Speaker 1: Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. YO.
Speaker 2: This is John.
Speaker 1: O'Briant, and this is dedicated to well, this is about
Speaker 1: me being homeless, and dedicated to all the strivers out there,
Speaker 1: all the achievers, the dreamers. To quote my friend doctor
Speaker 1: Dorothy Heyde, the late doctor Dorothy Heyde, John Brian, I
Speaker 1: love you because you're a dreamer with a shovel in
Speaker 1: your hands. This is a tribute to everybody who's a
Speaker 1: dreamer with a shovel in their hands. But you may
Speaker 1: not have a place to live, and people don't believe
Speaker 1: it when it's mentioned to them. So I need to
Speaker 1: make it clear. I wasn't always this way. I wasn't
Speaker 1: always so called successful. I was homeless. I mean I
Speaker 1: grew up first of all in South central LA and
Speaker 1: in later on in Compton, California. But that wasn't the
Speaker 1: roughest period. One of the roughest periods, certainly the roughest
Speaker 1: period before I was twenty years old, was when I
Speaker 1: was homeless. Most people who were homeless, at least in
Speaker 1: the time I was coming up, it was, and up
Speaker 1: until even recently since until the you know, just before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, it was you know, substance abuse, it was
Speaker 1: mental illness. A lot of policies, the government kicked people,
Speaker 1: a lot of medical facilities and indus streets. Now a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, actually making an economic choice,
Speaker 1: which is what I did, or the choice was made
Speaker 1: for me. No, No, I made an economic choice. So
Speaker 1: I was homeless six months of my life, real talk,
Speaker 1: And I want to remove the shame from that experience
Speaker 1: through me. For you, if you're having too much month
Speaker 1: at the end of your money problems, if you're arguing
Speaker 1: with your mate, if you are frustrated with yourself, if
Speaker 1: you are depressed, distressed, you know, in Middle Park of
Speaker 1: last year, fifty plus million Americans were on antidepressants. Then
Speaker 1: a lot of other people were medicating their depression through
Speaker 1: you know, recreational drugs and alcohol and et cetera. So
Speaker 1: it could be one hundred hundred and fifty million Americans
Speaker 1: that are just depressed adults and young people and you know,
Speaker 1: feeling that hope has walked away from them. And this
Speaker 1: country is not a country. She's an idea and we
Speaker 1: can make her anything we want, and we need to
Speaker 1: repair the ladder of aspiration and opportunity for all. That's
Speaker 1: my goal. To unleash your untapped potential at scale, that's
Speaker 1: my goal. So I want you to see yourself and
Speaker 1: me in this story. I want you to understand that
Speaker 1: I have been there. I have actually been depressed. I
Speaker 1: have been down on myself. There were times didn't last
Speaker 1: long where I thought, as a young man, Okay, life
Speaker 1: is over. Maybe I should not go on. I can't
Speaker 1: say I actually, you know, thought about literally suicide. But
Speaker 1: you know, it was pretty bleak there for a minute.
Speaker 1: So let's get into the details here. Let's get into
Speaker 1: the facts of the matter, the story behind the story,
Speaker 1: the details behind the story. So I was making money
Speaker 1: and not very much as an entrepreneur, as a business owner,
Speaker 1: those two things are different. I'll break that down in
Speaker 1: a separate podcast. By the way, if you want a
Speaker 1: podcast story, leave me a comment, leave me a note,
Speaker 1: you know, let me know what your interests are. You
Speaker 1: can also hit me on social media and you know,
Speaker 1: tell me what you mean to talk about. I'll be
Speaker 1: happy to get into it. As part of this process
Speaker 1: of building a new you. So I had several jobs
Speaker 1: at the same time, right. An entrepreneur works eighteen hours
Speaker 1: day to keep from getting a job. I had tried
Speaker 1: a number of things, concert promotion and marketing and business
Speaker 1: development on behalf of others in acting. That was a
Speaker 1: part of my career early on in my teens. And
Speaker 1: I had about five hundred dollars a month coming in
Speaker 1: from residual payments from acting. That's residual payments are when
Speaker 1: you do a show and it repeats on TV television
Speaker 1: back then, and you get a check. And so when
Speaker 1: you combine all of my income sources, I had about
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars coming in a month, and I had
Speaker 1: a choice to make because I had more going out
Speaker 1: than coming in. I had a black Montero jeep. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure they make them anymore, but it was beautiful, well,
Speaker 1: it was beautiful to me.
Speaker 2: I owned it. Well, I didn't know at least.
Speaker 1: It and I know at least it because the owners
Speaker 1: were looking for it was the dealership had financed it,
Speaker 1: very expensive financing. As I recall, my credit was shot
Speaker 1: back then, and I had made several payments and they
Speaker 1: were looking for the jeep, or they're looking for me
Speaker 1: driving the jeep. They wanted the jeep back. It's called
Speaker 1: you know, repo man. They wanted to repossess my Yes,
Speaker 1: me right, And by the way, that was my second
Speaker 1: repossession that I can think of.
Speaker 2: Before that, I had had.
Speaker 1: A dream of owning a BMW three twenty I back
Speaker 1: in the day, and my credit was so tore up.
Speaker 1: I took it out for a day. Even the dealership
Speaker 1: that wanted to take back the paper and financing themselves
Speaker 1: after a day said no, you just your credits told
Speaker 1: from a flow up, we can't even take a risk
Speaker 1: on to you bring that car back. I brought that
Speaker 1: car back and they actually allowed me to take another
Speaker 1: car out, which was a dots and to I think
Speaker 1: it was a two sixty Z two eight Z and
Speaker 1: actually they had to come get that one too. This
Speaker 1: was one of my early teens, so that later on
Speaker 1: my life, and I'm so called mature at least, I
Speaker 1: was about, you know, trying to actually build something. I
Speaker 1: still had too much month at the end of my money.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to take cared thus from my mother
Speaker 1: or my father. I wanted to do it on my own. Well,
Speaker 1: things didn't work out. That's a short version, and I
Speaker 1: may get into some of the details of some of
Speaker 1: the businesses that didn't work out. But the meat of
Speaker 1: this matter is that I had five hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: month coming in. It was dependable, and I had a
Speaker 1: choice to make. Do I rent an apartment or do
Speaker 1: I rent an office? And I decided to bank on
Speaker 1: myself and to rent a office. It wasn't a full office.
Speaker 1: It was an office within an office complex. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine owned the public relations firm, and I wanted
Speaker 1: a good address. I wanted to be in a good
Speaker 1: location and an aspiracial location, someplace I could do marketing
Speaker 1: and go and look, you know, like the clients I
Speaker 1: was trying to secure. So I was in technically Beverly Hills,
Speaker 1: but really on the outskirts. It was anybody knows La
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It was Pico Boulevard, west of Dolheiny, south
Speaker 1: side of the street. And again a friend of mine
Speaker 1: had a public relations firm, and I asked her could
Speaker 1: I rent one of the offices sub LEAs and she
Speaker 1: said yes. Now this was important decision. It was a
Speaker 1: critical decision I made to bank on me. It was
Speaker 1: a bank of john. I could have rented the apartment,
Speaker 1: which is what all of my friends were doing. It
Speaker 1: was what was you know was and then is today
Speaker 1: socially acceptable to have the right look, the right place
Speaker 1: to live. But that wasn't making me any money or
Speaker 1: bringing me any wealth. And I didn't care about how
Speaker 1: it looked. I was banking on me, and I thought
Speaker 1: the best investment was to take this five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and to rent this room within her it is kept Morrison,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's her name within her PR firm,
Speaker 1: and God bless her soul. And so the problem was
Speaker 1: I had no place to live, and I couldn't be
Speaker 1: driving this MONTERI jeep around town because well, folks were
Speaker 1: looking for it, the rebotman, to be specific.
Speaker 2: So I would go to the office.
Speaker 1: I worked all day and maybe this is where I
Speaker 1: got comfortable with working fifteen eighteen hours a day. So
Speaker 1: I had no choice. It couldn't be out running the
Speaker 1: streets in this jeep, so I would put a car
Speaker 1: cover over the jeep and over the license plate. By
Speaker 1: the way, I ultimately paid my debts, so just so
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't a bum. I just was delayed
Speaker 1: and I ended up paying the you know, my overages
Speaker 1: what I owed plus you know, late fees and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So but it was well worth it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was that was you know, that was also an
Speaker 1: investment in me. I was banking on the long term
Speaker 1: success of me. So I would stay there all day,
Speaker 1: work all day. I would sometimes run out to potential
Speaker 1: clients that were close by, or I could get marketing jobs,
Speaker 1: marketing consulting jobs representing their companies like Foster Shoe Company.
Speaker 1: I remember was one company that was down the street.
Speaker 1: It was a family that owned the company, and I
Speaker 1: had befriended them and impressed them, I guess, and they
Speaker 1: gave me, you know, one of my first jobs. Will
Speaker 1: I will talk more in detail about that in a moment.
Speaker 1: It ties back because I mean the thousand dollars check
Speaker 1: they got for me, I did not use to go
Speaker 1: rent the apartment. It was a retainer that gave me.
Speaker 1: That was over the five hundred dollars a month I
Speaker 1: was coming in. I could have rent an apartment. And
Speaker 1: I'll take a minute why I didn't. Let me get
Speaker 1: back to the story. So I stayed there all day
Speaker 1: and then when people left Kip Morrison and associates for
Speaker 1: the day. When home, I went to the restroom at
Speaker 1: Kit Morrison and Associates and cleaned up in the sink.
Speaker 1: So I would close the door. I would take off
Speaker 1: my shirt and clean the collar and clean the I
Speaker 1: guess my wrists were. I'd take some soap and some
Speaker 1: and a towel, and I would, you know, make sure
Speaker 1: I had no dirt showing I'd cleaned my shoes, certainly
Speaker 1: the tops and the size of the shoes. Back then,
Speaker 1: I wore boots and black leather sole shoes, black leather shoes,
Speaker 1: dress shoes. And I would wear a dark suit so
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell I'd been wearing it over and over.
Speaker 1: But I made sure that white shirt, that the collar
Speaker 1: and the cuff were clean. So I presented myself well,
Speaker 1: right presentation is important. And then I'd go back to
Speaker 1: work and of course eat, and then around midnight I
Speaker 1: would head out take the car cover off the jeep.
Speaker 1: And you know, tow trucks weren't typically looking for people
Speaker 1: who repossessions in lower Beverly Hills. Just you know, that's
Speaker 1: not the place where they were hanging out, and that's
Speaker 1: not where they suspected I'd be for sure. So I
Speaker 1: would then drive every night to near the Airport Latierra
Speaker 1: and Airport Boulevard. There's a there was an old Italian
Speaker 1: restaurant on that corner, a caddy corner like a v
Speaker 1: and behind the old Italian restaurant was a parking lot.
Speaker 1: And I'd pull in that parking lot and I would
Speaker 1: put the car cover over the front of the jeep.
Speaker 1: I'd roll it back over the doors and over the
Speaker 1: top of the jeep. I'd get inside of the jeep
Speaker 1: in the back, close the door, and as I was
Speaker 1: closing the door shut, I would drop the car cover
Speaker 1: over the back. That would of course cover the license
Speaker 1: plate and it would also cover me. I had a
Speaker 1: hot and cold running igloo, uh you know, ice chests
Speaker 1: or food container in there where I would eat late snack,
Speaker 1: and I had a low light that I could keep
Speaker 1: on my computer not so hot. And the windows were tenanted,
Speaker 1: so it was hard to see that we hit a
Speaker 1: tent in the car cover, you couldn't really see inside.
Speaker 1: And I park in this parking lot and I'd stay
Speaker 1: there from you know, midnight one in the morning until
Speaker 1: six ish. That's probably where I got the habit of
Speaker 1: sleeping for six hours. So it was there after business
Speaker 1: hours and gone before business hours. And I did that
Speaker 1: for six months, and I just kept I just kept harvesting,
Speaker 1: just kept harvesting, kept hustling. Wealth's through compounding. You don't
Speaker 1: have inherited wealth, you know, money from other sources, revenue
Speaker 1: from other sources. Sometimes you got to have compounded hustle.
Speaker 1: So I had hustle on top of hustle, creating more hustle.
Speaker 1: And one I think I've learned is that is that
Speaker 1: fear and failure and the devil are lazy bastards. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't do the work right. They expect us to
Speaker 1: give up. And so love is work. Not love is work.
Speaker 1: Non lover is laziness. Anti love is evil. Evil exists,
Speaker 1: but it's very rare. Most people are just lazy. I
Speaker 1: found intellectually lazy, spiritually lazy, financially lazy, dream lazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so easy for me to just default on all
Speaker 1: my obligations and file bankruptcy and throw the how. But
Speaker 1: that was my name out there, that was my reputation,
Speaker 1: my rep out there. Put some money on your name,
Speaker 1: put some respect on your name, right, And even though
Speaker 1: I didn't have money, didn't mean it. I didn't have
Speaker 1: wealth There's a difference between being broken being poor. Being
Speaker 1: broke is economic. Being poor is a disabling frame of mind.
Speaker 1: It to press condition of your spirit, and you must foul,
Speaker 1: never ever ever to be poor again. That's a lesson
Speaker 1: my mother taught me. And so I was broke. I
Speaker 1: wasn't poor, and I wasn't going to act poor, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to give in the poverty mindset. And
Speaker 1: those people loan me money and I signed on the
Speaker 1: dotted line. I knew what I was signing, our ship.
Speaker 1: And you know, they deserve to have their money back,
Speaker 1: or to have the cheap back. And so I didn't
Speaker 1: resent them coming looking for the cheap. I just didn't
Speaker 1: have a conversation for him that was acceptable. I couldn't
Speaker 1: even make payment arrangement because it would have been a
Speaker 1: lot I would I mean, I couldn't keep the commitment
Speaker 1: at that point.
Speaker 2: I had to wait until I actually had something to
Speaker 2: say that was meaningful.
Speaker 1: I worked and worked and worked, and got a few
Speaker 1: marketing gigs and was able to ultimately work myself out
Speaker 1: of being homeless economically and to rent. I think I
Speaker 1: first rented a room in someone's house. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when I did that. I think it was Malibu, where
Speaker 1: I rented a room in someone's house. Again, I wanted
Speaker 1: to be around aspiration. I wanted to be around success.
Speaker 1: As I keep saying, if you hang around nine broke people,
Speaker 1: you'll be the tenth. The opposite is also true. You
Speaker 1: hang around nine aspirational and successful folks, you might be
Speaker 1: the timp. I can't guarantee that being positive is going
Speaker 1: to make you a success, but I absolutely guarantee you
Speaker 1: that being negative will make you fail. The glass is
Speaker 1: half full or half empty, depends who's looking at the glass.
Speaker 1: It's the same glass. Whether you believe you can and
Speaker 1: whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right, right. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to be around an aspirational environment. So I
Speaker 1: rented a room. I rented it in Malibu, and I
Speaker 1: read it several rooms in Malibu and worked my way up. Again,
Speaker 1: this is a another story at another time. I want
Speaker 1: to stay focused on this, but I mean I worked
Speaker 1: my way up to you know, collaborating or co living
Speaker 1: with one of Flip Wilson's kids for a short period
Speaker 1: of time in Malibu on the Beach. On the Beach,
Speaker 1: Philip Wilson was a great comedian back in the day,
Speaker 1: and I befriended this one of his kids. Okay, back
Speaker 1: to this story. So when I got this thousand dollars
Speaker 1: from Foster Shoe Company, it was a retail store on
Speaker 1: Pico Boulevard owned by a Persian family who I had
Speaker 1: gotten to know, and they became impressed with me, and
Speaker 1: so I had a contract for the year to do
Speaker 1: marketing for them of their shoe company, their retail shoe company.
Speaker 1: I put together proposal sitting in that jeep under a
Speaker 1: light right and also yes, at my office. But when
Speaker 1: I was at the office, I was busy hustling most
Speaker 1: of the time. That was my hustle period, and I
Speaker 1: would work the phones NonStop because I really couldn't go
Speaker 1: drive around because again, the leasing company was looking for
Speaker 1: that Montero jeep. That's why I'm so obsessed with not
Speaker 1: being about the payment. By the way, when I signed
Speaker 1: that agreement, I didn't, you know, realize that. I mean,
Speaker 1: people asked what the You never asked what the payment
Speaker 1: is when there's an interest rate attached, right, And I
Speaker 1: asked what the payment was. And that was just a mistake.
Speaker 1: I mean, I ended up. I never would have been
Speaker 1: able to pay that jeep off because the loan I
Speaker 1: got my credit was so bad. It wasn't credit, it
Speaker 1: was critic and my credit was bad, as my dad,
Speaker 1: Johnny Smith would say, but it was where I was
Speaker 1: at that moment, right. Don't never let the perfect become
Speaker 1: the death of the good. So this thousand, this ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars contract I had for the year, which was
Speaker 1: a really big deal for me back then. I guess
Speaker 1: today you'd think it was a you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars contract. The ten thousand dollars contract I got
Speaker 1: for that year came with a thousand dollars advance, which
Speaker 1: I had to ask for, and I took that thousand
Speaker 1: dollars advance. And I'm trying to make sure I'm getting
Speaker 1: this right. I think the timing of this was actually
Speaker 1: a few years later, but the story still holds up.
Speaker 1: They were still a marketing client of mine, Foster's shoes.
Speaker 1: But just to show you how I made investments back
Speaker 1: in myself. So by this time, I worked myself out
Speaker 1: of being homeless, and I was reading a room in
Speaker 1: someone's home and I wanted to model somebody who's international.
Speaker 1: Who happened to be black. And the only two people
Speaker 1: I knew who were international who happened to be black
Speaker 1: based on our research was Ambassador angew Young and Quincy Jones. Now,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a businessman, but hey, take what
Speaker 1: you can get. And these were two iconic individuals just
Speaker 1: so happens. Andrew Young was in civil rights and social
Speaker 1: justice and Quincy Jones.
Speaker 2: Was in music.
Speaker 1: But you know, they were international brands and extremely prominent
Speaker 1: in the world, and I wanted to role model their success.
Speaker 1: So how do I get to them? Well, the Ambassador
Speaker 1: Young story is for another day. That's a separate podcast.
Speaker 1: I'll do if you want me to do it. But
Speaker 1: the Quincy Jones story I was telling right now. I
Speaker 1: wanted to meet Quincy Jones. And how do you do that?
Speaker 1: You try calling his office. You can try. You can try.
Speaker 1: There wasn't email back then, and it wasn't social media
Speaker 1: back then. You couldn't tag somebody. You can call his
Speaker 1: office and speak to a secretary, show up at his
Speaker 1: office and be turned away by security. All those would
Speaker 1: net you nothing but heartache. And I take no for vitamins,
Speaker 1: but I try to so nose don't bother me. But
Speaker 1: I tried to be smart about it. So there was
Speaker 1: a fundraiser that was being done for a congresswoman at
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones's house, and I found out about it and
Speaker 1: what was the entry fee? What was the fundraising commitment
Speaker 1: for an attendee? One thousand dollars. So that's why I
Speaker 1: went to Foster Shoe Company, which at that point had
Speaker 1: been a marketing consulting client for me for a minutes.
Speaker 1: I worked my way up from a monthly contract where
Speaker 1: they just trying to see if I was real or not.
Speaker 1: And I worked my way up after a few years
Speaker 1: to having a yearly contract and a monthly retainer. And
Speaker 1: I know, I went and asked for this thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: this advance. I took that check back. Then it was
Speaker 1: a check. I turned the check over. I endorsed the
Speaker 1: check because there was no money. There's no excess money
Speaker 1: in my account. I didn't want to check the bounce
Speaker 1: one of my checks to the bouncesse I would have
Speaker 1: been embarrassing. And I took that check up to Quincy
Speaker 1: Jones's house. I RSVP'd made a commitment of a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Now I didn't have a pot to piss in or
Speaker 1: window to throw it out of. Now, keep keep in mind,
Speaker 1: I'm I was homeless, and then I was still penniless
Speaker 1: when this was all happening, and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: living at most a subsistence environment. I showed up, and
Speaker 1: people think I'm a social animal. I'm really not. If
Speaker 1: I'm passionate about it, you can get me engaged, get
Speaker 1: me to talk, but I'm really I'm actually quite.
Speaker 2: I can be pretty quiet and pretty.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a very I'm a very private person
Speaker 1: living a very public life, and so I just don't
Speaker 1: have like, you know, how's the weather conversations, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't really interest me. I want to talk about something
Speaker 1: that's real and subsidience. So I showed to Quincy Jones'
Speaker 1: house and I hug a wall. Basically, I find a
Speaker 1: wall and I stand next to it. And all these
Speaker 1: pretty and beautiful people and handsome people and smart people
Speaker 1: and hooked up people and connected people walking past me,
Speaker 1: and celebrities and all these people I can recognize me,
Speaker 1: but I don't see Quincy. And so I just, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I stayed there. I paid a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I was gonna make sure I met him. Before I left,
Speaker 1: at least shook his hand. And you know, Bastor Younghand
Speaker 1: has this great quote, Coincidence is God's way at meaning anonymous.
Speaker 1: And I guarantee you if you know. Tony Resler, billionaire
Speaker 1: friend of mine and business partner, told me, if you
Speaker 1: don't quit, you can't fail. If you don't quit, you
Speaker 1: can't fail. And that's true because that night I didn't quit.
Speaker 1: And I was there for a couple hours, holding up
Speaker 1: that wall and looking at my watch, and I heard
Speaker 1: in the distance from another room, my name, do you
Speaker 1: know John Bryant? And it was Quincy Jones's voice, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the heck? And he was talking to
Speaker 1: the congresswoman and she's says, yes, I know John Brian.
Speaker 1: He's you know, he's a wonderful young man. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say who the congress person was. I don't
Speaker 1: want to but smirk her name. But she wasn't helpful.
Speaker 1: I mean, she wouldn't hate no me, nothing, but she
Speaker 1: to say that she was she loved me and she
Speaker 1: was supporting me, and all that stuff just wasn't true. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't true. But she told Quincy, oh, we
Speaker 1: love that young man. He's doing great work in the
Speaker 1: community that we support them. Okay, fine, this is a
Speaker 1: lesson stepping over mess and not in it. By the way,
Speaker 1: don't don't wear range the dick chairs and the Titanic
Speaker 1: in your life, right, don't don't have over a dollar
Speaker 1: to pick up a dime. Don't don't get emotional.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That was no time for me to go and step
Speaker 1: to her corrector, Right, Quincy Jones's mission in my name
Speaker 1: and she's bragging on me. I'm gonna let both of
Speaker 1: them talk about me. So and so she says, well, Quincy,
Speaker 1: he's here, he's at your he's in your house. And
Speaker 1: He's like, what do you mean he's my house? Where?
Speaker 1: And so I don't know whether they came around the
Speaker 1: corner to get me, or I walked around the corner.
Speaker 1: I probably, knowing me, walked around the corner and Quincy
Speaker 1: was couldn't have been more gracious. And so all I
Speaker 1: remember is Quincy and I shook hands and we started talking,
Speaker 1: and I talked to me is like back then, it
Speaker 1: was like getting a glass of water out of a
Speaker 1: fire hydrant, Like you know, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff to say, right, and I looked up and six,
Speaker 1: you know, five hours had passed.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it was five hours.
Speaker 1: And because everybody was gone and we were in Quincy
Speaker 1: and I were sitting at the entrance of for the
Speaker 1: exit because he was taking he was saying hello goodbye
Speaker 1: to people as they left. I don't remember any of that.
Speaker 1: I was just I was telling them my dreams, telling
Speaker 1: them and how much I respected them, and you know,
Speaker 1: asking him questions. And we were sitting right below Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: you know, platinum record situation, which you know Quincy of
Speaker 1: course had produced, amongst other other incredible achievements of his,
Speaker 1: and we became fast friends that night forward as a
Speaker 1: bad brother, more Grammy nominations than anybody I think until
Speaker 1: recently history. Uh just I mean just just unbelievable talent.
Speaker 1: And he wouldn't let me call him my mentor. He
Speaker 1: called himself my big brother. That's what he was. And
Speaker 1: I learned so much from Quincy, and that led to
Speaker 1: a real relationship, including out of town travel. I went
Speaker 1: to Montroe Jazz Festival with Quincy several times, and he
Speaker 1: was one of the innovators in the Montreal Jazz Festival.
Speaker 1: We went to he invited me to go to, uh
Speaker 1: the launch of the It was an African American museum.
Speaker 1: I forget the name of it, and I think it
Speaker 1: was Cleveland, and uh, he remember he told me gotta
Speaker 1: stay cool now.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: He told me to talk to his friend Clarence Avon,
Speaker 1: God dresses so about the transportation. So I had my assistant,
Speaker 1: my then assistant called Clarence Avon that at this point,
Speaker 1: so this is years, years and years later, and my
Speaker 1: assistant called Clarence Avon. She came my office crying. I
Speaker 1: mean she was just Clarence had cursed her out.
Speaker 2: Who do you call me? I'm in charge of this translation.
Speaker 2: So I called Quincy.
Speaker 1: Ay man, I mean, sir, I think I think we
Speaker 1: offended Clarence And he said, you just started laughing.
Speaker 2: He said, come on, man, that's just Clarence. He just
Speaker 2: messing with you.
Speaker 1: So I called Clarence and yes he was clowning, and
Speaker 1: uh so we got the That was my first time
Speaker 1: on a private jet. So here we go from homeless, uh,
Speaker 1: living in my g and meeting Quincy Jones and ultimately
Speaker 1: riding in a private jet with Quincy Jones and Clarence
Speaker 1: Avon and and that relationship. Capital opened many many doors.
Speaker 1: I remember we got back by the way from that
Speaker 1: trip and Clarence is like, you know, you're okay. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I treated you so badly, young man. He said,
Speaker 1: tell you what, next time you have a trip, you
Speaker 1: can use one of my jets, three of them. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's that's so, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: We're at Vanni's airport, a private airport, and he says, yep,
Speaker 1: it's Southwest United in Delta, and he walked off. Going
Speaker 1: back to the story of me being homeless. Once I
Speaker 1: was able to work my way out of that financial hole.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was hard and I would I couldn't resolve
Speaker 1: the card note issue. But there were smaller bills. I
Speaker 1: had my cell phone bill. A cell phone back then
Speaker 1: it was a I mean I used to carry a
Speaker 1: brick on my shoulder like a like back in the
Speaker 1: back in those days. It was forty five since a minute,
Speaker 1: by the way, and it was not digital.
Speaker 2: This was really.
Speaker 1: Crackly lines, right, some of you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And so I had a cell phone bill that I
Speaker 1: had to pay. I had a landline bill at the
Speaker 1: office that had to pay. I had business expenses, I
Speaker 1: had the you know whatever they were, and I would
Speaker 1: call the all the folks I have money to and
Speaker 1: I to settle on some kind of a payment arrangement.
Speaker 1: And what I found is as long as you communicate
Speaker 1: with people, they're pretty cool with you. People don't like
Speaker 1: to be dignified de dignified. They don't like to be
Speaker 1: blown off. You wouldn't want to be blown off, right
Speaker 1: If you loaned somebody some money and they won't call
Speaker 1: you back, you're offended by that. So why would why
Speaker 1: would the opposite not be true? Like, don't get offended
Speaker 1: or hurt by somebody because they're calling you looking at
Speaker 1: for their money. With that joke from Chris Rock, I
Speaker 1: don't know nobody would know one an hundred number. I
Speaker 1: ain't answering that phone, you know, So you got to
Speaker 1: answer the phone and deal with it before it deals
Speaker 1: with you. And if you deal with it, they tend,
Speaker 1: you know, they tend to work it out. This the
Speaker 1: carnal situation was different. It was such a big amount
Speaker 1: that when I talked to them, you know, if I
Speaker 1: gave them my details, I would have had to give
Speaker 1: them my location that they might have said they would
Speaker 1: get the payments, but they would have just taken the car,
Speaker 1: and I needed the car for transportation. So I apologize
Speaker 1: to Mitsubishi of West Covine. I believed it was who
Speaker 1: had either directly or indirectly financed my trade, but they
Speaker 1: became a venture capitalist for me. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: any money, so I used that. I used to have
Speaker 1: a pep Boy's card and a Macy's card and a
Speaker 1: JC Penny's credit card. And you know this is this
Speaker 1: is this was my made up capital stat of how
Speaker 1: I got in the business. I use these credit these
Speaker 1: places to float. I had a secure credit card, by
Speaker 1: the way, that had a three hundred dollars UH limit,
Speaker 1: and I think it was a three d dollars deposit
Speaker 1: and I was always bumping up against a three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars limit. Can somebody out there say, man, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about? And I remember going to lunch
Speaker 1: trying to impress somebody, sometimes a girl, yes, and sitting
Speaker 1: there sweating, trying to think, didn't my twenty five dollars payment.
Speaker 1: This is back in the days where you could flow
Speaker 1: the check. Don't act don't now, don't you guys act
Speaker 1: like you don't know what I'm talking about. Now you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. You write the check and
Speaker 1: you put it in the mail, and you put on
Speaker 1: the slow boat to wherever, and you hope that it
Speaker 1: don't show up. You know, you wanted to show up, sorry,
Speaker 1: but you hope that it doesn't process, because because you
Speaker 1: need to make sure that you've got the money in
Speaker 1: the bank before the check showed up. And these were
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars payments I was making. Well, the lunch
Speaker 1: I was that was twenty two dollars plus a tip,
Speaker 1: which I had to make sure it was cash because otherwise,
Speaker 1: I you know, I had a three dollar buffer. But
Speaker 1: I had to make sure that payment showed up and
Speaker 1: they registered it, and I wouldn't dare call the credit
Speaker 1: card company. So I would just sit there lunch and
Speaker 1: just sweat bullets and hope that the credit card charge
Speaker 1: go through. I remember did Gregory once said back in
Speaker 1: the day, he said, I love going to Africa. Even
Speaker 1: my old canceled credit card still work. It's not that
Speaker 1: way anymore, but it was a way back in the day.
Speaker 1: Another thing I used to do was I would if
Speaker 1: I owed somebody some money, I'm so so sad. I
Speaker 1: did this, but you know, I own it, and I
Speaker 1: made it all right.
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 1: If I owed somebody some money and I just I
Speaker 1: had to talk to him. I had to make it right.
Speaker 1: But I didn't have the money that moment. I had
Speaker 1: it in like two weeks. I would write the check
Speaker 1: and put it in the mail and forget to put
Speaker 1: the stamp on it, get quotation marks right. And of
Speaker 1: course they called me and I said, well, I put
Speaker 1: that in the mail to you. I mean I sent
Speaker 1: that check, which I did, and then I said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, is returned because I didn't put a stamp
Speaker 1: on it. I'm you know, apologized. Can say I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sorry because I wasn't sorry. I did it intentionally, but
Speaker 1: I apologized, and I put very intentional about my words.
Speaker 1: I put the stamp on it, put it back in
Speaker 1: the mail when I knew I had the cash.
Speaker 2: This is back in the day.
Speaker 1: Where you could float a check for a week. Now
Speaker 1: I think everything is instantaneous with debit cards or whatever,
Speaker 1: so we can't play those games. But all this was
Speaker 1: my hustle. These were my hustle periods, and I made
Speaker 1: the credit card company's whole I got. I mean, I have,
Speaker 1: amongst other things, Mary Express black card today, which I
Speaker 1: guess has no limit on it. I've got, you know,
Speaker 1: credit cards from all the major banks and corporations. I've
Speaker 1: got lines of credit, you know, I guess I can
Speaker 1: say this. You know, millions of dollars of credit availability
Speaker 1: through my businesses. You know, have a credit score now
Speaker 1: is eight. I think it's eighth nine or something like that.
Speaker 1: My mother's credit cord was eight fifty four. So I
Speaker 1: got in my life right and I paid off the
Speaker 1: it's a bish company, yes, but plus penalties. I handled
Speaker 1: all my debts right. And it wasn't pretty, but you know,
Speaker 1: neither is making certain types of food. It may not
Speaker 1: be pretty to look at, but it's delicious to eat
Speaker 1: when you finish. Just be committed to your growth, be
Speaker 1: committed to your authenticity, be committed to your hustle, be
Speaker 1: committed to your your dreams, be committed to living your
Speaker 1: best and most authentic version of yourself and your life,
Speaker 1: and and bank on you. That's what I did. It
Speaker 1: was a bank of job right. I didn't have anybody.
Speaker 1: By the way, I guess you should say this. People
Speaker 1: were to say, well, why didn't you just go You know,
Speaker 1: you had this great mom and his great dad. Your
Speaker 1: dad was a business owner, your mother was that wasn't
Speaker 1: gamely employed. Why you just go home to your parents? Well,
Speaker 1: my mother worried for a living, right right my mother.
Speaker 1: My dad would put me to work at its construction company.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't trying to get no callouses on my hands,
Speaker 1: I think after working for my dad in a construction site,
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, the only thing I'm getting only injury
Speaker 1: and getting on my hands when I get it. When
Speaker 1: I grew up as a paper cut from depositive and
Speaker 1: check in the bank, right, that's it. I'm not doing
Speaker 1: this manual label and I'm not I'm using my brain.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna grow from the neck up, not the shoulders down.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use.
Speaker 2: Brain, not broad.
Speaker 1: So my dad would put me to work for his
Speaker 1: construction company, I wouldn't feeling that, and my mother would
Speaker 1: have made me come home and live with her, and
Speaker 1: it would have gotten me a job at McDonald Douglas's
Speaker 1: Aircraft Believe where she was working at the time at
Speaker 1: what today would be eighteen dollars an hour twenty bucks
Speaker 1: an hour and look great job that wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: It was for my mother, but it wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: That was not my destiny. And so unless I'm willing
Speaker 1: to listen to their rules and follow them. And kids
Speaker 1: listening to this, young people, if you're in your parents roof,
Speaker 1: you got to follow their roofs. I wuldn't try to
Speaker 1: do that. I had my own dream and I wanted
Speaker 1: to pursue it, so I had to take the risks
Speaker 1: tied to that, and the penalties tied to that, licking
Speaker 1: tied to that. So my parents never knew I was
Speaker 1: homeless this entire period, and they found out when I
Speaker 1: was twenty three or so giving a speech somewhere and
Speaker 1: they were in the audience, and I told the story
Speaker 1: for the first time because they, you know, they would
Speaker 1: have overroded my vision for myself. And I was banking
Speaker 1: on John. It was a bank of John, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was my own venture capitalist. And it worked out.
Speaker 1: Rainbows only follow storms. You guys, you cannot have a
Speaker 1: rainbow without a storm first. So go pursue your dream.
Speaker 1: Go to Operation Hope at the one Million Black Business Initiative,
Speaker 1: where we've created just about four hundred thousand created, supported, advanced,
Speaker 1: hooked up four hundred thousand black businesses through the one
Speaker 1: Million Black Business Initiative. Our partnership with Shopify, were raising
Speaker 1: credit cards and serving as a private banker through hoping
Speaker 1: Side networks. Through the operation of hoping Side network work,
Speaker 1: we're helping people like myself, you know, to come up
Speaker 1: from nothing. And you know, this is an opportunity for
Speaker 1: you to plug into a new ladder of aspiration and hope.
Speaker 1: Be a dreamer with a shovel in your hands, and
Speaker 1: let me help you. Put some silver tone dirt in
Speaker 1: the shovel, balance it out as you throw it over
Speaker 1: your shoulder, and set yourself free.
Speaker 2: All right. John O'Brien is the silver rights movement. 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. Dep