April 1, 2026 • 52 mins
You might expect someone who experienced homelessness as a kid to grow up angry at the financial system. Instead, John Hope Bryant set out to understand it and help more people succeed within it. Our guest today believes financial literacy isn’t just helpful but foundational to economic opportunity and even human dignity. John is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, one of the nation’s leading organizations focused on financial literacy, credit access, and economic empowerment. Today, we’re talking about his personal story, economic mobility, entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to build a financial system that works for everyone. We cover:
- The ‘third reconstruction’
- Doing well and doing good
- Improving over burning our current system
- How our economy is driven by consumer spending
- AI upskilling and its impact on jobs
- Capitalism isn’t a blue vs red political choice
- Ladders of economic mobility
- Incentivizing corporations to help those in need
- The ‘American bet’ and what he thinks will give you a good shot at success
- And plenty more!
Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
- John Hope Bryant: Check out Operation Hope, John’s non-profit that works to expand economic opportunity via free enterprise, as well as his latest book, Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America.
- Credit card perks: Check out our favorite credit cards that we use to maximize rewards and optimize our spending.
- Money Gears: Knowing what to do with your money is crucial to your personal finance journey.
- Newsletter: Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
- Other money nerds: Find a thriving community of fellow money nerds by joining the HTM Facebook group!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm
talking capitalism for all, making the system work for everyone
with John Hope Bryant. Okay, so you might expect someone
(00:27):
who experienced homelessness as a kid to grow up angry
at the financial system. Well, instead, John Hobebriant, he set
out to understand it and to help more people succeed
within it. So he believes in financial literacy. He believes
that it's not just helpful, it's actually foundational to economic
opportunity and even to human dignity. John Hobrien, He's the founder,
He's the chairman and CEO of Operation Hope, which is
(00:49):
one of the nation's leading organizations focused on financial literacy,
credit access, and economic empowerment. So today we're talking about credit,
We're talking about economic mobility, entrepreneurship, what it really takes
to build a financial system that works for everyone. John
Hope Bryant, Welcome to How to Money. Thanks for joining me, Joe.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Nice to be with you, honor to be with you.
Heard good things about you. And this is a very
important conversation on the two hundred and fifty anniversary of
our nation. No one more important time to have a
conversation about who we want to be when we grow
up than now.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, still a young nation in so many ways, and
we have a lot of young listeners here, John, who
I think can benefit from your wisdom and your experience.
First question I got to ask you, because we ask
everyone who comes on the show, is what do you
like to di splur?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
John?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
What is the thing you're doing the smart stuff? You're
saving your investing for your future, but you got to
have like an outlet for spending that provides joy in
the here and now as well? What is that for you?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My racing simulator tell me about Well, I have a
full competitive auto racing license, which I don't get to
use very often because of my schedule, but I do
a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Of track days.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I have of race cars at Atlanta Motorsports Park or
Atlanta Native so you know it's in Dawsonville, so it's
like a country club for race cars. And so I'm right.
We have a Conda ride on the straightaway and my
cars are underneath. And we have a racing simulator here
at my house that we have in South Atlanta and
North Faeeville, and so I was on it all day yesterday,
(02:26):
And that's if you want to call it a splurge,
it's I just got a diving certification when I was
in Maui, and that being underneath in the calm, blue
ocean was one form of freedom and release. And then
being on the road the next week in Dubai where
(02:46):
I could arrive and arrive and drive there because I
have this racing license, and to have do they have
Buddhism at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, which
is what I call motorsports, is.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Another form of calm.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Those two, if you want to call it, or splurges,
But really all money is his freedom, that's all it is.
And so I had the freedom now to do things
like that. But it's really not about the money, it's
about what it facilitates.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, well, John, you're an incredible entrepreneur, But it kind
of it wasn't obvious that that was going to be
the outcome of your life. When you look at your
family tree, what do you think prompted or connected made
that a possibility for you?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Pain?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Pain, suffering, problems, challenges. My mom and dad had built
wealth up. They came from the Deep South. My second
grade grandparents were slaves on both sides of my family tree.
My mother, my mother's mother owned a shotgun shock. Your
listeners can look up what that is. We won't waste
time on definitions. My second grade grandmother, my mother's side,
(03:55):
escaped slavery, bought up, built a house, and had a
border with no mortgage on the house border me in
a renter, so she was a free enterprise person. My grandmother,
to the extend that she could, was a free enterprise person.
My mother owned seven homes and sold them. I owned
seven hundred. My father, my second great grandfather, protected Memphis,
(04:15):
Tennessee a fre Abraham Lincoln as part of the Emancipation Proclamation,
So had sort of justice in.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
My bones from from an early age. Got it honest.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
But he protected folks who weren't protecting them because, of course,
the Emancipation Proclamation was a call for those behind quote
enemy lines. Then my grandfather was Arby Smith, was a sharecropper,
so working land he didn't own that he would actually
never be able to control, but he worked it anyway
because he was industrious and wanted to do for himself.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
My father was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
My mom and dad took those bones, if you will,
brought them together. Initially it worked. They built a small
conglomerate of small businesses in south central Los Angeles. Apartment
building they bought for eighteen thousand dollars now worth eight
million dollars, a home gas station.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Anyway, they lost it all. They divorced over money.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Joe Number one calls her divorce in America's Money. Make
a long story short. I saw a murder when I
was six or seven years old. The guy who saved
my life. That was over money. My next door neighbor
was a drug dealer at the house. My mother bought
it with you know, she saved money and bought a house.
After the divorce in complet California, I tried to make
a friend. That friend was very smart, but didn't have
(05:29):
good parents like I did. Even though they were divorced,
they didn't make me a point of contention. They loved
me irrespective my dad had gave me says yes I can,
My mother sin said yes I am. She told me
she loved me every day in my life. This is
important to your question. So this best friend of mine
didn't have good role models anyway, He started hanging around
with the next door neighbor who was a drug dealer
(05:50):
that got killed together. So by the time I was
nine years old, I saw the death of our family
net worth. We lost that apartment building, lost all those assets.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I mentioned to.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You, because my dad was I couldn't make it, but
couldn't keep it, wouldn't ask my mother for help in
a relationship two plus twotion equal six, eight or ten.
Either you're better together or what are you doing? So
he didn't get that memo. So I got all these
lessons the hard way, Joe. Most people go to business school,
they go to you know, this life was my business
school was my master's class. And I got these lessons
(06:20):
and I only had to teach me once. And then
when I was nine years old, a banker came to
my classroom and taught me financial literacy. And he happened
to be Caucasian. And that's important because most experiences of
folks like me growing up with a person of Caucasian
was negative, a police officer throwing you against the patrol
car or something.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
This was a positive experience.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And this banker came and taught me financial literacy from
Bank of America, and my teachers would buy the mail
order products that I bought, and so that I had
in my little briefcase with just my dreams in it.
I sell mail order. My teachers, who are also Caucasian
would buy them from me. So I had these positive
experiences around. You might call race relations. I didn't know
that's what it was. But I asked banker who came
(07:01):
in once a week for six weeks, what do you
do for a living, and how'd you get rich legally?
And I was dead serious, right, I mean, I'd never
met this. I mean, this guy's like a martian. Come
into my classroom. My mother could My mother had a
lunch break joel in two fifteen minute breaks and she
only came to school if I got in trouble. This
guy was there in the middle of the day, chilling right,
(07:22):
and he said he called that. He said, I'm on
a salary.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Where do you work? Bank of America? Where in a
sky creaper? Here's my business card? Sixteen floor it's no
sixteen flour in content, there's six floors in content, and
that's a.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Courthouse like boom. Who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And he says, I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs,
and I said, I don't know what an entrepreneur is,
but it was legal, and you're financing it.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I'm going to be one.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And so later on I created a for profit and
a nonprofit now the largest of their kind in the country.
We've invested five billion dollars into mostly underserved economies, untapping
untapping human potential at scale. But the nonprofit is teaching
people how to get bank qualified at prime rates. Well
that's essentially, Joe, what that banker told me. I said,
(08:09):
So your job is a lend poor people money, and
all I have to.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Do is prove I can pay it back. Yes, okay,
I'm in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So I became an entrepreneur and put the lixture out
of the candy business when I was ten years old,
so that my confidence went through the roof from that.
I was homeless when I was eighteen years old for
about six to eight months of my life, so you
can't fall from the floor. So by the time I
was twenty years old, man, I had all kinds of
(08:38):
experiences that a sixty year old would have. Most sixty
year olds don't have those those loble experiences, and so
I really had a sense that this system could work
for everybody. But it's what people don't know that they
don't know, but they think they know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
People can focus I want to get that money. We'll
get that bag, that cash with that dollar. This is
you say, you have a young listeners. They're focusing on this.
I want that dollar, I want that money. No, wrong,
it's an illusion. All money is in exchange of value.
You want to build wealth, and you build wealth in
your sleep. And one of those areas is entrepreneurship, business
right of course, home ownership, asset ownership. So it just
(09:16):
dawned on me. That's my last book, Financial Literacy for All.
This is my seventh book coming out now, Capitalism for All.
I've been giving people these sort of software upgrades along
the way.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
The book Love Leadership was a philosophy on doing well
and doing good and.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
How the poor can save Capitalism is sort of self
self described title, but people thought it was crazy when
I wrote that. But basically my rich phrase eat my
poor friends, do better, if only to stay rich because
the market is seventy percent. The biggest economy in the
world is seventy percent consumer spending seventy there's a lesson
we need to learn and think about right now.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
The book the memo, Get the memo. That's what we
were talking about about what folks.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Don't know, they don't know up from nothing, my personal story,
financial literacy for all, getting people the bones of.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What they need.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
And now, the most audacious, bold, disruptive idea I think
that has been injected in American DNA in a while
is that this thing that people are intimidated by or
resent but often don't understand. Even those who are participating
(10:23):
in it don't understand it. Think it's about making money and
it's about all themselves. This capitalism for all ethos is
the only thing that can save us, and it saved me.
So I came from this unlikely place and most of
the people who thought I was wasting my time in
the neighborhood I grew up with want to work for me.
Now four hundred employees.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
By the way, and what made you? It sounds like
when I'm hearing I hear two things that came out
in your story. There's curiosity and there was some boldness.
And those are you were asking questions about how the
system worked that you didn't understand. You were getting nosy, right,
you were getting up in this guy's business to try
to figure out what, how did you thrive in this
environment that I don't really understand. It seems like in
(11:06):
our culture right now, there's a lot of burn it
down because I don't understand it. Instead of curiosity, let
me enter into this. How can I succeed in this environment?
It's like, I don't I don't like the game. How
would you respond to someone who's thinking that way?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, it's wrong, first of all, and it's ours and
it's our parents' fault. My parents had a responsibility to
raise me. My mother told me she loved me every
day of my life so that I don't have a
self esteem problem, and I thank her for that every day.
I think my dad for a lot of things. But
my dad also missed the matriculation exam on relationships. He
missed the matriculation exam on how to treat a woman.
(11:44):
He missed the exam on how to build a business,
build wealth, generational wealth, to protect it, on being nosy.
So you're being nice and saying I'm curious. No, I'm
actually nosy. Yeah, I give you two ears in one mouth.
You listen twice as much as you talk I'm actually
very nosy. I got my nose in everything, and you
got to stay young. You have to stay nosy, and
(12:06):
you have to understand your parents or just your parents.
They're trying the best that they can and do what
they do. But if they're not successful financially, if they're
not succeeding in the way that they would have liked,
or you would think that they have the potential for
you have.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
To consider the source.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
There's an old saying, no matter how much I love you,
my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom,
all I can give you is my own ignorance, And
so out of love we pass down bad habits generation
and generation. And again is what we don't know that
we don't know we think we know. So here's a misnomer.
People say, I hate rich people.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
No, you don't.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
You hate rich people until you become rich. What you
hate is a game system. What you hate is a
system that no matter how hard you work, you can't
seem to get ahead.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So let's ungain the system.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's what I'm doing with the book, That's what we're
doing with the work with Operation Hope. Is what I'm
doing in my work as a capitalist at Brian your
venture's second point. Let's say that somebody listening to this
and saying I don't I'm just not buying with this
guy saying it's a nice, cool story. But you know,
I'm going to college and I'm going to become a socialist. Okay,
here's my question to you. Two questions. Even if you
(13:14):
distribute money like a want to distribute money like a socialist,
don't you have to first collect it like a capitalist?
Second question, how'd you get to college?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Right? Did the government send you?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Did the community block club send you and pay your tuition?
Who's paying your car note? Who's paying your rent? Who's
paying somebody give you a food stipend? Is somebody paying
your cell phone bill that I'm unaware of? Is the
government doing that? The government give you sheets that you're
sleeping with? Did the government pay your utility bills for
(13:50):
the apartment or the public the public housing, the student housing?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
No, No, your parents did that? Okay? Where'd your parents
get the money? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So we are games with ourselves, those who say I
don't like capitalism. Look all socialism is really the biggest,
really simple. It's a taxing system. You know, you look
at the Nordic countries. And I've been to one hundred countries,
including the Nordic countries, and I know I've been there
several times. I'm not talking about like traveling as a tourist.
I know them very well. I mean they're engaging capitalism.
(14:18):
Sweden and Finland have their capitalists platform, like Sweden is
Timber is one of their big businesses I remember.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
More so than the United States in some ways.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
One hundred percent Nokia came out of I think it
was Finland and Norway is oil, right. But what they
did was they decided to tax the wealthy at a
higher rate so they wouldn't be poverty underneath it, and
that social services were funded. And that's great, but there's
less people there, much less, Like we've got more people
in the city in America than they've got in their country.
(14:49):
Number Two, while you don't see anybody at the bottom, Joel,
with that system, you don't see people who look like
me at the top. So I want to have full fluency.
I want to be able to go from the bottom
as I have. I'm at zero point zero one percent.
I want to go. I want to go as far
as I have the capacity that's not possible in a
socialist system. No one washes rental cars. You drive it
(15:12):
for two or three weeks, it gets dirty. You can
paint your fate your face on the windshield is so dirty,
and you take it back to the person who owns it,
which is hurts their budget, or whoever you rented the
car from. You don't want you take care of it
because you own it, so we anger emotions in business
are inappropriate placements in a serious environment. Anger is not
(15:35):
a strategy, and emotions should never be a You be
part of a serious decision making. Whenever you make an
emotional decision, it's the wrong one. Cryptocurrency I'm going to
I'm going to light up a lot of folks on fire.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Now.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Cryptocurrency was created emotionally as a result of the two
thousand and eight economic crisis. Don't trust me, Go do
your own research. It wasn't somebody sitting around going how
do I create a better economic system. It was I'm
angry at this system. Let's burn it down and let's
create this other system. And I find it interesting. And
by the way, my wife owns bitcoins. Gonna be very
(16:05):
clear that you know I'm not and I love blockchain technology,
but ninety percent of the crypto is either bankrupt, out
of business, or on ice not working. You have some
that are very doing very well, about a dozen of them, right,
But even a half dozen of those dozen redeem and
they're back by fiat currency, back by by cash. Right, So,
(16:30):
and what are people trying to do with cryptocurrency? Cash
it out for.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Cash?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So, by the way, what's the point of a dating
app talking about technology to go meet somebody in person?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So you can't get around.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The fact that the fundamentals of this system are are
you know, it's like capitalism, democracy, Joel or horrible systems
except for every other system. It's really what I'm saying,
So don't burn it down. Improve it. When you're being
a run out of town, get in front of the crowd,
made like a parade. Why spend all this energy trying
to create something different when you're the biggest economy on
(17:04):
the planet. America is the biggest economy in the world,
thirty trillion dollars. The US currency, we're not treating it
very well at the moment.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The US currency is the flight the quality US stocks,
US real estate, where the flight the quality in the world.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Why wouldn't we want to burn that down? Why wouldn't
when you want to build on top of that? And
like your iPhone comes with software up grades every six
weeks because iPhone realizes their phone wasn't perfect when they
realized it when they produced it. Let's also have software
up grades now in capitalism.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Well isn't in some ways too, It's just wasted energy.
Like we live in the system that we live in,
and we can spend hours of our week railing against it,
or we can say, all right, this is the reality
I live in. Let me do my best inside of
that reality. And one of the quotes you use frequently
is from Ambassador Andrew Young who said, we live in
(17:58):
a system of free enterprise, and to not understand the
rules of free enterprise must be the definition of slavery.
Which when I heard that just kind of like knocked
me off my feet. I was like, that's incredible that
it's almost like for a lot of people to rail
against it means it's like a form of self sabotage.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, you're very good man. Most people don't on earth
a quote like that. That says a lot about you.
And let's go deeper on that quote. Who is Ambassador
Andrew Young, the only aid of doctor Martinla King Junior,
by the way, the last living lieutenant of doctor King,
ninety three years of Young and we ninety four next month,
(18:37):
the only aide to doctor King to go to run
a city, the city of Atlanta where we're at, the
only one to take the philosophy of doing well and
doing good, of public purpose capitalism and place it into
a city environment.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
What's the result is? I love results.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
The biggest economy in the traditional South Atlanta, an economy
bigger than Singapore, Joel, I'm want to slow that down.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The city of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Multicultural, multi racial, to a city too busy to hate
birth the Civil rights the city that saved America because
it was where the Civil War ended when General Sherman
came here and burned the city of Atlanta to the
ground to stop the Confederate march and destroy their infrastructure.
And that's how Lincoln got re elected. So first reconstruction,
(19:29):
second reconstruction played a part in the history. I think
this is a third reconstruction, which is about ownership and
opportunity from the streets to the suites. But here comes
Andrew Young, brings the Olympics into Atlanta, makes it the
only international city in the South, you know, serves on
the border.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Delta sends them.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
To not just Europe, but the Africa, and that's one
of their most profitable routes. Now gets all these international
companies from Asia, in other words, in Europe to invest
in America. When he was into Atlanta when he was mayor,
seventy billion dollars, which at that time was still a
lot of money. It was a was an unimage amount
of money for a southern city when he was mayor.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
The net result.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Is this city that's unique in the world with a
five hundred and eighty billion dollar annual GDP. Joe, you
can take the surrounding states, put them together inside of
the city of Atlanta economy.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And still have role.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That shows to me that is the premifacial evidence of
what I'm saying in my book Capitalism for All. You
can do well and do good. You can do well
by doing good. You do not have to make a
false choice between white and black race, red or blue politics.
You can just pick the green, as in the color
of US currency.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
One of the things that highlights that in that you
talk about is how how it makes you, how you
feel about the fact that you employ a lot of folks, right,
you employed, You've employed thousands of people, and that changes lives.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
The fact that running a business and running it so
effectively that you can essentially provide for and allow people
the dignity of having work that pays them well and
jobs that they enjoy like that is I think an
underappreciated reality of what entrepreneurs can provide as they expand
and grow.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So, now that we know each other, I'm going to
answer your question that you asked me earlier a bit
more intimately. You asked me, what's the thing I splurge
on the most or something like that, What is the
thing that I there was never ask me that question,
by the way, because they normally see me through my
nonprofit lands. They don't see me as a capitalist entrepreneur,
which of course, is where that nonprofit came from, is
(21:38):
the fact that.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I could help to seed it. But you asked me
this great question.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I gave you an answer that a successful person gives,
which is not untrue. Here's the deeper answer. The number
one thing I'm proud of and pleased with and think
about all the time I splurged on was when I
sold one of my companies, the Promise Homes Company, in
twenty twenty one Christmas. Eve sold it for one hundred
and twenty one million dollars. The first thing I did
(22:03):
was is to make take a million dollars of that
and go buy automobiles for all of my senior leaders
in Operation Hope. Because they don't get bonuses, they don't
have stock options, they can't go and splurge, they can't
go to the racetrack and buy a race car. They're
working their tails off, and I thought that they should
be able to benefit from this free enterprise system. And
because they're doing the work at Operation Hope as my
(22:24):
senior leaders, it frees me to be able to go
do work in my broader portfolio. So they were helping
me indirectly, even though it's a firewall up between my
nonprofit and my for profit. Nipping aside getting a salary
and all that kind of stuff, I wanted to lean
into them some more.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I also gave them a million.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Dollars worth of stock so they could have some of
the up side of the economy. That is my proudest thing,
and I got that inspiration from my friend Oprah Winfrey
that it wasn't about what I had to get, is
what I had to give. And by the way, do
you think they worked harder for me guarante as a
result of that, and worked harder for the mission of course?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
All right, Johnny got more. I want to it to
with you, including I want to discuss what you outline
as kind of a third way, something that's not one
hundred percent capitalism, not one hundred percent socialism. We'll talk
about that in just a second. I'm talking with John O'Brien.
(23:20):
And John, one of the things you're talking about here
in your book as well, your new book that's that's
about to come out about capitalism for all, talk about
the third way approach like that. We talk about these
terms capitalist socialism, uh, and they're they're so polarizing because
I mean, truly, when you look one we live in
a society or in an economic system that isn't all
(23:40):
one or the other. Like think about our our health
care sector. That is that is not capitalism, that's not socialism.
It is this muddled, weird it's a complete it's and
it's completely dysfunctional. So what is this? What is the
third way. I guess that you are advocating that that's
more powerful than one or the other.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So this is going to be part of this radical
conversation as I go on tour acround this country. The
tour will start here in Atlanta at Clarke Atlanta University
and will extend hopefully to my friend Delta, CEO of Delta,
who was so Andrew Young did the Ford, did one
of the Fords. Ed Bashi and CEO of Delta did
one of the Forwards. He's one of our partners and
my board members and friends. And then Michael Milkin, who
(24:20):
is a King of Wall Street and created alternative credit
vehicles of finance vehicles, he did one of the Fords.
These three guys, who couldn't be more different in some ways,
found a unifying theme in this book.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So there's a number of third ways.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
And again it's a really radical, but I think common
sense conversation. Let's talk politics, because somebody's going to say, well, John,
you know, how does this speak politically.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm not for it, I'm not against it. It's irrelevant
that the free enterprise system is for the people. And
if I do something, if we do something that advances
the people, and which is, by the way, and so
somebody's gonna say, well, wait a minute, is this guy
talking about capitalism?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
You just talking about the people. Is it that social
so had a social statement? No? No, No.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Seventy percent of the US economy, Joel GDP is consumer
spending seventy So seventy percent of the thirty trillion dollars,
give or take, is you and me paying car notes,
going to restaurants, going on vacations, going to buy contract tickets.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
It's simple stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
And if that doesn't regenerate, if that doesn't grow, the
whole party's over. You won the battle on Wall Street.
That's why they called about a K straight, a K
shaped economy. Right now that guys like me and ladies
are doing well with equities, I'm not sure how long
this is going to last, by the way, unless we
solve this. But the bottomp side of part of the K,
(25:48):
which is the middle class in below, are really taking
it into shorts and aren't feeling really good about the economy.
Bankruptcies are up, by the way, year over year, foreclosures
are up. I don't know if anybody's following this, but
year or a year you're talking about. I mean it's
eye popping number. Thirty percent more defaults and foreclosure, thirteen
percent more bankruptcies. These are not small numbers. And this
(26:11):
is not two thousand and eight, not suggesting anything like that,
but this is not like two percent or five percent.
And if so, if this bottom part of the key
of the economy is not boastered up again, my rich frisy,
my poor friends do better if only stay rich. I
hope politicians, local, state, in federal steal ideas from my book,
(26:34):
steal them and go use them to drive their political success.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
We need them to be successful.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We need the president, the Senate, the House, the governors,
the mayors. We need them all to be successful because
their success is ours. Likewise, their failure is ours. So
let's check that box. No, you didn't ask it, but
let's deal with that address. That is the get it
done party, not the Republican or Democratic party.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It's about the people.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Number two, it's a third way because it's it's a
way that no one's talking about. For instance, artificial intelligence,
which I cover in this book. I'm co chair of
the AI Ethics Council with Sam Aultan. We've lost hope
AI at operation hope, et cetera. I live, I use
AI fifty times, one hundred times a day.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But what I'm now no using AI AI hallucinates. AI
gets things wrong in a mic because it's in a microcausse.
In other words, it's right in a narrow If you
don't dumb and dumb out, you ask a dumb question,
it's going to give you a really smart, dumb answer,
or it'll give you a really answer that looks really smart,
it looks right, but it's in a narrow bandwidth, so
(27:38):
it's actually wrong. And so you actually need a smart
thought process to go into that, to broaden the question,
to broaden the vision, to broaden the intuition, to have
a leadership approach to the question, so that AI can
then give you a smart answer that addresses the real question.
(28:01):
And I oftentimes all say, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I
made a mistake, you're right, let me recast that and
gives me a completely and he just told me I
was right over here right.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
So it's a people pleaser. It allucinate.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
It also likes to please your yes.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So here's what's my point of that AI is going
to change everything be clear about that. By twenty thirty,
that change everything. But AI needs people, So your job's
not going to be replaced by AI. And the short
version is going to be a lot of job lost,
but your job's not replaced by AI. Your jobs are
going to replaced by somebody who can use AI as
number one. Number two, there's going to What did I
say about the economy, it's seventy percent consumer spending. So
(28:36):
if all my tech bros. They said, oh, we don't
need people anymore, you're a genius with a blind spot
called people. Who's going to subscribe to your apps?
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Right?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Who's going to drive the revenue for the companies that
are laying off the people that need the people to
buy the stuff from the companies.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
You need the tech tech tech founders to have more
of a Henry Ford sort of mindset. I need the
people who are making the cars to be able to
afford the cars we're producing.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
That's right. So when I said to I can't say
who the CEO.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Is because you'd figured out if I can't say, sorry,
I can't give you any hints. But I'll just say
it's a fortune five hundred CEO of a consumer facing
company and after hearing this AI presentation about eight months ago,
he was like, Oh, you know, we're going to see
trillionaires and we're going to have all this wealth and
we don't need all these employees and you know, good Writtens.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Basically didn't say that, but that was an inference.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I said, you do know the economy is seventy percent
consumer spending, don't you? And he looked at me, Joel,
he said that can't be true. I said, no, it's
absolutely is true. And he said no, no, but what
about business? The business I said, yeah, that's eight to
ten percent. And he was so frazzled by that, Joel,
that he changed the subject, like he just couldn't handle
(29:48):
the conversation. So financially, financially literacy is not just poor
people and struggling working class people and middle class people.
It's the wealthy, it's the ultra wealthy, it's policy makers.
I mean, do you know that ninety percent of all
GDP comes from cities. This is a round number, it's
really between eighty three and ninety percent, but you know
(30:11):
it's closer to ninety ninety percent of all GDP Gross
domestic product income for the country comes from a city,
So let me rid castes.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Seventy percent of the campic's.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Economy in the world is you and me and whoever's
listening to this, right, and ninety percent of the seventy
percent comes from cities. So if you aren't supporting people
giving them, you know, AI of scaling skills. Everybody who
goes to a college right now, gets to higher education.
You need to get, you know, an accounting degree in,
(30:42):
an AI certification, right, a law degree and an AI certification.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Right. Everything's being being redone now, So whatever you're doing,
get an AI certification. And by the way, that AI
certification will only be good for about a year or
eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You're going need to get re certified because AI can't
figure out no one. These business leaders don't even know
where AIS going yet. All they know is it reduces costs.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
They don't know they don't yet know how to mix money.
They just know that it reduces costs.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But you cannot sit and wait for the future to
be perfect, because there is no perfect. You can't sit
and run, ring your arms and your hands and just
complain about how horrible the world is. Can't be a
chief criticism officer. The world's going to leave you. You
gotta be that Henry Ford thing, as you mentioned. And
by the way, Henry Ford the thirds on my board
of my philanthropy. You got to pay your workers enough
(31:30):
to buy the automobiles they were making and get them
bought into this new technology. Back then it was the
assembly line. Nobody wanted to work on the assembly line.
I think prediction. I've never said this to anybody. I'm
gonna sit on your show. There's gonna be job loss
middle class first, then service economy and people of the
high school education second. And then on the other side
(31:51):
of this, it's about three years into this, there's gonna
be a job surge growth because now you've got new
technology and new industries and people need to work on
the robotics, the AI, the systems going to have to
fix them, repair them, grow them. I want your listeners
to hear me on this. And if you say, with you,
what about that gap John of three years? Yeah, that
(32:11):
is a question, right.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
But one thing I want you to think about is
what can you create?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
What can you start? Because everything is changing. I'll give
you one example. Websites. Joe. I don't know how old
you are, but I think you're maybe within ten years
of my age. Okay, you certainly know that all of
our friends who had businesses ten years ago paid ten
grand twenty grand.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
For a website. That's right, all right, they haven't updated
that website since then.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Right, You're and my son or nephew or anybody listening
to this could pick Columbus, Georgia just you know, not
Atlanta Conyers or Murrietta or Alpharetta or whatever. Find out
how many businesses are in that ecosystem. So listen all
of them and say you have a website, you spend
(33:02):
five to ten twenty thousand dollars on it, five, ten,
fifteen years ago. I'm going to upgrade your website with AI,
and I'm gonna charge you five hundred bucks. Think about
how many businesses would say yes to that. I think
it's twenty five percent. You got to go from five
grand to twenty five grand to five hundred, and you're
gonna put AI and automation on the back end of
(33:22):
it and e commerce sign me up, so that if
you do two thousand of those contracts, you've done a
million dollars of business at five hundred dollars each. And
that's not even doing gradation of Some people are doing
to be two hundred contract with five dollar contracts. Somebody's
gonna bee thousand dollars contracts.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
But that's just one example of upgrading software.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But right now, you want to start a business two
years ago, that's a one hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
To a million dollar enterprise, and your accountant, you need lawyers,
you need, you need, you need all you need systems,
you need computers, you need all this stuff. Right, you
need ten people and one hundred thousand to a million bucks.
Now for fifty bucks, you can start a business, a
million dollar business. AI is your accountant, AI is your lawyer.
AI is your marketing agent. AI is your systems infrastructure.
(34:07):
AI is your coding I mean, go on and.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
On and on.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's really easy to cry about and to lament and
be worried about what AI can bring about. But I
think what you're what you're saying is take advantage of it,
like utilize it to make you a better business owner.
I have a friend who literally just Vibe coded a
website for another friend who's starting a small bakery business.
He did it in like five days. And that is
(34:32):
that those are the kind of tools available at our disposal,
and I get like future of AI is uncertain. That
three year period you talk about sounds like it could
be it could be dark. But for the people out
there who say, now I'm gonna figure this thing out
instead of being scared.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yes, when you're being run out of town, get in
front of the crowd and make.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Like a make like a parade. Yeah yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Know, figure out what you is an old saying in leadership,
let's see where our people are going. Let's go would
get in front of them and leave them right. Yeah,
Let's see where the market is going, Let's see where
things are happening, and let's let's go and become a
solution to that. That's what capitalism is, by the way,
So look, everybody listening to this, you can complain about life,
(35:15):
or you can go do something about it. You don't
like capitalism, but you're listening to this on a device
you bought through capitalism. If you have an iPhone, you
have a smartphone, you have an Android, that's capitalism. You
have these earbuds, that's capitalism. The airways, you're listening to
this on radio, that's capital You're on iHeart, you're on whatever, Spotify, whatever,
(35:38):
that's capitalism. You're listening to this in a car, that's capitalism.
You stop the gas station. The gas station owner is
a capitalist. You go get your nails done. The nail
tech is a capitalist. She's an independent contractor inside of
the nail salon, which is a capitalist's owned by somebody
(35:58):
who wants to make more tomorrow. They may yesterday, and
they want to be able to sell their business at
some point and take some capital gains and go and
live a good life. Your dentist is a capitalist. Yes,
I said it, your dentist, right, they're not doing it
for free. Your lawyer certainly is a capitalist. Your architect
is a capitalist, right. Your healthcare system we talked about
is really a messy form of it. But I mean
(36:21):
you think about, why should some of this stuff cost
us two thousand, five thousand and ten thousand dollars?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Crazy? But you know, how can the surgeon afford the
Ferrari or the Porsche. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I'm not hating on anything. I'm just saying this is
the way. This is the system we're living in. And
I've been to one hundred countries, Joel, I don't know
of another system that works better than this.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
In the world. Ah, that's good.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, we get more. I want to get to with you, John,
including I want to talk about I want to talk
more about ladders and what it looks like to bring
everyone in right and create more economics access under this
Capitalism for All system. Talk about that and more a
RNA for this. We're back still talking with John Hope
(37:15):
Bryant's talking about making the system work for everyone. Capitalism
for All love this philosophy. Talk to me about ladders
because that's one of the things you talk about in
the book as well, that that people who are locked
out of the wealth building system, they need ladders right
to be erected to assure ensure that they can participate
in the free enterprise economy. And I do think like
(37:35):
when we're talking about there is a segment of America
that does it feels like not a cast system India style, right,
but it does feel like it's harder for me to
move up and be economically mobile in society then maybe
what it felt like in my parents generation fifty or
sixty years ago. First, do you think that's true? And
(37:56):
then and then too, what does it look like to
bring ladders down for those peopeople to help them move up.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So we're coming full circle in the interview, which is beautiful.
We're ending where we began, and that's it shows that
you're really smart and good at what you do. People
resent this system because deep down in their gut, there's
an aching feeling that it doesn't work for them anymore.
And this is not a racial thing, it's not a
(38:23):
political thing. It's a human thing. Women have great intuition,
better than men typically because they're the only woman can
create life, so they're a terminal to higher power. And
there's an intuition that something's not quite right. So what
I call it sentiment. If you're doing looking at an American sentiment,
it's down. Even though the economy supposedly is up. People
(38:43):
know that something's quite not quite right. And when you
have everybody in a policy making environment who are billionaires,
are sentim millionaires one hundred million or more, how do
that person make good policy, Joel. They could be the
nicest person in the world, be very kind, but how
do you to somebody going to a grocery store. How
do you relate to somebody who's getting a turnoff notice
(39:04):
for their cable bill?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
How do you relate to.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Somebody who's going through a public airport. They're flying private
and they've been doing it for ten or twenty years.
How do you relate to somebody who's on a freeway
stuck in traffic. They're right there again, they're flying private.
How do you relate to somebody who is in a crowded,
noisy environment.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
They live behind a gated community. I know these people.
I'm not hating on them.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I'm saying it's impossible for you to create policy without
input from the masses because you just represent the classes.
And so folks at the bottom understand this country was
always about the poor at the bottom going into the top.
I mean Walmart with Sam Walton with a pickup truck,
a high school education in a storefront, the biggest retailer
(39:46):
in the world today, and they're one of my partners,
and I love Walmart. Ups. Jim Carrey Bicycle, He met
Henry Ford. They got together and while a UPS. Forget
the guy's name at Smith I think it was FedEx.
The two guys who created Goldman Sacks literally guy named
Goldman and a guy named Sacks. They couldn't get a
(40:07):
job on Wall Street, so they decided to go door
to door and sell their own products. And they built
what we now call the institutions called goman Secon Bank
of America. One guy, you know, after the fires in
San Francisco, create started lending the small business. This is
the history of capitalism. This is the history of America.
The bottom to the top, not top on top of
(40:28):
the top. And systems don't crater from the bottom, from
the top down, Joel. They created from the bottom end.
So we're at this inflection point on the two hundred
and fifty dinniversary of America what I call the Third Reconstruction,
where everything seems to have reached a near breaking point.
The environment is a little funky. Politics are funky, race
(40:50):
relations are funky. The mobility is funky. The ladder's not
only broken, it's missing. Somebody stole the ladder. Right now,
you're stuck at the bottom and you resent it. And
now when your outfloaks, he's your inflows and your overhead.
It becomes your downfall.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
And this system requires cooperation, requires trust, requires faith, requires belief.
Now it's the spirituality. Now requires confidence, it requires love,
It requires me caring about my neighbor.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
This system, there's not enough police. If you're in the
city of LA and I grew up there. There's not
enough police seven million people, Joe. Ten thousand police officers
with a side with a side arm and one pair
of handcuffs is not safety. Ten thousand police officers against
six million people. If the city comes unwound, and it did,
and with the Roddy King riots in nineteen ninety two,
(41:42):
by the way, and police chief there are Gates then
told the.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
LAPD to exit the city. He's afraid for his officers.
And when you had the what happened in the New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
You have four times more police officers per capital than LA,
but twice as less safe because all ruler law had decoupled.
There's not enough please law enforcement, military. There's not enough
directives to protect us from each other. If we don't believe,
if we believe, the bets off and the bet exists.
(42:16):
If I work hard, played by the rules, do the
right thing, keep my nose clean, pay my taxes, respectful
for my elders, I honor my citizenship. I'm gonna get
a reasonable shot of success or failure on my own merit.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
I hope you followed that.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I've never said that publicly, but that's what I believe
that that's the bet that we have with each other.
And it's so this country's not a country. She's an idea, Joel.
She's an idea, and we have to keep remaking it
every day. So this is a fight for our democracy.
I don't mean fight fight. I mean this is a struggle,
a recommitment to our democracy, our sense of fair play,
(42:48):
a software upgrade on capitalism.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And I think that it's.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Right on time. Rainbow's only follow storms. You cannot have
a rainbow without a storm first. If we do this right,
and I believe we will. My middle name is hope.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
We put the ladder back down into the soil.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
We start doing internshipsternships again and giving corporations tax credits.
This is in the book for internships, for apprenticeships, training
people in AI, training existing workers like Walmart's doing. They're
not firing their workers, they're training existing workers in artificial
intelligence upscaling them for And I believe that's a smart bet.
By the way, you're gonna need employees, You're gonna need
(43:26):
customers who can buy your goods.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
I said that earlier, good.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
For the business, good for the employee, good for the
future bottom line.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Right, So we need corporations to get tax credits for
sponsoring a school, sponsoring an entrepreneurship club. Corporation is a
sponsor to invest in a small business. We have to
use a taxing system. Has been so successful on home
ownership as an example, and so successful on philanthropy as example.
Let's use it as a way to get the top
(43:52):
to incentivize them to invest in the bottom. They're not
going to do it just because it's the right thing
to do or good will. If you want to go
all to that. You know what did Warren Buffer say,
when people are greedy, be afraid. When people are we're
afraid be greedy, and so so folks are just going
to go bunker up at the top. But give them
a tax, speak to their greed, speak to their self interest.
(44:13):
I don't mean greed, speak to their self interest, and
give them, give them incentives to invest in the least
of these God's children, and you'll see a resurge in
the explosion of innovation, of creation of an entrepreneurship, of
new businesses, things we've never even thought about, which, by
the way, those new businesses are going to hire people
as they grow.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
There you go, Joe, more new jobs right that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
No one thought about, and boom, now that economy goes
from I think that we have a shot in a
decade to go from thirty trillion to sixty trillion. You
heard it here first America. Now we get this wrong,
and we keep obsessing about wanting to go back to
the supposedly the great old days. I'm not quite sure
when this was a great old What days were the
great old days in America? Somebod can please tell me.
(44:54):
But anyway, what I'm allowed to say is not political,
it's not racial. It's just blunt. There are not enough successful,
college educated white men to drive GDP Gross domestic Product
for the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I like math. It doesn't have an opinion. That's a
melody housing quote.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Now I want every white man I know to be successful.
I needed to be successful because of his success is
my success, as I said earlier.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
But there's just not enough of them. And that that
has not statistically been true at any time in American
history until now.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
We need women are a third of the economy, Joe.
In nineteen seventy two, a woman, a white woman, couldn't
couldn't have a bank account in nineteen seventy two, Joe
her our mothers couldn't get a loan unless our unless
the husband's co signed it, not eighteen seventy two, nineteen
seventy two.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
So luckily we made the right bet and gave women
rights and.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Opportunities and they and now they're a third of the economy,
eight to eight to ten trillion dollars. We need to
we need to empower the bottom of the pyramid. Poor
whites is more for whites, and poor anybody else, neighbor,
mur and Indians, African Americans, Asians, Indians, middle class, whites,
middle class, everybody. We need to put that ladder back
down and raise it back up with everybody in mind,
(46:12):
and watch GDP grow. Otherwise we're gonna be speaking Mandarin
in twenty years. And I said yes, I said it,
and I meant it. If we don't get this right,
our our enemy is not our next door neighbor. The
enemy's not some black dude or white dude, or Republican
or Democrat. Knock it off. Russia, China and North Korea
wants your way of life. And they can't win in
(46:33):
a fair fight. They can only win, and we shoot
ourselves in the in the foot where we're doing a
pretty good job of it. Everybody in the world wants
to be an American, but Americans. So that's uh, that's
my capitalist call saying, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I love it. I love it, man, I hope it's John.
This has been a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Thank you for
joining me. Where where can how the money listeners find
out about your new book?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
By the way, just type in John O'Brien and Capitalism
for All. You can find it at Barnes and Noble,
at Walmart and Amazon. It's already on pre pre order
number one on Amazon and category you can go. You
can go to Wiley Publishing and go to Briankreu Ventures,
go to Operation Hoping you buy from Operation Open and
get a charitable contribution.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
All right, well, we'll link to you in the show
notes as well. John, thank you so much for joining
me today.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Joel God bless you, man. Appreciate you. You got somebout
to meet. Nobody else has can.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
My big takeaway from this conversation be that I'm inspired,
because I think it is. And in some ways John
speaks like a politician, but in so many ways he
doesn't because he says what he actually what he actually thinks,
but he speaks in a way I wish I guess
more politicians would speak, and and especially in an age
(47:39):
where we're so segmented as well, I'm part part of
this group or this tribe over here, and John lays
out what is a compelling vision I would say for
our country to embrace the idea of free markets and
entrepreneurship and and and building something that can benefit to
(48:00):
other people. So just there's a ton more questions by
the way, I had for John, and I wish we
could have gotten too. Maybe I'll have to bring him
back on the podcast at some point in the future,
but I think, yeah, big takeaway. First big takeaway is
ultimately that I think this is aspirational and inspirational and
we need that sometimes right, to remember that we're fortunate
(48:24):
to live in a place where we can go start something.
I talked to friends, talk to a friend who's from
another country, and he said, oh my gosh, to start
a business, to start a little grocery store. Do you
know how much oversight, how much we would have had
to prove to the government, essentially in order to even
(48:44):
get a tiny grocery store started. He was like, it
was impossible here in this country, you can start a
small grocery store in your neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
And by the.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Way, those are back. Small grocery stores are back. They're
making a dent, they're serving their local communities, they're serving
high quality items that cost more than they do at
a traditional grocery store most of the time. But people
are like, you know what, these are locally sourced items,
and so I'm more than happy to pay. It's fascinating
to see this uptick in small grocery stores. Well, guess
what in the United States, you right there, whoever you
(49:15):
are listening to, when if you had the druthers, the idea,
a little bit of capital to get started, you could
go do this yourself. And so what John is pointing
to is I think quite true. Still in this country,
we still live in a time where it is possible,
(49:35):
it is incredible, is very possible, maybe more possible than ever,
to start your own business and to succeed and to
not depend on someone else creating a job for you.
And I'm not saying it's easy, but it is quite possible.
But this actually, in some ways, this conversation brought me
back to our conversation we had with John Mackey, the
(49:58):
founder of Whole Foods, talking about grocery stores, who is
an advocate for something called conscious capitalism, and John Hope
Bryant very much in that same space. I think one
of the other things that John said that I wrote
down when he said it was you can do well
and do good. And I think that is such a
great message, and I think it is incredibly true that
(50:19):
you can build something that is not only good for you,
good for your family, good for wealth building, but it's
good for the community, it's good for the people that
you employ. And this is where and this is where
I think the term capitalism has really gotten commandeered, and
free markets might be just a better term to use
that is actually more on the nose. And then also
(50:42):
is just it has less baggage associated with it. But
capitalism for all, that's something I can get behind. And
the more we can each of us do our own
part to build good things where we live and to
ensure that people who might not have as much access
(51:04):
to the ladders that they need if we can help
be that ladder, just like John is with this nonprofit
Operation Hope, and he's trying to help people with financial
literacy with budget management.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That nonprofit serves a ton of people, all Lah Money
Management International.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
The companies that we talk about the nonprofits who are
doing good work out there, Operation Hope is another one.
So John isn't just right doing the good stuff and
making money so that he can splurge and live his life.
He is also he is a part of that process
of putting the ladder down for other people, which we
so desperately need right now. So thank you as always
(51:44):
for listening. We'll put links in the show notes to
some of the resources that we're mentioned, including John's new
book Hope you check it out. And of course thank
you for being a part of this show and the
hod of Money community. I really appreciate it. Until next time,
Best friend out,
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm
talking capitalism for all, making the system work for everyone
with John Hope Bryant. Okay, so you might expect someone
(00:27):
who experienced homelessness as a kid to grow up angry
at the financial system. Well, instead, John Hobebriant, he set
out to understand it and to help more people succeed
within it. So he believes in financial literacy. He believes
that it's not just helpful, it's actually foundational to economic
opportunity and even to human dignity. John Hobrien, He's the founder,
He's the chairman and CEO of Operation Hope, which is
(00:49):
one of the nation's leading organizations focused on financial literacy,
credit access, and economic empowerment. So today we're talking about credit,
We're talking about economic mobility, entrepreneurship, what it really takes
to build a financial system that works for everyone. John
Hope Bryant, Welcome to How to Money. Thanks for joining me, Joe.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Nice to be with you, honor to be with you.
Heard good things about you. And this is a very
important conversation on the two hundred and fifty anniversary of
our nation. No one more important time to have a
conversation about who we want to be when we grow
up than now.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, still a young nation in so many ways, and
we have a lot of young listeners here, John, who
I think can benefit from your wisdom and your experience.
First question I got to ask you, because we ask
everyone who comes on the show, is what do you
like to di splur?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
John?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
What is the thing you're doing the smart stuff? You're
saving your investing for your future, but you got to
have like an outlet for spending that provides joy in
the here and now as well? What is that for you?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
My racing simulator tell me about Well, I have a
full competitive auto racing license, which I don't get to
use very often because of my schedule, but I do
a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Of track days.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I have of race cars at Atlanta Motorsports Park or
Atlanta Native so you know it's in Dawsonville, so it's
like a country club for race cars. And so I'm right.
We have a Conda ride on the straightaway and my
cars are underneath. And we have a racing simulator here
at my house that we have in South Atlanta and
North Faeeville, and so I was on it all day yesterday,
(02:26):
And that's if you want to call it a splurge,
it's I just got a diving certification when I was
in Maui, and that being underneath in the calm, blue
ocean was one form of freedom and release. And then
being on the road the next week in Dubai where
(02:46):
I could arrive and arrive and drive there because I
have this racing license, and to have do they have
Buddhism at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, which
is what I call motorsports, is.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Another form of calm.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Those two, if you want to call it, or splurges,
But really all money is his freedom, that's all it is.
And so I had the freedom now to do things
like that. But it's really not about the money, it's
about what it facilitates.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, well, John, you're an incredible entrepreneur, But it kind
of it wasn't obvious that that was going to be
the outcome of your life. When you look at your
family tree, what do you think prompted or connected made
that a possibility for you?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Pain?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Pain, suffering, problems, challenges. My mom and dad had built
wealth up. They came from the Deep South. My second
grade grandparents were slaves on both sides of my family tree.
My mother, my mother's mother owned a shotgun shock. Your
listeners can look up what that is. We won't waste
time on definitions. My second grade grandmother, my mother's side,
(03:55):
escaped slavery, bought up, built a house, and had a
border with no mortgage on the house border me in
a renter, so she was a free enterprise person. My grandmother,
to the extend that she could, was a free enterprise person.
My mother owned seven homes and sold them. I owned
seven hundred. My father, my second great grandfather, protected Memphis,
(04:15):
Tennessee a fre Abraham Lincoln as part of the Emancipation Proclamation,
So had sort of justice in.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
My bones from from an early age. Got it honest.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
But he protected folks who weren't protecting them because, of course,
the Emancipation Proclamation was a call for those behind quote
enemy lines. Then my grandfather was Arby Smith, was a sharecropper,
so working land he didn't own that he would actually
never be able to control, but he worked it anyway
because he was industrious and wanted to do for himself.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
My father was a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
My mom and dad took those bones, if you will,
brought them together. Initially it worked. They built a small
conglomerate of small businesses in south central Los Angeles. Apartment
building they bought for eighteen thousand dollars now worth eight
million dollars, a home gas station.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Anyway, they lost it all. They divorced over money.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Joe Number one calls her divorce in America's Money. Make
a long story short. I saw a murder when I
was six or seven years old. The guy who saved
my life. That was over money. My next door neighbor
was a drug dealer at the house. My mother bought
it with you know, she saved money and bought a house.
After the divorce in complet California, I tried to make
a friend. That friend was very smart, but didn't have
(05:29):
good parents like I did. Even though they were divorced,
they didn't make me a point of contention. They loved
me irrespective my dad had gave me says yes I can,
My mother sin said yes I am. She told me
she loved me every day in my life. This is
important to your question. So this best friend of mine
didn't have good role models anyway, He started hanging around
with the next door neighbor who was a drug dealer
(05:50):
that got killed together. So by the time I was
nine years old, I saw the death of our family
net worth. We lost that apartment building, lost all those assets.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I mentioned to.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You, because my dad was I couldn't make it, but
couldn't keep it, wouldn't ask my mother for help in
a relationship two plus twotion equal six, eight or ten.
Either you're better together or what are you doing? So
he didn't get that memo. So I got all these
lessons the hard way, Joe. Most people go to business school,
they go to you know, this life was my business
school was my master's class. And I got these lessons
(06:20):
and I only had to teach me once. And then
when I was nine years old, a banker came to
my classroom and taught me financial literacy. And he happened
to be Caucasian. And that's important because most experiences of
folks like me growing up with a person of Caucasian
was negative, a police officer throwing you against the patrol
car or something.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
This was a positive experience.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And this banker came and taught me financial literacy from
Bank of America, and my teachers would buy the mail
order products that I bought, and so that I had
in my little briefcase with just my dreams in it.
I sell mail order. My teachers, who are also Caucasian
would buy them from me. So I had these positive
experiences around. You might call race relations. I didn't know
that's what it was. But I asked banker who came
(07:01):
in once a week for six weeks, what do you
do for a living, and how'd you get rich legally?
And I was dead serious, right, I mean, I'd never
met this. I mean, this guy's like a martian. Come
into my classroom. My mother could My mother had a
lunch break joel in two fifteen minute breaks and she
only came to school if I got in trouble. This
guy was there in the middle of the day, chilling right,
(07:22):
and he said he called that. He said, I'm on
a salary.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Where do you work? Bank of America? Where in a
sky creaper? Here's my business card? Sixteen floor it's no
sixteen flour in content, there's six floors in content, and
that's a.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Courthouse like boom. Who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And he says, I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs,
and I said, I don't know what an entrepreneur is,
but it was legal, and you're financing it.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I'm going to be one.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And so later on I created a for profit and
a nonprofit now the largest of their kind in the country.
We've invested five billion dollars into mostly underserved economies, untapping
untapping human potential at scale. But the nonprofit is teaching
people how to get bank qualified at prime rates. Well
that's essentially, Joe, what that banker told me. I said,
(08:09):
So your job is a lend poor people money, and
all I have to.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Do is prove I can pay it back. Yes, okay,
I'm in.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
So I became an entrepreneur and put the lixture out
of the candy business when I was ten years old,
so that my confidence went through the roof from that.
I was homeless when I was eighteen years old for
about six to eight months of my life, so you
can't fall from the floor. So by the time I
was twenty years old, man, I had all kinds of
(08:38):
experiences that a sixty year old would have. Most sixty
year olds don't have those those loble experiences, and so
I really had a sense that this system could work
for everybody. But it's what people don't know that they
don't know, but they think they know.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
People can focus I want to get that money. We'll
get that bag, that cash with that dollar. This is
you say, you have a young listeners. They're focusing on this.
I want that dollar, I want that money. No, wrong,
it's an illusion. All money is in exchange of value.
You want to build wealth, and you build wealth in
your sleep. And one of those areas is entrepreneurship, business
right of course, home ownership, asset ownership. So it just
(09:16):
dawned on me. That's my last book, Financial Literacy for All.
This is my seventh book coming out now, Capitalism for All.
I've been giving people these sort of software upgrades along
the way.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
The book Love Leadership was a philosophy on doing well
and doing good and.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
How the poor can save Capitalism is sort of self
self described title, but people thought it was crazy when
I wrote that. But basically my rich phrase eat my
poor friends, do better, if only to stay rich because
the market is seventy percent. The biggest economy in the
world is seventy percent consumer spending seventy there's a lesson
we need to learn and think about right now.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
The book the memo, Get the memo. That's what we
were talking about about what folks.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Don't know, they don't know up from nothing, my personal story,
financial literacy for all, getting people the bones of.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What they need.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
And now, the most audacious, bold, disruptive idea I think
that has been injected in American DNA in a while
is that this thing that people are intimidated by or
resent but often don't understand. Even those who are participating
(10:23):
in it don't understand it. Think it's about making money and
it's about all themselves. This capitalism for all ethos is
the only thing that can save us, and it saved me.
So I came from this unlikely place and most of
the people who thought I was wasting my time in
the neighborhood I grew up with want to work for me.
Now four hundred employees.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
By the way, and what made you? It sounds like
when I'm hearing I hear two things that came out
in your story. There's curiosity and there was some boldness.
And those are you were asking questions about how the
system worked that you didn't understand. You were getting nosy, right,
you were getting up in this guy's business to try
to figure out what, how did you thrive in this
environment that I don't really understand. It seems like in
(11:06):
our culture right now, there's a lot of burn it
down because I don't understand it. Instead of curiosity, let
me enter into this. How can I succeed in this environment?
It's like, I don't I don't like the game. How
would you respond to someone who's thinking that way?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, it's wrong, first of all, and it's ours and
it's our parents' fault. My parents had a responsibility to
raise me. My mother told me she loved me every
day of my life so that I don't have a
self esteem problem, and I thank her for that every day.
I think my dad for a lot of things. But
my dad also missed the matriculation exam on relationships. He
missed the matriculation exam on how to treat a woman.
(11:44):
He missed the exam on how to build a business,
build wealth, generational wealth, to protect it, on being nosy.
So you're being nice and saying I'm curious. No, I'm
actually nosy. Yeah, I give you two ears in one mouth.
You listen twice as much as you talk I'm actually
very nosy. I got my nose in everything, and you
got to stay young. You have to stay nosy, and
(12:06):
you have to understand your parents or just your parents.
They're trying the best that they can and do what
they do. But if they're not successful financially, if they're
not succeeding in the way that they would have liked,
or you would think that they have the potential for
you have.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
To consider the source.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
There's an old saying, no matter how much I love you,
my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom,
all I can give you is my own ignorance, And
so out of love we pass down bad habits generation
and generation. And again is what we don't know that
we don't know we think we know. So here's a misnomer.
People say, I hate rich people.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
No, you don't.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
You hate rich people until you become rich. What you
hate is a game system. What you hate is a
system that no matter how hard you work, you can't
seem to get ahead.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So let's ungain the system.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's what I'm doing with the book, That's what we're
doing with the work with Operation Hope. Is what I'm
doing in my work as a capitalist at Brian your
venture's second point. Let's say that somebody listening to this
and saying I don't I'm just not buying with this
guy saying it's a nice, cool story. But you know,
I'm going to college and I'm going to become a socialist. Okay,
here's my question to you. Two questions. Even if you
(13:14):
distribute money like a want to distribute money like a socialist,
don't you have to first collect it like a capitalist?
Second question, how'd you get to college?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Right? Did the government send you?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Did the community block club send you and pay your tuition?
Who's paying your car note? Who's paying your rent? Who's
paying somebody give you a food stipend? Is somebody paying
your cell phone bill that I'm unaware of? Is the
government doing that? The government give you sheets that you're
sleeping with? Did the government pay your utility bills for
(13:50):
the apartment or the public the public housing, the student housing?
Speaker 3 (13:53):
No, No, your parents did that? Okay? Where'd your parents
get the money? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So we are games with ourselves, those who say I
don't like capitalism. Look all socialism is really the biggest,
really simple. It's a taxing system. You know, you look
at the Nordic countries. And I've been to one hundred countries,
including the Nordic countries, and I know I've been there
several times. I'm not talking about like traveling as a tourist.
I know them very well. I mean they're engaging capitalism.
(14:18):
Sweden and Finland have their capitalists platform, like Sweden is
Timber is one of their big businesses I remember.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
More so than the United States in some ways.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
One hundred percent Nokia came out of I think it
was Finland and Norway is oil, right. But what they
did was they decided to tax the wealthy at a
higher rate so they wouldn't be poverty underneath it, and
that social services were funded. And that's great, but there's
less people there, much less, Like we've got more people
in the city in America than they've got in their country.
(14:49):
Number Two, while you don't see anybody at the bottom, Joel,
with that system, you don't see people who look like
me at the top. So I want to have full fluency.
I want to be able to go from the bottom
as I have. I'm at zero point zero one percent.
I want to go. I want to go as far
as I have the capacity that's not possible in a
socialist system. No one washes rental cars. You drive it
(15:12):
for two or three weeks, it gets dirty. You can
paint your fate your face on the windshield is so dirty,
and you take it back to the person who owns it,
which is hurts their budget, or whoever you rented the
car from. You don't want you take care of it
because you own it, so we anger emotions in business
are inappropriate placements in a serious environment. Anger is not
(15:35):
a strategy, and emotions should never be a You be
part of a serious decision making. Whenever you make an
emotional decision, it's the wrong one. Cryptocurrency I'm going to
I'm going to light up a lot of folks on fire.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Now.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Cryptocurrency was created emotionally as a result of the two
thousand and eight economic crisis. Don't trust me, Go do
your own research. It wasn't somebody sitting around going how
do I create a better economic system. It was I'm
angry at this system. Let's burn it down and let's
create this other system. And I find it interesting. And
by the way, my wife owns bitcoins. Gonna be very
(16:05):
clear that you know I'm not and I love blockchain technology,
but ninety percent of the crypto is either bankrupt, out
of business, or on ice not working. You have some
that are very doing very well, about a dozen of them, right,
But even a half dozen of those dozen redeem and
they're back by fiat currency, back by by cash. Right, So,
(16:30):
and what are people trying to do with cryptocurrency? Cash
it out for.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Cash?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
So, by the way, what's the point of a dating
app talking about technology to go meet somebody in person?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So you can't get around.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The fact that the fundamentals of this system are are
you know, it's like capitalism, democracy, Joel or horrible systems
except for every other system. It's really what I'm saying,
So don't burn it down. Improve it. When you're being
a run out of town, get in front of the crowd,
made like a parade. Why spend all this energy trying
to create something different when you're the biggest economy on
(17:04):
the planet. America is the biggest economy in the world,
thirty trillion dollars. The US currency, we're not treating it
very well at the moment.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The US currency is the flight the quality US stocks,
US real estate, where the flight the quality in the world.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Why wouldn't we want to burn that down? Why wouldn't
when you want to build on top of that? And
like your iPhone comes with software up grades every six
weeks because iPhone realizes their phone wasn't perfect when they
realized it when they produced it. Let's also have software
up grades now in capitalism.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Well isn't in some ways too, It's just wasted energy.
Like we live in the system that we live in,
and we can spend hours of our week railing against it,
or we can say, all right, this is the reality
I live in. Let me do my best inside of
that reality. And one of the quotes you use frequently
is from Ambassador Andrew Young who said, we live in
(17:58):
a system of free enterprise, and to not understand the
rules of free enterprise must be the definition of slavery.
Which when I heard that just kind of like knocked
me off my feet. I was like, that's incredible that
it's almost like for a lot of people to rail
against it means it's like a form of self sabotage.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, you're very good man. Most people don't on earth
a quote like that. That says a lot about you.
And let's go deeper on that quote. Who is Ambassador
Andrew Young, the only aid of doctor Martinla King Junior,
by the way, the last living lieutenant of doctor King,
ninety three years of Young and we ninety four next month,
(18:37):
the only aide to doctor King to go to run
a city, the city of Atlanta where we're at, the
only one to take the philosophy of doing well and
doing good, of public purpose capitalism and place it into
a city environment.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
What's the result is? I love results.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
The biggest economy in the traditional South Atlanta, an economy
bigger than Singapore, Joel, I'm want to slow that down.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The city of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Multicultural, multi racial, to a city too busy to hate
birth the Civil rights the city that saved America because
it was where the Civil War ended when General Sherman
came here and burned the city of Atlanta to the
ground to stop the Confederate march and destroy their infrastructure.
And that's how Lincoln got re elected. So first reconstruction,
(19:29):
second reconstruction played a part in the history. I think
this is a third reconstruction, which is about ownership and
opportunity from the streets to the suites. But here comes
Andrew Young, brings the Olympics into Atlanta, makes it the
only international city in the South, you know, serves on
the border.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Delta sends them.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
To not just Europe, but the Africa, and that's one
of their most profitable routes. Now gets all these international
companies from Asia, in other words, in Europe to invest
in America. When he was into Atlanta when he was mayor,
seventy billion dollars, which at that time was still a
lot of money. It was a was an unimage amount
of money for a southern city when he was mayor.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
The net result.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Is this city that's unique in the world with a
five hundred and eighty billion dollar annual GDP. Joe, you
can take the surrounding states, put them together inside of
the city of Atlanta economy.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
And still have role.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
That shows to me that is the premifacial evidence of
what I'm saying in my book Capitalism for All. You
can do well and do good. You can do well
by doing good. You do not have to make a
false choice between white and black race, red or blue politics.
You can just pick the green, as in the color
of US currency.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
One of the things that highlights that in that you
talk about is how how it makes you, how you
feel about the fact that you employ a lot of folks, right,
you employed, You've employed thousands of people, and that changes lives.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
The fact that running a business and running it so
effectively that you can essentially provide for and allow people
the dignity of having work that pays them well and
jobs that they enjoy like that is I think an
underappreciated reality of what entrepreneurs can provide as they expand
and grow.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
So, now that we know each other, I'm going to
answer your question that you asked me earlier a bit
more intimately. You asked me, what's the thing I splurge
on the most or something like that, What is the
thing that I there was never ask me that question,
by the way, because they normally see me through my
nonprofit lands. They don't see me as a capitalist entrepreneur,
which of course, is where that nonprofit came from, is
(21:38):
the fact that.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I could help to seed it. But you asked me
this great question.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I gave you an answer that a successful person gives,
which is not untrue. Here's the deeper answer. The number
one thing I'm proud of and pleased with and think
about all the time I splurged on was when I
sold one of my companies, the Promise Homes Company, in
twenty twenty one Christmas. Eve sold it for one hundred
and twenty one million dollars. The first thing I did
(22:03):
was is to make take a million dollars of that
and go buy automobiles for all of my senior leaders
in Operation Hope. Because they don't get bonuses, they don't
have stock options, they can't go and splurge, they can't
go to the racetrack and buy a race car. They're
working their tails off, and I thought that they should
be able to benefit from this free enterprise system. And
because they're doing the work at Operation Hope as my
(22:24):
senior leaders, it frees me to be able to go
do work in my broader portfolio. So they were helping
me indirectly, even though it's a firewall up between my
nonprofit and my for profit. Nipping aside getting a salary
and all that kind of stuff, I wanted to lean
into them some more.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I also gave them a million.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Dollars worth of stock so they could have some of
the up side of the economy. That is my proudest thing,
and I got that inspiration from my friend Oprah Winfrey
that it wasn't about what I had to get, is
what I had to give. And by the way, do
you think they worked harder for me guarante as a
result of that, and worked harder for the mission of course?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
All right, Johnny got more. I want to it to
with you, including I want to discuss what you outline
as kind of a third way, something that's not one
hundred percent capitalism, not one hundred percent socialism. We'll talk
about that in just a second. I'm talking with John O'Brien.
(23:20):
And John, one of the things you're talking about here
in your book as well, your new book that's that's
about to come out about capitalism for all, talk about
the third way approach like that. We talk about these
terms capitalist socialism, uh, and they're they're so polarizing because
I mean, truly, when you look one we live in
a society or in an economic system that isn't all
(23:40):
one or the other. Like think about our our health
care sector. That is that is not capitalism, that's not socialism.
It is this muddled, weird it's a complete it's and
it's completely dysfunctional. So what is this? What is the
third way. I guess that you are advocating that that's
more powerful than one or the other.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
So this is going to be part of this radical
conversation as I go on tour acround this country. The
tour will start here in Atlanta at Clarke Atlanta University
and will extend hopefully to my friend Delta, CEO of Delta,
who was so Andrew Young did the Ford, did one
of the Fords. Ed Bashi and CEO of Delta did
one of the Forwards. He's one of our partners and
my board members and friends. And then Michael Milkin, who
(24:20):
is a King of Wall Street and created alternative credit
vehicles of finance vehicles, he did one of the Fords.
These three guys, who couldn't be more different in some ways,
found a unifying theme in this book.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So there's a number of third ways.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
And again it's a really radical, but I think common
sense conversation. Let's talk politics, because somebody's going to say, well, John,
you know, how does this speak politically.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm not for it, I'm not against it. It's irrelevant
that the free enterprise system is for the people. And
if I do something, if we do something that advances
the people, and which is, by the way, and so
somebody's gonna say, well, wait a minute, is this guy
talking about capitalism?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
You just talking about the people. Is it that social
so had a social statement? No? No, No.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Seventy percent of the US economy, Joel GDP is consumer
spending seventy So seventy percent of the thirty trillion dollars,
give or take, is you and me paying car notes,
going to restaurants, going on vacations, going to buy contract tickets.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
It's simple stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
And if that doesn't regenerate, if that doesn't grow, the
whole party's over. You won the battle on Wall Street.
That's why they called about a K straight, a K
shaped economy. Right now that guys like me and ladies
are doing well with equities, I'm not sure how long
this is going to last, by the way, unless we
solve this. But the bottomp side of part of the K,
(25:48):
which is the middle class in below, are really taking
it into shorts and aren't feeling really good about the economy.
Bankruptcies are up, by the way, year over year, foreclosures
are up. I don't know if anybody's following this, but
year or a year you're talking about. I mean it's
eye popping number. Thirty percent more defaults and foreclosure, thirteen
percent more bankruptcies. These are not small numbers. And this
(26:11):
is not two thousand and eight, not suggesting anything like that,
but this is not like two percent or five percent.
And if so, if this bottom part of the key
of the economy is not boastered up again, my rich frisy,
my poor friends do better if only stay rich. I
hope politicians, local, state, in federal steal ideas from my book,
(26:34):
steal them and go use them to drive their political success.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
We need them to be successful.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We need the president, the Senate, the House, the governors,
the mayors. We need them all to be successful because
their success is ours. Likewise, their failure is ours. So
let's check that box. No, you didn't ask it, but
let's deal with that address. That is the get it
done party, not the Republican or Democratic party.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It's about the people.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Number two, it's a third way because it's it's a
way that no one's talking about. For instance, artificial intelligence,
which I cover in this book. I'm co chair of
the AI Ethics Council with Sam Aultan. We've lost hope
AI at operation hope, et cetera. I live, I use
AI fifty times, one hundred times a day.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But what I'm now no using AI AI hallucinates. AI
gets things wrong in a mic because it's in a microcausse.
In other words, it's right in a narrow If you
don't dumb and dumb out, you ask a dumb question,
it's going to give you a really smart, dumb answer,
or it'll give you a really answer that looks really smart,
it looks right, but it's in a narrow bandwidth, so
(27:38):
it's actually wrong. And so you actually need a smart
thought process to go into that, to broaden the question,
to broaden the vision, to broaden the intuition, to have
a leadership approach to the question, so that AI can
then give you a smart answer that addresses the real question.
(28:01):
And I oftentimes all say, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I
made a mistake, you're right, let me recast that and
gives me a completely and he just told me I
was right over here right.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
So it's a people pleaser. It allucinate.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
It also likes to please your yes.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So here's what's my point of that AI is going
to change everything be clear about that. By twenty thirty,
that change everything. But AI needs people, So your job's
not going to be replaced by AI. And the short
version is going to be a lot of job lost,
but your job's not replaced by AI. Your jobs are
going to replaced by somebody who can use AI as
number one. Number two, there's going to What did I
say about the economy, it's seventy percent consumer spending. So
(28:36):
if all my tech bros. They said, oh, we don't
need people anymore, you're a genius with a blind spot
called people. Who's going to subscribe to your apps?
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Right?
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Who's going to drive the revenue for the companies that
are laying off the people that need the people to
buy the stuff from the companies.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
You need the tech tech tech founders to have more
of a Henry Ford sort of mindset. I need the
people who are making the cars to be able to
afford the cars we're producing.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
That's right. So when I said to I can't say
who the CEO.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Is because you'd figured out if I can't say, sorry,
I can't give you any hints. But I'll just say
it's a fortune five hundred CEO of a consumer facing
company and after hearing this AI presentation about eight months ago,
he was like, Oh, you know, we're going to see
trillionaires and we're going to have all this wealth and
we don't need all these employees and you know, good Writtens.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Basically didn't say that, but that was an inference.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I said, you do know the economy is seventy percent
consumer spending, don't you? And he looked at me, Joel,
he said that can't be true. I said, no, it's
absolutely is true. And he said no, no, but what
about business? The business I said, yeah, that's eight to
ten percent. And he was so frazzled by that, Joel,
that he changed the subject, like he just couldn't handle
(29:48):
the conversation. So financially, financially literacy is not just poor
people and struggling working class people and middle class people.
It's the wealthy, it's the ultra wealthy, it's policy makers.
I mean, do you know that ninety percent of all
GDP comes from cities. This is a round number, it's
really between eighty three and ninety percent, but you know
(30:11):
it's closer to ninety ninety percent of all GDP Gross
domestic product income for the country comes from a city,
So let me rid castes.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Seventy percent of the campic's.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Economy in the world is you and me and whoever's
listening to this, right, and ninety percent of the seventy
percent comes from cities. So if you aren't supporting people
giving them, you know, AI of scaling skills. Everybody who
goes to a college right now, gets to higher education.
You need to get, you know, an accounting degree in,
(30:42):
an AI certification, right, a law degree and an AI certification.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Right. Everything's being being redone now, So whatever you're doing,
get an AI certification. And by the way, that AI
certification will only be good for about a year or
eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You're going need to get re certified because AI can't
figure out no one. These business leaders don't even know
where AIS going yet. All they know is it reduces costs.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
They don't know they don't yet know how to mix money.
They just know that it reduces costs.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
But you cannot sit and wait for the future to
be perfect, because there is no perfect. You can't sit
and run, ring your arms and your hands and just
complain about how horrible the world is. Can't be a
chief criticism officer. The world's going to leave you. You
gotta be that Henry Ford thing, as you mentioned. And
by the way, Henry Ford the thirds on my board
of my philanthropy. You got to pay your workers enough
(31:30):
to buy the automobiles they were making and get them
bought into this new technology. Back then it was the
assembly line. Nobody wanted to work on the assembly line.
I think prediction. I've never said this to anybody. I'm
gonna sit on your show. There's gonna be job loss
middle class first, then service economy and people of the
high school education second. And then on the other side
(31:51):
of this, it's about three years into this, there's gonna
be a job surge growth because now you've got new
technology and new industries and people need to work on
the robotics, the AI, the systems going to have to
fix them, repair them, grow them. I want your listeners
to hear me on this. And if you say, with you,
what about that gap John of three years? Yeah, that
(32:11):
is a question, right.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
But one thing I want you to think about is
what can you create?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
What can you start? Because everything is changing. I'll give
you one example. Websites. Joe. I don't know how old
you are, but I think you're maybe within ten years
of my age. Okay, you certainly know that all of
our friends who had businesses ten years ago paid ten
grand twenty grand.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
For a website. That's right, all right, they haven't updated
that website since then.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Right, You're and my son or nephew or anybody listening
to this could pick Columbus, Georgia just you know, not
Atlanta Conyers or Murrietta or Alpharetta or whatever. Find out
how many businesses are in that ecosystem. So listen all
of them and say you have a website, you spend
(33:02):
five to ten twenty thousand dollars on it, five, ten,
fifteen years ago. I'm going to upgrade your website with AI,
and I'm gonna charge you five hundred bucks. Think about
how many businesses would say yes to that. I think
it's twenty five percent. You got to go from five
grand to twenty five grand to five hundred, and you're
gonna put AI and automation on the back end of
(33:22):
it and e commerce sign me up, so that if
you do two thousand of those contracts, you've done a
million dollars of business at five hundred dollars each. And
that's not even doing gradation of Some people are doing
to be two hundred contract with five dollar contracts. Somebody's
gonna bee thousand dollars contracts.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
But that's just one example of upgrading software.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
But right now, you want to start a business two
years ago, that's a one hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
To a million dollar enterprise, and your accountant, you need lawyers,
you need, you need, you need all you need systems,
you need computers, you need all this stuff. Right, you
need ten people and one hundred thousand to a million bucks.
Now for fifty bucks, you can start a business, a
million dollar business. AI is your accountant, AI is your lawyer.
AI is your marketing agent. AI is your systems infrastructure.
(34:07):
AI is your coding I mean, go on and.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
On and on.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
It's really easy to cry about and to lament and
be worried about what AI can bring about. But I
think what you're what you're saying is take advantage of it,
like utilize it to make you a better business owner.
I have a friend who literally just Vibe coded a
website for another friend who's starting a small bakery business.
He did it in like five days. And that is
(34:32):
that those are the kind of tools available at our disposal,
and I get like future of AI is uncertain. That
three year period you talk about sounds like it could
be it could be dark. But for the people out
there who say, now I'm gonna figure this thing out
instead of being scared.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yes, when you're being run out of town, get in
front of the crowd and make.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Like a make like a parade. Yeah yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Know, figure out what you is an old saying in leadership,
let's see where our people are going. Let's go would
get in front of them and leave them right. Yeah,
Let's see where the market is going, Let's see where
things are happening, and let's let's go and become a
solution to that. That's what capitalism is, by the way,
So look, everybody listening to this, you can complain about life,
(35:15):
or you can go do something about it. You don't
like capitalism, but you're listening to this on a device
you bought through capitalism. If you have an iPhone, you
have a smartphone, you have an Android, that's capitalism. You
have these earbuds, that's capitalism. The airways, you're listening to
this on radio, that's capital You're on iHeart, you're on whatever, Spotify, whatever,
(35:38):
that's capitalism. You're listening to this in a car, that's capitalism.
You stop the gas station. The gas station owner is
a capitalist. You go get your nails done. The nail
tech is a capitalist. She's an independent contractor inside of
the nail salon, which is a capitalist's owned by somebody
(35:58):
who wants to make more tomorrow. They may yesterday, and
they want to be able to sell their business at
some point and take some capital gains and go and
live a good life. Your dentist is a capitalist. Yes,
I said it, your dentist, right, they're not doing it
for free. Your lawyer certainly is a capitalist. Your architect
is a capitalist, right. Your healthcare system we talked about
is really a messy form of it. But I mean
(36:21):
you think about, why should some of this stuff cost
us two thousand, five thousand and ten thousand dollars?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Crazy? But you know, how can the surgeon afford the
Ferrari or the Porsche. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I'm not hating on anything. I'm just saying this is
the way. This is the system we're living in. And
I've been to one hundred countries, Joel, I don't know
of another system that works better than this.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
In the world. Ah, that's good.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, we get more. I want to get to with you, John,
including I want to talk about I want to talk
more about ladders and what it looks like to bring
everyone in right and create more economics access under this
Capitalism for All system. Talk about that and more a
RNA for this. We're back still talking with John Hope
(37:15):
Bryant's talking about making the system work for everyone. Capitalism
for All love this philosophy. Talk to me about ladders
because that's one of the things you talk about in
the book as well, that that people who are locked
out of the wealth building system, they need ladders right
to be erected to assure ensure that they can participate
in the free enterprise economy. And I do think like
(37:35):
when we're talking about there is a segment of America
that does it feels like not a cast system India style, right,
but it does feel like it's harder for me to
move up and be economically mobile in society then maybe
what it felt like in my parents generation fifty or
sixty years ago. First, do you think that's true? And
(37:56):
then and then too, what does it look like to
bring ladders down for those peopeople to help them move up.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So we're coming full circle in the interview, which is beautiful.
We're ending where we began, and that's it shows that
you're really smart and good at what you do. People
resent this system because deep down in their gut, there's
an aching feeling that it doesn't work for them anymore.
And this is not a racial thing, it's not a
(38:23):
political thing. It's a human thing. Women have great intuition,
better than men typically because they're the only woman can
create life, so they're a terminal to higher power. And
there's an intuition that something's not quite right. So what
I call it sentiment. If you're doing looking at an American sentiment,
it's down. Even though the economy supposedly is up. People
(38:43):
know that something's quite not quite right. And when you
have everybody in a policy making environment who are billionaires,
are sentim millionaires one hundred million or more, how do
that person make good policy, Joel. They could be the
nicest person in the world, be very kind, but how
do you to somebody going to a grocery store. How
do you relate to somebody who's getting a turnoff notice
(39:04):
for their cable bill?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
How do you relate to.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Somebody who's going through a public airport. They're flying private
and they've been doing it for ten or twenty years.
How do you relate to somebody who's on a freeway
stuck in traffic. They're right there again, they're flying private.
How do you relate to somebody who is in a crowded,
noisy environment.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
They live behind a gated community. I know these people.
I'm not hating on them.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
I'm saying it's impossible for you to create policy without
input from the masses because you just represent the classes.
And so folks at the bottom understand this country was
always about the poor at the bottom going into the top.
I mean Walmart with Sam Walton with a pickup truck,
a high school education in a storefront, the biggest retailer
(39:46):
in the world today, and they're one of my partners,
and I love Walmart. Ups. Jim Carrey Bicycle, He met
Henry Ford. They got together and while a UPS. Forget
the guy's name at Smith I think it was FedEx.
The two guys who created Goldman Sacks literally guy named
Goldman and a guy named Sacks. They couldn't get a
(40:07):
job on Wall Street, so they decided to go door
to door and sell their own products. And they built
what we now call the institutions called goman Secon Bank
of America. One guy, you know, after the fires in
San Francisco, create started lending the small business. This is
the history of capitalism. This is the history of America.
The bottom to the top, not top on top of
(40:28):
the top. And systems don't crater from the bottom, from
the top down, Joel. They created from the bottom end.
So we're at this inflection point on the two hundred
and fifty dinniversary of America what I call the Third Reconstruction,
where everything seems to have reached a near breaking point.
The environment is a little funky. Politics are funky, race
(40:50):
relations are funky. The mobility is funky. The ladder's not
only broken, it's missing. Somebody stole the ladder. Right now,
you're stuck at the bottom and you resent it. And
now when your outfloaks, he's your inflows and your overhead.
It becomes your downfall.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
And this system requires cooperation, requires trust, requires faith, requires belief.
Now it's the spirituality. Now requires confidence, it requires love,
It requires me caring about my neighbor.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
This system, there's not enough police. If you're in the
city of LA and I grew up there. There's not
enough police seven million people, Joe. Ten thousand police officers
with a side with a side arm and one pair
of handcuffs is not safety. Ten thousand police officers against
six million people. If the city comes unwound, and it did,
and with the Roddy King riots in nineteen ninety two,
(41:42):
by the way, and police chief there are Gates then
told the.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
LAPD to exit the city. He's afraid for his officers.
And when you had the what happened in the New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
You have four times more police officers per capital than LA,
but twice as less safe because all ruler law had decoupled.
There's not enough please law enforcement, military. There's not enough
directives to protect us from each other. If we don't believe,
if we believe, the bets off and the bet exists.
(42:16):
If I work hard, played by the rules, do the
right thing, keep my nose clean, pay my taxes, respectful
for my elders, I honor my citizenship. I'm gonna get
a reasonable shot of success or failure on my own merit.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
I hope you followed that.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I've never said that publicly, but that's what I believe
that that's the bet that we have with each other.
And it's so this country's not a country. She's an idea, Joel.
She's an idea, and we have to keep remaking it
every day. So this is a fight for our democracy.
I don't mean fight fight. I mean this is a struggle,
a recommitment to our democracy, our sense of fair play,
(42:48):
a software upgrade on capitalism.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And I think that it's.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Right on time. Rainbow's only follow storms. You cannot have
a rainbow without a storm first. If we do this right,
and I believe we will. My middle name is hope.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
We put the ladder back down into the soil.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
We start doing internshipsternships again and giving corporations tax credits.
This is in the book for internships, for apprenticeships, training
people in AI, training existing workers like Walmart's doing. They're
not firing their workers, they're training existing workers in artificial
intelligence upscaling them for And I believe that's a smart bet.
By the way, you're gonna need employees, You're gonna need
(43:26):
customers who can buy your goods.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
I said that earlier, good.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
For the business, good for the employee, good for the
future bottom line.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Right, So we need corporations to get tax credits for
sponsoring a school, sponsoring an entrepreneurship club. Corporation is a
sponsor to invest in a small business. We have to
use a taxing system. Has been so successful on home
ownership as an example, and so successful on philanthropy as example.
Let's use it as a way to get the top
(43:52):
to incentivize them to invest in the bottom. They're not
going to do it just because it's the right thing
to do or good will. If you want to go
all to that. You know what did Warren Buffer say,
when people are greedy, be afraid. When people are we're
afraid be greedy, and so so folks are just going
to go bunker up at the top. But give them
a tax, speak to their greed, speak to their self interest.
(44:13):
I don't mean greed, speak to their self interest, and
give them, give them incentives to invest in the least
of these God's children, and you'll see a resurge in
the explosion of innovation, of creation of an entrepreneurship, of
new businesses, things we've never even thought about, which, by
the way, those new businesses are going to hire people
as they grow.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
There you go, Joe, more new jobs right that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
No one thought about, and boom, now that economy goes
from I think that we have a shot in a
decade to go from thirty trillion to sixty trillion. You
heard it here first America. Now we get this wrong,
and we keep obsessing about wanting to go back to
the supposedly the great old days. I'm not quite sure
when this was a great old What days were the
great old days in America? Somebod can please tell me.
(44:54):
But anyway, what I'm allowed to say is not political,
it's not racial. It's just blunt. There are not enough successful,
college educated white men to drive GDP Gross domestic Product
for the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
I like math. It doesn't have an opinion. That's a
melody housing quote.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Now I want every white man I know to be successful.
I needed to be successful because of his success is
my success, as I said earlier.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
But there's just not enough of them. And that that
has not statistically been true at any time in American
history until now.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
We need women are a third of the economy, Joe.
In nineteen seventy two, a woman, a white woman, couldn't
couldn't have a bank account in nineteen seventy two, Joe
her our mothers couldn't get a loan unless our unless
the husband's co signed it, not eighteen seventy two, nineteen
seventy two.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
So luckily we made the right bet and gave women
rights and.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Opportunities and they and now they're a third of the economy,
eight to eight to ten trillion dollars. We need to
we need to empower the bottom of the pyramid. Poor
whites is more for whites, and poor anybody else, neighbor,
mur and Indians, African Americans, Asians, Indians, middle class, whites,
middle class, everybody. We need to put that ladder back
down and raise it back up with everybody in mind,
(46:12):
and watch GDP grow. Otherwise we're gonna be speaking Mandarin
in twenty years. And I said yes, I said it,
and I meant it. If we don't get this right,
our our enemy is not our next door neighbor. The
enemy's not some black dude or white dude, or Republican
or Democrat. Knock it off. Russia, China and North Korea
wants your way of life. And they can't win in
(46:33):
a fair fight. They can only win, and we shoot
ourselves in the in the foot where we're doing a
pretty good job of it. Everybody in the world wants
to be an American, but Americans. So that's uh, that's
my capitalist call saying, I gotta go.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
I love it. I love it, man, I hope it's John.
This has been a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Thank you for
joining me. Where where can how the money listeners find
out about your new book?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
By the way, just type in John O'Brien and Capitalism
for All. You can find it at Barnes and Noble,
at Walmart and Amazon. It's already on pre pre order
number one on Amazon and category you can go. You
can go to Wiley Publishing and go to Briankreu Ventures,
go to Operation Hoping you buy from Operation Open and
get a charitable contribution.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
All right, well, we'll link to you in the show
notes as well. John, thank you so much for joining
me today.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Joel God bless you, man. Appreciate you. You got somebout
to meet. Nobody else has can.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
My big takeaway from this conversation be that I'm inspired,
because I think it is. And in some ways John
speaks like a politician, but in so many ways he
doesn't because he says what he actually what he actually thinks,
but he speaks in a way I wish I guess
more politicians would speak, and and especially in an age
(47:39):
where we're so segmented as well, I'm part part of
this group or this tribe over here, and John lays
out what is a compelling vision I would say for
our country to embrace the idea of free markets and
entrepreneurship and and and building something that can benefit to
(48:00):
other people. So just there's a ton more questions by
the way, I had for John, and I wish we
could have gotten too. Maybe I'll have to bring him
back on the podcast at some point in the future,
but I think, yeah, big takeaway. First big takeaway is
ultimately that I think this is aspirational and inspirational and
we need that sometimes right, to remember that we're fortunate
(48:24):
to live in a place where we can go start something.
I talked to friends, talk to a friend who's from
another country, and he said, oh my gosh, to start
a business, to start a little grocery store. Do you
know how much oversight, how much we would have had
to prove to the government, essentially in order to even
(48:44):
get a tiny grocery store started. He was like, it
was impossible here in this country, you can start a
small grocery store in your neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
And by the.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Way, those are back. Small grocery stores are back. They're
making a dent, they're serving their local communities, they're serving
high quality items that cost more than they do at
a traditional grocery store most of the time. But people
are like, you know what, these are locally sourced items,
and so I'm more than happy to pay. It's fascinating
to see this uptick in small grocery stores. Well, guess
what in the United States, you right there, whoever you
(49:15):
are listening to, when if you had the druthers, the idea,
a little bit of capital to get started, you could
go do this yourself. And so what John is pointing
to is I think quite true. Still in this country,
we still live in a time where it is possible,
(49:35):
it is incredible, is very possible, maybe more possible than ever,
to start your own business and to succeed and to
not depend on someone else creating a job for you.
And I'm not saying it's easy, but it is quite possible.
But this actually, in some ways, this conversation brought me
back to our conversation we had with John Mackey, the
(49:58):
founder of Whole Foods, talking about grocery stores, who is
an advocate for something called conscious capitalism, and John Hope
Bryant very much in that same space. I think one
of the other things that John said that I wrote
down when he said it was you can do well
and do good. And I think that is such a
great message, and I think it is incredibly true that
(50:19):
you can build something that is not only good for you,
good for your family, good for wealth building, but it's
good for the community, it's good for the people that
you employ. And this is where and this is where
I think the term capitalism has really gotten commandeered, and
free markets might be just a better term to use
that is actually more on the nose. And then also
(50:42):
is just it has less baggage associated with it. But
capitalism for all, that's something I can get behind. And
the more we can each of us do our own
part to build good things where we live and to
ensure that people who might not have as much access
(51:04):
to the ladders that they need if we can help
be that ladder, just like John is with this nonprofit
Operation Hope, and he's trying to help people with financial
literacy with budget management.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That nonprofit serves a ton of people, all Lah Money
Management International.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
The companies that we talk about the nonprofits who are
doing good work out there, Operation Hope is another one.
So John isn't just right doing the good stuff and
making money so that he can splurge and live his life.
He is also he is a part of that process
of putting the ladder down for other people, which we
so desperately need right now. So thank you as always
(51:44):
for listening. We'll put links in the show notes to
some of the resources that we're mentioned, including John's new
book Hope you check it out. And of course thank
you for being a part of this show and the
hod of Money community. I really appreciate it. Until next time,
Best friend out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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