WEBVTT - John's Mom: The Story of Juanita Smith 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.520 Welcome The Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:15.920 of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey, 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:18.360 this is John O'Brien and this is the Money in 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:22.360 Wealth podcast, coming to you every Thursday, dropping new episodes. 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:27.680 Tell all your friends about it. Financial literacy is a mindset. 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:29.960 It's not just about money, and my mother had the 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.159 right mindset. This is an episode dedicated to my mother. 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.559 Wanted to smith a bad sister. Grew up in the 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:42.320 Deep South and very much like this bandage out of 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.040 my hands, supporting my wrists, which I'm like an athlete 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.680 of the brain, always work in those writing new books. 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:51.040 So wore my muscles out here so recuperating. My mother 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:53.800 just wore out her hustle. She wore out her dream, 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.960 She wore out her life for her children. But you 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.800 know Rainbold's only follow storms. You know that you cannot 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.800 have rainbow without a storm first. And so she went 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:06.480 through stuff in order to become someone just like you're 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:11.319 going to do. And this is dedicated to single mothers 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.039 everywhere who want to know you can make it. You 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:18.640 can come up from nothing. My mother, it's a definition 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:23.760 of legitimate hustle. Became a millionaire working just like you, 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.520 many of you, an hourly job. Born in a small 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:34.520 town in Alabama, moved to East Saint Louis with her 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:40.280 sisters and her brother, and her dad died before she 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.959 was five. Before there were social security, there was no 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.760 social safety net as we call it today. So her 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.440 mother had to make a choice, right, And the choice 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:54.640 was do I send my kids everywhere like, break them up, 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.000 break the family up. And because there was no welfare, 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.320 there was no public assistance to take care of the family, 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:03.120 there was no father at home anymore, right, or do 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.800 we all find a way because we're better together to 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:12.160 make this, to make this work. And so grandmother of 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.560 Vester Murray decided that they were going to make it work. 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:21.280 And nobody cares work harder. Everybody had to work. So 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.960 they went to go work as domestics because they did 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.919 not have back then, you know, options that we had today, 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.600 and they did not have higher education. So they want 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:34.920 to go work for white families in private homes. And 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:40.720 my mother she made five dollars a day for the 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:45.520 whole day, not an hour for the whole day. And 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:49.280 when she come home from working, my grandmother, her mother 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:51.760 would say, would you make the day baby, and my 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.200 mother would say, I made five dollars, mom, and so 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.040 Vestor my grandmother would say, would give me that five dollars, 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.280 I'm going to the casino. Well, she didn't tell my 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:05.120 mother that. She just went to the casino and she 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.359 lost the money, their money. Now I'm about to give 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:13.440 you a big definition here in financial literacy. One of 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:15.440 these lessons is not what you make, is what you 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:20.040 keep right. And if your outflow sees your inflow, then 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.919 your overhead or be your downfall. And sometimes we save 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:28.359 our worst behavior family for those we care the most about. 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.639 Real talk. So just because somebody says they love you 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:37.160 doesn't mean they know how to love. And there's an 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.520 old Southern saying again, no matter how much I love you, 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:43.400 if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.280 my own ignorance. I'll repeat that, no matter how much 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.480 I love you, my son or my daughter, if I 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:53.600 don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:55.240 I can only give you what I've got In the 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:57.600 blind town of one eyed Man's King, if you don't 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.440 know better, you can't do better. So my grandmother knew 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:06.640 enough when my grandfather passed to not break the family 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:10.280 up and send the kids hither and there and there 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:12.680 around the country, and that's cool. But she did not 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:17.800 know enough to encourage my mother and her sisters and 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:19.919 brothers to go get higher education, which was really the 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:24.320 way out back then. Today we're trying to educate you 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:28.080 to you can go write a check, start a business. 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.599 That's an option. Back then, it was just they thought 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.640 cash a check and get a job. But they didn't 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.920 think the exception of my uncle, by the way, Buddy 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.359 Uncle Buddy, who did create his own business sanitation business, 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:46.160 amongst others. But Germany speaking, the mindset was low frequency, 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.400 let me just go work for somebody, and that I'll 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.880 never make it out of this. So the only way 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.640 to make it out was to get lucky, to gamble. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.719 So my grandmother took my mother's hard earn money and 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:04.760 went to the casino and lost it all every day. 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.640 So once my mother got win, that was what was 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.359 going on. She didn't want to talk back to grandma, 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:15.279 be disrespectful, but Grandma had short term memory, so luckily 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.039 for my mother, Grandma's like, well what you make today? 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.880 This is you know. A few weeks after and my 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.080 mother's got the memo now of like, what's really going on? 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.480 So my mother's like, well, I made two fifty two 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.040 dollars and fifty cents, give me that baby. So my 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:32.320 mother gave her the two fifty and she saved two 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.200 dollars and fifty cents. She had made five dollars, just 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.480 like she did before. But she now knew that that 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.800 she had to help grandmother help herself because she she 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.040 was financially illiterated and she didn't know any better, couldn't 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.240 do any better. So my mother learned the value of 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.599 savings at an early age. And I guess a survival mindset. 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:57.920 And there's three mindset surviving mindset, a thriving mindset, and 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.600 a winning mindset, And these three mindsets in my book 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.240 Up from Nothing, by the way, So initially my mother 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.880 had a surviving mindset, and she ultimately got to a 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.520 thriving mindset, but part of her that surviving mindset never 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.920 left my mother and the winning mindset, the builder mindset 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.400 that she blessed that my parents were able to give 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.080 me the optionality I guess to bless me with. When 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:22.960 I said I guess, meaning they didn't give it to me. 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:25.040 They gave me the platform, and I would and took 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.760 it for myself because they didn't know how to build. 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.600 That was not how they were built, It wasn't how 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.440 they were oriented. My wife, Shacher would say that all 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.520 behaviors learned behavior. I absolutely believe that. Right if you 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.680 hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. Once again, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.640 Grandma loved everybody, but all she knew was what she knew, 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:47.560 so all she could give was the ignorant She had 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:52.840 the lack of knowledge in the area of financial literacy. 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:58.960 So Mom decided she needed to save and protect that 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:03.600 and not she had that information, because you know, ignorance 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:09.440 was bliss in the household, so Mom gained a habit 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:15.400 of savings. Mom did not value education, unfortunately, she did 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:17.840 not see that as a way out for the family, 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:22.000 and so nobody in the family went to college. In fact, 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:26.160 most girls, and because there were girls, they are women. Unfortunately, 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:28.920 they were live in a chauvinistic world even to this day, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.200 and back then, expectations were not high for women, unfortunately, 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.080 and certainly not black women. Thank god, things have changed, 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.600 and so most of my aunties and my uncle they 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.960 didn't go to higher education and they were smart ladies. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.640 They just were not encouraged to finish high school. And 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.240 my mother didn't finish high school. She worked, and that's 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:54.560 when she went back to high school at age sixty 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.280 two and marched in. I mean, this was amazing. I 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.320 didn't know my mother was in school. She was going 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.720 to work, and she was in school part time after work. 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.320 I hadn't know it until one day I was asked, 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:10.760 did I want to go to her graduation? And like 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:16.320 graduation from what? Graduated from high school? And she marched 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:21.040 with cap and gown on with eighteen year olds who 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:23.120 were graduating in high school. This was when we were 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.200 in California. I couldn't be more proud of my mother 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:29.680 then and now, I mean, just an extraordinary woman. Do 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.240 you remember you know how much courage and how much 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.640 confidence and self belief and self esteem and individuality it 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.880 takes to go back to high school and to finish, 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.160 and to not be ashamed but be proud of marching 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:49.000 with eighteen year olds as a sixty two year old. 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.440 Do you meagine the ridicule and the cutting of the 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:54.800 eyes that some people must have had about my mother 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:57.719 when she was going through that process. She didn't care 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.120 right there was an eagle surrounded by buzzes and turkeys. 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:09.480 My mother was an amazing individual, and she graduated and 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:12.520 I got to find that high school diploma and put 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:17.480 it up on the wall. She graduated, and then at 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:22.080 Boying Aircraft a mcdonnald Douglas, she would sometimes get laid 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.360 off because contracts with the government would not get renewed, 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:27.800 or there was some issue with the federal government having 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:32.040 the budget not be approved or whatever, and so they 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.439 would not fire my mother. They'd lay her off until 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:39.080 new business came. At the aircraft manufacturing company that she 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.120 worked at as a centric, she was a fabricator. She 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:48.080 fabricated interiors of airplanes, which then led to a side 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:54.160 hustle by the way of her making handicrafts which she 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.480 made with her hand in a sewing machine or with 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:03.520 needles and crocheting. Things get more low cost and high quality, 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:09.160 and she would sell those handicrafts, not after work. She'd 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:11.679 do it boldly at work at lunch on brakes, and 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.560 then she'd make food and she'd sell that. And she 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:19.320 would ride a bicycle around the plant in Long Beach 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:23.240 McDonald DOA's aircraft and she would market her wares, and 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.200 that's where I got, you know, some of my early 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:32.640 hustle from is looking at my mother and she makes 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.680 sure her nine to five financerr five to nine. She 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.880 had a part time hustle for the entirety of her 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.720 working life. And when that and the supervisors couldn't fire 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.880 her because the supervisors were often buying product from her 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.679 right so they could not they could not fire her. 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:55.520 They had to tolerate and even support her because they 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.040 were buying food and the handicraft. And my mother would 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:04.760 would go in ap proachas terry cloth towels from the 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:09.760 handicraft store, and she would turn those towels, you know, 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:13.720 towels that we wash our bodies off with, our drying 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:15.200 bodies off with when we come out of the shower 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:20.160 or out of the bath. She create bathrobes out of 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.199 that custom bathrobes made out of towels, and she had 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:27.200 different designs and different approaches. In fact, it was so 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:31.360 successful that Walmart is so odd that I'm being the 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.440 CEO of Walmart. Are good friends today and I coach 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.880 here financial literacy for all with him today at Operation Hope. 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:39.520 But back in the day, my mother's products were so well, 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.840 were so good that Walmart offered to purchase her products 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:44.800 and put them in their stores. They wanted to put 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.520 them in testament a Walmart store in I believe it 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.000 was comped in our Long Beach. My mother said that 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.880 one financial literacy mistake she made was they offered her 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.839 one percent of sales, and she said, that's ridiculous. Why 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:59.920 would I make anything for one percent? And she really 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.559 today that she passed up a gold mine because one 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:04.760 percent of whatever sales might have been at what we 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.439 now know to be or what was even then Walmart, 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.440 would have been a pretty big number. She learned then 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:13.520 that she'd rather have ten percent of something than one 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:15.880 hundred percent of nothing. But that was a lesson she 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:21.000 learned later in life. So when she got laid off 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.920 at McDonald's Aircraft and couldn't get the it wasn't getting 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:27.559 an hourly wage, and couldn't then have her side hustle there, 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:30.720 she brought her side hustle home. But she also didn't 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.600 want to go on welfare, no different than when she 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:35.760 was a child and there was no SOI security, It 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.320 was no welfare, whether welfare. They barely didn't want to 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.160 go on it. State assistance. Her grandmother didn't want to 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.000 go on it, and she always wanted to do for herself. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:48.680 He's self reliant. The James Brown version of affirmative action 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:54.240 opened the door. I'll get it my dangself, right, And 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.520 so she would just go find the job in wherever 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.480 I was and irritate the heck out of me. So 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.520 I was at, of course school, I was at Colin 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:07.079 Peakelly Elementary School, El Segondo. It was actually El Segondo, 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.760 I believe, and it was renamed Colin Peakelly Elementary School, 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:14.160 if I got that correct. In Conflin, California, and she had 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:18.400 time on her hands. So she went and befriended the principal, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.640 a low relationship. Capital became friends with the principal, and 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:28.440 initially she became the janitor. Yes, my dignified mother, who 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:34.359 worked as a as a trained seamstress at fabricating interiors 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:39.959 of commercial airplanes at a major airplane manufacturer when laid off, 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:44.400 went and became a janitor at my elementary school so 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:46.319 she could keep an eye on me. Of course, it 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.040 drove me nuts the lines. I gonna want it with 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:53.280 my mother around me all day and all night. But 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:55.520 my mother was in the fight. She's like, I'm in 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.679 the fight to say my kid's life. That's just there's no, 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.959 that's not negotiable. She was all in, and so it 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:04.240 didn't matter what I wanted. In fact, that's where I 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.280 learned that I tell parents today, you should whether your 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:10.480 kids respect you and learn to like you, then like 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.080 you and never respect you. My mother wanted me to 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.040 like her, but it didn't matter right. She was like, 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.680 you're going to respect me. And so she was a 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:24.120 janitor and that job ran its course. She was called 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:28.160 back to mc donalds Aircraft as a seamstress, so another contract. 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.160 Then she's relaid off again and she became a security 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:35.120 guard at my school. I think she was three different 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.240 jobs she took at my school to stay close to me. 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:44.280 And I had many problems growing up, but self esteem 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:46.880 was not one of them. I learned early on there's 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.880 a lot of love, you know, in the word no. 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.239 My mother would tell me no when it was appropriate, 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.240 but she also made sure I had high self esteem, 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.440 so I now know. Also there's a difference between being 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:03.040 broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.000 as a disabling frame of mind. A depressied edition of 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.960 your spirit and you must vow never ever ever to 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.920 be poor again. I still use this quote, that operation Hope, 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.560 and it resonates with people. It probably resonates with you 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:17.800 as you're listening to this now. It's so common sense. 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.480 Operation Shope is a radical movement of common sense. But 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:22.560 I got that common sense from my mother. Because common 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:24.920 sense is not so common, it has to be taught. 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:31.000 And so she taught me to, you know, love myself, 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.200 and that became the real wealth we had because we 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:37.560 didn't have financial resources, so we had to have inner resources, right. 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:43.360 And I went to go on to sell mail order 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.960 Stacey Adams shoes and mail order jewelry and things like 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.760 that to my teachers and the principal at school in 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.680 part because of that self esteem and confidence that my 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.360 mother generated in me, and through her the relationship capital 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.800 I had with the personnel of the school, and I 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:05.360 leveraged that to get paid right. And I thank my 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:08.200 mother for that. I mean, there's so many other lessons 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.520 I got. I remember, Uh, there was a law pass 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.680 where you couldn't you couldn't beat your kids, and you 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:17.240 could spank your kids, but you couldn't beat them. And 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.280 child a piece of course. Uh, but it was a 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:24.440 broadly defined rule. And you know, teachers could spank you 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.480 with a ruler back in my day, and I think 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.000 they got out of law as well. So I came 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.120 home one day and I'd done something wrong and my 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:35.840 mother wanted to spain me. She wanted to go get 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:40.360 a switch you off the branch from the tree in 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:42.400 the back. I'm like, oh, no, you can't spank me. 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:47.120 That day is over, lost change. I'm free. And my 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.240 mother's like, oh you're free, right, I can't. I can't 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.000 spank you. No, no, no, you go to jail. I'll 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:54.480 call the police, argle my mother. My mother said, okay, 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.800 that's cool. Tell you what. Here's the phone I want 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.000 you to call. Pick up the phone down. I want 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:04.560 you to call the folks with the red light on 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.879 me the police and call the folks then with the 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.120 blue light for you. That's the more. Because I brought 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.080 you in this world, I damn sure can take you out. Right. 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.840 Like I said, I respected my mother, an I was afraid. 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.679 I was slightly afraid of her right. And it was 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.320 important because in my neighborhood, in the hood or d 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.520 hood d I d a hyphen h O d The 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.680 street behind me was so dangerous that if you went 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.000 on that street, you may not make it back. Like 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.800 my neighborhood, it wasn't you know, getting home, going to 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.320 school and getting home was not a foregone conclusion. Like 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.040 you you might get murdered. You certainly could have got jumped. 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:45.199 And I was jumped several times so my mother. And 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:47.080 my mother wasn't wasn't at home during the day, she 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:49.879 was at work, so I had to fear her, and 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:53.920 I did. I remember one day my mother was gonna 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:58.560 expect me again, and I said, I'm gonna call my daddy. 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:01.240 And they had divorced, of course, and she's like, oh, 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.359 you're gonna call your daddy, and she got a switch 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.359 from the back. She's like, no, this was a built. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.200 Actually he ain't every word with a lick or from 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:17.600 the built. He ain't paid child support in all these years. 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.320 You want to. I mean, she she's made me up 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:23.879 one side and down the other. I never made that 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.320 mistake again. Uh. It was actually good discipline. I mean 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:30.720 we today you have too many people raising their daughters 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.520 and loving their sons, right you you got to you 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.160 gotta raise a young black man differently and he needs love, 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.040 but he needs discipline straight up. He needs me to 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:41.480 know what the boundaries are, and he needs to know 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.880 the word no, and that discipline may need may have 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.720 an exclamation mark in an underline next to it. And 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:51.080 I needed everything my mom and dad gave me. I 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:53.240 am who I am because of what they put into me. 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.800 But there's too many UH parents today who want to 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.240 be the best friend of their children, and the children 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.679 are buck wile, they're crazy off the chain. They have 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.720 no discipline, no respect. And if I don't like me, 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:06.399 I'm not gonna like you. If I don't respect me, 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.280 don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me, 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:10.520 I don't have a clue how I love you. And 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:11.840 if I don't have a purpose of my life, I'll 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.000 make your life a living hell. My mother sold all 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.280 of that. With all these life lessons, I'm trying to 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:29.840 pour it into you. Now. Let's fast forward. My mother 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:36.639 married a man who abused her, and the number of 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.159 calls are divorced by the way. It's money. Know of 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.159 the reason why I police respond to calls and the 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:44.960 household is domestic abuse, and then number one calls her 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:50.480 domestic abuse. It's money. Number one reason for heart attacks, 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:54.119 says you know, American heart association is stress. Number one 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:59.960 reason for stress. It's money. So my mother married the 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.080 this man. They had two children, my brother and my sister. Together, 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.520 they were stressed about money. Their alphloks, either their inflows 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.160 or their overheall was bound to be their downfall. And 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.280 he took it out of my mother. And so domestic 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.720 abuse going on in the household, and he hit her 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.800 and tried to humiliate her, and she kept saving a 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:23.960 little bit on the side for herself and trying to 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:25.800 figure ot how she gonna get out of that situation. Ladies, 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.160 in any of this sound familiar, by the way, why 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.480 does a woman stay with an abuse of me? All right? 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.680 I mean just real talk, like why is a woman 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:37.720 on a stripper pole at three in the morning with 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.359 some three hundred pound guy throwing cash at her because 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.560 she likes it? Because she likes it because she's attracted 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.920 to this dude. Of course not it's economics. It's money, right, 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.240 So just real talk here. Financial literacy and the need 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.080 for it is everywhere. It is. It's entirely possible that 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.480 the only true freedom is financial freedom. And I want 0:20:57.520 --> 0:20:59.480 you to be free. My mother, God rest her soul, 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.120 who passed on the glory September tenth, twenty twenty three. 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.720 So this episode is dedicated to her. She wanted you 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.640 to be free. Her credit score was eight fifty when 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:12.200 she was still in the workforce, and it was over 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.160 seven hundred after she retired several years later. She wasn't 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:20.399 doing financial transactions anymore, but she understood that she wasn't black, 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:24.680 she was green, economic right, she was free. She could 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:28.879 do what she wanted. When she put her sub security 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:32.080 number in the computer whenever she was applying for the 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:33.840 computer to look at it and see what color she was, 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:37.920 the computer realized that her credit score was extraordinary, outstanding 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:40.000 and above average and just said, yes, whatever it is 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:42.280 she wanted. So she ever, later in her life, she 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.320 got credit access to whatever she wanted because she knew 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:50.320 better and could do better, unlike grandmother. Her mother back 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.600 to the story, So, I want you to understand that 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:57.960 rainbows only follow storms, which understand that you can't grow 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:02.440 except through legitimate suffering. Should understand that people don't change 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:06.160 in good times. Why would you, right, you only change 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:08.399 in bad times. And so my mother had bad times. 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.439 She realized that this was not working for her, this 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:13.920 being the situation with her mother, even though her mother 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:16.560 loved her. Right, And there'll be people who love you, 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:18.679 who say they love you, who don't know how to 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:20.920 love you, don't know how to live a successful life, 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:23.840 and you're going to need to be bilingual love them 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:28.919 and do something else, do something different to argue with 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:31.600 the fool cruiser are too So I want you getting 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:35.800 in stupid arguments with people because they say they love you. 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:39.000 I want you to accept what they have to give 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.040 that's beneficial to you, and then make a move that's 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:45.919 different for your life and the situations that require a 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:51.720 different set of choices and frankly intellect right, a software upgrade. 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.720 My mother was able to get this software upgrade initially 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:59.240 on her own, and then she was with again my 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:03.960 brothers sister's father. I won't mention his name because it's 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:06.800 not positive what I'm saying here, and I wanted to. 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:10.320 I'm not trying to jam up his legacy, but I 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:14.240 didn't like to beat my mother. Hello. So my mother 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:19.040 had one last insult too many, and she poured some 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.239 hot coffee on home boy. He was sleeping and had 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.199 demanded some coffee, and so I got some coffee for you, 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:29.359 and he said, I'm gonna kill you, you know, And so 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:32.840 she knew she had to go, and she prayed to God, 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.840 you know, she said, look, Lord, please just get me, 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:39.080 just get me out of here with my children. And 0:23:39.440 --> 0:23:43.040