Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm
Speaker 1: talking capitalism for all, making the system work for everyone
Speaker 1: with John Hope Bryant. Okay, so you might expect someone
Speaker 1: who experienced homelessness as a kid to grow up angry
Speaker 1: at the financial system. Well, instead, John Hobebriant, he set
Speaker 1: out to understand it and to help more people succeed
Speaker 1: within it. So he believes in financial literacy. He believes
Speaker 1: that it's not just helpful, it's actually foundational to economic
Speaker 1: opportunity and even to human dignity. John Hobrien, He's the founder,
Speaker 1: He's the chairman and CEO of Operation Hope, which is
Speaker 1: one of the nation's leading organizations focused on financial literacy,
Speaker 1: credit access, and economic empowerment. So today we're talking about credit,
Speaker 1: We're talking about economic mobility, entrepreneurship, what it really takes
Speaker 1: to build a financial system that works for everyone. John
Speaker 1: Hope Bryant, Welcome to How to Money. Thanks for joining me, Joe.
Speaker 2: Nice to be with you, honor to be with you.
Speaker 2: Heard good things about you. And this is a very
Speaker 2: important conversation on the two hundred and fifty anniversary of
Speaker 2: our nation. No one more important time to have a
Speaker 2: conversation about who we want to be when we grow
Speaker 2: up than now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still a young nation in so many ways, and
Speaker 1: we have a lot of young listeners here, John, who
Speaker 1: I think can benefit from your wisdom and your experience.
Speaker 1: First question I got to ask you, because we ask
Speaker 1: everyone who comes on the show, is what do you
Speaker 1: like to di splur?
Speaker 2: John?
Speaker 1: What is the thing you're doing the smart stuff? You're
Speaker 1: saving your investing for your future, but you got to
Speaker 1: have like an outlet for spending that provides joy in
Speaker 1: the here and now as well? What is that for you?
Speaker 2: My racing simulator tell me about Well, I have a
Speaker 2: full competitive auto racing license, which I don't get to
Speaker 2: use very often because of my schedule, but I do
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Of track days.
Speaker 2: I have of race cars at Atlanta Motorsports Park or
Speaker 2: Atlanta Native so you know it's in Dawsonville, so it's
Speaker 2: like a country club for race cars. And so I'm right.
Speaker 2: We have a Conda ride on the straightaway and my
Speaker 2: cars are underneath. And we have a racing simulator here
Speaker 2: at my house that we have in South Atlanta and
Speaker 2: North Faeeville, and so I was on it all day yesterday,
Speaker 2: And that's if you want to call it a splurge,
Speaker 2: it's I just got a diving certification when I was
Speaker 2: in Maui, and that being underneath in the calm, blue
Speaker 2: ocean was one form of freedom and release. And then
Speaker 2: being on the road the next week in Dubai where
Speaker 2: I could arrive and arrive and drive there because I
Speaker 2: have this racing license, and to have do they have
Speaker 2: Buddhism at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, which
Speaker 2: is what I call motorsports, is.
Speaker 3: Another form of calm.
Speaker 2: Those two, if you want to call it, or splurges,
Speaker 2: But really all money is his freedom, that's all it is.
Speaker 2: And so I had the freedom now to do things
Speaker 2: like that. But it's really not about the money, it's
Speaker 2: about what it facilitates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, John, you're an incredible entrepreneur, But it kind
Speaker 1: of it wasn't obvious that that was going to be
Speaker 1: the outcome of your life. When you look at your
Speaker 1: family tree, what do you think prompted or connected made
Speaker 1: that a possibility for you?
Speaker 3: Pain?
Speaker 2: Pain, suffering, problems, challenges. My mom and dad had built
Speaker 2: wealth up. They came from the Deep South. My second
Speaker 2: grade grandparents were slaves on both sides of my family tree.
Speaker 2: My mother, my mother's mother owned a shotgun shock. Your
Speaker 2: listeners can look up what that is. We won't waste
Speaker 2: time on definitions. My second grade grandmother, my mother's side,
Speaker 2: escaped slavery, bought up, built a house, and had a
Speaker 2: border with no mortgage on the house border me in
Speaker 2: a renter, so she was a free enterprise person. My grandmother,
Speaker 2: to the extend that she could, was a free enterprise person.
Speaker 2: My mother owned seven homes and sold them. I owned
Speaker 2: seven hundred. My father, my second great grandfather, protected Memphis,
Speaker 2: Tennessee a fre Abraham Lincoln as part of the Emancipation Proclamation,
Speaker 2: So had sort of justice in.
Speaker 3: My bones from from an early age. Got it honest.
Speaker 2: But he protected folks who weren't protecting them because, of course,
Speaker 2: the Emancipation Proclamation was a call for those behind quote
Speaker 2: enemy lines. Then my grandfather was Arby Smith, was a sharecropper,
Speaker 2: so working land he didn't own that he would actually
Speaker 2: never be able to control, but he worked it anyway
Speaker 2: because he was industrious and wanted to do for himself.
Speaker 3: My father was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: My mom and dad took those bones, if you will,
Speaker 2: brought them together. Initially it worked. They built a small
Speaker 2: conglomerate of small businesses in south central Los Angeles. Apartment
Speaker 2: building they bought for eighteen thousand dollars now worth eight
Speaker 2: million dollars, a home gas station.
Speaker 3: Anyway, they lost it all. They divorced over money.
Speaker 2: Joe Number one calls her divorce in America's Money. Make
Speaker 2: a long story short. I saw a murder when I
Speaker 2: was six or seven years old. The guy who saved
Speaker 2: my life. That was over money. My next door neighbor
Speaker 2: was a drug dealer at the house. My mother bought
Speaker 2: it with you know, she saved money and bought a house.
Speaker 2: After the divorce in complet California, I tried to make
Speaker 2: a friend. That friend was very smart, but didn't have
Speaker 2: good parents like I did. Even though they were divorced,
Speaker 2: they didn't make me a point of contention. They loved
Speaker 2: me irrespective my dad had gave me says yes I can,
Speaker 2: My mother sin said yes I am. She told me
Speaker 2: she loved me every day in my life. This is
Speaker 2: important to your question. So this best friend of mine
Speaker 2: didn't have good role models anyway, He started hanging around
Speaker 2: with the next door neighbor who was a drug dealer
Speaker 2: that got killed together. So by the time I was
Speaker 2: nine years old, I saw the death of our family
Speaker 2: net worth. We lost that apartment building, lost all those assets.
Speaker 3: I mentioned to.
Speaker 2: You, because my dad was I couldn't make it, but
Speaker 2: couldn't keep it, wouldn't ask my mother for help in
Speaker 2: a relationship two plus twotion equal six, eight or ten.
Speaker 2: Either you're better together or what are you doing? So
Speaker 2: he didn't get that memo. So I got all these
Speaker 2: lessons the hard way, Joe. Most people go to business school,
Speaker 2: they go to you know, this life was my business
Speaker 2: school was my master's class. And I got these lessons
Speaker 2: and I only had to teach me once. And then
Speaker 2: when I was nine years old, a banker came to
Speaker 2: my classroom and taught me financial literacy. And he happened
Speaker 2: to be Caucasian. And that's important because most experiences of
Speaker 2: folks like me growing up with a person of Caucasian
Speaker 2: was negative, a police officer throwing you against the patrol
Speaker 2: car or something.
Speaker 3: This was a positive experience.
Speaker 2: And this banker came and taught me financial literacy from
Speaker 2: Bank of America, and my teachers would buy the mail
Speaker 2: order products that I bought, and so that I had
Speaker 2: in my little briefcase with just my dreams in it.
Speaker 2: I sell mail order. My teachers, who are also Caucasian
Speaker 2: would buy them from me. So I had these positive
Speaker 2: experiences around. You might call race relations. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that's what it was. But I asked banker who came
Speaker 2: in once a week for six weeks, what do you
Speaker 2: do for a living, and how'd you get rich legally?
Speaker 2: And I was dead serious, right, I mean, I'd never
Speaker 2: met this. I mean, this guy's like a martian. Come
Speaker 2: into my classroom. My mother could My mother had a
Speaker 2: lunch break joel in two fifteen minute breaks and she
Speaker 2: only came to school if I got in trouble. This
Speaker 2: guy was there in the middle of the day, chilling right,
Speaker 2: and he said he called that. He said, I'm on
Speaker 2: a salary.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: Where do you work? Bank of America? Where in a
Speaker 2: sky creaper? Here's my business card? Sixteen floor it's no
Speaker 2: sixteen flour in content, there's six floors in content, and
Speaker 2: that's a.
Speaker 3: Courthouse like boom. Who is this guy?
Speaker 2: And he says, I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: and I said, I don't know what an entrepreneur is,
Speaker 2: but it was legal, and you're financing it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be one.
Speaker 2: And so later on I created a for profit and
Speaker 2: a nonprofit now the largest of their kind in the country.
Speaker 2: We've invested five billion dollars into mostly underserved economies, untapping
Speaker 2: untapping human potential at scale. But the nonprofit is teaching
Speaker 2: people how to get bank qualified at prime rates. Well
Speaker 2: that's essentially, Joe, what that banker told me. I said,
Speaker 2: So your job is a lend poor people money, and
Speaker 2: all I have to.
Speaker 3: Do is prove I can pay it back. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm in.
Speaker 2: So I became an entrepreneur and put the lixture out
Speaker 2: of the candy business when I was ten years old,
Speaker 2: so that my confidence went through the roof from that.
Speaker 2: I was homeless when I was eighteen years old for
Speaker 2: about six to eight months of my life, so you
Speaker 2: can't fall from the floor. So by the time I
Speaker 2: was twenty years old, man, I had all kinds of
Speaker 2: experiences that a sixty year old would have. Most sixty
Speaker 2: year olds don't have those those loble experiences, and so
Speaker 2: I really had a sense that this system could work
Speaker 2: for everybody. But it's what people don't know that they
Speaker 2: don't know, but they think they know.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: People can focus I want to get that money. We'll
Speaker 2: get that bag, that cash with that dollar. This is
Speaker 2: you say, you have a young listeners. They're focusing on this.
Speaker 2: I want that dollar, I want that money. No, wrong,
Speaker 2: it's an illusion. All money is in exchange of value.
Speaker 2: You want to build wealth, and you build wealth in
Speaker 2: your sleep. And one of those areas is entrepreneurship, business
Speaker 2: right of course, home ownership, asset ownership. So it just
Speaker 2: dawned on me. That's my last book, Financial Literacy for All.
Speaker 2: This is my seventh book coming out now, Capitalism for All.
Speaker 2: I've been giving people these sort of software upgrades along
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 3: The book Love Leadership was a philosophy on doing well
Speaker 3: and doing good and.
Speaker 2: How the poor can save Capitalism is sort of self
Speaker 2: self described title, but people thought it was crazy when
Speaker 2: I wrote that. But basically my rich phrase eat my
Speaker 2: poor friends, do better, if only to stay rich because
Speaker 2: the market is seventy percent. The biggest economy in the
Speaker 2: world is seventy percent consumer spending seventy there's a lesson
Speaker 2: we need to learn and think about right now.
Speaker 3: The book the memo, Get the memo. That's what we
Speaker 3: were talking about about what folks.
Speaker 2: Don't know, they don't know up from nothing, my personal story,
Speaker 2: financial literacy for all, getting people the bones of.
Speaker 3: What they need.
Speaker 2: And now, the most audacious, bold, disruptive idea I think
Speaker 2: that has been injected in American DNA in a while
Speaker 2: is that this thing that people are intimidated by or
Speaker 2: resent but often don't understand. Even those who are participating
Speaker 2: in it don't understand it. Think it's about making money and
Speaker 2: it's about all themselves. This capitalism for all ethos is
Speaker 2: the only thing that can save us, and it saved me.
Speaker 2: So I came from this unlikely place and most of
Speaker 2: the people who thought I was wasting my time in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood I grew up with want to work for me.
Speaker 2: Now four hundred employees.
Speaker 1: By the way, and what made you? It sounds like
Speaker 1: when I'm hearing I hear two things that came out
Speaker 1: in your story. There's curiosity and there was some boldness.
Speaker 1: And those are you were asking questions about how the
Speaker 1: system worked that you didn't understand. You were getting nosy, right,
Speaker 1: you were getting up in this guy's business to try
Speaker 1: to figure out what, how did you thrive in this
Speaker 1: environment that I don't really understand. It seems like in
Speaker 1: our culture right now, there's a lot of burn it
Speaker 1: down because I don't understand it. Instead of curiosity, let
Speaker 1: me enter into this. How can I succeed in this environment?
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't I don't like the game. How
Speaker 1: would you respond to someone who's thinking that way?
Speaker 2: Well, it's wrong, first of all, and it's ours and
Speaker 2: it's our parents' fault. My parents had a responsibility to
Speaker 2: raise me. My mother told me she loved me every
Speaker 2: day of my life so that I don't have a
Speaker 2: self esteem problem, and I thank her for that every day.
Speaker 2: I think my dad for a lot of things. But
Speaker 2: my dad also missed the matriculation exam on relationships. He
Speaker 2: missed the matriculation exam on how to treat a woman.
Speaker 2: He missed the exam on how to build a business,
Speaker 2: build wealth, generational wealth, to protect it, on being nosy.
Speaker 2: So you're being nice and saying I'm curious. No, I'm
Speaker 2: actually nosy. Yeah, I give you two ears in one mouth.
Speaker 2: You listen twice as much as you talk I'm actually
Speaker 2: very nosy. I got my nose in everything, and you
Speaker 2: got to stay young. You have to stay nosy, and
Speaker 2: you have to understand your parents or just your parents.
Speaker 2: They're trying the best that they can and do what
Speaker 2: they do. But if they're not successful financially, if they're
Speaker 2: not succeeding in the way that they would have liked,
Speaker 2: or you would think that they have the potential for
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 3: To consider the source.
Speaker 2: There's an old saying, no matter how much I love you,
Speaker 2: my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom,
Speaker 2: all I can give you is my own ignorance, And
Speaker 2: so out of love we pass down bad habits generation
Speaker 2: and generation. And again is what we don't know that
Speaker 2: we don't know we think we know. So here's a misnomer.
Speaker 2: People say, I hate rich people.
Speaker 3: No, you don't.
Speaker 2: You hate rich people until you become rich. What you
Speaker 2: hate is a game system. What you hate is a
Speaker 2: system that no matter how hard you work, you can't
Speaker 2: seem to get ahead.
Speaker 3: So let's ungain the system.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm doing with the book, That's what we're
Speaker 2: doing with the work with Operation Hope. Is what I'm
Speaker 2: doing in my work as a capitalist at Brian your
Speaker 2: venture's second point. Let's say that somebody listening to this
Speaker 2: and saying I don't I'm just not buying with this
Speaker 2: guy saying it's a nice, cool story. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to college and I'm going to become a socialist. Okay,
Speaker 2: here's my question to you. Two questions. Even if you
Speaker 2: distribute money like a want to distribute money like a socialist,
Speaker 2: don't you have to first collect it like a capitalist?
Speaker 2: Second question, how'd you get to college?
Speaker 3: Right? Did the government send you?
Speaker 2: Did the community block club send you and pay your tuition?
Speaker 2: Who's paying your car note? Who's paying your rent? Who's
Speaker 2: paying somebody give you a food stipend? Is somebody paying
Speaker 2: your cell phone bill that I'm unaware of? Is the
Speaker 2: government doing that? The government give you sheets that you're
Speaker 2: sleeping with? Did the government pay your utility bills for
Speaker 2: the apartment or the public the public housing, the student housing?
Speaker 3: No, No, your parents did that? Okay? Where'd your parents
Speaker 3: get the money? Right?
Speaker 2: So we are games with ourselves, those who say I
Speaker 2: don't like capitalism. Look all socialism is really the biggest,
Speaker 2: really simple. It's a taxing system. You know, you look
Speaker 2: at the Nordic countries. And I've been to one hundred countries,
Speaker 2: including the Nordic countries, and I know I've been there
Speaker 2: several times. I'm not talking about like traveling as a tourist.
Speaker 2: I know them very well. I mean they're engaging capitalism.
Speaker 2: Sweden and Finland have their capitalists platform, like Sweden is
Speaker 2: Timber is one of their big businesses I remember.
Speaker 1: More so than the United States in some ways.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent Nokia came out of I think it
Speaker 2: was Finland and Norway is oil, right. But what they
Speaker 2: did was they decided to tax the wealthy at a
Speaker 2: higher rate so they wouldn't be poverty underneath it, and
Speaker 2: that social services were funded. And that's great, but there's
Speaker 2: less people there, much less, Like we've got more people
Speaker 2: in the city in America than they've got in their country.
Speaker 2: Number Two, while you don't see anybody at the bottom, Joel,
Speaker 2: with that system, you don't see people who look like
Speaker 2: me at the top. So I want to have full fluency.
Speaker 2: I want to be able to go from the bottom
Speaker 2: as I have. I'm at zero point zero one percent.
Speaker 2: I want to go. I want to go as far
Speaker 2: as I have the capacity that's not possible in a
Speaker 2: socialist system. No one washes rental cars. You drive it
Speaker 2: for two or three weeks, it gets dirty. You can
Speaker 2: paint your fate your face on the windshield is so dirty,
Speaker 2: and you take it back to the person who owns it,
Speaker 2: which is hurts their budget, or whoever you rented the
Speaker 2: car from. You don't want you take care of it
Speaker 2: because you own it, so we anger emotions in business
Speaker 2: are inappropriate placements in a serious environment. Anger is not
Speaker 2: a strategy, and emotions should never be a You be
Speaker 2: part of a serious decision making. Whenever you make an
Speaker 2: emotional decision, it's the wrong one. Cryptocurrency I'm going to
Speaker 2: I'm going to light up a lot of folks on fire.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Cryptocurrency was created emotionally as a result of the two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight economic crisis. Don't trust me, Go do
Speaker 2: your own research. It wasn't somebody sitting around going how
Speaker 2: do I create a better economic system. It was I'm
Speaker 2: angry at this system. Let's burn it down and let's
Speaker 2: create this other system. And I find it interesting. And
Speaker 2: by the way, my wife owns bitcoins. Gonna be very
Speaker 2: clear that you know I'm not and I love blockchain technology,
Speaker 2: but ninety percent of the crypto is either bankrupt, out
Speaker 2: of business, or on ice not working. You have some
Speaker 2: that are very doing very well, about a dozen of them, right,
Speaker 2: But even a half dozen of those dozen redeem and
Speaker 2: they're back by fiat currency, back by by cash. Right, So,
Speaker 2: and what are people trying to do with cryptocurrency? Cash
Speaker 2: it out for.
Speaker 3: Cash?
Speaker 2: So, by the way, what's the point of a dating
Speaker 2: app talking about technology to go meet somebody in person?
Speaker 3: So you can't get around.
Speaker 2: The fact that the fundamentals of this system are are
Speaker 2: you know, it's like capitalism, democracy, Joel or horrible systems
Speaker 2: except for every other system. It's really what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: So don't burn it down. Improve it. When you're being
Speaker 2: a run out of town, get in front of the crowd,
Speaker 2: made like a parade. Why spend all this energy trying
Speaker 2: to create something different when you're the biggest economy on
Speaker 2: the planet. America is the biggest economy in the world,
Speaker 2: thirty trillion dollars. The US currency, we're not treating it
Speaker 2: very well at the moment.
Speaker 3: The US currency is the flight the quality US stocks,
Speaker 3: US real estate, where the flight the quality in the world.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't we want to burn that down? Why wouldn't
Speaker 2: when you want to build on top of that? And
Speaker 2: like your iPhone comes with software up grades every six
Speaker 2: weeks because iPhone realizes their phone wasn't perfect when they
Speaker 2: realized it when they produced it. Let's also have software
Speaker 2: up grades now in capitalism.
Speaker 1: Well isn't in some ways too, It's just wasted energy.
Speaker 1: Like we live in the system that we live in,
Speaker 1: and we can spend hours of our week railing against it,
Speaker 1: or we can say, all right, this is the reality
Speaker 1: I live in. Let me do my best inside of
Speaker 1: that reality. And one of the quotes you use frequently
Speaker 1: is from Ambassador Andrew Young who said, we live in
Speaker 1: a system of free enterprise, and to not understand the
Speaker 1: rules of free enterprise must be the definition of slavery.
Speaker 1: Which when I heard that just kind of like knocked
Speaker 1: me off my feet. I was like, that's incredible that
Speaker 1: it's almost like for a lot of people to rail
Speaker 1: against it means it's like a form of self sabotage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're very good man. Most people don't on earth
Speaker 2: a quote like that. That says a lot about you.
Speaker 2: And let's go deeper on that quote. Who is Ambassador
Speaker 2: Andrew Young, the only aid of doctor Martinla King Junior,
Speaker 2: by the way, the last living lieutenant of doctor King,
Speaker 2: ninety three years of Young and we ninety four next month,
Speaker 2: the only aide to doctor King to go to run
Speaker 2: a city, the city of Atlanta where we're at, the
Speaker 2: only one to take the philosophy of doing well and
Speaker 2: doing good, of public purpose capitalism and place it into
Speaker 2: a city environment.
Speaker 3: What's the result is? I love results.
Speaker 2: The biggest economy in the traditional South Atlanta, an economy
Speaker 2: bigger than Singapore, Joel, I'm want to slow that down.
Speaker 3: The city of Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Multicultural, multi racial, to a city too busy to hate
Speaker 2: birth the Civil rights the city that saved America because
Speaker 2: it was where the Civil War ended when General Sherman
Speaker 2: came here and burned the city of Atlanta to the
Speaker 2: ground to stop the Confederate march and destroy their infrastructure.
Speaker 2: And that's how Lincoln got re elected. So first reconstruction,
Speaker 2: second reconstruction played a part in the history. I think
Speaker 2: this is a third reconstruction, which is about ownership and
Speaker 2: opportunity from the streets to the suites. But here comes
Speaker 2: Andrew Young, brings the Olympics into Atlanta, makes it the
Speaker 2: only international city in the South, you know, serves on
Speaker 2: the border.
Speaker 3: Delta sends them.
Speaker 2: To not just Europe, but the Africa, and that's one
Speaker 2: of their most profitable routes. Now gets all these international
Speaker 2: companies from Asia, in other words, in Europe to invest
Speaker 2: in America. When he was into Atlanta when he was mayor,
Speaker 2: seventy billion dollars, which at that time was still a
Speaker 2: lot of money. It was a was an unimage amount
Speaker 2: of money for a southern city when he was mayor.
Speaker 3: The net result.
Speaker 2: Is this city that's unique in the world with a
Speaker 2: five hundred and eighty billion dollar annual GDP. Joe, you
Speaker 2: can take the surrounding states, put them together inside of
Speaker 2: the city of Atlanta economy.
Speaker 3: And still have role.
Speaker 2: That shows to me that is the premifacial evidence of
Speaker 2: what I'm saying in my book Capitalism for All. You
Speaker 2: can do well and do good. You can do well
Speaker 2: by doing good. You do not have to make a
Speaker 2: false choice between white and black race, red or blue politics.
Speaker 2: You can just pick the green, as in the color
Speaker 2: of US currency.
Speaker 1: One of the things that highlights that in that you
Speaker 1: talk about is how how it makes you, how you
Speaker 1: feel about the fact that you employ a lot of folks, right,
Speaker 1: you employed, You've employed thousands of people, and that changes lives.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The fact that running a business and running it so
Speaker 1: effectively that you can essentially provide for and allow people
Speaker 1: the dignity of having work that pays them well and
Speaker 1: jobs that they enjoy like that is I think an
Speaker 1: underappreciated reality of what entrepreneurs can provide as they expand
Speaker 1: and grow.
Speaker 2: So, now that we know each other, I'm going to
Speaker 2: answer your question that you asked me earlier a bit
Speaker 2: more intimately. You asked me, what's the thing I splurge
Speaker 2: on the most or something like that, What is the
Speaker 2: thing that I there was never ask me that question,
Speaker 2: by the way, because they normally see me through my
Speaker 2: nonprofit lands. They don't see me as a capitalist entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: which of course, is where that nonprofit came from, is
Speaker 2: the fact that.
Speaker 3: I could help to seed it. But you asked me
Speaker 3: this great question.
Speaker 2: I gave you an answer that a successful person gives,
Speaker 2: which is not untrue. Here's the deeper answer. The number
Speaker 2: one thing I'm proud of and pleased with and think
Speaker 2: about all the time I splurged on was when I
Speaker 2: sold one of my companies, the Promise Homes Company, in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one Christmas. Eve sold it for one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty one million dollars. The first thing I did
Speaker 2: was is to make take a million dollars of that
Speaker 2: and go buy automobiles for all of my senior leaders
Speaker 2: in Operation Hope. Because they don't get bonuses, they don't
Speaker 2: have stock options, they can't go and splurge, they can't
Speaker 2: go to the racetrack and buy a race car. They're
Speaker 2: working their tails off, and I thought that they should
Speaker 2: be able to benefit from this free enterprise system. And
Speaker 2: because they're doing the work at Operation Hope as my
Speaker 2: senior leaders, it frees me to be able to go
Speaker 2: do work in my broader portfolio. So they were helping
Speaker 2: me indirectly, even though it's a firewall up between my
Speaker 2: nonprofit and my for profit. Nipping aside getting a salary
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff, I wanted to lean
Speaker 2: into them some more.
Speaker 3: I also gave them a million.
Speaker 2: Dollars worth of stock so they could have some of
Speaker 2: the up side of the economy. That is my proudest thing,
Speaker 2: and I got that inspiration from my friend Oprah Winfrey
Speaker 2: that it wasn't about what I had to get, is
Speaker 2: what I had to give. And by the way, do
Speaker 2: you think they worked harder for me guarante as a
Speaker 2: result of that, and worked harder for the mission of course?
Speaker 1: All right, Johnny got more. I want to it to
Speaker 1: with you, including I want to discuss what you outline
Speaker 1: as kind of a third way, something that's not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent capitalism, not one hundred percent socialism. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in just a second. I'm talking with John O'Brien.
Speaker 1: And John, one of the things you're talking about here
Speaker 1: in your book as well, your new book that's that's
Speaker 1: about to come out about capitalism for all, talk about
Speaker 1: the third way approach like that. We talk about these
Speaker 1: terms capitalist socialism, uh, and they're they're so polarizing because
Speaker 1: I mean, truly, when you look one we live in
Speaker 1: a society or in an economic system that isn't all
Speaker 1: one or the other. Like think about our our health
Speaker 1: care sector. That is that is not capitalism, that's not socialism.
Speaker 1: It is this muddled, weird it's a complete it's and
Speaker 1: it's completely dysfunctional. So what is this? What is the
Speaker 1: third way. I guess that you are advocating that that's
Speaker 1: more powerful than one or the other.
Speaker 2: So this is going to be part of this radical
Speaker 2: conversation as I go on tour acround this country. The
Speaker 2: tour will start here in Atlanta at Clarke Atlanta University
Speaker 2: and will extend hopefully to my friend Delta, CEO of Delta,
Speaker 2: who was so Andrew Young did the Ford, did one
Speaker 2: of the Fords. Ed Bashi and CEO of Delta did
Speaker 2: one of the Forwards. He's one of our partners and
Speaker 2: my board members and friends. And then Michael Milkin, who
Speaker 2: is a King of Wall Street and created alternative credit
Speaker 2: vehicles of finance vehicles, he did one of the Fords.
Speaker 2: These three guys, who couldn't be more different in some ways,
Speaker 2: found a unifying theme in this book.
Speaker 3: So there's a number of third ways.
Speaker 2: And again it's a really radical, but I think common
Speaker 2: sense conversation. Let's talk politics, because somebody's going to say, well, John,
Speaker 2: you know, how does this speak politically.
Speaker 3: It doesn't.
Speaker 2: I'm not for it, I'm not against it. It's irrelevant
Speaker 2: that the free enterprise system is for the people. And
Speaker 2: if I do something, if we do something that advances
Speaker 2: the people, and which is, by the way, and so
Speaker 2: somebody's gonna say, well, wait a minute, is this guy
Speaker 2: talking about capitalism?
Speaker 3: You just talking about the people. Is it that social
Speaker 3: so had a social statement? No? No, No.
Speaker 2: Seventy percent of the US economy, Joel GDP is consumer
Speaker 2: spending seventy So seventy percent of the thirty trillion dollars,
Speaker 2: give or take, is you and me paying car notes,
Speaker 2: going to restaurants, going on vacations, going to buy contract tickets.
Speaker 3: It's simple stuff.
Speaker 2: And if that doesn't regenerate, if that doesn't grow, the
Speaker 2: whole party's over. You won the battle on Wall Street.
Speaker 2: That's why they called about a K straight, a K
Speaker 2: shaped economy. Right now that guys like me and ladies
Speaker 2: are doing well with equities, I'm not sure how long
Speaker 2: this is going to last, by the way, unless we
Speaker 2: solve this. But the bottomp side of part of the K,
Speaker 2: which is the middle class in below, are really taking
Speaker 2: it into shorts and aren't feeling really good about the economy.
Speaker 2: Bankruptcies are up, by the way, year over year, foreclosures
Speaker 2: are up. I don't know if anybody's following this, but
Speaker 2: year or a year you're talking about. I mean it's
Speaker 2: eye popping number. Thirty percent more defaults and foreclosure, thirteen
Speaker 2: percent more bankruptcies. These are not small numbers. And this
Speaker 2: is not two thousand and eight, not suggesting anything like that,
Speaker 2: but this is not like two percent or five percent.
Speaker 2: And if so, if this bottom part of the key
Speaker 2: of the economy is not boastered up again, my rich frisy,
Speaker 2: my poor friends do better if only stay rich. I
Speaker 2: hope politicians, local, state, in federal steal ideas from my book,
Speaker 2: steal them and go use them to drive their political success.
Speaker 3: We need them to be successful.
Speaker 2: We need the president, the Senate, the House, the governors,
Speaker 2: the mayors. We need them all to be successful because
Speaker 2: their success is ours. Likewise, their failure is ours. So
Speaker 2: let's check that box. No, you didn't ask it, but
Speaker 2: let's deal with that address. That is the get it
Speaker 2: done party, not the Republican or Democratic party.
Speaker 3: It's about the people.
Speaker 2: Number two, it's a third way because it's it's a
Speaker 2: way that no one's talking about. For instance, artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: which I cover in this book. I'm co chair of
Speaker 2: the AI Ethics Council with Sam Aultan. We've lost hope
Speaker 2: AI at operation hope, et cetera. I live, I use
Speaker 2: AI fifty times, one hundred times a day.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: But what I'm now no using AI AI hallucinates. AI
Speaker 2: gets things wrong in a mic because it's in a microcausse.
Speaker 2: In other words, it's right in a narrow If you
Speaker 2: don't dumb and dumb out, you ask a dumb question,
Speaker 2: it's going to give you a really smart, dumb answer,
Speaker 2: or it'll give you a really answer that looks really smart,
Speaker 2: it looks right, but it's in a narrow bandwidth, so
Speaker 2: it's actually wrong. And so you actually need a smart
Speaker 2: thought process to go into that, to broaden the question,
Speaker 2: to broaden the vision, to broaden the intuition, to have
Speaker 2: a leadership approach to the question, so that AI can
Speaker 2: then give you a smart answer that addresses the real question.
Speaker 2: And I oftentimes all say, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 2: made a mistake, you're right, let me recast that and
Speaker 2: gives me a completely and he just told me I
Speaker 2: was right over here right.
Speaker 3: So it's a people pleaser. It allucinate.
Speaker 1: It also likes to please your yes.
Speaker 2: So here's what's my point of that AI is going
Speaker 2: to change everything be clear about that. By twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: that change everything. But AI needs people, So your job's
Speaker 2: not going to be replaced by AI. And the short
Speaker 2: version is going to be a lot of job lost,
Speaker 2: but your job's not replaced by AI. Your jobs are
Speaker 2: going to replaced by somebody who can use AI as
Speaker 2: number one. Number two, there's going to What did I
Speaker 2: say about the economy, it's seventy percent consumer spending. So
Speaker 2: if all my tech bros. They said, oh, we don't
Speaker 2: need people anymore, you're a genius with a blind spot
Speaker 2: called people. Who's going to subscribe to your apps?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Who's going to drive the revenue for the companies that
Speaker 2: are laying off the people that need the people to
Speaker 2: buy the stuff from the companies.
Speaker 1: You need the tech tech tech founders to have more
Speaker 1: of a Henry Ford sort of mindset. I need the
Speaker 1: people who are making the cars to be able to
Speaker 1: afford the cars we're producing.
Speaker 3: That's right. So when I said to I can't say
Speaker 3: who the CEO.
Speaker 2: Is because you'd figured out if I can't say, sorry,
Speaker 2: I can't give you any hints. But I'll just say
Speaker 2: it's a fortune five hundred CEO of a consumer facing
Speaker 2: company and after hearing this AI presentation about eight months ago,
Speaker 2: he was like, Oh, you know, we're going to see
Speaker 2: trillionaires and we're going to have all this wealth and
Speaker 2: we don't need all these employees and you know, good Writtens.
Speaker 3: Basically didn't say that, but that was an inference.
Speaker 2: I said, you do know the economy is seventy percent
Speaker 2: consumer spending, don't you? And he looked at me, Joel,
Speaker 2: he said that can't be true. I said, no, it's
Speaker 2: absolutely is true. And he said no, no, but what
Speaker 2: about business? The business I said, yeah, that's eight to
Speaker 2: ten percent. And he was so frazzled by that, Joel,
Speaker 2: that he changed the subject, like he just couldn't handle
Speaker 2: the conversation. So financially, financially literacy is not just poor
Speaker 2: people and struggling working class people and middle class people.
Speaker 2: It's the wealthy, it's the ultra wealthy, it's policy makers.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you know that ninety percent of all
Speaker 2: GDP comes from cities. This is a round number, it's
Speaker 2: really between eighty three and ninety percent, but you know
Speaker 2: it's closer to ninety ninety percent of all GDP Gross
Speaker 2: domestic product income for the country comes from a city,
Speaker 2: So let me rid castes.
Speaker 3: Seventy percent of the campic's.
Speaker 2: Economy in the world is you and me and whoever's
Speaker 2: listening to this, right, and ninety percent of the seventy
Speaker 2: percent comes from cities. So if you aren't supporting people
Speaker 2: giving them, you know, AI of scaling skills. Everybody who
Speaker 2: goes to a college right now, gets to higher education.
Speaker 2: You need to get, you know, an accounting degree in,
Speaker 2: an AI certification, right, a law degree and an AI certification.
Speaker 3: Right. Everything's being being redone now, So whatever you're doing,
Speaker 3: get an AI certification. And by the way, that AI
Speaker 3: certification will only be good for about a year or
Speaker 3: eighteen months.
Speaker 2: You're going need to get re certified because AI can't
Speaker 2: figure out no one. These business leaders don't even know
Speaker 2: where AIS going yet. All they know is it reduces costs.
Speaker 3: They don't know they don't yet know how to mix money.
Speaker 3: They just know that it reduces costs.
Speaker 2: But you cannot sit and wait for the future to
Speaker 2: be perfect, because there is no perfect. You can't sit
Speaker 2: and run, ring your arms and your hands and just
Speaker 2: complain about how horrible the world is. Can't be a
Speaker 2: chief criticism officer. The world's going to leave you. You
Speaker 2: gotta be that Henry Ford thing, as you mentioned. And
Speaker 2: by the way, Henry Ford the thirds on my board
Speaker 2: of my philanthropy. You got to pay your workers enough
Speaker 2: to buy the automobiles they were making and get them
Speaker 2: bought into this new technology. Back then it was the
Speaker 2: assembly line. Nobody wanted to work on the assembly line.
Speaker 2: I think prediction. I've never said this to anybody. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna sit on your show. There's gonna be job loss
Speaker 2: middle class first, then service economy and people of the
Speaker 2: high school education second. And then on the other side
Speaker 2: of this, it's about three years into this, there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a job surge growth because now you've got new
Speaker 2: technology and new industries and people need to work on
Speaker 2: the robotics, the AI, the systems going to have to
Speaker 2: fix them, repair them, grow them. I want your listeners
Speaker 2: to hear me on this. And if you say, with you,
Speaker 2: what about that gap John of three years? Yeah, that
Speaker 2: is a question, right.
Speaker 3: But one thing I want you to think about is
Speaker 3: what can you create?
Speaker 2: What can you start? Because everything is changing. I'll give
Speaker 2: you one example. Websites. Joe. I don't know how old
Speaker 2: you are, but I think you're maybe within ten years
Speaker 2: of my age. Okay, you certainly know that all of
Speaker 2: our friends who had businesses ten years ago paid ten
Speaker 2: grand twenty grand.
Speaker 3: For a website. That's right, all right, they haven't updated
Speaker 3: that website since then.
Speaker 2: Right, You're and my son or nephew or anybody listening
Speaker 2: to this could pick Columbus, Georgia just you know, not
Speaker 2: Atlanta Conyers or Murrietta or Alpharetta or whatever. Find out
Speaker 2: how many businesses are in that ecosystem. So listen all
Speaker 2: of them and say you have a website, you spend
Speaker 2: five to ten twenty thousand dollars on it, five, ten,
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago. I'm going to upgrade your website with AI,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna charge you five hundred bucks. Think about
Speaker 2: how many businesses would say yes to that. I think
Speaker 2: it's twenty five percent. You got to go from five
Speaker 2: grand to twenty five grand to five hundred, and you're
Speaker 2: gonna put AI and automation on the back end of
Speaker 2: it and e commerce sign me up, so that if
Speaker 2: you do two thousand of those contracts, you've done a
Speaker 2: million dollars of business at five hundred dollars each. And
Speaker 2: that's not even doing gradation of Some people are doing
Speaker 2: to be two hundred contract with five dollar contracts. Somebody's
Speaker 2: gonna bee thousand dollars contracts.
Speaker 3: But that's just one example of upgrading software.
Speaker 2: But right now, you want to start a business two
Speaker 2: years ago, that's a one hundred thousand.
Speaker 4: To a million dollar enterprise, and your accountant, you need lawyers,
Speaker 4: you need, you need, you need all you need systems,
Speaker 4: you need computers, you need all this stuff. Right, you
Speaker 4: need ten people and one hundred thousand to a million bucks.
Speaker 4: Now for fifty bucks, you can start a business, a
Speaker 4: million dollar business. AI is your accountant, AI is your lawyer.
Speaker 4: AI is your marketing agent. AI is your systems infrastructure.
Speaker 4: AI is your coding I mean, go on and.
Speaker 3: On and on.
Speaker 1: It's really easy to cry about and to lament and
Speaker 1: be worried about what AI can bring about. But I
Speaker 1: think what you're what you're saying is take advantage of it,
Speaker 1: like utilize it to make you a better business owner.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who literally just Vibe coded a
Speaker 1: website for another friend who's starting a small bakery business.
Speaker 1: He did it in like five days. And that is
Speaker 1: that those are the kind of tools available at our disposal,
Speaker 1: and I get like future of AI is uncertain. That
Speaker 1: three year period you talk about sounds like it could
Speaker 1: be it could be dark. But for the people out
Speaker 1: there who say, now I'm gonna figure this thing out
Speaker 1: instead of being scared.
Speaker 2: Yes, when you're being run out of town, get in
Speaker 2: front of the crowd and make.
Speaker 3: Like a make like a parade. Yeah yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, figure out what you is an old saying in leadership,
Speaker 2: let's see where our people are going. Let's go would
Speaker 2: get in front of them and leave them right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Let's see where the market is going, Let's see where
Speaker 2: things are happening, and let's let's go and become a
Speaker 2: solution to that. That's what capitalism is, by the way,
Speaker 2: So look, everybody listening to this, you can complain about life,
Speaker 2: or you can go do something about it. You don't
Speaker 2: like capitalism, but you're listening to this on a device
Speaker 2: you bought through capitalism. If you have an iPhone, you
Speaker 2: have a smartphone, you have an Android, that's capitalism. You
Speaker 2: have these earbuds, that's capitalism. The airways, you're listening to
Speaker 2: this on radio, that's capital You're on iHeart, you're on whatever, Spotify, whatever,
Speaker 2: that's capitalism. You're listening to this in a car, that's capitalism.
Speaker 2: You stop the gas station. The gas station owner is
Speaker 2: a capitalist. You go get your nails done. The nail
Speaker 2: tech is a capitalist. She's an independent contractor inside of
Speaker 2: the nail salon, which is a capitalist's owned by somebody
Speaker 2: who wants to make more tomorrow. They may yesterday, and
Speaker 2: they want to be able to sell their business at
Speaker 2: some point and take some capital gains and go and
Speaker 2: live a good life. Your dentist is a capitalist. Yes,
Speaker 2: I said it, your dentist, right, they're not doing it
Speaker 2: for free. Your lawyer certainly is a capitalist. Your architect
Speaker 2: is a capitalist, right. Your healthcare system we talked about
Speaker 2: is really a messy form of it. But I mean
Speaker 2: you think about, why should some of this stuff cost
Speaker 2: us two thousand, five thousand and ten thousand dollars?
Speaker 3: Crazy? But you know, how can the surgeon afford the
Speaker 3: Ferrari or the Porsche. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not hating on anything. I'm just saying this is
Speaker 2: the way. This is the system we're living in. And
Speaker 2: I've been to one hundred countries, Joel, I don't know
Speaker 2: of another system that works better than this.
Speaker 3: In the world. Ah, that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we get more. I want to get to with you, John,
Speaker 1: including I want to talk about I want to talk
Speaker 1: more about ladders and what it looks like to bring
Speaker 1: everyone in right and create more economics access under this
Speaker 1: Capitalism for All system. Talk about that and more a
Speaker 1: RNA for this. We're back still talking with John Hope
Speaker 1: Bryant's talking about making the system work for everyone. Capitalism
Speaker 1: for All love this philosophy. Talk to me about ladders
Speaker 1: because that's one of the things you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book as well, that that people who are locked
Speaker 1: out of the wealth building system, they need ladders right
Speaker 1: to be erected to assure ensure that they can participate
Speaker 1: in the free enterprise economy. And I do think like
Speaker 1: when we're talking about there is a segment of America
Speaker 1: that does it feels like not a cast system India style, right,
Speaker 1: but it does feel like it's harder for me to
Speaker 1: move up and be economically mobile in society then maybe
Speaker 1: what it felt like in my parents generation fifty or
Speaker 1: sixty years ago. First, do you think that's true? And
Speaker 1: then and then too, what does it look like to
Speaker 1: bring ladders down for those peopeople to help them move up.
Speaker 2: So we're coming full circle in the interview, which is beautiful.
Speaker 2: We're ending where we began, and that's it shows that
Speaker 2: you're really smart and good at what you do. People
Speaker 2: resent this system because deep down in their gut, there's
Speaker 2: an aching feeling that it doesn't work for them anymore.
Speaker 2: And this is not a racial thing, it's not a
Speaker 2: political thing. It's a human thing. Women have great intuition,
Speaker 2: better than men typically because they're the only woman can
Speaker 2: create life, so they're a terminal to higher power. And
Speaker 2: there's an intuition that something's not quite right. So what
Speaker 2: I call it sentiment. If you're doing looking at an American sentiment,
Speaker 2: it's down. Even though the economy supposedly is up. People
Speaker 2: know that something's quite not quite right. And when you
Speaker 2: have everybody in a policy making environment who are billionaires,
Speaker 2: are sentim millionaires one hundred million or more, how do
Speaker 2: that person make good policy, Joel. They could be the
Speaker 2: nicest person in the world, be very kind, but how
Speaker 2: do you to somebody going to a grocery store. How
Speaker 2: do you relate to somebody who's getting a turnoff notice
Speaker 2: for their cable bill?
Speaker 3: How do you relate to.
Speaker 2: Somebody who's going through a public airport. They're flying private
Speaker 2: and they've been doing it for ten or twenty years.
Speaker 2: How do you relate to somebody who's on a freeway
Speaker 2: stuck in traffic. They're right there again, they're flying private.
Speaker 2: How do you relate to somebody who is in a crowded,
Speaker 2: noisy environment.
Speaker 3: They live behind a gated community. I know these people.
Speaker 3: I'm not hating on them.
Speaker 2: I'm saying it's impossible for you to create policy without
Speaker 2: input from the masses because you just represent the classes.
Speaker 2: And so folks at the bottom understand this country was
Speaker 2: always about the poor at the bottom going into the top.
Speaker 2: I mean Walmart with Sam Walton with a pickup truck,
Speaker 2: a high school education in a storefront, the biggest retailer
Speaker 2: in the world today, and they're one of my partners,
Speaker 2: and I love Walmart. Ups. Jim Carrey Bicycle, He met
Speaker 2: Henry Ford. They got together and while a UPS. Forget
Speaker 2: the guy's name at Smith I think it was FedEx.
Speaker 2: The two guys who created Goldman Sacks literally guy named
Speaker 2: Goldman and a guy named Sacks. They couldn't get a
Speaker 2: job on Wall Street, so they decided to go door
Speaker 2: to door and sell their own products. And they built
Speaker 2: what we now call the institutions called goman Secon Bank
Speaker 2: of America. One guy, you know, after the fires in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, create started lending the small business. This is
Speaker 2: the history of capitalism. This is the history of America.
Speaker 2: The bottom to the top, not top on top of
Speaker 2: the top. And systems don't crater from the bottom, from
Speaker 2: the top down, Joel. They created from the bottom end.
Speaker 2: So we're at this inflection point on the two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dinniversary of America what I call the Third Reconstruction,
Speaker 2: where everything seems to have reached a near breaking point.
Speaker 2: The environment is a little funky. Politics are funky, race
Speaker 2: relations are funky. The mobility is funky. The ladder's not
Speaker 2: only broken, it's missing. Somebody stole the ladder. Right now,
Speaker 2: you're stuck at the bottom and you resent it. And
Speaker 2: now when your outfloaks, he's your inflows and your overhead.
Speaker 2: It becomes your downfall.
Speaker 3: And this system requires cooperation, requires trust, requires faith, requires belief.
Speaker 3: Now it's the spirituality. Now requires confidence, it requires love,
Speaker 3: It requires me caring about my neighbor.
Speaker 2: This system, there's not enough police. If you're in the
Speaker 2: city of LA and I grew up there. There's not
Speaker 2: enough police seven million people, Joe. Ten thousand police officers
Speaker 2: with a side with a side arm and one pair
Speaker 2: of handcuffs is not safety. Ten thousand police officers against
Speaker 2: six million people. If the city comes unwound, and it did,
Speaker 2: and with the Roddy King riots in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: by the way, and police chief there are Gates then
Speaker 2: told the.
Speaker 3: LAPD to exit the city. He's afraid for his officers.
Speaker 3: And when you had the what happened in the New Orleans.
Speaker 2: You have four times more police officers per capital than LA,
Speaker 2: but twice as less safe because all ruler law had decoupled.
Speaker 2: There's not enough please law enforcement, military. There's not enough
Speaker 2: directives to protect us from each other. If we don't believe,
Speaker 2: if we believe, the bets off and the bet exists.
Speaker 2: If I work hard, played by the rules, do the
Speaker 2: right thing, keep my nose clean, pay my taxes, respectful
Speaker 2: for my elders, I honor my citizenship. I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: a reasonable shot of success or failure on my own merit.
Speaker 3: I hope you followed that.
Speaker 2: I've never said that publicly, but that's what I believe
Speaker 2: that that's the bet that we have with each other.
Speaker 2: And it's so this country's not a country. She's an idea, Joel.
Speaker 2: She's an idea, and we have to keep remaking it
Speaker 2: every day. So this is a fight for our democracy.
Speaker 2: I don't mean fight fight. I mean this is a struggle,
Speaker 2: a recommitment to our democracy, our sense of fair play,
Speaker 2: a software upgrade on capitalism.
Speaker 3: And I think that it's.
Speaker 2: Right on time. Rainbow's only follow storms. You cannot have
Speaker 2: a rainbow without a storm first. If we do this right,
Speaker 2: and I believe we will. My middle name is hope.
Speaker 3: We put the ladder back down into the soil.
Speaker 2: We start doing internshipsternships again and giving corporations tax credits.
Speaker 2: This is in the book for internships, for apprenticeships, training
Speaker 2: people in AI, training existing workers like Walmart's doing. They're
Speaker 2: not firing their workers, they're training existing workers in artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence upscaling them for And I believe that's a smart bet.
Speaker 2: By the way, you're gonna need employees, You're gonna need
Speaker 2: customers who can buy your goods.
Speaker 3: I said that earlier, good.
Speaker 1: For the business, good for the employee, good for the
Speaker 1: future bottom line.
Speaker 2: Right, So we need corporations to get tax credits for
Speaker 2: sponsoring a school, sponsoring an entrepreneurship club. Corporation is a
Speaker 2: sponsor to invest in a small business. We have to
Speaker 2: use a taxing system. Has been so successful on home
Speaker 2: ownership as an example, and so successful on philanthropy as example.
Speaker 2: Let's use it as a way to get the top
Speaker 2: to incentivize them to invest in the bottom. They're not
Speaker 2: going to do it just because it's the right thing
Speaker 2: to do or good will. If you want to go
Speaker 2: all to that. You know what did Warren Buffer say,
Speaker 2: when people are greedy, be afraid. When people are we're
Speaker 2: afraid be greedy, and so so folks are just going
Speaker 2: to go bunker up at the top. But give them
Speaker 2: a tax, speak to their greed, speak to their self interest.
Speaker 2: I don't mean greed, speak to their self interest, and
Speaker 2: give them, give them incentives to invest in the least
Speaker 2: of these God's children, and you'll see a resurge in
Speaker 2: the explosion of innovation, of creation of an entrepreneurship, of
Speaker 2: new businesses, things we've never even thought about, which, by
Speaker 2: the way, those new businesses are going to hire people
Speaker 2: as they grow.
Speaker 3: There you go, Joe, more new jobs right that.
Speaker 2: No one thought about, and boom, now that economy goes
Speaker 2: from I think that we have a shot in a
Speaker 2: decade to go from thirty trillion to sixty trillion. You
Speaker 2: heard it here first America. Now we get this wrong,
Speaker 2: and we keep obsessing about wanting to go back to
Speaker 2: the supposedly the great old days. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: when this was a great old What days were the
Speaker 2: great old days in America? Somebod can please tell me.
Speaker 2: But anyway, what I'm allowed to say is not political,
Speaker 2: it's not racial. It's just blunt. There are not enough successful,
Speaker 2: college educated white men to drive GDP Gross domestic Product
Speaker 2: for the next twenty years.
Speaker 3: I like math. It doesn't have an opinion. That's a
Speaker 3: melody housing quote.
Speaker 2: Now I want every white man I know to be successful.
Speaker 2: I needed to be successful because of his success is
Speaker 2: my success, as I said earlier.
Speaker 3: But there's just not enough of them. And that that
Speaker 3: has not statistically been true at any time in American
Speaker 3: history until now.
Speaker 2: We need women are a third of the economy, Joe.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy two, a woman, a white woman, couldn't
Speaker 2: couldn't have a bank account in nineteen seventy two, Joe
Speaker 2: her our mothers couldn't get a loan unless our unless
Speaker 2: the husband's co signed it, not eighteen seventy two, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two.
Speaker 3: So luckily we made the right bet and gave women
Speaker 3: rights and.
Speaker 2: Opportunities and they and now they're a third of the economy,
Speaker 2: eight to eight to ten trillion dollars. We need to
Speaker 2: we need to empower the bottom of the pyramid. Poor
Speaker 2: whites is more for whites, and poor anybody else, neighbor,
Speaker 2: mur and Indians, African Americans, Asians, Indians, middle class, whites,
Speaker 2: middle class, everybody. We need to put that ladder back
Speaker 2: down and raise it back up with everybody in mind,
Speaker 2: and watch GDP grow. Otherwise we're gonna be speaking Mandarin
Speaker 2: in twenty years. And I said yes, I said it,
Speaker 2: and I meant it. If we don't get this right,
Speaker 2: our our enemy is not our next door neighbor. The
Speaker 2: enemy's not some black dude or white dude, or Republican
Speaker 2: or Democrat. Knock it off. Russia, China and North Korea
Speaker 2: wants your way of life. And they can't win in
Speaker 2: a fair fight. They can only win, and we shoot
Speaker 2: ourselves in the in the foot where we're doing a
Speaker 2: pretty good job of it. Everybody in the world wants
Speaker 2: to be an American, but Americans. So that's uh, that's
Speaker 2: my capitalist call saying, I gotta go.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it, man, I hope it's John.
Speaker 1: This has been a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me. Where where can how the money listeners find
Speaker 1: out about your new book?
Speaker 2: By the way, just type in John O'Brien and Capitalism
Speaker 2: for All. You can find it at Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 2: at Walmart and Amazon. It's already on pre pre order
Speaker 2: number one on Amazon and category you can go. You
Speaker 2: can go to Wiley Publishing and go to Briankreu Ventures,
Speaker 2: go to Operation Hoping you buy from Operation Open and
Speaker 2: get a charitable contribution.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll link to you in the show
Speaker 1: notes as well. John, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: me today.
Speaker 2: Joel God bless you, man. Appreciate you. You got somebout
Speaker 2: to meet. Nobody else has can.
Speaker 1: My big takeaway from this conversation be that I'm inspired,
Speaker 1: because I think it is. And in some ways John
Speaker 1: speaks like a politician, but in so many ways he
Speaker 1: doesn't because he says what he actually what he actually thinks,
Speaker 1: but he speaks in a way I wish I guess
Speaker 1: more politicians would speak, and and especially in an age
Speaker 1: where we're so segmented as well, I'm part part of
Speaker 1: this group or this tribe over here, and John lays
Speaker 1: out what is a compelling vision I would say for
Speaker 1: our country to embrace the idea of free markets and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship and and and building something that can benefit to
Speaker 1: other people. So just there's a ton more questions by
Speaker 1: the way, I had for John, and I wish we
Speaker 1: could have gotten too. Maybe I'll have to bring him
Speaker 1: back on the podcast at some point in the future,
Speaker 1: but I think, yeah, big takeaway. First big takeaway is
Speaker 1: ultimately that I think this is aspirational and inspirational and
Speaker 1: we need that sometimes right, to remember that we're fortunate
Speaker 1: to live in a place where we can go start something.
Speaker 1: I talked to friends, talk to a friend who's from
Speaker 1: another country, and he said, oh my gosh, to start
Speaker 1: a business, to start a little grocery store. Do you
Speaker 1: know how much oversight, how much we would have had
Speaker 1: to prove to the government, essentially in order to even
Speaker 1: get a tiny grocery store started. He was like, it
Speaker 1: was impossible here in this country, you can start a
Speaker 1: small grocery store in your neighborhood.
Speaker 3: And by the.
Speaker 1: Way, those are back. Small grocery stores are back. They're
Speaker 1: making a dent, they're serving their local communities, they're serving
Speaker 1: high quality items that cost more than they do at
Speaker 1: a traditional grocery store most of the time. But people
Speaker 1: are like, you know what, these are locally sourced items,
Speaker 1: and so I'm more than happy to pay. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: to see this uptick in small grocery stores. Well, guess
Speaker 1: what in the United States, you right there, whoever you
Speaker 1: are listening to, when if you had the druthers, the idea,
Speaker 1: a little bit of capital to get started, you could
Speaker 1: go do this yourself. And so what John is pointing
Speaker 1: to is I think quite true. Still in this country,
Speaker 1: we still live in a time where it is possible,
Speaker 1: it is incredible, is very possible, maybe more possible than ever,
Speaker 1: to start your own business and to succeed and to
Speaker 1: not depend on someone else creating a job for you.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying it's easy, but it is quite possible.
Speaker 1: But this actually, in some ways, this conversation brought me
Speaker 1: back to our conversation we had with John Mackey, the
Speaker 1: founder of Whole Foods, talking about grocery stores, who is
Speaker 1: an advocate for something called conscious capitalism, and John Hope
Speaker 1: Bryant very much in that same space. I think one
Speaker 1: of the other things that John said that I wrote
Speaker 1: down when he said it was you can do well
Speaker 1: and do good. And I think that is such a
Speaker 1: great message, and I think it is incredibly true that
Speaker 1: you can build something that is not only good for you,
Speaker 1: good for your family, good for wealth building, but it's
Speaker 1: good for the community, it's good for the people that
Speaker 1: you employ. And this is where and this is where
Speaker 1: I think the term capitalism has really gotten commandeered, and
Speaker 1: free markets might be just a better term to use
Speaker 1: that is actually more on the nose. And then also
Speaker 1: is just it has less baggage associated with it. But
Speaker 1: capitalism for all, that's something I can get behind. And
Speaker 1: the more we can each of us do our own
Speaker 1: part to build good things where we live and to
Speaker 1: ensure that people who might not have as much access
Speaker 1: to the ladders that they need if we can help
Speaker 1: be that ladder, just like John is with this nonprofit
Speaker 1: Operation Hope, and he's trying to help people with financial
Speaker 1: literacy with budget management.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: That nonprofit serves a ton of people, all Lah Money
Speaker 1: Management International.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The companies that we talk about the nonprofits who are
Speaker 1: doing good work out there, Operation Hope is another one.
Speaker 1: So John isn't just right doing the good stuff and
Speaker 1: making money so that he can splurge and live his life.
Speaker 1: He is also he is a part of that process
Speaker 1: of putting the ladder down for other people, which we
Speaker 1: so desperately need right now. So thank you as always
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll put links in the show notes to
Speaker 1: some of the resources that we're mentioned, including John's new
Speaker 1: book Hope you check it out. And of course thank
Speaker 1: you for being a part of this show and the
Speaker 1: hod of Money community. I really appreciate it. Until next time,
Speaker 1: Best friend out,