Speaker 1: Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Ho'bryant, a production
Speaker 1: of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo Yo.
Speaker 1: This is John Hope Bryant. This is Money and Wealth
Speaker 1: podcast series. I am honored in twenty twenty five to
Speaker 1: bring you another exciting episode. This is going to be
Speaker 1: a bit of a masterclass I give you today. I'm
Speaker 1: calling in, I'm phoning this in. I'm recording this live
Speaker 1: from Poland. That's right halfway around the world, and it's
Speaker 1: appropriate that I'm doing this from Poland. I'm actually here,
Speaker 1: Schaefer and I are here is commemorating with Van Jones
Speaker 1: and Robert Smith and others, the only invited delegation that
Speaker 1: includes African Americans. Oddly enough are interestingly enough, should I
Speaker 1: say for the eightieth of liberation of Auschwitz the Jews
Speaker 1: who were murdered here eighty years ago in World War Two?
Speaker 1: This is commemorating the liberation from auschwitzen God bless the
Speaker 1: soul's loss here. But when I'm on travel, I've got
Speaker 1: to run my businesses. While I'm doing well, I have
Speaker 1: to do good too. In order to do good, I
Speaker 1: have to do well first, and so I have to
Speaker 1: find a way to continue to run my operations. I've
Speaker 1: got five divisions of John O'Briant Enterprises. You know me
Speaker 1: most from my work at Operation the Hope, which is
Speaker 1: the largest financial literacy coaching organization in America. Fifteen hundred offices,
Speaker 1: give or take in almost every state in the United States.
Speaker 1: We have thousands of volunteers, we have collaborative partnership offices.
Speaker 1: We have four hundred full time employees in all of
Speaker 1: our operations. You have Operation Hope, You've got Brianger Adventures,
Speaker 1: You've got brig Adventures Advisors, Brian Go Digital ETCA, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and then all the projects with an Operation Open.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a masterclass at some point on
Speaker 1: how to run an effective nonprofit and how to build
Speaker 1: one from scratch. Let me know if you like that idea,
Speaker 1: by the way, how to build one from scratch, how
Speaker 1: to to take an idea and turn it into and
Speaker 1: operating entity, How to take an operating entity and turn
Speaker 1: it into a successful enterprise. How to take a successful
Speaker 1: enterprise that's boutique, our small business turning into a boutique
Speaker 1: boutique successful enterprise that's been with a reputation, but it is,
Speaker 1: you know, basically local, and how to take something local
Speaker 1: and turning it into something that is known regionally doing
Speaker 1: is regionally and nationally, et cetera. And how to turn
Speaker 1: that too from a personality driven the activity into an
Speaker 1: institution that is an upcoming podcast. You tell me whether
Speaker 1: you like that. By the way, I'll do the same
Speaker 1: thing for a for profit, but I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with something that is a bit of a mystery with people,
Speaker 1: which is a nonprofit. But the larger issues, whether it's
Speaker 1: my real estate stuff, or whether it's my nonprofit financial
Speaker 1: literacy stuff, or whether it's my you know whatever, we're
Speaker 1: writing books and and speaking and et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: how do I do it? And people like how do
Speaker 1: you do this? And then you you know, you have
Speaker 1: a family, a personal life, how do you do all
Speaker 1: this stuff? Well, I'm going to unpack some of that today,
Speaker 1: and today no pun intended to unpack them and tell
Speaker 1: you about also how I pack. I will put a
Speaker 1: couple of photos in of this actual photos of actually
Speaker 1: my suitcase on this trip to give you some sense
Speaker 1: of literally how I pack. But I'm going to most
Speaker 1: importantly tell you about my tech tools. People will tell
Speaker 1: you to be successful, they don't tell you how. So
Speaker 1: part of my masterclass in twenty twenty five is breaking
Speaker 1: down the how. This series, this session is my tech Tools,
Speaker 1: John Bryant's tech Tools, the how of how I do
Speaker 1: all this stuff and not go crazy. Somebody told me
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and it's completely true that
Speaker 1: if you don't have technology in the center of your
Speaker 1: business or enterprise or nonprofit or government agency or whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're running. If you don't have technology in
Speaker 1: the center that I even believe in your personal life,
Speaker 1: then you're actually not succeeding. You're falling behind. I'll say
Speaker 1: that again. If you don't have technology, if technology is
Speaker 1: not centric, centered in the center of whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're doing. And I don't mean just having a iPhone
Speaker 1: or whatever, the Samsung phone, whatever it is you use.
Speaker 1: I use iPhone, I use Apple products. But I don't
Speaker 1: just mean having a smartphone and treating it like it's
Speaker 1: a dumb device. I don't mean just having a phone
Speaker 1: and sending an email to somebody, or sending a text
Speaker 1: to somebody, or making a phone call. That's not what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. If you don't have technology and use
Speaker 1: it intelligently, use it smartly, and center that root that
Speaker 1: in the center of your life. As a growing twenty
Speaker 1: first century business, enterprise, entrepreneur or doer, you're actually not
Speaker 1: going forward, you're going backwards. In real time, You've got
Speaker 1: to be organized. It could be said that half a
Speaker 1: success is showing up and having good habits. Showing up
Speaker 1: and having good habits, it's time to take out your
Speaker 1: notepad and begin to take some notes. So let's go.
Speaker 1: I'll do the packing piece as a bit of a
Speaker 1: bonus here, how I, how do I travel? What do
Speaker 1: I use? Let's get into the technology and how I
Speaker 1: do it beyond the magic soft of how I think
Speaker 1: and how I lead, which are value propositions our assets
Speaker 1: that I have in my institutions have because leadership is
Speaker 1: that outlier, unique asset that defines everything. And you have leaders,
Speaker 1: you have managers, you have tacticians, you have doers. Those
Speaker 1: are different categories of executives that you will have in
Speaker 1: your organization. You give somebody a title does not mean
Speaker 1: that they're a leader, by the way, But let's assume
Speaker 1: for the moment you've got the right team in place.
Speaker 1: Many of my people be with me for twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years. My chief of staff Rachel Dove has been
Speaker 1: with me for thirty two years. I make sure it's
Speaker 1: my second employee when I founded out Brian Group Ventures
Speaker 1: and Operation Hope Lands Triggs building me for I think
Speaker 1: going on thirty years. Mary Harrison going on, you know,
Speaker 1: close to thirty years. Jenney Roscoe over twenty years and
Speaker 1: goes on, goes on, goes on. So most of my people,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a newbie with me, you building
Speaker 1: me for a decade. So you've got to have a
Speaker 1: special forces team. It's been said, and I agree that
Speaker 1: eighty percent of important work is done by twenty percent
Speaker 1: of your people. Eighty percent of important work is done
Speaker 1: by twenty percent of your people. But if you're going
Speaker 1: to have by and then the other people just complain
Speaker 1: and make your life miserable. But anyway, being an employer,
Speaker 1: oftentimes the babies that are actually have great employees, So
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining about by people. But even if you
Speaker 1: have a special forces team, which's dinner different from having
Speaker 1: a General Army special forces team, no different than special
Speaker 1: forces in the military who has advanced weaponry to go
Speaker 1: be dropped behind enemy lines so they can have an
Speaker 1: outsized impact being outnumbered and outgunned. They've got to have
Speaker 1: the you know, the element of surprise, and they have
Speaker 1: to have superior training and be able to outsmart their adversary.
Speaker 1: They're playing you know, chant and everybody else is playing checkers.
Speaker 1: But they have to have you know, technology in their
Speaker 1: again example, the example weaponry, which is far superiod in
Speaker 1: those that they are coming up against. I have technology.
Speaker 1: I have weaponry. It's called technology tools that allow me
Speaker 1: and my special forces team to operate with outsized effectiveness.
Speaker 1: Because even though we have four hundred people, it feels
Speaker 1: like somebody told me that we have forty thousand people.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they said four thousand, orto that
Speaker 1: you get the point. It feels like ten x or
Speaker 1: twenty x or one hundred x of what we have
Speaker 1: in human capital actually on our payroll because we've been
Speaker 1: so effective. Okay, so start writing this down. You don't
Speaker 1: have to use these tools, but I think you should
Speaker 1: use something like it. So the first thing I do,
Speaker 1: and I have this graph, and I'm going to put
Speaker 1: this graph somewhere on the video version of this podcast
Speaker 1: so people can see it. I'm going to put this
Speaker 1: graph in, but it's by JSB formula for achievement. So vision, mission, strategy, plan,
Speaker 1: business plan, execution tactics to dos to done's assessment readjustment
Speaker 1: for a grade back division. Now I haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: the technology tools, per se. This is the technology is
Speaker 1: how I use mind mapping, which is the first piece
Speaker 1: of technology software that I'm gonna suggest that you get
Speaker 1: for yourself. I don't care which software you use. There's
Speaker 1: a simple one that you can use called mind le
Speaker 1: It's very easy. In my n D L Y, there's
Speaker 1: my thoughts. There's another one I've used before. What I
Speaker 1: use at the moment is mind Meister. Mind Meister. It's
Speaker 1: German mind mapping, and I like it because it's collaborative
Speaker 1: and sophisticated and all that stuff. You can put links
Speaker 1: in it. And I do a mind map for almost
Speaker 1: everything important in my life. I start with the mind map.
Speaker 1: And what you're doing in the mind map is getting
Speaker 1: all the gello and all of the wiring, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the all the wiring of thoughts. I it is going
Speaker 1: through your head at a million miles and miles and
Speaker 1: miles an hour. You dry down the street, all these ideas,
Speaker 1: so we to organize it, and you give yourself a headache.
Speaker 1: Take all that stuff, clear the cobwebs out of your head,
Speaker 1: and put it on a mind map. Literally, it is
Speaker 1: a mapping of your mind as relates to the idea
Speaker 1: at hand. So the first thing I do is take
Speaker 1: my vision and make it real for my team, because
Speaker 1: they can't get in my head. If they even they could,
Speaker 1: they may not be able to understand what the heck's
Speaker 1: going on there. I've been told them, just a different
Speaker 1: kind of guy. I'm operating on different juice. I operate
Speaker 1: three four times faster and everybody else when they get
Speaker 1: up in the morning, right down the street and around
Speaker 1: the blocks, you know I've finished when they're starting. And
Speaker 1: I'm also just I'm just I'm operinging a different bit rate.
Speaker 1: But I'm also maybe operating. I'm just thinking differently than
Speaker 1: everybody else. I'm at thirty thousand foot and they're at
Speaker 1: you know, three thousand feet or three hundred feet. Because
Speaker 1: they're tacticals. Most people are managers. They're just trying to
Speaker 1: get stuff done on their to do list in front
Speaker 1: of them. It's very different from executing against a vision,
Speaker 1: and the Bible says, well, there is no vision that
Speaker 1: people perish. So you have to have a vision. You
Speaker 1: have to be disciplined about keeping it. So I have
Speaker 1: mind maps, is my first suggestion for you. It works
Speaker 1: in my business life. And here's a success hack. Is
Speaker 1: a cheat she can give you now. It also works
Speaker 1: in your personal life. Your personalize needs to be organized
Speaker 1: just like your business life. Use mind maps to map
Speaker 1: out a project, an initiative of your goals for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, whatever it is, a new startup, business, restructuring,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You know you're going to send your
Speaker 1: kids to college. You want to map that out over
Speaker 1: the next five years. How you're going to pay for it.
Speaker 1: Start with a mind map. Okay, so here's my map
Speaker 1: for achievement of anything. Again, I would say one more time, vision,
Speaker 1: what am I doing? Why? Mission? Why am I doing
Speaker 1: that thing? Like, what's the purpose behind that? Uh strategy? Okay,
Speaker 1: so my mission to go back to my missions. You know,
Speaker 1: one of my missions is to un is to unleash
Speaker 1: untapped human potential at scale. It's one of my missions. So, uh,
Speaker 1: my vision might be the change of the world in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. My mission might wait to do that is
Speaker 1: to unleash untapped human potential at scale, to create an
Speaker 1: economic infrastructure for underserved America, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And so you can look through my vision, see my
Speaker 1: mission and vision might also be to extend on the
Speaker 1: third reconstruction, or do the work of the third reconstruction,
Speaker 1: which was the work that maybe doctor King and ambassor
Speaker 1: Andrew Young we would be doing. Uh and doctor King
Speaker 1: was still alive today, Andrew Young is very much alive,
Speaker 1: or or if Frederick Douglas Nabam Lincoln was still alive today,
Speaker 1: that was the first reconstruction in the second what I
Speaker 1: believe this is a third reconstruction. So my vision might
Speaker 1: be big, you know, and audacious, which is to you know, X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z whatever that big bode here at big
Speaker 1: Bode audacious idea is that's your vision for yourself. My
Speaker 1: vision's this crazy big. Your vision might be to become
Speaker 1: a business owner or have financial freedom or whatever. It's all.
Speaker 1: Everybody's vision is different. Your mission, right, is a bit
Speaker 1: more tangible. Right, And you've heard just now what my
Speaker 1: mission is, right, and your mission should align with your
Speaker 1: vision and then your strategy. Okay, how are you going
Speaker 1: to go about this? Like what route are you going
Speaker 1: to take to get to this objective? And then you
Speaker 1: have a business plan. Okay, how's that? Strategy and admission
Speaker 1: and vision get codified and run the ground. PhDs are good,
Speaker 1: PhDs are better. Then you have execution. That is what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. You know, there's nothing better than getting
Speaker 1: stuff done. So if there's an end of the story,
Speaker 1: can we please start there. Let's get about the business
Speaker 1: of getting it done. And don't let the perfect be
Speaker 1: the death of the good. Sometimes you just need to
Speaker 1: oftentimes just get out there and do it. You can always,
Speaker 1: you know, fix it, repair it, upgraded, change it while
Speaker 1: you're out there. But don't wait for things to be
Speaker 1: perfect before you start something. You'll never start anything. Tactics,
Speaker 1: it is against it. Most people are there are tactical
Speaker 1: in their life. Most people getting up and that's all
Speaker 1: they're doing is just tactical stuff, and they're urgent. Is
Speaker 1: crowding out the importance in their life. They can't figure
Speaker 1: out why they're not making any progress because busyness is
Speaker 1: different from business to dos again it is when it
Speaker 1: says again from tactics, tactical is Okay, how do I
Speaker 1: achieve this project or this objective today that my boss,
Speaker 1: my vision has given me or maybe it is your
Speaker 1: boss and to do's right or that's what they sound like.
Speaker 1: And then literally you want to have a software for todos.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Two dons again,
Speaker 1: you want to confirm you did the toadoos assessment? How
Speaker 1: are you going to evaluate whether you were effective at
Speaker 1: the pieces? I just articulated vision, mission, strategy, business plants,
Speaker 1: Hugan tactics to dos to dons. What's your assessment with that?
Speaker 1: Be honest? Did you screw up? If so, how, where,
Speaker 1: when and how it went? And why? Readjustment based on
Speaker 1: your assessment? Right? So yeah, readjustment and then give yourself
Speaker 1: a software grade, a mental software grade. Okay, how do
Speaker 1: I now take what I've learned and make myself better tomorrow?
Speaker 1: You should go to bed tonight. You should get up
Speaker 1: in the morning smarter and wiser, more fine than you were,
Speaker 1: a better person even than you were when you went
Speaker 1: to bed last night, because you've got a new mindset
Speaker 1: or refined thought process, and you've got some sleep, and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna give yourself a software grade, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna come back to vision the next day, and
Speaker 1: everything you do in that day has to align with
Speaker 1: vision or why are you doing it? You can waste
Speaker 1: my money occasionally. You can't waste my time. I'm ruthless
Speaker 1: about my time. Out Let anybody waste my time. I
Speaker 1: can waste my time. You can't. Okay, So now let's
Speaker 1: get into the tools to achieve the things that I
Speaker 1: just said on this graph. Okay, and I've had this this,
Speaker 1: I've been using this graph for two plus decades. Right,
Speaker 1: So mind mapping software. I told you I used mind Master,
Speaker 1: I suggested Mindly, have suggested I thoughts as other alternatives,
Speaker 1: but use what you like. There's literally hundreds of software
Speaker 1: that are available. To find the one that you really enjoy.
Speaker 1: Then I have I use From there, I use something
Speaker 1: called Confluence. Well in truth, I have a note taking
Speaker 1: app it's really for crazy people called Obsidian. It sounds
Speaker 1: like obsessed, but it's Obsidian, and it uses a technology
Speaker 1: or an approach called markdowns, which I won't get into
Speaker 1: in this video. But this is essentially your second brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the second brain. This is you talking to you.
Speaker 1: If you can keep one hundred things in your head.
Speaker 1: This allows you to keep one hundred thousand things in
Speaker 1: your computer. And it's just it's it's just you talking
Speaker 1: to you. Nobody. No one sees my Obsidian notes but me,
Speaker 1: So just look into it. I call it my second brain.
Speaker 1: But you need a note taking app. So you take
Speaker 1: this vision, this this mind map, and now you've got
Speaker 1: to make some comments yourself about how are you going
Speaker 1: to strategize to get this done? And then I've got
Speaker 1: this Confluence software right, which is documents storage, cloud based
Speaker 1: document and knowledge sharing with your team whoever's working with
Speaker 1: you on this stuff, and an active collaboration. You can
Speaker 1: have twenty thirty forty fifty people collaborating working with you
Speaker 1: on the business plan, the strategy plan, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You're working on the project at the same time on
Speaker 1: a document that's live that came from you, you know,
Speaker 1: consolidation of your note taking which was which was birth
Speaker 1: through your vision. Okay. So now I've got you from
Speaker 1: vision right and mind mapping. Then I've taken you to
Speaker 1: note taking with Obsidian, okay, or any note taking app
Speaker 1: you like. Don't you don't have to use your subsidian.
Speaker 1: I'm just giving you ideas of what I use, and
Speaker 1: then I have stepped into a suite of software that
Speaker 1: I use, the first of which is Confluence Confluence, and
Speaker 1: Confluence is this collaborative tool. You don't have to use Confluence.
Speaker 1: You're gonna use whatever you like. This is just what
Speaker 1: I use, and it is not I outgrow a lot
Speaker 1: of things, but I have not outgrown this. And that's
Speaker 1: saying a lot for this software, but I have not
Speaker 1: yet outgrown it. I also use ever Note to store
Speaker 1: things that are one offs. So ever Note is cloud based.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you've got your birth certificate, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna need that. At some point you're gonna
Speaker 1: be flying around somewhere. You're gonna need your birth certificate.
Speaker 1: It won't be won't be to get to your house,
Speaker 1: get to your safe. You're gonna be in Nebraska or
Speaker 1: someplace you need your birth certificate. And you don't want
Speaker 1: to be walking around with all this stuff. I used
Speaker 1: to go to Maui on a retreat twice a year,
Speaker 1: and literally I have this sixty seventy pound bag that
Speaker 1: I throw at my shoulder. All these books I wanted
Speaker 1: to read when I was a mall and retreat and
Speaker 1: now just take my iPad. All my books are loaded here,
Speaker 1: so you try to digitize as much as you can.
Speaker 1: I hate paper. There's nothing. There's not a piece of
Speaker 1: paper that I use in the course of the day anymore.
Speaker 1: Now I used to use nothing but paper once upon
Speaker 1: a time. Everything I use now is digital encrypted, which
Speaker 1: means it has a deep security application to it, and
Speaker 1: cloud based with encryption, which means it's hard for people
Speaker 1: to basically steal your stuff. Ever. Note again, a birth certificate,
Speaker 1: I only careful. I tell you what to put in here,
Speaker 1: and I want to take it because I want you
Speaker 1: blaming me if it doesn't work out. But it's one off.
Speaker 1: Receipts warranties is the easy stuff. Copies of important things
Speaker 1: go in every note. I then use from Confluence, I
Speaker 1: use Trello, and Trello is a lovely, wonderful, visually stimulating
Speaker 1: program that allows you to do project management. And the
Speaker 1: collaboration with Confluence has now moved into project management. How
Speaker 1: you're going to get this thing. You're going to run
Speaker 1: it down ground to get it down. And so I
Speaker 1: have project boards, organizational and project boards and have cards
Speaker 1: in those projects that take this big vision and crunch it,
Speaker 1: crunch it, crunch it down to manageable steps. Right. And
Speaker 1: then we won't get into this today. But it's something
Speaker 1: called GIRA j I r A that is deep project management. Well,
Speaker 1: we won't get in that today. That's a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: I want to give you head I want to give
Speaker 1: you a headache, but project management, you know. And I
Speaker 1: used to use another software before TrailO called Airtable. And
Speaker 1: then one note is on Microsoft. But one note is
Speaker 1: note taking in the Microsoft as a whole suite. So
Speaker 1: there's a whole Microsoft version of what I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: But there's two sides of my organization. There's the hunter
Speaker 1: side of my organization. I'm the hunt. I'm the chief Hunter,
Speaker 1: going and get it, going, to get the business, going
Speaker 1: to get the you know, the relationships, the joint ventures,
Speaker 1: the securing the future, closing the deal, you know, launching
Speaker 1: new projects and products. But hunting, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: There's a hunting group, there's hunter organization. Every organization is
Speaker 1: a hunter, skinner and a cook. Okay, the hunter that's me.
Speaker 1: Call it business acquisition. Keep that simple skinner, that's analysis
Speaker 1: and administration. Right. My chief of staff is my chief
Speaker 1: of staff. And she also is the chief administrative officer
Speaker 1: for our companies, right, so she is very high level
Speaker 1: executive and she's administering. And my chief financial officer is
Speaker 1: also part of the Skinner Skinner group. Right, So the
Speaker 1: Hunter Skinner this Cook. So the guy who is in
Speaker 1: charge of my products and my programs, he's delivering on
Speaker 1: my promises. That's the Cook. So the Skinner and Cook
Speaker 1: is a known You need of particularly you get organies
Speaker 1: as big as mine as mine is. We have you know,
Speaker 1: US one hundred standardization. You need policies and procedures. You
Speaker 1: need dependability, You need a software backbone that you know
Speaker 1: won't break. You need standardization. Uh, this is the general
Speaker 1: army stuff, right and this get this wrong and your
Speaker 1: whole thing freezes up. You cannot be it cannot be
Speaker 1: based on our personality. So we use Microsoft for that
Speaker 1: full disclosure. But the Hunter side of the house we
Speaker 1: use io Apple products for that and these customized apps
Speaker 1: that I have decided we're best in class over time.
Speaker 1: Because I'm really an underground tech geek. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you knew that I'm really a techie. I've run
Speaker 1: around with computers in my head have you ever seen
Speaker 1: me walking through the airport or whatever. If you see
Speaker 1: me sitting down with any free time, it's good chance
Speaker 1: I got my iPad app. I might have my app
Speaker 1: iPad out and a little magnetic because max safe allows
Speaker 1: things to stick to the to the iPad and stick
Speaker 1: to your eye. Stick your iPhone there too. You might
Speaker 1: see me have my iPhone up, iPad out with a
Speaker 1: floating keyboard and a magnetic elegant magnetic device next to
Speaker 1: the keyboard where I put my iPhone, so everything is
Speaker 1: I've got field of view. Sometimes if you you might
Speaker 1: see me out, I'll have my Mac, my iPad connected
Speaker 1: to my Mac, and my phone connected to my Mac also,
Speaker 1: and I've got three in that example, three screens of
Speaker 1: work going at the same time, three independent screens of work.
Speaker 1: But that's another video for another time, dealing with efficiency.
Speaker 1: Coming back to the tool. So we're now at Trello again.
Speaker 1: I've used other products. I've explained to you now that
Speaker 1: there's a getting side of the house, the hunter side.
Speaker 1: That's me and I've been taking it from zero to
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars a year in activity. Then there's
Speaker 1: a skinner in the cook side of the house, and
Speaker 1: we have a four star Sharing Navigator reading, which I
Speaker 1: do walk through when we do the other video on
Speaker 1: how to build a nonprofit, which essentially means we're like
Speaker 1: a four We're like a triple A bond rating on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, which is extraordinarily good. So we have a
Speaker 1: fast running organization, fast growing organization, but also stabilized, conservatively managed.
Speaker 1: We've got all the ratios and numbers, so they call
Speaker 1: it KPIs keep performing indicators are in all the right
Speaker 1: places where your bankers and your financiers, your backers, your
Speaker 1: partners want to see those numbers. Your donors if you're
Speaker 1: a nonprofit, want to see that most of your money's
Speaker 1: going to helping people. You need technology to keep track
Speaker 1: of all that. You can't keep track of it in
Speaker 1: your heads. Impossible. World's moving too fast these days. So
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not doing any notes here. I'm
Speaker 1: just talking to you from literally not even my memory.
Speaker 1: This is this is just my flow. My intuition is
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you organically, giving you my heart and
Speaker 1: my soul of how I run my enterprise. So hopefully
Speaker 1: you're finding this very valuable and hopefully you're taking lots
Speaker 1: of notes. So we've gotten down to project management, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of stuff happens, and I project
Speaker 1: manage everything. Right, You've got to understand again, the PhDs
Speaker 1: are good, but PhDs are even better, or at least
Speaker 1: equally as good. You can't just have a vision. Don't
Speaker 1: let the perfect become of the death of the goods.
Speaker 1: You get it half a success as showing up and
Speaker 1: having good habits. And I show up every day, and
Speaker 1: my good habits are aided by this technology that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get your hip on. And so Trello is
Speaker 1: really big in my life, and I look at it
Speaker 1: several times a day, certainly in the morning, and I
Speaker 1: do a lot of left bright analytical work in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I do right brain creative work late at night.
Speaker 1: So then I go from Trello to Slack right slack
Speaker 1: And by the way, cheat sheet here, Slack, Trello and
Speaker 1: Confluence are owned by the same company, and you can,
Speaker 1: when you get really good at this, you can jump
Speaker 1: from one app to the other inside of the app,
Speaker 1: never having to leave. So talk about being effective well.
Speaker 1: Slack is used for essentially for confidential, encrypted targeted text
Speaker 1: you're testing along a channel of activity. So you have
Speaker 1: a Slack channel for administration, a Slack channel this is
Speaker 1: if you're running a company for marketing, a Slack channel
Speaker 1: for finance and making this up, a Slack channel for
Speaker 1: product development, a Slack channel for customer service. You decide
Speaker 1: what's the Slack channel, name is, what the topic is.
Speaker 1: I used to do Slack channels even by micro projects.
Speaker 1: In fact, to this day, we still have a Slack
Speaker 1: channel for every trip that I take, like the trip
Speaker 1: I'm one now has its dedicated Slack channel, And people
Speaker 1: who are in Slack channel A may not be in
Speaker 1: Slack channel C and D and F. These are different
Speaker 1: projects that require different skills and different clearances, security clearances
Speaker 1: and all that stuff because we're dealing with confidential information
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So Slack is a
Speaker 1: wonderful I know the guy who made it, breat guy,
Speaker 1: by the way, and I think he sold it to
Speaker 1: a at I get the name right at Lesian, which
Speaker 1: is which owns uh these three softwares that I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: and I'm encouraging you to to to to get serious
Speaker 1: about looking to them as as as options in your life.
Speaker 1: Your ad Lesian A t L A s S I
Speaker 1: A N is the owner. It's a Nordic area company
Speaker 1: in Europe. Uh. They own Slack, they own Trello and
Speaker 1: their own confluence. Okay, so now we got it down
Speaker 1: to texting and back and forth. And these are non
Speaker 1: urgent texts. Right then you have regular texting on your
Speaker 1: phone for things that are like right now. But do not,
Speaker 1: please hear me, do not try to manage your business
Speaker 1: by texting. That is, I noticed that, I know that
Speaker 1: this generation loves texting. You cannot manage your business by texting.
Speaker 1: You got a text, gets lost, you don't know where
Speaker 1: it wents, you don't know know what you said. Do
Speaker 1: not that. In fact, texting is actually there's a lot
Speaker 1: of risk these days of countries and companies trying to
Speaker 1: rob you and defraud you by going through your text
Speaker 1: messaging or grabbing your text messages before it gets to
Speaker 1: the cloud. It's all kind of risk with just doing
Speaker 1: raw texting. You want to do texting on a platform
Speaker 1: if you can that's again encrypted, something like WhatsApp. There
Speaker 1: are other platforms, but again for non urgent stuff Slack
Speaker 1: and never put pass codes all that stuff in a
Speaker 1: text message. By the way, case in case you want
Speaker 1: some unsecured network and somebody stills gets that information, they
Speaker 1: can take your whole identity. So I'm now given you
Speaker 1: a range of tools that I use. This is these
Speaker 1: things that I use. I also use other twos, and
Speaker 1: I use Salesforce for my again, this is the non
Speaker 1: special force a side of my operations. And I use Podio,
Speaker 1: which is that's not important today, but that's how I
Speaker 1: talk to my employees and team members. My general army
Speaker 1: is how I talk to them and how they talk
Speaker 1: to each other. That's tied to the Microsoft side of
Speaker 1: my house. That's another video for another time. So these
Speaker 1: are some examples of how I use these technologies. And
Speaker 1: I'll take a vision from a mind map, I'll drag
Speaker 1: it to the ground with my note taking in Obsidian.
Speaker 1: I'll then take all of my notes from Obsidian. I'll
Speaker 1: consolidate those notes into something I don't mind now the
Speaker 1: publics of my team seeing. I'll then throw that into
Speaker 1: Confluence and make it a word document. Well, I'm thrown
Speaker 1: the Confluence and make it a work, a document we
Speaker 1: can work on, and I encourage my team to come
Speaker 1: and help me refine that thought process to turn it
Speaker 1: from vision into a business plan. Then once I've got
Speaker 1: a new business plan, I then converted into a word
Speaker 1: document and filed away in Dropbox. It's another subset app
Speaker 1: I use, similar to Evernoe. It's not primary, but it's
Speaker 1: a place where I store some source documents. Then once
Speaker 1: I've done it with Confluence, then I go into typically
Speaker 1: into Trello set. Trello's a whole another thing all but
Speaker 1: can do it podcast just on Trello. But I've given
Speaker 1: you enough to what your appetite if you're interested, And
Speaker 1: that's where I do project management. Again, Gira is a
Speaker 1: way to plug in also on Leasian to plug in
Speaker 1: to Trello to do deep project management. We won't talk
Speaker 1: about that today. And then Slack again targeted text messaging
Speaker 1: and communication. But do not try to manage enterprises from Slack.
Speaker 1: Don't try to get Slack to do more than it's
Speaker 1: designed to do. And then I told you you can
Speaker 1: use regular texting, but I think you should do be
Speaker 1: encrypted for right now. Something's urgent, need to talk to
Speaker 1: you right now sort of stuff, and take big ideas
Speaker 1: and break them down into small, actionable concepts that you
Speaker 1: can track. And then in Trello. I use things like
Speaker 1: in Trello and a card, I use it to do
Speaker 1: I love my favorite thing is the favorite sub app
Speaker 1: and Trello is a to do list. So every car,
Speaker 1: every card in Trello, a card is where you have
Speaker 1: an activity, has a to do list. So I might have,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty cards on a Trello board, and each
Speaker 1: one of them has its own individual to do lists,
Speaker 1: and I go through there and I check those boxes.
Speaker 1: It's a very good feeling to feel like you check
Speaker 1: something and got something done. I check it myself. You'd
Speaker 1: also do to do lists in calendars and confluence with
Speaker 1: your team. So I hope this has been helpful as
Speaker 1: a starter set on how you can have two people
Speaker 1: and look like and feel like you've got twenty to
Speaker 1: have five or ten people, it feel like you've got
Speaker 1: fifty or one hundred to have my case, four hundred
Speaker 1: and feel like you have four thousand, maybe even forty
Speaker 1: thousand employees, not forty thousand, four thousand employees because you're
Speaker 1: just that tight. How do you I can't The one
Speaker 1: thing I can't manufacture is more time, right, and I'm
Speaker 1: ruthless about my time. How do you create more time
Speaker 1: you cheat technology. If you're very smart and using technology
Speaker 1: to make you more efficient, it allows you to be
Speaker 1: more present. That's what I called it. Being a present
Speaker 1: a gift. And there's no yesterday and there's no tomorrow, right,
Speaker 1: those are illusions. All you have is this moment make
Speaker 1: and you want to maximize this moment. You want to
Speaker 1: be completely present in this moment, which means you want
Speaker 1: to be organized. The Bible even talks of being you know,
Speaker 1: to organization and being neat and clean, So you want
Speaker 1: to be organized at your mind. The clutter out your mind,
Speaker 1: which is why you want to use mind maps. Get
Speaker 1: all that clutter and the dust and those all the
Speaker 1: main ideas and sticky those in your brain. Is clear
Speaker 1: it all out and put it in one, two, ten,
Speaker 1: fifty mind maps, doesn't matter. These are your mind maps.
Speaker 1: Share the mind maps to your team and then as
Speaker 1: needed basis to help them understand how you are thinking.
Speaker 1: And then and then and then run every idea down
Speaker 1: to ground in up you call it a fancy to
Speaker 1: do list if you want, but a project plan. And
Speaker 1: then there's budgeting software like you know, there's Excel or
Speaker 1: you can I use Excel to do budgets, but you
Speaker 1: can use budgeting software like Quicken or quick Books. You
Speaker 1: should definitely have a budget and budgeting software. But that's
Speaker 1: not what this is about. I'm out of running budgets
Speaker 1: of myself for myself, I'm running. I'm now working more
Speaker 1: on the businesses than in the businesses uh where I
Speaker 1: used to do have every task and in those cases
Speaker 1: when I was just starting out in business, your best
Speaker 1: friend is a budget. If you if you love what
Speaker 1: you're doing, you need a budget. If you love your
Speaker 1: your wife, your wife loves you, then you should have
Speaker 1: a budget because a budget is a way so sure
Speaker 1: that whatever you're doing can be sustained, because if your
Speaker 1: outflow sets your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall.
Speaker 1: I can do this forever of helping to unpack how
Speaker 1: I use these technologies. Won't you leave some comments when
Speaker 1: you when when you where you hear this, If you're
Speaker 1: able to comment, or either you're you're listening to this
Speaker 1: on iHeart or wherever you listen to your podcasts, then
Speaker 1: make sure you go over to the social media platforms
Speaker 1: and leave me a note saying John, I heard you
Speaker 1: on your podcast this week and here's my question for you.
Speaker 1: If you want me to unpack this, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: answer very Specif the questions how to go from nothing
Speaker 1: to something, they just tell you go do it, well,
Speaker 1: you're confused, and it's what you don't know that you
Speaker 1: don't know that is killing you. But you think you know,
Speaker 1: and Where're supposed to learn all this stuff. So I'm
Speaker 1: just giving you. I'm giving you cheat sheets and shortcuts
Speaker 1: to and life hacks success hacks, because I'm already I've
Speaker 1: already succeeded in. This is not speculation. If it's worked
Speaker 1: for me to work for you now. If you're lazy,
Speaker 1: if you won't, if you're not consistent, if you don't
Speaker 1: have good habits, if you're not going to do this
Speaker 1: every day. I work out every day fifteen minutes or
Speaker 1: more when I get up in the morning. There's no excuses.
Speaker 1: The first thing I do stretch and workout, and this
Speaker 1: is a version of stretching and working out again, showing up,
Speaker 1: being consistent and good habits. If you're not going to
Speaker 1: show up, you're not gonna be consistent. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: do a Tuesday and Friday and the next Monday and
Speaker 1: then skip a week like you're going like going to
Speaker 1: the gym or using that treadmill that has clothes on it.
Speaker 1: Then don't even bother doing this right. You can still
Speaker 1: do the mind mapping part that will help, but you're
Speaker 1: not going to get any momentum you build again. You
Speaker 1: need to you build wealth by compounding. It's not just
Speaker 1: financial wealth, it's the wealth of ideas. It's the wealth.
Speaker 1: It's building an organization that is valuable. And you need momentum.
Speaker 1: You need consistency. People. You know that they can count
Speaker 1: you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be the
Speaker 1: same as Monday was. And then the next Monday when
Speaker 1: you come back from your break, there you go again
Speaker 1: being consistent. Then they can literally bank on you, and
Speaker 1: they're willing to lead in, lead into you. Okay, let
Speaker 1: me give you this bonus. I could again this technology
Speaker 1: stuff I could talk about all day and don't even
Speaker 1: get me back into how I used to roll around
Speaker 1: with computers back when it was not in vogue as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I used to have I had a
Speaker 1: radio shack computer set that I had as a kid.
Speaker 1: I had a compact computer that weighed fifty pounds that
Speaker 1: was called a portable computer back then fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: five pounds. I had one computer that I would go
Speaker 1: on a plane with coach seats back then cheap coach
Speaker 1: seats and on airlines that don't exist anymore, and I
Speaker 1: would have I would take the tray and God blessed
Speaker 1: people who are sitting next to me, I apologize with you.
Speaker 1: You're one of those who sitting next to me. And
Speaker 1: I have this. I had this beautiful carrying case that
Speaker 1: was leather, and then the front of it would flip
Speaker 1: down and that would be the keyboards on the on
Speaker 1: the port book computer I was using that weighed fifty pounds,
Speaker 1: maybe that would weigh thirty five pounds, okay, the keyboard,
Speaker 1: and then on the other side it would flip out
Speaker 1: and that would be the printer. This is in my
Speaker 1: coach seat now. And then on the top I'd flip
Speaker 1: that up and that'd be Oh. That was a fax
Speaker 1: machine that remember the plain paper faxes and also the
Speaker 1: facts paper that curled up. If you were if you
Speaker 1: had some money, you had plain paper facts. But this
Speaker 1: is generation realized where a fax machine is. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: had all that in a portable computer that I that
Speaker 1: I yeah, I took over the whole row in coach
Speaker 1: when I was flying, and that I would plug that
Speaker 1: into the wall into the port in my seat, or
Speaker 1: I had some battery power also. That was you know,
Speaker 1: and I'd run my businesses and all the devices and
Speaker 1: technology has gotten smaller. I used to have a brick
Speaker 1: a phone, a brick that would go on my shoulder
Speaker 1: at forty five cents a minute. Back those days, I
Speaker 1: had the first mobile phones ever. I've been using technology
Speaker 1: my whole life. People laughed at me back then. They're
Speaker 1: not laughing anymore. Right, So, first people will ignore you,
Speaker 1: then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try. Well, First they'll
Speaker 1: ignore you, then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try to
Speaker 1: copy you. Then you win. First ignore you, then they'll
Speaker 1: criticize you, try to get you off the stage competition.
Speaker 1: Then they're trying to copy you, and they're using this
Speaker 1: technology being efficient. They won't be able to because because
Speaker 1: the devil's lazy, they just don't want to do the work.
Speaker 1: But it's only successfully. It comes before the word work
Speaker 1: in a dictionary because it's alphabetical. So first, first he
Speaker 1: will ignore you, then they'll criticize you, then they'll try
Speaker 1: to copy you. Then you win, and you just keep
Speaker 1: your foot of the gas and just don't give up.
Speaker 1: You just don't stop. Even if you hit a wall,
Speaker 1: you over the round it, through it, you don't get
Speaker 1: to it. You just never stop, right, don't let the
Speaker 1: purpose become the death of the good. Just never ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever stop and think about never stopping. When I'm traveling,
Speaker 1: which is a lot, I use certain products, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put a photo here and have my team put
Speaker 1: a photo here of a couple of shots of what
Speaker 1: some of my travel setups look like. But I use
Speaker 1: cues with which I which I use for different types
Speaker 1: of things. Toilet trees, a night where workout year, formal
Speaker 1: dress shirts, casual dress shirts, because again, you don't be
Speaker 1: sitting there spending time trying to run through your bag
Speaker 1: unorganized wears this shirt and iron it and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. I know exactly what I'm going to
Speaker 1: takes me a minute a second, define it. I grab that,
Speaker 1: and I've already saved that valuable commodity. It's talked about time.
Speaker 1: It also looks good. I'm a little vain, but I
Speaker 1: keep myself organized, and I use to me luggage to you,
Speaker 1: am I. They're expensive, but they have a lifetime guarantee
Speaker 1: warranty and a little heavier than normal luggage. But they
Speaker 1: don't break. And when they if something does break up
Speaker 1: a zipper breaks, they'll fix it like you. Literally just
Speaker 1: drop it off to me. They give you a loaner.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that they give you a loaner. You
Speaker 1: give them the luggage they sent, They fix it like new,
Speaker 1: They send it to you a month or two later,
Speaker 1: and then you give them the loaner back and gone
Speaker 1: about your business. They even clean it for you. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: these are these are life hacks that that I use.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my too me backpack. I've got my iPad,
Speaker 1: I've got my mac book. I've got all of my
Speaker 1: uh prepackaged A chargers and I mean connecting devices, including international,
Speaker 1: which is where I'm now. But I also have several
Speaker 1: battery packs that are pre charged because you may be
Speaker 1: up in another country or someplace that doesn't have the
Speaker 1: capacity to charge, so have more cords than you need.
Speaker 1: These are investments that will pay dividends. But you buy
Speaker 1: the stuff once you wanted to buy it ever again,
Speaker 1: and I'm very serious about my shoes, Like I only
Speaker 1: wear Ferragamo shoes because I was tired of my feet hurting.
Speaker 1: I used to wear Louis Vauton boots and all that
Speaker 1: stuff for years, not because I was being bougie, because
Speaker 1: they really make good shoes and my feet. Never hurt
Speaker 1: your feet. Nothing's worth than your feet hurting. Can I
Speaker 1: get an a man? Right? So my Ferragamos that they
Speaker 1: don't hurt my feet. It can go all day online.
Speaker 1: They look great and they built great, and it's a
Speaker 1: great investment. Shoot. You can even sell some of this
Speaker 1: stuff later on. If the same bags I use for
Speaker 1: business I've been using for decades now. I've got some
Speaker 1: bags I've owned for more than ten years. And if
Speaker 1: you're a good bag, you can clean it up, put
Speaker 1: you know, leather cleaner on it or fabric cleaner, clean
Speaker 1: it up, put it in a stored away, come back to it,
Speaker 1: you know, different season you've been having worked, used it
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, pull it down, you got
Speaker 1: your own inventory, and use it again. And you were like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's so cool. Where'd you get that from? I want
Speaker 1: to tell them this stuff is eight years old, but
Speaker 1: it's just timeless. And when you buy things that are
Speaker 1: classy and timeless, they last forever. So yeah, once you
Speaker 1: ask me questions, because there's so much in my head
Speaker 1: right now, But what I wanted to want you to
Speaker 1: ask me questions about what you would like me to
Speaker 1: share with you, and I'll adam and answer them in
Speaker 1: the comments in on the social media channels where you'll
Speaker 1: see this video posted the video version this podcast posted.
Speaker 1: But yeah, my suits are pre packed to recently bought
Speaker 1: all my suits from a minority owned vendor in drug
Speaker 1: clothing in la I did that for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Now use him in a local tailor in Atlanta. But
Speaker 1: my suits are pre defined. Make sure you always carry
Speaker 1: black suits and some white shirts. You do other stuff
Speaker 1: which you need, your fundamentals, make sure you get your
Speaker 1: basics in place again, you buy it right, buy it well,
Speaker 1: you'll buy it once. All right, that's enough for one
Speaker 1: podcast sending you love and light. This has been a
Speaker 1: masterclass on my tools and trips and tips, my hacks,
Speaker 1: my time hacks, and ways to make you better. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this. As John O'Brien, love and light
Speaker 1: and all. That's right. Let's go kill it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. See you next week. Tell a friend to
Speaker 1: get Money and Wealth on their phone as a podcast subscription.
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Speaker 1: It's up to us. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien
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