The $3 Trillion Dollar Opportunity We Can’t Afford to Miss with John Hope Bryant

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, sits down with John Hope Bryant to talk about the $3 trillion opportunity sitting in front of Black America—and what happens if we keep missing it. John breaks down why financial literacy is the new civil rights, how capitalism can be reclaimed, and why ownership is no longer optional. From Operation HOPE to AI to economic dignity, this episode is a blueprint for power, wealth, and real freedom.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nobody remembers anything that they did during the plandemic. It's
all one blur, right, But human interaction, the warmth, the engagement.
We're not human doings were human beings, so we're not
human beings having a spiritual experience. Where spiritual beings having
a human experience. Energy matters. Take your energy and your
rear in and go in that office, get in front

(00:20):
of that investor, get in front of that employer, or
get it wherever you're trying to impress, right and make
an impression on them.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
He everybody opes. In an episode of butter Nomics, I'm
your host, Brandon Butler found a CEO of butter acl
and today, Man, we have got a very very special
guest in the building, the one, the only, mister John O'Brien, Sir,
how are you doing today.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, Brandon, I'm wanted to be with you. Man. I
heard great things about you.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Oh Man, thank you so much again for pulling up.
This is an honor, my honor.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
My honor. Absolutely your parents clearly raised you well.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hey man, you know, thank you, Matt out to the parents.
You know, that's how you can tell, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, they're making it. When I look at people like you.
It makes me comforted because I think we need to
make smart sexy again. You know, we've made dumb sexy
for way too long. We've dumbed down and celebrated it.
And we've got to make smart sexy again. It takes
twenty years to change of culture quote from my late
great friend Quincy Jones. And you know, we just we

(01:26):
were going in the wrong direction for a long time.
And you go far enough to the north pole, you
end up south. Yeah, and so we've got to make
smart sexy. And this Bishop TD Jakes told me recently,
we also need to make boring sexy, like like stocks, bonds,
a home ownership, you know, a stock account, a wheel
like you know, we got to get the basics right.

(01:48):
And so I love it when I see somebody who
combines culture, cool and capitalism together, which is what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, thank you, Thanking. That's what we aim to do. Man,
were gonna get into this is gonna be a great conversation.
We're going to talk about lots of different things. But
first I like do something with all our guests on here. Now,
some people, I mean I don't know how everybody doesn't know,
But for those that don't know, we don't do the
whole tell us about yourself and all this stuff. One
thing we're gonna talk about today is AI amongst many
other things. So what I did, what I do with

(02:15):
all our guests is I actually asked chat gpt to
write me your bio on you. And I'm gonna read
what chat chept says about you on here. And it's
a little long because you've got a lot of stuff
going on, but I want you let me know if
it's all track, if it's missing anything. And this is
what we do with all our guests on here, all right,
So let's get into it. John hop Brien is a
visionary entrepreneur, author in philanthropist is dedicated to economic empowerment

(02:36):
and financial literacy. He is the founder and chairman and
CEO of Operation Hope, Incorporated, the largest nonprofit organization in
the United States focused on financial literacy and economic empowerment.
Under his leadership, Operation and Hope is directed over four
point two billion in capital to marginalized communities, established hundred
financial empowerment centers a nationwide. Brian has served as an

(02:56):
advisor to three presidents and was instrumental in making finneinancial
literacy and official US federal policy under President George W.
Bush and Barack Obama. He also successfully led efforts to
rename the US Treasury Annex as the Freedman's Bank Building,
recognizing the unfinished economic work of Abraham Lincoln for freed slaves.
In addition to his work with Operation Hope, Brian is

(03:17):
the founder of the Bryant Group Ventures and the Promise
Homes Company, which is the largest minority controlled owner of
single family rental homes in the United States. Brian is
also a best selling author of six books, Financial Literacy
for All and hosts iHeartRadio podcast Money and Wealth with
John Hope Bryant. He is a CNBC contributor and member
of the CNBC Global Financial Wellness Council and NBC CEO Council.

(03:41):
Recognized as the Conscious of Capitalism by Fortune five hundred CEOs,
Bryan's advocacy focuses on transforming economic systems for underserved communities
and ensuring inclusive growth for an AI driven future. He
co founded the AI Ethics Council with Open AI CEO
Sam Altman and launched the AI Literacy Pipeline to Prosperity
Project to bridge AI, the AI community gap. His life's

(04:03):
mission is to help America live up to his promise
one financially and technologically empowered, one person at a time.
What do you think, how did Chat do?

Speaker 1 (04:12):
It's gonna put some people out of business. I mean
that was The technology is amazing. I've had so many
experiences with Chat. I mean Chat has become like my
virtual assistant. I used to I'd pull up on our
city or whatever, and on the way to the city,

(04:33):
I type in, I'd pull up Wikipedia and I would
just do a little research on the city, and then
I would create a narrative from that that connected me
bound me with the mayor who are speaking with in
the city. I mean what used to take me thirty minutes,
which before that took me it took my staff three days.

(04:54):
Was before that took three weeks of research? You know
now takes three minutes. Now it takes three seconds. I
mean it is. I was writing something late one night,
like midnight, and I was talking to Bishop TD Jakes
on the phone, who's a great man, and you should
have them on your program, and I couldn't reach anybody

(05:15):
in my staff. It was midnight or Friday night, even though,
I still call people and they're like, oh, can we
talk tomorrow or Sunday. I'm like, I need to get
this done now. I need to submit it on Monday.
And Bishop was like, you really aren't that bright. He's like,
I thought you were, like, you know, marginally smart. We're

(05:36):
good friends. He's like, you're not that bright. He said,
what are you talking about? He said, you are like
like the co chair of the AI Ethics Council with
Sam Altman, right, the Steve Jobs of generation. Yeah, and
he's like, John, just go to chat the public figure
and just say, look, I'm writing this piece. Here the
framework of my beliefs. Here's the point, the north star
of the point I'm trying to make. Here the ten

(05:57):
points that I want to cover. It's John o'bra in
my public figure. So you know me, please give this
to me in X number of words.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
I mean if it took three seconds, that would be
a long time. It was. It was scary. It was
as if I wrote it myself. I mean, and I
felt bad about it for a minute. I'm like, well,
wait a minute, this plagiarism. But no, no, it's me
talking about me about me, So yeah, look, chat GBT
is in particular powerful. And I saw the prototype before

(06:30):
it was even released from SAM but and didn't know
what I was saying when I was when I saw it.
But this whole AI thing is going to change the
world as we know it by twenty thirty.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Oh, absolutely, it's already changed the world. I mean, the
World Economic Form came out with a report earlier this
year that said, what, by twenty thirty, forty percent of
all almost all jobs, tasks going to be outdated due
to AI. And then when you kind of throw in
just the acceleration after that, by twenty thirty five, it'll
be another you know, probably twenty thirty percent. So if
you think about it, right, like, if you do ten
things right now, four of them are going to be

(07:03):
irrelevant in the next five years.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yes, it's Look, you said forty percent of jobs, double
that for black people, right because we're over indexed on
stuff that with a high school education. So if you
have a high school education right now and no hustle,
you're lazy and you don't have any skills, You're done.
You're toast. If you can't reimagine yourself, rearranging your reimagine

(07:26):
your skills, if you're not nosy, God gave you two
ears and one mouth, so you listen twice as much
as you talk. If you can't be nosy and curious
and learn and relearn. Like this phone here, My Apple
phone is a sixteen, but within two weeks of me
having it, there was an upgrade for sixteen point five,

(07:47):
and now the upgrades are approaching nineteen, even though it's
the sixteen. Phone has just came out. Because even Apple
is realized that it's no sooner they get the hardware out,
there are bugs in it and their efficiencies and their improvements,
and they need to constantly upgrade their software. We need
to upgrade our software. Nobody, No one's coming to save us.

(08:08):
I was. I enjoy responding to comments on social media
because I think, one people don't assume that I'm going
to that it's me talking back to them. And two
I use it as a place to learn. Like the
post is a framework for subpost. The comments to me

(08:31):
are subposts. I use to educate. So if somebody comes
to me sideways, you know, I try to make a
point that then enlightens maybe not them, but everybody who
may be buying in to that silliness. Somebody's got talked
to us straight. This guy was how much? Oh you know,
this guy doesn't care about it saving black people. He

(08:52):
just wants to be on CNN. Brother, I'm not here
to save you. You're here to save you. You've got
to I'm not get that out of yet. I'm not
here to say black people. The man in the moon,
my uncle Joe Pooky them like, if you want help,
I'll help you. Help yourself. This is a James Brown
version of affirmative action. Open the door. I'll get it

(09:13):
my damn self. But if you want somebody or you
expect somebody to come and save you, get you off
your lazy duff, off your porch. You're done. You're toast.
You were toast before, you're really toast now. So I
use that as an opportunity to he went, he went
two feet, I went twenty and I you know, one

(09:34):
of my favorite phras is just to knock it off,
like just I these people just to like knock off
the silliness. There was a lady today going on and
on about it was a post about AI and it
was an innocent I was in the grocery store. It
was ten o'clock at night in a Republican conservative community.
Just make clear this was wasn't folks picking on black people.

(09:56):
And eighty percent of the checkout lines were self checkout. Yeah,
all the regular tellers were closed except one. I decided
to go to the regular teller. I wanted to give
them some love. Hopefully the manager would see I went
to the regular to a teller with a human being.
Maybe that influenced them to keep the jobs around a
little longer. The self check the regular checkout line had

(10:18):
a self checkout feature to it where I had to
scan my own stuff, put my credit card. I would
want to get hand my credit card to the you know,
in the old days, the old days, you you know,
you actually dealt with the checkout register and they process everything.
Then we got used to a box being there where

(10:40):
you put your own card in. Now you're processing your
own goods and then processing your own payment. And the
three people at the end of the counter who worked
for the grocery store were just standing there, no one
even paying any attention to me. They're talking amongst themselves
about their weekend, about it whatever, like, look, you're gonna
have more than a weekend y'all be playing around like

(11:01):
you need to like act like you're concerned about what's
going on here. Yeah, but he's just fascinating to me.
And so I put this on online and then this
lady was like this with rich dude, if he really
wanted to help us, he would go to the owner
of the grocery store and he would read and he said, hey, hey, hey, hey,
knock it off. Like whether you believe you can, whether

(11:21):
you believe you can't, You're absolutely right. Is the glass
half full or is the glass half empty? It depends
who's looking at the glass. I can't guarantee you that
being positive is going to make you a success, but
I absolutely guarantee you that being negative is going to
make you fail. And this lady's attitude is a failure attitude.
I don't know what she's like, Lady. I grew up

(11:44):
in continent South central, right. I'm literally up from nothing. Right.
I was homeless. Were you homeless? Like you want to
talk about the hood? You want to talk about coming
from nothing? I probably started lower than you, spend more
time under you, right, and now I'm you know, I
hopefully an example of a north star of legitimate wealth.
Creation that could be a model for you. But you're

(12:06):
spending so much time focusing on what I should be doing.
You're not doing at any time focusing on what you
should be doing. We're just observing the fact these jobs
are poof one way, right in front of you, talking
to your child, your cousin, and yourself about what your
plan is tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
I don't think people realize, Like I remember when the
pandemic hit and I sat there for a second, especially
somebody that grew up and worked in tech and do
all this stuff, And I told people, I said, I
don't think y'all understand. This just moved us forward three
or four years in like literally a matter of months.
I mean, even when you just think about the shifting,
like certain things that happened. Everybody was at home. I
remember before it started, nobody want to do video conference
and nobody want to do video means everything was in person.

(12:45):
Now all of a sudden, everybody's on zoom, everybody's on
social media, everybody's really leaning in. That was one of
the things that we did at Butter and really helped
us kind of create some distance between some of our
competitors who said, look like, let's embrace this. Everybody's going
to be at home for the next I don't know
how long, and from their phones and from their computter
is like, how do we lean in? And so when
you think about even like that shift that kind of
happened in that moment and then you all of a

(13:05):
sudden add an accelerator on here like AI and all
these different tools to your point that it is literally
getting into everything. I mean again, whether it's at the
grocery store checkout through. I went through the drive through
the other day and I'm not even talking to a
regular person anymore, right, Like it literally popped up and said,
what's your order? You're talking to it like you're talking
to chat and all of a sudden, that's a job.
Like we know that a lot of folks that look

(13:26):
like us are going to be impacted by this stuff. First, like,
how can we, in your opinion, make sure, especially with
all the work you're doing with the AI ethics counsel.
I mean you're literally sitting here talking to folks like
Sam Altman, who's leading these charges, But how can we
make sure that the black people don't miss out on this
gold rush? Cause while there is a lot of disruption happening.
There's also a lot of opportunity in this too.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Right, Yes it look to quote my brother Van Jones,
nine percent of black people don't know a thing about AI,
but nine nine percent of white people don't know a
thing about AI either. We're all equally discriminated against. And
the folks who are really going to get a hit,
a hit that there's to be hard, not impossible, but

(14:05):
harvor them to recover from quickly given their standard of
living and their burn rate on living expenses. Are those
in the professions, white collar professions whose job is going
to go from zero to from hero to zero in
no time flat. The first thing that corporations are using
for AI is reduction of costs. They haven't figured out

(14:27):
how to make money on it yet, but there's two
ways to make to make money, make more, you spend less.
They're trying to spend less. Well, if you can knock
out entire chunks of one hundred thousand, two h thousand
dollars salaries, that's an easy decision, particularly when you think
your competitors doing it. Like people think that these capitalists
are just cruel and unnice people, there are some cruel

(14:48):
and unnice people. Most people like me who are capitalists
or business owners are just the most decent people on
the planet. They're trying to survive, just like you. And
if they don't, they want to be Netflix. Not Blockbuster, right,
I mean Blockbuster For those who listening to this who
are over forty, Blockbuster was everything. That was your Friday

(15:11):
night date yep, that might have been your Tuesday and
Wednesday night entertainment. That was your weekend obsession. You stood
in line to get your favorite movie. You you bribed,
incentivized the manager five dollars or you know, a lunch meal.
That's it, a little subway certificate. Man, oh my movie?

(15:33):
You know he is that movie come in yet? Is
it come back here? You know, just put that on
the side. For me, this was the thing. It was
a thing. And Blockbuster got arrogant. They got self absorbed
and obnoxious. They started taking things for granted. They took
us for granted. Netflix came around. We started out very
basic in a vending machine. They came around and said, look,

(15:56):
will you buy us? Fifty million dollars was the offer.
Blockbuster threw their nose up. No, we're a Blockbuster, we
don't need you Blockbuster went bankrupt and now Netflix could
buy them with literally one hours, with the revenue in
one day. Sears, poof Jcpenny, poof Kodak. They used to

(16:22):
be Kodak booths in every parking lot in America. Poof, Like,
these CEOs are absolutely freaked out. They don't want to
be Blockbuster or Sears or jcpenny or Circuit City. Hello. Hell.
They don't want to be the past, which means they

(16:43):
need to keep up with the future. And if that
means they got to cut costs. If they don't cut
the costs, their competitor will. And when the competitor does,
they're out of business or they're behind the lead. So
we take it personal. Are they trying to not pay us? No,
they're trying to stay alive. Capitalism's not personal. Business is
not personal. Capitalism is a gladiator sport, and we have

(17:04):
better learn it. We've mastered everything else. By the way,
I commend you about what you said about what you
did in the pandemic. You know, I have a lot
of little philosophies that are I try to make learning lessons.
When you're being run out of town, get in front
of the crowd, make like a parade, So turn your
negative into a positive. You can't grow except through legitimate suffering. Right,

(17:28):
Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without
a storm first. It's actually a scientific fact. So what
you did, the pandemic of seeing the writing on the
wall and flip it and make it an advantage was
brilliant the first. I'm a techie. Give it a choice
between going to a party and hanging out. My wife
is a social butterfly in our family. Give a choice

(17:50):
between hanging out or hanging in. I'll hang in. Let
me get in front of my computer, behind my computer
or my iPad and just dream, research, dream, watch documentaries.
I'll stayed home on a Friday night, and all I
want people to do is leave me alone. Right, So,
I'm a techie. I love technology, I love researching, I

(18:11):
love knowledge. I had no clue about how video conference was.
I had never done one before February twenty twenty. I
had not ever. So when I did my first one,
it was Coca Cola. It was February twenty twenty. They
had a technology called blue Jeans, and I'm like, well,
coke doesn't make genes. Like what I was My brain

(18:32):
was what is blue jeans? And why am I on it?
And they had to explain to me this was their
their selected video conference technology, and I was just fascinated.
Now I do video conferences all day, every day, as
do you. It has become normal in our lives. Now
let's go to the future. So, black people, we over

(18:54):
indexed on cryptocurrency. Forty percent of us invested in cryptocurrency
more than any other race because we've been hijacked and
messed with by capitalism and free enterprise, and we don't
trust any of that stuff, banking, business, government, I understand,
but trying to find a way around the traditional system.

(19:14):
Also to get rich quick, we over indexed in cryptocurrency,
got robbed. There are twenty thousand cryptocurrencies. By the way,
people listening to this, don't trust me. Do it. Use
your phone for something smart. It is a smart phone.
Stop using for dumb stuff, right, It's more, it's desires,
more than sports tickets and concert tickets. Research what I'm saying.

(19:36):
There were twenty thousand cryptocurrencies. Most of them went away,
most of them. It was fraud. It was it was redpools.
It was horrible stuff. There. These are crooks, There are criminals. Yes, people,
Oh what about bitcoin? Yeah, what about that's one? Okay,
then they'll name two or three more. Okay, that's three
four fantastic. By the way, By the way, even on

(19:58):
those situations, somebody body else had a block. Well really,
blockchain technology is amazing, but somebody else at a block
on that on that bit coin. And when this stuff
ran up, uh, and we pushed it up right when
it went down, we got crushed, right. And so I'm
not telling you how to do it. My wife did it.
My wife owns bitcoin. She did very well. But she's

(20:20):
got me. So if things go south of the border,
she's okay, don't use your rent money. So what what
what point am I making? We tend to go overboard
on things. We get emotional about stuff. Pandemic, remote work, Ah,
screw these employers. I'm gonna work at home. I'm never

(20:40):
going back in the office. No no, no, no, no no.
Get your BlackBerry in it back in the office in
the middle of the pandemic as fast as you can.
People say, oh, John, you got your dang on mine.
You you don't understand this generation. No, no, you don't
understand capitalism and free enterprise and which is as old
as Jesus. In fact, with all due respect, it's older

(21:05):
than the story of Jesus, which I'll get to before
we finished this podcast interview. Marriage, by the way, is
older than the Bible. It was a business model endowed
by God with spiritual values. But it was a business
model for families trying to protect their assets by joining
them together, and so on and so forth. Families, cousins

(21:28):
got married. I mean, it's disgusting, but Neil family members,
sisters and brothers got married from different houses, different royal houses.
Let's come back to this point. Why John, do you
want black people to go back to the office. I
don't want you to just go back in the office.
I want you to become an irritant in the office.
I want you to go in the office when nobody's there,
everybody else else is at home. I want you to

(21:48):
walk find the boss's desk, hopefully it has a glass window,
just like this. I want you to walk back and
fourth in front of the bosses off until he says
or she says, who are you? Why are you here?
I mean, there's nobody else here? And why you keep

(22:10):
running back in front? Well, I'm working, I'm doing this.
I'm doing that. I'm getting stuff done. It's fantastic. Who
are you. I'm Brandon. Well, there's nobody else here. Come
in here, Come and sit down. What's going on with you?
Tell me your story. Well, I want to get ahead.
I want to be aspirational. Okay, you know I don't
have got this project. It's not very good, but yes,

(22:32):
I'll do it. You don't even know what it is.
Whatever it is, I'll do it. Take that project, kill it.
Wait for the next project. Take that project, kill it.
They're gonna give you the best project. The wealthy people.
The people have been there for ten years, the folks
with the big titles. They got to do with the
great projects. All is left is the crap, right, take
crap and turn it in the cream, right, impress that

(22:55):
boss because you show, because you're in his face. Because
it's all about relationship capital.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah right.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
You don't have financial capital, we don't have inherited capital,
but you can have relationship with capital. Because we are
good at being cool. We're we have master cool in culture.
We are not likable, warm loving people. Use it as
your assets. Stop happy. The only asset on your ass
that's on your ass. Stop it, knock it off, go
in there and press that boss. Show up at work.
Because love is work. Non love is laziness. Anti love

(23:23):
is evil. Evil exists, Brandon, but it's very rare. Mostly
it just lazy, intellectually lazy, spiritually lazy, physically lazy, financially lazy,
emotional lazy. They don't want to do the work. They
want somebody to do it for them. Like the gud
telling me that he wants me to say black people.
My point responds back to them is no, you're going
to have to save you. I'm gonna give you the latter.
You're gonna have to go up it. So we should

(23:43):
have been back in the office when no one else
was what's happening, so that people say, oh, John, you
don't understand the office is did Okay, here's what I understand.
There's over a trillion dollars of commercial mortgages that came
due for refinands in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
If you think that Wall Street and bankers and some

(24:05):
of the biggest companies in the world are gonna let
their assets go bankrupt because you've got a cultural moment,
you out your you out your cotton picking mind. That's
number one. Do you think these banks that out of
this stuff on their on their balance sheet are gonna
write that off a trillion dollars you out of your
cotton picking mind? Or they do. They pushed it down,
they kicked it down the road, they gave it an

(24:26):
extension on the loan. They didn't call it, they didn't foreclose.
It kicked it down the road, right, And then what
do you start hearing CEO say, not just because of
the reason I'm about to give you financially, but because
of cultural reasons I need you back.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
In the offeh.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
By the way, what's people say? So now? People say, oh, John,
so you're saying it's a game. No, I'm saying you
don't understand the game. There's a dating app. What's the
purpose of a dating app? Get dates, get connections in person? Yeah?
So am I missing? Like Stee want to my brother,
he's my friend. Now, Steve Wander can see this like

(24:58):
it is every By the way, Steve want I can
see better than most people. That's a whole nother story.
That's a whole other story. Like for me and him
in the studio at midnight and I'm handicapping him thinking
that he can't see. And my brother's got a a
phone with brail. He's got's letters with the brail machine.
He's more competent than most people. Lady I was dating

(25:19):
back then, he's filling on earth trying to tell about Oh,
what's your name? Lady? In front of you you can
see just so, So what am I saying. I'm saying
that the whole purpose of that dating app is to
get in front of the person for an actual date. Hello,
the purpose of cryptocurrency is to convert it into cash. Hell,

(25:39):
let's not playing this game. Knock it off. Like so,
if you have a chance to get relationship capital with
decision makers, you're not gonna do that. Virtually, technology is
more ef This ship is not more effective. Quick story
during the pandemic. By the way, the one thing the
chap got wrong was I sold the company Promise Homes.

(25:59):
I'm I built it. I sold it for one hundred
and twenty one million dollars. I'm a modest shareholder now,
but I'm on my way actually trying to exit that company,
so I'm allowed to start another one. But anyway, when
I was selling that company, I had told Henry Kravitz
of KKR fame. When we are two video calls. What's
going on with you, John, blah blah blah blah blah.
I also have this company. I'm about to sell it.

(26:20):
Oh that's great. I'll go to New York in the
middle of the pandemic. Hey, Henry, I'm in New York. Now,
no one's in his office. Come and see me. Okay,
I go by. We have lunch. He shows me his office.
He shows me is model Bugatti and his office. He
showed me his views. He just moved into Hudson Yards.
He's by the way pandemic. He bought the built the building.

(26:41):
He's got a floor for KKR too. He's got an
insurance company that he invested in below them. So he
clearly values personal interaction. But there's nobody there. He goes
into the kitchen, the cafeteria where his employees one day
will be. He's bracked. He's very proud of it. We
go to his private dining room. Tell me what's going
on with you, Jim huh? Now, Brandon, I just talked

(27:02):
to him three weeks before that. I told him, Okay, fine,
blah blah blah blah, blah, I mentioned my business. Really,
it's as if I said it for the first time.
Is this real estate? Yes, tell me about that. Hey, Billy,
he had a real estate Come in here, Senate Paupa,
Chair John, repeat that. This is the fourth time I

(27:26):
play around. I played along with it. I mentioned, Billy,
we should be in this business, Brandon. They made an offer.
They made an offer to buy my company. Now it
was outbid by somebody else. But the point of that
is they didn't make an offer when I was on
virtual They walked right past it. It was a forty
five minute call. The point was, get off the call,
get through it. Nobody remembers anything that they did during

(27:47):
the pandemic. It's all one blur, right, But human interaction,
the warmth, the engagement. We're not human doings. We're human beings.
So we're not human beings having a spiritual experience, where
spiritual beings have having a human experience. Energy matters. Take
your energy and your rear in and go in that office,
Get in front of that investor, get in front of
that employer, or get it wherever you're trying to impress

(28:09):
right and make an impression on them. Last point I
want to make before I shut up for your audience
is really important. Stop making everything personal. Capitalism is this table. Sorry,
I've already said capitalism the gladiator sport. Business is this table.
You're on one side of the table, I'm on the other.

(28:29):
You're the producer, I'm the consumer. In this example, your job,
your job is to extract as much money from me
for your product while giving me the least amount of value.
My job is to pay the lease for your product.
Why obtaining the most value? That's my job. Have I
missed something?

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Brandan, No, you're on point.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
That's our jobs. Stop taking it personal. A good negotiation
is where everybody leaves that negotiating table slightly annoyed. So
we have just missed the basics, Like when the rules
of published and the playing fiellers level black folks kill it,
professional sports, the arts, faith, church, politics, the military were

(29:17):
the rules of published in the plainfield's level. When we
know how to play this game, we absolutely kill it.
We master it. No one's ever taught us capitalism are
free enterprise, and worse, they've told us is evil to
keep us away from it. And I'm trying to democratize
this conversation. I'm trying to. I'm going to create the
biggest infrastructure, the largest plumbing, economic plumbing, first for Black America,

(29:42):
then black and brown America, and then even poor whites.
The bottom half of the society deserves to have a
private banker, and I'm doing that at scale. I have
fifteen hundred offices across this country in forty two states,
and my goal is have fifteen thousand offices. We will
become the Steve Jobs in the apple of economic empowerment.
Financial literacy will be the civil rights issue of this generation.
And I think that AI literacy should be the civil

(30:04):
rights issue of this generation. From the streets to the suites.
This is a moment in history. Man like this, this
is the world changing stuff and it's happening right now.
And we've got to upgrade our software. There's no time
to be messing around. It's not time to be having
stupid arguments argue with the food cruiser are too We've

(30:25):
got to knock it off, knock all the stupid stuff out.
If you hang around nine broke people, you're gonna be
the tenth. Like I tell people, Okay, you don't like
what I'm saying, has the other shit you've been doing work. Hello, Okay,
civil rights very important. Let's just get people off of you.
All civil rights is let's just get get bad people

(30:45):
off of you, bad systems off of you. They don't
pay your mortgage. It's gonna pay your car now. It's
red rooms to keep bad things from happening to you. Right,
the government's gonna save us. Okay, how's that working out
for you? This president had made it absolutely clear. I
was in Harlem last week, doctor George Fraser, who's great?

(31:08):
And I said to the room, I said, you know,
this president has succeeded in one thing. He has completely
unified black people for the first time since the nineteen sixties.
I'm sure it wasn't his goal, but we are now
completely We're reading the Constitution, We're reading the Bill of Rights.

(31:29):
We want to know what the Executive Order is. We
reading books. We try to understand financial literacy, like whoa, whoa,
wait a minute, like people are real clear that we
own our own by the way. I don't like how
we got here, but I like the message. Yes, you
are on You've always been on your own. Jews realize

(31:51):
this six thousand years ago, three thousand years before Jesus
who created modern finance and trading, and it was really
trading and business really an economic basis, and then finance
came out of that. That was Middle Easterners, Dark Africans
and Jews, who were mostly dark. By the way, well,

(32:13):
the Middle Easterns were in the prime shipping lanes Brandon
back then, so people just kept them distracted and dazed
and confused and kept sort of colonizing them. To this day,
they're traders because they were sort of not empowered, never talked,
never educated unless they found oil. Blacks were colonized because

(32:35):
we had the richest soil, and at that time in
the agricultural age, Brandon the largest intelligence, which was agricultural
intelligence on the planet. So they couldn't empower us. They
needed to get us confused and dazed and dejected and
not to realize that we were the go mind. We
were sitting on Africa, and to get confused about what

(33:00):
was going on with slavery, which was all about taking
genius of the land and bringing it to the gold
of that era, which was places where you could have
cotton and all the rest of the things. Jews did
not have a country until a few years ago in
the world history has a few years ago, they were
scattered all around the world. But the Jews who went

(33:20):
to Europe and are married, and they start looking lighter
and start looking at European they could blend in canon land.
They learned finance which allowed them to control the land.
What's the number one group of minorities in the world
today that's mastered wealth and freedom through self determination? Jews,

(33:42):
I mean black folks need a black Jewish business plan.
And by scattering them all around the world, they now
have contacts all around the world for global trade. All
I'm trying to do in an hour with you is
to get us to see what Malcolm Mexic has been saying.
I'm typically I'll tell you about Andrew Young and doctor King.
That's who typically our quote. But this is a Malcolm

(34:04):
X moment. We've been bamboozled, we've been tricked, we've been food,
we've been hoodwink, we've been led them up. That's a
that's a Malcolm X quote. And we've become emotional and
we've been played. Andrew Young quote delivering a system of
free enterprise, and not to understand the rules of free
enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. So nothing

(34:25):
that I've said is rocket science. Even the word white,
racial word white is made up. Whites and blacks were
friends when in different servitude started in the sixteen hundreds,
and that was a problem for the people who were
in power, so they messed that up. And now poor
whites and poor blacks forty years later at each other's throat.
Why I asked, I'm gonna asking rational, why are we that?

(34:46):
That makes no sense? But this is not meant to
make sense. It's meant to make somebody else sense, as
in dollars. So I'm trying to suggest a radical movement
of common sense. It's what you preach on this show.
We need to fight the new fight from the shoulders up.

(35:19):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
One of the things you talked about, and I love
your game. You talked about is understanding the rules of
the game and how the game works. And one of
my favorite books is forty Million Dollars Slaves by William C. Roaden,
and he kind of talks about that same concept, but
he applies it to sports. He talks about who all
through sports, right, especially for black athletes, all through the years.
To your point, we always excelled, but whenever we excelled
at a certain point. They always found a way to

(35:41):
change the rules of the game, and you know then
even the athletes will still excel.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
You think about Tiger Woods when he was back there
kicking everybody's butt, you know, on the Masters and in golf,
and they were changing the course around, and he still
went in there and excelled, right, And so you see
this kind of happening all the time to where even
though you know, again the rules get changed, we have
to kind of you know, shift around, we still find
ways to perseverere. What I want to know from you
is you've had a chance to meet and talk and
sit with the one percent of the one percent, not

(36:07):
just the people that have wealth, but they have power,
They have influence that at a global scale that some
people probably can't really even fathom. What is it that
they understand about money and growth and wealth and power
that we tend to miss out on and we don't
fully understand.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, you ask excellent questions. Thank you. When you go
to a wealthy neighborhood, there quiet just like this room,
just like right now. So you can think you go
to a black neighborhood or brow neighborhood. You go to
a poor neighborhood, it's noisy as hell. Intentionally, they value simplicity.
That's why you often will see them with a T

(36:44):
shirt and and jenes on. They need quiet because it's
only in quiet can you create right in peace. I'm
sorry that you can create and creation what all the
patent is is a monetized creation. Right. They understand you
can make more money on money than money can ever
make on labor. I'm saying this very slowly so the

(37:06):
audience can absorb it. They understand you can make more
money on money. Rephrase that money makes more money on
money than money can never make on labor. Okay. They
understand you make money during the day. You build wealth
in your sleep because it's compounding stocks, bonds, homeownership, business ownership, etc.

(37:28):
They understand that if everybody has the information that they
have at the same time that they have, and it
has optimism, willing to play by the rules, do the
right things, that everybody. They won't say this, they won't
acknowledge this, but everybody actually could succeed potentially at their level.

(37:51):
They're not interested in that part. They're not trying to
Here's where we get it wrong. We believe it's personal.
They are trying to hold us back. No, no, no,
trying to get ahead as far ahead as fast as
they can. That's capitalism, that's competitive juices. That's no different
than than an athlete. It's no different than somebody with

(38:13):
a rap or you know, anything else that you want
to covet your knowledge and use your hustle and your
unique brand to get as far ahead to distinguish yourself
as you can.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
That's always say to create distance.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yes, that's what they want. They want to create distance,
and they don't mind you having a few snacks once
they created some distance. What I have said is if
you go far enough to the north to pull you
end up south. If the top five percent, the top
ten percent becomes the top two percent, the top one percent,
and then the top zero zero one percent, I've said,

(38:52):
my rich friends now need my poor friends to do better,
if only to stay rich. So now the world has
completely changed. God has a sense of humor. And here's
now I'm going to pivot to the question you asked earlier. Yes,
I did listen to you. In what ways are black
people positioned to succeed in this world? That everything is changing.

(39:13):
We are incredibly well positioned. We've been doing so much
with so little for so long. We can almost do
anything with nothing. A lot of other folks are about
to have a lot of problems. They don't know how
to deal with problems. The problem with them is, you know,
don Johnny got sick at school and got a scrape
at two o'clock. They're freaking out. You know, we have
a crisis every Tuesday. We're experts at crisis management number two.

(39:39):
We fall every day. You can't fall from the floor.
We're already on the floor, so we take no for vitamins.
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,
over and rounded through it. We're going to get to it.
We're great at hustle. We're great at creation. Again. We
had a choice to make back six thousand years ago.
We were Our choice was creativity, culture and cool. Their

(40:05):
choice was capitalism, commerce and money. We can revise our
choices from rocking the mic to owning it. So in
nineteen fifty America was ninety percent Caucasian. To make sure
that number was right in my head, nineteen fifty one,

(40:26):
the United States of America was ninety percent Caucasian. I
want the audience to think about this for a moment,
not the South, the whole country. So with my mentor
ambassador Andrew Young, who built Atlanta into the only international
city in the South, the only mintee of doctor King
ever to become mayor congressman, you an ambassador, and to
creating a global economy which is the tenth of Lar's

(40:48):
economy in the US. This is not by accident. That
was This is doctor King's business plan on a city,
and we've proven you can do well and do good
at scale. Andrew Young did it. But with doctor King,
with Andrew Young, and credit Scott King, and the heroes
and she ros of that day. What they did was
unbelievable because they took up because eight or six percent

(41:11):
or eight percent of the US population back then converted
ninety percent of the population to do the right thing.
Think about this brand and it's crazy. Today America's forty
percent black and brown. Within ten years it will be
a majority of minorities. Black people in brown people and
women are forty percent of the GDP, seventy percent of

(41:31):
the GDP gross domestic product the income of the country.
It's consumer spending, we're the largest economy in the world,
were the sole superpower in the world. You never had
a superpower that was in the economic power at the
same time in the history of the world. Never has
there been a time where a superpower in the economic

(41:52):
power needed the population, the diverse population, to continue to win.
Demographic their destiny. So you have now a group of
baby boomers sixty five years of age, all trying to retire.
At the same time, you've gotten more people over sixty
five than under age eighteen, and the majority of those

(42:13):
under eighteen look like you and me, the once over
sixty five or experts of financial literacy. We don't have
any idea what financial literacy means. Basically, all these folks
at the top they have they represent about one hundred
and fifty trillion dollars of wealth. About one hundred trillion
dollars of that is going to transition through inheritance in
the next ten to fifteen years. They got to give

(42:35):
their stocks, the bonds, the homes, the cash to the wives,
the husbands, and the children. Nobody wants the businesses. These
are successful, profitable, cash flowing businesses with real estate brands.
There's nothing wrong with them. Nobody wants them that want
to do the work. That's fifteen trillion dollars of existing
profitable businesses that don't have a secession plan. We should

(42:59):
be the succession plan. Hello, go find the dentists. Off
walking to your dentists and if your dentist at sixty five,
take them a lunch. Go to your go to your
law firm, where you go go to, go to the
architecture office. Go like this is not complicated, Like just
go look around. You can always tell the business owner
go into the to the you don't have to look
for the This is to be like high tech and

(43:21):
like you know allan tree dollars. No, no, no, these
are twenty million dollar businesses, five million dollar businesses. Like
this is enough for a wealthy lifestyle. Go find the
local anything that's doing well in your town. They've got
a brand of reputation. If the owner looks sixty five
or sixty, become their best friend, right and at some

(43:44):
point say, you know, i'd be interested if if you're
interested in trying to buy your business, keeping your legacy alive.
I've got hustle, i got I've got intellect, I've got
a degree, I've got I can put a management team
in place. As you've known me for the last six months.
We have a good relationship. I've got people's skills, I've
got warmth, and the owner goes, I really like you, Yeah,
you really do you. Actually you remind me of my children.

(44:06):
The only difference is you like to work right. But
I don't have the capital, so I'll I'll get a
bank loan or I'll get Wall Street to back part
of this. Would you be willing to take back some paper?
Would you be willing to carry part of this? Uh?
And of course if I screw it up, it comes
back to you. If I default, you get the business back.

(44:27):
I mean, what's the downside in this? Right? I just
gave you. I've never done this on anybody's show, but
I just gave folks, I don't know, ten minute million
dollars with a game for ninety nine. This is not complicated.
But we're looking for love and all the wrong places.
So demographics your destiny. I've said on many shows when

(44:47):
people talking about DE and I knock it off. We're
fifth on the list white Black people with a poster
child for d E and I. We're fifth on the
dang on lists because they want you to be the
poster child so they can take race, conflict with liberalism
and woke whatever heck that means, and put you into
this box and then dismiss you, ignore d and I

(45:09):
I love diversity, all right. So my point is, if
this economy is consumer spending, and we are increasingly the
majority of the country and we spend money. We all
know black people spend money all day, then this economy
actually needs us. Why are we just protesting some in

(45:30):
boycotting in some store. Don't just boycott them, buy them out.
Find every black product on their shelfs, coordinate that. Go
coordinate a three hour buyout, buy out everything they've got.
Then send a letter. We become more We need to
become more sophisticated in our approaches. Send a letter to
the CEO, the chief financial officer, the chief buyer right,

(45:50):
and the lead director on the board. We just bought
out all your products that are black manufactured. Please reorder
and let us know when you reorder, we'll be back.
Now you've got to respect. Now they say, oh my god, Okay,
this is an emerging market. It's not black people. This
is green. It's always been. Brandon has always been green.

(46:14):
It was green and slavery. There's such an opportunity right
in front of us. We've got to get out of
our depression. We've got to get out of our pity party.
We got to get out of our wards me. We've
got to stop enabl gazing and admiring the problem. There's
no time to be pissed off, right, be pissed off later. Right, Yeah,

(46:36):
there's no time to be emotional. You need to get
on your game. Not you, You're already on your game.
We need to get on our game. This is our time.
And that's exactly why they want you distracted. It's exactly
why they don't want you to focus. This is an
incredible opportunity to get educated, to own a business, to start. Look,

(46:56):
I did a business plan. I try to remove all
of excuses that we could have. One of the last
remaining things was like I said, let me create a
business plan for black America. Then I said, well, some
other people are going to complain that I'm being black nationalists,
which I'm not. I'm a do So I created a
business plan for rural America, poor white that I created

(47:17):
a business plan for women and a business plan for
Indian Native American Indians, a Business Plan for Asians. I
covered every group and a business Plan for America. By
the way, people listening to this can download it. Go
to Dreamford, John Bryant, Jean Ford or John Bryant Operation
to Help Business Plan for America. Find it, download it.
It's there for you to look at it. And I

(47:38):
laid it out. Here's why you shouldn't obsess about the government.
If they got the government to do reparations that they
really not doing it now. But if we did, if
we did by some miracle, I'm gonna throw a number out, Brandon,
three hundred billion to six hundred billion. It's a lot
of money over twenty years, sounded by right, right, Okay,

(48:01):
it really owns forty one trillion. But that would bank
up the country. Okay, so let's let's be serious about Okay.
But if all we did was raise our credit score
one hundred points, because our average credit score almongst Black
America is six to twenty, which means Pooky and them
and Booble and already at five hundred are the predominant.
And me, you and me, we have seven hundred and
seven twenty and we're just being pulled down by an average,

(48:21):
so it's six twenty. If we raise our credit score
to seven twenty, that's worth seven hundred and fifty billion
dollars in wealth creation in twenty years. If we then
took the credit score and went to go buy a house,
are number way you build wealth in America. So forty
four percent of was on a home if we just moved,
but compared to seventy five percent of our white counterparts,

(48:42):
if you just move that number from forty four percent
to sixty two percent, nothing miraculous a black home ownership.
That's eight hundred billion dollars Brandon separate from the seven
to fifty billion. Those two numbers alone, that's one point
five one point six trillion income comparison to the obsession
with the government that might if they had a deathbed

(49:05):
conversion give you three hundred to six hundred billion over
twenty years, which don't think they're going to ever do.
They're cutting things right at the moment. You then say, well,
let's add AI own to that artificial intelligence that's a
trillion minimum. Then you add owning buying these businesses that
I just mentioned six percent of the fifteen trillion less
than that a trillion. So these are the conservative numbers, right, Brendan,

(49:29):
that's three and a half two and a half to
three and a half trillion dollars of wealth creation and
none of that's the government, and none of that's difficult.
I'm so excited about the future, but I'm also frustrated
because I think most of us are depressed. We're distressed,
we're distracted, we're frustrated. We're living in a surviving mindset

(49:53):
when these people you're talking about, the zero zero one
percenters are living in a building mindset. There's surviving, thriving,
that's middle class and building winning. I wake up with
a winning mindset. I don't even know what negative thought is, right, right,
but that's where they are. They're in the building winning category.

(50:16):
We're over here in this surviving category. We got to
get out of it as soon as humanly possible.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Well, one of the ways you're helping people get out
of it too, is I mean again, we've got the
green socks in here. You know, we just came out
of Financial Literacy Month. You've you've helped over you know,
ten thousand children here in Atlanta alone open up child
savings accounts, Like what.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Make the mayor by the way, Mayor Andre Dickens or
that Lance.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Bottoms absolutely good friend, Like what do parents need to
understand about, you know, making sure their kids understand financial
literacy because again to your point, a lot of these
parents are in survival mindsets, right, They're starting to change,
and I think what we start to see too, is
is this next generation that's coming up where there's a
lot of real opportunity, especially they can get a head
start on things like for this stuff, you know, Like

(51:12):
you know, when I grew up, man, I had to
go to the library and use the Dewey decimal system
to go find information. Now, to your point, all this
stuff's right here on the cell phone. And I think
our kids are gonna laugh at us one day and
we tell them I used to go on this thing
called Google and type in something that it would give
me a bunch of links and I have to search
through them and figure it out. Like now all the
information is right there. I think for the first time
in almost twenty years, Google searches are down because of

(51:34):
chat GBT because now you can get the information with context, right, Like,
so I think we're doing the work to like start
to stam up this next generation so that even if
it's not you know, the ones that are happening right now,
like there's gonna have the ability to really lean into
some of these opportunities.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Right, yes, no, yes, everything you said. No, your children
shouldn't be laughing. Our children shouldn't be laughing because they're
missing a piece called critical thinking skills. Right when you
and I were growing up, you went to McDonald's and
there were literally one, two three, there were numbers on

(52:10):
the cash register and the person had to add the
numbers up. And then when later on, when we were
in our teens, there was a photo on the cash
register of the fries. Because people weren't weren't math literate, right,
But it also made things easier. Now we're just going

(52:31):
up to the screen and just punching the stuff in.
We're doing the work ourselves, and those jobs that used
to be behind the counter are gone. There's just they're
quality control people and so on and so forth. When
you and I were growing up, we had to do math,
longhand then I'm making this, I'm making this quick. They
had the calculator. Then they had sophisticated calculators. I remember

(52:53):
I used to have this very long. It was very
cool back in the day to have a big, big
calculator under that one exactly exactly right now, the computer
technology will do the calculation for you. That should be
freeing you up to do higher level, higher frequency thinking,
critical thinking about stuff that only you can do. But

(53:17):
my fear is that that's not freeing us up to do.
That is allowing us to dumb down. We're just not
thinking at all. This is the risk. We just stop thinking.
We stop being curious, we stop being nosy, we stop
understanding the world's changing right in front of us. We
stop questioning everything and to understanding that. Love is work.

(53:38):
Whatever you love is going to drive you crazy. You
love your husband, you love your wife. They want to
get away from you at least once a month, right.
You love your children. You want to divorce from your
kids at least, you know, you know, once every three months.
You love your job, you want to quit from it.
You know, I want to quit from my Brazioby Can
I'm the founder, right, you know? Whatever you love is

(53:59):
going to drive you. That is the definition of love.
It's a struggle. People don't want to struggle. They want
it easy. That's a prescription for failure. So we have
got to embrace the technology, but understanding the job of
living is still here, Like there's going to be a

(54:20):
risk here with the AI, which is different from the
other technologies. You're going to have hundreds of millions of
robots in the next five to eight years. I didn't
say fifty years. Hundreds of millions in the world of
robots with armored and embraced with AI technology that are

(54:43):
going to be doing things like being a waiter, being
a waitress, cleaning rooms at a hotel. I mean, you
see the little robots right now cleaning your carpet. That's
going to that little round thing is going to grow
up to be something that looks human and not.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
I love you said that, because that's what I don't
think people really understand, right, is that even when it
comes to AI, it's one thing right now when you're
doing on your phone. What people don't really understand is
when you take a step back and think about how
technology works and how the world is designed. The world
is designed to interface with human hands in the human body. Yes,
we have doors that you got to turn the knob
on and open. We have stairs you got to go

(55:23):
up and down like, they're not going to reinvent that stuff. No,
what they are going to do is reinvent.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
These robots without the attitude.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Without the attitude, they can do the same thing different.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
So, so girlfriend who's at the at the at the
at the restaurant, what you want my horder? She's out.
Now there's gonna be a robot there. Well, and that'll
be just automated with the panel. But there'll be situations
where anything that the receptionists, anything that was that there's
a risk of lawsuits, drama attitudes like low frequency BS,

(55:57):
that's gone. They're gonna just automate it. Be AI agents.
This sounds like some science fiction stuff. I'm sing. There's
gonna be in groups of AI agents doing tasks in
your house, at your apartment building, in your parking garage,
in your office. There's going to neutralize a low frequency,

(56:20):
low educated employed person who was complaining about already complaining
about their low paying job. They don't take that off
your hands. Oh you you don't want this little paying job.
Don't worry about it. Right, there won't be a job.
The risk that we have in society now is what
do you do with all these people? What does society

(56:43):
do when you don't need people to drive the economy.
I don't know. Twenty or thirty percent of the economy
as we know it can be automated. And if you
have high school educated people. By the way, the biggest
population of poverty are poor whites, not poor blacks. Again,
how do we become the postr child for poverty? Right? Yeah,

(57:03):
this is everybody's problem, and the President has told poor
whites don't worry about it. I got you, okay, I'm
waiting to see that. I want to see that. By
the way, your audience will hate me for saying this.
I need him to win. I need the president to succeed.
But there's not eight of them. This one. The election's over, right.
If he wins, we win. If he loses, we lose.

(57:25):
Right now, I don't think that things he's doing right
now are going to work, which is why I'm writing
articles and trying to put it under his nose and
trying to get it Secretary of the Treasury to listen to.
I mean, I don't think that a lot of stuff
they're doing are going to work. I've got a calculator.
I can do math like math doesn't have an opinion.
But I don't want to speak Chinese in twenty years,

(57:49):
I don't want to be speaking Russian. I'm not interested
in speaking Korean North Korea. These are countries that want
our way of life. We're arguing with each other. They're
trying to take us out these other countries. So some
president should like some presidents you don't like. Some presidents
are great, some presidents are horrible. We have a whole
history of the range of these things. Good news is

(58:11):
they'll be gone in four years or whatever if you
don't like them. But this is what we have at
the moment. But this particular administration doesn't even have the memo,
so they're not focused on the things I'm focused on
about raising the bottom third and using them as capital.
Taking the bottom third of society, and as we did
one hundred years ago with poor whites when they came

(58:31):
from Poland, and they came from Italy, the Jews, all
these groups that are now mainstreamed as Europeans were poor
whites who were stuck at the bottom of the economic
ladder and it needed that was called a New Deal
to lift themselves up. And then you had the Marshall Plan,
you had the gi Bill, which helped ninety nine percent

(58:53):
white folks. You had the Homestead Act in the eighteen
sixty two the allocated ten percent of all American land
to struggling whites who who became stakeholders. And I'm not
asking for a handown. I'm saying we have got a finanite,
structured way that we don't go broke as a country.

(59:13):
And God has a sense of humor. Now, my rich
white friends need black and brown and poor white people
to succeed to and this we have to work out
because right now, politically, that's not the message that's being sent.
There's a message of separation and division. And you know,
all I know is that that's going to show. That's

(59:33):
gonna make the economy slow down. It's going to slower,
it's going to lower GDP. I mean, it's just math
to me. So after they get through with this political
fight or whatever it is that they're doing in Washington
right now, I think it can't last for another more
than a few more months. It just can't. Whereverbody's exhausted.
But then they're going to figure out, you know what,

(59:53):
we actually need the other sixty percent of the country,
right And that's what we need a business plan. That's
what I'm trying to be ready for. We have got
to figure out branding. Whether we're better together as a country,
and I think we are. I've been to one hundred countries. Yeah,
this country is racist in many ways. My second great

(01:00:15):
grandfather was a slave, my second great grandmother was a slave.
My great grandfather, RB. Smith was a sharecropper. I'm not
immune to the disgusting abuses in this country. But I
couldn't have become John O'Brien anyplace else. I couldn't have
become John O'Brien in Germany or France or Japan. There's

(01:00:36):
no old ladder from a guy who has my complexion there.
I don't care how smart you are, maybe you don't
go to the bottom. In the Nordic countries and other ways,
they've got a socialist model, which is really a taxing
model that allows you to the government take tax you
fifty to seventy cents of your dollars, so they make
sure that people at the bottom have food and health
care and all that stuff. But you don't see us

(01:00:58):
at the top either, So you're out of them, but
you don't see it's at the top.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
In Europe.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
Uh. An inner city in France called Paris. You don't
see us hanging out, not owning right in Paris. You
don't see us in the top of companies right. Uh.
The inner city in the UK is called London. We
can do this all day and all night. Black and
brown people are in the suburbs. They're there, they're out

(01:01:25):
the way away from the action. Look at America, black
people are in the hood. We are, We are right
in the inner city. We own it and we're giving
it away. This man, we need like three episodes to
cover all this ground like we should be. We should
be buying up land. Right here in Atlanta, between Midtown
and the airport's a gold mine. Why are you? Why

(01:01:48):
are you trying to rent something but people don't want
you with money you don't have in a place you
don't understand in a reality won't last. With money that
you really can have for it. Why are you renting
in Buckhead? I like Buckhead, it's great, But why are
you renting in Buckhead because you got a doorman and
all this floss and stuff. Take your knock it off,

(01:02:10):
take your rear end to wherever you want. Midtown, south Hood,
adjacent right, buy it, rehabit and rent it. Buy it,
rehabit and live in it. You do that three times,
you'll be a millionaire. Then you can go rent something
up town and Buckhet if you want to for the weekends.

(01:02:31):
Like what's wrong with us? Just do it. I can't
say what I really want to say. Just do what
successful folks are doing. Just model that again in where
I started. If you hang around nine broke people, you'll
be the tenth. I mean, what's complicated about this? It's
an old Southern sec because you do my parents before.
It's an old Southern saying. No matter how much I
love you, my son and my daughter, if I don't

(01:02:52):
have wisdom, all I can give you is my own ignorance.
So we passed down bad habits from generation to generation
of love. Out of love, we're ignorant on purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
First of all, John, if you want to have three
more convers I'm personally I would love to have you
come in here and talk more about this. I want
to be respectful of your time. But as we wrap
this up, the question I have for you is, we've
talked about a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
We cover nothing on your list, probably.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Is what we got we cover some of the stuff
we're coming back. We covered a lot of things that
One of the things I want to want to ask
you before we get out of here is your name
is John Hope, Brian, and so hope is a part
of this. My question for you is what gives you hope?
What do you see that that gives you hope about
where we are as a nation is Again, I love
the way you talk about it's not about you know,

(01:03:53):
red and red and red and blue. It's not about
you know, black and white. It is about green. And
I do believe that myself, cause again that's that's what
that's what helps the vibe, that's what.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
For you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Right, So when you do think like where do you
see hope at? Like what gives you hope for the future?
What gives you hope for where we're going as a
as a people and as a country.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
This is God's world, brother, the lords is on the throne.
If you're religious, and if you're Christian, now I've got
every on my risk here. I've got every religion. I've
got Christianity, I've got Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, ninety religions
are exactly the same. He is a shocker for you all.

(01:04:35):
Jesus Christ is mentioned in every one of these religions,
is mentioned in the Koran, more dis mentioned in the Bible. Jesus,
by the way, money is mentioned more in the Bible
than anything else. Two thousand plus mentions. By the way,
people don't know that. And the work and proverb says
to be poors, not to not have anything, to be poors,
not to not do anything. And lazy hands make a

(01:04:56):
man poor. That's proverbs in the Bible. Who won't mention
that part. But if you're a spiritual, and if you're Christian,
and if you believe in the Lucifer the devil, the
devil is a fallen angel. He's a punk. God gives
the devil permission to exist. He ain't shit. Excuse me
say it on your product. That's French. That's French. Let's
go one step further. It's a light outside right now.

(01:05:19):
Darkness is defined by light, not the other way around.
Badness has failed goodness. Fear is much less powerful than hope. Okay,
people say, John, that's nice theory. Put in the practice. Okay.
The book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell University of Illinois
study proved at five percent of positive role models. Every

(01:05:40):
community stabilizes, not fifty percent, not seventy five percent, not
even thirty percent. Five percent of positive role models. Every
community stabilizes. The tail wags the dog. That's how powerful
hope is. But here's a historic fact. Never in the
history of the world, Old Brandon the world's five billion

(01:06:03):
years old organism lifes four billion years old. Neanderthal life
two hundred million years old, modern human life one hundred
and sixty thousand, two hundred thousand years old, the life
of Enlightenment let's say six thousand years old. Jesus Christ
three thousand years old in North America four hundred five
hundred years depending how you calculate it. Never in the

(01:06:25):
history of the world has been a group of bad
people who've ever succeeded for more than a few years.
They come, they tear up everything, The light shows up,
the darkness goes away. They go into the dustbin of history.
Caesar Throat was cut by his own senators Asama bin

(01:06:49):
Laden Stalin Hitler, I mean go down, we can go,
we can go down. The list they come and they
go pot is over stated. Is expiration date because he
controls the whole country. But he will be gone soon too.
But Russia is a rounding era in the world. I mean,
they're irritant because they're just that's the businesses being a thug.

(01:07:12):
They're like the only gangster them in North Korea, the
only gangster countries in the world. But I mean their
GDP is a rounding error in the world. There are
no consequence to anybody if they weren't the complete jerks.
This thing called fear and evil is exhausting. People want
the light, they want hope, But if you don't have hope,

(01:07:36):
they're willing to take fear. That happened in Germany after
World War One, when Germany tried to take over the world.
They got their ass whipped. They had to pay reparations.
Here comes this guy in nineteen twenty five saying, it's
not your fault, Germany. The world's blaming. It's on you.
It's not your fault, you're the victim. They put him
in jail temporarily Hitler and then they but people wanted

(01:07:59):
to have an excuse, they wanted to believe it wasn't them,
And he rose up and people saluted him by name,
and for a while it was like all hope was lost.
And then one day he just died as a little, small,
lonely man in the bunker.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Has its been a history.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
I just think we're let's not get over. Let's not
get over exercise about this moment. God still says on
the throne, this is his world and only we can
screw it up. So we needed to sit in the light.
All enlightenment is is you find the light, you sit
down in it, and you respect the fact that God
gave us ability to breathe, and he wants us to

(01:08:41):
do something with our life other than just to serve ourselves.
So we are the greatest asset and we are the
greatest liability. You're not gonna deny your strengths. I mean,
you know, you know, I don't agree with the president.
I would acknowledge that he's a brilliant marketer. I don't
think he's a brilliant man. I think he's a brilliant marketer.
And I think if you go far enof the North Pole,
you end up saying off, he will come and he

(01:09:01):
will go. And but we've got to have a business plan.
The rest of us have got to have a business
plan for the rest of our lives, for the rest
of what what? What are we here for it? Are
we better? I said earlier? Are we better together? And
in the meantime, let's see if there's opportunities in the
middle of the middle of all this chaos that Washington

(01:09:21):
is throwing out. By the way, there is there are
immense economic opportunities in the middle of all this disruption
and chaos that is being swirled around in Washington. So
you have to wait, you can get involved with it.
But also the GDP, your your show is huge. Yes,
it's it's a it's known everywhere, but it's huge here
in Atlanta. It's the tenth Laren's economy in the whole country.

(01:09:44):
It's there's no Atlanta any place in the world. It is.
It is the Black Ossie and Harrietville in the world.
This this is Wakanda, right yeah, and we and every
race gets along. What's what's my point? This is where
GDB comes from, not from Washington. Go volunteer in your
school district. Go help raise your kids, right, be a
mother or father, not a baby daddy, baby mama. Go

(01:10:06):
help the school board, Go help the city council. Go
help your mayor get I mean, aren't you busy not
pay your car notes? Don't you a suit to excuse me?
Don't you have stuff to do? Like? Knock it off?
Why is somebody obsessed with what's going on the rest
of the world. Just if you just obsessed some things
I just mentioned, and then go buy a house in
the hood, rehabit, find yourself some place to live, get

(01:10:27):
yourself a will, get yourself an insurance policy, buy yourself
a house, start a business, invest in somebody else's business,
and do that pleasure, raise your kid. You won't help,
You'll be trying to find time to sleep. You know,
my mother always said, you never want to be the
old guy in the club. So before you kick me
out of here, I'm gonna leave. I'm out.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Let me tell you. I remember I was spend some
time in La one time, and I was at a
club and I said, you know what, Yeah, I don't
want to be those guys, but you are not that guy.
You are you know again, thank you so much for
coming out.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Do you see me in the club? I own it?

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
And that's right, you know what. That's the way to
think about it, and that's what people need to understand,
and we really appreciate you coming out. But more importantly, man,
I really appreciate the fact that, like I said, as
somebody that from your point started, you know, at the bottom,
and it's built your way up. You've not only been
on the other side, but you've you've seen, you've learned,
and you've kind of gone behind enemy lines and brought
information back and sharing it with folks. So thank you

(01:11:20):
so much for doing that. Thank you so much for
sharing this on button Nomics. We appreciate you. And you
know what that said, we out, y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
That's the pod like Capitalists Matter.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your host,
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback? Want to be on the show?
Send us an email today at hello at butternomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Casey Pegram, with marketing support from Queen and Nikki. Music
provided by mister Hanky. If you haven't already, hit that
subscribe button and never missed an episode, and be sure

(01:11:52):
to follow us on all our social platforms at butter
dot atl Listen to buttteron Nomics on the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Mm hmm