December 5, 2024 • 43 mins
This episode is dedicated to John's mother - Juanita Smith
In this episode, John talks about his brilliant and resilient mother. Today we honor her, for every decision she made, led to a better one.
To get John's book, Up from Nothing: The Untold Story of How We (All) Succeed, visit: https://johnhopebryant.com/up-from-nothing
To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome The Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John O'Brien and this is the Money in
Wealth podcast, coming to you every Thursday, dropping new episodes.
(00:22):
Tell all your friends about it. Financial literacy is a mindset.
It's not just about money, and my mother had the
right mindset. This is an episode dedicated to my mother.
Wanted to smith a bad sister. Grew up in the
Deep South and very much like this bandage out of
(00:42):
my hands, supporting my wrists, which I'm like an athlete
of the brain, always work in those writing new books.
So wore my muscles out here so recuperating. My mother
just wore out her hustle. She wore out her dream,
She wore out her life for her children. But you
know Rainbold's only follow storms. You know that you cannot
have rainbow without a storm first. And so she went
(01:03):
through stuff in order to become someone just like you're
going to do. And this is dedicated to single mothers
everywhere who want to know you can make it. You
can come up from nothing. My mother, it's a definition
of legitimate hustle. Became a millionaire working just like you,
(01:24):
many of you, an hourly job. Born in a small
town in Alabama, moved to East Saint Louis with her
sisters and her brother, and her dad died before she
was five. Before there were social security, there was no
social safety net as we call it today. So her
(01:47):
mother had to make a choice, right, And the choice
was do I send my kids everywhere like, break them up,
break the family up. And because there was no welfare,
there was no public assistance to take care of the family,
there was no father at home anymore, right, or do
we all find a way because we're better together to
make this, to make this work. And so grandmother of
(02:12):
Vester Murray decided that they were going to make it work.
And nobody cares work harder. Everybody had to work. So
they went to go work as domestics because they did
not have back then, you know, options that we had today,
and they did not have higher education. So they want
to go work for white families in private homes. And
(02:35):
my mother she made five dollars a day for the
whole day, not an hour for the whole day. And
when she come home from working, my grandmother, her mother
would say, would you make the day baby, and my
mother would say, I made five dollars, mom, and so
(02:55):
Vestor my grandmother would say, would give me that five dollars,
I'm going to the casino. Well, she didn't tell my
mother that. She just went to the casino and she
lost the money, their money. Now I'm about to give
you a big definition here in financial literacy. One of
these lessons is not what you make, is what you
keep right. And if your outflow sees your inflow, then
(03:20):
your overhead or be your downfall. And sometimes we save
our worst behavior family for those we care the most about.
Real talk. So just because somebody says they love you
doesn't mean they know how to love. And there's an
old Southern saying again, no matter how much I love you,
(03:40):
if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
my own ignorance. I'll repeat that, no matter how much
I love you, my son or my daughter, if I
don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance.
I can only give you what I've got In the
blind town of one eyed Man's King, if you don't
know better, you can't do better. So my grandmother knew
(04:01):
enough when my grandfather passed to not break the family
up and send the kids hither and there and there
around the country, and that's cool. But she did not
know enough to encourage my mother and her sisters and
brothers to go get higher education, which was really the
way out back then. Today we're trying to educate you
(04:24):
to you can go write a check, start a business.
That's an option. Back then, it was just they thought
cash a check and get a job. But they didn't
think the exception of my uncle, by the way, Buddy
Uncle Buddy, who did create his own business sanitation business,
amongst others. But Germany speaking, the mindset was low frequency,
(04:46):
let me just go work for somebody, and that I'll
never make it out of this. So the only way
to make it out was to get lucky, to gamble.
So my grandmother took my mother's hard earn money and
went to the casino and lost it all every day.
So once my mother got win, that was what was
(05:07):
going on. She didn't want to talk back to grandma,
be disrespectful, but Grandma had short term memory, so luckily
for my mother, Grandma's like, well what you make today?
This is you know. A few weeks after and my
mother's got the memo now of like, what's really going on?
So my mother's like, well, I made two fifty two
dollars and fifty cents, give me that baby. So my
(05:29):
mother gave her the two fifty and she saved two
dollars and fifty cents. She had made five dollars, just
like she did before. But she now knew that that
she had to help grandmother help herself because she she
was financially illiterated and she didn't know any better, couldn't
do any better. So my mother learned the value of
savings at an early age. And I guess a survival mindset.
(05:52):
And there's three mindset surviving mindset, a thriving mindset, and
a winning mindset, And these three mindsets in my book
Up from Nothing, by the way, So initially my mother
had a surviving mindset, and she ultimately got to a
thriving mindset, but part of her that surviving mindset never
left my mother and the winning mindset, the builder mindset
(06:16):
that she blessed that my parents were able to give
me the optionality I guess to bless me with. When
I said I guess, meaning they didn't give it to me.
They gave me the platform, and I would and took
it for myself because they didn't know how to build.
That was not how they were built, It wasn't how
they were oriented. My wife, Shacher would say that all
behaviors learned behavior. I absolutely believe that. Right if you
(06:38):
hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. Once again,
Grandma loved everybody, but all she knew was what she knew,
so all she could give was the ignorant She had
the lack of knowledge in the area of financial literacy.
So Mom decided she needed to save and protect that
(06:59):
and not she had that information, because you know, ignorance
was bliss in the household, so Mom gained a habit
of savings. Mom did not value education, unfortunately, she did
not see that as a way out for the family,
and so nobody in the family went to college. In fact,
(07:22):
most girls, and because there were girls, they are women. Unfortunately,
they were live in a chauvinistic world even to this day,
and back then, expectations were not high for women, unfortunately,
and certainly not black women. Thank god, things have changed,
and so most of my aunties and my uncle they
didn't go to higher education and they were smart ladies.
(07:44):
They just were not encouraged to finish high school. And
my mother didn't finish high school. She worked, and that's
when she went back to high school at age sixty
two and marched in. I mean, this was amazing. I
didn't know my mother was in school. She was going
to work, and she was in school part time after work.
(08:06):
I hadn't know it until one day I was asked,
did I want to go to her graduation? And like
graduation from what? Graduated from high school? And she marched
with cap and gown on with eighteen year olds who
were graduating in high school. This was when we were
in California. I couldn't be more proud of my mother
(08:26):
then and now, I mean, just an extraordinary woman. Do
you remember you know how much courage and how much
confidence and self belief and self esteem and individuality it
takes to go back to high school and to finish,
and to not be ashamed but be proud of marching
with eighteen year olds as a sixty two year old.
(08:49):
Do you meagine the ridicule and the cutting of the
eyes that some people must have had about my mother
when she was going through that process. She didn't care
right there was an eagle surrounded by buzzes and turkeys.
My mother was an amazing individual, and she graduated and
(09:10):
I got to find that high school diploma and put
it up on the wall. She graduated, and then at
Boying Aircraft a mcdonnald Douglas, she would sometimes get laid
off because contracts with the government would not get renewed,
or there was some issue with the federal government having
the budget not be approved or whatever, and so they
(09:32):
would not fire my mother. They'd lay her off until
new business came. At the aircraft manufacturing company that she
worked at as a centric, she was a fabricator. She
fabricated interiors of airplanes, which then led to a side
hustle by the way of her making handicrafts which she
(09:54):
made with her hand in a sewing machine or with
needles and crocheting. Things get more low cost and high quality,
and she would sell those handicrafts, not after work. She'd
do it boldly at work at lunch on brakes, and
then she'd make food and she'd sell that. And she
(10:14):
would ride a bicycle around the plant in Long Beach
McDonald DOA's aircraft and she would market her wares, and
that's where I got, you know, some of my early
hustle from is looking at my mother and she makes
sure her nine to five financerr five to nine. She
(10:35):
had a part time hustle for the entirety of her
working life. And when that and the supervisors couldn't fire
her because the supervisors were often buying product from her
right so they could not they could not fire her.
They had to tolerate and even support her because they
were buying food and the handicraft. And my mother would
(10:59):
would go in ap proachas terry cloth towels from the
handicraft store, and she would turn those towels, you know,
towels that we wash our bodies off with, our drying
bodies off with when we come out of the shower
or out of the bath. She create bathrobes out of
(11:20):
that custom bathrobes made out of towels, and she had
different designs and different approaches. In fact, it was so
successful that Walmart is so odd that I'm being the
CEO of Walmart. Are good friends today and I coach
here financial literacy for all with him today at Operation Hope.
But back in the day, my mother's products were so well,
were so good that Walmart offered to purchase her products
(11:42):
and put them in their stores. They wanted to put
them in testament a Walmart store in I believe it
was comped in our Long Beach. My mother said that
one financial literacy mistake she made was they offered her
one percent of sales, and she said, that's ridiculous. Why
would I make anything for one percent? And she really
today that she passed up a gold mine because one
percent of whatever sales might have been at what we
(12:04):
now know to be or what was even then Walmart,
would have been a pretty big number. She learned then
that she'd rather have ten percent of something than one
hundred percent of nothing. But that was a lesson she
learned later in life. So when she got laid off
at McDonald's Aircraft and couldn't get the it wasn't getting
(12:24):
an hourly wage, and couldn't then have her side hustle there,
she brought her side hustle home. But she also didn't
want to go on welfare, no different than when she
was a child and there was no SOI security, It
was no welfare, whether welfare. They barely didn't want to
go on it. State assistance. Her grandmother didn't want to
go on it, and she always wanted to do for herself.
(12:45):
He's self reliant. The James Brown version of affirmative action
opened the door. I'll get it my dangself, right, And
so she would just go find the job in wherever
I was and irritate the heck out of me. So
I was at, of course school, I was at Colin
Peakelly Elementary School, El Segondo. It was actually El Segondo,
(13:07):
I believe, and it was renamed Colin Peakelly Elementary School,
if I got that correct. In Conflin, California, and she had
time on her hands. So she went and befriended the principal,
a low relationship. Capital became friends with the principal, and
initially she became the janitor. Yes, my dignified mother, who
(13:29):
worked as a as a trained seamstress at fabricating interiors
of commercial airplanes at a major airplane manufacturer when laid off,
went and became a janitor at my elementary school so
she could keep an eye on me. Of course, it
drove me nuts the lines. I gonna want it with
my mother around me all day and all night. But
(13:53):
my mother was in the fight. She's like, I'm in
the fight to say my kid's life. That's just there's no,
that's not negotiable. She was all in, and so it
didn't matter what I wanted. In fact, that's where I
learned that I tell parents today, you should whether your
kids respect you and learn to like you, then like
you and never respect you. My mother wanted me to
like her, but it didn't matter right. She was like,
(14:15):
you're going to respect me. And so she was a
janitor and that job ran its course. She was called
back to mc donalds Aircraft as a seamstress, so another contract.
Then she's relaid off again and she became a security
guard at my school. I think she was three different
(14:35):
jobs she took at my school to stay close to me.
And I had many problems growing up, but self esteem
was not one of them. I learned early on there's
a lot of love, you know, in the word no.
My mother would tell me no when it was appropriate,
but she also made sure I had high self esteem,
(14:56):
so I now know. Also there's a difference between being
broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor
as a disabling frame of mind. A depressied edition of
your spirit and you must vow never ever ever to
be poor again. I still use this quote, that operation Hope,
and it resonates with people. It probably resonates with you
as you're listening to this now. It's so common sense.
(15:18):
Operation Shope is a radical movement of common sense. But
I got that common sense from my mother. Because common
sense is not so common, it has to be taught.
And so she taught me to, you know, love myself,
and that became the real wealth we had because we
didn't have financial resources, so we had to have inner resources, right.
(15:38):
And I went to go on to sell mail order
Stacey Adams shoes and mail order jewelry and things like
that to my teachers and the principal at school in
part because of that self esteem and confidence that my
mother generated in me, and through her the relationship capital
I had with the personnel of the school, and I
(15:58):
leveraged that to get paid right. And I thank my
mother for that. I mean, there's so many other lessons
I got. I remember, Uh, there was a law pass
where you couldn't you couldn't beat your kids, and you
could spank your kids, but you couldn't beat them. And
child a piece of course. Uh, but it was a
(16:20):
broadly defined rule. And you know, teachers could spank you
with a ruler back in my day, and I think
they got out of law as well. So I came
home one day and I'd done something wrong and my
mother wanted to spain me. She wanted to go get
a switch you off the branch from the tree in
(16:40):
the back. I'm like, oh, no, you can't spank me.
That day is over, lost change. I'm free. And my
mother's like, oh you're free, right, I can't. I can't
spank you. No, no, no, you go to jail. I'll
call the police, argle my mother. My mother said, okay,
that's cool. Tell you what. Here's the phone I want
you to call. Pick up the phone down. I want
(17:02):
you to call the folks with the red light on
me the police and call the folks then with the
blue light for you. That's the more. Because I brought
you in this world, I damn sure can take you out. Right.
Like I said, I respected my mother, an I was afraid.
I was slightly afraid of her right. And it was
important because in my neighborhood, in the hood or d
(17:24):
hood d I d a hyphen h O d The
street behind me was so dangerous that if you went
on that street, you may not make it back. Like
my neighborhood, it wasn't you know, getting home, going to
school and getting home was not a foregone conclusion. Like
you you might get murdered. You certainly could have got jumped.
And I was jumped several times so my mother. And
(17:45):
my mother wasn't wasn't at home during the day, she
was at work, so I had to fear her, and
I did. I remember one day my mother was gonna
expect me again, and I said, I'm gonna call my daddy.
And they had divorced, of course, and she's like, oh,
you're gonna call your daddy, and she got a switch
from the back. She's like, no, this was a built.
(18:06):
Actually he ain't every word with a lick or from
the built. He ain't paid child support in all these years.
You want to. I mean, she she's made me up
one side and down the other. I never made that
mistake again. Uh. It was actually good discipline. I mean
(18:27):
we today you have too many people raising their daughters
and loving their sons, right you you got to you
gotta raise a young black man differently and he needs love,
but he needs discipline straight up. He needs me to
know what the boundaries are, and he needs to know
the word no, and that discipline may need may have
an exclamation mark in an underline next to it. And
(18:49):
I needed everything my mom and dad gave me. I
am who I am because of what they put into me.
But there's too many UH parents today who want to
be the best friend of their children, and the children
are buck wile, they're crazy off the chain. They have
no discipline, no respect. And if I don't like me,
I'm not gonna like you. If I don't respect me,
don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me,
I don't have a clue how I love you. And
(19:10):
if I don't have a purpose of my life, I'll
make your life a living hell. My mother sold all
of that. With all these life lessons, I'm trying to
pour it into you. Now. Let's fast forward. My mother
(19:31):
married a man who abused her, and the number of
calls are divorced by the way. It's money. Know of
the reason why I police respond to calls and the
household is domestic abuse, and then number one calls her
domestic abuse. It's money. Number one reason for heart attacks,
says you know, American heart association is stress. Number one
(19:54):
reason for stress. It's money. So my mother married the
this man. They had two children, my brother and my sister. Together,
they were stressed about money. Their alphloks, either their inflows
or their overheall was bound to be their downfall. And
he took it out of my mother. And so domestic
(20:14):
abuse going on in the household, and he hit her
and tried to humiliate her, and she kept saving a
little bit on the side for herself and trying to
figure ot how she gonna get out of that situation. Ladies,
in any of this sound familiar, by the way, why
does a woman stay with an abuse of me? All right?
I mean just real talk, like why is a woman
(20:35):
on a stripper pole at three in the morning with
some three hundred pound guy throwing cash at her because
she likes it? Because she likes it because she's attracted
to this dude. Of course not it's economics. It's money, right,
So just real talk here. Financial literacy and the need
for it is everywhere. It is. It's entirely possible that
the only true freedom is financial freedom. And I want
(20:57):
you to be free. My mother, God rest her soul,
who passed on the glory September tenth, twenty twenty three.
So this episode is dedicated to her. She wanted you
to be free. Her credit score was eight fifty when
she was still in the workforce, and it was over
seven hundred after she retired several years later. She wasn't
doing financial transactions anymore, but she understood that she wasn't black,
(21:21):
she was green, economic right, she was free. She could
do what she wanted. When she put her sub security
number in the computer whenever she was applying for the
computer to look at it and see what color she was,
the computer realized that her credit score was extraordinary, outstanding
and above average and just said, yes, whatever it is
she wanted. So she ever, later in her life, she
(21:42):
got credit access to whatever she wanted because she knew
better and could do better, unlike grandmother. Her mother back
to the story, So, I want you to understand that
rainbows only follow storms, which understand that you can't grow
except through legitimate suffering. Should understand that people don't change
(22:02):
in good times. Why would you, right, you only change
in bad times. And so my mother had bad times.
She realized that this was not working for her, this
being the situation with her mother, even though her mother
loved her. Right, And there'll be people who love you,
who say they love you, who don't know how to
love you, don't know how to live a successful life,
and you're going to need to be bilingual love them
(22:23):
and do something else, do something different to argue with
the fool cruiser are too So I want you getting
in stupid arguments with people because they say they love you.
I want you to accept what they have to give
that's beneficial to you, and then make a move that's
different for your life and the situations that require a
(22:45):
different set of choices and frankly intellect right, a software upgrade.
My mother was able to get this software upgrade initially
on her own, and then she was with again my
brothers sister's father. I won't mention his name because it's
not positive what I'm saying here, and I wanted to.
(23:07):
I'm not trying to jam up his legacy, but I
didn't like to beat my mother. Hello. So my mother
had one last insult too many, and she poured some
hot coffee on home boy. He was sleeping and had
demanded some coffee, and so I got some coffee for you,
and he said, I'm gonna kill you, you know, And so
(23:29):
she knew she had to go, and she prayed to God,
you know, she said, look, Lord, please just get me,
just get me out of here with my children. And
she had premonition from God. She told me that God
told her that you'll be delivered two thousand miles from here.
And my father, the guy who became my father, Johnny Smith,
(23:50):
came through town east Saint Louis and saw a mother
and went crazy, just fell and initially in loss with
her and then in love with her and was like
within a day, like how do I marry you? And
she said, well, you got to take me and my
kids if before we can have any kind of conversation.
And he said that's great. I live in California. Well
that's about two thousand miles right, almost precisely for where
(24:14):
my mother was. So my mother's like, okay, this is
God speaking. And so she got out of town before Dave,
I say that's his name, my brother and sister's father,
day before he could find her and do harm to
her self preservation. So she had to go, right, don't
let the perfect become the death of the good, like
(24:34):
this was good enough at the stars a line, and
she was out. My father was in town because he
was back in the day, if you were successful and prosperous.
My dad owned a construction of a senior contracting business.
I'll get into his story in a separate podcast episode
Johnny Smith. But he was driving his car to go
buy a new car in Detroit, Michigan, and he drove
(24:55):
across the country and was seeing some relatives or some
friends in Saint Louis, and he was going to the
d dealership the manufactured by a cart. That's what they
did back in the day. I guess the profile, and
so versus. Continuing on to Detroit, he met my mother,
lost his mind. They turned around, packed up all the clothes,
packed up my brother and my sister, and went back
to California. And I was born February sixth, nineteen sixty six,
(25:17):
at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. And they
ultimately bought a home on Santa Barbara Boulevard now it's
called Martin Luther King Boulevard and started to build a life.
And I was the youngest of three children, and I
remember up and they had done a great job. They built,
(25:38):
they bought a home together. Only forty one to forty
five percent of black folks own a home today, by
the way, compared to seventy five percent of our white counterparts.
Was the number one way you build wealth in America
home ownership. Hello, So they had built a home, started
building some wealth. They had built sor I purchased an
eight unit apartment building across the street, I believe it was,
(26:01):
and they were at some point, and by maybe getting
my math, I think making the chronology here wrong. I
think they bought the eight unit apartment building. First lived
in one unit rented to out that covered the mortgage
payment that was subped three hundred dollars a month. Yes,
they built. They bought it for eighteen thousand dollars. For
anybody who think in real estate, it's not magical that
(26:22):
private building's worth several million dollars today almost the last
time I checked, it was six million dollars. That's that
apartment building is worth. We bought it for eighteen thousand
dollars and the rest of the unit rent so it
was eight units. So we lived in one unit rented
out to to cover the mortgage payment. The rest of
the units, the five units that were left for profit,
and they used that profit, saved that extra money to
(26:45):
then put a down payment on their home, the home
I'm talking about on Santa Barbara Boulevard. And by the way,
we lost the apartment building. I'll get to that in
a minute. And I say we lost because that's generational
wealth for our family. It wasn't just my mom and
my dad. It wasn't just my dad. They my dad
didn't realize that they had to be better together, a
pastor Andrew Young, my dad was a great hustler, by
(27:07):
the way, a great hustler. But there's a difference between
making money and building wealth. At the end of that.
In a separate podcast, we're really focused on that. But
like a lot of black strivers, we think that making
that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting that buck,
getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right. You
can win the battle and lose the war. And that's
(27:28):
exactly what my mother or my father did and wouldn't
listen to my mother. So but here's the positive part.
They were smart enough to buy that apartment building for
eighteen thousand dollars and they did nothing else but buy
that and just hold it. The whole family would be
set today, more set than ultimately we ended up being
(27:49):
with my mother by at least six times more set
that my mother ended up being technically a millionaire when
she passed on, But that one apartment building again would
be worth six million dollars today. We only own eighteen
thousand dollars when we purchased it, when they purchased it.
And when you buy a piece of real estate, you
get the benefit of the depreciation at tax benefits. You
get the benefit of the appreciation the equity, and you
(28:13):
write off the most of the mortgage payments against your income.
So it was really win win win anyway. So we
moved from the apartment building, owned it, then woved, got
a house, great good job. Then we bought a gas
station at I believe it's at Norman Dy and Vernon
South East corner. For those who know Los Angeles geography,
(28:35):
you know that that gas station is still there today.
Last time I was in LA it was still there
and functioning. We owned that gas station. We own a
cement contracting business. We owned a little nursery business taken
care of knucklehead kids like me. Before and after school,
and dad ought really argued over money because my dad
(28:55):
can make it but couldn't keep as I mentioned earlier,
and he was a great hustler, but he was not
financially literate. And Basil Young says the men and women
failed for three reasons arrogainst pride, and greed. My dad
was not greedy, but he was full of pride and
slightly arrogant. And he wouldn't ask my mother for advice.
And only in a relationship do I think that the
(29:19):
math should not work? Like I love math, I quote
my friend Melody Hobson. I love math because it doesn't
have an opinion right, But only in a relationship should
the math not work two plus two if it doesn't
equal four, sorry equals six, eight or ten meaning more
than four? What are you doing right? You can do
(29:40):
better all by yourself. If you're not better together, what
are you doing right? So Dad and Mom had the
building blocks right, but they didn't have the strategy right.
They didn't have the mindset right. They still had a
surviving mindset. They didn't together move to a thriving mindset. Again,
my mother finally got to thriving mindset. We're not there yet,
(30:01):
And unfortunately they thought they were builders, but they still
had a surviving, hustling mindset and approach, and so ended
up winning the battle and losing the war. Crossing bridges
ahead of time, picking up a stepping over a dollar
to pick up a dime. What do I mean by that?
They argued over money. Dad wouldn't listen to mother. He
(30:23):
would bid jobs of the scene seement contractor. He wanted
to win the bid. I respect the hustle, but again
not financially literate. So the job was the last contract
to bid with the client for one thousand dollars. My
dad would go in and bid at nine hundred. Well,
the materials might be nine to fifty. My dad didn't
think about that. He thought the cash flow is profit wrong.
(30:45):
So the more money he made the broker we got.
He made a dollar and spend a dollar fifty and
we lost everything. We lost the gas station, we lost
the apartment building, we lost our home, and on the
verge of losing our home. My mother again, she was
a master at savings, remember this going back to the
Grandma story. And she would put the little sea corns
(31:07):
to the side, and then ladies and gentlemen, get married.
I want you to trust each other. I want you
to be in each other's lives. I want you to
all that. But understand that you're meeting a business partner
here and not just the mate. And when you go
to the club and you see the dude, oh he's handsome. Lady, guys,
you see the lady, Oh she's fine. Don't just ask
their name, ask their credit score. Right, And I'm joking,
(31:30):
but I'm serious, right, because this is a business partner
for the rest of your life. So you want to
have a joint account, right, and you want to have
a separate account to make sure that you know, if
you find out this person is actually not financially literate,
they tear their own reery and they're not tearing yours,
the collective of yours. At the same time, you need
to have the backup plan for your family. So my
(31:52):
mother had a separate little account that she had set up,
and she wasn't hiding from my father. My father knew
it was there, and she had saved one thousand dollars,
which was a lot of money back then. This is
nineteen sixty eight. Now, this was nineteen seventy. I was four,
four or five years old, between three and five years old,
I get the math right, So sometime between sixty I
(32:14):
was born in sixty six, sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy
seventy one, that time period, anyway, four thousand dollars a
lot of money. My mother had saved this four thousand
dollars to send my brother to a college of his
choice because she wanted him to move from a surviving
mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, a thriving mindset, sost
surviving mindset is free. Your first reconstruction, free slavery. Out
(32:36):
of slavery, you're free. Second reconstruction, civil rights movement, getting
access to jobs, access to careers, access to education, access
to the polling booth, access to you know, public facilities,
restrooms of your choice, all that stuff being able to
have access. Of course, third reconstruction, which is we're in today.
(32:57):
That operation shop is helping the lead as a movie,
from the streets to the suites, from civil rights to
silver rights. Right, the third reconstruction. The color's not black
or white, it's green. It's not red or blue, it's green.
It's economicist opportunity for all. It's about writing checks. Not
just cashing them. So we're in the second reconstruction. Now
(33:26):
we're in the sixties and the seventies, and my mother
knew that for my brother to do better, he needed
a higher education. And you know better, you do better.
And to give you a little bit of inspiration, I
had a ged degree, which Chris Rock calls a good
enough diploma. Now I've got honorary doctor degrees from several
universities and colleges, and I'm on the bord of Clark
Atland University, and most people who work for me have
(33:47):
a college degree. I think actually everybody w works for
me as a college degree advanced degree. So I'm obsessed
with education. Around my library right now, it's nothing but books.
I love making smart sexy. Right I think we'll be
making dom sex even way too long. We've dumbed down
and celebrated it, and now we got to make smart
sexy again. So my brother was set to go to
(34:08):
a college of his choice to be whoever he wanted.
My father got to the bank first and took that
four thousand dollars. Unfortunately, my mother had him as a
signer on the account. So you might want to have
until you guys, in bed until you embed yourself into
you know, going through what about me to about week.
It may take up a minute for you guys to
come together as one and you trust each other, not
(34:28):
just romantically, but about money and business decisions, and you're
on the same accord. You might want to have an
account just your own name on it, and then he
has an account, or she has an account with their
name on it, and then you have a joint account
until things evolve. So I'll do a whole podcast on marriage,
so don't don't in the history of marriage and all
that stuff, So don't worry about that. So he got
(34:51):
the money and wasted it on some hair brain idea.
He had to get a bag, my dad did, and
of course he lost it like my grandmother lost it,
because they were both financially literate, good people, but financially literate,
and my brother could not go to a college of
his choice, and it broke my mother's heart and the
first thing she was my time. My brother ended up
(35:13):
going to the Navy, and he went to the Navy
because he could get a four year education to be
signed up for military service. He thought he signed over
for four years. Of course, it's like they know the
psychology in the military. Once you're there, you probably stayed there.
You had a good experience. So he signed her for
four years, resigned up, resigned up, and had a career
of the Navy, became a noncommissioned officer, a great career
(35:34):
in intelligence there, and ended up retiring to Hawaii, marry
somebody who lives in Hawaii. It works for retired from
the Navy, works for the Navy as a private contractor
with his family. And it's a beautiful story, but it
wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by that
(35:56):
four thousand dollars moment where he did not have self determination. Right,
But what would his life be? How to be different
if he had gone to college of a choice and
become a dentist or a doctor, or a banker or
a business person or an engineer or whatever. Right, you know,
what does a matter what he was? But it could
have been his choice and he and he just didn't
do that. And as a result of that, Uh, well,
(36:19):
I just told you the story. Right, he's a great,
great life, but it wasn't his choice. And that was enough.
My mother had had enough and my mother said him
out and uh and that became the fight of all
fights and my dad they had domestic abuse came to blows.
They had to call the police to get my mother,
my dad off, my off, my mother beating her up,
(36:40):
and she put off a pump, a three inch pump
popped him on the head. Here didn't grow on the
top of his head until his last dying days from
that pop. So he learned how to do that with
my mother again. But uh, she she was out, you
know that she left. We left with the shirt or
her back and her kids and we went to go
to say with somebody, she said, with my uncle O
(37:02):
c h. Was really her girlfriend and her boyfriend whose
name was OC. But it order made me feel comfortable,
make the kids feel comfortable, she said. It was that
that was my uncle and I was playing on the
and she was staying there with her girlfriend and her
boyfriend to save money for her by her first house
on her own. Again, here's that same lesson again, the basics,
(37:25):
you know, spending lesson you make, putting a little side
for the future. So she's working as a seatrist now
in McDonald bill's aircraft which she later became boeing and
making you know, equivalent of today, of fifteen dollars eighteen
dollars an hour. And she worked work, work safe, safe, save.
And while she was doing that, I built a relationship
(37:45):
with the guy oc who again thought was my uncle.
And I I was playing on the porch one day
and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I
was choking, and he cleared. He cleared my throat, you know,
he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I
wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I
(38:07):
adored this guy right, and he got murdered in front
of me in order to take care of his family
and all and and and are staying with him. He
didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I can't
afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's talk
about this again bas Young's quote. Men and when failed
for three reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. He could have
just had a conversation with us. My mother would have
(38:28):
contributed some money. But he decided he was going to
go to work his legit job. Then he was going
to go out again and he was going to sell
drugs part time. And it was marijuana was in the
wrong neighborhood, and those guys shitted very seriously. They followed
him home. They said, you're in the wrong territory, and
they drove. They dragged him. They hit him with a
truck and dragged him. Was on a bicycle. H And
(38:49):
that was right in front of me, in front of
the house. And I think they did it because I
could see him sent a message and they killed him
right in front of me. And I still had an
I mention in my head. So I saw my first
death and that was about money. So the first death
was the death of our of our parents' net worth,
family structure, generational well, second first murder was oc getting
(39:14):
murdered in front of me. All this is about money.
And my best friend George got murdered over money selling
drugs with the next door neighbor, Tweet, who we moved into.
My mother bought our first home one five five oh
two South Freeley in Compton, California, and she bought that house. Uh,
And I became friends with George, who was real smarter
(39:36):
than me, by the way, so intellect alone is not enough.
But George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset and
got murdered hanging out with tweet. So watch who you
hang around again. You hang around nine broke people, you'll
be the tenth. Whoever you hang around, whatever you see
is who you will be. And so I could go
on and on and on about my mother. But the
(39:57):
story here is that she she bought that house, we
lived in it. It was the beginning of her generational wealth.
She built equity, and then she sold that house, bought
another house, sold that house, she used the equity to
buy another house. She did that seven times, and she
ended up with a net worth of a million dollars.
And I know that because she gave some money to
(40:19):
my sister and my brother to buy a home a
couple of times. And of course i'm the manager of
her estate trusty Veru State, because she had a will.
I want everybody to have a will when she passed
on the glory. So hopefully she's an inspiration to you.
She lives on today, she has a fund in her name,
her legacy lives and hopefully now you know that even
if you're a single parent, you can still make it.
You can work an hourly job and build a net
(40:41):
worth of a million dollars and live a life of
dignity and self reliance. You can be free. It is possible.
The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom
can be taken away from you. But my mother's story
is a very simple one. She took a message from
her grandmother. She loved it, but she did My grandmother
didn't know, couldn't do better, and she used that lesson
(41:02):
for the rest of her life to take an hourly
income and turn it into generational wealth. And she passed
it on to her kids, or her kids would have
optionality and choice. And now the three of us are
living our truth because my mother lived her life not
only for herself, not just for me, but for week.
This is John O'Brien and this is how. Now you
(41:25):
make some money, but you build some wealth and you
have that dignity inside of you that no one can
take from you. All right, let's go Money and Wealth
(41:47):
with John O'Brien 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 show.
Welcome The Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John O'Brien and this is the Money in
Wealth podcast, coming to you every Thursday, dropping new episodes.
(00:22):
Tell all your friends about it. Financial literacy is a mindset.
It's not just about money, and my mother had the
right mindset. This is an episode dedicated to my mother.
Wanted to smith a bad sister. Grew up in the
Deep South and very much like this bandage out of
(00:42):
my hands, supporting my wrists, which I'm like an athlete
of the brain, always work in those writing new books.
So wore my muscles out here so recuperating. My mother
just wore out her hustle. She wore out her dream,
She wore out her life for her children. But you
know Rainbold's only follow storms. You know that you cannot
have rainbow without a storm first. And so she went
(01:03):
through stuff in order to become someone just like you're
going to do. And this is dedicated to single mothers
everywhere who want to know you can make it. You
can come up from nothing. My mother, it's a definition
of legitimate hustle. Became a millionaire working just like you,
(01:24):
many of you, an hourly job. Born in a small
town in Alabama, moved to East Saint Louis with her
sisters and her brother, and her dad died before she
was five. Before there were social security, there was no
social safety net as we call it today. So her
(01:47):
mother had to make a choice, right, And the choice
was do I send my kids everywhere like, break them up,
break the family up. And because there was no welfare,
there was no public assistance to take care of the family,
there was no father at home anymore, right, or do
we all find a way because we're better together to
make this, to make this work. And so grandmother of
(02:12):
Vester Murray decided that they were going to make it work.
And nobody cares work harder. Everybody had to work. So
they went to go work as domestics because they did
not have back then, you know, options that we had today,
and they did not have higher education. So they want
to go work for white families in private homes. And
(02:35):
my mother she made five dollars a day for the
whole day, not an hour for the whole day. And
when she come home from working, my grandmother, her mother
would say, would you make the day baby, and my
mother would say, I made five dollars, mom, and so
(02:55):
Vestor my grandmother would say, would give me that five dollars,
I'm going to the casino. Well, she didn't tell my
mother that. She just went to the casino and she
lost the money, their money. Now I'm about to give
you a big definition here in financial literacy. One of
these lessons is not what you make, is what you
keep right. And if your outflow sees your inflow, then
(03:20):
your overhead or be your downfall. And sometimes we save
our worst behavior family for those we care the most about.
Real talk. So just because somebody says they love you
doesn't mean they know how to love. And there's an
old Southern saying again, no matter how much I love you,
(03:40):
if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you
my own ignorance. I'll repeat that, no matter how much
I love you, my son or my daughter, if I
don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance.
I can only give you what I've got In the
blind town of one eyed Man's King, if you don't
know better, you can't do better. So my grandmother knew
(04:01):
enough when my grandfather passed to not break the family
up and send the kids hither and there and there
around the country, and that's cool. But she did not
know enough to encourage my mother and her sisters and
brothers to go get higher education, which was really the
way out back then. Today we're trying to educate you
(04:24):
to you can go write a check, start a business.
That's an option. Back then, it was just they thought
cash a check and get a job. But they didn't
think the exception of my uncle, by the way, Buddy
Uncle Buddy, who did create his own business sanitation business,
amongst others. But Germany speaking, the mindset was low frequency,
(04:46):
let me just go work for somebody, and that I'll
never make it out of this. So the only way
to make it out was to get lucky, to gamble.
So my grandmother took my mother's hard earn money and
went to the casino and lost it all every day.
So once my mother got win, that was what was
(05:07):
going on. She didn't want to talk back to grandma,
be disrespectful, but Grandma had short term memory, so luckily
for my mother, Grandma's like, well what you make today?
This is you know. A few weeks after and my
mother's got the memo now of like, what's really going on?
So my mother's like, well, I made two fifty two
dollars and fifty cents, give me that baby. So my
(05:29):
mother gave her the two fifty and she saved two
dollars and fifty cents. She had made five dollars, just
like she did before. But she now knew that that
she had to help grandmother help herself because she she
was financially illiterated and she didn't know any better, couldn't
do any better. So my mother learned the value of
savings at an early age. And I guess a survival mindset.
(05:52):
And there's three mindset surviving mindset, a thriving mindset, and
a winning mindset, And these three mindsets in my book
Up from Nothing, by the way, So initially my mother
had a surviving mindset, and she ultimately got to a
thriving mindset, but part of her that surviving mindset never
left my mother and the winning mindset, the builder mindset
(06:16):
that she blessed that my parents were able to give
me the optionality I guess to bless me with. When
I said I guess, meaning they didn't give it to me.
They gave me the platform, and I would and took
it for myself because they didn't know how to build.
That was not how they were built, It wasn't how
they were oriented. My wife, Shacher would say that all
behaviors learned behavior. I absolutely believe that. Right if you
(06:38):
hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. Once again,
Grandma loved everybody, but all she knew was what she knew,
so all she could give was the ignorant She had
the lack of knowledge in the area of financial literacy.
So Mom decided she needed to save and protect that
(06:59):
and not she had that information, because you know, ignorance
was bliss in the household, so Mom gained a habit
of savings. Mom did not value education, unfortunately, she did
not see that as a way out for the family,
and so nobody in the family went to college. In fact,
(07:22):
most girls, and because there were girls, they are women. Unfortunately,
they were live in a chauvinistic world even to this day,
and back then, expectations were not high for women, unfortunately,
and certainly not black women. Thank god, things have changed,
and so most of my aunties and my uncle they
didn't go to higher education and they were smart ladies.
(07:44):
They just were not encouraged to finish high school. And
my mother didn't finish high school. She worked, and that's
when she went back to high school at age sixty
two and marched in. I mean, this was amazing. I
didn't know my mother was in school. She was going
to work, and she was in school part time after work.
(08:06):
I hadn't know it until one day I was asked,
did I want to go to her graduation? And like
graduation from what? Graduated from high school? And she marched
with cap and gown on with eighteen year olds who
were graduating in high school. This was when we were
in California. I couldn't be more proud of my mother
(08:26):
then and now, I mean, just an extraordinary woman. Do
you remember you know how much courage and how much
confidence and self belief and self esteem and individuality it
takes to go back to high school and to finish,
and to not be ashamed but be proud of marching
with eighteen year olds as a sixty two year old.
(08:49):
Do you meagine the ridicule and the cutting of the
eyes that some people must have had about my mother
when she was going through that process. She didn't care
right there was an eagle surrounded by buzzes and turkeys.
My mother was an amazing individual, and she graduated and
(09:10):
I got to find that high school diploma and put
it up on the wall. She graduated, and then at
Boying Aircraft a mcdonnald Douglas, she would sometimes get laid
off because contracts with the government would not get renewed,
or there was some issue with the federal government having
the budget not be approved or whatever, and so they
(09:32):
would not fire my mother. They'd lay her off until
new business came. At the aircraft manufacturing company that she
worked at as a centric, she was a fabricator. She
fabricated interiors of airplanes, which then led to a side
hustle by the way of her making handicrafts which she
(09:54):
made with her hand in a sewing machine or with
needles and crocheting. Things get more low cost and high quality,
and she would sell those handicrafts, not after work. She'd
do it boldly at work at lunch on brakes, and
then she'd make food and she'd sell that. And she
(10:14):
would ride a bicycle around the plant in Long Beach
McDonald DOA's aircraft and she would market her wares, and
that's where I got, you know, some of my early
hustle from is looking at my mother and she makes
sure her nine to five financerr five to nine. She
(10:35):
had a part time hustle for the entirety of her
working life. And when that and the supervisors couldn't fire
her because the supervisors were often buying product from her
right so they could not they could not fire her.
They had to tolerate and even support her because they
were buying food and the handicraft. And my mother would
(10:59):
would go in ap proachas terry cloth towels from the
handicraft store, and she would turn those towels, you know,
towels that we wash our bodies off with, our drying
bodies off with when we come out of the shower
or out of the bath. She create bathrobes out of
(11:20):
that custom bathrobes made out of towels, and she had
different designs and different approaches. In fact, it was so
successful that Walmart is so odd that I'm being the
CEO of Walmart. Are good friends today and I coach
here financial literacy for all with him today at Operation Hope.
But back in the day, my mother's products were so well,
were so good that Walmart offered to purchase her products
(11:42):
and put them in their stores. They wanted to put
them in testament a Walmart store in I believe it
was comped in our Long Beach. My mother said that
one financial literacy mistake she made was they offered her
one percent of sales, and she said, that's ridiculous. Why
would I make anything for one percent? And she really
today that she passed up a gold mine because one
percent of whatever sales might have been at what we
(12:04):
now know to be or what was even then Walmart,
would have been a pretty big number. She learned then
that she'd rather have ten percent of something than one
hundred percent of nothing. But that was a lesson she
learned later in life. So when she got laid off
at McDonald's Aircraft and couldn't get the it wasn't getting
(12:24):
an hourly wage, and couldn't then have her side hustle there,
she brought her side hustle home. But she also didn't
want to go on welfare, no different than when she
was a child and there was no SOI security, It
was no welfare, whether welfare. They barely didn't want to
go on it. State assistance. Her grandmother didn't want to
go on it, and she always wanted to do for herself.
(12:45):
He's self reliant. The James Brown version of affirmative action
opened the door. I'll get it my dangself, right, And
so she would just go find the job in wherever
I was and irritate the heck out of me. So
I was at, of course school, I was at Colin
Peakelly Elementary School, El Segondo. It was actually El Segondo,
(13:07):
I believe, and it was renamed Colin Peakelly Elementary School,
if I got that correct. In Conflin, California, and she had
time on her hands. So she went and befriended the principal,
a low relationship. Capital became friends with the principal, and
initially she became the janitor. Yes, my dignified mother, who
(13:29):
worked as a as a trained seamstress at fabricating interiors
of commercial airplanes at a major airplane manufacturer when laid off,
went and became a janitor at my elementary school so
she could keep an eye on me. Of course, it
drove me nuts the lines. I gonna want it with
my mother around me all day and all night. But
(13:53):
my mother was in the fight. She's like, I'm in
the fight to say my kid's life. That's just there's no,
that's not negotiable. She was all in, and so it
didn't matter what I wanted. In fact, that's where I
learned that I tell parents today, you should whether your
kids respect you and learn to like you, then like
you and never respect you. My mother wanted me to
like her, but it didn't matter right. She was like,
(14:15):
you're going to respect me. And so she was a
janitor and that job ran its course. She was called
back to mc donalds Aircraft as a seamstress, so another contract.
Then she's relaid off again and she became a security
guard at my school. I think she was three different
(14:35):
jobs she took at my school to stay close to me.
And I had many problems growing up, but self esteem
was not one of them. I learned early on there's
a lot of love, you know, in the word no.
My mother would tell me no when it was appropriate,
but she also made sure I had high self esteem,
(14:56):
so I now know. Also there's a difference between being
broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor
as a disabling frame of mind. A depressied edition of
your spirit and you must vow never ever ever to
be poor again. I still use this quote, that operation Hope,
and it resonates with people. It probably resonates with you
as you're listening to this now. It's so common sense.
(15:18):
Operation Shope is a radical movement of common sense. But
I got that common sense from my mother. Because common
sense is not so common, it has to be taught.
And so she taught me to, you know, love myself,
and that became the real wealth we had because we
didn't have financial resources, so we had to have inner resources, right.
(15:38):
And I went to go on to sell mail order
Stacey Adams shoes and mail order jewelry and things like
that to my teachers and the principal at school in
part because of that self esteem and confidence that my
mother generated in me, and through her the relationship capital
I had with the personnel of the school, and I
(15:58):
leveraged that to get paid right. And I thank my
mother for that. I mean, there's so many other lessons
I got. I remember, Uh, there was a law pass
where you couldn't you couldn't beat your kids, and you
could spank your kids, but you couldn't beat them. And
child a piece of course. Uh, but it was a
(16:20):
broadly defined rule. And you know, teachers could spank you
with a ruler back in my day, and I think
they got out of law as well. So I came
home one day and I'd done something wrong and my
mother wanted to spain me. She wanted to go get
a switch you off the branch from the tree in
(16:40):
the back. I'm like, oh, no, you can't spank me.
That day is over, lost change. I'm free. And my
mother's like, oh you're free, right, I can't. I can't
spank you. No, no, no, you go to jail. I'll
call the police, argle my mother. My mother said, okay,
that's cool. Tell you what. Here's the phone I want
you to call. Pick up the phone down. I want
(17:02):
you to call the folks with the red light on
me the police and call the folks then with the
blue light for you. That's the more. Because I brought
you in this world, I damn sure can take you out. Right.
Like I said, I respected my mother, an I was afraid.
I was slightly afraid of her right. And it was
important because in my neighborhood, in the hood or d
(17:24):
hood d I d a hyphen h O d The
street behind me was so dangerous that if you went
on that street, you may not make it back. Like
my neighborhood, it wasn't you know, getting home, going to
school and getting home was not a foregone conclusion. Like
you you might get murdered. You certainly could have got jumped.
And I was jumped several times so my mother. And
(17:45):
my mother wasn't wasn't at home during the day, she
was at work, so I had to fear her, and
I did. I remember one day my mother was gonna
expect me again, and I said, I'm gonna call my daddy.
And they had divorced, of course, and she's like, oh,
you're gonna call your daddy, and she got a switch
from the back. She's like, no, this was a built.
(18:06):
Actually he ain't every word with a lick or from
the built. He ain't paid child support in all these years.
You want to. I mean, she she's made me up
one side and down the other. I never made that
mistake again. Uh. It was actually good discipline. I mean
(18:27):
we today you have too many people raising their daughters
and loving their sons, right you you got to you
gotta raise a young black man differently and he needs love,
but he needs discipline straight up. He needs me to
know what the boundaries are, and he needs to know
the word no, and that discipline may need may have
an exclamation mark in an underline next to it. And
(18:49):
I needed everything my mom and dad gave me. I
am who I am because of what they put into me.
But there's too many UH parents today who want to
be the best friend of their children, and the children
are buck wile, they're crazy off the chain. They have
no discipline, no respect. And if I don't like me,
I'm not gonna like you. If I don't respect me,
don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me,
I don't have a clue how I love you. And
(19:10):
if I don't have a purpose of my life, I'll
make your life a living hell. My mother sold all
of that. With all these life lessons, I'm trying to
pour it into you. Now. Let's fast forward. My mother
(19:31):
married a man who abused her, and the number of
calls are divorced by the way. It's money. Know of
the reason why I police respond to calls and the
household is domestic abuse, and then number one calls her
domestic abuse. It's money. Number one reason for heart attacks,
says you know, American heart association is stress. Number one
(19:54):
reason for stress. It's money. So my mother married the
this man. They had two children, my brother and my sister. Together,
they were stressed about money. Their alphloks, either their inflows
or their overheall was bound to be their downfall. And
he took it out of my mother. And so domestic
(20:14):
abuse going on in the household, and he hit her
and tried to humiliate her, and she kept saving a
little bit on the side for herself and trying to
figure ot how she gonna get out of that situation. Ladies,
in any of this sound familiar, by the way, why
does a woman stay with an abuse of me? All right?
I mean just real talk, like why is a woman
(20:35):
on a stripper pole at three in the morning with
some three hundred pound guy throwing cash at her because
she likes it? Because she likes it because she's attracted
to this dude. Of course not it's economics. It's money, right,
So just real talk here. Financial literacy and the need
for it is everywhere. It is. It's entirely possible that
the only true freedom is financial freedom. And I want
(20:57):
you to be free. My mother, God rest her soul,
who passed on the glory September tenth, twenty twenty three.
So this episode is dedicated to her. She wanted you
to be free. Her credit score was eight fifty when
she was still in the workforce, and it was over
seven hundred after she retired several years later. She wasn't
doing financial transactions anymore, but she understood that she wasn't black,
(21:21):
she was green, economic right, she was free. She could
do what she wanted. When she put her sub security
number in the computer whenever she was applying for the
computer to look at it and see what color she was,
the computer realized that her credit score was extraordinary, outstanding
and above average and just said, yes, whatever it is
she wanted. So she ever, later in her life, she
(21:42):
got credit access to whatever she wanted because she knew
better and could do better, unlike grandmother. Her mother back
to the story, So, I want you to understand that
rainbows only follow storms, which understand that you can't grow
except through legitimate suffering. Should understand that people don't change
(22:02):
in good times. Why would you, right, you only change
in bad times. And so my mother had bad times.
She realized that this was not working for her, this
being the situation with her mother, even though her mother
loved her. Right, And there'll be people who love you,
who say they love you, who don't know how to
love you, don't know how to live a successful life,
and you're going to need to be bilingual love them
(22:23):
and do something else, do something different to argue with
the fool cruiser are too So I want you getting
in stupid arguments with people because they say they love you.
I want you to accept what they have to give
that's beneficial to you, and then make a move that's
different for your life and the situations that require a
(22:45):
different set of choices and frankly intellect right, a software upgrade.
My mother was able to get this software upgrade initially
on her own, and then she was with again my
brothers sister's father. I won't mention his name because it's
not positive what I'm saying here, and I wanted to.
(23:07):
I'm not trying to jam up his legacy, but I
didn't like to beat my mother. Hello. So my mother
had one last insult too many, and she poured some
hot coffee on home boy. He was sleeping and had
demanded some coffee, and so I got some coffee for you,
and he said, I'm gonna kill you, you know, And so
(23:29):
she knew she had to go, and she prayed to God,
you know, she said, look, Lord, please just get me,
just get me out of here with my children. And
she had premonition from God. She told me that God
told her that you'll be delivered two thousand miles from here.
And my father, the guy who became my father, Johnny Smith,
(23:50):
came through town east Saint Louis and saw a mother
and went crazy, just fell and initially in loss with
her and then in love with her and was like
within a day, like how do I marry you? And
she said, well, you got to take me and my
kids if before we can have any kind of conversation.
And he said that's great. I live in California. Well
that's about two thousand miles right, almost precisely for where
(24:14):
my mother was. So my mother's like, okay, this is
God speaking. And so she got out of town before Dave,
I say that's his name, my brother and sister's father,
day before he could find her and do harm to
her self preservation. So she had to go, right, don't
let the perfect become the death of the good, like
(24:34):
this was good enough at the stars a line, and
she was out. My father was in town because he
was back in the day, if you were successful and prosperous.
My dad owned a construction of a senior contracting business.
I'll get into his story in a separate podcast episode
Johnny Smith. But he was driving his car to go
buy a new car in Detroit, Michigan, and he drove
(24:55):
across the country and was seeing some relatives or some
friends in Saint Louis, and he was going to the
d dealership the manufactured by a cart. That's what they
did back in the day. I guess the profile, and
so versus. Continuing on to Detroit, he met my mother,
lost his mind. They turned around, packed up all the clothes,
packed up my brother and my sister, and went back
to California. And I was born February sixth, nineteen sixty six,
(25:17):
at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. And they
ultimately bought a home on Santa Barbara Boulevard now it's
called Martin Luther King Boulevard and started to build a life.
And I was the youngest of three children, and I
remember up and they had done a great job. They built,
(25:38):
they bought a home together. Only forty one to forty
five percent of black folks own a home today, by
the way, compared to seventy five percent of our white counterparts.
Was the number one way you build wealth in America
home ownership. Hello, So they had built a home, started
building some wealth. They had built sor I purchased an
eight unit apartment building across the street, I believe it was,
(26:01):
and they were at some point, and by maybe getting
my math, I think making the chronology here wrong. I
think they bought the eight unit apartment building. First lived
in one unit rented to out that covered the mortgage
payment that was subped three hundred dollars a month. Yes,
they built. They bought it for eighteen thousand dollars. For
anybody who think in real estate, it's not magical that
(26:22):
private building's worth several million dollars today almost the last
time I checked, it was six million dollars. That's that
apartment building is worth. We bought it for eighteen thousand
dollars and the rest of the unit rent so it
was eight units. So we lived in one unit rented
out to to cover the mortgage payment. The rest of
the units, the five units that were left for profit,
and they used that profit, saved that extra money to
(26:45):
then put a down payment on their home, the home
I'm talking about on Santa Barbara Boulevard. And by the way,
we lost the apartment building. I'll get to that in
a minute. And I say we lost because that's generational
wealth for our family. It wasn't just my mom and
my dad. It wasn't just my dad. They my dad
didn't realize that they had to be better together, a
pastor Andrew Young, my dad was a great hustler, by
(27:07):
the way, a great hustler. But there's a difference between
making money and building wealth. At the end of that.
In a separate podcast, we're really focused on that. But
like a lot of black strivers, we think that making
that money, getting that dollar, getting that cash, getting that buck,
getting that bag is everything. It's actually not right. You
can win the battle and lose the war. And that's
(27:28):
exactly what my mother or my father did and wouldn't
listen to my mother. So but here's the positive part.
They were smart enough to buy that apartment building for
eighteen thousand dollars and they did nothing else but buy
that and just hold it. The whole family would be
set today, more set than ultimately we ended up being
(27:49):
with my mother by at least six times more set
that my mother ended up being technically a millionaire when
she passed on, But that one apartment building again would
be worth six million dollars today. We only own eighteen
thousand dollars when we purchased it, when they purchased it.
And when you buy a piece of real estate, you
get the benefit of the depreciation at tax benefits. You
get the benefit of the appreciation the equity, and you
(28:13):
write off the most of the mortgage payments against your income.
So it was really win win win anyway. So we
moved from the apartment building, owned it, then woved, got
a house, great good job. Then we bought a gas
station at I believe it's at Norman Dy and Vernon
South East corner. For those who know Los Angeles geography,
(28:35):
you know that that gas station is still there today.
Last time I was in LA it was still there
and functioning. We owned that gas station. We own a
cement contracting business. We owned a little nursery business taken
care of knucklehead kids like me. Before and after school,
and dad ought really argued over money because my dad
(28:55):
can make it but couldn't keep as I mentioned earlier,
and he was a great hustler, but he was not
financially literate. And Basil Young says the men and women
failed for three reasons arrogainst pride, and greed. My dad
was not greedy, but he was full of pride and
slightly arrogant. And he wouldn't ask my mother for advice.
And only in a relationship do I think that the
(29:19):
math should not work? Like I love math, I quote
my friend Melody Hobson. I love math because it doesn't
have an opinion right, But only in a relationship should
the math not work two plus two if it doesn't
equal four, sorry equals six, eight or ten meaning more
than four? What are you doing right? You can do
(29:40):
better all by yourself. If you're not better together, what
are you doing right? So Dad and Mom had the
building blocks right, but they didn't have the strategy right.
They didn't have the mindset right. They still had a
surviving mindset. They didn't together move to a thriving mindset. Again,
my mother finally got to thriving mindset. We're not there yet,
(30:01):
And unfortunately they thought they were builders, but they still
had a surviving, hustling mindset and approach, and so ended
up winning the battle and losing the war. Crossing bridges
ahead of time, picking up a stepping over a dollar
to pick up a dime. What do I mean by that?
They argued over money. Dad wouldn't listen to mother. He
(30:23):
would bid jobs of the scene seement contractor. He wanted
to win the bid. I respect the hustle, but again
not financially literate. So the job was the last contract
to bid with the client for one thousand dollars. My
dad would go in and bid at nine hundred. Well,
the materials might be nine to fifty. My dad didn't
think about that. He thought the cash flow is profit wrong.
(30:45):
So the more money he made the broker we got.
He made a dollar and spend a dollar fifty and
we lost everything. We lost the gas station, we lost
the apartment building, we lost our home, and on the
verge of losing our home. My mother again, she was
a master at savings, remember this going back to the
Grandma story. And she would put the little sea corns
(31:07):
to the side, and then ladies and gentlemen, get married.
I want you to trust each other. I want you
to be in each other's lives. I want you to
all that. But understand that you're meeting a business partner
here and not just the mate. And when you go
to the club and you see the dude, oh he's handsome. Lady, guys,
you see the lady, Oh she's fine. Don't just ask
their name, ask their credit score. Right, And I'm joking,
(31:30):
but I'm serious, right, because this is a business partner
for the rest of your life. So you want to
have a joint account, right, and you want to have
a separate account to make sure that you know, if
you find out this person is actually not financially literate,
they tear their own reery and they're not tearing yours,
the collective of yours. At the same time, you need
to have the backup plan for your family. So my
(31:52):
mother had a separate little account that she had set up,
and she wasn't hiding from my father. My father knew
it was there, and she had saved one thousand dollars,
which was a lot of money back then. This is
nineteen sixty eight. Now, this was nineteen seventy. I was four,
four or five years old, between three and five years old,
I get the math right, So sometime between sixty I
(32:14):
was born in sixty six, sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy
seventy one, that time period, anyway, four thousand dollars a
lot of money. My mother had saved this four thousand
dollars to send my brother to a college of his
choice because she wanted him to move from a surviving
mindset to a thriving mindset. Right, a thriving mindset, sost
surviving mindset is free. Your first reconstruction, free slavery. Out
(32:36):
of slavery, you're free. Second reconstruction, civil rights movement, getting
access to jobs, access to careers, access to education, access
to the polling booth, access to you know, public facilities,
restrooms of your choice, all that stuff being able to
have access. Of course, third reconstruction, which is we're in today.
(32:57):
That operation shop is helping the lead as a movie,
from the streets to the suites, from civil rights to
silver rights. Right, the third reconstruction. The color's not black
or white, it's green. It's not red or blue, it's green.
It's economicist opportunity for all. It's about writing checks. Not
just cashing them. So we're in the second reconstruction. Now
(33:26):
we're in the sixties and the seventies, and my mother
knew that for my brother to do better, he needed
a higher education. And you know better, you do better.
And to give you a little bit of inspiration, I
had a ged degree, which Chris Rock calls a good
enough diploma. Now I've got honorary doctor degrees from several
universities and colleges, and I'm on the bord of Clark
Atland University, and most people who work for me have
(33:47):
a college degree. I think actually everybody w works for
me as a college degree advanced degree. So I'm obsessed
with education. Around my library right now, it's nothing but books.
I love making smart sexy. Right I think we'll be
making dom sex even way too long. We've dumbed down
and celebrated it, and now we got to make smart
sexy again. So my brother was set to go to
(34:08):
a college of his choice to be whoever he wanted.
My father got to the bank first and took that
four thousand dollars. Unfortunately, my mother had him as a
signer on the account. So you might want to have
until you guys, in bed until you embed yourself into
you know, going through what about me to about week.
It may take up a minute for you guys to
come together as one and you trust each other, not
(34:28):
just romantically, but about money and business decisions, and you're
on the same accord. You might want to have an
account just your own name on it, and then he
has an account, or she has an account with their
name on it, and then you have a joint account
until things evolve. So I'll do a whole podcast on marriage,
so don't don't in the history of marriage and all
that stuff, So don't worry about that. So he got
(34:51):
the money and wasted it on some hair brain idea.
He had to get a bag, my dad did, and
of course he lost it like my grandmother lost it,
because they were both financially literate, good people, but financially literate,
and my brother could not go to a college of
his choice, and it broke my mother's heart and the
first thing she was my time. My brother ended up
(35:13):
going to the Navy, and he went to the Navy
because he could get a four year education to be
signed up for military service. He thought he signed over
for four years. Of course, it's like they know the
psychology in the military. Once you're there, you probably stayed there.
You had a good experience. So he signed her for
four years, resigned up, resigned up, and had a career
of the Navy, became a noncommissioned officer, a great career
(35:34):
in intelligence there, and ended up retiring to Hawaii, marry
somebody who lives in Hawaii. It works for retired from
the Navy, works for the Navy as a private contractor
with his family. And it's a beautiful story, but it
wasn't his choice. His whole story is defined by that
(35:56):
four thousand dollars moment where he did not have self determination. Right,
But what would his life be? How to be different
if he had gone to college of a choice and
become a dentist or a doctor, or a banker or
a business person or an engineer or whatever. Right, you know,
what does a matter what he was? But it could
have been his choice and he and he just didn't
do that. And as a result of that, Uh, well,
(36:19):
I just told you the story. Right, he's a great,
great life, but it wasn't his choice. And that was enough.
My mother had had enough and my mother said him
out and uh and that became the fight of all
fights and my dad they had domestic abuse came to blows.
They had to call the police to get my mother,
my dad off, my off, my mother beating her up,
(36:40):
and she put off a pump, a three inch pump
popped him on the head. Here didn't grow on the
top of his head until his last dying days from
that pop. So he learned how to do that with
my mother again. But uh, she she was out, you
know that she left. We left with the shirt or
her back and her kids and we went to go
to say with somebody, she said, with my uncle O
(37:02):
c h. Was really her girlfriend and her boyfriend whose
name was OC. But it order made me feel comfortable,
make the kids feel comfortable, she said. It was that
that was my uncle and I was playing on the
and she was staying there with her girlfriend and her
boyfriend to save money for her by her first house
on her own. Again, here's that same lesson again, the basics,
(37:25):
you know, spending lesson you make, putting a little side
for the future. So she's working as a seatrist now
in McDonald bill's aircraft which she later became boeing and
making you know, equivalent of today, of fifteen dollars eighteen
dollars an hour. And she worked work, work safe, safe, save.
And while she was doing that, I built a relationship
(37:45):
with the guy oc who again thought was my uncle.
And I I was playing on the porch one day
and I fell and I was swallowing my tongue. I
was choking, and he cleared. He cleared my throat, you know,
he cleared my throat passage and saved my life. I
wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. So I
(38:07):
adored this guy right, and he got murdered in front
of me in order to take care of his family
and all and and and are staying with him. He
didn't have a conversation with us saying, hey, I can't
afford to have you guys stay with me. Let's talk
about this again bas Young's quote. Men and when failed
for three reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. He could have
just had a conversation with us. My mother would have
(38:28):
contributed some money. But he decided he was going to
go to work his legit job. Then he was going
to go out again and he was going to sell
drugs part time. And it was marijuana was in the
wrong neighborhood, and those guys shitted very seriously. They followed
him home. They said, you're in the wrong territory, and
they drove. They dragged him. They hit him with a
truck and dragged him. Was on a bicycle. H And
(38:49):
that was right in front of me, in front of
the house. And I think they did it because I
could see him sent a message and they killed him
right in front of me. And I still had an
I mention in my head. So I saw my first
death and that was about money. So the first death
was the death of our of our parents' net worth,
family structure, generational well, second first murder was oc getting
(39:14):
murdered in front of me. All this is about money.
And my best friend George got murdered over money selling
drugs with the next door neighbor, Tweet, who we moved into.
My mother bought our first home one five five oh
two South Freeley in Compton, California, and she bought that house. Uh,
And I became friends with George, who was real smarter
(39:36):
than me, by the way, so intellect alone is not enough.
But George had the wrong role model, wrong mindset and
got murdered hanging out with tweet. So watch who you
hang around again. You hang around nine broke people, you'll
be the tenth. Whoever you hang around, whatever you see
is who you will be. And so I could go
on and on and on about my mother. But the
(39:57):
story here is that she she bought that house, we
lived in it. It was the beginning of her generational wealth.
She built equity, and then she sold that house, bought
another house, sold that house, she used the equity to
buy another house. She did that seven times, and she
ended up with a net worth of a million dollars.
And I know that because she gave some money to
(40:19):
my sister and my brother to buy a home a
couple of times. And of course i'm the manager of
her estate trusty Veru State, because she had a will.
I want everybody to have a will when she passed
on the glory. So hopefully she's an inspiration to you.
She lives on today, she has a fund in her name,
her legacy lives and hopefully now you know that even
if you're a single parent, you can still make it.
You can work an hourly job and build a net
(40:41):
worth of a million dollars and live a life of
dignity and self reliance. You can be free. It is possible.
The only freedom is financial freedom, because every other freedom
can be taken away from you. But my mother's story
is a very simple one. She took a message from
her grandmother. She loved it, but she did My grandmother
didn't know, couldn't do better, and she used that lesson
(41:02):
for the rest of her life to take an hourly
income and turn it into generational wealth. And she passed
it on to her kids, or her kids would have
optionality and choice. And now the three of us are
living our truth because my mother lived her life not
only for herself, not just for me, but for week.
This is John O'Brien and this is how. Now you
(41:25):
make some money, but you build some wealth and you
have that dignity inside of you that no one can
take from you. All right, let's go Money and Wealth
(41:47):
with John O'Brien 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 show.
Host
John Hope Bryant
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