December 31, 2024 • 24 mins
This special Best Of edition episode features some our favorite moments from the season! If you missed one of these episodes, this might be your second chance to listen!
Clip 1 Episode Title: The New Game is Money
Clip 2 Episode Title: 10 Businesses to Start for Less Than $25K
Clip 3 Episode Title: Leaders vs. Managers
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Piece of the planet, Charlamagne to God here and as
we come closer the closing out this year, I just
want to say thank you for tuning it into the
Black Effect podcast Network. There have been so many great
moments over the past year. Take a listen to some
of those captivating moments in this special best of episode.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
When somebody cursed me out, or if they could, they don't.
But if somebody was cursing me out or being mad
to me at a restaurant, you know, I don't have
to get upset with you. I can put my amerri
Express card out, my Black America Express card and knock
you out with it without ever touching you. I can
I can buy the not just pay for the bill.
I can buy the restaurant with it. Like literally, there's
no limit on the card. Over with you. Doesn't have
(00:35):
to get upset with you. She just I mean she
was on the board of I think it was Weight Watchers,
and something happened when something went down where she didn't
like what they were doing, and so she made some
moves that they didn't like, and so they said, well,
we're gonna we don't appreciate you doing syz Oprah. So
(00:57):
we're going to I just saw her a few weeks ago.
I love her. We're gonna you know, we don't want
you to think to be our spokesman anymore. Can you
imagine somebody saying this to Oprah and she's like, that's cool,
let's find no problem. Didn't raise her voice on sold
all over stock tied to the deal. The stock then plunged.
I think this is the weight watchers. Don't quote me
(01:17):
in this, but whatever weight management company she was associated with,
you can correct me in the comments or confirming in
the comments if I'm right. The stock plunged when she
sold her shares. They forgot that she had a strong
economic interest. She wrote a very smart, financially literate and
intelligent deal. It's all about the details. When she cut
(01:39):
that deal to be their spokesman, she's like, I'm not
gonna rock the mic. I'm going to own it. And
that's what I want you to do. I want you
to own the stage. Don't just dance on it. I
want you Quincy Jones says, if you think that you're
in the music business and you don't own music rights,
publishing rights, licensing rights, some kind of rights or ownership interests.
You're not in the music business. You're a temporary performer,
(02:00):
you know. Jones and Iced to talk about Michael Jackson
and how Paul McCarthy got very upset with Michael because
Paul McCartney said that Michael should own publishing, shouldn't just
be an entertainer, And Michael realized that he was smart,
and so God gave you two ears in one mouth
to listen twice as much as you talk, and so
he's like, okay, cool, that's really smart. I should own
(02:21):
publishing rights. Okay cool. So he had it owns. We
went I was trying to own his own publishing rights,
Michael Jackson's rights. But then he's like, well, who else
should I own? The Beatles? So he went and bought
bid for the Beatles publishing rights, and Paul McCarthy lost
his mind. He was extraor I think to this day,
extraordinarily effect. I no, based on public reports, published reports.
(02:43):
In his own words, he was very very, very very
very unhappy with Michael Jackson. Now it might have been
on the edges I go that your friend tells you that,
you know, he didn't say no. He's not even another
go because Paul McCarthy didn't say any publishing rights but ours.
He didn't say but but the Beatles. In fact, there's
a little bit of arrogance assumed that Michael Jackson, who
(03:04):
was the biggest pop star in the world at that time,
did I did not have a right to own the
Beatles publishing rights too. But he didn't say, you can
own any rights but the Beatles. He was giving this
advice against like a tutor gives, like a mentor gives
a mentee. Didn't realize that that that that the student
was going to become the teacher. Michael when bought the
Beatles publishing portfolio, Paul McCarthy lost his mind and and
(03:28):
and could not say a nice thing after about his
once good friend. Michael Jackson. Just didn't. He didn't, He
didn't do any unethical He just outbit everybody else, including
the Beatles. The Beatles could have outbid Michael Jackson, they
could have bought that portfolio, but didn't believe in themselves
as much as Michael Jackson believed in them, and he
bought that portfolio. Do you know that when Michael Jackson
(03:50):
was doing all that spending and the reason he didn't
go broke was because he owned that publishing rights, which
which Sony ultimately ended up purchasing, was worth a billion
dollars his his he never weighed that kind of money.
And tour, you knew you toured. You made ten million
back in the day, ten twenty million. The tour that
took him out when he passed away got restless. So
I think that was he's gonna make fifty million. Is
to get the number right, We have the number right,
(04:10):
fifty million. But his portfolio was worth a billion back
in that day. It was worth you know, seven hundred million.
And that's in large part because he owned his portfolio
plus a few others, but mostly the Beatles' rights. It's
what you own. And so getting your credit score now
you know Michael Jackson's credit score was He's Michael Jackson.
(04:33):
He is in Presario, and he had these relationship capital
amongst people in the music business, and he was savvy
about business, and so he made a case, a credible case.
You know, the word credit comes in the lot who
were creditito, which means credibility. Did you know that? So
he had credibility with those who could who could work
with him to back him to buy the publishing rights.
Now he got into trouble financially later on and had
(04:54):
to sell his half of the publishing and ultimately as
a state, I think right now is trying to sell
all the publishing rights. But the reason Michael Jackson was
able to live the life he lived was not because
he danced from the stage, because he owned the music
being played on the stage. So on the stage you
live on. The credit score you have gets most of
(05:15):
the yes. Is that you want you want to become
you want a prime home loan, The answer is yes,
good credit score over seven hundred. My mother's credit score
was eight fifty four when it the smith got rest
her soul, and the computer just said yes to my
mother midnight. When my mother went to computer to apply
for a loan for something a home mortgage or consumer
loan or auto a loan, whatever, the computer just said yes.
(05:38):
Because now it didn't say are you black, or you
let you're female? Whatever. He said, Oh my gosh, he's
an eight hundred credit score plus over seven hundred. By
the way, it's just fine, perfect, actually seven fifty yet golden.
But my mother's credit score was eight to fifty four
back back when it went that high, and the computer
just said, yes, you're approved. And you've never seen a
riot and a seven hundred credit score neighborhood in all
of your life. Right, So I want you to get
(06:01):
your credit score right. I want you to get your
debt down, your savings up, your credit score up, because
if you can do that, the bank just says, yes,
the banks are not racist. Okay, they're capitalist machines. They
want to make money and they cannot make money unless
they make a loan. Now, is there somebody racist at
a bank? Sure there is, right, they are racist people everywhere.
But as a rule, like racism and banks, I did
(06:21):
a thing on banks. We go and listen to that
podcast or break this down. But one hundred years ago, yes,
there was a racist bank. It was Joe's bank, as
family owned it, and he didn't want to give any
loans to black people. Yes, or maybe even the women.
Women couldn't even get a loan before nineteen seventy two,
you know that. That's that nineteen seventy two women. I
did a Time article on this, you should read it.
I did a podcast on this, you should listen to it.
(06:43):
But women did not have rights financial rights before nineteen
seventy two, nineteen seventy four crazy, not eighteen seventy two, eighties,
seventy four, nineteen seventy two in our lifetime. So the
bank wants to say, yes, they can't make any money
unless they make a loan. Again, on a hundred years ago,
they were discriminating issue because they could because it was
owned by a family. Now a bank is publicly traded
(07:04):
and they want their stock to do well. They want
their they want to perform for their shareholders, which means
they need to make good loans. So if you're pooking
them boo booing them, whether you're poor white or poor black,
your credit score is five hundred, not making you alone.
They're not making you alone. I wouldn't make you alone, okay,
But if your credit score is seven hundred, you're not
black or white, You're not red or blues and politics
(07:27):
black and white isn't race. You're green as in a
good credit risk. Those of you not familiar. I'm an
entrepreneur and I built businesses and enterprises and nonprofit organizations,
and I've been at this my whole life. I started
(07:50):
not in the womb, but I was, you know, it
was role modeled by my mom and my dad. We
model what we see right, Right, And I often tell
people when people say, why the kids in the inner
city want to be rap stars, athletes or drug dealers? Right,
And there's nothing wrong with being want to be a
rap star, just you can't. It's hard to scale. My
(08:12):
friends Killer Mike and t I and the jay Z's
of the world, and even you know, the R and
B stars that I love so much, like my brother
Howard Hewitt and all these you know, the impresarios. You know,
there's only one Quincy Jones in the world. Right, it's
hard to scale. You can't reproduce personality like that. They're unique, right.
(08:35):
And athletes same thing. Right, There's something like five hundred
thousand young men trying to go into the believe it's
the NBA, see the NBA, of the NFL, and of that,
you know, like eighteen thousand of them. Make them into college,
make it into college sports. And it's like one two.
(08:59):
I think it's this is the NBA. Make it actually
into the pros. I think it's like sixty and so,
you know, and of course, nobody should want to be
a drug dealer. And you've heard me say this before.
You know, drug dealers are unethical and it may be
a moral business, but they're not dumb. They understand import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail,
(09:21):
customer service, security, territory logistics. Right, These are not dumb people.
These are really smart guys and unfortunately sometimes ladies with
a really crabby business plan and bad role models and
bad mentors. And one of the reasons that I do
what I do is that you know is what we
don't know that we don't know this killing us, but
(09:42):
we think we know like no one gave us a shot,
no one gave us a plan, no one gave us,
gave us training, right, no one gave us a proper
business plan for our lives. It's my I think it's
my fourth book. The memo with the book that's out
now is Financial Literacy for All, which, by the way,
thanks everybody for continuing to make it a number one seller.
It's number one in business finance on Amazon nationwide for
(10:05):
the last three months. So if you haven't don't have
your copy, get a copy. If you have your own
copy already, leave a review please online. And it's coming
to black bookstores near you. If it's not there, already
I'll do this American Aspiration tour. I'll be stopping at
black business bookstores. I'm doing a book, a couple of
book events at Walmart. The CEO Walmart did the forward
(10:26):
for the book. Doug Millan, good friend of mine, coach
chair Financial Lucy for all with me And yeah, there's
some other surprises coming the end of the year with
the book. But you know what was that to do
with this podcast episode? Like my shirt today says my
hustle looks different, My hustle looks different. But my mom
and dad I understood a had blessings like the other
(10:48):
people didn't have. My mom. Yeah, I grew up in
the hood. I grew up in South Central incompetent. Yes,
all that's true. I was homeless, all that's true. But
my mother, I was economical helmless, by the way, which
is different than most people's homelessness. And you know, it
was almost an intentional situation because I could have gone
home and hung out with my mother, but she would
have you know, she was worrying about me. She wouldn't
worried about me, and she would have forced me to
(11:09):
go get a job at mc Downdela's Air crab and
Boying Aircraft when she down Dose Aircraft which is now
Boying Aircraft where she worked. I didn't want to do that.
That wasn't my calling in my life. So I was
willing to roll the dice on me, swilling to bet
on me. My hustle looks different. Well, my mother worked
a job. She also had a small business part time
(11:30):
selling making handicrafts and selling that plus food that she made.
H she sell it to her co workers at Medwndular's Aircraft.
She would and then the supervisor got mad at her.
He would threaten there like I'm going to expose your
side hustle. She's like, well, I'm gonna expose you of
being accustom my side hustle and let me ride around
(11:51):
his bicycle on the campus oft BC down Douglas air
crab and sell it to all my coworkers and your
your piers. So when I go down, you going down
zip it. My dad owned his own business right and
my grandfather was a sharecropper born in eight seventy one RB. Smith.
So I got it honest. Like my mom had a
(12:12):
sense of yes, I am gay that to me, my
dad has sense of yes I can and get that
to me, all right, So my hustle was different, and
I want your hustle to be different. If I want
you to have a choice, like I want you to
have freedom, I want you to have freedom of self
determination and not just the freedom to go work where
(12:32):
you want. That's cool. Most people are going to work
for somebody else's that's perfectly fine, and we need that,
We need to encourage that. We need to build the
middle class. But sometimes you want to You may choose
to take a higher risk and to get more reward
if you succeeded that you go from cashing a check
working for somebody else to writing a check, hello, working
(12:55):
for yourself. Can I get any man? I tell you
this is this is the church. What is happening now?
And what have you done for me lately? This is
the pulpit of finance. This is the weekly ministry, not pulpit.
No disrespect to pastors of the cloth. This is my
ministry of finance. Right, small m and an opportunity again.
(13:15):
Money and Wealth. This is this is my Money and
Wealth podcast series on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
Come in to you every week with something that breaks
this down at a level and in a way that
everybody can understand. Again, you're not dumb and you're not stupid.
It's what you don't know that you don't know that's
going you. But you think you know in a blind
town or one eyed man's king. If you don't know better,
(13:37):
you can't do better or keep people like John? Can
you get on with the ten businesses? Right? Let me
so in these in these unique times, right. So, I
recognize you have hustle. I recognize that you're nine to five.
Your job may finance your five to nine your side hustle, beautiful.
I know that you want to go from the bottom
of the top. I know that your role models may
be limited because you model what you see. But we
(13:59):
don't see a lot of business people in our neighborhoods.
And when I was coming up, you know, I didn't
know there were businesses in my neighborhood. I knew there
was a nail salon, I knew there was a you know,
a liquor store or whatever, but I didn't equate that
to business. I didn't realize those were capitalists, right. I
didn't realize that was free enterprise. It took a banker
coming into my classroom and breaking that down for me
(14:22):
when I was nine years old. In my financial literacy course,
which I hope to one day get indoctrinated into every
school in America home economic course to financial Literacy for
All legislation, I'll be working on that. You can go
for the Campaign if America. By the way, on our
website and operation help go to the Campaign for America
under the book Financial Literacy for All book page in
(14:42):
sign up for the Campaign for America to ultimately build
a list that would go to legislators that would encourage
them to make financial literacy in the legislation of the land.
But that's how I got it right. Banker come in
my class froom giving me tools and then I and
then my eyes lit up. I saw businesses everywhere, so
I wanted to make it's easy for you. Here are
ten businesses right that you can start. Now. You know,
(15:06):
some of these I could go for one hundred thousand,
but I'm going to do this. I'm going to make
this approachable. Right, ten businesses you can start for twenty
five thousand dollars a year because these are lean times, right,
Folks at too much month at the end of their money.
Right now, these are leaner times. If this was two
thousand and one the pandemic hit. Now the stimulus money
(15:27):
is flowing, I might do a podcast that's one hundred
thousand dollars business, but you've got less money, day, less resources, right,
So I wanted something that's approachable twenty five thousand dollars
and you can even finance some of that if you
need to business person versus entrepreneur. People use these phrases interchangeably.
(15:50):
They're not interchangeable. You can be an entrepreneur and be
a small business owner. You can be an entrepreneur and
be a big business owner. You can be an entrepreneur
and not be a asiness owner. You can have an
entrepreneurial mindset and run a nonprofit. Run your life just
as almost like a you know, an entrepreneur mindset if
you're just running your life. What might be an upgrade
(16:10):
on being a hustler and I mean hustler in the
positive sense of the phrase. You can be a business
owner and be entrepreneurial, and you can be a business
owner and be an entrepreneur. But don't presume because you're
a business owner you are an entrepreneur that that is
a bridge too far, and words matter, definitions matter. And
(16:36):
by the way, don't be an entrepreneur and presume that
you There are people who are entrepreneurs who are horrible.
Horrible business owners need to be need to stay in
a mellion a ways away from actually running and owning
a business. Uh you know. This is analogous to a
great recording artist, is a great uh you know, a
track star athlete or a great you know, performer who
(16:58):
has a business manager who handles the left brain work
while they handle the right brain work. Left brain is
analytical two plus twe equals four and all that stuff.
Left brain, sorry, right brain is creative, making the best,
the most amazing music or whatever on the planet. But
don't confuse those things. Because you have a genius in
(17:19):
one area, it automatically means you have a genius in another.
That is a mistake. To assume is to make an
ass out of you and me. Literally, that's how it's spelled.
So don't assume, right, don't. It's a horrible thing to
do in business or life is to make assumptions. Just
ask the question, don't assume. Just ask the questions and
get the answers. So now let's let's get into an
(17:44):
unpack uh, the substance of titles entitling in business. Before
I get to that, me deal with a one huge misnomer.
I've already dealt with one misnomer which is not so huge,
but business an entrepreneur, it's just something that irritates me
because I am an entrepreneur, I am a business owner,
(18:05):
I am an executive. These are three different categories, and
there are three different talents. And I'm also a getted
none person. I'm all lot of execution. I'm also a
thought leader in some ways. These are five different categories
of talent. And so you want to be the Michael
(18:28):
Jordan of your space, right, Michael Jordan was not just
a great basketball player. He had he was had intellectual genius.
He has strategy, he you know, he had placement, he
knew timing, he knew you know, he had you know anyway,
so he had you know, he was high frequency, high
frequency thinker, and he was very observant of He could
(18:49):
figure out what his opponent was doing, who is whoever
is assigned to him. Within one and a half games,
he had figured that guy out. So he is paying
attention not to his own game. He understood his own game.
He's paying at ten and the other how he played
the game. So we can map out how to reverse
engineer success in that situation. Here's a bigger git. That's
(19:09):
important leadership versus management, leaders versus managers. I made this mistake, me,
John O'Brien. I screwed this up time and time again.
Is I built close to fifty entities now around the world,
three of which are the largest in their category. The
(19:29):
largest minority owner of single family rental homes in America.
Company I built and sold and still have an ownership
interest in it, but I don't run it anymore. That's
a Promise Homes company. So a couple of years ago,
built and still lead. That's Operation Hope. Largest nonprofit financial
(19:49):
literacy Promise Homes is for profit, the largest financial literacy
financial coaching organization in America. You know, forty plus states,
three hundred physical offices, fifteen hundred physical and satellite offices,
millions of clients, billions of dollars deployed on the for
profit side, a few hundred million dollars in that one
(20:11):
business of activity and transactional value. Then the largest financial
inclusion holding company in the country. Four hundred employees all
that stuff. Okay, so does that make me a leader
or a manager? Well, I'm both. In fact, I'm more
(20:33):
than that, if you listen to the titles I mentioned earlier.
My mistake was that I could take somebody who was
not even a manager a tactician, and turn them into
a manager or no jump over management, and make them
a leader by giving them a title because I like them.
(20:55):
You can put wings on a pig and hope it
will fly. It won't. If you put wings of a
pig and hope to fly, It's not the pig's fault,
it's yours. That's what I was doing. I was taking
people I cared about, I liked, I thought were amazing,
giving them a title, giving them a paycheck because they
said they could do it, they wanted it, they desired it,
(21:17):
told me they could handle it. Don't worry, had no
experience in the situation we're talking to me about, telling
me they could do romanticize what I was doing by
looking at what I was doing. Oh my god, that's
so easy and not easy, and just fell right on
their flat on their face half the time. And you know,
(21:38):
sometimes ruin the relationship because I'm pushing them to be
the best that I see in them. But what I
see in them is not what they see in themselves.
How I see them is not how they see themselves.
I remember there was one dude who worked for me
and really talented in many areas, really talented the areas,
(21:58):
great in community, great with kids, great, I mean great
with anything black is in black issues, great personality. And
one day I noticed that on the on the business card,
the signature line on the email that we assigned to
them at the company and I pay for the email,
(22:22):
title had changed to regional CEO. And I'm like, well, hell,
I don't have a regional CEO. I called chamber my
my my manager liked, did I change titles? Did I
approve channel title changes? And I just don't remember it. No, No,
you have regional you have market precedents and market leaders.
You don't have a regional CEO. You're the CEO. John,
(22:42):
thank you reminded me. I appreciate that. So I call
this person. I'm like, look, you know you already CEO
chief executive officers. What that means you got to write
a check or cause checks to be written, like you
got a hunt CEO is a hunter, and uh, this
person didn't want to. They wanted to flass. They wanted
to have fun, they wanted to enjoy themselves. They wanted
(23:04):
to chill. They wanted to go to parties and receptions
and go to the White House and go what go
go do what they do well. And I'm like, that's
only part of the job. It's a very small part
of the job. Actually, I hate going under these receptions
and all this stuff when all I'm doing is just
talking about blah blah blah. I want my problems have
to have a beginning and middle and an end, right.
And so this person told me that they were good
(23:28):
at a word i'd never heard of before, ideation, And
I'm like, wow, okay, it just taught me something. And
I've learned that word ideation. It's a really important word.
But I also realized I had put this person in
the wrong job, and to their credit, they quit. But
I had been paying them for a long time to
not do the job that I asked them to do.
(23:49):
They decided to do the job they wanted to do.
I mean I'd come in and they'd be in my
office doing photoshoots in my office, right and I was
out traveling trying to raise money, and I had a budget,
and they had to meet the budgets. If you're gonna
have this time, you gotta meet the but ian. You
want to get rid of somebody quickly give them a
fundraising go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Once again, thank you for tuning into the Black Effect
Podcast Network. Seeing you in twenty twenty five for more
great moments from your favorite podcast.
Piece of the planet, Charlamagne to God here and as
we come closer the closing out this year, I just
want to say thank you for tuning it into the
Black Effect podcast Network. There have been so many great
moments over the past year. Take a listen to some
of those captivating moments in this special best of episode.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
When somebody cursed me out, or if they could, they don't.
But if somebody was cursing me out or being mad
to me at a restaurant, you know, I don't have
to get upset with you. I can put my amerri
Express card out, my Black America Express card and knock
you out with it without ever touching you. I can
I can buy the not just pay for the bill.
I can buy the restaurant with it. Like literally, there's
no limit on the card. Over with you. Doesn't have
(00:35):
to get upset with you. She just I mean she
was on the board of I think it was Weight Watchers,
and something happened when something went down where she didn't
like what they were doing, and so she made some
moves that they didn't like, and so they said, well,
we're gonna we don't appreciate you doing syz Oprah. So
(00:57):
we're going to I just saw her a few weeks ago.
I love her. We're gonna you know, we don't want
you to think to be our spokesman anymore. Can you
imagine somebody saying this to Oprah and she's like, that's cool,
let's find no problem. Didn't raise her voice on sold
all over stock tied to the deal. The stock then plunged.
I think this is the weight watchers. Don't quote me
(01:17):
in this, but whatever weight management company she was associated with,
you can correct me in the comments or confirming in
the comments if I'm right. The stock plunged when she
sold her shares. They forgot that she had a strong
economic interest. She wrote a very smart, financially literate and
intelligent deal. It's all about the details. When she cut
(01:39):
that deal to be their spokesman, she's like, I'm not
gonna rock the mic. I'm going to own it. And
that's what I want you to do. I want you
to own the stage. Don't just dance on it. I
want you Quincy Jones says, if you think that you're
in the music business and you don't own music rights,
publishing rights, licensing rights, some kind of rights or ownership interests.
You're not in the music business. You're a temporary performer,
(02:00):
you know. Jones and Iced to talk about Michael Jackson
and how Paul McCarthy got very upset with Michael because
Paul McCartney said that Michael should own publishing, shouldn't just
be an entertainer, And Michael realized that he was smart,
and so God gave you two ears in one mouth
to listen twice as much as you talk, and so
he's like, okay, cool, that's really smart. I should own
(02:21):
publishing rights. Okay cool. So he had it owns. We
went I was trying to own his own publishing rights,
Michael Jackson's rights. But then he's like, well, who else
should I own? The Beatles? So he went and bought
bid for the Beatles publishing rights, and Paul McCarthy lost
his mind. He was extraor I think to this day,
extraordinarily effect. I no, based on public reports, published reports.
(02:43):
In his own words, he was very very, very very
very unhappy with Michael Jackson. Now it might have been
on the edges I go that your friend tells you that,
you know, he didn't say no. He's not even another
go because Paul McCarthy didn't say any publishing rights but ours.
He didn't say but but the Beatles. In fact, there's
a little bit of arrogance assumed that Michael Jackson, who
(03:04):
was the biggest pop star in the world at that time,
did I did not have a right to own the
Beatles publishing rights too. But he didn't say, you can
own any rights but the Beatles. He was giving this
advice against like a tutor gives, like a mentor gives
a mentee. Didn't realize that that that that the student
was going to become the teacher. Michael when bought the
Beatles publishing portfolio, Paul McCarthy lost his mind and and
(03:28):
and could not say a nice thing after about his
once good friend. Michael Jackson. Just didn't. He didn't, He
didn't do any unethical He just outbit everybody else, including
the Beatles. The Beatles could have outbid Michael Jackson, they
could have bought that portfolio, but didn't believe in themselves
as much as Michael Jackson believed in them, and he
bought that portfolio. Do you know that when Michael Jackson
(03:50):
was doing all that spending and the reason he didn't
go broke was because he owned that publishing rights, which
which Sony ultimately ended up purchasing, was worth a billion
dollars his his he never weighed that kind of money.
And tour, you knew you toured. You made ten million
back in the day, ten twenty million. The tour that
took him out when he passed away got restless. So
I think that was he's gonna make fifty million. Is
to get the number right, We have the number right,
(04:10):
fifty million. But his portfolio was worth a billion back
in that day. It was worth you know, seven hundred million.
And that's in large part because he owned his portfolio
plus a few others, but mostly the Beatles' rights. It's
what you own. And so getting your credit score now
you know Michael Jackson's credit score was He's Michael Jackson.
(04:33):
He is in Presario, and he had these relationship capital
amongst people in the music business, and he was savvy
about business, and so he made a case, a credible case.
You know, the word credit comes in the lot who
were creditito, which means credibility. Did you know that? So
he had credibility with those who could who could work
with him to back him to buy the publishing rights.
Now he got into trouble financially later on and had
(04:54):
to sell his half of the publishing and ultimately as
a state, I think right now is trying to sell
all the publishing rights. But the reason Michael Jackson was
able to live the life he lived was not because
he danced from the stage, because he owned the music
being played on the stage. So on the stage you
live on. The credit score you have gets most of
(05:15):
the yes. Is that you want you want to become
you want a prime home loan, The answer is yes,
good credit score over seven hundred. My mother's credit score
was eight fifty four when it the smith got rest
her soul, and the computer just said yes to my
mother midnight. When my mother went to computer to apply
for a loan for something a home mortgage or consumer
loan or auto a loan, whatever, the computer just said yes.
(05:38):
Because now it didn't say are you black, or you
let you're female? Whatever. He said, Oh my gosh, he's
an eight hundred credit score plus over seven hundred. By
the way, it's just fine, perfect, actually seven fifty yet golden.
But my mother's credit score was eight to fifty four
back back when it went that high, and the computer
just said, yes, you're approved. And you've never seen a
riot and a seven hundred credit score neighborhood in all
of your life. Right, So I want you to get
(06:01):
your credit score right. I want you to get your
debt down, your savings up, your credit score up, because
if you can do that, the bank just says, yes,
the banks are not racist. Okay, they're capitalist machines. They
want to make money and they cannot make money unless
they make a loan. Now, is there somebody racist at
a bank? Sure there is, right, they are racist people everywhere.
But as a rule, like racism and banks, I did
(06:21):
a thing on banks. We go and listen to that
podcast or break this down. But one hundred years ago, yes,
there was a racist bank. It was Joe's bank, as
family owned it, and he didn't want to give any
loans to black people. Yes, or maybe even the women.
Women couldn't even get a loan before nineteen seventy two,
you know that. That's that nineteen seventy two women. I
did a Time article on this, you should read it.
I did a podcast on this, you should listen to it.
(06:43):
But women did not have rights financial rights before nineteen
seventy two, nineteen seventy four crazy, not eighteen seventy two, eighties,
seventy four, nineteen seventy two in our lifetime. So the
bank wants to say, yes, they can't make any money
unless they make a loan. Again, on a hundred years ago,
they were discriminating issue because they could because it was
owned by a family. Now a bank is publicly traded
(07:04):
and they want their stock to do well. They want
their they want to perform for their shareholders, which means
they need to make good loans. So if you're pooking
them boo booing them, whether you're poor white or poor black,
your credit score is five hundred, not making you alone.
They're not making you alone. I wouldn't make you alone, okay,
But if your credit score is seven hundred, you're not
black or white, You're not red or blues and politics
(07:27):
black and white isn't race. You're green as in a
good credit risk. Those of you not familiar. I'm an
entrepreneur and I built businesses and enterprises and nonprofit organizations,
and I've been at this my whole life. I started
(07:50):
not in the womb, but I was, you know, it
was role modeled by my mom and my dad. We
model what we see right, Right, And I often tell
people when people say, why the kids in the inner
city want to be rap stars, athletes or drug dealers? Right,
And there's nothing wrong with being want to be a
rap star, just you can't. It's hard to scale. My
(08:12):
friends Killer Mike and t I and the jay Z's
of the world, and even you know, the R and
B stars that I love so much, like my brother
Howard Hewitt and all these you know, the impresarios. You know,
there's only one Quincy Jones in the world. Right, it's
hard to scale. You can't reproduce personality like that. They're unique, right.
(08:35):
And athletes same thing. Right, There's something like five hundred
thousand young men trying to go into the believe it's
the NBA, see the NBA, of the NFL, and of that,
you know, like eighteen thousand of them. Make them into college,
make it into college sports. And it's like one two.
(08:59):
I think it's this is the NBA. Make it actually
into the pros. I think it's like sixty and so,
you know, and of course, nobody should want to be
a drug dealer. And you've heard me say this before.
You know, drug dealers are unethical and it may be
a moral business, but they're not dumb. They understand import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail,
(09:21):
customer service, security, territory logistics. Right, These are not dumb people.
These are really smart guys and unfortunately sometimes ladies with
a really crabby business plan and bad role models and
bad mentors. And one of the reasons that I do
what I do is that you know is what we
don't know that we don't know this killing us, but
(09:42):
we think we know like no one gave us a shot,
no one gave us a plan, no one gave us,
gave us training, right, no one gave us a proper
business plan for our lives. It's my I think it's
my fourth book. The memo with the book that's out
now is Financial Literacy for All, which, by the way,
thanks everybody for continuing to make it a number one seller.
It's number one in business finance on Amazon nationwide for
(10:05):
the last three months. So if you haven't don't have
your copy, get a copy. If you have your own
copy already, leave a review please online. And it's coming
to black bookstores near you. If it's not there, already
I'll do this American Aspiration tour. I'll be stopping at
black business bookstores. I'm doing a book, a couple of
book events at Walmart. The CEO Walmart did the forward
(10:26):
for the book. Doug Millan, good friend of mine, coach
chair Financial Lucy for all with me And yeah, there's
some other surprises coming the end of the year with
the book. But you know what was that to do
with this podcast episode? Like my shirt today says my
hustle looks different, My hustle looks different. But my mom
and dad I understood a had blessings like the other
(10:48):
people didn't have. My mom. Yeah, I grew up in
the hood. I grew up in South Central incompetent. Yes,
all that's true. I was homeless, all that's true. But
my mother, I was economical helmless, by the way, which
is different than most people's homelessness. And you know, it
was almost an intentional situation because I could have gone
home and hung out with my mother, but she would
have you know, she was worrying about me. She wouldn't
worried about me, and she would have forced me to
(11:09):
go get a job at mc Downdela's Air crab and
Boying Aircraft when she down Dose Aircraft which is now
Boying Aircraft where she worked. I didn't want to do that.
That wasn't my calling in my life. So I was
willing to roll the dice on me, swilling to bet
on me. My hustle looks different. Well, my mother worked
a job. She also had a small business part time
(11:30):
selling making handicrafts and selling that plus food that she made.
H she sell it to her co workers at Medwndular's Aircraft.
She would and then the supervisor got mad at her.
He would threaten there like I'm going to expose your
side hustle. She's like, well, I'm gonna expose you of
being accustom my side hustle and let me ride around
(11:51):
his bicycle on the campus oft BC down Douglas air
crab and sell it to all my coworkers and your
your piers. So when I go down, you going down
zip it. My dad owned his own business right and
my grandfather was a sharecropper born in eight seventy one RB. Smith.
So I got it honest. Like my mom had a
(12:12):
sense of yes, I am gay that to me, my
dad has sense of yes I can and get that
to me, all right, So my hustle was different, and
I want your hustle to be different. If I want
you to have a choice, like I want you to
have freedom, I want you to have freedom of self
determination and not just the freedom to go work where
(12:32):
you want. That's cool. Most people are going to work
for somebody else's that's perfectly fine, and we need that,
We need to encourage that. We need to build the
middle class. But sometimes you want to You may choose
to take a higher risk and to get more reward
if you succeeded that you go from cashing a check
working for somebody else to writing a check, hello, working
(12:55):
for yourself. Can I get any man? I tell you
this is this is the church. What is happening now?
And what have you done for me lately? This is
the pulpit of finance. This is the weekly ministry, not pulpit.
No disrespect to pastors of the cloth. This is my
ministry of finance. Right, small m and an opportunity again.
(13:15):
Money and Wealth. This is this is my Money and
Wealth podcast series on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio.
Come in to you every week with something that breaks
this down at a level and in a way that
everybody can understand. Again, you're not dumb and you're not stupid.
It's what you don't know that you don't know that's
going you. But you think you know in a blind
town or one eyed man's king. If you don't know better,
(13:37):
you can't do better or keep people like John? Can
you get on with the ten businesses? Right? Let me
so in these in these unique times, right. So, I
recognize you have hustle. I recognize that you're nine to five.
Your job may finance your five to nine your side hustle, beautiful.
I know that you want to go from the bottom
of the top. I know that your role models may
be limited because you model what you see. But we
(13:59):
don't see a lot of business people in our neighborhoods.
And when I was coming up, you know, I didn't
know there were businesses in my neighborhood. I knew there
was a nail salon, I knew there was a you know,
a liquor store or whatever, but I didn't equate that
to business. I didn't realize those were capitalists, right. I
didn't realize that was free enterprise. It took a banker
coming into my classroom and breaking that down for me
(14:22):
when I was nine years old. In my financial literacy course,
which I hope to one day get indoctrinated into every
school in America home economic course to financial Literacy for
All legislation, I'll be working on that. You can go
for the Campaign if America. By the way, on our
website and operation help go to the Campaign for America
under the book Financial Literacy for All book page in
(14:42):
sign up for the Campaign for America to ultimately build
a list that would go to legislators that would encourage
them to make financial literacy in the legislation of the land.
But that's how I got it right. Banker come in
my class froom giving me tools and then I and
then my eyes lit up. I saw businesses everywhere, so
I wanted to make it's easy for you. Here are
ten businesses right that you can start. Now. You know,
(15:06):
some of these I could go for one hundred thousand,
but I'm going to do this. I'm going to make
this approachable. Right, ten businesses you can start for twenty
five thousand dollars a year because these are lean times, right,
Folks at too much month at the end of their money.
Right now, these are leaner times. If this was two
thousand and one the pandemic hit. Now the stimulus money
(15:27):
is flowing, I might do a podcast that's one hundred
thousand dollars business, but you've got less money, day, less resources, right,
So I wanted something that's approachable twenty five thousand dollars
and you can even finance some of that if you
need to business person versus entrepreneur. People use these phrases interchangeably.
(15:50):
They're not interchangeable. You can be an entrepreneur and be
a small business owner. You can be an entrepreneur and
be a big business owner. You can be an entrepreneur
and not be a asiness owner. You can have an
entrepreneurial mindset and run a nonprofit. Run your life just
as almost like a you know, an entrepreneur mindset if
you're just running your life. What might be an upgrade
(16:10):
on being a hustler and I mean hustler in the
positive sense of the phrase. You can be a business
owner and be entrepreneurial, and you can be a business
owner and be an entrepreneur. But don't presume because you're
a business owner you are an entrepreneur that that is
a bridge too far, and words matter, definitions matter. And
(16:36):
by the way, don't be an entrepreneur and presume that
you There are people who are entrepreneurs who are horrible.
Horrible business owners need to be need to stay in
a mellion a ways away from actually running and owning
a business. Uh you know. This is analogous to a
great recording artist, is a great uh you know, a
track star athlete or a great you know, performer who
(16:58):
has a business manager who handles the left brain work
while they handle the right brain work. Left brain is
analytical two plus twe equals four and all that stuff.
Left brain, sorry, right brain is creative, making the best,
the most amazing music or whatever on the planet. But
don't confuse those things. Because you have a genius in
(17:19):
one area, it automatically means you have a genius in another.
That is a mistake. To assume is to make an
ass out of you and me. Literally, that's how it's spelled.
So don't assume, right, don't. It's a horrible thing to
do in business or life is to make assumptions. Just
ask the question, don't assume. Just ask the questions and
get the answers. So now let's let's get into an
(17:44):
unpack uh, the substance of titles entitling in business. Before
I get to that, me deal with a one huge misnomer.
I've already dealt with one misnomer which is not so huge,
but business an entrepreneur, it's just something that irritates me
because I am an entrepreneur, I am a business owner,
(18:05):
I am an executive. These are three different categories, and
there are three different talents. And I'm also a getted
none person. I'm all lot of execution. I'm also a
thought leader in some ways. These are five different categories
of talent. And so you want to be the Michael
(18:28):
Jordan of your space, right, Michael Jordan was not just
a great basketball player. He had he was had intellectual genius.
He has strategy, he you know, he had placement, he
knew timing, he knew you know, he had you know anyway,
so he had you know, he was high frequency, high
frequency thinker, and he was very observant of He could
(18:49):
figure out what his opponent was doing, who is whoever
is assigned to him. Within one and a half games,
he had figured that guy out. So he is paying
attention not to his own game. He understood his own game.
He's paying at ten and the other how he played
the game. So we can map out how to reverse
engineer success in that situation. Here's a bigger git. That's
(19:09):
important leadership versus management, leaders versus managers. I made this mistake, me,
John O'Brien. I screwed this up time and time again.
Is I built close to fifty entities now around the world,
three of which are the largest in their category. The
(19:29):
largest minority owner of single family rental homes in America.
Company I built and sold and still have an ownership
interest in it, but I don't run it anymore. That's
a Promise Homes company. So a couple of years ago,
built and still lead. That's Operation Hope. Largest nonprofit financial
(19:49):
literacy Promise Homes is for profit, the largest financial literacy
financial coaching organization in America. You know, forty plus states,
three hundred physical offices, fifteen hundred physical and satellite offices,
millions of clients, billions of dollars deployed on the for
profit side, a few hundred million dollars in that one
(20:11):
business of activity and transactional value. Then the largest financial
inclusion holding company in the country. Four hundred employees all
that stuff. Okay, so does that make me a leader
or a manager? Well, I'm both. In fact, I'm more
(20:33):
than that, if you listen to the titles I mentioned earlier.
My mistake was that I could take somebody who was
not even a manager a tactician, and turn them into
a manager or no jump over management, and make them
a leader by giving them a title because I like them.
(20:55):
You can put wings on a pig and hope it
will fly. It won't. If you put wings of a
pig and hope to fly, It's not the pig's fault,
it's yours. That's what I was doing. I was taking
people I cared about, I liked, I thought were amazing,
giving them a title, giving them a paycheck because they
said they could do it, they wanted it, they desired it,
(21:17):
told me they could handle it. Don't worry, had no
experience in the situation we're talking to me about, telling
me they could do romanticize what I was doing by
looking at what I was doing. Oh my god, that's
so easy and not easy, and just fell right on
their flat on their face half the time. And you know,
(21:38):
sometimes ruin the relationship because I'm pushing them to be
the best that I see in them. But what I
see in them is not what they see in themselves.
How I see them is not how they see themselves.
I remember there was one dude who worked for me
and really talented in many areas, really talented the areas,
(21:58):
great in community, great with kids, great, I mean great
with anything black is in black issues, great personality. And
one day I noticed that on the on the business card,
the signature line on the email that we assigned to
them at the company and I pay for the email,
(22:22):
title had changed to regional CEO. And I'm like, well, hell,
I don't have a regional CEO. I called chamber my
my my manager liked, did I change titles? Did I
approve channel title changes? And I just don't remember it. No, No,
you have regional you have market precedents and market leaders.
You don't have a regional CEO. You're the CEO. John,
(22:42):
thank you reminded me. I appreciate that. So I call
this person. I'm like, look, you know you already CEO
chief executive officers. What that means you got to write
a check or cause checks to be written, like you
got a hunt CEO is a hunter, and uh, this
person didn't want to. They wanted to flass. They wanted
to have fun, they wanted to enjoy themselves. They wanted
(23:04):
to chill. They wanted to go to parties and receptions
and go to the White House and go what go
go do what they do well. And I'm like, that's
only part of the job. It's a very small part
of the job. Actually, I hate going under these receptions
and all this stuff when all I'm doing is just
talking about blah blah blah. I want my problems have
to have a beginning and middle and an end, right.
And so this person told me that they were good
(23:28):
at a word i'd never heard of before, ideation, And
I'm like, wow, okay, it just taught me something. And
I've learned that word ideation. It's a really important word.
But I also realized I had put this person in
the wrong job, and to their credit, they quit. But
I had been paying them for a long time to
not do the job that I asked them to do.
(23:49):
They decided to do the job they wanted to do.
I mean I'd come in and they'd be in my
office doing photoshoots in my office, right and I was
out traveling trying to raise money, and I had a budget,
and they had to meet the budgets. If you're gonna
have this time, you gotta meet the but ian. You
want to get rid of somebody quickly give them a
fundraising go.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Once again, thank you for tuning into the Black Effect
Podcast Network. Seeing you in twenty twenty five for more
great moments from your favorite podcast.
Host
John Hope Bryant
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