January 30, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode, John Hope Bryant shares tech tools that will simply building your business and streamline your processes.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Ho'bryant, a production
of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo Yo.
This is John Hope Bryant. This is Money and Wealth
podcast series. I am honored in twenty twenty five to
(00:23):
bring you another exciting episode. This is going to be
a bit of a masterclass I give you today. I'm
calling in, I'm phoning this in. I'm recording this live
from Poland. That's right halfway around the world, and it's
appropriate that I'm doing this from Poland. I'm actually here,
(00:44):
Schaefer and I are here is commemorating with Van Jones
and Robert Smith and others, the only invited delegation that
includes African Americans. Oddly enough are interestingly enough, should I
say for the eightieth of liberation of Auschwitz the Jews
(01:04):
who were murdered here eighty years ago in World War Two?
This is commemorating the liberation from auschwitzen God bless the
soul's loss here. But when I'm on travel, I've got
to run my businesses. While I'm doing well, I have
to do good too. In order to do good, I
(01:24):
have to do well first, and so I have to
find a way to continue to run my operations. I've
got five divisions of John O'Briant Enterprises. You know me
most from my work at Operation the Hope, which is
the largest financial literacy coaching organization in America. Fifteen hundred offices,
(01:49):
give or take in almost every state in the United States.
We have thousands of volunteers, we have collaborative partnership offices.
We have four hundred full time employees in all of
our operations. You have Operation Hope, You've got Brianger Adventures,
(02:10):
You've got brig Adventures Advisors, Brian Go Digital ETCA, et cetera,
et cetera, and then all the projects with an Operation Open.
I'm going to do a masterclass at some point on
how to run an effective nonprofit and how to build
one from scratch. Let me know if you like that idea,
by the way, how to build one from scratch, how
(02:31):
to to take an idea and turn it into and
operating entity, How to take an operating entity and turn
it into a successful enterprise. How to take a successful
enterprise that's boutique, our small business turning into a boutique
boutique successful enterprise that's been with a reputation, but it is,
(02:51):
you know, basically local, and how to take something local
and turning it into something that is known regionally doing
is regionally and nationally, et cetera. And how to turn
that too from a personality driven the activity into an
institution that is an upcoming podcast. You tell me whether
(03:14):
you like that. By the way, I'll do the same
thing for a for profit, but I wanted to start
with something that is a bit of a mystery with people,
which is a nonprofit. But the larger issues, whether it's
my real estate stuff, or whether it's my nonprofit financial
literacy stuff, or whether it's my you know whatever, we're
writing books and and speaking and et cetera, et cetera,
(03:39):
how do I do it? And people like how do
you do this? And then you you know, you have
a family, a personal life, how do you do all
this stuff? Well, I'm going to unpack some of that today,
and today no pun intended to unpack them and tell
you about also how I pack. I will put a
couple of photos in of this actual photos of actually
(04:02):
my suitcase on this trip to give you some sense
of literally how I pack. But I'm going to most
importantly tell you about my tech tools. People will tell
you to be successful, they don't tell you how. So
part of my masterclass in twenty twenty five is breaking
down the how. This series, this session is my tech Tools,
(04:24):
John Bryant's tech Tools, the how of how I do
all this stuff and not go crazy. Somebody told me
a couple of years ago, and it's completely true that
if you don't have technology in the center of your
business or enterprise or nonprofit or government agency or whatever
(04:46):
it is you're running. If you don't have technology in
the center that I even believe in your personal life,
then you're actually not succeeding. You're falling behind. I'll say
that again. If you don't have technology, if technology is
not centric, centered in the center of whatever it is
you're doing. And I don't mean just having a iPhone
(05:09):
or whatever, the Samsung phone, whatever it is you use.
I use iPhone, I use Apple products. But I don't
just mean having a smartphone and treating it like it's
a dumb device. I don't mean just having a phone
and sending an email to somebody, or sending a text
to somebody, or making a phone call. That's not what
I'm talking about. If you don't have technology and use
it intelligently, use it smartly, and center that root that
(05:32):
in the center of your life. As a growing twenty
first century business, enterprise, entrepreneur or doer, you're actually not
going forward, you're going backwards. In real time, You've got
to be organized. It could be said that half a
success is showing up and having good habits. Showing up
(05:54):
and having good habits, it's time to take out your
notepad and begin to take some notes. So let's go.
I'll do the packing piece as a bit of a
bonus here, how I, how do I travel? What do
I use? Let's get into the technology and how I
(06:15):
do it beyond the magic soft of how I think
and how I lead, which are value propositions our assets
that I have in my institutions have because leadership is
that outlier, unique asset that defines everything. And you have leaders,
(06:36):
you have managers, you have tacticians, you have doers. Those
are different categories of executives that you will have in
your organization. You give somebody a title does not mean
that they're a leader, by the way, But let's assume
for the moment you've got the right team in place.
Many of my people be with me for twenty or
thirty years. My chief of staff Rachel Dove has been
(06:58):
with me for thirty two years. I make sure it's
my second employee when I founded out Brian Group Ventures
and Operation Hope Lands Triggs building me for I think
going on thirty years. Mary Harrison going on, you know,
close to thirty years. Jenney Roscoe over twenty years and
goes on, goes on, goes on. So most of my people,
(07:20):
if you're if you're a newbie with me, you building
me for a decade. So you've got to have a
special forces team. It's been said, and I agree that
eighty percent of important work is done by twenty percent
of your people. Eighty percent of important work is done
by twenty percent of your people. But if you're going
(07:42):
to have by and then the other people just complain
and make your life miserable. But anyway, being an employer,
oftentimes the babies that are actually have great employees, So
I'm not complaining about by people. But even if you
have a special forces team, which's dinner different from having
a General Army special forces team, no different than special
(08:02):
forces in the military who has advanced weaponry to go
be dropped behind enemy lines so they can have an
outsized impact being outnumbered and outgunned. They've got to have
the you know, the element of surprise, and they have
to have superior training and be able to outsmart their adversary.
They're playing you know, chant and everybody else is playing checkers.
(08:26):
But they have to have you know, technology in their
again example, the example weaponry, which is far superiod in
those that they are coming up against. I have technology.
I have weaponry. It's called technology tools that allow me
and my special forces team to operate with outsized effectiveness.
(08:50):
Because even though we have four hundred people, it feels
like somebody told me that we have forty thousand people.
I don't know if they said four thousand, orto that
you get the point. It feels like ten x or
twenty x or one hundred x of what we have
in human capital actually on our payroll because we've been
so effective. Okay, so start writing this down. You don't
(09:15):
have to use these tools, but I think you should
use something like it. So the first thing I do,
and I have this graph, and I'm going to put
this graph somewhere on the video version of this podcast
so people can see it. I'm going to put this
graph in, but it's by JSB formula for achievement. So vision, mission, strategy, plan,
(09:44):
business plan, execution tactics to dos to done's assessment readjustment
for a grade back division. Now I haven't gotten to
the technology tools, per se. This is the technology is
(10:06):
how I use mind mapping, which is the first piece
of technology software that I'm gonna suggest that you get
for yourself. I don't care which software you use. There's
a simple one that you can use called mind le
It's very easy. In my n D L Y, there's
my thoughts. There's another one I've used before. What I
(10:28):
use at the moment is mind Meister. Mind Meister. It's
German mind mapping, and I like it because it's collaborative
and sophisticated and all that stuff. You can put links
in it. And I do a mind map for almost
(10:48):
everything important in my life. I start with the mind map.
And what you're doing in the mind map is getting
all the gello and all of the wiring, uh, you know,
the all the wiring of thoughts. I it is going
through your head at a million miles and miles and
miles an hour. You dry down the street, all these ideas,
so we to organize it, and you give yourself a headache.
Take all that stuff, clear the cobwebs out of your head,
(11:10):
and put it on a mind map. Literally, it is
a mapping of your mind as relates to the idea
at hand. So the first thing I do is take
my vision and make it real for my team, because
they can't get in my head. If they even they could,
they may not be able to understand what the heck's
going on there. I've been told them, just a different
(11:33):
kind of guy. I'm operating on different juice. I operate
three four times faster and everybody else when they get
up in the morning, right down the street and around
the blocks, you know I've finished when they're starting. And
I'm also just I'm just I'm operinging a different bit rate.
But I'm also maybe operating. I'm just thinking differently than
(11:57):
everybody else. I'm at thirty thousand foot and they're at
you know, three thousand feet or three hundred feet. Because
they're tacticals. Most people are managers. They're just trying to
get stuff done on their to do list in front
of them. It's very different from executing against a vision,
and the Bible says, well, there is no vision that
people perish. So you have to have a vision. You
have to be disciplined about keeping it. So I have
(12:20):
mind maps, is my first suggestion for you. It works
in my business life. And here's a success hack. Is
a cheat she can give you now. It also works
in your personal life. Your personalize needs to be organized
just like your business life. Use mind maps to map
out a project, an initiative of your goals for twenty
(12:44):
twenty five, whatever it is, a new startup, business, restructuring,
whatever it is. You know you're going to send your
kids to college. You want to map that out over
the next five years. How you're going to pay for it.
Start with a mind map. Okay, so here's my map
for achievement of anything. Again, I would say one more time, vision,
(13:05):
what am I doing? Why? Mission? Why am I doing
that thing? Like, what's the purpose behind that? Uh strategy? Okay,
so my mission to go back to my missions. You know,
one of my missions is to un is to unleash
untapped human potential at scale. It's one of my missions. So, uh,
my vision might be the change of the world in
(13:26):
my lifetime. My mission might wait to do that is
to unleash untapped human potential at scale, to create an
economic infrastructure for underserved America, and so on and so forth.
And so you can look through my vision, see my
mission and vision might also be to extend on the
third reconstruction, or do the work of the third reconstruction,
which was the work that maybe doctor King and ambassor
(13:48):
Andrew Young we would be doing. Uh and doctor King
was still alive today, Andrew Young is very much alive,
or or if Frederick Douglas Nabam Lincoln was still alive today,
that was the first reconstruction in the second what I
believe this is a third reconstruction. So my vision might
be big, you know, and audacious, which is to you know, X,
(14:09):
Y and Z whatever that big bode here at big
Bode audacious idea is that's your vision for yourself. My
vision's this crazy big. Your vision might be to become
a business owner or have financial freedom or whatever. It's all.
Everybody's vision is different. Your mission, right, is a bit
(14:30):
more tangible. Right, And you've heard just now what my
mission is, right, and your mission should align with your
vision and then your strategy. Okay, how are you going
to go about this? Like what route are you going
to take to get to this objective? And then you
have a business plan. Okay, how's that? Strategy and admission
(14:50):
and vision get codified and run the ground. PhDs are good,
PhDs are better. Then you have execution. That is what
it sounds like. You know, there's nothing better than getting
(15:12):
stuff done. So if there's an end of the story,
can we please start there. Let's get about the business
of getting it done. And don't let the perfect be
the death of the good. Sometimes you just need to
oftentimes just get out there and do it. You can always,
you know, fix it, repair it, upgraded, change it while
you're out there. But don't wait for things to be
perfect before you start something. You'll never start anything. Tactics,
(15:34):
it is against it. Most people are there are tactical
in their life. Most people getting up and that's all
they're doing is just tactical stuff, and they're urgent. Is
crowding out the importance in their life. They can't figure
out why they're not making any progress because busyness is
different from business to dos again it is when it
says again from tactics, tactical is Okay, how do I
(15:54):
achieve this project or this objective today that my boss,
my vision has given me or maybe it is your
boss and to do's right or that's what they sound like.
And then literally you want to have a software for todos.
I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Two dons again,
you want to confirm you did the toadoos assessment? How
(16:17):
are you going to evaluate whether you were effective at
the pieces? I just articulated vision, mission, strategy, business plants,
Hugan tactics to dos to dons. What's your assessment with that?
Be honest? Did you screw up? If so, how, where,
when and how it went? And why? Readjustment based on
(16:37):
your assessment? Right? So yeah, readjustment and then give yourself
a software grade, a mental software grade. Okay, how do
I now take what I've learned and make myself better tomorrow?
You should go to bed tonight. You should get up
in the morning smarter and wiser, more fine than you were,
a better person even than you were when you went
(16:58):
to bed last night, because you've got a new mindset
or refined thought process, and you've got some sleep, and
then you're gonna give yourself a software grade, and then
you're gonna come back to vision the next day, and
everything you do in that day has to align with
vision or why are you doing it? You can waste
my money occasionally. You can't waste my time. I'm ruthless
(17:19):
about my time. Out Let anybody waste my time. I
can waste my time. You can't. Okay, So now let's
get into the tools to achieve the things that I
just said on this graph. Okay, and I've had this this,
I've been using this graph for two plus decades. Right,
So mind mapping software. I told you I used mind Master,
(17:40):
I suggested Mindly, have suggested I thoughts as other alternatives,
but use what you like. There's literally hundreds of software
that are available. To find the one that you really enjoy.
Then I have I use From there, I use something
called Confluence. Well in truth, I have a note taking
(18:06):
app it's really for crazy people called Obsidian. It sounds
like obsessed, but it's Obsidian, and it uses a technology
or an approach called markdowns, which I won't get into
in this video. But this is essentially your second brain. Okay,
this is the second brain. This is you talking to you.
If you can keep one hundred things in your head.
This allows you to keep one hundred thousand things in
(18:29):
your computer. And it's just it's it's just you talking
to you. Nobody. No one sees my Obsidian notes but me,
So just look into it. I call it my second brain.
But you need a note taking app. So you take
this vision, this this mind map, and now you've got
to make some comments yourself about how are you going
to strategize to get this done? And then I've got
(18:53):
this Confluence software right, which is documents storage, cloud based
document and knowledge sharing with your team whoever's working with
you on this stuff, and an active collaboration. You can
have twenty thirty forty fifty people collaborating working with you
(19:16):
on the business plan, the strategy plan, whatever it is.
You're working on the project at the same time on
a document that's live that came from you, you know,
consolidation of your note taking which was which was birth
through your vision. Okay. So now I've got you from
(19:38):
vision right and mind mapping. Then I've taken you to
note taking with Obsidian, okay, or any note taking app
you like. Don't you don't have to use your subsidian.
I'm just giving you ideas of what I use, and
then I have stepped into a suite of software that
(20:02):
I use, the first of which is Confluence Confluence, and
Confluence is this collaborative tool. You don't have to use Confluence.
You're gonna use whatever you like. This is just what
I use, and it is not I outgrow a lot
of things, but I have not outgrown this. And that's
(20:27):
saying a lot for this software, but I have not
yet outgrown it. I also use ever Note to store
things that are one offs. So ever Note is cloud based.
And you know, if you've got your birth certificate, you
know you're gonna need that. At some point you're gonna
be flying around somewhere. You're gonna need your birth certificate.
(20:47):
It won't be won't be to get to your house,
get to your safe. You're gonna be in Nebraska or
someplace you need your birth certificate. And you don't want
to be walking around with all this stuff. I used
to go to Maui on a retreat twice a year,
and literally I have this sixty seventy pound bag that
I throw at my shoulder. All these books I wanted
to read when I was a mall and retreat and
(21:08):
now just take my iPad. All my books are loaded here,
so you try to digitize as much as you can.
I hate paper. There's nothing. There's not a piece of
paper that I use in the course of the day anymore.
Now I used to use nothing but paper once upon
a time. Everything I use now is digital encrypted, which
means it has a deep security application to it, and
(21:32):
cloud based with encryption, which means it's hard for people
to basically steal your stuff. Ever. Note again, a birth certificate,
I only careful. I tell you what to put in here,
and I want to take it because I want you
blaming me if it doesn't work out. But it's one off.
(21:52):
Receipts warranties is the easy stuff. Copies of important things
go in every note. I then use from Confluence, I
use Trello, and Trello is a lovely, wonderful, visually stimulating
(22:15):
program that allows you to do project management. And the
collaboration with Confluence has now moved into project management. How
you're going to get this thing. You're going to run
it down ground to get it down. And so I
have project boards, organizational and project boards and have cards
in those projects that take this big vision and crunch it,
(22:38):
crunch it, crunch it down to manageable steps. Right. And
then we won't get into this today. But it's something
called GIRA j I r A that is deep project management. Well,
we won't get in that today. That's a bridge too far.
I want to give you head I want to give
you a headache, but project management, you know. And I
used to use another software before TrailO called Airtable. And
(23:02):
then one note is on Microsoft. But one note is
note taking in the Microsoft as a whole suite. So
there's a whole Microsoft version of what I'm telling you.
But there's two sides of my organization. There's the hunter
side of my organization. I'm the hunt. I'm the chief Hunter,
going and get it, going, to get the business, going
to get the you know, the relationships, the joint ventures,
(23:25):
the securing the future, closing the deal, you know, launching
new projects and products. But hunting, that's what I do.
There's a hunting group, there's hunter organization. Every organization is
a hunter, skinner and a cook. Okay, the hunter that's me.
(23:45):
Call it business acquisition. Keep that simple skinner, that's analysis
and administration. Right. My chief of staff is my chief
of staff. And she also is the chief administrative officer
for our companies, right, so she is very high level
executive and she's administering. And my chief financial officer is
also part of the Skinner Skinner group. Right, So the
(24:09):
Hunter Skinner this Cook. So the guy who is in
charge of my products and my programs, he's delivering on
my promises. That's the Cook. So the Skinner and Cook
is a known You need of particularly you get organies
as big as mine as mine is. We have you know,
(24:30):
US one hundred standardization. You need policies and procedures. You
need dependability, You need a software backbone that you know
won't break. You need standardization. Uh, this is the general
army stuff, right and this get this wrong and your
whole thing freezes up. You cannot be it cannot be
(24:51):
based on our personality. So we use Microsoft for that
full disclosure. But the Hunter side of the house we
use io Apple products for that and these customized apps
that I have decided we're best in class over time.
Because I'm really an underground tech geek. I don't know
(25:11):
if you knew that I'm really a techie. I've run
around with computers in my head have you ever seen
me walking through the airport or whatever. If you see
me sitting down with any free time, it's good chance
I got my iPad app. I might have my app
iPad out and a little magnetic because max safe allows
things to stick to the to the iPad and stick
(25:32):
to your eye. Stick your iPhone there too. You might
see me have my iPhone up, iPad out with a
floating keyboard and a magnetic elegant magnetic device next to
the keyboard where I put my iPhone, so everything is
I've got field of view. Sometimes if you you might
see me out, I'll have my Mac, my iPad connected
(25:57):
to my Mac, and my phone connected to my Mac also,
and I've got three in that example, three screens of
work going at the same time, three independent screens of work.
But that's another video for another time, dealing with efficiency.
Coming back to the tool. So we're now at Trello again.
(26:21):
I've used other products. I've explained to you now that
there's a getting side of the house, the hunter side.
That's me and I've been taking it from zero to
one hundred million dollars a year in activity. Then there's
a skinner in the cook side of the house, and
we have a four star Sharing Navigator reading, which I
do walk through when we do the other video on
(26:42):
how to build a nonprofit, which essentially means we're like
a four We're like a triple A bond rating on
Wall Street, which is extraordinarily good. So we have a
fast running organization, fast growing organization, but also stabilized, conservatively managed.
We've got all the ratios and numbers, so they call
it KPIs keep performing indicators are in all the right
(27:04):
places where your bankers and your financiers, your backers, your
partners want to see those numbers. Your donors if you're
a nonprofit, want to see that most of your money's
going to helping people. You need technology to keep track
of all that. You can't keep track of it in
your heads. Impossible. World's moving too fast these days. So
(27:24):
by the way, I'm not doing any notes here. I'm
just talking to you from literally not even my memory.
This is this is just my flow. My intuition is
I'm talking to you organically, giving you my heart and
my soul of how I run my enterprise. So hopefully
you're finding this very valuable and hopefully you're taking lots
of notes. So we've gotten down to project management, which
(27:47):
is where a lot of stuff happens, and I project
manage everything. Right, You've got to understand again, the PhDs
are good, but PhDs are even better, or at least
equally as good. You can't just have a vision. Don't
let the perfect become of the death of the goods.
You get it half a success as showing up and
having good habits. And I show up every day, and
(28:09):
my good habits are aided by this technology that I'm
trying to get your hip on. And so Trello is
really big in my life, and I look at it
several times a day, certainly in the morning, and I
do a lot of left bright analytical work in the morning,
and I do right brain creative work late at night.
(28:33):
So then I go from Trello to Slack right slack
And by the way, cheat sheet here, Slack, Trello and
Confluence are owned by the same company, and you can,
when you get really good at this, you can jump
from one app to the other inside of the app,
never having to leave. So talk about being effective well.
(28:54):
Slack is used for essentially for confidential, encrypted targeted text
you're testing along a channel of activity. So you have
a Slack channel for administration, a Slack channel this is
if you're running a company for marketing, a Slack channel
for finance and making this up, a Slack channel for
product development, a Slack channel for customer service. You decide
(29:16):
what's the Slack channel, name is, what the topic is.
I used to do Slack channels even by micro projects.
In fact, to this day, we still have a Slack
channel for every trip that I take, like the trip
I'm one now has its dedicated Slack channel, And people
who are in Slack channel A may not be in
Slack channel C and D and F. These are different
projects that require different skills and different clearances, security clearances
(29:41):
and all that stuff because we're dealing with confidential information
and so on and so forth. So Slack is a
wonderful I know the guy who made it, breat guy,
by the way, and I think he sold it to
a at I get the name right at Lesian, which
is which owns uh these three softwares that I just mentioned,
(30:08):
and I'm encouraging you to to to to get serious
about looking to them as as as options in your life.
Your ad Lesian A t L A s S I
A N is the owner. It's a Nordic area company
in Europe. Uh. They own Slack, they own Trello and
(30:31):
their own confluence. Okay, so now we got it down
to texting and back and forth. And these are non
urgent texts. Right then you have regular texting on your
phone for things that are like right now. But do not,
please hear me, do not try to manage your business
by texting. That is, I noticed that, I know that
(30:51):
this generation loves texting. You cannot manage your business by texting.
You got a text, gets lost, you don't know where
it wents, you don't know know what you said. Do
not that. In fact, texting is actually there's a lot
of risk these days of countries and companies trying to
rob you and defraud you by going through your text
(31:12):
messaging or grabbing your text messages before it gets to
the cloud. It's all kind of risk with just doing
raw texting. You want to do texting on a platform
if you can that's again encrypted, something like WhatsApp. There
are other platforms, but again for non urgent stuff Slack
and never put pass codes all that stuff in a
(31:35):
text message. By the way, case in case you want
some unsecured network and somebody stills gets that information, they
can take your whole identity. So I'm now given you
a range of tools that I use. This is these
(32:00):
things that I use. I also use other twos, and
I use Salesforce for my again, this is the non
special force a side of my operations. And I use Podio,
which is that's not important today, but that's how I
talk to my employees and team members. My general army
is how I talk to them and how they talk
to each other. That's tied to the Microsoft side of
(32:22):
my house. That's another video for another time. So these
are some examples of how I use these technologies. And
I'll take a vision from a mind map, I'll drag
it to the ground with my note taking in Obsidian.
I'll then take all of my notes from Obsidian. I'll
consolidate those notes into something I don't mind now the
(32:43):
publics of my team seeing. I'll then throw that into
Confluence and make it a word document. Well, I'm thrown
the Confluence and make it a work, a document we
can work on, and I encourage my team to come
and help me refine that thought process to turn it
from vision into a business plan. Then once I've got
(33:05):
a new business plan, I then converted into a word
document and filed away in Dropbox. It's another subset app
I use, similar to Evernoe. It's not primary, but it's
a place where I store some source documents. Then once
I've done it with Confluence, then I go into typically
into Trello set. Trello's a whole another thing all but
(33:26):
can do it podcast just on Trello. But I've given
you enough to what your appetite if you're interested, And
that's where I do project management. Again, Gira is a
way to plug in also on Leasian to plug in
to Trello to do deep project management. We won't talk
about that today. And then Slack again targeted text messaging
(33:48):
and communication. But do not try to manage enterprises from Slack.
Don't try to get Slack to do more than it's
designed to do. And then I told you you can
use regular texting, but I think you should do be
encrypted for right now. Something's urgent, need to talk to
you right now sort of stuff, and take big ideas
(34:09):
and break them down into small, actionable concepts that you
can track. And then in Trello. I use things like
in Trello and a card, I use it to do
I love my favorite thing is the favorite sub app
and Trello is a to do list. So every car,
every card in Trello, a card is where you have
(34:33):
an activity, has a to do list. So I might have,
you know, fifty cards on a Trello board, and each
one of them has its own individual to do lists,
and I go through there and I check those boxes.
It's a very good feeling to feel like you check
something and got something done. I check it myself. You'd
(34:54):
also do to do lists in calendars and confluence with
your team. So I hope this has been helpful as
a starter set on how you can have two people
and look like and feel like you've got twenty to
have five or ten people, it feel like you've got
fifty or one hundred to have my case, four hundred
(35:19):
and feel like you have four thousand, maybe even forty
thousand employees, not forty thousand, four thousand employees because you're
just that tight. How do you I can't The one
thing I can't manufacture is more time, right, and I'm
ruthless about my time. How do you create more time
you cheat technology. If you're very smart and using technology
(35:43):
to make you more efficient, it allows you to be
more present. That's what I called it. Being a present
a gift. And there's no yesterday and there's no tomorrow, right,
those are illusions. All you have is this moment make
and you want to maximize this moment. You want to
be completely present in this moment, which means you want
to be organized. The Bible even talks of being you know,
(36:05):
to organization and being neat and clean, So you want
to be organized at your mind. The clutter out your mind,
which is why you want to use mind maps. Get
all that clutter and the dust and those all the
main ideas and sticky those in your brain. Is clear
it all out and put it in one, two, ten,
fifty mind maps, doesn't matter. These are your mind maps.
(36:26):
Share the mind maps to your team and then as
needed basis to help them understand how you are thinking.
And then and then and then run every idea down
to ground in up you call it a fancy to
do list if you want, but a project plan. And
then there's budgeting software like you know, there's Excel or
(36:46):
you can I use Excel to do budgets, but you
can use budgeting software like Quicken or quick Books. You
should definitely have a budget and budgeting software. But that's
not what this is about. I'm out of running budgets
of myself for myself, I'm running. I'm now working more
on the businesses than in the businesses uh where I
used to do have every task and in those cases
(37:08):
when I was just starting out in business, your best
friend is a budget. If you if you love what
you're doing, you need a budget. If you love your
your wife, your wife loves you, then you should have
a budget because a budget is a way so sure
that whatever you're doing can be sustained, because if your
outflow sets your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall.
(37:29):
I can do this forever of helping to unpack how
I use these technologies. Won't you leave some comments when
you when when you where you hear this, If you're
able to comment, or either you're you're listening to this
on iHeart or wherever you listen to your podcasts, then
make sure you go over to the social media platforms
and leave me a note saying John, I heard you
(37:52):
on your podcast this week and here's my question for you.
If you want me to unpack this, I'm happy to
answer very Specif the questions how to go from nothing
to something, they just tell you go do it, well,
you're confused, and it's what you don't know that you
don't know that is killing you. But you think you know,
and Where're supposed to learn all this stuff. So I'm
just giving you. I'm giving you cheat sheets and shortcuts
(38:13):
to and life hacks success hacks, because I'm already I've
already succeeded in. This is not speculation. If it's worked
for me to work for you now. If you're lazy,
if you won't, if you're not consistent, if you don't
have good habits, if you're not going to do this
every day. I work out every day fifteen minutes or
more when I get up in the morning. There's no excuses.
The first thing I do stretch and workout, and this
(38:34):
is a version of stretching and working out again, showing up,
being consistent and good habits. If you're not going to
show up, you're not gonna be consistent. If you're gonna
do a Tuesday and Friday and the next Monday and
then skip a week like you're going like going to
the gym or using that treadmill that has clothes on it.
Then don't even bother doing this right. You can still
(38:55):
do the mind mapping part that will help, but you're
not going to get any momentum you build again. You
need to you build wealth by compounding. It's not just
financial wealth, it's the wealth of ideas. It's the wealth.
It's building an organization that is valuable. And you need momentum.
You need consistency. People. You know that they can count
(39:17):
you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be the
same as Monday was. And then the next Monday when
you come back from your break, there you go again
being consistent. Then they can literally bank on you, and
they're willing to lead in, lead into you. Okay, let
me give you this bonus. I could again this technology
stuff I could talk about all day and don't even
(39:39):
get me back into how I used to roll around
with computers back when it was not in vogue as
a kid, and I used to have I had a
radio shack computer set that I had as a kid.
I had a compact computer that weighed fifty pounds that
was called a portable computer back then fifty to seventy
five pounds. I had one computer that I would go
on a plane with coach seats back then cheap coach
(40:03):
seats and on airlines that don't exist anymore, and I
would have I would take the tray and God blessed
people who are sitting next to me, I apologize with you.
You're one of those who sitting next to me. And
I have this. I had this beautiful carrying case that
was leather, and then the front of it would flip
(40:24):
down and that would be the keyboards on the on
the port book computer I was using that weighed fifty pounds,
maybe that would weigh thirty five pounds, okay, the keyboard,
and then on the other side it would flip out
and that would be the printer. This is in my
coach seat now. And then on the top I'd flip
that up and that'd be Oh. That was a fax
(40:48):
machine that remember the plain paper faxes and also the
facts paper that curled up. If you were if you
had some money, you had plain paper facts. But this
is generation realized where a fax machine is. Anyway, I
had all that in a portable computer that I that
I yeah, I took over the whole row in coach
(41:13):
when I was flying, and that I would plug that
into the wall into the port in my seat, or
I had some battery power also. That was you know,
and I'd run my businesses and all the devices and
technology has gotten smaller. I used to have a brick
a phone, a brick that would go on my shoulder
(41:33):
at forty five cents a minute. Back those days, I
had the first mobile phones ever. I've been using technology
my whole life. People laughed at me back then. They're
not laughing anymore. Right, So, first people will ignore you,
then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try. Well, First they'll
ignore you, then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try to
copy you. Then you win. First ignore you, then they'll
(41:57):
criticize you, try to get you off the stage competition.
Then they're trying to copy you, and they're using this
technology being efficient. They won't be able to because because
the devil's lazy, they just don't want to do the work.
But it's only successfully. It comes before the word work
in a dictionary because it's alphabetical. So first, first he
will ignore you, then they'll criticize you, then they'll try
(42:18):
to copy you. Then you win, and you just keep
your foot of the gas and just don't give up.
You just don't stop. Even if you hit a wall,
you over the round it, through it, you don't get
to it. You just never stop, right, don't let the
purpose become the death of the good. Just never ever, ever,
ever stop and think about never stopping. When I'm traveling,
which is a lot, I use certain products, and I'm
(42:41):
gonna put a photo here and have my team put
a photo here of a couple of shots of what
some of my travel setups look like. But I use
cues with which I which I use for different types
of things. Toilet trees, a night where workout year, formal
(43:03):
dress shirts, casual dress shirts, because again, you don't be
sitting there spending time trying to run through your bag
unorganized wears this shirt and iron it and all that
kind of stuff. I know exactly what I'm going to
takes me a minute a second, define it. I grab that,
and I've already saved that valuable commodity. It's talked about time.
(43:24):
It also looks good. I'm a little vain, but I
keep myself organized, and I use to me luggage to you,
am I. They're expensive, but they have a lifetime guarantee
warranty and a little heavier than normal luggage. But they
don't break. And when they if something does break up
(43:44):
a zipper breaks, they'll fix it like you. Literally just
drop it off to me. They give you a loaner.
Can you believe that they give you a loaner. You
give them the luggage they sent, They fix it like new,
They send it to you a month or two later,
and then you give them the loaner back and gone
about your business. They even clean it for you. Yeah. Again,
these are these are life hacks that that I use.
(44:08):
I'm looking at my too me backpack. I've got my iPad,
I've got my mac book. I've got all of my
uh prepackaged A chargers and I mean connecting devices, including international,
which is where I'm now. But I also have several
battery packs that are pre charged because you may be
(44:32):
up in another country or someplace that doesn't have the
capacity to charge, so have more cords than you need.
These are investments that will pay dividends. But you buy
the stuff once you wanted to buy it ever again,
and I'm very serious about my shoes, Like I only
wear Ferragamo shoes because I was tired of my feet hurting.
(44:52):
I used to wear Louis Vauton boots and all that
stuff for years, not because I was being bougie, because
they really make good shoes and my feet. Never hurt
your feet. Nothing's worth than your feet hurting. Can I
get an a man? Right? So my Ferragamos that they
don't hurt my feet. It can go all day online.
They look great and they built great, and it's a
great investment. Shoot. You can even sell some of this
(45:13):
stuff later on. If the same bags I use for
business I've been using for decades now. I've got some
bags I've owned for more than ten years. And if
you're a good bag, you can clean it up, put
you know, leather cleaner on it or fabric cleaner, clean
it up, put it in a stored away, come back to it,
(45:34):
you know, different season you've been having worked, used it
for a couple of years, pull it down, you got
your own inventory, and use it again. And you were like, oh,
that's so cool. Where'd you get that from? I want
to tell them this stuff is eight years old, but
it's just timeless. And when you buy things that are
classy and timeless, they last forever. So yeah, once you
(45:56):
ask me questions, because there's so much in my head
right now, But what I wanted to want you to
ask me questions about what you would like me to
share with you, and I'll adam and answer them in
the comments in on the social media channels where you'll
see this video posted the video version this podcast posted.
But yeah, my suits are pre packed to recently bought
(46:18):
all my suits from a minority owned vendor in drug
clothing in la I did that for twenty five years.
Now use him in a local tailor in Atlanta. But
my suits are pre defined. Make sure you always carry
black suits and some white shirts. You do other stuff
which you need, your fundamentals, make sure you get your
(46:40):
basics in place again, you buy it right, buy it well,
you'll buy it once. All right, that's enough for one
podcast sending you love and light. This has been a
masterclass on my tools and trips and tips, my hacks,
my time hacks, and ways to make you better. I
(47:00):
hope you enjoyed this. As John O'Brien, love and light
and all. That's right. Let's go kill it in twenty
twenty five. See you next week. Tell a friend to
get Money and Wealth on their phone as a podcast subscription.
Get Financial Literacy for All the book that's the best
seller number one since the last April in business finance.
(47:22):
Get that book Financial Literacy for All. You're already having
the book, Please leave an online review today. I want
to see hundreds of reviews on Amazon and Walmart and
Apple platforms, and also black bookstores. By the way, Also,
if you buy books books from a minority or small bookstore,
(47:42):
small business books for that's a cool thing too. Go
to Operation Hope and tell him I sent you. They'll
give you a one thousand dollars starter scholarship for coaching
and counseling at one of my fifteen hundred locations nationwide
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It's up to us. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien
(48:16):
is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For
more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Ho'bryant, a production
of The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Yo Yo.
This is John Hope Bryant. This is Money and Wealth
podcast series. I am honored in twenty twenty five to
(00:23):
bring you another exciting episode. This is going to be
a bit of a masterclass I give you today. I'm
calling in, I'm phoning this in. I'm recording this live
from Poland. That's right halfway around the world, and it's
appropriate that I'm doing this from Poland. I'm actually here,
(00:44):
Schaefer and I are here is commemorating with Van Jones
and Robert Smith and others, the only invited delegation that
includes African Americans. Oddly enough are interestingly enough, should I
say for the eightieth of liberation of Auschwitz the Jews
(01:04):
who were murdered here eighty years ago in World War Two?
This is commemorating the liberation from auschwitzen God bless the
soul's loss here. But when I'm on travel, I've got
to run my businesses. While I'm doing well, I have
to do good too. In order to do good, I
(01:24):
have to do well first, and so I have to
find a way to continue to run my operations. I've
got five divisions of John O'Briant Enterprises. You know me
most from my work at Operation the Hope, which is
the largest financial literacy coaching organization in America. Fifteen hundred offices,
(01:49):
give or take in almost every state in the United States.
We have thousands of volunteers, we have collaborative partnership offices.
We have four hundred full time employees in all of
our operations. You have Operation Hope, You've got Brianger Adventures,
(02:10):
You've got brig Adventures Advisors, Brian Go Digital ETCA, et cetera,
et cetera, and then all the projects with an Operation Open.
I'm going to do a masterclass at some point on
how to run an effective nonprofit and how to build
one from scratch. Let me know if you like that idea,
by the way, how to build one from scratch, how
(02:31):
to to take an idea and turn it into and
operating entity, How to take an operating entity and turn
it into a successful enterprise. How to take a successful
enterprise that's boutique, our small business turning into a boutique
boutique successful enterprise that's been with a reputation, but it is,
(02:51):
you know, basically local, and how to take something local
and turning it into something that is known regionally doing
is regionally and nationally, et cetera. And how to turn
that too from a personality driven the activity into an
institution that is an upcoming podcast. You tell me whether
(03:14):
you like that. By the way, I'll do the same
thing for a for profit, but I wanted to start
with something that is a bit of a mystery with people,
which is a nonprofit. But the larger issues, whether it's
my real estate stuff, or whether it's my nonprofit financial
literacy stuff, or whether it's my you know whatever, we're
writing books and and speaking and et cetera, et cetera,
(03:39):
how do I do it? And people like how do
you do this? And then you you know, you have
a family, a personal life, how do you do all
this stuff? Well, I'm going to unpack some of that today,
and today no pun intended to unpack them and tell
you about also how I pack. I will put a
couple of photos in of this actual photos of actually
(04:02):
my suitcase on this trip to give you some sense
of literally how I pack. But I'm going to most
importantly tell you about my tech tools. People will tell
you to be successful, they don't tell you how. So
part of my masterclass in twenty twenty five is breaking
down the how. This series, this session is my tech Tools,
(04:24):
John Bryant's tech Tools, the how of how I do
all this stuff and not go crazy. Somebody told me
a couple of years ago, and it's completely true that
if you don't have technology in the center of your
business or enterprise or nonprofit or government agency or whatever
(04:46):
it is you're running. If you don't have technology in
the center that I even believe in your personal life,
then you're actually not succeeding. You're falling behind. I'll say
that again. If you don't have technology, if technology is
not centric, centered in the center of whatever it is
you're doing. And I don't mean just having a iPhone
(05:09):
or whatever, the Samsung phone, whatever it is you use.
I use iPhone, I use Apple products. But I don't
just mean having a smartphone and treating it like it's
a dumb device. I don't mean just having a phone
and sending an email to somebody, or sending a text
to somebody, or making a phone call. That's not what
I'm talking about. If you don't have technology and use
it intelligently, use it smartly, and center that root that
(05:32):
in the center of your life. As a growing twenty
first century business, enterprise, entrepreneur or doer, you're actually not
going forward, you're going backwards. In real time, You've got
to be organized. It could be said that half a
success is showing up and having good habits. Showing up
(05:54):
and having good habits, it's time to take out your
notepad and begin to take some notes. So let's go.
I'll do the packing piece as a bit of a
bonus here, how I, how do I travel? What do
I use? Let's get into the technology and how I
(06:15):
do it beyond the magic soft of how I think
and how I lead, which are value propositions our assets
that I have in my institutions have because leadership is
that outlier, unique asset that defines everything. And you have leaders,
(06:36):
you have managers, you have tacticians, you have doers. Those
are different categories of executives that you will have in
your organization. You give somebody a title does not mean
that they're a leader, by the way, But let's assume
for the moment you've got the right team in place.
Many of my people be with me for twenty or
thirty years. My chief of staff Rachel Dove has been
(06:58):
with me for thirty two years. I make sure it's
my second employee when I founded out Brian Group Ventures
and Operation Hope Lands Triggs building me for I think
going on thirty years. Mary Harrison going on, you know,
close to thirty years. Jenney Roscoe over twenty years and
goes on, goes on, goes on. So most of my people,
(07:20):
if you're if you're a newbie with me, you building
me for a decade. So you've got to have a
special forces team. It's been said, and I agree that
eighty percent of important work is done by twenty percent
of your people. Eighty percent of important work is done
by twenty percent of your people. But if you're going
(07:42):
to have by and then the other people just complain
and make your life miserable. But anyway, being an employer,
oftentimes the babies that are actually have great employees, So
I'm not complaining about by people. But even if you
have a special forces team, which's dinner different from having
a General Army special forces team, no different than special
(08:02):
forces in the military who has advanced weaponry to go
be dropped behind enemy lines so they can have an
outsized impact being outnumbered and outgunned. They've got to have
the you know, the element of surprise, and they have
to have superior training and be able to outsmart their adversary.
They're playing you know, chant and everybody else is playing checkers.
(08:26):
But they have to have you know, technology in their
again example, the example weaponry, which is far superiod in
those that they are coming up against. I have technology.
I have weaponry. It's called technology tools that allow me
and my special forces team to operate with outsized effectiveness.
(08:50):
Because even though we have four hundred people, it feels
like somebody told me that we have forty thousand people.
I don't know if they said four thousand, orto that
you get the point. It feels like ten x or
twenty x or one hundred x of what we have
in human capital actually on our payroll because we've been
so effective. Okay, so start writing this down. You don't
(09:15):
have to use these tools, but I think you should
use something like it. So the first thing I do,
and I have this graph, and I'm going to put
this graph somewhere on the video version of this podcast
so people can see it. I'm going to put this
graph in, but it's by JSB formula for achievement. So vision, mission, strategy, plan,
(09:44):
business plan, execution tactics to dos to done's assessment readjustment
for a grade back division. Now I haven't gotten to
the technology tools, per se. This is the technology is
(10:06):
how I use mind mapping, which is the first piece
of technology software that I'm gonna suggest that you get
for yourself. I don't care which software you use. There's
a simple one that you can use called mind le
It's very easy. In my n D L Y, there's
my thoughts. There's another one I've used before. What I
(10:28):
use at the moment is mind Meister. Mind Meister. It's
German mind mapping, and I like it because it's collaborative
and sophisticated and all that stuff. You can put links
in it. And I do a mind map for almost
(10:48):
everything important in my life. I start with the mind map.
And what you're doing in the mind map is getting
all the gello and all of the wiring, uh, you know,
the all the wiring of thoughts. I it is going
through your head at a million miles and miles and
miles an hour. You dry down the street, all these ideas,
so we to organize it, and you give yourself a headache.
Take all that stuff, clear the cobwebs out of your head,
(11:10):
and put it on a mind map. Literally, it is
a mapping of your mind as relates to the idea
at hand. So the first thing I do is take
my vision and make it real for my team, because
they can't get in my head. If they even they could,
they may not be able to understand what the heck's
going on there. I've been told them, just a different
(11:33):
kind of guy. I'm operating on different juice. I operate
three four times faster and everybody else when they get
up in the morning, right down the street and around
the blocks, you know I've finished when they're starting. And
I'm also just I'm just I'm operinging a different bit rate.
But I'm also maybe operating. I'm just thinking differently than
(11:57):
everybody else. I'm at thirty thousand foot and they're at
you know, three thousand feet or three hundred feet. Because
they're tacticals. Most people are managers. They're just trying to
get stuff done on their to do list in front
of them. It's very different from executing against a vision,
and the Bible says, well, there is no vision that
people perish. So you have to have a vision. You
have to be disciplined about keeping it. So I have
(12:20):
mind maps, is my first suggestion for you. It works
in my business life. And here's a success hack. Is
a cheat she can give you now. It also works
in your personal life. Your personalize needs to be organized
just like your business life. Use mind maps to map
out a project, an initiative of your goals for twenty
(12:44):
twenty five, whatever it is, a new startup, business, restructuring,
whatever it is. You know you're going to send your
kids to college. You want to map that out over
the next five years. How you're going to pay for it.
Start with a mind map. Okay, so here's my map
for achievement of anything. Again, I would say one more time, vision,
(13:05):
what am I doing? Why? Mission? Why am I doing
that thing? Like, what's the purpose behind that? Uh strategy? Okay,
so my mission to go back to my missions. You know,
one of my missions is to un is to unleash
untapped human potential at scale. It's one of my missions. So, uh,
my vision might be the change of the world in
(13:26):
my lifetime. My mission might wait to do that is
to unleash untapped human potential at scale, to create an
economic infrastructure for underserved America, and so on and so forth.
And so you can look through my vision, see my
mission and vision might also be to extend on the
third reconstruction, or do the work of the third reconstruction,
which was the work that maybe doctor King and ambassor
(13:48):
Andrew Young we would be doing. Uh and doctor King
was still alive today, Andrew Young is very much alive,
or or if Frederick Douglas Nabam Lincoln was still alive today,
that was the first reconstruction in the second what I
believe this is a third reconstruction. So my vision might
be big, you know, and audacious, which is to you know, X,
(14:09):
Y and Z whatever that big bode here at big
Bode audacious idea is that's your vision for yourself. My
vision's this crazy big. Your vision might be to become
a business owner or have financial freedom or whatever. It's all.
Everybody's vision is different. Your mission, right, is a bit
(14:30):
more tangible. Right, And you've heard just now what my
mission is, right, and your mission should align with your
vision and then your strategy. Okay, how are you going
to go about this? Like what route are you going
to take to get to this objective? And then you
have a business plan. Okay, how's that? Strategy and admission
(14:50):
and vision get codified and run the ground. PhDs are good,
PhDs are better. Then you have execution. That is what
it sounds like. You know, there's nothing better than getting
(15:12):
stuff done. So if there's an end of the story,
can we please start there. Let's get about the business
of getting it done. And don't let the perfect be
the death of the good. Sometimes you just need to
oftentimes just get out there and do it. You can always,
you know, fix it, repair it, upgraded, change it while
you're out there. But don't wait for things to be
perfect before you start something. You'll never start anything. Tactics,
(15:34):
it is against it. Most people are there are tactical
in their life. Most people getting up and that's all
they're doing is just tactical stuff, and they're urgent. Is
crowding out the importance in their life. They can't figure
out why they're not making any progress because busyness is
different from business to dos again it is when it
says again from tactics, tactical is Okay, how do I
(15:54):
achieve this project or this objective today that my boss,
my vision has given me or maybe it is your
boss and to do's right or that's what they sound like.
And then literally you want to have a software for todos.
I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Two dons again,
you want to confirm you did the toadoos assessment? How
(16:17):
are you going to evaluate whether you were effective at
the pieces? I just articulated vision, mission, strategy, business plants,
Hugan tactics to dos to dons. What's your assessment with that?
Be honest? Did you screw up? If so, how, where,
when and how it went? And why? Readjustment based on
(16:37):
your assessment? Right? So yeah, readjustment and then give yourself
a software grade, a mental software grade. Okay, how do
I now take what I've learned and make myself better tomorrow?
You should go to bed tonight. You should get up
in the morning smarter and wiser, more fine than you were,
a better person even than you were when you went
(16:58):
to bed last night, because you've got a new mindset
or refined thought process, and you've got some sleep, and
then you're gonna give yourself a software grade, and then
you're gonna come back to vision the next day, and
everything you do in that day has to align with
vision or why are you doing it? You can waste
my money occasionally. You can't waste my time. I'm ruthless
(17:19):
about my time. Out Let anybody waste my time. I
can waste my time. You can't. Okay, So now let's
get into the tools to achieve the things that I
just said on this graph. Okay, and I've had this this,
I've been using this graph for two plus decades. Right,
So mind mapping software. I told you I used mind Master,
(17:40):
I suggested Mindly, have suggested I thoughts as other alternatives,
but use what you like. There's literally hundreds of software
that are available. To find the one that you really enjoy.
Then I have I use From there, I use something
called Confluence. Well in truth, I have a note taking
(18:06):
app it's really for crazy people called Obsidian. It sounds
like obsessed, but it's Obsidian, and it uses a technology
or an approach called markdowns, which I won't get into
in this video. But this is essentially your second brain. Okay,
this is the second brain. This is you talking to you.
If you can keep one hundred things in your head.
This allows you to keep one hundred thousand things in
(18:29):
your computer. And it's just it's it's just you talking
to you. Nobody. No one sees my Obsidian notes but me,
So just look into it. I call it my second brain.
But you need a note taking app. So you take
this vision, this this mind map, and now you've got
to make some comments yourself about how are you going
to strategize to get this done? And then I've got
(18:53):
this Confluence software right, which is documents storage, cloud based
document and knowledge sharing with your team whoever's working with
you on this stuff, and an active collaboration. You can
have twenty thirty forty fifty people collaborating working with you
(19:16):
on the business plan, the strategy plan, whatever it is.
You're working on the project at the same time on
a document that's live that came from you, you know,
consolidation of your note taking which was which was birth
through your vision. Okay. So now I've got you from
(19:38):
vision right and mind mapping. Then I've taken you to
note taking with Obsidian, okay, or any note taking app
you like. Don't you don't have to use your subsidian.
I'm just giving you ideas of what I use, and
then I have stepped into a suite of software that
(20:02):
I use, the first of which is Confluence Confluence, and
Confluence is this collaborative tool. You don't have to use Confluence.
You're gonna use whatever you like. This is just what
I use, and it is not I outgrow a lot
of things, but I have not outgrown this. And that's
(20:27):
saying a lot for this software, but I have not
yet outgrown it. I also use ever Note to store
things that are one offs. So ever Note is cloud based.
And you know, if you've got your birth certificate, you
know you're gonna need that. At some point you're gonna
be flying around somewhere. You're gonna need your birth certificate.
(20:47):
It won't be won't be to get to your house,
get to your safe. You're gonna be in Nebraska or
someplace you need your birth certificate. And you don't want
to be walking around with all this stuff. I used
to go to Maui on a retreat twice a year,
and literally I have this sixty seventy pound bag that
I throw at my shoulder. All these books I wanted
to read when I was a mall and retreat and
(21:08):
now just take my iPad. All my books are loaded here,
so you try to digitize as much as you can.
I hate paper. There's nothing. There's not a piece of
paper that I use in the course of the day anymore.
Now I used to use nothing but paper once upon
a time. Everything I use now is digital encrypted, which
means it has a deep security application to it, and
(21:32):
cloud based with encryption, which means it's hard for people
to basically steal your stuff. Ever. Note again, a birth certificate,
I only careful. I tell you what to put in here,
and I want to take it because I want you
blaming me if it doesn't work out. But it's one off.
(21:52):
Receipts warranties is the easy stuff. Copies of important things
go in every note. I then use from Confluence, I
use Trello, and Trello is a lovely, wonderful, visually stimulating
(22:15):
program that allows you to do project management. And the
collaboration with Confluence has now moved into project management. How
you're going to get this thing. You're going to run
it down ground to get it down. And so I
have project boards, organizational and project boards and have cards
in those projects that take this big vision and crunch it,
(22:38):
crunch it, crunch it down to manageable steps. Right. And
then we won't get into this today. But it's something
called GIRA j I r A that is deep project management. Well,
we won't get in that today. That's a bridge too far.
I want to give you head I want to give
you a headache, but project management, you know. And I
used to use another software before TrailO called Airtable. And
(23:02):
then one note is on Microsoft. But one note is
note taking in the Microsoft as a whole suite. So
there's a whole Microsoft version of what I'm telling you.
But there's two sides of my organization. There's the hunter
side of my organization. I'm the hunt. I'm the chief Hunter,
going and get it, going, to get the business, going
to get the you know, the relationships, the joint ventures,
(23:25):
the securing the future, closing the deal, you know, launching
new projects and products. But hunting, that's what I do.
There's a hunting group, there's hunter organization. Every organization is
a hunter, skinner and a cook. Okay, the hunter that's me.
(23:45):
Call it business acquisition. Keep that simple skinner, that's analysis
and administration. Right. My chief of staff is my chief
of staff. And she also is the chief administrative officer
for our companies, right, so she is very high level
executive and she's administering. And my chief financial officer is
also part of the Skinner Skinner group. Right, So the
(24:09):
Hunter Skinner this Cook. So the guy who is in
charge of my products and my programs, he's delivering on
my promises. That's the Cook. So the Skinner and Cook
is a known You need of particularly you get organies
as big as mine as mine is. We have you know,
(24:30):
US one hundred standardization. You need policies and procedures. You
need dependability, You need a software backbone that you know
won't break. You need standardization. Uh, this is the general
army stuff, right and this get this wrong and your
whole thing freezes up. You cannot be it cannot be
(24:51):
based on our personality. So we use Microsoft for that
full disclosure. But the Hunter side of the house we
use io Apple products for that and these customized apps
that I have decided we're best in class over time.
Because I'm really an underground tech geek. I don't know
(25:11):
if you knew that I'm really a techie. I've run
around with computers in my head have you ever seen
me walking through the airport or whatever. If you see
me sitting down with any free time, it's good chance
I got my iPad app. I might have my app
iPad out and a little magnetic because max safe allows
things to stick to the to the iPad and stick
(25:32):
to your eye. Stick your iPhone there too. You might
see me have my iPhone up, iPad out with a
floating keyboard and a magnetic elegant magnetic device next to
the keyboard where I put my iPhone, so everything is
I've got field of view. Sometimes if you you might
see me out, I'll have my Mac, my iPad connected
(25:57):
to my Mac, and my phone connected to my Mac also,
and I've got three in that example, three screens of
work going at the same time, three independent screens of work.
But that's another video for another time, dealing with efficiency.
Coming back to the tool. So we're now at Trello again.
(26:21):
I've used other products. I've explained to you now that
there's a getting side of the house, the hunter side.
That's me and I've been taking it from zero to
one hundred million dollars a year in activity. Then there's
a skinner in the cook side of the house, and
we have a four star Sharing Navigator reading, which I
do walk through when we do the other video on
(26:42):
how to build a nonprofit, which essentially means we're like
a four We're like a triple A bond rating on
Wall Street, which is extraordinarily good. So we have a
fast running organization, fast growing organization, but also stabilized, conservatively managed.
We've got all the ratios and numbers, so they call
it KPIs keep performing indicators are in all the right
(27:04):
places where your bankers and your financiers, your backers, your
partners want to see those numbers. Your donors if you're
a nonprofit, want to see that most of your money's
going to helping people. You need technology to keep track
of all that. You can't keep track of it in
your heads. Impossible. World's moving too fast these days. So
(27:24):
by the way, I'm not doing any notes here. I'm
just talking to you from literally not even my memory.
This is this is just my flow. My intuition is
I'm talking to you organically, giving you my heart and
my soul of how I run my enterprise. So hopefully
you're finding this very valuable and hopefully you're taking lots
of notes. So we've gotten down to project management, which
(27:47):
is where a lot of stuff happens, and I project
manage everything. Right, You've got to understand again, the PhDs
are good, but PhDs are even better, or at least
equally as good. You can't just have a vision. Don't
let the perfect become of the death of the goods.
You get it half a success as showing up and
having good habits. And I show up every day, and
(28:09):
my good habits are aided by this technology that I'm
trying to get your hip on. And so Trello is
really big in my life, and I look at it
several times a day, certainly in the morning, and I
do a lot of left bright analytical work in the morning,
and I do right brain creative work late at night.
(28:33):
So then I go from Trello to Slack right slack
And by the way, cheat sheet here, Slack, Trello and
Confluence are owned by the same company, and you can,
when you get really good at this, you can jump
from one app to the other inside of the app,
never having to leave. So talk about being effective well.
(28:54):
Slack is used for essentially for confidential, encrypted targeted text
you're testing along a channel of activity. So you have
a Slack channel for administration, a Slack channel this is
if you're running a company for marketing, a Slack channel
for finance and making this up, a Slack channel for
product development, a Slack channel for customer service. You decide
(29:16):
what's the Slack channel, name is, what the topic is.
I used to do Slack channels even by micro projects.
In fact, to this day, we still have a Slack
channel for every trip that I take, like the trip
I'm one now has its dedicated Slack channel, And people
who are in Slack channel A may not be in
Slack channel C and D and F. These are different
projects that require different skills and different clearances, security clearances
(29:41):
and all that stuff because we're dealing with confidential information
and so on and so forth. So Slack is a
wonderful I know the guy who made it, breat guy,
by the way, and I think he sold it to
a at I get the name right at Lesian, which
is which owns uh these three softwares that I just mentioned,
(30:08):
and I'm encouraging you to to to to get serious
about looking to them as as as options in your life.
Your ad Lesian A t L A s S I
A N is the owner. It's a Nordic area company
in Europe. Uh. They own Slack, they own Trello and
(30:31):
their own confluence. Okay, so now we got it down
to texting and back and forth. And these are non
urgent texts. Right then you have regular texting on your
phone for things that are like right now. But do not,
please hear me, do not try to manage your business
by texting. That is, I noticed that, I know that
(30:51):
this generation loves texting. You cannot manage your business by texting.
You got a text, gets lost, you don't know where
it wents, you don't know know what you said. Do
not that. In fact, texting is actually there's a lot
of risk these days of countries and companies trying to
rob you and defraud you by going through your text
(31:12):
messaging or grabbing your text messages before it gets to
the cloud. It's all kind of risk with just doing
raw texting. You want to do texting on a platform
if you can that's again encrypted, something like WhatsApp. There
are other platforms, but again for non urgent stuff Slack
and never put pass codes all that stuff in a
(31:35):
text message. By the way, case in case you want
some unsecured network and somebody stills gets that information, they
can take your whole identity. So I'm now given you
a range of tools that I use. This is these
(32:00):
things that I use. I also use other twos, and
I use Salesforce for my again, this is the non
special force a side of my operations. And I use Podio,
which is that's not important today, but that's how I
talk to my employees and team members. My general army
is how I talk to them and how they talk
to each other. That's tied to the Microsoft side of
(32:22):
my house. That's another video for another time. So these
are some examples of how I use these technologies. And
I'll take a vision from a mind map, I'll drag
it to the ground with my note taking in Obsidian.
I'll then take all of my notes from Obsidian. I'll
consolidate those notes into something I don't mind now the
(32:43):
publics of my team seeing. I'll then throw that into
Confluence and make it a word document. Well, I'm thrown
the Confluence and make it a work, a document we
can work on, and I encourage my team to come
and help me refine that thought process to turn it
from vision into a business plan. Then once I've got
(33:05):
a new business plan, I then converted into a word
document and filed away in Dropbox. It's another subset app
I use, similar to Evernoe. It's not primary, but it's
a place where I store some source documents. Then once
I've done it with Confluence, then I go into typically
into Trello set. Trello's a whole another thing all but
(33:26):
can do it podcast just on Trello. But I've given
you enough to what your appetite if you're interested, And
that's where I do project management. Again, Gira is a
way to plug in also on Leasian to plug in
to Trello to do deep project management. We won't talk
about that today. And then Slack again targeted text messaging
(33:48):
and communication. But do not try to manage enterprises from Slack.
Don't try to get Slack to do more than it's
designed to do. And then I told you you can
use regular texting, but I think you should do be
encrypted for right now. Something's urgent, need to talk to
you right now sort of stuff, and take big ideas
(34:09):
and break them down into small, actionable concepts that you
can track. And then in Trello. I use things like
in Trello and a card, I use it to do
I love my favorite thing is the favorite sub app
and Trello is a to do list. So every car,
every card in Trello, a card is where you have
(34:33):
an activity, has a to do list. So I might have,
you know, fifty cards on a Trello board, and each
one of them has its own individual to do lists,
and I go through there and I check those boxes.
It's a very good feeling to feel like you check
something and got something done. I check it myself. You'd
(34:54):
also do to do lists in calendars and confluence with
your team. So I hope this has been helpful as
a starter set on how you can have two people
and look like and feel like you've got twenty to
have five or ten people, it feel like you've got
fifty or one hundred to have my case, four hundred
(35:19):
and feel like you have four thousand, maybe even forty
thousand employees, not forty thousand, four thousand employees because you're
just that tight. How do you I can't The one
thing I can't manufacture is more time, right, and I'm
ruthless about my time. How do you create more time
you cheat technology. If you're very smart and using technology
(35:43):
to make you more efficient, it allows you to be
more present. That's what I called it. Being a present
a gift. And there's no yesterday and there's no tomorrow, right,
those are illusions. All you have is this moment make
and you want to maximize this moment. You want to
be completely present in this moment, which means you want
to be organized. The Bible even talks of being you know,
(36:05):
to organization and being neat and clean, So you want
to be organized at your mind. The clutter out your mind,
which is why you want to use mind maps. Get
all that clutter and the dust and those all the
main ideas and sticky those in your brain. Is clear
it all out and put it in one, two, ten,
fifty mind maps, doesn't matter. These are your mind maps.
(36:26):
Share the mind maps to your team and then as
needed basis to help them understand how you are thinking.
And then and then and then run every idea down
to ground in up you call it a fancy to
do list if you want, but a project plan. And
then there's budgeting software like you know, there's Excel or
(36:46):
you can I use Excel to do budgets, but you
can use budgeting software like Quicken or quick Books. You
should definitely have a budget and budgeting software. But that's
not what this is about. I'm out of running budgets
of myself for myself, I'm running. I'm now working more
on the businesses than in the businesses uh where I
used to do have every task and in those cases
(37:08):
when I was just starting out in business, your best
friend is a budget. If you if you love what
you're doing, you need a budget. If you love your
your wife, your wife loves you, then you should have
a budget because a budget is a way so sure
that whatever you're doing can be sustained, because if your
outflow sets your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall.
(37:29):
I can do this forever of helping to unpack how
I use these technologies. Won't you leave some comments when
you when when you where you hear this, If you're
able to comment, or either you're you're listening to this
on iHeart or wherever you listen to your podcasts, then
make sure you go over to the social media platforms
and leave me a note saying John, I heard you
(37:52):
on your podcast this week and here's my question for you.
If you want me to unpack this, I'm happy to
answer very Specif the questions how to go from nothing
to something, they just tell you go do it, well,
you're confused, and it's what you don't know that you
don't know that is killing you. But you think you know,
and Where're supposed to learn all this stuff. So I'm
just giving you. I'm giving you cheat sheets and shortcuts
(38:13):
to and life hacks success hacks, because I'm already I've
already succeeded in. This is not speculation. If it's worked
for me to work for you now. If you're lazy,
if you won't, if you're not consistent, if you don't
have good habits, if you're not going to do this
every day. I work out every day fifteen minutes or
more when I get up in the morning. There's no excuses.
The first thing I do stretch and workout, and this
(38:34):
is a version of stretching and working out again, showing up,
being consistent and good habits. If you're not going to
show up, you're not gonna be consistent. If you're gonna
do a Tuesday and Friday and the next Monday and
then skip a week like you're going like going to
the gym or using that treadmill that has clothes on it.
Then don't even bother doing this right. You can still
(38:55):
do the mind mapping part that will help, but you're
not going to get any momentum you build again. You
need to you build wealth by compounding. It's not just
financial wealth, it's the wealth of ideas. It's the wealth.
It's building an organization that is valuable. And you need momentum.
You need consistency. People. You know that they can count
(39:17):
you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be the
same as Monday was. And then the next Monday when
you come back from your break, there you go again
being consistent. Then they can literally bank on you, and
they're willing to lead in, lead into you. Okay, let
me give you this bonus. I could again this technology
stuff I could talk about all day and don't even
(39:39):
get me back into how I used to roll around
with computers back when it was not in vogue as
a kid, and I used to have I had a
radio shack computer set that I had as a kid.
I had a compact computer that weighed fifty pounds that
was called a portable computer back then fifty to seventy
five pounds. I had one computer that I would go
on a plane with coach seats back then cheap coach
(40:03):
seats and on airlines that don't exist anymore, and I
would have I would take the tray and God blessed
people who are sitting next to me, I apologize with you.
You're one of those who sitting next to me. And
I have this. I had this beautiful carrying case that
was leather, and then the front of it would flip
(40:24):
down and that would be the keyboards on the on
the port book computer I was using that weighed fifty pounds,
maybe that would weigh thirty five pounds, okay, the keyboard,
and then on the other side it would flip out
and that would be the printer. This is in my
coach seat now. And then on the top I'd flip
that up and that'd be Oh. That was a fax
(40:48):
machine that remember the plain paper faxes and also the
facts paper that curled up. If you were if you
had some money, you had plain paper facts. But this
is generation realized where a fax machine is. Anyway, I
had all that in a portable computer that I that
I yeah, I took over the whole row in coach
(41:13):
when I was flying, and that I would plug that
into the wall into the port in my seat, or
I had some battery power also. That was you know,
and I'd run my businesses and all the devices and
technology has gotten smaller. I used to have a brick
a phone, a brick that would go on my shoulder
(41:33):
at forty five cents a minute. Back those days, I
had the first mobile phones ever. I've been using technology
my whole life. People laughed at me back then. They're
not laughing anymore. Right, So, first people will ignore you,
then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try. Well, First they'll
ignore you, then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try to
copy you. Then you win. First ignore you, then they'll
(41:57):
criticize you, try to get you off the stage competition.
Then they're trying to copy you, and they're using this
technology being efficient. They won't be able to because because
the devil's lazy, they just don't want to do the work.
But it's only successfully. It comes before the word work
in a dictionary because it's alphabetical. So first, first he
will ignore you, then they'll criticize you, then they'll try
(42:18):
to copy you. Then you win, and you just keep
your foot of the gas and just don't give up.
You just don't stop. Even if you hit a wall,
you over the round it, through it, you don't get
to it. You just never stop, right, don't let the
purpose become the death of the good. Just never ever, ever,
ever stop and think about never stopping. When I'm traveling,
which is a lot, I use certain products, and I'm
(42:41):
gonna put a photo here and have my team put
a photo here of a couple of shots of what
some of my travel setups look like. But I use
cues with which I which I use for different types
of things. Toilet trees, a night where workout year, formal
(43:03):
dress shirts, casual dress shirts, because again, you don't be
sitting there spending time trying to run through your bag
unorganized wears this shirt and iron it and all that
kind of stuff. I know exactly what I'm going to
takes me a minute a second, define it. I grab that,
and I've already saved that valuable commodity. It's talked about time.
(43:24):
It also looks good. I'm a little vain, but I
keep myself organized, and I use to me luggage to you,
am I. They're expensive, but they have a lifetime guarantee
warranty and a little heavier than normal luggage. But they
don't break. And when they if something does break up
(43:44):
a zipper breaks, they'll fix it like you. Literally just
drop it off to me. They give you a loaner.
Can you believe that they give you a loaner. You
give them the luggage they sent, They fix it like new,
They send it to you a month or two later,
and then you give them the loaner back and gone
about your business. They even clean it for you. Yeah. Again,
these are these are life hacks that that I use.
(44:08):
I'm looking at my too me backpack. I've got my iPad,
I've got my mac book. I've got all of my
uh prepackaged A chargers and I mean connecting devices, including international,
which is where I'm now. But I also have several
battery packs that are pre charged because you may be
(44:32):
up in another country or someplace that doesn't have the
capacity to charge, so have more cords than you need.
These are investments that will pay dividends. But you buy
the stuff once you wanted to buy it ever again,
and I'm very serious about my shoes, Like I only
wear Ferragamo shoes because I was tired of my feet hurting.
(44:52):
I used to wear Louis Vauton boots and all that
stuff for years, not because I was being bougie, because
they really make good shoes and my feet. Never hurt
your feet. Nothing's worth than your feet hurting. Can I
get an a man? Right? So my Ferragamos that they
don't hurt my feet. It can go all day online.
They look great and they built great, and it's a
great investment. Shoot. You can even sell some of this
(45:13):
stuff later on. If the same bags I use for
business I've been using for decades now. I've got some
bags I've owned for more than ten years. And if
you're a good bag, you can clean it up, put
you know, leather cleaner on it or fabric cleaner, clean
it up, put it in a stored away, come back to it,
(45:34):
you know, different season you've been having worked, used it
for a couple of years, pull it down, you got
your own inventory, and use it again. And you were like, oh,
that's so cool. Where'd you get that from? I want
to tell them this stuff is eight years old, but
it's just timeless. And when you buy things that are
classy and timeless, they last forever. So yeah, once you
(45:56):
ask me questions, because there's so much in my head
right now, But what I wanted to want you to
ask me questions about what you would like me to
share with you, and I'll adam and answer them in
the comments in on the social media channels where you'll
see this video posted the video version this podcast posted.
But yeah, my suits are pre packed to recently bought
(46:18):
all my suits from a minority owned vendor in drug
clothing in la I did that for twenty five years.
Now use him in a local tailor in Atlanta. But
my suits are pre defined. Make sure you always carry
black suits and some white shirts. You do other stuff
which you need, your fundamentals, make sure you get your
(46:40):
basics in place again, you buy it right, buy it well,
you'll buy it once. All right, that's enough for one
podcast sending you love and light. This has been a
masterclass on my tools and trips and tips, my hacks,
my time hacks, and ways to make you better. I
(47:00):
hope you enjoyed this. As John O'Brien, love and light
and all. That's right. Let's go kill it in twenty
twenty five. See you next week. Tell a friend to
get Money and Wealth on their phone as a podcast subscription.
Get Financial Literacy for All the book that's the best
seller number one since the last April in business finance.
(47:22):
Get that book Financial Literacy for All. You're already having
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to see hundreds of reviews on Amazon and Walmart and
Apple platforms, and also black bookstores. By the way, Also,
if you buy books books from a minority or small bookstore,
(47:42):
small business books for that's a cool thing too. Go
to Operation Hope and tell him I sent you. They'll
give you a one thousand dollars starter scholarship for coaching
and counseling at one of my fifteen hundred locations nationwide
to be your private banker. Let's go change the world.
It's up to us. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien
(48:16):
is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For
more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
John Hope Bryant
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