Speaker 1: Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. So my
Speaker 1: road to entrepreneurship wasn't some fairy tale, and it certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't easy, and that's good because then you can relate
Speaker 1: to it. When I was in Compton and living with
Speaker 1: my mother, the backstory to meeting this white banker who
Speaker 1: taught me financial literacy in what was then home economics
Speaker 1: class was my mother who had bought that home. And
Speaker 1: so I saw somebody make a choice right between rending
Speaker 1: and owning the dignity and the respect that gendered the
Speaker 1: sense of somebodyness that we had knowing that the roof
Speaker 1: over our head was our own home. There's an unconscious
Speaker 1: thing about owning your own stuff, right. And you could
Speaker 1: tell whose home was rented because the grass was up
Speaker 1: to your knees. Our grass was well maintained because well,
Speaker 1: nobody washes rental cars, right, but you when you own it,
Speaker 1: you take care of it. You tend to take care
Speaker 1: of it. And so we would cut the grass. I
Speaker 1: would cut the grass right for for my mom. And
Speaker 1: at that one five five oh two South Freely address
Speaker 1: in Compton, California, the corner.
Speaker 2: Corner lot that she owned.
Speaker 1: And when I was growing up there in Compton, i'd
Speaker 1: already seen, you know, the death of our net worth
Speaker 1: or the death of our family structure, divorce when I
Speaker 1: was less than five years old. Then I saw a murder.
Speaker 1: Oh see, the guy who saved my life when I
Speaker 1: was you know, six, seven years old, might have been
Speaker 1: even five or six murdered right in front of me.
Speaker 1: That was about over money. He was selling marijuana part
Speaker 1: time in the wrong neighborhood, trying to make some extra money,
Speaker 1: the wrong side hustle, and they murdered him for it.
Speaker 1: I witnessed that. I can still see it in my
Speaker 1: own mind's eye to this day. And I had met
Speaker 1: when I moved to Compton, this young man who was
Speaker 1: older than me by ten years plus, George.
Speaker 2: He was eighteen.
Speaker 1: I was nine or ten at this time at this
Speaker 1: particular point. So when I met him, you know, he
Speaker 1: was you know, maybe seventeen or sixteen, but when he was.
Speaker 2: Murdered he was eighteen.
Speaker 1: Uh. George was smart. George had great grades. I had
Speaker 1: okay grades, by the way, I got to C minus
Speaker 1: C plus in math. I think, so the finance, the
Speaker 1: so called financial literacies are you know, financial literacy big
Speaker 1: baller for the country, who's advised three US presidents from
Speaker 1: both parties, President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama, who's
Speaker 1: advised the Treasury Department, helped create policy for the Executive
Speaker 1: Order through the federal government, and financial literacy policy and
Speaker 1: emergency financial disaster policy through female homeland security, and all
Speaker 1: the stuff that we've done in Operation in Hope, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I got a C minus C plus in math. That's right,
Speaker 1: And I'm in good company because you may not know this,
Speaker 1: but doctor Martin Luther King Junior got a C minus
Speaker 1: in public speaking from Krozier's seminary. Did you know that?
Speaker 1: That's right? They said, if you don't stop talking like that,
Speaker 1: you never amount to anything. Well, he turned out more
Speaker 1: than okay. So doing something different doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: can't do it. It just made mean that it's different.
Speaker 1: So George had a great grades. He was a perfect student,
Speaker 1: but didn't have great parents. And I don't think i've
Speaker 1: ever remember seeing his father. Now, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: father at home, but I had a father. My mom
Speaker 1: and dad were divorced, but my dad spent time with me.
Speaker 1: My mother spent time with me. They did not argue
Speaker 1: with me. They didn't make me a negotiating point between
Speaker 1: them in the household. They didn't make their children to
Speaker 1: argue point. Please don't do that to your kids. They
Speaker 1: don't Your kids not asked to come here. They did
Speaker 1: not get a vote, right, you guys got busy. They
Speaker 1: showed up. And so you have a responsibility to raise
Speaker 1: them into adulthood and to make them responsible citizens and
Speaker 1: give them all the tools they need to compete. Discipline, structure, love, accountability, confidence, belief,
Speaker 1: all in the tool they need to roll in this world. So,
Speaker 1: my mother was like a mom and a dad when
Speaker 1: I was, you know, with her. And then my dad
Speaker 1: was like extra sauce right when I go went to
Speaker 1: go hang out with him oftentimes on weekends. He lived
Speaker 1: in South Central, We lived in Canton. He lived at
Speaker 1: thirty fifth in Western and But but I never saw
Speaker 1: George's father and and and his mother was nice enough,
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't really remember her very much.
Speaker 1: When I would hang out, he would spend most of
Speaker 1: his time at our house because I think he loved
Speaker 1: my mother. Anyway, George was a great student and I
Speaker 1: want to be like George because I want to be smart. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: George didn't know who he wanted to be. So George
Speaker 1: started hanging out with my next door neighbor, Tweet, the
Speaker 1: local drug dealer. The whole family next door was just
Speaker 1: off the chain, crazy like they were.
Speaker 2: They were.
Speaker 1: They were all involved with the drug train, ganging, slanging
Speaker 1: and banging. Police were always at the house next door.
Speaker 1: Tweet was he was a handsome guy. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: he was super cool, but just uses talent for something
Speaker 1: that did not have a return on an investment. And
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood you had prison, baroque and death, and
Speaker 1: Jors started hanging out with Tweet, started walking like Tweet,
Speaker 1: talking like Tweet, acting like Tweet, and got shot and
Speaker 1: killed with Tweet. So that was the third time I
Speaker 1: witnessed a death, and the second time I actually I
Speaker 1: didn't witness that it happened, right, but it was witnessed.
Speaker 2: In my life, I.
Speaker 1: Saw three deaths, two murders, experienced three deaths, deaths of
Speaker 1: something important to me that was transformational to family structure,
Speaker 1: our net worth, you know, generational wealth. Then the murder
Speaker 1: of Oc and then the murder which I actually witnessed
Speaker 1: in the murderer of George, and I realized being smart
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. Like you know, yeah, it's really important, but
Speaker 1: it's not enough. Being cool is not enough. Hanging out
Speaker 1: certainly depends who you're hanging out with.
Speaker 2: Not enough.
Speaker 1: Culture matters. Like culture to this day is not the
Speaker 1: most important thing in business. It's the only thing in business.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing in your life. On your street,
Speaker 1: your neighborhood has a culture, your household has a culture.
Speaker 1: As my wife Schachuer has said, most habits are learned, right,
Speaker 1: most things are learned. What is the habit in your household,
Speaker 1: in your life, and your family structure. So you're trying
Speaker 1: to get a sense of what the habits were in
Speaker 1: my family structure and the ecosystem in my family that
Speaker 1: my mother, what's going to make sure sure was embedded
Speaker 1: in our culture before we walked down that front door,
Speaker 1: and even when she wasn't around, we were guided by
Speaker 1: her role. Modeling right, you model what you see. A
Speaker 1: lot of kids want to be rap stars, nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with it, but you can't scale a rap star. TI
Speaker 1: is my friend, Killer, Mike's my friend. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who are rappers, actors and my friend
Speaker 1: I was with Chris Tucker to bring comedian and actor.
Speaker 1: Uh just today, great friend. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the entertainment business. Quincy Jones is
Speaker 1: a mentor of mind. But the very fact that I
Speaker 1: can mention these names, I know, Oprah Winfrey, I know
Speaker 1: I know a lot of a lot of these people
Speaker 1: that you are aware of, Quavo, right, but you can't be.
Speaker 1: The very fact that I mentioned their name means that
Speaker 1: they're there, their their brands, they're unique into themselves, and
Speaker 1: you cannot have forty million black people trying to be
Speaker 1: you know, three thousand rappers and two hundred named actors,
Speaker 1: and just the numbers don't work right, not scalable, and
Speaker 1: and even their businesses dependent upon their personality. So they're
Speaker 1: they're in all likelihood have two, three, four to ten employees.
Speaker 1: But our community needs even going to go work for them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you need somebody who can create hundreds of employee employees
Speaker 1: and thousands of employees. I I e. I wrote a
Speaker 1: piece once that America needed and I love the presidency
Speaker 1: of Barack Obama and what he represented, but I wrote
Speaker 1: that America probably needed black America probably needed a Black
Speaker 1: Bill Gates before it needed the black.
Speaker 2: President, right.
Speaker 1: We needed that role model to see, uh, and experience
Speaker 1: what it's like to create a business that create that create,
Speaker 1: created a business of the billionaire that creates one hundred million,
Speaker 1: one hundred millionaires to work for him, that create then
Speaker 1: you know, uh, multi millionaires, and then creating millionaires underneath
Speaker 1: underneath underneath that then create one hundred thousand airs salaried employees.
Speaker 1: And all these people are giving money back, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, to their communities and donating charities, going to donating,
Speaker 1: tiding at church, and hooking up the vendors at their
Speaker 1: house where they be you know, painters or electricians or
Speaker 1: folks cutting the grass. It all trickles down right, and
Speaker 1: it's all habit for me. So that's why I've said
Speaker 1: Black America probably needed a Black Bill Gates or several
Speaker 1: of them before we needed a black president, because government
Speaker 1: can't save you, just like drug dealing can't say you,
Speaker 1: just like rap stars can't save you. So my point
Speaker 1: was that we end up wanting to be rap stars,
Speaker 1: athletes and drug Dealer's nothing wrong with a rap star example,
Speaker 1: other than it's not scalable, and you shouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be a drug dealer or a gangster.
Speaker 2: But we end up modeling that because that's what we see.
Speaker 1: Those are symbols of success that we see and where
Speaker 1: the rules of published and the playing fiellers level, Black
Speaker 1: folks and brown folks succeed. Think about the arts, you
Speaker 1: sing well, you dance well, people buy your records or whatever,
Speaker 1: go to your performances, you succeed. I think about sports.
Speaker 1: You run fast, you hit a bounce a baseball, you bounce,
Speaker 1: you bounce a basketball, you throw a football, whatever, you're
Speaker 1: good at it, You get the.
Speaker 2: Contract, and you succeed.
Speaker 1: Right even though that, by the way, is not necessarily sustainable,
Speaker 1: because seventy percent of those seventy percent of those in
Speaker 1: professional sports, namely the NFL, in the NBA or bankrupt
Speaker 1: five years give or take after retirement. That's another podcast
Speaker 1: doing all focus on professional sports and all that. But
Speaker 1: on this example, just once you understand that this is
Speaker 1: the math of the matter. You cannot have forty million
Speaker 1: plus black people trying to fit into these sub categories
Speaker 1: of artistry that are scalable. So you got all these
Speaker 1: people trying to do these few jobs which don't last.
Speaker 1: But that's what we're modeling what we see because we
Speaker 1: see success in it, but you can't scale.
Speaker 2: It, and.
Speaker 1: So we end up to do these things that don't
Speaker 1: have what I call economic legs on them. There are
Speaker 1: no retired drug dealers, r prison, beaged, probation, parole, death right.
Speaker 1: It does not have a retirement plan. There's no pension plan.
Speaker 1: But one thing I did understand in my neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: I do give credit to the folks in my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and think about people now in your neighborhood, if you
Speaker 1: can relate to this where you grew up or where
Speaker 1: you may live right now, there are no dumb drug
Speaker 1: dealers who is successful. It may be immoral, it may
Speaker 1: be unethical, it may not be a good business plan
Speaker 1: because you're selling death to youral community. In many cases,
Speaker 1: you're infecting people with something that doesn't doesn't prosper their lives.
Speaker 1: It's what I call bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where
Speaker 1: I benefit and other people benefit more. Bad capitalism is
Speaker 1: where I benefit everybody else pays a price for it.
Speaker 1: So drug dealing is by its own very nature bad capitalism.
Speaker 1: But we're not necessarily talking about bad people. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you're a drug dealer, you're an I legal and
Speaker 1: ethical entrepreneur. You understand import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale retail,
Speaker 1: customer service, security, territory logistics, and on and on and on.
Speaker 1: You've got payroll, right, I mean, these are business people,
Speaker 1: they're entrepreneurs, they're hustlers, and they just need a good
Speaker 1: business plan. By the way, I'm not picking on black
Speaker 1: and brown people. Poor them were poor whites in America,
Speaker 1: the poor anybody else?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 1: And where do you think NASCAR came from? Moonshine running
Speaker 1: from the Appalachian mountains?
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: These are guys who are running from the police, selling
Speaker 1: moonshine running the police. Became really good at it, realizing
Speaker 1: that the moonshine running part was not going to last.
Speaker 1: Running from the police was not a sustainable career. Get prison, ovation,
Speaker 1: garrow death right, right, And so it was they had
Speaker 1: to stop that part. And they're like, you know, we're
Speaker 1: good at driving, and so they started driving on those
Speaker 1: country roads, then driving on the beach, and then driving
Speaker 1: in circles on dirt tracks, and then that turned into
Speaker 1: a fifth generation five generations later. If you go back
Speaker 1: five generations of a lot of these NASCAR families. You'll
Speaker 1: find moonshine runners, but their multi multi multi millionaires today
Speaker 1: is a multi multi billion dollar industry today. And the
Speaker 1: president of asdcars on my board of director's great guy,
Speaker 1: Steve Phelps. So how do we take where's the rainbow?
Speaker 1: After this start? He took a negative to turn into
Speaker 1: a positive. These drug dealers are natural business people. Maybe
Speaker 1: they can't go work for IBM because a lot of
Speaker 1: them have a public record, but they can go create
Speaker 1: the new IBM, right they can. If you can't get
Speaker 1: a job, create a job, you can't cast a check,
Speaker 1: right one. And if you're a gang member, you're a
Speaker 1: frustrated union organizer. Hello, right, so that's organizing skills, right.
Speaker 1: These are talented people. Unfortunately they didn't get the memo
Speaker 1: of my neighborhood. So George got murdered with tweet. My
Speaker 1: friend Andre got hooked up at jail. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about now in the I was on the corner.
Speaker 1: Look left, there's Tweet and there's George murdered. Look in
Speaker 1: front of me, there's Andre and all my boys that
Speaker 1: hung out there jail, prison, per parole, in some cases murder.
Speaker 1: These are friends of mine, but an extremely talented never
Speaker 1: got out of the hood. To my right was this
Speaker 1: one family, our role model, Hispanic family and one of
Speaker 1: my dear friends lived down the street, Sanchez family, and
Speaker 1: they all lived in the same property. Now, part of
Speaker 1: that was because it's a Hispanic neighborhood now Compton where
Speaker 1: grew up, but it was a black neighborhood there with
Speaker 1: a few Hispanic families. They didn't feel necessarily welcome to
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. So they had a fence around their property.
Speaker 1: And that actually forced them to work together as a unit.
Speaker 1: And they lived in the same house. It was a house,
Speaker 1: a frontment house in the back. They lived together, worked together,
Speaker 1: slept together, were family together, created business together, built wealth together.
Speaker 1: To this day, the whole generation, multi generations of them
Speaker 1: make it's three generations now immensely successful. I'm still in
Speaker 1: touch with the family. I watched that, right, I watched that,
Speaker 1: and I say them in my book Up from Nothing,
Speaker 1: and I'll get into details of that. The five pillars
Speaker 1: a success. But the third pillar is family structure and resiliency. Right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: becoming an entrepreneur and a businessman is not just about
Speaker 1: having a great business ideas having the right culture, the
Speaker 1: right role models, right environment, because you and you model
Speaker 1: what you see. And so I said, when the rules
Speaker 1: of publishing, the playing field is leveled, black people succeed.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the arts, I mentioned professional sports, politics, that's hey,
Speaker 1: you give a good speech, you you have a good platform,
Speaker 1: they vote for you. The rules of published in the
Speaker 1: playing field is level. But in entrepreneurship, in business, there
Speaker 1: is no rule book right. And you confuse making money
Speaker 1: of building wealth right. Anything hustles enough, it's not. And
Speaker 1: so we have to get our hustle right, get our
Speaker 1: life right, and our role models right, our our and
Speaker 1: then we'll get we'll get our business plan right, and
Speaker 1: then we'll get our story right. So I became an
Speaker 1: entrepreneur in my mind before I ever became one in
Speaker 1: real life. I became a businessman in my spirit, before
Speaker 1: I ever became one who cast a check or brought
Speaker 1: in revenue.
Speaker 2: It was a mindset. Mindset matters.
Speaker 1: And and I looked around my neighborhood and saw what
Speaker 1: I liked, so what I didn't like, decided I didn't
Speaker 1: want that. And there's a lot of love of the
Speaker 1: word no and so I'd start by legal hustle and
Speaker 1: I started selling mail order because I have any inventory,
Speaker 1: didn't have any money, So what can I do.
Speaker 2: I've got good hustle.
Speaker 1: You if you don't have any compounded capital, if you
Speaker 1: need a compound and hustle and hustle and hustle can
Speaker 1: create more hustle.
Speaker 2: And that and you know fear.
Speaker 1: Fear is a lazy bastard, and the devil's a lazy bastard.
Speaker 1: They don't work hard. They wait, they wait for you
Speaker 1: to give up. So I figured if I got up earlier,
Speaker 1: stayed up later, worked harder, likes my teacher says, nobody
Speaker 1: cares work harder, that that would be my advantage. And
Speaker 1: so I h hustle and I had gift for gam
Speaker 1: and I sold mail order anything. I would share my
Speaker 1: dream with my teachers at school and whatever, and all
Speaker 1: that led to then my lesson in financial literacy that I, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, had this banker come in my classroom.
Speaker 2: And click click click click click.
Speaker 1: That plus what my mother taught me, what I saw
Speaker 1: my father, what I saw my neighborhood. But I didn't
Speaker 1: want but I did want rainbows after storms boom. That's
Speaker 1: the business plan for my life. And you know, this
Speaker 1: story can go on forever. I can do two three
Speaker 1: different segments on just this aspect of becoming an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and a business owner. But it all started with that
Speaker 1: childhood framework. And there's nothing I just said that's magical, right,
Speaker 1: And none of it required a lot of money capital,
Speaker 1: none of it required fancy stuff or you know, flossing.
Speaker 1: None of this it was all pretty basic and it's
Speaker 1: everyone of these tools are available to you. And uh
Speaker 1: so when that banker said I'm a banker and not
Speaker 1: financial entrepreneurs, well that became the business plan for my life.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna become an entrepreneur. And then when I asked
Speaker 1: that banker, well, how many bankers are there in you
Speaker 1: know they're more than you, right, Like, make sure understand
Speaker 1: this is properly. I can borrow money from you, and
Speaker 1: I don't get dead if I don't pay you back.
Speaker 1: So what are you talking about it? Well, in my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: if you borrow money from pooky them and you don't
Speaker 1: pay them back, you're not coming back. You know, they
Speaker 1: take you out or they enslave you for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. You don't never you never get out
Speaker 1: of debt. He's like, no, no, you you know you
Speaker 1: take it a loan, you qualify. You know, you take
Speaker 1: the loan out, you pay it back, your fine, and
Speaker 1: you don't pay it back. You know, we have notice
Speaker 1: of default. We foreclose on you. You live this fight
Speaker 1: another day. I'm like, Okay, well, I just figured out
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do, and I gotta do is convince
Speaker 1: you my business plans right and have decent credit. Yet Okay,
Speaker 1: so how many people are like you? Well, there's a
Speaker 1: couple hundred thousand bankers in the Bank of America, he said,
Speaker 1: So it's got to be millions of bankers in America.
Speaker 2: Whoa whoa?
Speaker 1: And how many bankers are there in America? May ten thousand?
Speaker 1: Back then it's forty five hundred banks today. FDIC Insurance Bank,
Speaker 1: whose mission is to in you capital if you can
Speaker 1: prove you could that.
Speaker 2: You qualified, said, who whoa wa who whoa whoa whoa.
Speaker 1: So my people don't have to go out and get
Speaker 1: money from Pooky them and Jojo and Bang Bang and
Speaker 1: the mafia and all that stuff, paity lenders and rent
Speaker 1: own stores and check cashers and look, what's what's going
Speaker 1: on in our neighborhoods wrapped, you know, fire of the
Speaker 1: credit score, neighborhoods, check cash or patio on lender, rent
Speaker 1: on store, title, lended, liquor store, pawn shop. They're just
Speaker 1: praying on people with low financial literacy and high aspirations
Speaker 1: and dreams.
Speaker 2: Where the house.
Speaker 1: Whoever's a surviving mindset, they're praying on you. It's target marketing.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but I'm sick and
Speaker 1: tired of being sick and tired. It's Malcolm Max said,
Speaker 1: I've been we've been bamboos, we've been tricked, we've been full,
Speaker 1: and I don't know about you, but I'm sick and
Speaker 1: tired of being sick and tired.
Speaker 2: So he told me that that.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, but that was a business plan
Speaker 1: for Operation Hope, which I had found, which I would
Speaker 1: found back then, so I was nine going on ten
Speaker 1: years old. I would have found it twenty six sixteen
Speaker 1: years later, I would have found Operation Hope. And there's
Speaker 1: a whole nother story of some organization I found it
Speaker 1: for Tom Bradley, which is still a city government agency.
Speaker 1: I found out was nineteen years old and a volunteer
Speaker 1: for the City of la under Tom Bradley. But I
Speaker 1: was too young to run it. They told me it
Speaker 1: was a city lending agency. But I'll try to put
Speaker 1: that in the in the in the comments for the podcast.
Speaker 1: God remember the name of the city agency, but you
Speaker 1: can look it up today. I inspired when I was
Speaker 1: nineteen years old, if that became the preamble for what
Speaker 1: Openan would become after the Rony King riots. Operation Hope,
Speaker 1: but Operation Hopes business plan of really unleashing untapped human
Speaker 1: potential at scale and making people bankable at scale and
Speaker 1: get your credit score up and your debt down, your
Speaker 1: savings up, and making you bankable, turning you from black
Speaker 1: and white or red or blue to green right right bankable.
Speaker 1: That get making the private banker to the working class,
Speaker 1: the underserved folks were too much month at the end
Speaker 1: of their money, folks who are moving from a struggling mentality,
Speaker 1: surviving anxiety, to a thriving mentality to a winning mentality
Speaker 1: you know again, the private banker for the working class
Speaker 1: and working for the working working middle class. Operation Hope,
Speaker 1: which is large in the country today, fifty four million
Speaker 1: dollar budget, five billion dollars invested almost in under cerved neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Raising credit score is fifty four to one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty points in twenty six months and twenty four months.
Speaker 1: All that started with this kid and this dream. It's
Speaker 1: all the same business plan. I became the entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: now operation sho was you're a banker, so you can
Speaker 1: become dream makers in your life. Rainbows only follow storms, right,
Speaker 1: you cannot have a rainbow without a storm.
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: Can I grow without legitimate suffering? Don't run away from
Speaker 1: your problems, run through them. I love you, I'm out.
Speaker 1: Let's go do this thing. They bought at eight unit
Speaker 1: of Harber Building. First lived in one unit rented to
Speaker 1: out that covered the mortgage payment that was supped three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month. Yes, they built. They bought it
Speaker 1: for eighteen thousand dollars. For anybody who think in real estate,
Speaker 1: that's not magical that private buildings worth several million dollars
Speaker 1: today almost, I think it's a six lesson. I checked
Speaker 1: it was six million dollars. That's that apartment building is worth.
Speaker 1: We bought it for eighteen thousand dollars and the rest
Speaker 1: of the unit rent so was eight units. So we
Speaker 1: lived in one unit rented out to to cover the
Speaker 1: mortage payment. The rest of the units, the five units
Speaker 1: that were left for profit, and they used that profit,
Speaker 1: saved that extra money to then put a down payment
Speaker 1: on their home, the home I'm talking about on Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara Boulevard. And by the way, we lost the apartment building.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. And I say
Speaker 1: we lost because that's generational wealth for our family. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just my mom and my dad. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: my dad. My dad didn't realize that they had to
Speaker 1: be better together. My dad was a great hustler, by
Speaker 1: the way, a great hustler. But there's a difference between
Speaker 1: making money and building wealth. I'll get the end of
Speaker 1: that in a separate podcast. We're really focused on that.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of black strivers, we think that
Speaker 1: making that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting
Speaker 1: that buck, getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right.
Speaker 1: You can you can make you can win the battle
Speaker 1: and lose the war. And that's exactly what my father
Speaker 1: did and wouldn't listen to my mother. So but here's
Speaker 1: the positive part. They were smart enough to buy that
Speaker 1: apartment building for eighteen thousand dollars, and they did nothing
Speaker 1: else but buy that and just hold it. The whole
Speaker 1: family would be set today, more set than ultimately we
Speaker 1: ended up being with my mother by at least six
Speaker 1: times more set. My mother ended up being technically a
Speaker 1: millionaire when she passed on, but that one apartment building
Speaker 1: again would be worth six million dollars today.
Speaker 2: We only only own eighteen thousand dollars when we purchased it,
Speaker 2: when they purchased it.
Speaker 1: And when you buy a piece of real estate, you
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the depreciation at tax benefit. You
Speaker 1: get the benefit of the appreciation the equity, and you
Speaker 1: write off the most of the mortgage payments against your income.
Speaker 2: So it was really a win win when.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so we moved from the apartment building, owned it,
Speaker 1: then woved got a house, great good job. Then we
Speaker 1: bought a gas station at I believe it's at Normandy
Speaker 1: and Vernon south east corner. For those who know Los
Speaker 1: Angeles geography, you know that that gas station is still
Speaker 1: there today. Last time I was in LA it was
Speaker 1: still there and functioning. We owned that gas station. We
Speaker 1: own a cement contracting business. We owned a little nursery
Speaker 1: business taking care of knucklehead kids like me before and
Speaker 1: after school for working parents. My mother had a side house,
Speaker 1: so making arts and crafts. Anyway, my dad ought to
Speaker 1: really argued over money because my dad could make it
Speaker 1: but couldn't keep as I mentioned earlier, and he was
Speaker 1: a great hustler, but he was not financially literate. And
Speaker 1: Vassil Young says the men and women failed for three
Speaker 1: reasons ar against, pride and greed. My dad was not greedy,
Speaker 1: but he was full of pride and slightly arrogant, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't ask my mother for advice. And only in
Speaker 1: a relationship do I think that the mass should not work?
Speaker 1: Like I love math, my friend Melody Hobson, I love
Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion right, But only
Speaker 1: in a relationship should the math not work two plus
Speaker 1: two if it doesn't equal? Who was six, eight or
Speaker 1: ten meaning more than four? What are you doing right?
Speaker 1: You can do bad all by yourself if you're not
Speaker 1: better together, what are you doing right? So Dad and
Speaker 1: mom had the building blocks right, but they didn't have
Speaker 1: the strategy right. They didn't have the mindset right. They
Speaker 1: still had a surviving mindset. They didn't together move to
Speaker 1: a thriving mindset. Again, my mother finally got to thrift
Speaker 1: your mindset, we're not there yet. And unfortunately they thought
Speaker 1: they were builders, but they still had a surviving, hustling
Speaker 1: mindset and approach, and so end up winning the battle
Speaker 1: and losing the war. Crossing bridges ahead of time, picking
Speaker 1: up a stepping over a dollar to pick up a din?
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? They argued over money.
Speaker 1: Dad wouldn't listen to mother. He would bid jobs of
Speaker 1: the scene, seement contractor. He wanted to win the bid.
Speaker 1: I respect the hustle, but again not financially literate. So
Speaker 1: the job was if the last contract to bid with
Speaker 1: the client for a thousand dollars, my dad would go
Speaker 1: in and bid at nine hundred. Well, the materials might
Speaker 1: be nine to fifty. My dad didn't think about that.
Speaker 1: He thought the cash flow is profit wrong. So the
Speaker 1: more money he made, the broker we got. He made
Speaker 1: a dollar and spend a dollar fifty and we lost everything.
Speaker 1: We lost the gas station, we lost the apartment building,
Speaker 1: we lost our home, and on the verge of losing
Speaker 1: our home. My mother again, she was a master at savings.
Speaker 1: Remember this going back to the Grandma story, and she
Speaker 1: would you put those sea corns to the side, and
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen get married. I want you to trust
Speaker 1: each other. I want you to be in each other's lives.
Speaker 1: I want you to all that and understand that you're
Speaker 1: meeting a business partner here and not just to mate.
Speaker 1: And when you go to the club and you see
Speaker 1: the dude, oh he's handsome. Guys, you see the lady,
Speaker 1: she's fine. Don't just ask their name, ask their credit score. Right,
Speaker 1: And I'm joking, but I'm serious, right, because this is
Speaker 1: the business partner for the rest of your life. So
Speaker 1: you want to have a joint account, right, and you
Speaker 1: want to have a separate account to make sure that
Speaker 1: you know, if you find out this person is actually
Speaker 1: not financially literate, they tear their own revery and they're
Speaker 1: not tearing yours, the collective of yours. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you need to have the backup plan for your family.
Speaker 1: So my mother had a separate little account that she
Speaker 1: had set up and she wasn't hiding for my father.
Speaker 1: My father knew it was there, and she had saved
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen sixty eight. No, this was nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: I was four four or five years old, between three
Speaker 1: and five years old. I get the math right, So
Speaker 1: sometime between sixty I was born in sixty six, sixty eight,
Speaker 1: sixty nine, seventy seventy one, that time period, anyway, four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a lot of money. My mother had said this,
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars to send my brother to a college
Speaker 1: of his choice, because she wanted him to move from
Speaker 1: a surviving mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, a thriving mindset,
Speaker 1: SOS surviving mindset is free. Your first reconstruction, out of slavery,
Speaker 1: you're free. Second reconstruction, civil rights movement, getting access to jobs,
Speaker 1: access to careers, access to education, access to the polling booth,
Speaker 1: access to public facilities, restrooms of your choice, all that
Speaker 1: stuff being able to have access. Of course, third reconstruction,
Speaker 1: which we're in today, that operation SULP is helping the
Speaker 1: lead is a movement from the streets to the suites,
Speaker 1: from civil rights to silver rights. Right at the third reconstruction.
Speaker 1: The color is not black or white, it's green. It's
Speaker 1: not red or blue, it's green. It's economicist opportunity for all.
Speaker 1: It's it's about writing checks, not just cashing them. So
Speaker 1: we're in the second reconstruction. Now we're in the sixties
Speaker 1: and the seventies, and my mother knew that for my
Speaker 1: brother to do better, he needed a higher education. And
Speaker 1: you know better, you do better, and so my brother
Speaker 1: was set to go to a college of his choice
Speaker 1: to be whoever he wanted. My father got to the
Speaker 1: bank first and took that four thousand dollars. Unfortunately my
Speaker 1: mother had him as a signer on the account. So
Speaker 1: you might want to have until you guys in bed,
Speaker 1: until you embed yourself into you know, going for about
Speaker 1: me to a bout a week. It may take a
Speaker 1: minute for you guys to come together as one and
Speaker 1: you trust each other, not just romantically, but about money
Speaker 1: and business decisions, and you're on the same accord. You
Speaker 1: might want to have an account just your own name
Speaker 1: on it, and then he has an account, or she
Speaker 1: has an account with their name on it. Then you
Speaker 1: have a joint account. Until things evolved. He got the
Speaker 1: money and wasted it on some hair brain idea. He
Speaker 1: had to get a bag, my dad did, and of
Speaker 1: course he lost it, and my brother could not go
Speaker 1: to a college of his choice, and it broke my
Speaker 1: mother's heart. And by the time my brother ended up
Speaker 1: going to them to the Navy. And he went to
Speaker 1: the Navy because he could get a four year education
Speaker 1: to be signed up for military service. He thought he
Speaker 1: signed over for four years. Of course, it's like they
Speaker 1: know the psychology in the military. Once you're there, you
Speaker 1: probably stayed there. He had a good experience, so he
Speaker 1: signed for four years, resigned up, resigned up, and had
Speaker 1: a career the Navy, became a noncommissioned officer, a great
Speaker 1: career in intelligence there, and ended up retiring to Hawaii,
Speaker 1: marrying somebody who lives in Hawaii. It works for retire
Speaker 1: from the Navy, works for the Navy as a private
Speaker 1: contractor with his family, and it's a beautiful story. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by
Speaker 1: that four thousand dollars moment where he did not have
Speaker 1: self determination. Right, but, uh, what would his life be?
Speaker 1: How to be different? Right if if if he had
Speaker 1: gone to college of a choice and become a dentist
Speaker 1: or a doctor, or a banker or a business person
Speaker 1: or an engineer or whatever. Right, you know what does
Speaker 1: a matter what was but it could have been his
Speaker 1: choice and he just didn't do uh that and as
Speaker 1: a result of that, Uh, well, I just told you
Speaker 1: the story, right, He's a great, great life, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't his choice.
Speaker 2: And that was enough.
Speaker 1: My mother had had enough and my mother said I'm
Speaker 1: out and uh and that became the fight of all
Speaker 1: fights and my dad they had domestic abuse came to blows.
Speaker 2: They had to call the police to get my mother.
Speaker 1: My dad off, my off, my mother beating her up,
Speaker 1: and she put off a pump, a three inch pump
Speaker 1: popped him on the head. Here didn't grow on the
Speaker 1: top of his head until his last dying days from
Speaker 1: that pop. Uh. So he learned how to do that
Speaker 1: with my mother again. But uh, she she was out,
Speaker 1: you know that she left. We left with the shirt
Speaker 1: of her back and her kids and we went to
Speaker 1: go to stay with with somebody, she said, with my
Speaker 1: uncle oc. Uh was really her girlfriend and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: whose name was OC. But it order made me feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: make the kids feel comfortable, she said. It was that
Speaker 1: that was my uncle and I was playing on the
Speaker 1: and she was staying there with her girlfriend and her
Speaker 1: boyfriend to save money for her by her first.
Speaker 2: House on her own.
Speaker 1: Again, here's that same lesson again, the basics learning, you know,
Speaker 1: spending lesson you make, putting a little side for the future.
Speaker 1: So she's working as a seatrist now in McDonald bill's
Speaker 1: aircraft when she later became boeing and making you know,
Speaker 1: equivalent of today of fifteen dollars eighteen dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: And she worked work, work, safe, safe, save. And while
Speaker 1: she was doing that, I built a relationship with the
Speaker 1: guy O C. Who again thought was my uncle, and
Speaker 1: I was. I was playing on the porch one day
Speaker 1: and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I
Speaker 1: was choking, and he cleared. He cleared my throat, you know,
Speaker 1: he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I
Speaker 1: adored this guy, right, and you got a murder it
Speaker 1: in front of me. Well, in order to take care
Speaker 1: of his family and all and our staying with him,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: can't afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about this against Young's quote. Men, when failed for
Speaker 1: three reasons, arrogance, pride, and greed. He could have just
Speaker 1: had a conversation with us. My mother would have contributed
Speaker 1: some money. But he decided he was going to go
Speaker 1: to work his legit job. Then he was going to
Speaker 1: go out again and he was going to sell drugs
Speaker 1: part time, and it was marijuana. Was in the wrong neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and those guys sitting very seriously, they followed him home.
Speaker 1: They said, you're in the wrong territory, and they drove.
Speaker 1: They dragged him. They hit him with a truck and
Speaker 1: dragged him. He was on a bicycle.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And that was right in front of me, in front
Speaker 1: of the house. And I think they did it because
Speaker 1: I could see him. Sent a message and they killed
Speaker 1: him right in front of me. And I still did
Speaker 1: mention my in my head. So I saw my first
Speaker 1: death and that was about money. So the first death
Speaker 1: was the of our of our parents net worth, family structure,
Speaker 1: generational wealth. Second first murder was oc getting murdered in
Speaker 1: front of me. All this is about money. And my
Speaker 1: best friend George got murdered over money selling drugs with
Speaker 1: the next door neighbor, tweet who we moved into. My
Speaker 1: mother bought her first home one five five oh two
Speaker 1: South Freeley in Compton, California. And she bought that house. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I became friends with George, who was real smarter
Speaker 1: than me, by the way, so intellectual alone is not enough.
Speaker 1: And but George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset,
Speaker 1: and got murdered hanging out with Tweet. So watch who
Speaker 1: you hang around again. You hang around nine broke people,
Speaker 1: you'll be the tenth. Whoever you hang around, whatever you
Speaker 1: see is who you will be.
Speaker 2: And so I could go on and on and on
Speaker 2: about my mother.
Speaker 1: But the story here is that she she bought that house,
Speaker 1: we lived in it.
Speaker 2: It was the beginning of our generational wealth.
Speaker 1: She built equity and then she sold that house, bought
Speaker 1: another house, sold that house, used the equity to buy
Speaker 1: another house. She did that seven times, and she ended
Speaker 1: up with a net worth of a million dollars. And
Speaker 1: I know that because she gave some money to my
Speaker 1: sister and my brother to buy a home a couple
Speaker 1: of times. And of course I'm the manager of her
Speaker 1: state trusty Verus state. Because she had a will. I
Speaker 1: want everybody to have a will when she passed on
Speaker 1: the glory, So Hopefully she's an inspiration to you. She
Speaker 1: lives on today, she has a fund in her name,
Speaker 1: and her legacy lives and hopefully now you know that
Speaker 1: even if you're a single parent, you can still make it.
Speaker 1: You can work an hourly job and build a net
Speaker 1: worth of a million dollars and live a life of dignity.
Speaker 2: And self reliance. You can be free. It is possible.
Speaker 1: The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom
Speaker 1: can be taken away from you. Money and Wealth with
Speaker 1: John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.