody, but all she knew was what she knew,
Speaker 1: so all she could give was the ignorant She had
Speaker 1: the lack of knowledge in the area of financial literacy.
Speaker 1: So Mom decided she needed to save and protect that
Speaker 1: and not she had that information, because you know, ignorance
Speaker 1: was bliss in the household, so Mom gained a habit
Speaker 1: of savings. Mom did not value education, unfortunately, she did
Speaker 1: not see that as a way out for the family,
Speaker 1: and so nobody in the family went to college. In fact,
Speaker 1: most girls, and because there were girls, they are women. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they were live in a chauvinistic world even to this day,
Speaker 1: and back then, expectations were not high for women, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: and certainly not black women. Thank god, things have changed,
Speaker 1: and so most of my aunties and my uncle they
Speaker 1: didn't go to higher education and they were smart ladies.
Speaker 1: They just were not encouraged to finish high school. And
Speaker 1: my mother didn't finish high school. She worked, and that's
Speaker 1: when she went back to high school at age sixty
Speaker 1: two and marched in. I mean, this was amazing. I
Speaker 1: didn't know my mother was in school. She was going
Speaker 1: to work, and she was in school part time after work.
Speaker 1: I hadn't know it until one day I was asked,
Speaker 1: did I want to go to her graduation? And like
Speaker 1: graduation from what? Graduated from high school? And she marched
Speaker 1: with cap and gown on with eighteen year olds who
Speaker 1: were graduating in high school. This was when we were
Speaker 1: in California. I couldn't be more proud of my mother
Speaker 1: then and now, I mean, just an extraordinary woman. Do
Speaker 1: you remember you know how much courage and how much
Speaker 1: confidence and self belief and self esteem and individuality it
Speaker 1: takes to go back to high school and to finish,
Speaker 1: and to not be ashamed but be proud of marching
Speaker 1: with eighteen year olds as a sixty two year old.
Speaker 1: Do you meagine the ridicule and the cutting of the
Speaker 1: eyes that some people must have had about my mother
Speaker 1: when she was going through that process. She didn't care
Speaker 1: right there was an eagle surrounded by buzzes and turkeys.
Speaker 1: My mother was an amazing individual, and she graduated and
Speaker 1: I got to find that high school diploma and put
Speaker 1: it up on the wall. She graduated, and then at
Speaker 1: Boying Aircraft a mcdonnald Douglas, she would sometimes get laid
Speaker 1: off because contracts with the government would not get renewed,
Speaker 1: or there was some issue with the federal government having
Speaker 1: the budget not be approved or whatever, and so they
Speaker 1: would not fire my mother. They'd lay her off until
Speaker 1: new business came. At the aircraft manufacturing company that she
Speaker 1: worked at as a centric, she was a fabricator. She
Speaker 1: fabricated interiors of airplanes, which then led to a side
Speaker 1: hustle by the way of her making handicrafts which she
Speaker 1: made with her hand in a sewing machine or with
Speaker 1: needles and crocheting. Things get more low cost and high quality,
Speaker 1: and she would sell those handicrafts, not after work. She'd
Speaker 1: do it boldly at work at lunch on brakes, and
Speaker 1: then she'd make food and she'd sell that. And she
Speaker 1: would ride a bicycle around the plant in Long Beach
Speaker 1: McDonald DOA's aircraft and she would market her wares, and
Speaker 1: that's where I got, you know, some of my early
Speaker 1: hustle from is looking at my mother and she makes
Speaker 1: sure her nine to five financerr five to nine. She
Speaker 1: had a part time hustle for the entirety of her
Speaker 1: working life. And when that and the supervisors couldn't fire
Speaker 1: her because the supervisors were often buying product from her
Speaker 1: right so they could not they could not fire her.
Speaker 1: They had to tolerate and even support her because they
Speaker 1: were buying food and the handicraft. And my mother would
Speaker 1: would go in ap proachas terry cloth towels from the
Speaker 1: handicraft store, and she would turn those towels, you know,
Speaker 1: towels that we wash our bodies off with, our drying
Speaker 1: bodies off with when we come out of the shower
Speaker 1: or out of the bath. She create bathrobes out of
Speaker 1: that custom bathrobes made out of towels, and she had
Speaker 1: different designs and different approaches. In fact, it was so
Speaker 1: successful that Walmart is so odd that I'm being the
Speaker 1: CEO of Walmart. Are good friends today and I coach
Speaker 1: here financial literacy for all with him today at Operation Hope.
Speaker 1: But back in the day, my mother's products were so well,
Speaker 1: were so good that Walmart offered to purchase her products
Speaker 1: and put them in their stores. They wanted to put
Speaker 1: them in testament a Walmart store in I believe it
Speaker 1: was comped in our Long Beach. My mother said that
Speaker 1: one financial literacy mistake she made was they offered her
Speaker 1: one percent of sales, and she said, that's ridiculous. Why
Speaker 1: would I make anything for one percent? And she really
Speaker 1: today that she passed up a gold mine because one
Speaker 1: percent of whatever sales might have been at what we
Speaker 1: now know to be or what was even then Walmart,
Speaker 1: would have been a pretty big number. She learned then
Speaker 1: that she'd rather have ten percent of something than one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of nothing. But that was a lesson she
Speaker 1: learned later in life. So when she got laid off
Speaker 1: at McDonald's Aircraft and couldn't get the it wasn't getting
Speaker 1: an hourly wage, and couldn't then have her side hustle there,
Speaker 1: she brought her side hustle home. But she also didn't
Speaker 1: want to go on welfare, no different than when she
Speaker 1: was a child and there was no SOI security, It
Speaker 1: was no welfare, whether welfare. They barely didn't want to
Speaker 1: go on it. State assistance. Her grandmother didn't want to
Speaker 1: go on it, and she always wanted to do for herself.
Speaker 1: He's self reliant. The James Brown version of affirmative action
Speaker 1: opened the door. I'll get it my dangself, right, And
Speaker 1: so she would just go find the job in wherever
Speaker 1: I was and irritate the heck out of me. So
Speaker 1: I was at, of course school, I was at Colin
Speaker 1: Peakelly Elementary School, El Segondo. It was actually El Segondo,
Speaker 1: I believe, and it was renamed Colin Peakelly Elementary School,
Speaker 1: if I got that correct. In Conflin, California, and she had
Speaker 1: time on her hands. So she went and befriended the principal,
Speaker 1: a low relationship. Capital became friends with the principal, and
Speaker 1: initially she became the janitor. Yes, my dignified mother, who
Speaker 1: worked as a as a trained seamstress at fabricating interiors
Speaker 1: of commercial airplanes at a major airplane manufacturer when laid off,
Speaker 1: went and became a janitor at my elementary school so
Speaker 1: she could keep an eye on me. Of course, it
Speaker 1: drove me nuts the lines. I gonna want it with
Speaker 1: my mother around me all day and all night. But
Speaker 1: my mother was in the fight. She's like, I'm in
Speaker 1: the fight to say my kid's life. That's just there's no,
Speaker 1: that's not negotiable. She was all in, and so it
Speaker 1: didn't matter what I wanted. In fact, that's where I
Speaker 1: learned that I tell parents today, you should whether your
Speaker 1: kids respect you and learn to like you, then like
Speaker 1: you and never respect you. My mother wanted me to
Speaker 1: like her, but it didn't matter right. She was like,
Speaker 1: you're going to respect me. And so she was a
Speaker 1: janitor and that job ran its course. She was called
Speaker 1: back to mc donalds Aircraft as a seamstress, so another contract.
Speaker 1: Then she's relaid off again and she became a security
Speaker 1: guard at my school. I think she was three different
Speaker 1: jobs she took at my school to stay close to me.
Speaker 1: And I had many problems growing up, but self esteem
Speaker 1: was not one of them. I learned early on there's
Speaker 1: a lot of love, you know, in the word no.
Speaker 1: My mother would tell me no when it was appropriate,
Speaker 1: but she also made sure I had high self esteem,
Speaker 1: so I now know. Also there's a difference between being
Speaker 1: broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor
Speaker 1: as a disabling frame of mind. A depressied edition of
Speaker 1: your spirit and you must vow never ever ever to
Speaker 1: be poor again. I still use this quote, that operation Hope,
Speaker 1: and it resonates with people. It probably resonates with you
Speaker 1: as you're listening to this now. It's so common sense.
Speaker 1: Operation Shope is a radical movement of common sense. But
Speaker 1: I got that common sense from my mother. Because common
Speaker 1: sense is not so common, it has to be taught.
Speaker 1: And so she taught me to, you know, love myself,
Speaker 1: and that became the real wealth we had because we
Speaker 1: didn't have financial resources, so we had to have inner resources, right.
Speaker 1: And I went to go on to sell mail order
Speaker 1: Stacey Adams shoes and mail order jewelry and things like
Speaker 1: that to my teachers and the principal at school in
Speaker 1: part because of that self esteem and confidence that my
Speaker 1: mother generated in me, and through her the relationship capital
Speaker 1: I had with the personnel of the school, and I
Speaker 1: leveraged that to get paid right. And I thank my
Speaker 1: mother for that. I mean, there's so many other lessons
Speaker 1: I got. I remember, Uh, there was a law pass
Speaker 1: where you couldn't you couldn't beat your kids, and you
Speaker 1: could spank your kids, but you couldn't beat them. And
Speaker 1: child a piece of course. Uh, but it was a
Speaker 1: broadly defined rule. And you know, teachers could spank you
Speaker 1: with a ruler back in my day, and I think
Speaker 1: they got out of law as well. So I came
Speaker 1: home one day and I'd done something wrong and my
Speaker 1: mother wanted to spain me. She wanted to go get
Speaker 1: a switch you off the branch from the tree in
Speaker 1: the back. I'm like, oh, no, you can't spank me.
Speaker 1: That day is over, lost change. I'm free. And my
Speaker 1: mother's like, oh you're free, right, I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: spank you. No, no, no, you go to jail. I'll
Speaker 1: call the police, argle my mother. My mother said, okay,
Speaker 1: that's cool. Tell you what. Here's the phone I want
Speaker 1: you to call. Pick up the phone down. I want
Speaker 1: you to call the folks with the red light on
Speaker 1: me the police and call the folks then with the
Speaker 1: blue light for you. That's the more. Because I brought
Speaker 1: you in this world, I damn sure can take you out. Right.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I respected my mother, an I was afraid.
Speaker 1: I was slightly afraid of her right. And it was
Speaker 1: important because in my neighborhood, in the hood or d
Speaker 1: hood d I d a hyphen h O d The
Speaker 1: street behind me was so dangerous that if you went
Speaker 1: on that street, you may not make it back. Like
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, it wasn't you know, getting home, going to
Speaker 1: school and getting home was not a foregone conclusion. Like
Speaker 1: you you might get murdered. You certainly could have got jumped.
Speaker 1: And I was jumped several times so my mother. And
Speaker 1: my mother wasn't wasn't at home during the day, she
Speaker 1: was at work, so I had to fear her, and
Speaker 1: I did. I remember one day my mother was gonna
Speaker 1: expect me again, and I said, I'm gonna call my daddy.
Speaker 1: And they had divorced, of course, and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna call your daddy, and she got a switch
Speaker 1: from the back. She's like, no, this was a built.
Speaker 1: Actually he ain't every word with a lick or from
Speaker 1: the built. He ain't paid child support in all these years.
Speaker 1: You want to. I mean, she she's made me up
Speaker 1: one side and down the other. I never made that
Speaker 1: mistake again. Uh. It was actually good discipline. I mean
Speaker 1: we today you have too many people raising their daughters
Speaker 1: and loving their sons, right you you got to you
Speaker 1: gotta raise a young black man differently and he needs love,
Speaker 1: but he needs discipline straight up. He needs me to
Speaker 1: know what the boundaries are, and he needs to know
Speaker 1: the word no, and that discipline may need may have
Speaker 1: an exclamation mark in an underline next to it. And
Speaker 1: I needed everything my mom and dad gave me. I
Speaker 1: am who I am because of what they put into me.
Speaker 1: But there's too many UH parents today who want to
Speaker 1: be the best friend of their children, and the children
Speaker 1: are buck wile, they're crazy off the chain. They have
Speaker 1: no discipline, no respect. And if I don't like me,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like you. If I don't respect me,
Speaker 1: don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me,
Speaker 1: I don't have a clue how I love you. And
Speaker 1: if I don't have a purpose of my life, I'll
Speaker 1: make your life a living hell. My mother sold all
Speaker 1: of that. With all these life lessons, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: pour it into you. Now. Let's fast forward. My mother
Speaker 1: married a man who abused her, and the number of
Speaker 1: calls are divorced by the way. It's money. Know of
Speaker 1: the reason why I police respond to calls and the
Speaker 1: household is domestic abuse, and then number one calls her
Speaker 1: domestic abuse. It's money. Number one reason for heart attacks,
Speaker 1: says you know, American heart association is stress. Number one
Speaker 1: reason for stress. It's money. So my mother married the
Speaker 1: this man. They had two children, my brother and my sister. Together,
Speaker 1: they were stressed about money. Their alphloks, either their inflows
Speaker 1: or their overheall was bound to be their downfall. And
Speaker 1: he took it out of my mother. And so domestic
Speaker 1: abuse going on in the household, and he hit her
Speaker 1: and tried to humiliate her, and she kept saving a
Speaker 1: little bit on the side for herself and trying to
Speaker 1: figure ot how she gonna get out of that situation. Ladies,
Speaker 1: in any of this sound familiar, by the way, why
Speaker 1: does a woman stay with an abuse of me? All right?
Speaker 1: I mean just real talk, like why is a woman
Speaker 1: on a stripper pole at three in the morning with
Speaker 1: some three hundred pound guy throwing cash at her because
Speaker 1: she likes it? Because she likes it because she's attracted
Speaker 1: to this dude. Of course not it's economics. It's money, right,
Speaker 1: So just real talk here. Financial literacy and the need
Speaker 1: for it is everywhere. It is. It's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: the only true freedom is financial freedom. And I want
Speaker 1: you to be free. My mother, God rest her soul,
Speaker 1: who passed on the glory September tenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So this episode is dedicated to her. She wanted you
Speaker 1: to be free. Her credit score was eight fifty when
Speaker 1: she was still in the workforce, and it was over
Speaker 1: seven hundred after she retired several years later. She wasn't
Speaker 1: doing financial transactions anymore, but she understood that she wasn't black,
Speaker 1: she was green, economic right, she was free. She could
Speaker 1: do what she wanted. When she put her sub security
Speaker 1: number in the computer whenever she was applying for the
Speaker 1: computer to look at it and see what color she was,
Speaker 1: the computer realized that her credit score was extraordinary, outstanding
Speaker 1: and above average and just said, yes, whatever it is
Speaker 1: she wanted. So she ever, later in her life, she
Speaker 1: got credit access to whatever she wanted because she knew
Speaker 1: better and could do better, unlike grandmother. Her mother back
Speaker 1: to the story, So, I want you to understand that
Speaker 1: rainbows only follow storms, which understand that you can't grow
Speaker 1: except through legitimate suffering. Should understand that people don't change
Speaker 1: in good times. Why would you, right, you only change
Speaker 1: in bad times. And so my mother had bad times.
Speaker 1: She realized that this was not working for her, this
Speaker 1: being the situation with her mother, even though her mother
Speaker 1: loved her. Right, And there'll be people who love you,
Speaker 1: who say they love you, who don't know how to
Speaker 1: love you, don't know how to live a successful life,
Speaker 1: and you're going to need to be bilingual love them
Speaker 1: and do something else, do something different to argue with
Speaker 1: the fool cruiser are too So I want you getting
Speaker 1: in stupid arguments with people because they say they love you.
Speaker 1: I want you to accept what they have to give
Speaker 1: that's beneficial to you, and then make a move that's
Speaker 1: different for your life and the situations that require a
Speaker 1: different set of choices and frankly intellect right, a software upgrade.
Speaker 1: My mother was able to get this software upgrade initially
Speaker 1: on her own, and then she was with again my
Speaker 1: brothers sister's father. I won't mention his name because it's
Speaker 1: not positive what I'm saying here, and I wanted to.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to jam up his legacy, but I
Speaker 1: didn't like to beat my mother. Hello. So my mother
Speaker 1: had one last insult too many, and she poured some
Speaker 1: hot coffee on home boy. He was sleeping and had
Speaker 1: demanded some coffee, and so I got some coffee for you,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm gonna kill you, you know, And so
Speaker 1: she knew she had to go, and she prayed to God,
Speaker 1: you know, she said, look, Lord, please just get me,
Speaker 1: just get me out of here with my children. And
Speaker 1: she had premonition from God. She told me that God
Speaker 1: told her that you'll be delivered two thousand miles from here.
Speaker 1: And my father, the guy who became my father, Johnny Smith,
Speaker 1: came through town east Saint Louis and saw a mother
Speaker 1: and went crazy, just fell and initially in loss with
Speaker 1: her and then in love with her and was like
Speaker 1: within a day, like how do I marry you? And
Speaker 1: she said, well, you got to take me and my
Speaker 1: kids if before we can have any kind of conversation.
Speaker 1: And he said that's great. I live in California. Well
Speaker 1: that's about two thousand miles right, almost precisely for where
Speaker 1: my mother was. So my mother's like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: God speaking. And so she got out of town before Dave,
Speaker 1: I say that's his name, my brother and sister's father,
Speaker 1: day before he could find her and do harm to
Speaker 1: her self preservation. So she had to go, right, don't
Speaker 1: let the perfect become the death of the good, like
Speaker 1: this was good enough at the stars a line, and
Speaker 1: she was out. My father was in town because he
Speaker 1: was back in the day, if you were successful and prosperous.
Speaker 1: My dad owned a construction of a senior contracting business.
Speaker 1: I'll get into his story in a separate podcast episode
Speaker 1: Johnny Smith. But he was driving his car to go
Speaker 1: buy a new car in Detroit, Michigan, and he drove
Speaker 1: across the country and was seeing some relatives or some
Speaker 1: friends in Saint Louis, and he was going to the
Speaker 1: d dealership the manufactured by a cart. That's what they
Speaker 1: did back in the day. I guess the profile, and
Speaker 1: so versus. Continuing on to Detroit, he met my mother,
Speaker 1: lost his mind. They turned around, packed up all the clothes,
Speaker 1: packed up my brother and my sister, and went back
Speaker 1: to California. And I was born February sixth, nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. And they
Speaker 1: ultimately bought a home on Santa Barbara Boulevard now it's
Speaker 1: called Martin Luther King Boulevard and started to build a life.
Speaker 1: And I was the youngest of three children, and I
Speaker 1: remember up and they had done a great job. They built,
Speaker 1: they bought a home together. Only forty one to forty
Speaker 1: five percent of black folks own a home today, by
Speaker 1: the way, compared to seventy five percent of our white counterparts.
Speaker 1: Was the number one way you build wealth in America
Speaker 1: home ownership. Hello, So they had built a home, started
Speaker 1: building some wealth. They had built sor I purchased an
Speaker 1: eight unit apartment building across the street, I believe it was,
Speaker 1: and they were at some point, and by maybe getting
Speaker 1: my math, I think making the chronology here wrong. I
Speaker 1: think they bought the eight unit apartment building. First lived
Speaker 1: in one unit rented to out that covered the mortgage
Speaker 1: payment that was subped three hundred dollars a month. Yes,
Speaker 1: they built. They bought it for eighteen thousand dollars. For
Speaker 1: anybody who think in real estate, it's not magical that
Speaker 1: private building's worth several million dollars today almost the last
Speaker 1: time I checked, it was six million dollars. That's that
Speaker 1: apartment building is worth. We bought it for eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and the rest of the unit rent so it
Speaker 1: was eight units. So we lived in one unit rented
Speaker 1: out to to cover the mortgage payment. The rest of
Speaker 1: the units, the five units that were left for profit,
Speaker 1: and they used that profit, saved that extra money to
Speaker 1: then put a down payment on their home, the home
Speaker 1: I'm talking about on Santa Barbara Boulevard. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we lost the apartment building. I'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. And I say we lost because that's generational
Speaker 1: wealth for our family. It wasn't just my mom and
Speaker 1: my dad. It wasn't just my dad. They my dad
Speaker 1: didn't realize that they had to be better together, a
Speaker 1: pastor Andrew Young, my dad was a great hustler, by
Speaker 1: the way, a great hustler. But there's a difference between
Speaker 1: making money and building wealth. At the end of that.
Speaker 1: In a separate podcast, we're really focused on that. But
Speaker 1: like a lot of black strivers, we think that making
Speaker 1: that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting that buck,
Speaker 1: getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right. You
Speaker 1: can win the battle and lose the war. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what my mother or my father did and wouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to my mother. So but here's the positive part.
Speaker 1: They were smart enough to buy that apartment building for
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand dollars and they did nothing else but buy
Speaker 1: that and just hold it. The whole family would be
Speaker 1: set today, more set than ultimately we ended up being
Speaker 1: with my mother by at least six times more set
Speaker 1: that my mother ended up being technically a millionaire when
Speaker 1: she passed on, But that one apartment building again would
Speaker 1: be worth six million dollars today. We only own eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars when we purchased it, when they purchased it.
Speaker 1: And when you buy a piece of real estate, you
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the depreciation at tax benefits. You
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the appreciation the equity, and you
Speaker 1: write off the most of the mortgage payments against your income.
Speaker 1: So it was really win win win anyway. So we
Speaker 1: moved from the apartment building, owned it, then woved, got
Speaker 1: a house, great good job. Then we bought a gas
Speaker 1: station at I believe it's at Norman Dy and Vernon
Speaker 1: South East corner. For those who know Los Angeles geography,
Speaker 1: you know that that gas station is still there today.
Speaker 1: Last time I was in LA it was still there
Speaker 1: and functioning. We owned that gas station. We own a
Speaker 1: cement contracting business. We owned a little nursery business taken
Speaker 1: care of knucklehead kids like me. Before and after school,
Speaker 1: and dad ought really argued over money because my dad
Speaker 1: can make it but couldn't keep as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and he was a great hustler, but he was not
Speaker 1: financially literate. And Basil Young says the men and women
Speaker 1: failed for three reasons arrogainst pride, and greed. My dad
Speaker 1: was not greedy, but he was full of pride and
Speaker 1: slightly arrogant. And he wouldn't ask my mother for advice.
Speaker 1: And only in a relationship do I think that the
Speaker 1: math should not work? Like I love math, I quote
Speaker 1: my friend Melody Hobson. I love math because it doesn't
Speaker 1: have an opinion right, But only in a relationship should
Speaker 1: the math not work two plus two if it doesn't
Speaker 1: equal four, sorry equals six, eight or ten meaning more
Speaker 1: than four? What are you doing right? You can do
Speaker 1: better all by yourself. If you're not better together, what
Speaker 1: are you doing right? So Dad and Mom had the
Speaker 1: building blocks right, but they didn't have the strategy right.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the mindset right. They still had a
Speaker 1: surviving mindset. They didn't together move to a thriving mindset. Again,
Speaker 1: my mother finally got to thriving mindset. We're not there yet,
Speaker 1: And unfortunately they thought they were builders, but they still
Speaker 1: had a surviving, hustling mindset and approach, and so ended
Speaker 1: up winning the battle and losing the war. Crossing bridges
Speaker 1: ahead of time, picking up a stepping over a dollar
Speaker 1: to pick up a dime. What do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: They argued over money. Dad wouldn't listen to mother. He
Speaker 1: would bid jobs of the scene seement contractor. He wanted
Speaker 1: to win the bid. I respect the hustle, but again
Speaker 1: not financially literate. So the job was the last contract
Speaker 1: to bid with the client for one thousand dollars. My
Speaker 1: dad would go in and bid at nine hundred. Well,
Speaker 1: the materials might be nine to fifty. My dad didn't
Speaker 1: think about that. He thought the cash flow is profit wrong.
Speaker 1: So the more money he made the broker we got.
Speaker 1: He made a dollar and spend a dollar fifty and
Speaker 1: we lost everything. We lost the gas station, we lost
Speaker 1: the apartment building, we lost our home, and on the
Speaker 1: verge of losing our home. My mother again, she was
Speaker 1: a master at savings, remember this going back to the
Speaker 1: Grandma story. And she would put the little sea corns
Speaker 1: to the side, and then ladies and gentlemen, get married.
Speaker 1: I want you to trust each other. I want you
Speaker 1: to be in each other's lives. I want you to
Speaker 1: all that. But understand that you're meeting a business partner
Speaker 1: here and not just the mate. And when you go
Speaker 1: to the club and you see the dude, oh he's handsome. Lady, guys,
Speaker 1: you see the lady, Oh she's fine. Don't just ask
Speaker 1: their name, ask their credit score. Right, And I'm joking,
Speaker 1: but I'm serious, right, because this is a business partner
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. So you want to
Speaker 1: have a joint account, right, and you want to have
Speaker 1: a separate account to make sure that you know, if
Speaker 1: you find out this person is actually not financially literate,
Speaker 1: they tear their own reery and they're not tearing yours,
Speaker 1: the collective of yours. At the same time, you need
Speaker 1: to have the backup plan for your family. So my
Speaker 1: mother had a separate little account that she had set up,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't hiding from my father. My father knew
Speaker 1: it was there, and she had saved one thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money back then. This is
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. Now, this was nineteen seventy. I was four,
Speaker 1: four or five years old, between three and five years old,
Speaker 1: I get the math right, So sometime between sixty I
Speaker 1: was born in sixty six, sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy
Speaker 1: seventy one, that time period, anyway, four thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: lot of money. My mother had saved this four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to send my brother to a college of his
Speaker 1: choice because she wanted him to move from a surviving
Speaker 1: mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, a thriving mindset, sost
Speaker 1: surviving mindset is free. Your first reconstruction, free slavery. Out
Speaker 1: of slavery, you're free. Second reconstruction, civil rights movement, getting
Speaker 1: access to jobs, access to careers, access to education, access
Speaker 1: to the polling booth, access to you know, public facilities,
Speaker 1: restrooms of your choice, all that stuff being able to
Speaker 1: have access. Of course, third reconstruction, which is we're in today.
Speaker 1: That operation shop is helping the lead as a movie,
Speaker 1: from the streets to the suites, from civil rights to
Speaker 1: silver rights. Right, the third reconstruction. The color's not black
Speaker 1: or white, it's green. It's not red or blue, it's green.
Speaker 1: It's economicist opportunity for all. It's about writing checks. Not
Speaker 1: just cashing them. So we're in the second reconstruction. Now
Speaker 1: we're in the sixties and the seventies, and my mother
Speaker 1: knew that for my brother to do better, he needed
Speaker 1: a higher education. And you know better, you do better.
Speaker 1: And to give you a little bit of inspiration, I
Speaker 1: had a ged degree, which Chris Rock calls a good
Speaker 1: enough diploma. Now I've got honorary doctor degrees from several
Speaker 1: universities and colleges, and I'm on the bord of Clark
Speaker 1: Atland University, and most people who work for me have
Speaker 1: a college degree. I think actually everybody w works for
Speaker 1: me as a college degree advanced degree. So I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with education. Around my library right now, it's nothing but books.
Speaker 1: I love making smart sexy. Right I think we'll be
Speaker 1: making dom sex even way too long. We've dumbed down
Speaker 1: and celebrated it, and now we got to make smart
Speaker 1: sexy again. So my brother was set to go to
Speaker 1: a college of his choice to be whoever he wanted.
Speaker 1: My father got to the bank first and took that
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars. Unfortunately, my mother had him as a
Speaker 1: signer on the account. So you might want to have
Speaker 1: until you guys, in bed until you embed yourself into
Speaker 1: you know, going through what about me to about week.
Speaker 1: It may take up a minute for you guys to
Speaker 1: come together as one and you trust each other, not
Speaker 1: just romantically, but about money and business decisions, and you're
Speaker 1: on the same accord. You might want to have an
Speaker 1: account just your own name on it, and then he
Speaker 1: has an account, or she has an account with their
Speaker 1: name on it, and then you have a joint account
Speaker 1: until things evolve. So I'll do a whole podcast on marriage,
Speaker 1: so don't don't in the history of marriage and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, So don't worry about that. So he got
Speaker 1: the money and wasted it on some hair brain idea.
Speaker 1: He had to get a bag, my dad did, and
Speaker 1: of course he lost it like my grandmother lost it,
Speaker 1: because they were both financially literate, good people, but financially literate,
Speaker 1: and my brother could not go to a college of
Speaker 1: his choice, and it broke my mother's heart and the
Speaker 1: first thing she was my time. My brother ended up
Speaker 1: going to the Navy, and he went to the Navy
Speaker 1: because he could get a four year education to be
Speaker 1: signed up for military service. He thought he signed over
Speaker 1: for four years. Of course, it's like they know the
Speaker 1: psychology in the military. Once you're there, you probably stayed there.
Speaker 1: You had a good experience. So he signed her for
Speaker 1: four years, resigned up, resigned up, and had a career
Speaker 1: of the Navy, became a noncommissioned officer, a great career
Speaker 1: in intelligence there, and ended up retiring to Hawaii, marry
Speaker 1: somebody who lives in Hawaii. It works for retired from
Speaker 1: the Navy, works for the Navy as a private contractor
Speaker 1: with his family. And it's a beautiful story, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by that
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars moment where he did not have self determination. Right,
Speaker 1: But what would his life be? How to be different
Speaker 1: if he had gone to college of a choice and
Speaker 1: become a dentist or a doctor, or a banker or
Speaker 1: a business person or an engineer or whatever. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: what does a matter what he was? But it could
Speaker 1: have been his choice and he and he just didn't
Speaker 1: do that. And as a result of that, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I just told you the story. Right, he's a great,
Speaker 1: great life, but it wasn't his choice. And that was enough.
Speaker 1: My mother had had enough and my mother said him
Speaker 1: out and uh and that became the fight of all
Speaker 1: fights and my dad they had domestic abuse came to blows.
Speaker 1: They had to call the police to get my mother,
Speaker 1: my dad off, my off, my mother beating her up,
Speaker 1: and she put off a pump, a three inch pump
Speaker 1: popped him on the head. Here didn't grow on the
Speaker 1: top of his head until his last dying days from
Speaker 1: that pop. So he learned how to do that with
Speaker 1: my mother again. But uh, she she was out, you
Speaker 1: know that she left. We left with the shirt or
Speaker 1: her back and her kids and we went to go
Speaker 1: to say with somebody, she said, with my uncle O
Speaker 1: c h. Was really her girlfriend and her boyfriend whose
Speaker 1: name was OC. But it order made me feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: make the kids feel comfortable, she said. It was that
Speaker 1: that was my uncle and I was playing on the
Speaker 1: and she was staying there with her girlfriend and her
Speaker 1: boyfriend to save money for her by her first house
Speaker 1: on her own. Again, here's that same lesson again, the basics,
Speaker 1: you know, spending lesson you make, putting a little side
Speaker 1: for the future. So she's working as a seatrist now
Speaker 1: in McDonald bill's aircraft which she later became boeing and
Speaker 1: making you know, equivalent of today, of fifteen dollars eighteen
Speaker 1: dollars an hour. And she worked work, work safe, safe, save.
Speaker 1: And while she was doing that, I built a relationship
Speaker 1: with the guy oc who again thought was my uncle.
Speaker 1: And I I was playing on the porch one day
Speaker 1: and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I
Speaker 1: was choking, and he cleared. He cleared my throat, you know,
Speaker 1: he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I
Speaker 1: adored this guy right, and he got murdered in front
Speaker 1: of me in order to take care of his family
Speaker 1: and all and and and are staying with him. He
Speaker 1: didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I can't
Speaker 1: afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about this again bas Young's quote. Men and when failed
Speaker 1: for three reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. He could have
Speaker 1: just had a conversation with us. My mother would have
Speaker 1: contributed some money. But he decided he was going to
Speaker 1: go to work his legit job. Then he was going
Speaker 1: to go out again and he was going to sell
Speaker 1: drugs part time. And it was marijuana was in the
Speaker 1: wrong neighborhood, and those guys shitted very seriously. They followed
Speaker 1: him home. They said, you're in the wrong territory, and
Speaker 1: they drove. They dragged him. They hit him with a
Speaker 1: truck and dragged him. Was on a bicycle. H And
Speaker 1: that was right in front of me, in front of
Speaker 1: the house. And I think they did it because I
Speaker 1: could see him sent a message and they killed him
Speaker 1: right in front of me. And I still had an
Speaker 1: I mention in my head. So I saw my first
Speaker 1: death and that was about money. So the first death
Speaker 1: was the death of our of our parents' net worth,
Speaker 1: family structure, generational well, second first murder was oc getting
Speaker 1: murdered in front of me. All this is about money.
Speaker 1: And my best friend George got murdered over money selling
Speaker 1: drugs with the next door neighbor, Tweet, who we moved into.
Speaker 1: My mother bought our first home one five five oh
Speaker 1: two South Freeley in Compton, California, and she bought that house. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I became friends with George, who was real smarter
Speaker 1: than me, by the way, so intellect alone is not enough.
Speaker 1: But George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset and
Speaker 1: got murdered hanging out with tweet. So watch who you
Speaker 1: hang around again. You hang around nine broke people, you'll
Speaker 1: be the tenth. Whoever you hang around, whatever you see
Speaker 1: is who you will be. And so I could go
Speaker 1: on and on and on about my mother. But the
Speaker 1: story here is that she she bought that house, we
Speaker 1: lived in it. It was the beginning of her generational wealth.
Speaker 1: She built equity, and then she sold that house, bought
Speaker 1: another house, sold that house, she used the equity to
Speaker 1: buy another house. She did that seven times, and she
Speaker 1: ended up with a net worth of a million dollars.
Speaker 1: And I know that because she gave some money to
Speaker 1: my sister and my brother to buy a home a
Speaker 1: couple of times. And of course i'm the manager of
Speaker 1: her estate trusty Veru State, because she had a will.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to have a will when she passed
Speaker 1: on the glory. So hopefully she's an inspiration to you.
Speaker 1: She lives on today, she has a fund in her name,
Speaker 1: her legacy lives and hopefully now you know that even
Speaker 1: if you're a single parent, you can still make it.
Speaker 1: You can work an hourly job and build a net
Speaker 1: worth of a million dollars and live a life of
Speaker 1: dignity and self reliance. You can be free. It is possible.
Speaker 1: The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom
Speaker 1: can be taken away from you. But my mother's story
Speaker 1: is a very simple one. She took a message from
Speaker 1: her grandmother. She loved it, but she did My grandmother
Speaker 1: didn't know, couldn't do better, and she used that lesson
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life to take an hourly
Speaker 1: income and turn it into generational wealth. And she passed
Speaker 1: it on to her kids, or her kids would have
Speaker 1: optionality and choice. And now the three of us are
Speaker 1: living our truth because my mother lived her life not
Speaker 1: only for herself, not just for me, but for week.
Speaker 1: This is John O'Brien and this is how. Now you
Speaker 1: make some money, but you build some wealth and you
Speaker 1: have that dignity inside of you that no one can
Speaker 1: take from you. All right, let's go Money and Wealth
Speaker 1: with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect
Speaker 1: Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite show.