Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio John Hope
Speaker 1: Bryant Money in Wealth podcast series. This is where I
Speaker 1: unpack capitalism and free enterprise, make it approachable to everybody
Speaker 1: inclusive capitalism. This is where we explain how things work.
Speaker 1: We inspire you to be better. We make sure you're
Speaker 1: not a shame that you don't know better and no
Speaker 1: one ever talks to you. It's not your fault. It's
Speaker 1: what you don't know. That you don't know this killing you,
Speaker 1: but you think you know. There's no need for shame anymore.
Speaker 1: We're gonna unpack all of this and repack it with
Speaker 1: you in mind. And with that in mind, every now
Speaker 1: and then I will bring as you know, I just
Speaker 1: normally ramble and talk to you directly. We have a
Speaker 1: conversation about going from the streets to the suites. But
Speaker 1: every now and then, when I think it's special and important,
Speaker 1: I bring a guest on. It's very rare, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to call this the Builders Series. And really a
Speaker 1: first in this section is an iconic figure, somebody who
Speaker 1: is very important to me the world, would nom as
Speaker 1: Michael Milkin. Our Hiss friends call him Mike Milkin, a
Speaker 1: man who is one of the greatest and most innovative
Speaker 1: minds of the twentieth century in capitalism in finance, one
Speaker 1: who really reset the system at scale, and he reimagined,
Speaker 1: reimagined capitalism in finance and with it free enterprise. And
Speaker 1: in some ways, and I don't believe this is over exaggeration,
Speaker 1: I think this is literally true what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: In some ways Wall Street can look at itself in
Speaker 1: as long as history as sort of pre Mike Milkin
Speaker 1: and post Mike Milkin. We'll get into that in a second.
Speaker 1: But when you think about what's changed this country, of
Speaker 1: course we know of some of you know of Alexander Hamilton,
Speaker 1: our first Secretary of the Treasury, who by the way,
Speaker 1: came from the Islands and had a single mother's I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say I think he was part black. But
Speaker 1: I'm just my own little inference there that's not fascially
Speaker 1: corrected or anyway. This is my sense that he comes
Speaker 1: from humble, He came from humble and unique beginnings and
Speaker 1: came in this country and changed everything as our first
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Treasury and was inclusive in his view,
Speaker 1: and you go sort of fast forward. You go through
Speaker 1: the Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War and Frederick Douglass
Speaker 1: who was not only an abolitionist but a businessman, and
Speaker 1: then you get to the twentieth century and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the guy behind the guy. You know about
Speaker 1: Reginald Lewis, but you may not know about the guy
Speaker 1: behind the guy. That is this guy Mike Milkin. So
Speaker 1: before we get into that, And he hates when I
Speaker 1: say this, but he's a billionaire. He hates when I
Speaker 1: say it because it's not about money, it's about purpose.
Speaker 1: But he is something that we all aspire to understand
Speaker 1: and be as it relates to freedom. Mike, why do
Speaker 1: you give a damn? I mean, why do you care
Speaker 1: so much? You could literally just go chill, Like I've
Speaker 1: stayed in your house. You don't even stay in your house.
Speaker 1: You're busy working.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll visit you in my house. John.
Speaker 1: We actually kick Mike out of his own house. We're like,
Speaker 1: we gotta change your nine meter a date, goodbye. But Mike,
Speaker 1: Mike has could just chill. He could just enjoy his life,
Speaker 1: spend his money, focus on his obsess on his own
Speaker 1: family and really be inclusive and exclusive at the same time.
Speaker 1: But that's not who you are and it's not been
Speaker 1: who you are. This is not a new look for you.
Speaker 1: This is who you've been your whole life. Why do
Speaker 1: you give a damn? Why do you care? We're going
Speaker 1: to get into how you operationalize that because these are
Speaker 1: good PhDs are better. We're going to get into what
Speaker 1: you've done that with specific people like Reginald Lewis and
Speaker 1: unpack that. But again, why do you care?
Speaker 2: I think, John, there's points in your life that kind
Speaker 2: of change your life. My father, his mother died in childbirth.
Speaker 2: His father died in a car accident when he was
Speaker 2: eleven and twelve, lived through the Depression. One of the
Speaker 2: few things his father ever left him was a watch.
Speaker 2: And to give you the relative values, and during the Depression,
Speaker 2: when he was at the University of Wisconsin, he gave
Speaker 2: up the watch that his father gave him to pay
Speaker 2: for an entire year of tuition. Now today, obviously a
Speaker 2: time X watch is not going to cover the cost
Speaker 2: of tuition. He was very strong on family and next generation.
Speaker 2: It was extremely important to him, and his feeling was
Speaker 2: that his grandchildren would not have a life, a good life,
Speaker 2: a chance at the American dream unless every single person
Speaker 2: felt they had a chance at the American dreams. And
Speaker 2: so I grew up during the fifties. The show Happy Days,
Speaker 2: some of your viewers might have seen Happy Days, and
Speaker 2: in many ways these were happy days for communities. I
Speaker 2: used to ride my bike to school. Your neighbors knew
Speaker 2: who you were, your streets were safe, and it was
Speaker 2: a period of time in this country. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to run the space program. So the first thing that
Speaker 2: ever happened to me was Sputnik went up and everything
Speaker 2: was turned upside down in nineteen fifty seven and communism
Speaker 2: quote one, this little ball was traveling around Earth. You
Speaker 2: could drop nuclear bombs anywhere you wanted if you could
Speaker 2: do this. Soviet Union thought it was their finest day,
Speaker 2: but it was the end, the beginning and end of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union because it woke up the United States,
Speaker 2: and so the US economy was much larger than the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, and DARPUB was formed so the US would
Speaker 2: never go fall behind in science.
Speaker 1: Well was dark Boat just very quickly.
Speaker 2: It was part of the Defense Department, right and its
Speaker 2: goal was to it's kind of like a venture capital
Speaker 2: firm that was created, a government venture capital firm to
Speaker 2: push science. It was cool to be a STEM major.
Speaker 1: At the engineering in math. We're gonna make sure we're
Speaker 1: not packed these these these phrases for people.
Speaker 2: And so the government put up money and encouraged kids
Speaker 2: to go into science and math. And I wrote a
Speaker 2: letter to the President in fifty seven that I was
Speaker 2: running to run the space program because NASA was being formed.
Speaker 2: Now I was a little disappointed. I didn't get a
Speaker 2: letter back from the President. Okay, I was eleven years old.
Speaker 2: I never had That was my plan. I'd run our
Speaker 2: space program until the Watts riots. August eleventh, nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 2: and I met a young African American man who was married,
Speaker 2: had a child, had no savings, and they had burned
Speaker 2: down the building that he worked in. He didn't start it,
Speaker 2: but he didn't stop it, so when he woke up
Speaker 2: the next morning, he didn't have a job.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And when I sat with them, he told me that
Speaker 2: his father never had access to capital, no matter how
Speaker 2: many good ideas he has, because of the color of
Speaker 2: his skin, and that he wouldn't have an opportunity to
Speaker 2: build his own business, and he'd always be somebody's employee
Speaker 2: because of the color of his skin. And that was
Speaker 2: August eleventh, nineteen sixty five, and I went back to
Speaker 2: Berkeley where I was going to school, changed my major
Speaker 2: to finance. Had done all this research and it was
Speaker 2: totally irrational to me that the color of anyone's skin
Speaker 2: should determine whether they're a good credit, whether their ideas
Speaker 2: are good and could be financed. And I made the
Speaker 2: decision in nineteen sixty five that I was going to
Speaker 2: change the flow of capital as a sophomore at Berkeley
Speaker 2: in the future, and that people would not be judged
Speaker 2: on the color of their skin, but their ability, their entrepreneurism,
Speaker 2: and their talent. And so when you say why do
Speaker 2: I do what I do today, I've had this mission.
Speaker 2: I have grandchildren today, and I tell them the same
Speaker 2: thing my father told me. Unless every kid feels they
Speaker 2: have a chance, it's not going to be great for them.
Speaker 2: That's equal opportunity, not necessarily equal outcomes. I've been on
Speaker 2: a mission and going to start my sixtieth year this
Speaker 2: year on this mission, and so as long as I'm
Speaker 2: living and breathing, I'm going to make sure that everyone
Speaker 2: feels they have this opportunity and a project that you're
Speaker 2: working on. I'm going to make sure they understand how
Speaker 2: important financial literacy is. When Laurie and I got married,
Speaker 2: we got married on August eleventh, nineteen sixty eight. It
Speaker 2: was not an accident. I never wanted to forget that.
Speaker 1: Day of the day the riots.
Speaker 2: That's correct, and we're going to celebrate that at our
Speaker 2: center on August eleventh, twenty twenty five, the Center for
Speaker 2: Advancing the American Dream. And one of those pillars, John,
Speaker 2: you know, is financial literacy. And so I knew when
Speaker 2: Laura and I got married. We set up a budget
Speaker 2: of six hundred dollars a month. That's what we had
Speaker 2: to live on transportation rent. Because I knew, even if
Speaker 2: I was only getting ten percent rate of return investment
Speaker 2: on my money, that I knew every dollar I spent
Speaker 2: today would have been worth eight dollars in twenty years.
Speaker 2: So when I hit forty, I knew that if I
Speaker 2: saved a dollar, it would be worth eight dollars. And
Speaker 2: the power of compounding and understand this. Einstein is often
Speaker 2: credited with the idea, what is the most powerful force
Speaker 2: in the world. It's not as famous formula e equals
Speaker 2: mc square. It was coumpounding, and people forget how important
Speaker 2: that is. And so the concept of saving, the concept
Speaker 2: of making an investment in the future, and one of
Speaker 2: those investments you make is in your own education.
Speaker 1: So hold on right there. So you told me something
Speaker 1: one day that brains intelligence are equally distributed, but opportunity
Speaker 1: is not, which I'm gonna get to in this next question.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you. But as you were talking
Speaker 1: about compounding, and as you talked about what you and
Speaker 1: Laurie dian I want to make sure the listeners don't
Speaker 1: skip over what he said about August eleventh. What he
Speaker 1: said was he got married. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike.
Speaker 1: You got me on the same day that you had
Speaker 1: this epiphany about the mission of your life, which was
Speaker 1: the day of the riots. This is the wats riots,
Speaker 1: and so rainbows after storms you had you changed your
Speaker 1: major to finance. I didn't know you wanted to be
Speaker 1: an astronaut. That's a new news to me. That's cool
Speaker 1: to know. And then you moved into this mission of
Speaker 1: giving access to all people through finance and got married
Speaker 1: as a pivot point really acknowledging point a reminder on
Speaker 1: August eleventh, and now you're going to open up the
Speaker 1: center on August eleventh. But one of the billionaires you
Speaker 1: created is a guy who helped me out named Tony Wrestler.
Speaker 1: And Tony told me one day you make money during
Speaker 1: the day, you built well in your sleep, which is
Speaker 1: another way of what you just said, which is you
Speaker 1: and Laurie had six hundred dollars and you wanted to
Speaker 1: save ten percent of that because you knew in X
Speaker 1: number of years that that was really going to have
Speaker 1: be the way you build wealth. Most people don't understand that.
Speaker 1: They got their obsession with I want to make that
Speaker 1: mon want to get this dollar, We'll get this cash,
Speaker 1: We'll get that bag. I want to get this mullah.
Speaker 1: They all these different acronisms for money. Money is highly overrated.
Speaker 1: You build wealth in your sleep, which is compounding. As
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, how many billionaires, which you guess you
Speaker 1: created through your work over your years, how many people
Speaker 1: have come through you and are now enjoying their own status.
Speaker 1: Is one of the titans in the world. A dozen,
Speaker 1: two dozen.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a thousand, but it's hundreds,
Speaker 2: but I'd say the most important element, John, is that
Speaker 2: tens of millions of jobs were created. One of the
Speaker 2: things I saw very goodly. You know, people don't really
Speaker 2: think of it this way, but the value of human potential,
Speaker 2: often referred to as human capital and social capital. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in this country is about fifteen hundred trillion, So it's
Speaker 2: fifteen times the assets. So if an individual thought, boy,
Speaker 2: if I could get these skills, if I had a
Speaker 2: mentor if I could get a job and learn from
Speaker 2: someone else, they don't really see it, but their value
Speaker 2: is going up, and the value of what they can
Speaker 2: do in the future when you're young is far more
Speaker 2: valuable than the amount of money you have in the bank,
Speaker 2: or your net worth or what assets you hold. And
Speaker 2: so the potential of people in this country is fifteen
Speaker 2: times the financial assets, and it's fifty times the size
Speaker 2: of the economy, and so people don't necessarily think about that.
Speaker 2: As a young kid, boy, if I became good in math,
Speaker 2: math majors are among some of the highest paid people
Speaker 2: in this country. If I learned how to code, if
Speaker 2: I built a little robot when I was six years
Speaker 2: old and I wanted to make my robot move. So
Speaker 2: I learned how to code. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: think about their first job is who's going to pay
Speaker 2: him the most. That's right, the most important thing on
Speaker 2: your first job is who's going to teach you the most.
Speaker 2: You're going to be your mentor, because what you're going
Speaker 2: to achieve and the rest of your life is going
Speaker 2: to dwarf what your starting salary is. And so a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't really step back and think, boy,
Speaker 2: these are the jobs of the future, These are the
Speaker 2: skills of the future. There are plenty of skills that
Speaker 2: you know aren't in big demand today because of technology disintermediating,
Speaker 2: and so one skill is always knowledge and education.
Speaker 1: So untapped human potential. You and I share a passion
Speaker 1: for unleashing untapped human potential at scale. And as you know,
Speaker 1: I wore a little crush velvet three piece suit that
Speaker 1: my mother bought me to go to church. I wore
Speaker 1: that suit to the school in Compton, California, and the
Speaker 1: model of the banker who came in my classroom, who
Speaker 1: happened to be white, who was teaching us financial literacy
Speaker 1: when I was nine years old, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: what do you do for a living and how'd you
Speaker 1: get rich legally? And I was dead serious, no one.
Speaker 1: I'd never met anybody like this before. He said, I'm
Speaker 1: a banker and I finance entrepreneurs. That was sort of
Speaker 1: my first unofficial mentor in finance, and and it was,
Speaker 1: it was, and it changed my whole life. I started
Speaker 1: a business right after that, and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: There's another guy that you saw potential in at an
Speaker 1: early age. Well, you saw his potential after he reached
Speaker 1: a mature age, but he saw his potentil at an
Speaker 1: early age. He was a lawyer. He was on the
Speaker 1: he was on Wall Street, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: get a piece of the big ring. He was trying
Speaker 1: to grab the big ring. And what was unheard of
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, which was to do a billion
Speaker 1: dollar deal on Wall Street, wasn't about the money. He
Speaker 1: was trying to buy a company. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: part of the leverage buyouts of that age, and he
Speaker 1: was trying to buy a company. A district of case
Speaker 1: was Beach's International. I believe it was nine erny eighty
Speaker 1: five million dollar was an acquisition price. Think so anybody
Speaker 1: listening to this, watching this, think you know I'm saying
Speaker 1: a billion, think twenty billion a day, think thirty billion.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty five, and he's got to have to
Speaker 1: be black. His name was Reginald Lewis, now Reggie Lewis's Grace.
Speaker 1: The covers a Black Enterprise and all these different publications,
Speaker 1: and he's held up as the Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: of Wall Street, the first black man to do a
Speaker 1: billion dollar deal on Wall Street. And he deserves all
Speaker 1: that credit. There's a museum with his name on it
Speaker 1: in Baltimore and so on and so forth. His family
Speaker 1: enjoys generational wealth. He's helped countless people, but when he
Speaker 1: went to Wall Street, he was denied access to capital.
Speaker 1: It goes back to that quote that you told me, Mike,
Speaker 1: that intelligence is equally distributed, but access an opportunity is not.
Speaker 1: And tell us the story of Reginald Lewis, And why
Speaker 1: did you stick your nose in this, put your reputation
Speaker 1: and I think relationship capital at risk to help this guy.
Speaker 1: I believe by the way you were picked on later
Speaker 1: because of helping people like him and others. I'll give
Speaker 1: you that, hopefully before we finish. But again, why you
Speaker 1: give a damn And how'd you pick this guy? And
Speaker 1: what made him special? And what did you do.
Speaker 2: Well? First, I had met Regg number of years earlier.
Speaker 2: He was an entrepreneur. And when it came time to
Speaker 2: sell this international division of Beatrice, the people who were
Speaker 2: selling it told me that Reggie not have any credibility
Speaker 2: with them, and I told them.
Speaker 1: Harvard educated attorney just for these those are not completely
Speaker 1: aware of Redge Lewis is correct.
Speaker 2: And the largest private equity firm was the seller of
Speaker 2: the company. And I had financed the purchase of overall
Speaker 2: beaches for them, but I told them they didn't need to.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to have credibility with them. He had
Speaker 2: credibility with me, and so that was it. And I
Speaker 2: would say to you that he was better prepared. He
Speaker 2: knew the assets better than anyone else, and he knew
Speaker 2: the plan and he had the best plan as to
Speaker 2: what he was going to do with these assets. So
Speaker 2: he was the best person for this job. And I
Speaker 2: had helped them build their firm, and I told them
Speaker 2: that I stood by Rege Lewis. And to think about
Speaker 2: it was only you know, almost forty years ago. Today
Speaker 2: reg has occurred with Reg and John. I got hate letters,
Speaker 2: I got death threats. We've come a long way. And
Speaker 2: what I saw on Reg Lewis is I saw the
Speaker 2: Jackie Robinson. There were many minority entrepreneurs that have built businesses,
Speaker 2: but when they got bigger, they already always sold them
Speaker 2: to a bigger company. And so I view this as
Speaker 2: a statement that if you have ability, and you have
Speaker 2: more ability in anyone else, you don't have to sell
Speaker 2: that unlimited capital is available to you and you can
Speaker 2: grow and you can make your ideas become a reality.
Speaker 2: And so my feeling was that no different than Jackie
Speaker 2: Robinson's role in baseball, that Reg was going to play
Speaker 2: this role in business. And one of the last things
Speaker 2: Reg and I ever talked about was maybe he should
Speaker 2: buy Paramount Wow, occurring in the early nineties, and who
Speaker 2: knows what would have happened to Paramont had he bought it.
Speaker 2: But Reg's life was cut short by a glioblastema. He
Speaker 2: was a very proud man and really didn't want anyone
Speaker 2: to know that he had terminal cancer until he died,
Speaker 2: except for his family, and so to me, I traveled
Speaker 2: around with him. We went and talked to high schools,
Speaker 2: we went to talk to kids. John, you grew up
Speaker 2: in Compton, California. So if we ask what is one
Speaker 2: of the ten worst places to have grown up in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, you list Compton, California as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And.
Speaker 2: So most of the kids didn't make it out of Compton.
Speaker 2: Most of the schools it wasn't even safe going to school.
Speaker 2: So we built a company called K twelve in the
Speaker 2: late nineties where you could go to school online, and
Speaker 2: so if a parent was concerned about the safety of
Speaker 2: their child, they could go to school at home. Getting
Speaker 2: a computer was free, curriculum was free, teachers were free.
Speaker 2: And so many kids have gone on to great colleges
Speaker 2: and flourished from Compton who actually went to school online.
Speaker 2: And when I think of Compton, besides you, it's hard
Speaker 2: to think of Compton today without thinking about Venus and
Speaker 2: Serena Williams who came out of Compton. That's right, So
Speaker 2: a lot of talent. But the question is what is
Speaker 2: the opportunity, And you talked about it, what is the
Speaker 2: role model your day of a banker walking into your
Speaker 2: classroom and hopefully if people want to see your purple suit,
Speaker 2: they'll go to the Center for Advancing the American Dream
Speaker 2: and see your purples. But whether it's Compton or East
Speaker 2: Saint Louis or East Palo Alto or Harlem or the Bronx,
Speaker 2: there are so many talented people. Fifty years ago I
Speaker 2: started to interact with an economists called Hernando de Soto
Speaker 2: out of Peru, and his view was most gorillas or
Speaker 2: terrorists as they were referred to, many of onere entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: who didn't have access to capital.
Speaker 1: So the audia he means, the rebels in the in
Speaker 1: the the mountains, mountains areas.
Speaker 2: Called South America, and his view was get these people,
Speaker 2: give them capital, tell them there's another path besides growing
Speaker 2: cocaine or something else that they can make money on.
Speaker 2: And so that's why I say, if there's one recommendation
Speaker 2: for young people today is don't focus on your first paycheck.
Speaker 2: Focus on who's the mentor what are you going to lose.
Speaker 2: I've had tens of thousands of people tell me that
Speaker 2: they told a person everything they know. I always correct
Speaker 2: them and say, you taught them everything you know. Many
Speaker 2: of them have gone far past what you taught them,
Speaker 2: but you set them on the path of what you
Speaker 2: know So the Tony Wrestlers of the world, the hundreds
Speaker 2: of those today that are been successful, built great firms,
Speaker 2: you've partnered with. What I'm most proud about them is
Speaker 2: that they care about the society they live in, and
Speaker 2: I've been able to pass on to them over the
Speaker 2: past fifty years plus the idea that their children, their grandchildren,
Speaker 2: the life they grow up in will be a function
Speaker 2: of every kid feeling they had a change. And therefore
Speaker 2: you never know where those ideas come from when you
Speaker 2: look at it today. Bill Gates didn't finish college. Larry
Speaker 2: Alison didn't finish college. Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Now
Speaker 2: those are three of the ten most valuable people in
Speaker 2: the world measured by dollars. That built Oracle, Facebook, Meta,
Speaker 2: and Microsoft. But they went there for a year or two,
Speaker 2: but got the entrepreneurial bug in them. They could build something,
Speaker 2: They could create something new. So when I visit countries
Speaker 2: around the world, I always go into the schools and
Speaker 2: try to find that outlier, that kid, okay, who's got
Speaker 2: an idea, And I think showing role models to people
Speaker 2: that there is another path. There are so many people
Speaker 2: from lower income growing up who've risen to the top
Speaker 2: because someone gave them a chance, someone gave them a mentor,
Speaker 2: and they changed the world. John, They changed the world.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure had Reggie Lewis not passed away a
Speaker 2: few years later from a brain tumor, you would have
Speaker 2: a lot more people knowing about him, or Slivia Edmunds,
Speaker 2: or many other African Americans who I loan money to.
Speaker 2: So you know, talent is colorblind, no desire and will.
Speaker 2: So many people went and excelled in sports because they
Speaker 2: thought they could. There are so many people in the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties and fifties and sixties that I've interacted with.
Speaker 2: They went to work for the post office. Now why
Speaker 2: did they go work for the post office? Because there
Speaker 2: was no discrimination in that government post office?
Speaker 1: That's right. Many of them profecial sports, entertainment, government service
Speaker 1: and level the rules are published and Plainfield was level. Continue.
Speaker 2: So what I found, John, was very simply, if I
Speaker 2: financed a person who came from India, he was more
Speaker 2: likely to hire a person who came from India. If
Speaker 2: I finance an African American, they were more likely to
Speaker 2: hire an African American. Now it isn't necessarily the discriminate.
Speaker 2: But there's circles they operated, and so if we're going
Speaker 2: to get and to give.
Speaker 1: Back to afric American communities, by the way, when they
Speaker 1: make some money, they're more likely to do that because
Speaker 1: of that same proplics.
Speaker 2: Some are, some aren't. But I would say to you
Speaker 2: Bill Tatum at the Amsterdam News, I was always used
Speaker 2: to tell me I had two disadvantages. One I was
Speaker 2: black and two I look white. Ya I was with
Speaker 2: him in Harlem. That's what he used to tell me.
Speaker 1: But so for the audience this as you know, Michael
Speaker 1: Milner and I had an argument last night about a
Speaker 1: range of stuff that wasn't important, but he basically I said, look, Mike,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you about finance. Don't tell
Speaker 1: me about basically the black culture. He's basic try to
Speaker 1: convince me he's blacker than me. And you know, he's
Speaker 1: one of the few people who actually has a little
Speaker 1: bit of credentials in this area. He's talking about all
Speaker 1: the things he's done in the community, and this was
Speaker 1: all true. By the way, he's telling this one story
Speaker 1: about Harlem. Now he's a I'm going to make you
Speaker 1: an honorary black man. Just just going to just give
Speaker 1: you that credential for the moment.
Speaker 2: So that's quite an honor, John, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: But I would say for everyone on listening, everyone has potential.
Speaker 2: You're going to make sure you invest in your own potential.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that's knowledge. You know, when I went
Speaker 2: to school back in the dark ages, to get a PhD.
Speaker 2: You had to speak two foreign languages. No longer, it's
Speaker 2: much more important that you can program, or you have
Speaker 2: math skills or accounting skills, you know, taking an accounting
Speaker 2: course and understanding a balance sheet and understanding how you
Speaker 2: build a business and understanding how it works. You never
Speaker 2: know later in life how that's going to pay off
Speaker 2: for you. That's right now. When I went to Wall Street,
Speaker 2: very few people were math majors or had strength in math,
Speaker 2: and it kind of amazed me. And so you go,
Speaker 2: you bump into a person and I and he'd say, okay,
Speaker 2: let's see I made one hundred percent on my money
Speaker 2: this year. It went from one thousand dollars to two thousand,
Speaker 2: and then next year I lost fifty percent of my money. Well,
Speaker 2: if you do the math, you're back where you started.
Speaker 2: It went from one thousand to two thousand. Now you'd
Speaker 2: ask people on Wall Street, let me see if I
Speaker 2: make one hundred percent one year and then I lose fifty.
Speaker 2: They take one hundred minus fifty is fifty and divided
Speaker 2: by two and tell me you were making twenty five
Speaker 2: percent on your money, okay. And that is why often
Speaker 2: if I hired the number one graduate from a leading
Speaker 2: a business school, I always teem them up with a
Speaker 2: kid or a person that grew up in the school
Speaker 2: of hard knocks that understand what the real world was,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, it's interesting. I have a good friend,
Speaker 2: Neil Ferguson, who was a professor at Stanford and maybe
Speaker 2: the leading business historian alive today, and he used to
Speaker 2: tell me when he walked into that class, he would
Speaker 2: try to figure out how long which kids got there
Speaker 2: on their ability and which kids got there because of
Speaker 2: their pedigree. And then once he determined that, he tried
Speaker 2: to think about how long was it going to be
Speaker 2: for the guy that got there and his family to
Speaker 2: come to work for the guy that got there on
Speaker 2: his ability? And so people don't really think about this.
Speaker 2: Let's think about an industry that most of the viewers
Speaker 2: are familiar with the entertainment industry and industry where I
Speaker 2: financed a lot of the companies MGM, Fox, Universal Columbia,
Speaker 2: every single one, Warner Brothers, every single one of the
Speaker 2: founders of those companies grew up two hundred miles from Warsaw.
Speaker 2: Everyone was an outsider built an entire industry. Now, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the people that have built the new industries.
Speaker 1: By the ways, But the viewers, he's talking about people
Speaker 1: who grew up outside of Warsaw, the concentration camps. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, polanark in Poland, in Poland. Yes,
Speaker 1: the analysis is, you know, my my grandfather was a sharecropper,
Speaker 1: My second great grandfather was a slave who fought in
Speaker 1: the Union Army, so up from nothing, and so his
Speaker 1: analogy that these people built these great businesses. We were,
Speaker 1: you know, they were one step removed from absolute human devastation,
Speaker 1: which I can relate to. Had compassion for By the way, well.
Speaker 2: You could think about it, right she had capital been
Speaker 2: available and they had a different system, the center of
Speaker 2: the entertainment industry would have been Warsaw, Poland. Okay, but
Speaker 2: they all came here for a better life and a
Speaker 2: better opportunity and built something new. You look at those
Speaker 2: companies today that are the most valuable in the world. Navidia,
Speaker 2: it's the third or the second most valuable company in
Speaker 2: the world today. He came from Taiwan. The CEO of
Speaker 2: Microsoft and the stock's gone up four fold since he
Speaker 2: became the CEO. Born in India, the CEO of Google
Speaker 2: and the most watched streaming network YouTube, born in India,
Speaker 2: the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, Jordanian, Jeff Bezos. Everyone
Speaker 2: was an outsider, and so to me, you know, when
Speaker 2: I went to Istanbul and you go to the bazaars,
Speaker 2: They've got six to twelve year old kids that could
Speaker 2: have been on my trading desk. They've seen every they've
Speaker 2: seen everyone that came. They just needed to get a
Speaker 2: bigger platform to operate on than in front of their stall.
Speaker 2: In that bizarre And so whether you visit a part
Speaker 2: of the country that looks totally run down, those individuals
Speaker 2: there are diamonds in the rough there. They need to
Speaker 2: be polished and they need to be disciplined. You know,
Speaker 2: what I see is a lot of people want to
Speaker 2: be entrepreneurs, a lot of people want access to capitol region.
Speaker 2: But they're not willing to put the time and effort
Speaker 2: to get themselves prepared.
Speaker 1: Did you just give me a compliment? Did you just
Speaker 1: actually call me Ridge?
Speaker 2: By the way I do, you're my new Redge. But John,
Speaker 2: what I'm saying to you is you've prepared your whole
Speaker 2: life for the role you're in today. Okay, to be
Speaker 2: a new Rege Lewis. But let's talk about the Olympics.
Speaker 2: It's going to happen in Paris, and that one hundred
Speaker 2: meter dash is going to take less than ten seconds.
Speaker 2: Whoever wins it, whoever wins it is going to run
Speaker 2: in less than ten seconds. So you can see, well,
Speaker 2: how long do they prepare? How long did they prepare
Speaker 2: for that race? They might have prepared for fifteen years
Speaker 2: for that less than ten seconds. The runners are bigger,
Speaker 2: they're stronger today, their legs are more powerful because getting
Speaker 2: out of those slotting starting blocks, John is more important.
Speaker 2: And so my point is you see it in athletes.
Speaker 2: A guy tells you he took three thousand three pointers.
Speaker 2: Stephen Carey just didn't walk out of the basketball court. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: they've been practicing in the gym. When you see those
Speaker 2: their knees iced at the end of the game. Okay,
Speaker 2: they're preparing to perform at the highest level. You want
Speaker 2: to run a company, you want to build a new industry. Today,
Speaker 2: never before are their greater opportunities today in that when
Speaker 2: I went to Wall Street, you maybe had ten maybe
Speaker 2: eight people, either they liked you or they didn't like you.
Speaker 2: Today there's ten thousand. You don't need to win a
Speaker 2: popularity conference contests with everyone. Just one is enough. But
Speaker 2: you got to get yourself prepared. No different than that athlete,
Speaker 2: no different than that singer, no different than that actor.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people don't understand how important going
Speaker 2: to school is, learning programming, learning accounting, understanding finance. These
Speaker 2: are just no different than an athlete or an entertainer.
Speaker 2: You're getting yourself prepared, okay, And so getting yourself and
Speaker 2: in the best investment you can make is in your self.
Speaker 1: That's right. So look, Look, was obvious to me, Mike
Speaker 1: is that we're gonna have to do a part two
Speaker 1: and a part three before we get through it this episode.
Speaker 1: We're gonna uh and I want the viewers and listeners
Speaker 1: to send me a note to say whether you want
Speaker 1: to hear more from Mike as you can hear. Uh,
Speaker 1: we got more than we can unpack in an hour.
Speaker 1: But before we finished with this, we're gonna cover some
Speaker 1: more ground. But I want to go back. There's some
Speaker 1: many things I want to talk to you about. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about mcad before we finish briefly, but I
Speaker 1: want to go back because you're talking about outliers and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about you know, Tony Restler and Michael Arraghetty
Speaker 1: from Ares who are in private equity, and I do
Speaker 1: a podcast that explains what private equity is and I
Speaker 1: unpack it. Uh and and Michael and Michael Arraghetty CEO,
Speaker 1: Tony Restler's executive chairman. Tony came from your shop, as
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, and now he's doing well and
Speaker 1: doing good at scale. But before private equity, there was
Speaker 1: junk bonds, and that's the junk bonds is what financed
Speaker 1: Reginald Lewis. There's a lot of private equity being finance
Speaker 1: for entrepreneurs to day, but it was back in your day.
Speaker 1: You pioneered this thing called junk bonds, which required an
Speaker 1: out of the box, outlier, disruptive mindset. You talk about
Speaker 1: other innovators. I'm talking about this innovator you. And let's
Speaker 1: go back now to high school, because it started way
Speaker 1: back when you were you were a cheerleader. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, an arm flier, is that right?
Speaker 2: Aren't you a cheerleader? John Well? In my high school,
Speaker 2: that's the cheerleader was an elected, very important role, okay,
Speaker 2: because you had a fire up the school. We had
Speaker 2: to raise money for lights for the football field and
Speaker 2: for the grass and everything. And so yes, I've been
Speaker 2: a cheerleader my whole life. Now, I did have good
Speaker 2: insight in that my wife, who was in my high
Speaker 2: school class and I met in seventh grade, was voted
Speaker 2: most likely to succeed. So I decided I'd stay as
Speaker 2: close to her as possible. But I know they weren't
Speaker 2: call John bonds.
Speaker 1: They were still fine, by the way, Laurie is still fine.
Speaker 2: Yes, And so they were called high yield bonds, high
Speaker 2: return bonds. But when you think about the club, there's
Speaker 2: millions of companies, millions, only five hundred are rated investment grade.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't know if you guys got that.
Speaker 1: He corrected me. He didn't like the phrase junk bonds.
Speaker 2: That's a phrase you could call him whatever he hid.
Speaker 1: High yield bonds. No, this is proper exactly, but he.
Speaker 2: John. When Japan started manufacturing things, everyone said everything from
Speaker 2: Japan is junk. And then often we discovered, gosh, their
Speaker 2: cars are of higher quality. And so what I was saying,
Speaker 2: if you're in the group, you're going to think of
Speaker 2: a lot of names. Though that's junk. Why you want
Speaker 2: to buy a Japanese car, that's junk? Okay. But my
Speaker 2: point was, if you were one of the five hundred
Speaker 2: companies in the world there was investment grade, you liked it.
Speaker 2: If no one else had access to Campan all right,
Speaker 2: So when cable came around, you could have a great
Speaker 2: idea of building the cable industry. But it took a
Speaker 2: lot of money to build the cable industry. It didn't exist,
Speaker 2: so nothing was investment grade. So the John Malones and
Speaker 2: other pioneers and Chuck Dowens, you know, I had a
Speaker 2: chance to finance all of them because no one else believed.
Speaker 2: And it's hard to believe John today, if you say
Speaker 2: to me, of all the industries I ever financed, what
Speaker 2: was the hardest. It was mobile phones? This little device here, wow, Okay,
Speaker 2: no one believed in it. Why did you need a
Speaker 2: mobile phone? You had a wireline phone. What did you
Speaker 2: need another phone for? And it wasn't until I teamed
Speaker 2: up with John Coogey or Craig McCall and others and
Speaker 2: gave him capital that this industry took off. That's a
Speaker 2: longer story. I don't know if we have time to
Speaker 2: get into it. But John, they wrote in the financial
Speaker 2: magazines about how bad John's accounting was, and the stock
Speaker 2: went went down. So he decided he'd put him on
Speaker 2: a misery and he'd buy all the stock himself. He
Speaker 2: only needed three and a half billion to do that.
Speaker 2: So it was a good teaming up. And three years
Speaker 2: later John was the wealthiest person in America.
Speaker 1: And you financed him.
Speaker 2: I asked you that.
Speaker 1: How many companies the entrepreneur's deals have you financed? You
Speaker 1: have any sense of that number?
Speaker 2: Over three thousand. But I want to make a different
Speaker 2: story to you. Let's think about a person watching this podcast.
Speaker 2: You believe in mobile telephones. You believe in this idea
Speaker 2: that your communication device should be where you are now.
Speaker 2: I felt that way because I was a Star Trek
Speaker 2: fan and wherever Captain Kirk was he hit this little
Speaker 2: thing and his phone was with him. Okay, So AT
Speaker 2: and T invented the technology. They went to McKenzie who
Speaker 2: analyzed it, and McKenzie told them in the year two thousand,
Speaker 2: this is in the late nineteen seventies, there'll be one
Speaker 2: million users on the planet and they'll be paying one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year, and the entire market in the
Speaker 2: year two thousand will be one billion dollars. And AT
Speaker 2: and T decided with their advice that it's too small,
Speaker 2: and so they invented it and decided not to go
Speaker 2: in the industry. Now, if you were working for it,
Speaker 2: and you were just you know, an engineer down below,
Speaker 2: and you said, you know, I believe in this thing.
Speaker 2: Do you know what it costs to ask for the
Speaker 2: sell your franchise for New York City? How much did
Speaker 2: you have to put up ten thousand dollars? No way,
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 1: For the franchise for all of New York City.
Speaker 2: That's correct, That is correct. Okay, So you, an individual
Speaker 2: could have felt this way, and now you have what
Speaker 2: was one of the largest companies in the world who
Speaker 2: didn't feel that way. And so a young kid out
Speaker 2: of Seattle, Craig McCall took it up, and twenty four
Speaker 2: years later after this technology was invented, and fifteen years
Speaker 2: later after they turned it down, they spent twenty to
Speaker 2: thirty billion buying a call seller to get into the
Speaker 2: business they decided not to go into. So for the
Speaker 2: people on this phone, you can see something that others
Speaker 2: don't see. And if you believe strongly on that business,
Speaker 2: that industry, that needs and just ask yourself, what are
Speaker 2: the needs of the people today? With the demographics changing
Speaker 2: and people getting older in the United States, the needs
Speaker 2: of people over sixty are going to be so significant,
Speaker 2: and what are the services they need? They're not the
Speaker 2: same as they were sixty years ago. So my point
Speaker 2: was every day there's an opportunity out there. Every day
Speaker 2: some stock makes a new all time high, and every
Speaker 2: day some stock makes an a new low. So it's
Speaker 2: a market of stocks, it's a market of ideas. But
Speaker 2: when I look at a company, and I made the
Speaker 2: decision to finance companies, the first thing I looked at
Speaker 2: and the most important asset was who's running the company,
Speaker 2: what are their visions, what are their ideas? And except
Speaker 2: for professional sports, no company put their people on the
Speaker 2: balance sheet. So there's this company about to go bankrupt
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven called Apple, and Steve jobs. They
Speaker 2: allow him to go back to the company he founded
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven. It's on the verge of bankruptcy
Speaker 2: and it took it would have taken twenty Apples to
Speaker 2: make one. Some today it takes twenty Sonys to make one.
Speaker 2: Happen four hundred to one change in one generation by
Speaker 2: a person. I'm not a Boston Celtic fan. I don't
Speaker 2: know how many of your viewers are Boston Celtic fans.
Speaker 2: But I went to graduate school in Philadelphia, and the
Speaker 2: seventy six ers had a better team, but they always
Speaker 2: lost to the Celtics. And the Lakers had a better team,
Speaker 2: but they always lost. And so I grew up not
Speaker 2: liking the Boston Celtics. And things were good because the
Speaker 2: Boston Celtics fell on very hard times for a number
Speaker 2: of years. Then something happened. They drafted one kid named
Speaker 2: Larry Bird out of Indiana State, and for the next
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years they were or problem again. And
Speaker 2: the same thing in Chicago, one of the worst professional
Speaker 2: teams ever drafted this skinny kid named Michael Jordan out
Speaker 2: of North Carolina. And so in sports you can say, boy,
Speaker 2: that one person made a difference, But it's the same
Speaker 2: in business. Business, And so a person who's a great
Speaker 2: investor says, you know who's running this company, whose ideas?
Speaker 2: What is their vision? Who's the next Reg Lewis? Okay,
Speaker 2: what is their idea? And I can back them And
Speaker 2: it's not the balance sheet.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, once
Speaker 2: capital was available, large companies created investment grade companies minus
Speaker 2: four million jobs in thirty years minus four million jobs.
Speaker 2: And quote junk companies or non investment grade companies created
Speaker 2: sixty two million jobs. So once you leveled.
Speaker 1: The small bus as a non investment grade company like
Speaker 1: a small business, are growing companies not yet made it
Speaker 1: to institutional quality.
Speaker 2: Well you people would be surprised today how many household
Speaker 2: names are non investment grade credits. It's the majority. And
Speaker 2: so my point was, you want job creation, you want
Speaker 2: the companies of the future. When I met Sam Walton
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four, Steers was one thousand times the
Speaker 2: size of Walmart. Now, if you were a bigger yeah,
Speaker 2: if you were a young guy looking for a career,
Speaker 2: you'd have been you'd be a very wealthy person today
Speaker 2: had you made the decision to go to Walmart instead
Speaker 2: of Steers which went bankrupt, or Kmart that went bank
Speaker 2: So this is my best advice to people on the
Speaker 2: job is who's the CEO? What is their vision? Do
Speaker 2: you believe in it? Do you believe in the products
Speaker 2: and the services? And if you can join them early,
Speaker 2: you could become quite wealthy. If you joined Microsoft or
Speaker 2: any of these companies early in their day, wealth was
Speaker 2: a byproduct, but you had you believed in something. You
Speaker 2: believed in whatever it was that this company was doing.
Speaker 2: And if you don't believe in what the company is doing,
Speaker 2: then don't go to work for that company. And if
Speaker 2: you don't believe in the management, they're not going to
Speaker 2: take you in the right direction. And So when I
Speaker 2: met a guy like Steve Wynn, he had a little
Speaker 2: hotel in downtown Vegas called the Golden Nugget. But when
Speaker 2: I saw him and his vision of what he thought
Speaker 2: things could be, to me, he was Walt Disney for adults.
Speaker 2: He was going to be the Walt Disney for adults. Wow,
Speaker 2: And I mentioned it because I was in Las Vegas
Speaker 2: yesterday and all these buildings that exist in almost all
Speaker 2: these companies, I were like my little kids growing up.
Speaker 2: But each one had an entrepreneur, whether he was Kirk
Speaker 2: Kryan or whether it was Steve Wynn and had ability.
Speaker 2: And as you go to industry, industry, Federal Express, whoever
Speaker 2: thought that would work? You have the US Mail? What
Speaker 2: do you need another person delivering packages and mail for ubs?
Speaker 2: Yeah or DHL. And so I challenged people every day,
Speaker 2: where's the future going? What are their ideas, what do
Speaker 2: they have passion for? And if they have passion for it.
Speaker 2: Out of all the companies I've financed over all the
Speaker 2: years that I've interacted with now for almost sixty years,
Speaker 2: I only had one person tell me he was in
Speaker 2: it for the money. Now, some of them might have been,
Speaker 2: but if they told me, I wouldn't have loaned the money.
Speaker 2: But most people that have created significant success or wealth,
Speaker 2: it was a by product of their passion and meeting
Speaker 2: the needs of society. That's right, it's a by product.
Speaker 2: You're building on a nonprofit basis, Operation Hope. What is
Speaker 2: the challenge in our country? The challenge is most people
Speaker 2: are financially illiterate. They're making decisions every day that aren't
Speaker 2: in their best interests. They're not investing in themselves through education, training, mentorship,
Speaker 2: and so often when we gave equity to people over
Speaker 2: the years, they didn't recognize the value it hand and
Speaker 2: didn't hold on to it. So today, when you talk
Speaker 2: about private equity, private equity today employees about nineteen million
Speaker 2: people in America, and somewhere between twelve and fourteen million
Speaker 2: of those have been given stock in their company. And
Speaker 2: as you know, sometimes they think it's valuable. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: think it's not valuable. And if you don't do a
Speaker 2: good job giving them these tools of financial literacy, they're
Speaker 2: not going to achieve what you want to achieve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a bonus. Without financial literacy, they
Speaker 1: think stock is maybe either worthless or when they want
Speaker 1: to cash it out because they just think it's a
Speaker 1: financial bonus at the end of the year, and then
Speaker 1: they end up winning a battle and losing the war,
Speaker 1: or worse, taking the money and putting a down payment
Speaker 1: on a mobile home or something or a car, and
Speaker 1: then end up with a bunch of debt that they
Speaker 1: can't pay off and end up going bankrupt or something.
Speaker 1: So this wonderful thing becomes a noose around their neck
Speaker 1: because they didn't understand this was an opportunity for them
Speaker 1: to build wealth again, for them to compound in their sleep.
Speaker 1: So when you don't know better, you can't do better.
Speaker 1: There's an old Southern saying, Mike, no matter how much
Speaker 1: I love you, my son or my daughter, if I
Speaker 1: don't have wisdom, all I can give you is my
Speaker 1: own ignorance. So out of love, we passed down bad
Speaker 1: habits from generation the generation. And so I am, as
Speaker 1: you know, coaching all the Delta employees, one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: of them with a bashing as the CEO. There's another
Speaker 1: great leader example. You know Walmart's doing this with their employees,
Speaker 1: Doug Millan. I'm doing it with a Venetian hotel. Just
Speaker 1: starting that in Las Vegas through Apollo, which is a
Speaker 1: private equity player, and doing a division of KKR, A
Speaker 1: couple companies of KKR owns doing financial coaching and counseling.
Speaker 1: I want to do financial literacy, which you did with
Speaker 1: High Yo bonds. You pioneered an entire industry, an entire space.
Speaker 1: You're an outlier, and I want to be that. We
Speaker 1: will be that for financial literacy. We believe that financial
Speaker 1: literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. And
Speaker 1: the colors not black or white, or red or blue.
Speaker 1: It's green, as in the color of US currency for
Speaker 1: those who are in the US watching this. And so
Speaker 1: we think this is a way for inclusive capitalism, Mike,
Speaker 1: the way to set things right, to allow the playing
Speaker 1: field to be level so that people can have freedom,
Speaker 1: freedom through self determination, the same thing that you have
Speaker 1: enjoyed and now you're trying to give to others through.
Speaker 1: By the way, the African Scholars Program, which we did
Speaker 1: not have a chance to really get in the details here.
Speaker 1: You gotta promise me to come back with the African
Speaker 1: Scholars Program. You talk a little bit about that. You've
Speaker 1: done that yet identifying as talent from the kindent of
Speaker 1: Africa to come here and learn the best about financi
Speaker 1: maybe to go back to their home country. You've got
Speaker 1: the Mcat and Milk con Center for the Advancement of
Speaker 1: the American Dream right next to the Freedman's Bank. By
Speaker 1: the way, what the Amber answer, Andrew Young would say,
Speaker 1: coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. What are the
Speaker 1: chances that Michael Milkin would buy six very former bank
Speaker 1: buildings that bank Lincoln and all these people across from
Speaker 1: the White House. He'd buy these buildings, and what's the
Speaker 1: chances that his assembled property, no planning here are next
Speaker 1: to the building that I called to be renamed was
Speaker 1: the Treasury Annex Building now the Freedman's Bank Building, in
Speaker 1: honor of Abraham Lincoln's vision to teach free slaves about
Speaker 1: money after the Civil War, to give them a sense
Speaker 1: of free enterprise, understanding a little seacorn, little knowledge, a
Speaker 1: little capital, a little access. And of course Lincoln was assassinated,
Speaker 1: the story was lost. What's the chances that these things
Speaker 1: are joined at the hip. We've got to work together.
Speaker 1: This is ordained that we move people from the streets
Speaker 1: to the suites. Then to continue your legacy, which will
Speaker 1: last one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Know that building is going to last a lot longer,
Speaker 2: we hope than one hundred years, because as long as
Speaker 2: the country exists, that's central. But you touched on something, John,
Speaker 2: I just want to briefly mention, and it's really two things. One,
Speaker 2: how do you increase your human capital? One is education, mentorship,
Speaker 2: getting skills, etc. Getting financial literacy. But the second one
Speaker 2: is your health. Yeah, you take care of yourself, Okay,
Speaker 2: And what we know now in science, in public health
Speaker 2: and medical research has been the number one driver of
Speaker 2: the world's economy. So you might have a lot of potential,
Speaker 2: a lot of potential, but if you're not taking care
Speaker 2: of yourself, and that these when you talk about bad habits,
Speaker 2: no eating all the fried food and passing down from
Speaker 2: generation to generation. Today we know what happens with your microbiome,
Speaker 2: and so they're getting yourself. You can increase your human
Speaker 2: capital by you being healthy. Every single great athlete is
Speaker 2: taking care of themselves today. In Babe Ruth's day, they didn't.
Speaker 2: He had an outsized talent, and he might be out
Speaker 2: at night drinking and whatever he was doing at night,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't play anymore with an athlete. And how
Speaker 2: did Tom Brady win a Super Bowl as a quarterback
Speaker 2: in his forties if he wasn't taking care of his body?
Speaker 2: And how is Lebron James at thirty nine years old
Speaker 2: still starring for the Lakers if he wasn't taking care
Speaker 2: of his body. Of the things every person can do
Speaker 2: is not only invest in their knowledge and skills and
Speaker 2: financial literacy, but their health that's right. Health and wealth
Speaker 2: that is correct. And that comes back to Roman and
Speaker 2: Greek times when they used to say the health of
Speaker 2: a nation is the wealth of a nation from that standpoint,
Speaker 2: and we saw that during COVID when it was costing
Speaker 2: the country one trillion dollars a month with the actions
Speaker 2: we were taking. So the first thing I just wanted
Speaker 2: to comment on your addressing is many people have parents,
Speaker 2: and prostate cancer is a disease that's heavily heredity based,
Speaker 2: and the most likely person to get it is an
Speaker 2: African American. And I saw Alonzo Mourning announced in the
Speaker 2: last couple of days that he just was treated for
Speaker 2: prostate cancer. But understanding how you can reduce your risk
Speaker 2: of getting a life threatening disease is available to everyone today.
Speaker 1: Everybody listening to this. Now we're wrapping this thing up,
Speaker 1: but I'm the host, so I can go a little
Speaker 1: for a little longer if I want to. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go a few more minutes here because this is a
Speaker 1: really important note for you to know. Michael's not just
Speaker 1: talking about this in some theoretical sense. I want you
Speaker 1: to stop now. You got a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 1: For this last hour, I reagally need you to stop
Speaker 1: and listen very carefully to what this man just said.
Speaker 1: Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without
Speaker 1: a storm. First, A lady who created months drunk driving.
Speaker 1: She lost her daughter to a drunk driver. She was devastated,
Speaker 1: she was angry, she was upset, she was depressed, and
Speaker 1: then she found her purpose and she's to her work
Speaker 1: saved lives of tens of millions. Michael Milkin had prostate cancer.
Speaker 1: Michael McGan was given a death sentence. He was told
Speaker 1: he was gonna live I think he said eighteen months
Speaker 1: with some crazy thing. And Michael was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. And Michael went out and and and educated
Speaker 1: himself and learned everything that he could learn about this,
Speaker 1: to all the knowledge around the world about this. And
Speaker 1: not only did did he did he solve his own
Speaker 1: He was own his own dang on doctor. He solved
Speaker 1: his own prostate cancer uh and cured himself. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and it's lived a long, beautiful life. He's the largest
Speaker 1: funder for prostate cancer today in the world. So when
Speaker 1: he tells you about this, he's not lecturing you. He's
Speaker 1: not talking down at you. He's not talking over, he's
Speaker 1: not talking theoretical. He's talking about somebody who had to
Speaker 1: literally stop his life to save his own life. And
Speaker 1: now once again he's trying to pay it forward. And
Speaker 1: I went and got a colonoscope. I used to get
Speaker 1: a more rudinentary test once a year, which I won't
Speaker 1: talk about. But was you know, a little uncomfortable. Uh hello, uh,
Speaker 1: but but you know, I call it a good cleanse.
Speaker 1: When I got a colonoscope. And everybody watching this should
Speaker 1: want to go get test it. You will know. He's
Speaker 1: gonna give you some stats. But the short version is,
Speaker 1: if you're black and you're male, you need to go
Speaker 1: get tested seven. If you're over forty, you're twice as
Speaker 1: likely or some crazy thing to die than your white counterpart.
Speaker 1: And he talked about fried chicken. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do this whole thing. We're gonna do a three part series.
Speaker 1: He wasn't down in fried chicken. I like fried chicken,
Speaker 1: but understand, this is a slave diet. He can't say it.
Speaker 1: I'll say it. Fried chicken, hog moss, pig feet, grits
Speaker 1: of ribs. All these were things the slave owner threw
Speaker 1: out the back of his house as a sign of disrespect,
Speaker 1: and we turned that our mothers and fathers and grandmothers
Speaker 1: and grandparents and great grandparents turned that into a delicacy.
Speaker 1: We said, we'll show you, and we turned that into
Speaker 1: a delicacy called soul food. And that's beautiful, but don't
Speaker 1: eat it every day. Eat it once a month and
Speaker 1: enjoy the legacy. But you gotta speed yourself with healthy things.
Speaker 1: As my wife would say, staying in good shape. Eighty
Speaker 1: percent of it is what you eat, not working out.
Speaker 1: So now, Michael, now that people know the backstory, was
Speaker 1: it the stats on black men and prostate cancer and
Speaker 1: what can they do to extend their life?
Speaker 2: Well, we launched a program about eight years ago with
Speaker 2: the VA, and we created a special program for all
Speaker 2: African American men that served this country and we reduced
Speaker 2: the death rate by fifty percent and it's now no different,
Speaker 2: five zero fifty percent. Correct. So it shows that if
Speaker 2: you care, you can do something about it. And so
Speaker 2: the best two ways to increase your your value long
Speaker 2: term earnings, power, our knowledge mentorship is one and the
Speaker 2: other is taking care of your health. And it isn't
Speaker 2: just you now we talk about the individual they got
Speaker 2: a life threatening disease, but it affects it's the whole family.
Speaker 2: And there are great companies. Time Warner, its builder, its
Speaker 2: visionary died in January of nineteen ninety three from cancer.
Speaker 2: Had he not died, the company would have been a
Speaker 2: totally different company today. Had Abraham Lincoln not been assassinated,
Speaker 2: the past for this country would have been substantially different.
Speaker 2: So there are things you can do to make sure
Speaker 2: your path. If you're in good health, your children and
Speaker 2: grandchildren will have a different life than if you're not
Speaker 2: in good health. And so as you said, John, you
Speaker 2: got tested today, and so many diseases like colon cancer,
Speaker 2: you catch it early today, ninety five percent chance of
Speaker 2: total emission, you catch it late. Complicated.
Speaker 1: They told me to come back in ten years. They said,
Speaker 1: I got my colorhoscomy. They said, you're good for ten years.
Speaker 1: I was so happy to hear that. I don't want
Speaker 1: to tube anywhere near me on that in that regard
Speaker 1: any sooner than I have to, but I was happy
Speaker 1: to do it.
Speaker 2: There'll be new blood tests that are like an early
Speaker 2: warning system. There's a Grail test fifty different cancers the
Speaker 2: same as checking your cholesterol. Wow. Now these things aren't
Speaker 2: totally perfected, but today what's going on in medical research
Speaker 2: and science and what we've pushed over the last fifty years,
Speaker 2: there are low cost options to have things checked. And
Speaker 2: so I just wanted there's a lot of investments you
Speaker 2: can make in yourself. One of them is your health,
Speaker 2: and the other ones your financial literacy and your education,
Speaker 2: and saying to yourself, you know who'd be a good
Speaker 2: mentor that's the person I want to go work for
Speaker 2: for the summer, Get an internship. You never know where
Speaker 2: I might lead.
Speaker 1: As we wrap up, Mike, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you two quick things. One on AT and T as
Speaker 1: you you pioneered this whole space and financed it, and
Speaker 1: again AT and T thought it was not a really
Speaker 1: important thing that went back in the business. Later on,
Speaker 1: I put a landline at where we live. We have
Speaker 1: you know, we're a rural area and we have forty
Speaker 1: acres and at forty acres in a sprinter VANU E
Speaker 1: forty acres and a mule and uh, they had to
Speaker 1: run a line to the house at and T and
Speaker 1: went through a lot of energy to do this and
Speaker 1: that was about four years ago. I get a note,
Speaker 1: and I wanted a land line because you know Russia,
Speaker 1: somebody cuts the thing on cables on the ocean. I
Speaker 1: want to have a backup to a mobile phone and
Speaker 1: for an emergency anyway. I get a notice. My my
Speaker 1: cheet said Rachel tells me that AT and T now
Speaker 1: wants to charge me not a couple hundred dollars a month,
Speaker 1: they won't charge me two thousand dollars a month to
Speaker 1: keep that land line. And they're trying to discourage me capitalism.
Speaker 1: They're trying to discourage me from having a landline. They
Speaker 1: want to go to digital, and they want to go
Speaker 1: for a mobile. So to two points one, here's a
Speaker 1: company that was built on landlines that didn't want or
Speaker 1: rejected or discount AT Mobile, who's now over emphasizing mobile
Speaker 1: to the point they're trying to discourage their best customers
Speaker 1: from having a landline. And by the way, they succeeded.
Speaker 1: I'm not paying two thousand dollars a month for a
Speaker 1: landline that I'm not using. I'll come up with another plan,
Speaker 1: a SAT phone or something. But look at what you
Speaker 1: did that full circle arch and by the way for
Speaker 1: twenty percent of that two thousand dollars. That's twenty percent
Speaker 1: of when I could have bought the entire rights for
Speaker 1: mobile phone service from Manhattan for ten grant can Hall.
Speaker 1: They have the whole platform. Manhattan builds them real wealth.
Speaker 1: So that's the first thought that hit me. The second
Speaker 1: one on mentors. Guy you don't know, I don't think.
Speaker 1: His name was Harvey Baskin got riscue his soul. He
Speaker 1: was in finance in Washington, d C. He was one
Speaker 1: of my early mentors. I went to work for me
Speaker 1: were Ion Jeffrey's restaurant in Malibu. He built it for
Speaker 1: his then lover Jeffrey. At the end, anyway, I was
Speaker 1: a waiter convincing to let me be his assistant. I
Speaker 1: just wanted a mentor. I was peppering this guy with
Speaker 1: questions all the time. I mean, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm nosy. I was asking questions. And I took him
Speaker 1: to dinner one day at my request, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to go some fancy restaurant in Venice, California, And I'm
Speaker 1: peppering him with questions, and it was like driving his Daisy.
Speaker 1: I was driving my little Audi and he was he
Speaker 1: broken his legs, so he sitting in the back of
Speaker 1: the seat, was pushed up, hit his foot up. I
Speaker 1: didn't care what it looked like. I'm trying to give
Speaker 1: me some knowledge. And so we go to dinner and
Speaker 1: the bill comes Mike and it's one hundred bucks. I
Speaker 1: was twenty years old. It might as would have been
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars. And he only paid me twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars years. This was a lot of money. The bill
Speaker 1: coms one hundred bucks. He slides it to me. I
Speaker 1: slide it to him. He slides it back to me.
Speaker 1: I slide it back to him. He slides it back
Speaker 1: to me. I go to slide it back to me,
Speaker 1: said John, stop, stop, stop, stop. You got a decision
Speaker 1: to make here. You got to figure out whether you
Speaker 1: want to pick my brain or pick my pocket. One
Speaker 1: last longer, and I took a breath that I really
Speaker 1: was I was got frea consulting. I've been asking this
Speaker 1: guy for a million questions. It's invaluable the knowledge you
Speaker 1: gave me, Just like this podcast today for those listening.
Speaker 1: I took the bill back, paid the bill with the
Speaker 1: last hundred bucks I had, and twenty bucks I gave
Speaker 1: the waiter as a tip. It wasn't his fault that
Speaker 1: I was broke and drove back with the last gas
Speaker 1: I had. You know, that guy put his hands around
Speaker 1: me as a mentorer friend. He pointed to me to
Speaker 1: the icons at that time and said, this is my guy.
Speaker 1: He introduced me, walked me into places, he vouched me.
Speaker 1: That wasn't early. He was testing me, like, are you
Speaker 1: trying to make some money a short term gain? Are
Speaker 1: you trying to build some wealth? Are you trying to
Speaker 1: have a transaction or do you want to have a relationship?
Speaker 1: Are you about what you get or what you have
Speaker 1: to give? And that's really what I hear you saying
Speaker 1: is be a giver, build a relationship, work the long term.
Speaker 1: Don't just take that short term piece as we got
Speaker 1: to y start it. Don't just get that paycheck for
Speaker 1: the highest pay and sometimes that unpaid internship is the
Speaker 1: best deal you can get because you're around power, you're
Speaker 1: around you're around knowledge. Just be ear hustle, ear hustle. Everybody, listen,
Speaker 1: be nosy, Quincy Jones, I'd get so smart. I'm just
Speaker 1: nosy as hell. Be nosy, and uh be the whatever
Speaker 1: I don't play golf for the caddy at the best
Speaker 1: country club, because now you're building that relationship capital and
Speaker 1: I just hope that people got that message. And I've
Speaker 1: I've learned so much from you. I've learned from this
Speaker 1: podcast that I'm doing. And I thought, I know you
Speaker 1: pretty well. And thanks for being a true innovator and
Speaker 1: pioneer and disruptor and I think industry creator, sector creator
Speaker 1: for the twenty really twentieth century and innovator. One of
Speaker 1: the most those innovative minds of twentieth century capitalism the
Speaker 1: world has seen.
Speaker 2: We're going to continue to do that in the twenty
Speaker 2: first century. John, I look forward to visiting you again.
Speaker 2: And you've made a very interesting insight here for people.
Speaker 2: When you look at people that rise up from the
Speaker 2: lowest socio economic to the highest, it's generally those that
Speaker 2: interact with people of different social economic groups. And yes,
Speaker 2: whether they were a caddy at a country club, whether
Speaker 2: they're a waiter at a high end restaurant, whatever it
Speaker 2: might have been, you never know where those relationships are
Speaker 2: coming when you get yourself involved in Yes, the best
Speaker 2: internships might be the unpaid internships.
Speaker 1: So we wrap this up this podcast. I have two questions. One,
Speaker 1: will you come back?
Speaker 2: Of course, because I learned when we talk also John,
Speaker 2: it isn't just a one way street.
Speaker 1: You learn we argue maybe too, it's always a one
Speaker 1: to We're never bored when we're talking to each other. Never.
Speaker 2: I hope your listeners understand that there's opportunity just around
Speaker 2: the corner if they think about it. And you mentioned
Speaker 2: why are we so focused on young leaders in Africa?
Speaker 2: Because forty percent of all the young people in the
Speaker 2: world are going to be living in some Sahara Africa,
Speaker 2: and it will not make any difference what you do
Speaker 2: if you don't create opportunities there. And as we see today,
Speaker 2: there are more people in the United States today that
Speaker 2: were born in sub Sahara Africa than in Europe. Amazing thing.
Speaker 2: And as you know, many of these are very high
Speaker 2: performing people that have made enormous contributions to the United
Speaker 2: States that have come from Kenya, Nigeria and other countries.
Speaker 2: And so by US training and giving these skills to
Speaker 2: the future leaders of their countries, they'll create more jobs,
Speaker 2: they'll create more opportunities for their people.
Speaker 1: Now, this has got to be the longest, the longest
Speaker 1: podcast I've ever done, and I'm so I'm so happy
Speaker 1: with it. It's going to be it's brilliant. Not because because
Speaker 1: you're in it now you you must be going into
Speaker 1: hives or something, Mike, because in an hour and whatever,
Speaker 1: you haven't used but two stats and you are stat
Speaker 1: of seconds. So I want you to I want you
Speaker 1: to end this, to drop the mic moment. We got
Speaker 1: so much to talk about in future podcasts. But the
Speaker 1: power of the diversity of this country, of immigrant experiences,
Speaker 1: of all the different voices here, why don't you give
Speaker 1: the audience I wrote something all the Business Plan for America.
Speaker 1: People can go watch it. They should listen them out.
Speaker 1: Read my book Financial Literacy for All. Read The Business
Speaker 1: Plan from America. I talk about the power of our diversity.
Speaker 1: But from where you said you are a statistical genius,
Speaker 1: Please leave the audience with the status of the power
Speaker 1: of this country.
Speaker 2: Well, there are many countries in the world, but there's
Speaker 2: only one country that people want to come to, and
Speaker 2: that's the United States. Forty percent of everyone worth a
Speaker 2: million dollars today in China wants to come to the US,
Speaker 2: not just bring their wealth, but their creativity. And you
Speaker 2: see it every day IVM in order to compete with
Speaker 2: other companies. Just hired a new CEO a little while ago.
Speaker 2: Born in India. Okay, So each the head of the
Speaker 2: World Bank today born in India. And so if we
Speaker 2: went back sixty plus years, seventy five percent of everyone
Speaker 2: not born here was born in Europe. Today it's nine.
Speaker 2: And so this country is changing. In the area you
Speaker 2: grew up in, john more than seventy percent of all
Speaker 2: the children in the second largest school district in America,
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, are of Latin American ancestry, and more than
Speaker 2: fifty percent now of everyone living in California under twenty
Speaker 2: five is of Latin American ancestry. So the fates of
Speaker 2: the country is changing, and the vast majority of people
Speaker 2: in the country someday will be of African, Latin American
Speaker 2: and Asian ancestry. And so it's important that they all
Speaker 2: feel they had a chance. Not that they grab that
Speaker 2: ring and turned out to be a Bill Gates or
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs, but they least had a chance to do it.
Speaker 2: And so this is essential. The country's getting older, there
Speaker 2: would be no increase in our population in the last
Speaker 2: fifty years if it wasn't for immigration, and today the
Speaker 2: leading immigrants in this country in this century twenty first
Speaker 2: century have first come from Mexico, second India, third China,
Speaker 2: fourth the Philippines, and then the Dominican Republic. And all
Speaker 2: those people that have come here from the Dominican Republic
Speaker 2: are not baseball players. However, you'd have quite a baseball
Speaker 2: team with just players from the Dominican Republic. So when
Speaker 2: you're thinking about what business you're going to go into,
Speaker 2: what fields, let's think about where's the future and opportunities.
Speaker 2: So if you're a financier, your opportunities are identifying those
Speaker 2: who were born in Africa or of African American ancestry,
Speaker 2: or born in Latin America or of Latin American ancestry
Speaker 2: or Asian ancestry, because they're going to be the majority
Speaker 2: in this country. And you need role models. And there's
Speaker 2: plenty of people with ability if you go find them
Speaker 2: and give them opportunities.
Speaker 1: And what are we trying to do here today? We're
Speaker 1: trying to make smart sexy again. It takes twenty years
Speaker 1: to change a culture. In the last twenty years, i'd
Speaker 1: argue many of my communities I love and care about
Speaker 1: underserved communities have made dumb sexy. We've dumbed down and
Speaker 1: celebrated it. And and now we need to make smart
Speaker 1: sexy again. It's not and by the way, not just
Speaker 1: all our black and brown neighborhood poor white neighborhoods have
Speaker 1: been making dumb sexy. I mean, it's just we got
Speaker 1: We gotta get rid of the ignorance and get rid
Speaker 1: of the drama, get rid of the emotionalism, and get
Speaker 1: to the and create a business plan for our lives.
Speaker 1: And the business plan for our lives is what Mike said.
Speaker 1: We are better together. And and you've never had a
Speaker 1: superpower that wasn't an economic power at the same time,
Speaker 1: and we've got a new generation of people coming up.
Speaker 1: We got to make them. Black capitalists matter. We got
Speaker 1: to make them. We got it. We gotta get them
Speaker 1: in economy. Give them a shot. Doesn't mean anybody has
Speaker 1: a right to succeed. There's no equity. Doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: have a right to succeed. It means you get a
Speaker 1: place at the table and an opportunity to show that
Speaker 1: you can do it. It's giving people a fish and
Speaker 1: teaching them how to fish at scale. That's financial literacy
Speaker 1: for all and I want to thank you, Mike for
Speaker 1: extending your legacy into the twenty first century. As you said,
Speaker 1: the mcat's going to be a great place for people
Speaker 1: to learn how to take the reins of opportunity for themselves.
Speaker 1: And in future podcasts we will go in the deep
Speaker 1: dives on several As you were going through this, I thought, Geek,
Speaker 1: this topic could be an hour, that topic could be
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. And I think we have to unpack this
Speaker 1: so people no better, so they.
Speaker 2: Can happy to do that. John, and I want you
Speaker 2: to say your closing speech today is one of Martin
Speaker 2: Luther King's most famous speeches. People know I have a dream,
Speaker 2: but if you get a chance, go online and google
Speaker 2: what is the blueprint of your life? By Martin Luther King?
Speaker 2: What is your blueprint? What is your plan? Fantastic speech
Speaker 2: he gave, And periodically I go back, maybe once a
Speaker 2: quarter or once a month and listen to that speech,
Speaker 2: reminding you if what is your blueprint? Where do you
Speaker 2: want to head? What is your plan? Great speech by
Speaker 2: a very very talented man, reg Luther Martin, John Brian, Okay,
Speaker 2: giving you all those.
Speaker 1: I love you, man, and I'm gonna let you I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cautch you with some slack and make you more
Speaker 1: black than me for about thirty seconds because I did
Speaker 1: not know the doctor King gave it. Did he really
Speaker 1: do a speech called the.
Speaker 2: Blueprint the Blueprint of your life?
Speaker 1: I had no idea, and I thought I was.
Speaker 2: So you can work on your blueprint.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, ladies and gentlemen. This has been Michael Milkin,
Speaker 1: the living legend, the innovator of hio bonds, yes for
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the innovator of finance that changed everything.
Speaker 1: Maybe in another podcast I'll talk about why he got
Speaker 1: into so much trouble trying to help poor people and
Speaker 1: open doors some folks. Some people didn't want at the table,
Speaker 1: but that's okay. Everything worked out just fine for him
Speaker 1: and the world. The world's better because Michael was here.
Speaker 1: Read his book, go check out his cancer research, check
Speaker 1: out what he's doing with Milking Institute, the Milk and
Speaker 1: Global Conference, the Milkin Center for the Advancement of the
Speaker 1: American Dream. And come back, I guess to this podcast.
Speaker 1: We will continue this conversation. This is John Hope Bryant
Speaker 1: and Money and Wealth, and this is my conversation with
Speaker 1: the Great, the amazing Michael.
Speaker 2: Milkin, Thank You, John, John Hope Bryant, Thank You.
Speaker 1: Aka Rich, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a
Speaker 1: production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.