Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey Hey, it's John O'Brien This is money and Wealth.
Speaker 1: And I'm popping my collar because I paid my taxes
Speaker 1: and I'm happy about it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Actually, I got a pretty good deal this year. Last year,
Speaker 1: it was an okay deal. In the year before that,
Speaker 1: it was a painful deal because I paid the most
Speaker 1: taxes I'd ever paid in my life.
Speaker 2: It was seven.
Speaker 1: Figures in taxes alone. In fact, my state tax bill
Speaker 1: was larger than any tax I'd ever paid period in
Speaker 1: my life, just my state tax bill.
Speaker 2: My federal tax bill was seven figures by itself. But
Speaker 2: I was happy to do it. Listen to me, now,
Speaker 2: I was happy to do it because that meant I
Speaker 2: made money. I even generated some generational wealth. I forget
Speaker 2: what year it was, but it was, you know, two, three,
Speaker 2: four years ago where I'd paid this enormous tax bill.
Speaker 2: But don't get upset with Uncle Sam. Because you're paying
Speaker 2: a tax bill, it means that you're actually making some money.
Speaker 2: You might want to be upset when you're not paying
Speaker 2: a tax bill because it made mean you're broke and
Speaker 2: don't be smarty pans and decide you're going to skip
Speaker 2: out on your tax bill. I'd rather rather steal from
Speaker 2: my mother got rest of her soul, than still from
Speaker 2: from the federal government of the irs. They didn't get
Speaker 2: alcohopone from murdering man.
Speaker 1: They got alcopone on tax evasion and put that man
Speaker 1: under the jail.
Speaker 2: He died in.
Speaker 1: Prison, cool smooth, all that he avoided all those things
Speaker 1: he actually did, which was literally murders and stickups and
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. But they couldn't catch them. But
Speaker 1: they said, basically, look, we can't prove you broke these
Speaker 1: laws and committed these crimes, but you seem to have
Speaker 1: a lifestyle that doesn't make any sense, and we can't
Speaker 1: you can't justify where you made this money. So you
Speaker 1: have evaded taxation because you didn't report the income. So
Speaker 1: it's really deep American American American capitalism is American government
Speaker 1: is deep.
Speaker 2: It's like, we maybe convict you that it's illegal, but
Speaker 2: you dang if you're.
Speaker 1: Gonna pay your taxes on your comp on your on
Speaker 1: the income that you made, or we'll get you that way.
Speaker 1: And so they got them that way. And they're not
Speaker 1: gonna get me that way. I'm gonna pay my taxes.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Now, we just had tax season, and you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: paying more taxes than you have to. And uh, this
Speaker 1: tax system is designed for you to maximize your tax benefit.
Speaker 1: The whole thing about owning a home, the tax structure,
Speaker 1: the tax system. I don't want to use that word again.
Speaker 1: The taxing infrastructure in America is designed to benefit home ownership.
Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to say. So, you write
Speaker 1: off the most of a thirty year mortgage twenty on average,
Speaker 1: twenty of the thirty year mortgage.
Speaker 2: You write it off through.
Speaker 1: Mortgage interest payments, and you will be able to get
Speaker 1: a lot of that back in a tax refund at
Speaker 1: the end of the year. So if you're renting from
Speaker 1: me a home or an apartment, or from some other investor,
Speaker 1: you're opening a window and throwing your money out the window.
Speaker 1: There are times for you to be a renter. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not hating on that. I've been a renter. There's
Speaker 1: been times to be a renter, but you get no
Speaker 1: benefit from that. But if you own a home and
Speaker 1: you're basically paying the same for rental for mortgage ownership
Speaker 1: home ownership as you would for rental. If you own
Speaker 1: a home, then you're going to get a lot of
Speaker 1: that money you paid against the mortgage back through a
Speaker 1: tax refund.
Speaker 2: At the end of the year.
Speaker 1: You get the benefit of appreciation, the benefit of depreciation,
Speaker 1: a tax benefit, and you get to write off a
Speaker 1: lot of the mortgage payments because a lot of its
Speaker 1: mortgage interest in those first those first years. Now, writing
Speaker 1: things off you, I'm gonna be a little tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek here.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: You can't write off the strip club guys. You can't
Speaker 1: write off you know, your girlfriend. You might not even
Speaker 1: make it. Write off your wardrobe. I'm actually serious about this. Now,
Speaker 1: if you if you're in a profession where like the
Speaker 1: entertainment business, and you think, well, this is directly tied
Speaker 1: to I mean, I'm a businessman. I'd like to be
Speaker 1: able to think that my wardrobe is complement to my
Speaker 1: business and it's directly ti to it. It is not
Speaker 1: a forgone conclusion. And you can write off your wardrobes.
Speaker 1: You need to talk to your tax person. You can't
Speaker 1: write off if you work from your house. You can't
Speaker 1: write off the whole house. Please, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to be audited. I don't want you to get in trouble.
Speaker 1: Please listen to me. You can write off the portion
Speaker 1: of the house that you're using for business purposes. There's
Speaker 1: an office in your house, right you can tax that
Speaker 1: should be tax deductible.
Speaker 2: Check with your tax professional.
Speaker 1: Don't just take my word for it, but that part
Speaker 1: of the house you're using for tax for business purposes
Speaker 1: should qualify as a tax write off. All of your
Speaker 1: car may not be tax deductible, but the part that
Speaker 1: you're using for business purposes. Even if you want to
Speaker 1: be very specific, you can do mileage calculations and do
Speaker 1: it that way, but you need to be very thoughtful
Speaker 1: about what's a business expense and what you can write
Speaker 1: off and what you can't. Certain things you absolutely will
Speaker 1: not be able to write off because this well nuts.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned a couple examples there. But you can write
Speaker 1: off things that have a direct business correlation, or things
Speaker 1: that are covered by the tax code, like many kinds
Speaker 1: of real estate and mortgage payments and interest expense on
Speaker 1: businesses and again anything if you have a side business
Speaker 1: or a primary business, then those direct business expenses you'll
Speaker 1: be able to write off. I also want to very
Speaker 1: briefly touch on this really falsehood that politicians play games,
Speaker 1: what they say that rich people don't pay money. The
Speaker 1: reality is that most taxes actually in this country, most
Speaker 1: income for America is paid by the wealthy people. I guess,
Speaker 1: like me, seventy or eighty percent of all the taxes
Speaker 1: in the country are paid for by those at the
Speaker 1: highest income bracket. So what's all this about the wealth
Speaker 1: You don't pay taxes, Well, they don't pay a lot
Speaker 1: of percentage wise of income taxes, so that if they're
Speaker 1: not paying income taxes, and what are they paying. They're
Speaker 1: paying in many cases capital gain taxes. So income taxes
Speaker 1: might be thirty percent, thirty five percent, forty five percent, uh,
Speaker 1: if you can stay in federal taxes might even be
Speaker 1: some cases like California might be approaching fifty percent. If
Speaker 1: you're making a bunch of your money, you know, from
Speaker 1: performing as an actor or an entertainer or a sports
Speaker 1: figure or whatever, you're making a lot of income W
Speaker 1: two income they I guess it called you're in a sitcom,
Speaker 1: a t a situation comedy, you're on a TV show
Speaker 1: or something, and you're getting a W two paycheck. Then
Speaker 1: they may withhold, you know, thirty five to forty percent
Speaker 1: of your taxes.
Speaker 2: You may be in that tax bracket.
Speaker 1: Uh. That's why they say that Warren Buffet pays less
Speaker 1: taxes than its secretary. What I mean by that, well,
Speaker 1: she's getting an income. Well, Warren Buffet's not getting a paycheck.
Speaker 1: He may choose I don't want an income, don't pay
Speaker 1: me a paycheck. Because what he does is he when
Speaker 1: he sells stock, he gets hit with a capital gains tax.
Speaker 1: When somebody sells like real estate like me, that you
Speaker 1: get hit with a capital gains tax, which is typically
Speaker 1: about twenty percent twenty one percent of whatever the thing
Speaker 1: you sold is value. That so if it's worth a
Speaker 1: million dollars, you may get hit with a two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars tax bill all at once, and you know,
Speaker 1: happy to pay it. We're not happy to pay it,
Speaker 1: but you pay it. And that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of this country eats. Income comes
Speaker 1: from the wealthy paying a combination of income tax and
Speaker 1: capital gains tax. There's other kinds of taxes, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make this simple. But don't listen to people
Speaker 1: who tell you that just because a wealthy person is
Speaker 1: not paying income tax their tax bracket, well they're paying
Speaker 1: less an income tax in the secretary because the secretary
Speaker 1: has got to sell and.
Speaker 2: Is earning a paycheck every two weeks.
Speaker 1: And as with holdings, and the boss may not be
Speaker 1: on any salary at all, which means you can't tax
Speaker 1: something it doesn't exist. Very very very wealthy people don't
Speaker 1: want an income Okay, as a funny one for you,
Speaker 1: all right, John O'Brien, this is money and wealth and
Speaker 1: this is uh the tax season. So I want you
Speaker 1: to be tax smart. Pay your fair share because well
Speaker 1: that means you're doing really well and you live in
Speaker 1: the most secure economy in the world with the best
Speaker 1: laws and its best infrastructure, the best protections of the
Speaker 1: law that costs something. And the government is that if
Speaker 1: you get in a lawsuit, the government there the laws.
Speaker 1: You know you can rely on the laws to be
Speaker 1: sturdy and resilient. You have intellectual property rights that are preserved,
Speaker 1: you have real property rights that are you know will
Speaker 1: be preserved, then protect it. That's the government of work.
Speaker 1: I'm not advocating for the government, just saying that those
Speaker 1: things call something you look roads, gutters, street lights, subways
Speaker 1: that that somebody's got to pay for that.
Speaker 2: The government pays for that.
Speaker 1: You're in a highway and you're making money because you
Speaker 1: want to sell something to somebody. Well, you're on driving
Speaker 1: on the highway. That's the public and you, as a taxpayer,
Speaker 1: you pay for that. Schools are not free. Schools are
Speaker 1: paid for by you and me. So that's why you
Speaker 1: should also want to vote. Because you're you're a shareholder.
Speaker 1: You have assets, and your assets are not just on
Speaker 1: your ass.
Speaker 2: You own things.
Speaker 1: That's why when you see a house that's got line
Speaker 1: up to you know, your net, it's because that's probably
Speaker 1: a renter. Because nobody washes rental cars. But once you
Speaker 1: own a home, there's a quote for you. Nobody want.
Speaker 1: Nobody washes rental cars. Once you own a home, are
Speaker 1: you owned some property all of a sudden you become
Speaker 1: real concerned about it, and now you're a stakeholder, and
Speaker 1: now you typically want to vote to protect your stake
Speaker 1: in what you have and to have a say in
Speaker 1: how governments do their business.
Speaker 2: And so there you go.
Speaker 1: All right, So there's a civics lessons and a tax lesson,
Speaker 1: and the first positive things somebody's ever said to you
Speaker 1: about the government the irs, I bet all right, And
Speaker 1: I haven't been audited yet. I'm sure it's coming at
Speaker 1: some point, but I've been audited. I don't think i've
Speaker 1: been audited. But there was a time where I didn't
Speaker 1: pay taxes for years and I got hit with very
Speaker 1: serious penalties back in the day when I was in
Speaker 1: my teens, from the Franchise Tax Board and from the
Speaker 1: state of California. It hit me hard and I had
Speaker 1: to catch up. So it's not Life's not always been
Speaker 1: a better roses, but I think I've been relatively smart about,
Speaker 1: you know, paying my fair share of taxes, both income
Speaker 1: tax and capital gains taxes, but also taking my reasonable
Speaker 1: write offs of things that are legitimate business expenses.
Speaker 2: And a lot of my life is business because I'm
Speaker 2: always doing it.
Speaker 1: So there you go. I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker 1: Make sure you have a tax pro. Sure that your
Speaker 1: tax pro gives back to the community. Choose one that
Speaker 1: does give back to the community. By the way, they
Speaker 1: can donate that a few hours of their time as
Speaker 1: a tax pro to help businesses come up with like
Speaker 1: the the one Men and Black Business initiative like my
Speaker 1: firm Apryo does here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: So get a tax pro get a lawyer, and of
Speaker 2: course get a life. You're listening to this, you already
Speaker 2: have a life, all right, Love you, John Hope Brien. Hey,
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: John Hope Brian on money and wealth, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to tackle a topic today that is a little controversial,
Speaker 1: which is self esteem versus confidence, particularly with reguard to
Speaker 1: my African American brothers and sisters. So why is this
Speaker 1: important and why does it have to do with money
Speaker 1: and wealth? Because if your assets are all on your ass,
Speaker 1: is a reason for it. If you spend, if you
Speaker 1: produce one point six trillion dollars in consume economic output
Speaker 1: as a race, but notinety one percent of that is consumption,
Speaker 1: there's a reason for it. If the number one way
Speaker 1: to build wealth is home ownership and we don't really
Speaker 1: own homes, there's a reason for it. And there's a
Speaker 1: reason why America has African American ghettos and not really
Speaker 1: any kind of other kind of ghettos.
Speaker 2: And it has to do with slavery.
Speaker 1: It has to do with destroying and destroyed self esteem.
Speaker 2: We're brilliant people, African.
Speaker 1: Americans, We've been doing so much with so little for
Speaker 1: so long. We could almost do anything with nothing. We have,
Speaker 1: you know, succeeded against the odds. We were brought here
Speaker 1: as brilliant agricultural geniuses of the land and had the
Speaker 1: self esteem beaten up out of us for literally.
Speaker 2: Three hundred years.
Speaker 1: So I had to do the math sixteen nineteen to
Speaker 1: the really the mid nineteen.
Speaker 2: Sixties, even before America was America, you know.
Speaker 1: And this is not even a podcast of a race
Speaker 1: or slavery or it has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: I'm just giving you the backstory to understand you could
Speaker 1: make a mistake and not be one. We're actually the
Speaker 1: opposite where geniuses were amazing. But there was an intentional attempt,
Speaker 1: which I'll do in another podcast to break down the
Speaker 1: why as to why African Americans, with all our genius,
Speaker 1: with all of our outside success all around the world,
Speaker 1: I think of the majority of us are clinically undiagnosed depressed,
Speaker 1: and that depression creates a surviving mindset, and a surviving
Speaker 1: mindset is directly in conflict with a thriving mindset and
Speaker 1: a winning mindset.
Speaker 2: Winners of builders. If you're a surviving mindset.
Speaker 1: You are always looking for risk and issues, and the
Speaker 1: glass is half fifty nine half full. You tend to
Speaker 1: be more cynical than skeptical. Now you generalize, you discriminate.
Speaker 1: So yes, these are generalizations, but they tend to stick.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to frame this in a way that
Speaker 1: makes it perfectly clear. I'm going to give you the
Speaker 1: economic framework first, because it's a raise to white people too.
Speaker 2: So if the issue was.
Speaker 1: Only race, right, that defines success or failures, self esteem
Speaker 1: and confidence and all that kind of stuff, then you
Speaker 1: would not have rich whites and poor whites.
Speaker 2: You just have rich whites. If the issue is just race,
Speaker 2: you just have rich whites.
Speaker 1: But the largest population of poverty in this country is
Speaker 1: actually white poverty.
Speaker 2: I'll go one step further.
Speaker 1: The number one group dying in this country are high
Speaker 1: school educated white men.
Speaker 2: Lack of hope.
Speaker 1: Opioid addiction is the trigger, but it's really lack of hope.
Speaker 2: Not go to African Americans for a minute.
Speaker 1: If black was the same, just like I just said,
Speaker 1: the white was the same, and it wasn't a cultural
Speaker 1: issue because somebody didn't say, John, why are you picking
Speaker 1: on your own people?
Speaker 2: I'm not picking on anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm breaking some stuff down so that we can understand
Speaker 1: it so we can fix it.
Speaker 2: Just the opposite.
Speaker 1: Actually, I said, we've been picked on, and we picked
Speaker 1: ourselves up. Like as I said, we've been doing so
Speaker 1: much with so little for so long. We could almost
Speaker 1: do anything with nothing. But I don't want you an
Speaker 1: expert in surviving. I want you an.
Speaker 2: Expert in thriving and winning. Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: So I talked about whites, now black, poor whites and
Speaker 1: poor blacks. These are obvious, but no one ever says it.
Speaker 1: So the issue was only rased and all black should
Speaker 1: be the same too. But the Federal Reserve at Boston
Speaker 1: did a survey about five to seven years ago on
Speaker 1: the net worth of everybody in Boston. They found that
Speaker 1: whites had a six figure net worth. They found that
Speaker 1: Caribbean blacks had it I think it was a twelve
Speaker 1: hundred dollars net worth. And they found that African Americans
Speaker 1: had net worth of seven bucks.
Speaker 2: That's right, seven dollars.
Speaker 1: And when they put this on the front page of
Speaker 1: the Boston Globe, and you can't pull it up on
Speaker 1: the internet, by the way, it said blacks net worth
Speaker 1: seven dollars, and it had to say this is not
Speaker 1: a typo in the headline because it was so dramatic.
Speaker 2: And if it was just race, why wouldn't all blacks
Speaker 2: have the same networth? Why wouldn't all whites have the
Speaker 2: same network?
Speaker 1: Because culture and environment matter, and so we can be
Speaker 1: proud that we have survived and all this torture. But
Speaker 1: if there's some PTSD there, there's some damage to our
Speaker 1: psyche and our spirit and our self esteeming.
Speaker 2: As I've often said, if I don't like me, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna like you.
Speaker 1: If I don't feel good about me, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: feel good about you. If I don't respect me, don't
Speaker 1: expect me to respect you. If I don't love me,
Speaker 1: I don't have a clue how to love you. And
Speaker 1: if I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make your life a living hell, because whatever goes
Speaker 1: around comes around. So now broken down and hopefully in
Speaker 1: the way, it's sufficient the economic differences even within the
Speaker 1: same group of black people. And I'm gonna say something
Speaker 1: I can't absolutely true say is the fact, but I
Speaker 1: believe it based on me traveling the countless cities across
Speaker 1: this country. They're not Ghanaian ghettos in America. They're Ghanaian communities.
Speaker 1: They're not Jamaican ghettos in America. There are Jamaican communities
Speaker 1: where Jamaicans live together, working class, middle class neighborhoods. I
Speaker 1: can think of some in the Five Boroughs right now,
Speaker 1: as example. There are Ethiopian communities, lots of them. There
Speaker 1: are South African communities and so on and so forth, right, but.
Speaker 2: They're only black ghettos.
Speaker 1: African American so African American communities where you see check Cashers,
Speaker 1: Patia only now you see these other communities, right, But
Speaker 1: it's intensely focused in African American communities because us, well,
Speaker 1: we were broken and people are now praying on that brokenness.
Speaker 1: Where so now I'm going to get to self esteem
Speaker 1: and confidence. So you can't fix this stuff unless you
Speaker 1: recognize it. If you look at the majority of ghettos
Speaker 1: and inner cities in America where people proliferate, they tend
Speaker 1: to be mostly African American versus communities where different people live,
Speaker 1: and there's oppressive environments in those neighborhoods and communities.
Speaker 2: Because those impressive environments are.
Speaker 1: Profitable to some people and negative to the people that
Speaker 1: they're subject to it. But maybe you don't even notice
Speaker 1: it because we're so used to surviving and so used
Speaker 1: to brokenness that we think it's okay. We think it's
Speaker 1: okay for a check cash or to the next to
Speaker 1: a payda loan lender, to rento store or title lender,
Speaker 1: linkt store, pasha. By the way, that actually does exist
Speaker 1: in low wealth communities.
Speaker 2: Of all kinds.
Speaker 1: I'm not just praying on that, but I'm just giveing
Speaker 1: and that as an example. Right and now now I'm
Speaker 1: going to pivot to something that I think does differentiate
Speaker 1: healthy from those trying to heal those who need to heal.
Speaker 1: So self esteem versus confidence, those things are different. Self
Speaker 1: esteem is internal and confidence is really external. And so
Speaker 1: confidence comes from your competence. You're confident about something, so
Speaker 1: you express that through a confidence. I'll come back to
Speaker 1: that in a moment. Self esteem is how I esteem myself.
Speaker 1: So if you look at Caribbean blacks and you look
Speaker 1: at African blacks as an example, you see people and
Speaker 1: I'm generalizing. Whenever you generalize, you discriminate that it's true.
Speaker 1: But follow me for a moment, I'm making a point.
Speaker 1: If you go if you look at those who come
Speaker 1: from the Caribbean and come from Africa, you generally speaking
Speaker 1: see fine people who have high self esteem but low
Speaker 1: levels of initially of confidence when they come to America.
Speaker 1: Why because the self esteem comes from nuclear families, mom
Speaker 1: and dad, husbands and wives.
Speaker 2: It comes from seeing the.
Speaker 1: Denis that looks like you, the mayor that looks like you,
Speaker 1: the governor looks like you, the CEO that looks at you,
Speaker 1: the saint looks like you, the passion looks like you,
Speaker 1: and the crooks looking.
Speaker 2: Like you too. Everybody looks like you.
Speaker 1: So there's a self esteem that comes from having a
Speaker 1: healthy spiritual, emotional, psychological environment.
Speaker 2: Are you with me so far?
Speaker 1: But they have a low level of confidence because they
Speaker 1: come from a small and developing economy that's not cutting
Speaker 1: edge economically. It's not where you take your skills and
Speaker 1: put it to work against other people at the top
Speaker 1: of their game. And so as a result of that,
Speaker 1: you don't really know whether you've been taught is truly
Speaker 1: top the mark. So you may not have the confidence
Speaker 1: that comes from competition at the highest level and winning.
Speaker 1: So you may have low confidence, but high self esteem.
Speaker 1: The opposite is true for African Americans. In American you
Speaker 1: have people who have high confidence, extremely high confidence, but
Speaker 1: typically low self esteem. Now low self esteem for the
Speaker 1: meat reasons I just mentioned. People have beaten the love
Speaker 1: out of us, beaten the confidence and self esteem out
Speaker 1: of us, beaten the joy out.
Speaker 2: Of us because they needed us to not create.
Speaker 1: A problem back in the day. Keep you in that
Speaker 1: box just become human machinery for hundreds of years, but
Speaker 1: it damaged our spirit and it ruined our families. I
Speaker 1: think the fire pillows of success as much education as
Speaker 1: you can shut down your throat.
Speaker 2: This is from my book Up from Nothing.
Speaker 1: I have six books now, three or four bestsellers, the
Speaker 1: last one being Out being Financial Literacy for All Just
Speaker 1: out that's entered the fray at Amazon, number one in Economics.
Speaker 2: Etcetera, etcetera. Picking up if you don't have it.
Speaker 1: But Up from Nothing, my last book, there's much education
Speaker 1: you shut down your throat, understanding the math.
Speaker 2: Financial literacy, wealth creation, etc.
Speaker 1: Family Structured resiliency number three, A, self esteem and confidence
Speaker 1: number four, Role Models and environment number five. Now I've
Speaker 1: done a podcast episode just on this, so you can
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that, and I break these
Speaker 1: things down in some detail, and if you have three
Speaker 1: or four of those things, of those five things, you're
Speaker 1: going to be very successful. But three groups were denied
Speaker 1: those three things, and not in any.
Speaker 2: Order.
Speaker 1: Here Native American, Indians, poor Whites, and African Americans and
Speaker 1: out of you know, a couple hundred ethnic groups in
Speaker 1: this country, and there's actually more than that if you
Speaker 1: want to get into cultures. Everybody seems to come here
Speaker 1: and be able to succeed within a short period of
Speaker 1: time because they have self esteem attack and their confidence
Speaker 1: comes ultimately from competing on the playing field called life.
Speaker 1: But our experience was just the opposite. We're denied. Actually
Speaker 1: it was legally barred to educate us. They destroyed our family,
Speaker 1: separated our children, sol wives off from husbands, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So we did not have out
Speaker 1: of the five pillars of success. But if you have
Speaker 1: three four of those things, of those five things, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you, no matter what's in front of you, over
Speaker 1: around it, through what you're gonna get to it. I
Speaker 1: know that because that's my story and I'm African American.
Speaker 1: My mother told me. She loved me every day of
Speaker 1: my life at a sense of yes I can from
Speaker 1: my dad and the yes I am from my mother.
Speaker 1: I know was taught about facial literacy when I was
Speaker 1: nine years old. I have self love, self esteem, which
Speaker 1: I'll get to in a moment in great detail. I
Speaker 1: had good role models and a enabling environment. Thus I
Speaker 1: succeeded at scale with from the bottom quartile of poverty
Speaker 1: and struggle, not the very bottom, but the bottom quartile
Speaker 1: to the top one percent.
Speaker 2: And you can do it too.
Speaker 1: You can rehabilitate yourself, but you've got to understand what
Speaker 1: ghosts is chasing you and what healing you're pursuing. So
Speaker 1: there's self esteem and confidence. So here's self esteem. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna repeat myself a little bit. I apologize, but
Speaker 1: it's really important to get this. If I don't like me,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like you. If I don't feel good
Speaker 1: about me, I'm not gonna feel good about you. If
Speaker 1: I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you.
Speaker 1: If I don't love me, I don't have a clue
Speaker 1: how to love you. And here's the big one. If
Speaker 1: I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around comes around,
Speaker 1: and hurt people hurt people. The opposite is also true.
Speaker 1: Hurt people hurt people. It's an old saying. No matter
Speaker 1: how much I love you, my son or my daughter,
Speaker 1: if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
Speaker 1: my own ignorance.
Speaker 2: So out of love we pass down bad habits from
Speaker 2: generation to generation.
Speaker 1: I know this is gonna be a deep, deep, deep
Speaker 1: controversial podcast, but this is also well because wealth is mindset.
Speaker 1: Anybody can make money. A drug dealer can make money,
Speaker 1: pimp can make money. Wall Street banker can make money,
Speaker 1: the engineer can make money. Anybody legit illegit can make money.
Speaker 1: But building wealth, you build wealth in your sleep. You
Speaker 1: gotta think. You gotta do it for the neck up,
Speaker 1: not the shoulders down. It's a mindset that builds wealth,
Speaker 1: and I want you to have that mindset, not only
Speaker 1: in financial wealth, but mental, spiritual, emotional wealth. I want
Speaker 1: you to heal. So confidence comes from competence. So why
Speaker 1: are afric Americans confident in America? Because we competed in
Speaker 1: the biggest economy in the world, the most competitive place
Speaker 1: in the world, and we killed it. Whether the rules
Speaker 1: are published and the playing fielders level, we succeed. What's
Speaker 1: examples of that, professional sports, the arts, government service and
Speaker 1: elected office, the faith community, the rules of published, the
Speaker 1: playing rules level, we kill it. But capital is them
Speaker 1: and free enterprise of why they gave us that memo?
Speaker 1: That's my Is that my third or my fourth book?
Speaker 1: It's my third book. No one gave us that memo.
Speaker 1: I think it's my third book of how things work.
Speaker 1: Freedman's Bank eighteen sixty five Abraham Lincoln a bank chartered
Speaker 1: to teach free slaves about money. He was killed the
Speaker 1: next year for the doubles truck to run the bank.
Speaker 1: So we're not dumb and we're not stupids. Well, we
Speaker 1: don't know that. We don't know this killing is, but
Speaker 1: we think we know.
Speaker 2: But you know, in.
Speaker 1: Spite of that, we've done actually okay, pretty okay. But
Speaker 1: we are so focused on getting that bag, getting that money,
Speaker 1: getting that hustle, getting that dollar, getting that money, that
Speaker 1: we don't realize and that's short term, that's just transactional.
Speaker 1: You can get rich, but you don't build wealth. You
Speaker 1: build wealth and you're sleep. It's mindset. But the reason
Speaker 1: we're so successful is that we actually are the most
Speaker 1: competitive group of people of color I believe in the world,
Speaker 1: and we should be proud of it. We've got our
Speaker 1: share of billionaires, we have our share of you know,
Speaker 1: of multi multi millionaires of which I would qualify. We
Speaker 1: have tons of you know, one hundred thousand airs. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a solid middle class. Thank you, Andrew Young,
Speaker 1: doctor King, doctor Dorothy Hye, credit Scott King, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Heroes and she rose red from CTVV and John Lewis
Speaker 1: who created the civil rights movement. Right, but we got
Speaker 1: to go from cashing checks to writing them mindset, becoming
Speaker 1: wealth creators and not just consumers. Mindset to loving ourselves
Speaker 1: so we can love each other, so we don't have
Speaker 1: crab in the barrel mindset. Why is somebody watching me,
Speaker 1: listening to me and going, he ain't nothing has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with me. If I'm succeeding and you're listening
Speaker 1: and you're I mean, you should be like bravo. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he's not doing what I'm doing. Maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want to be those injuries, but god, that's fantastic. He's succeeding.
Speaker 1: That gives me some sense of what I can do.
Speaker 1: Was there anything negative in it? But you'll find people
Speaker 1: who are hurt trying to hurt people. Doctor King once
Speaker 1: said that evil and hurt. I'm adding hurt. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it was just evil, he said. Corrodes and container
Speaker 1: that sits within Hello, your body seventy percent water, So
Speaker 1: you get all worked up and hot. You're just killing yourself.
Speaker 1: You're cooking your own organs. Whatever goes around comes around.
Speaker 1: So self esteem not only it helps you live in
Speaker 1: the world, it helps you to live. That's why in
Speaker 1: these low wealth communities, the credit score. I was launching
Speaker 1: my last book, Financial Lewacy for All. I was in
Speaker 1: CNBC Last Call and I broke down how credit scores
Speaker 1: a our whole financial wellness index. How credit scores are
Speaker 1: lower in low wealth communities. And you also live twenty
Speaker 1: years a shorter life than you live in a seven
Speaker 1: hundred credit.
Speaker 2: Community credit score community. Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1: You lived at sixty one years old in a five
Speaker 1: hundred credit score neighborhood. You lived at eighty one years
Speaker 1: old in a seven hundred credit score neighborhood twenty year delta.
Speaker 2: And I think that that.
Speaker 1: Is state of mind, it's mindset it's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: So we've got to heal.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned check cashers, payday loan lender's, rental own stores,
Speaker 1: title lenders, liquors stores, pawn shops, and a church down
Speaker 1: the street trying to make you feel a little bit.
Speaker 2: Better once a week.
Speaker 1: That's your neighborhood psychologists, that's your neighborhood shriek, trying to
Speaker 1: keep you go from crazy, going completely crazy and going
Speaker 1: postal on somebody once a week.
Speaker 2: Just calm you down.
Speaker 1: While we black folks, we're in emotional we're going ha ha,
Speaker 1: We going hoop and hollow and get it out of
Speaker 1: our system. Replace that anger and that frustration with joy.
Speaker 1: That's a depressed person who needs to screen to get
Speaker 1: it out of them. You just you just you're on
Speaker 1: You wake up on nine on the scale of one
Speaker 1: of ten. You need to release some tension. By the way,
Speaker 1: not just black people. You go to a poor white neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you see the same thing. Check cash or patio in
Speaker 1: the rental, own store, title, their liquor store, pawn shop, church.
Speaker 2: They just.
Speaker 1: Do things. They move in different way. We riote when
Speaker 1: we angry on the streets. When they're angry they riot.
Speaker 1: It appears at the ballot box. Poor whites. You figure
Speaker 1: that out for yourself. What am I saying and what
Speaker 1: they relate to? Hello, So we've got to heal. Three
Speaker 1: ways to live suicide, you can die alive. We're not
Speaker 1: human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having
Speaker 1: a human experience, and energy matters. I just refuse to
Speaker 1: have toxicity around me. It's like you, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go. You gotta get the heck out of here.
Speaker 1: I just try to be clean. I try to have
Speaker 1: a toxic free zone.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: I go to dinner, Like, what you know anything you're
Speaker 1: allergic to? Yeah, bad food and toxic people. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I'm done. Like you hang around nine broke people, you'll
Speaker 1: be the tenth. Like you just keep that mess over there.
Speaker 1: I don't want to jump in on me. Life's about energy.
Speaker 2: What are you? Who are you?
Speaker 1: What are you attracting? How long can I get n
Speaker 1: a man? We have some church today. All these things
Speaker 1: are related, and they're interrelated, and they're interconnected, and you
Speaker 1: and weals tends to hang around wealth, and poverty tends
Speaker 1: to ringing around poverty.
Speaker 2: And we need to start doing some transfers to get.
Speaker 1: People out of poverty, rebuild the ladder and get them
Speaker 1: back up to wealth. And by the way, when you
Speaker 1: are depressed, distressed, when you're angry at the world, you.
Speaker 2: Actually don't believe in the dream anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's by the way, suits wealth just
Speaker 1: just fine. You stay over there and be angry, being
Speaker 1: expert in what you're against, not what you're for. Fine
Speaker 1: with them then leads more for them. What in X savy,
Speaker 1: you've been bamboozled, you've been tripped, you've been fooled. Is
Speaker 1: what we don't know. That we don't know is killing,
Speaker 1: is what we think we know. We have to heal,
Speaker 1: We have to deal with our stuff. Suicide, coping, healing.
Speaker 1: Three ways to live suicide You can die alive. The
Speaker 1: most dangerous person in the world, well, the second most
Speaker 1: dangerous a person with no hope.
Speaker 2: First most dangerous.
Speaker 1: Someone with power, money, wealth, different things power, money, wealth, position,
Speaker 1: low sale, esteem, fear.
Speaker 2: Now you think about who I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: That person is very dangerous because they can actually use
Speaker 1: they can weaponize their unhealed nature to hurt somebody that
Speaker 1: threatens them or anger at them. I mean a narcissist
Speaker 1: literally believes everything somebody else's fault, like it's never themselves.
Speaker 1: And a malignant narcissist, well that's a whole nother situation.
Speaker 1: I don't want you training in any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: So there's suicide, right, then there's coping and there's healing.
Speaker 2: Coping.
Speaker 1: An addiction is literally irresponse to emotion you can't handle.
Speaker 1: So you have all kind of engs you don't need, shopping, drugging, drinking,
Speaker 1: you know, texting, texting all day, all night, you know, oversleeping.
Speaker 2: These are negative eyengs.
Speaker 1: You need to replace them with some positive engs, like healing.
Speaker 1: Because you cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First,
Speaker 1: it's a scientific fact. You did not have a rainbow
Speaker 1: without a storm first. So and then of course that
Speaker 1: the third way to live.
Speaker 2: Is to heal.
Speaker 1: And that's really what I'm talking about. Before you heal,
Speaker 1: you got a deal. And when you're not dealing, somebody's
Speaker 1: taking advantage of you. Either you're not using your money,
Speaker 1: your money's using you. Angel young quote.
Speaker 2: To live in a.
Speaker 1: System of free enterprise and not to understand the rules
Speaker 1: of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery.
Speaker 1: People who are surviving mindset. The glass is half full,
Speaker 1: not half empty, whether you remember whether you believe you
Speaker 1: can or whether you believe you can't.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 1: They don't like success. They're like, oh, I hate rich people. No,
Speaker 1: you don't. You hate rich people till you become rich.
Speaker 1: What you hate is a game system, but the latter's broken,
Speaker 1: and you don't believe the system works for you. You think
Speaker 1: it's corrupted, and so you throw your hands up and
Speaker 1: decide to live short termism coping. You start to see
Speaker 1: all this works together. And then if you're taking your
Speaker 1: advice from somebody who's just coping, dealing, not healing, that
Speaker 1: goes that quote in a blind town, a one eyed
Speaker 1: man's king. If you don't know better, you dang sure
Speaker 1: can't do better, no matter how much I love you,
Speaker 1: my son or my daughter.
Speaker 2: If I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
Speaker 2: my own ignorance.
Speaker 1: The definition of insanity is the same thing over and
Speaker 1: over again, but expecting a different outcome. Let's assume you
Speaker 1: disagree with half of what I've said on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Why don't you try it? It can't possibly, that's somebody says, well,
Speaker 1: why should I try? God, he cannot possibly mismanage your
Speaker 1: life worse than you have. You and me, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm in that same bucket. I decided to try and
Speaker 1: it worked beautifully. He's never let me down. But maybe
Speaker 1: you should try a different business plan, the one that
Speaker 1: has not worked. But a lot of wealth, or the
Speaker 1: lack thereof, is mindset. Poverty outside of roof over your head,
Speaker 1: food on the table, healthcare, Susten is poverty. That's Sustan poverty.
Speaker 1: Every other foreign poverty is mindset. Is how you're thinking,
Speaker 1: and whether you believe you can or you believe you can't.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right. I want you to have high self esteem,
Speaker 2: not one answer.
Speaker 1: My self esteem and self respect depends on your acceptance
Speaker 1: of men. That's a Quincy Jones quote. It's okay if
Speaker 1: you don't like me, I like me. That's a job o'
Speaker 1: briant quote. Life is ten percent what life does to you,
Speaker 1: but not evencent. How you choose to respond to it,
Speaker 1: how you're going to what's your responds going to be.
Speaker 1: Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: That requires self esteem and confidence. Never give up.
Speaker 1: I take no for vitamins that requires self esteem and confidence.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to just have confidence, because you'll
Speaker 1: be cocky, you'll be arrogant, and you will over compensate
Speaker 1: by trying to put your assets on your ass. You're
Speaker 1: going to try to wear your self esteem to prove
Speaker 1: to everybody else to have loud music and a loud life,
Speaker 1: because you're trying to communicate to everybody else externally your value,
Speaker 1: whereas realizing internally you're already valuable because you're a God's child.
Speaker 1: When you got the power, you don't need to use it. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was deep. Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2: Spread the word, Let's have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Go to Operation Help get your financial literacy counseling from
Speaker 1: my team and Hope and Size locations and three hundred
Speaker 1: locations across the country. Pick up my book of Financial
Speaker 1: Literacy for All, which is now out and debuted number
Speaker 1: one on economics and a couple of other categories.
Speaker 2: Thank you all who supported it.
Speaker 1: It is your weekly workshop toolbox as you sit down
Speaker 1: and have a discussion every week about money with your
Speaker 1: family at the kitchen table. And there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: tools coming out tied to that. But it starts with
Speaker 1: the book, Yeah, take your life back. It starts with
Speaker 1: making that decision. I believe in you.
Speaker 2: Do you yo Yo.
Speaker 1: This is John O'Bryant and this is Money and Wealth
Speaker 1: on the Black Effect Network. And we have a great
Speaker 1: fan question today billionaire Underscore Freddy from Instagram what a
Speaker 1: great inspiring Instagram handle? A billionaire Underscore Freddie at Instagram says,
Speaker 1: what's one surefire away to generate cash flow with one MBB? Well,
Speaker 1: that answer is fairly actually obvious and interesting to you
Speaker 1: because it's part of one MBB. One MBB is one
Speaker 1: Million Black Business Initiative, which Operation Hope launched after George
Speaker 1: Floyd's murder, and it is committed to creating a million
Speaker 1: black businesses by twenty thirty. And we already have inspired, creative,
Speaker 1: nurtured and supported over four hundred thousand black businesses, which
Speaker 1: would be about twelve percent of all black businesses in America.
Speaker 1: Yay for Operation Hope. And the way you would do
Speaker 1: it is to get to it. You would if you
Speaker 1: have a barbershop or any physical business. As I said,
Speaker 1: you make money during the day, you build wealth win
Speaker 1: now in your sleep. So you would say you have
Speaker 1: a barbershop business, and right now somebody has to call
Speaker 1: you while you're doing the cut. Now you can apply
Speaker 1: this to any kind of business, restaurant, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, you're doing the cut, and they say,
Speaker 1: can I get an appointment? Let me get to my
Speaker 1: appointment book. I can't really talk right now, I'm doing
Speaker 1: the cut. Can I call you back? What's your number?
Speaker 1: Can you call me back? They'd never call you back
Speaker 1: because they're going to the airport to catch a flight.
Speaker 1: What you want is for that person to be on
Speaker 1: the flight. It's midnight and they should be able to
Speaker 1: search your business online from the plane.
Speaker 2: Wireless internet is on most planes.
Speaker 1: Now. I know this example because I use this process
Speaker 1: myself going into the city or barbershops for black barbershops
Speaker 1: in New York City as an example, or in Harlem
Speaker 1: or wherever. The name of your shop would come up
Speaker 1: because it would be registered through Shopify, our partner for
Speaker 1: one MBB, which we give you the account for free
Speaker 1: for four months, and we give you a website, domain name,
Speaker 1: payment systems, delivery system support, business plan support, all that
Speaker 1: through one me and Black Business Initiative Counseling and coaching
Speaker 1: on the back end, on e commerce as well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: in this example, they know they can now go onlines,
Speaker 1: go to the scheduling app schedule and appointment. Now you're sleep,
Speaker 1: it's midnight or your chill at home, schedule an appointment
Speaker 1: for their haircut. Put their credit card up, so now
Speaker 1: you're the business. Whether they cancel or not, there's a
Speaker 1: twenty percent or fifty percent cancelation fee, so they would
Speaker 1: lose that amount of money if they don't show up,
Speaker 1: and that goes into your cash register while you're sleeping,
Speaker 1: cash flow. While they're on your site, you're now saying
Speaker 1: now that thank you for booking your appointment. Do you
Speaker 1: need a wave cap? Do you need a brush? Do
Speaker 1: you need conditioner? And they ordered items from you, and
Speaker 1: what might have been a simple haircut for seventy five bucks,
Speaker 1: fifty bucks whatever it is, you know, might end up
Speaker 1: being one hundred and fifty two hundred and three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars order. Maybe even have a subscription service tied to
Speaker 1: the business where you're teaching hair conditioning or hair growth
Speaker 1: or hair stabilization techniques. In this case, the black men
Speaker 1: that can somebody can subscribe to that you know, become
Speaker 1: a subscript subscriber for five bucks a month or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. So now you've got cash flow profit and
Speaker 1: little wealth creation because you've built money. You've made money
Speaker 1: in your sleep. Billionaire underscore Freddy from Instagram. I hope
Speaker 1: this has been steady, Freddie, I hope this has been
Speaker 1: good advice for you. All of you don't know what
Speaker 1: MBB is, Go and sign up. It will change your life.
Speaker 1: It's a commitment from one hundred and thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: from Shopify's founder to be an Operation Hope to create
Speaker 1: black businesses in this country. And it's working, and it's
Speaker 1: completely no cost to you. Invest your time and energy
Speaker 1: and we do the rest. We get your credit score up,
Speaker 1: your debt down, your savings up, help you with a
Speaker 1: business plan, etc. You go to download the Hope and
Speaker 1: Hand app on your Android or Apple platform. You can
Speaker 1: call our toll free line for Operation Hope, and you
Speaker 1: can go online Operation dot org. I also encourage you
Speaker 1: to buy this book, Financial Literacy for All, which is
Speaker 1: now a bestseller. It's on all platforms including black bookstores,
Speaker 1: by the way, but you can get this book now
Speaker 1: on Amazon, number one in several categories in the world
Speaker 1: on economics, and business finance, etc. And that is your
Speaker 1: toolbox at the kitchen table as you transform your life,
Speaker 1: your families, and in this example, your business. You don't
Speaker 1: want to confuse business with busyness, our profit with cash flow,
Speaker 1: as my dad unfortunately did. I tell that story in
Speaker 1: the book. All Right, piece and light love, Let's go.
Speaker 1: This is John O'Brien on money and wealth.
Speaker 2: I'm out.
Speaker 1: Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
Speaker 1: the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Speaker 1: Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: The