June 26, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode, John gets personal by comparing the lifestyles of his mom and dad. What earning style makes the most sense for you? John's breakdown will educate you on some of the smart decisions and biggest mistakes you can make!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and
Wealth Podcast Series Season two. Honored to be with you
(00:23):
and to come at you again with another very personal
example of success and failure in order to be a
teaching tool for you on your journey to be self reliant.
I want to start off by thanking everyone for making
this a top podcast in the world. Now one of
(00:44):
the top I believe five percent of all podcasts in
the world. Will thank you very much. Tell all your
friends about it. Let's now get into this. The title
of this podcast is the Businessman Hustler Versus the hourly
worker Investor. The businessman hustler versus an hourly worker investor?
(01:07):
Who do you bet on? It's a deeply personal episode.
It contrasts two very powerful forces in my life. My father,
Johnny will Smith, hard working, hard driving businessman, self made
(01:28):
if you want to call it that. He owned multiple
ventures by the time I was a young man and
could recognize what was going on around me. But he
lacked financial literacy, which I did not understand the value
of it. At all as a young person, at least
(01:49):
not at that time. I'm now talking about, you know what,
I'm thinking about my life, my dad and seeing payroll
and meet the payroll at the front door of our
front screen door and then front metal door of our
place on thirty fifth Street in Western. It was four
or five years of age actually sorry Santa Barbara Boulevard
(02:11):
which was now Martinth the King Boulevard, and then later
on thirty fifth in Western when I want to live
with him as a young man. He had a cement
contracting business he had at that time, but before that,
when they were my mom and dad were together, they
owned a cement contribute business that was his cash flow business.
(02:33):
They had a nursery business took care of kids. I
was the first client. They owned their own home on
Santa Barbara now Martin the King Boulevard. Those in Los
Angeles know these street names. We owned an eight unit
apartment building that they bought for eighteen thousand dollars. You
(02:57):
can make the payment on the note renting two units.
They lived in one of the units. This is before
they bought their own home. The rest was profit that
in an apartment building today is worth millions of dollars.
Last time I checked, it was something north of six
(03:18):
million dollars, six to eight million dollars. They owned a
gas station at Western and Vernon, I believe Southeast Corner,
still there to this day. They were bawling. They were married,
high school education, up from the South, migrated to Los Angeles.
(03:43):
I'll tell you a little bit about that story. It's
also in my book Up from Nothing, A little bit
of my book Financial Literacy for All. But Johnny will
Smith and Wanita Smith were for a minute, literally the
American dream. My mother, Jannita Smith, was an hourly worker.
(04:06):
She had a side hustle making handicrafts, robes and things
like that. She made from terry cloth, basically bath house
She turned that into little pieces of artwork that you wore, robes,
(04:32):
kitchen covers for cooking, playful aprons that I can't explain
in public now because it was pretty embarrassing. And I'll
just tell you I was a model, and my mother
used to put the female parts in the male parts.
(04:53):
She'd make those and stuff the male parts with stuffing,
and we did to come out walk in the living
room and we'd have to we'd have to model the
aprons that she made and then lift up, you know,
lift up the private part to make everybody laugh and
hopefully they buy something. I could probably assume my mother
(05:16):
for uh, looking back, sue my mom and dad my
dad for child abuse or something. But at the time
you started it was cute. Actually, no idea. I was
embarrassed back then too now and I recall it. But
my mother was an industrious she was. That was her
side house although her primary business, her primary business was
a paycheck and she worked atmcdonald's Aircraft, which later was
so de Boeing Aircraft. But she had this side hustle,
(05:38):
which I'll get to in a moment because it's important,
because it's important. So she was an hourly worker and
quietly built wealth through discipline, smart investing, and excellent credit.
So when you don't have inheritance, when you don't have
somebody to give you something right, then you've got to
find And if life is about compounding, right, you make
(06:01):
money during the day, you build wealth and your sleep okay,
And if you don't have compounded cash, compounded financial capital
because daddy mummy did well and handed it to you,
which are a lot of mainstream families have that legacy.
Black families typically, Black and brown families typically do not. Okay,
(06:22):
because this generation might be the first generation that made
any real money right and putting it over the side
now is how you build wealth for the next generation.
So this might be the this generation. You might feel
stressed out because you're trying to do it all out
of one pocket. Can I get an a man, anybody
listening this can relate to this. You're trying to pay
it back, spend it, finance the now, and pay it
(06:46):
forward all out of one paycheck or out of one hustle.
So if you feel stressed out and don't know why,
that's the reason. It's the reason because you're in the
season of doing it all. And if it's not, if
it doesn't feel easy, that's because it's not right. You're
doing generational legacy work and trying to live your best life.
(07:10):
So I commend you. And so compounding education, compounding hustle,
hustle on hustle creates more hustle. If you get up early,
work later, get up earlier, stay late, short lunch. After
a while, you outrun your competitor. Because the devil's a
(07:34):
lazy bastard. Yeah, I said it. The devil's lazy. The
devil's a fallowing angel, right, So even God gives permission,
the devil permission to exist. He likes shortcuts, and he
likes people who don't want to hustle and don't want
to do the work. And love is work. Non love
is laziness. Anti love is evil. Exists, but it's very rare.
Most people are just lazy intellectually lazy, physically lazy, financially lazy, spiritually. Yeah,
(08:02):
they just don't want to do the work. They want
somebody to do it for them. So if you do
the work. To quote my friend Tony Wrestler, who's one
of the two hundredth richest man and most successful successful
self made businessmen in the world today, Tony Wrestler would say,
if you don't quit, you can't fail. If you don't quit,
(08:22):
you can't fail. I would say it differently and say,
you just have to take note for vitamins that success
is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,
older rounded through it, you're going to get to it.
So my mother had, my mother and my father had
this sense of undying resiliency and hustle. They were not lazy.
(08:44):
So let's check that box. As a success feature, I
wrote in my book I think it was. It was
the memo or Up from Nothing, about the fire pillars
of success, and I talk about as much education as
(09:06):
you can shove down your throat, understanding, financial literacy, family
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models, an environment.
If you have these five things, even with racism, bias, discrimination,
an unpleasant political environment, unsupportive environment period in the world,
(09:32):
maybe even a repressive environment leaning down on your world,
you'll still succeed. If you need to write those five
things down, replay this, take the podcast back thirty seconds,
replay it again, write it down on your iPhone or
your Android or wherever you keep your notes. These five things.
(09:53):
If you have these five things and you have this
resiliency factor, I said, what did Tony say, if you
don't quit, your can't fail. I told you. John Brian says,
we're going to take no for vitamins. Success is going
from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. We're never
going to give up. You will fit in time, you
will succeed. If you have three of these things or more,
(10:15):
you're going to go from surviving mode to thriving mode,
and maybe the building mode, but at least go from
surviving mode to thriving mode. You don't want to be
in surviving mode. If you have less than these three things,
any three of these things, you're in trouble again. As
much education, you shut down your throat, family structure and resiliency, well,
financial literacy, self well, family education, right, financial literacy, family
(10:41):
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence. Role Model's an environment,
as you're going to hear from my example, my family
had most of those things but then lost some critical elements.
And I want you to tell me in the notes
when you see this in pieces and social media, which
of the five things did my family my mother and
(11:04):
my father mess up, screw up, miss out on, etc.
Because they had it all and then it fell apart.
So my mother again had compounded good credit, right, compounded
self education, compounding discipline, right compounding focus, compounding good values
(11:28):
plus compounding hustle. The result. This is a real life
case study and why hustle alone isn't enough to be successful,
sustainably successful, and how strategy, stewardship, and financial literacy win
(11:49):
the long game. So Let's now get into this. Who
do you bet on the businessman who owns a gas
station in an apartment building or the ali worker who
with good credit in a long term plan, is betting
on herself. My mother, Well, my father made the money,
(12:15):
but my mother built the wealth. Interesting, how is that possible?
We're going to talk about these two people who I love,
my parents, and the very different money legacies they left behind.
Let's talk about my mother and my father as a couple. Married.
(12:37):
My dad Johnny Smith. His father, RB Smith, was a sharecropper.
My second great grandfather on my father's side, George Young,
was in the Civil War, UH, part of the answer
to the call for the Emancipation Proclamation. That's maybe where
I got my social justice bones from. I served in Memphis,
(12:59):
Tennessee for the Union calls thought for justice and freedom
for those who never gave him justice or freedom or protection,
protected those who didn't protect him. Long list of self
reliant doers. My father grandfather was a sharecropper. Dad was
a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. So there's your role modeling example.
(13:23):
I didn't know my dad was financially illiterate. I just
knew my dad hustled hard and worked hard, and so
I'm following that write the check versus cast to check model.
Right the check, meaning you're a business owner. My dad
was very successful and as sement contracting business, he did
it with his own hands. He would go to a job,
(13:45):
he would guestimate the cost of that job, which was
the cost of cement. It's the products that make cement
the hourly worker wage for the workers. And he had
all races of workers working for him. That's one of
the reasons I have no problem with white people or
Hispanics or Asians or anybody else, of course blacks, because
everybody worked for my father. Everybody respected him as the boss,
(14:10):
the boss man. They called him the employer, the guy
who paid them their paychecks so they can then pay
their bills. And they were lined up every Friday for payroll.
He paid them in cash back in the day. But
they all respected them. And I love that seeing that
respect that gave my dad. Well, he would just calculate
in his head or a little piece of paper a
notebook he had what the job was to make this
(14:34):
redo or to lay out for a first time a
sidewalk or a driveway, which were typical his typical jobs.
And I remember one day he was trying to beat
out another contractor who had bid let's just say, twelve
hundred dollars for this job. My dad not knowing what
(14:57):
the heart costs were, but wanting the job. He dragged
me around all these jobs. I was sitting in the passenger
receipt of his pickup truck, burning up to death in
this hot truck with no air conditioning, by side of
my head stuck to the window because it was so
hot in the south central Los Angeles. As I went
to sleep trying to get through the twenty job estimates.
He went through and it was really beautiful that he
(15:19):
made me hang with him because my daddy was not
a baby daddy, he was a father. So only commend
him for that. We have to, I think, claim our kids.
We shouldn't be saying baby mama or baby father. He's
a father and a mother. That's your child. You own them,
you own their legacy in making and they know what
you give them. You know, and my dad gave me
(15:39):
everything he had. It wasn't everything I needed, but it
was everything he had and for that I will forever
be thankful to Johnny will Smith, who even as you
can hear in a minute, took care of my brother
and my sister who was not his children. So a
very honorable man and bastard Andrew Young would say that
men and women fail for three reason arrogance, pride, and greed.
(16:02):
My dad was not arrogant, not in traditional sense. He
was not greedy at all, but he was full of pride,
and that pride might have bordered on a slight bit
of arrogance because he wouldn't listen, he wouldn't take advice,
certainly not from my mother. So anyway, he made this
(16:24):
job four thousand dollars, and the problem was that the
costs he found out later, or maybe worse, did not
find out later, but it was obvious when he went
broke the cost of that job was at least one
thousand dollars, probably one thousand and fifty or eleven hundred dollars.
So my dad confused cash flow with profit. Very important point,
(16:48):
he thought, the cash flow getting that back, And again,
what do we do in the black and brown community,
Give me that bag, give me that dollar, give me
that cash. You know, we think that we over index
the importance of cash. Cash is nothing more than a
transfer of value. That's all it is. But we think
it's really more than that, and we think we have
got a bunch of cash, a bunch of bills in
(17:10):
our pocket. Then that means something. It might mean you're
going to go broke when at that money disappears, and
it will disappear because if your outflow exees your inflow,
then your overhead will be your downfall. And with my father,
he would spend a dollar, but he would make a dollar,
but spend a dollar fifty. So the more money he made,
the broker we got. And I say we because as
(17:32):
you're here in a minute, we lost everything. So my
dad back up the story a little bit. My dad
was doing very well, as I seeing a contractor would
(17:53):
buy a new car from Detroit every couple of years,
because that's how you profile back then, your success. Because
black people could not buy cars like that directly from
a car dealership or you know anybody. I mean, you
could not in the sixties just go buy a fancy
new car. People wouldn't sell it to you. The dealers
(18:13):
wouldn't sell it to you if you're a black man.
My dad went full floss. He would drive the car
to the manufacturer in Detroit, and he had family in
East Saint Louis, and so he would go through East
Saint Louis to visit his family and then go to
(18:33):
Detroit to sell the car and buy a new and
to trade it in and buy a new one. Well,
this time he ran into my fine and mouth one
Nita Smith, and the rest is history. He fell in love,
and my mother said, well, if you want me, you
got to take my two children with me. It was
my brother Donnie Dave, jon L Harris and my sister
(18:55):
Marl Hoskins, two brilliant, amazing people and who are from
a former marriage my mother had. And my mother was
all about our kids. And my mother grew up in
a shotgun shack, and he's Saint Louis. You want to
know about more about her story, her backstory, you can
read one of my last books, I believe is detail
(19:17):
it up from nothing. And so Dad says, yes, happy
to do that. I'ted to do that. So they packed
up everything in my dad's car, including the two kids
I was not yet born, moved to la That's where
I was born, in Good Samaritan Hospital. They start building, building,
building together and I'm now, I come in this world.
(19:38):
They get busy, they have me. I come in the world,
and about four or five years of age, they're having
some serious differences of opinion. But my mother is like,
that's okay, you know, this is normal. I'll deal with
whatever it is. He's a good man. He's taking care
of my kids and me. But my mother had saved
four thousand dollars to send my brother, Dave Darnelle Harris
(20:02):
to a college of his choice, and four thousand dollars
in nineteen sixty eight nineteen seventy I think it was
in nineteen seventy was a lot of moolah. And I
was born in sixty six to nineteen seventy, and I
was about four or five years old, and she was
(20:24):
saving that money so he could go become whoever he
wanted to be. My dad found the money because my
mother did not put the money in the bank account.
She had it under a mattress of where she saved.
Please open a bank account, everybody. The bank account is
FDIC insured right for your deposits. So this would not
have this whole story about to tell you. It would
(20:44):
be different if my mother put the money into a
bank account the black who don't trust banks because of
the history of the Freeman's Bank and all the stuff,
which I understand, But this is a new world. I'm
telling you to upgrade your software. Put your money into
the bank in your own name. In this example, this
bank my mother's dad. Mom and dad probably had a
joint account. I'm not sure, but surely she surely should
(21:06):
have had a separate account for this money in her
own name. He found the money, he wasted it on
some hair brain thing, some investment or something he thought
he assumed was going to be important and successful. And
as usual, he was wrong about this. He was great
at sement contracting. The rest of the stuff he was
speculating on was not so great because my dad game
(21:28):
was financially illiterate, I found out later. So he wasted
the money and Mom had had it. Mom was like, okay,
I'm done. You can mess over me, can mess with
my kids and with my mother. What I was not
thinking about then, but I now know. What I know
now is that she's like, well, look, I got two
more kids in the line here. This is the oldest kid.
(21:49):
If you're doing this to my oldest kid, then the
rest of my kids. I'm just asking for pain. So
at this point we owned keep in mind, this is
nineteen seventy. Now we own our own home Semen on
Santa Barbara Boulevard now called martinather King Boulevard. We owned
(22:12):
a gas station. The home we owned was at twenty
fourteen West Santa Barbara Avenue in Los Angeles, now Martin
King Boulevard. We owned a eight ent apartment building. The
gas station, nursery business, Seeman contracting business, which was cash flow.
So nursery business and the contract contracting business were cash
(22:33):
flow businesses. Right. The single family home was an asset
that appreciated. The gas station was cash flow plus an
asset that could appreciate. The apartment building was cash flow
plus an asset that could appreciate. And we probably had
a couple of side hustles, but my mother's side hustle
(22:55):
of doing handicrafts that came later, but just that alone
would have made us most millionaires, and the whole family
would have had generational wealth. Mom and Dad get over,
get into this. I remember the fights I had to
call my mother, call my brother, my sister. Sorry, Monty
called the police. We called her Montemorrow we called her Manti.
She called the police and put somebody answer and somehow
(23:17):
gave me the phone. Don't know how I get the
phone and policemen. Come, come, come. My daddy's being up
by my mother. My mother took off that three inch pump.
She was a church. It was it was a Sunday
after church. And she's like, no man's going to ever
put his hand on me again. That happened in her
first or their first husband. By the way, number one
calls for domestic abuse. Money. Number one calls for divorce. Money.
(23:41):
Number one calls for heart attacks. Stress. Number one calls
for stress. Money. Hello, every day is not about God
or love. Your day is about money. That's why we
need to understand money. We lived in a capitalist democracy, right,
we got to understand how this game is played. So
uh there getting into it, and she popped them over
(24:03):
the side of his head with that little that three
inch pomp here didn't grow there for the rest of
his life, right on the ball of his head. He
stopped messing with it. But she's like, Okay, I'm not
gonna sit around here and get beat. I can't protect
my kids. So my mother filed for divorce and left them. Now,
California is a community property state. Please hear me, My
mother could have taken there for everything he had. Anybody
(24:25):
listening to this, and you live in California, you know
exactly what I'm talking about. I grew up there. It
is a California is a community property state at least half.
And she's got these kids also. I mean, she could
have left them destitute, but she wanted. All she wanted
was her freedom. All she wanted the ability to go
out and do for herself and create her own life.
(24:45):
And she had enough confidence in herself, so she left
with nothing. And it just dawned on me recently that
this was how much courage she had, because she could
have again, she could have take left the house, left
and kept the house and everything else, and he didn't
get an apartment or live with friends. She left with
the kids lived to go stay. So now he's got
(25:08):
all these assets. Now she goes to stay with her girlfriend.
And you can listen to the you know again, check
out the backstory of this in my book Up from
Nothing I believe it is, and financial Literacy for All,
because it's an interesting backstory with the guy who I
ended up living with temporarily a guy named O C.
I believe who saved my life while staying there temporarily
(25:33):
while my mother what was her girlfriend and her girlfriend's
boyfriend who saved my life? But my mother wanted to
stay with her girlfriend so she could get a job,
or she did working in McDonald douglas Aircraft For that
she said the equivalent of fifteen dollars to eighteen dollars
an hour, fifteen dollars an hour when she started, eighteen
dollars an hour about that when she retired, plus benefits
(25:55):
in a pension. My mother worked that job, did not
have bills because she stayed with her girlfriend, used the
money from not having bills to save a down payment.
And mind you, the guy her the girl, her girlfriend's
boyfriend saved my life when I fell on this porch.
But again that's the backstory not important to take up
(26:17):
in this podcast. He was ultimately murdered over money, by
the way, the guy who saved my life. Mom then
bounces from that house that she stayed with her girlfriend,
moves to one five five oh two South Freyley. Don't
you you know when you buy a house and you
own it, you remember the address, right? My mother bought
(26:39):
her first home one five five oh too South Freyley
in Compton, California. And I was in nirvana. I mean
it was our own home. It was me and my sister.
My brother had okay to check this out. So my brother,
because he could not I go to college of his choice,
he ended ver happy to go into the Navy to
(27:01):
get his education. He wanted a four year education. So
the Navy said, fine, we'll give you an education, but
you're going to have to give us four years of
military service. Whether the Navy understands its psychology, the psychology
people very well, and the chances are once you get
into the Navy and you get that environment in your bloodstream,
they know that this is at least a fifty percent change,
(27:23):
if not better, you're going to stay. Well. My brother stayed.
My brother stayed four years, eight years, ten years, twenty years.
He retired as a commissioned officer in the Navy as
an intelligence officer. Very proud of him. Donnie's Dave Downall Harris.
He married, moved to Hawaii, married a Wayan at the
Whole Wayian kids. You started to get the memo all
(27:43):
this changed his life, This little four thousand dollars decision
my dad made change his entire the trajectory of his
entire life. You don't think money makes a difference. Money
money can be I mean, as the Bible suggests, the
Bible talks about money more than it's talk about any
other topic, more than two thousand mentions. Money is not evil.
(28:05):
It's the love of money. What you need to do
is understand how to use it before it uses you.
So my brother goes to the military, and he's got
a great life. He's required. He's on the second retirement
from naval contracting because he contracts with companies that do
business with the Navy. So he's a real expert at
what he does. But how his life had been different
(28:26):
if he had that four thousand dollars could have gone
on college of his choice and did as he liked.
So my mother then had the chance now to curate
the life of my sister was older than me and me,
and she did a fabulous job. None of these kids
went to prison or jail or had any because we
were more afraid of her than we were the streets.
(28:50):
So so far in the story, you like, well, John,
I understand like your dad's winning. In fact, your dad won?
What what's how do you make some sense out of this?
My dad was, you know, charismatic and driven, proud black businessman.
(29:11):
An error of this wasn't easy. But he had no
financial literacy. He had no credit management, no systems around
his business, no estate planning, and he didn't understand. My
mother was a mathematical genius. Right. My mother wanted the
smith worked an hourly job for thirty two years, never flashy,
(29:33):
focused on stability, had excellent credit, paid her bills on time,
invested quietly and consistently. Ultimately walked away when money became
a point of contention from the marriage. They owned real assets.
What were they lacked together? Was they shared philosophy about money? Right?
(29:54):
And two plus two in a relationship, it has to
be six eight or ten or why are you doing it?
If you're not better together? Why are you doing it?
Because marriage when the when the looks drop and the
body falls away, that's your business partner for life. Right,
So it has to be more than I like this person.
(30:19):
So Johnny will Smith in this example so far happening
through this podcast episode, Johnny will Smith is winning. He's
got all these assets. He was left with everything my
mother got nothing. He's got cash flow, he's got he's
got appreciable assets, he's got everybody in the city knows him.
You know. He goes to the bank brands. They call
them by you know, it's the first name, Hello Johnny,
(30:41):
and mister mister Smith or whatever. He's balling. He's got
a cemen equipment. He's got a tractor, he's got a truck.
He's got his name, a van, Johnny's you know, semen
work on the outside of the van. He's got workers,
he's got respectability in the neighborhood. I remember all of that, right,
it's as if it's as if it happened yesterday. So fast, Floord. Now,
(31:02):
mind you, my mother's just now working a job. You
got this modest house in confidence. She's working this job,
and she's got the those side hustle doing handicrafts. But
so my mother's put it on sort of you know,
not rent repeat, but just remote control. By the way,
if you if you do nothing, here's a little tip
for you. If you do nothing, but save two hundred
dollars a month into the stock market, and the stock
(31:26):
market gates between seven and ten percent return every year
between thirty three years and forty years from the time
you start that, you'll be worth a million dollars. Okay,
so that just put that aside, right, Yes, I said
that pretty quickly. You're like, what, Yes, you put two
hundred dollars a month. So whenever you start to start,
just start right now. If you need it done it halftime.
(31:47):
Double up on the money if you can. You put
two hundred dollars in prop in sort of you know,
premiere stocks, not no Homeboy shopping network stuff. No, no,
no speculative stocks. I mean, you know blue chip stocks
that are returning you seven to preferably ten percent a year.
If it's ten percent a year, you'll be worth a
million dollars in thirty three years. If it's seven percent
(32:08):
of year, it's about forty years. But just just put
it on auto pay, right, and you'll be a millionaire. Okay,
Now that aside. My dad. I remember calling my dad
one day and what dad was going on? Well, and
I'm wondering why his girlfriend was ugly because my mother
(32:31):
was fine. But when I think back, because I was
just traveling all around the country, around the world, I
was hustling myself and life was a blur. I slept
for six five or six hours in the middle or
three hours in the middle of a day because it
was just a blur, so I didn't really wasn't really
paying deep attention what was going on with my dad. But
when my dad told me that he was staying with
his lady. There was his girlfriend, and she basically had
(32:52):
control financially over his life, and she was staying in
a house that she owned, it got my attention. I'm like,
what would you say? Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
With whatever her name was, she was ugly, unattracted, physically,
unattractive spiritually. I remember meeting her and she didn't treat
my father very well, but he was like a It
(33:13):
was like a reverse sexty situation. He I guess he
played with him for so long now they're playing him
and she at this place and she let him stay there,
but he had to be her girlfriend. This is a
serious story, and I'm like, no, no, Dad, you can't
do that. Now. I was not a place financially where
I can afford to do what I'm about to tell you,
(33:33):
But I knew that my dad could not be in
this situation. So my first real estate lesson I. I
guess I was in my early twenties when this happened.
As I remember, I had my first for my first
success in business, I bought the property, the home from
(33:56):
the lady, and one hundred thousand dolls whatever it was.
By the way, you can't find anything in Los Angeles
for one hundred thousand dollars today, So that's why I said,
people just buy the property. You'll never think it's the
price is right. It's just gonna go up if you
could afford it, buy the property and hold on to it.
I bought this property. I knocked down the zoning was
(34:17):
I thought R four. It was R three, which is residential,
which means I could put three or four units on it.
But it was on a single family residential. A single
family residential home was on this lot, so I thought,
if I buy it. I checked this out with an
account with an architect first, but I did not check
the zoning. My father told me it was a C four.
I was an R four. I just trusted them. I
(34:38):
bought the property. I knocked down three walls, kept one
wall up, which made it the sustainable structure. I didn't
got a construction loan for an apartment building. That's when
the bank was Fargo. I'm always thankful to them told
me that it was not zoned R four. It was
zoned R three. Fine. That means I could put three
(34:58):
units up my dad's. He's in one unit read from
the other two, just pays enough to cover the mortgage
and his living expenses. Because I couldn't afford to just
write a check out of my pocket every month to
take care of my dad for the remainder of his life.
I did a cook calculation. Knew I'd be broke doing that,
and I didn't want to make a promise to my
dad I couldn't keep. So I got Wells Fargo to
(35:20):
make this loan a construction loan, and Tom Swanson want
to be for everything for the Tom Swanson because the
story gets in very interesting. I gave my dad the chance.
My dad asked for the chance to construct his own home.
I should have just said no, he's not a general contractor.
And the reason he went and't broken in the first
place was he couldn't manage his money. Fine emotional I've
(35:44):
always said to you, don't make an emotional decision, it's
going to be a bad one. Out of love and emotions.
I said yes when my brain should have said no,
I should have got an independent contractor to building. I'm
already giving him place to live, already bought the place,
and not like I'm not doing enough. So he wanted
to be seen, is building his own place profile like whatever.
I give him this construction loan, he runs through it
(36:08):
nothing less. I give him an Emerger Express green card.
I didn't even have one, had a six thousand dollars
limit on it. My dad ran through that in a month.
I mean, I was so upset, But what am I
gonna do? He's my father. So I canceled the green
card and had to pay it back over time. I mean,
it might as well have been fifty thousand dollars today,
six thousand dollars back then or more. And luckily for me,
(36:33):
Tom Swanson ed Wills Fargo since retired. I went back
to him, told him the truth, told him exactly what happened. Luckily,
the market was going up at that time, values were
going up, and he said, look, the property's worth more
now than it was when you took out the construction loan.
We're going to refinance the construction loan for you. Allow
you to take out the money to now finish his
three unit department building. But now you've got to get
(36:54):
a proper contractor. We're going to have project ensured project
construction insurance on this project in case you get weak
need and trust your father again. And I learned so
many lessons. I finished the project just barely, and that
three in the building is worth seven figures today without question.
So anyway, and my dad lived in dignity there until
(37:16):
the day passed on broke. My dad died. God bless us,
so God rest is so financially broke lost everything. We
lost the gas station, lost the single valley residential home.
If you're in La Drive by Western and Vernon, I
believe those are the new Rodale world. I think I
(37:40):
think those are. That's the corner southeast corner. That gas
station still there is what we owned. Lost the apartment
building worth millions. We lost it all. I don't know
how I lost it. He just did. And the only
thing was keeping him going until he couldn't do anymore
was the seeming contracting business. And even lost the trucks
(38:00):
or sold them or whatever the equipment. So by the
time I got back around into the story, the story
my dad was not in great health, uh and and
didn't take good care of himself and wouldn't listen to
me when I tried to. It was a whole another story.
But I loved him and I was gonna do everything
I could to let him live in dignity. And I'm
proud that I did that. And when I think Rachel
(38:23):
DiPT my chief of staff for being an honorary sister
to my honorary daughter to my father and taking care
of him when I was out on the road, my
mother had a different story. So my mom and my
dad had just two different world views right, and they
collided and the partnership dissolved over time. My dad lost
(38:44):
it all, every asset gone. My mother worked that job,
took that extra money that she was making part time.
And by the way, if you're married, here's an ideal situation.
If two people are working. One person earns the income
and paid living expenses. You live on one paycheck. Please
hear me. The other person earns an income and invests it.
(39:07):
Now that this is at the forty minute mark of
this podcast, you won't. You don't get to pick up
anything else. Tell your friends to go to the forty
minute mark or whatever around thirty eight to forty minute mark,
and mark this place and follow what I said. You
have two income houses. One person makes the money and
you live off that all your living expenses under this
one person. The other person take this money and invested
(39:28):
what I tell you earlier, two hundred dollars a month,
and we're two hundred dollars a month over thirty three
to forty years, and you'll be a millionaire. What happens
if you do five hundred a month or one thousand
dollars a month? Okay, you starting to get Get the hint,
get the memo. It's the magic of compounding in the marketplace.
So my dad, Johnny Smith, had assets, but no structure
(39:51):
in his life. He's cash rich at times, but asset
pour in the end, no diverse ofation, no succession plan,
no long term investment strategy. My mother hustled differently, hustled smartly,
(40:11):
use credit as leveraged out a crutch. My dad used
to say his credit was bad. My dad's credit was
so bad he didn't call it credit. He said his
credit was bad. My dad, I love him. My mother
understood delayed gratification, believe in consistency over charisma, invest, reinvest,
(40:34):
leave it alone, let it compound. Hustle gets you in
the door. Literacy and stewardship keeps you in the room.
It keeps a roof over your head that you own.
They again, they fought over money to different world views.
My mom, My mom left. You know, you know again,
you can do that all by yourself. She made a choice.
(40:55):
So my mother ended up buying and selling seven homes
to drop Mike here. She had a life insurance policy.
She drew up a will with a poison peel in it.
Anybody who contests this will, and I want to thank
for James Buchanan for helping her in the later years
of her life. He works for me, became a friend
(41:15):
of my mother, and he advised her to put this
element in the will, which I agree with. Anybody who
can test his will will be removed from the proceeds.
Anybody who can test his will removed from the inheritance. Boy,
and I was and I was the you know, the
the trustee. Whatever for the whills. I didn't. I didn't
want to fight come in my way. But everybody got
(41:37):
real quiet once they read the wheel and saw that
in it. Mom was gangster. Mom had a stock account,
she had a bank account. Of course, she had a Mercedes.
She paid cash for it. My mother ultimately converted the
life insurance policy and the stock I believe to cash.
(42:00):
She helped her kids to buy houses, put their down
payment in their homes, but the involved some seven homes.
And when she passed away, she had a million dollar
net worth and my dad was broke, and she worked
an hourly job, and she didn't get that million dollar
net worth from the stock market, like I just told you.
She put a little bit of money in the stock
market through her through her employer, but she did most
(42:21):
of this through through real estate and making really smart
credit moves. She had a credit of credit score of
eight fifty four. Back when the credit score went that high,
it was changed age fifty as a maximum. Whatever the
maximum was, she had it. And then later on her life,
when she wasn't working, wasn't wasn't cutting deals, her credit
score went down to the high seven to the low
seven hundreds. But it's because she wasn't she wasn't using
(42:43):
credit at that time. But I'm just giving an example
of what really matters, right and what doesn't. So I
want to break the myth you don't need to own
a business to build wealth. You can be an hourly
worker and Bill Well, that is the situation for most
people in this country. My mom's formula was good credit,
(43:15):
equal access to capital, prime access to capital. She went
to computer at midnight, typed in her so security number
in her name at midnight. Computers not asking her she's
black or female or whatever, if it's below one hundred
thousand dollars or whatever, the computer just says yes, because
my mother's not black or white, she's green right. Good credit.
She had automatic savings. She looked automatic savings as a
(43:39):
long term game. She had a modest lifestyle. She lived
under a means. She knew that equal freedom. This is
what millions of Americas that do. As a business model.
Imagine now, if Johnny WILLI smith, we need to smith
my mom and dad combine their strengths. Imagine I mean
(44:00):
that hustle, they had, that network, what they've built. If
he made it and she invested it, Oh my god,
they'd be powerhouse in my life. Story would be different.
Maybe they'd be no operation hope, I wouldn't be no
financial literacy course. I wouldn't have been in Compton. My
mother went about the house. I mean, you know all
these things, rainbow's after storms. She cannot have a rainbow
of a storm. First, I've been a very different person
(44:22):
if it had not been for the trauma and the
drama in my life. And so I don't regret anything.
I don't ask for anything to be different. But I
would have wanted my mother to be happier, and she
wasn't really all that happy. She was happy with her kids,
she was happy by what she had done, her success,
but she wasn't personally fulfilled from a love perspective. She
wanted to be loved, she gave. She told me she
(44:43):
loved me every day of my life. So I never
had a self esteem problem. And that's where the quote
for Operation Hope comes from. There's a difference between being
broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor
as a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of
your spirit. And you must vow never, ever ever to
be poor again. That's came from my mother. But my
mother told me she loved me every day in my life.
(45:05):
No one ever told her that, even her own mother
was not somebody who effusively said, I love you baby.
So my mother was not loved by her family. She
was love by our kids, her and her sisters, but
not really. It did not have a love interest. And
that I think was the one sadness in her life.
(45:25):
Now let's talk about my dad. Imagine if Johnny. By
the way, my mother was my date for many, many,
many years. I take her all around the world. I
went to I've been to one hundred countries. I'm sure
of taking my mother to at least ten. And I'm
so proud that we had a time together. And anyway, reminiscing,
(45:46):
Sorry about that. What was my What can the modern
entrepreneur learn from from this? Incorporate your business, build business credit,
maintain personal credit because if you're an if you're a
small business owner, your business credit may rely on your
(46:06):
personal credit rating. Separate hustle from household. Plan with your
spouse or partner. Avoid silent wars over money. You can
have weekly meetings on money, or monthly or semi quarterly
or semi annually or annually. You know, my family, we
talk about money all the time. When it you know,
(46:27):
when it comes up, what doesn't come up when it
needs to come up? Right, and keep a budget. I
used to think the budgets were born. Budgets or budgets
are glorious. You should have one. Everybody should have one.
Here's an action plan for business hustlers. Formalize your operations
and using a limited liability corporation as easy as quick,
(46:47):
ass cheap, use a proper accounting firm. Pay your taxes.
My taxman was always after my dad. By the way.
He was in a cash business. Uh, he didn't pay
his taxes. Build your credit profile. Invest in something that
pays you back over time. An apartment building. And again
the apartment building was cash flow and asset appreciation. So
(47:07):
he was making money during the day, the week, and
when he's then and then it was it was appreciating
because it's real estate and it's a business. Actually three
times it was a three times profit margin because he
would have sold the business, he would have got paid.
If he had sold the real estate, he would have
got paid. And he was getting paid every week and
every day and every month on the income from the
(47:27):
gas station. Same was the same was the case with
the apartment building. So if he had just kept those
I mean he bought an eight unit apartment building in
Los Angeles for eighteen thousand dollars. I mean, my god,
imagine you could just live on that for the rest
of your life. And then when you sold it, what heck,
you're on easy Street. But he didn't. So build your
(47:52):
credit profile, formalize your operations, build your credit profile. Invested
something that pays you back over time for hourly workers.
Max out your retirement. If your employer has a four
oh one K plan and they're giving you x dollars,
match it x dollars of your own money. It's free money,
it's found money, it's yours. Why would you leave money
on the table right whatever your employer has given you,
(48:13):
match it immediately, you know. If you don't, if you
need it later, you're always pull it out right. Protect
your credit score. Learn basic investing. You know index funds ETFs,
but learn basic investing in the stock market, and then
put in at least fifty bucks one hundred bucks, two
hundred bucks a month. You can do fractional shares. By
the way, there's no excuse for doing for not doing nothing.
(48:36):
And of course you know me. I'm going to say
you should invest in real estate. Buy a home whenever
you can. You don't have to own the block tomorrow,
but you have to own your mindset today. My father
gave me a fearless spirit, and I'll always be thankful
for him for that. My mother gave me financial wisdom
and I'll always be grateful for that. My mom gave
(48:57):
me a sense of yes I am. My dad gave
me a sense of yes I can. But in the end,
it was my mother who built the legacy, the sustainable legacy.
Here's your call to action, everybody. Share this with someone
who you think is working harder in the same way
that my mom and dad did, but not working smarter,
(49:18):
and you want them to work smarter. The definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting a different outcome. Tell them to go to
the Operation Hope credit score index page on the Internet
and look up the credit score for the neighborhood that
you're living in. Because that neighborhood that you're living in,
if you do nothing but follow the trends in that neighborhood,
(49:39):
you're you're going to you're going to model everything about
the neighborhood. So you live in a six hundred credit
score five hundred credit score neighborhood you're going to live
to about sixty one years of age. For every fifty
points we found in met to every credit score in
American by zip code of operation Hope and thank you
Experience for giving us the data in the US Census.
For every increase in credit score of fifty points, you
(50:01):
pick up five more years of life. Yes, that's what
I said. I said it, and which Yes, I hope
you didn't run off the road when I said that.
If you have a seven hundred credit score, you lived
on average eighty one years of age. A five hundred
credit score you lived to on average sixty one years
of age, and you don't get so security until sixty five. Hello. Right,
So a twenty year gap in wellness, in well being,
(50:22):
you lived twenty year longer life with us two hundred
point gap in your credit score. It's not about the
credit score. Is about hope, well being, faith, confidence, belief, optimism, mindset.
It's about how your's your mindset? Do you believe? Is
the glass half empty? Is a glass half full? It
depends who's looking at the glass. Whether you believe you can't,
whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right, right, So
you got to get your mind right because I can
(50:45):
I gain I've done on my straight title Straight Talk
Live series. I've talked about being homeless. I've talked about
people win the lottery. I can give a million a
homeless guy a million dollars, He'll be broken six months
if nothing else changes in his mind, in his heart,
that reflex was in his pocket. Most people win the lottery,
bankrupt in five years, broke. MOSTBA and NFL players bankrupt
(51:08):
within five years of retirement and divorced because again, you
got the money, but you didn't get the education. You
get the financial literacy, you don't understand what to do
with it. So getting your mindset right is really important.
Tell everybody listening to this go download the Hope and
Hand app. Tell them that John Brian sent you. They'll
offer you a one thousand dollars Hope Financial scholarship for
(51:28):
coaching and counseling to get your credit score up, your
debt down, your savings up. We're geting credit scores up
fifty four points in six months, twelve hundred dollars up
for savings, thirty eight hundred dollars down for debt. In
a year. You do that, you make forty eight to
fifty thousand dollars a year. In this example, we just
made you bank of them. We're the only nonprofit allowed
(51:49):
to operate out of a bank branch in US history,
and so removing you from a no answer at the
bank to a yes answer. In most cases, you have
a job, your employ you have a good credit score,
your debt, the intrarations are in place. The bank wants
to make a good loan there. They don't make a
good loan. They can't. They can't pay their bills, so
they need the money to be working. They don't. They
don't want to give to people they think are going
to default on the debt. Right, So I need you
(52:11):
to understand how the system works and where our job
is to be economic plumbing for the entire country. I
want you to tell your friends that subscribe to Money
and Wealth to podcast and get my book Financial Literacy
for All, which is the best seller in the world.
John O'Brien, This is Money and Wealth on the Black
Effect Network on iHeartRadio. This has been a special episode
(52:31):
where I went deep into my own personal soul and
told you some things are very private person with me.
The example the businessman hustler versus the hourly worker investor,
which one wins. This is something everybody can do. This
is this is John O'Brien is the silver rights movement,
from civil rights to civil rights, from civil rights in
(52:53):
the streets to civil rights in the suites. I'm Out
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
(53:16):
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hope Bryant and this is Money and
Wealth Podcast Series Season two. Honored to be with you
(00:23):
and to come at you again with another very personal
example of success and failure in order to be a
teaching tool for you on your journey to be self reliant.
I want to start off by thanking everyone for making
this a top podcast in the world. Now one of
(00:44):
the top I believe five percent of all podcasts in
the world. Will thank you very much. Tell all your
friends about it. Let's now get into this. The title
of this podcast is the Businessman Hustler Versus the hourly
worker Investor. The businessman hustler versus an hourly worker investor?
(01:07):
Who do you bet on? It's a deeply personal episode.
It contrasts two very powerful forces in my life. My father,
Johnny will Smith, hard working, hard driving businessman, self made
(01:28):
if you want to call it that. He owned multiple
ventures by the time I was a young man and
could recognize what was going on around me. But he
lacked financial literacy, which I did not understand the value
of it. At all as a young person, at least
(01:49):
not at that time. I'm now talking about, you know what,
I'm thinking about my life, my dad and seeing payroll
and meet the payroll at the front door of our
front screen door and then front metal door of our
place on thirty fifth Street in Western. It was four
or five years of age actually sorry Santa Barbara Boulevard
(02:11):
which was now Martinth the King Boulevard, and then later
on thirty fifth in Western when I want to live
with him as a young man. He had a cement
contracting business he had at that time, but before that,
when they were my mom and dad were together, they
owned a cement contribute business that was his cash flow business.
(02:33):
They had a nursery business took care of kids. I
was the first client. They owned their own home on
Santa Barbara now Martin the King Boulevard. Those in Los
Angeles know these street names. We owned an eight unit
apartment building that they bought for eighteen thousand dollars. You
(02:57):
can make the payment on the note renting two units.
They lived in one of the units. This is before
they bought their own home. The rest was profit that
in an apartment building today is worth millions of dollars.
Last time I checked, it was something north of six
(03:18):
million dollars, six to eight million dollars. They owned a
gas station at Western and Vernon, I believe Southeast Corner,
still there to this day. They were bawling. They were married,
high school education, up from the South, migrated to Los Angeles.
(03:43):
I'll tell you a little bit about that story. It's
also in my book Up from Nothing, A little bit
of my book Financial Literacy for All. But Johnny will
Smith and Wanita Smith were for a minute, literally the
American dream. My mother, Jannita Smith, was an hourly worker.
(04:06):
She had a side hustle making handicrafts, robes and things
like that. She made from terry cloth, basically bath house
She turned that into little pieces of artwork that you wore, robes,
(04:32):
kitchen covers for cooking, playful aprons that I can't explain
in public now because it was pretty embarrassing. And I'll
just tell you I was a model, and my mother
used to put the female parts in the male parts.
(04:53):
She'd make those and stuff the male parts with stuffing,
and we did to come out walk in the living
room and we'd have to we'd have to model the
aprons that she made and then lift up, you know,
lift up the private part to make everybody laugh and
hopefully they buy something. I could probably assume my mother
(05:16):
for uh, looking back, sue my mom and dad my
dad for child abuse or something. But at the time
you started it was cute. Actually, no idea. I was
embarrassed back then too now and I recall it. But
my mother was an industrious she was. That was her
side house although her primary business, her primary business was
a paycheck and she worked atmcdonald's Aircraft, which later was
so de Boeing Aircraft. But she had this side hustle,
(05:38):
which I'll get to in a moment because it's important,
because it's important. So she was an hourly worker and
quietly built wealth through discipline, smart investing, and excellent credit.
So when you don't have inheritance, when you don't have
somebody to give you something right, then you've got to
find And if life is about compounding, right, you make
(06:01):
money during the day, you build wealth and your sleep okay,
And if you don't have compounded cash, compounded financial capital
because daddy mummy did well and handed it to you,
which are a lot of mainstream families have that legacy.
Black families typically, Black and brown families typically do not. Okay,
(06:22):
because this generation might be the first generation that made
any real money right and putting it over the side
now is how you build wealth for the next generation.
So this might be the this generation. You might feel
stressed out because you're trying to do it all out
of one pocket. Can I get an a man, anybody
listening this can relate to this. You're trying to pay
it back, spend it, finance the now, and pay it
(06:46):
forward all out of one paycheck or out of one hustle.
So if you feel stressed out and don't know why,
that's the reason. It's the reason because you're in the
season of doing it all. And if it's not, if
it doesn't feel easy, that's because it's not right. You're
doing generational legacy work and trying to live your best life.
(07:10):
So I commend you. And so compounding education, compounding hustle,
hustle on hustle creates more hustle. If you get up early,
work later, get up earlier, stay late, short lunch. After
a while, you outrun your competitor. Because the devil's a
(07:34):
lazy bastard. Yeah, I said it. The devil's lazy. The
devil's a fallowing angel, right, So even God gives permission,
the devil permission to exist. He likes shortcuts, and he
likes people who don't want to hustle and don't want
to do the work. And love is work. Non love
is laziness. Anti love is evil. Exists, but it's very rare.
Most people are just lazy intellectually lazy, physically lazy, financially lazy, spiritually. Yeah,
(08:02):
they just don't want to do the work. They want
somebody to do it for them. So if you do
the work. To quote my friend Tony Wrestler, who's one
of the two hundredth richest man and most successful successful
self made businessmen in the world today, Tony Wrestler would say,
if you don't quit, you can't fail. If you don't quit,
(08:22):
you can't fail. I would say it differently and say,
you just have to take note for vitamins that success
is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,
older rounded through it, you're going to get to it.
So my mother had, my mother and my father had
this sense of undying resiliency and hustle. They were not lazy.
(08:44):
So let's check that box. As a success feature, I
wrote in my book I think it was. It was
the memo or Up from Nothing, about the fire pillars
of success, and I talk about as much education as
(09:06):
you can shove down your throat, understanding, financial literacy, family
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models, an environment.
If you have these five things, even with racism, bias, discrimination,
an unpleasant political environment, unsupportive environment period in the world,
(09:32):
maybe even a repressive environment leaning down on your world,
you'll still succeed. If you need to write those five
things down, replay this, take the podcast back thirty seconds,
replay it again, write it down on your iPhone or
your Android or wherever you keep your notes. These five things.
(09:53):
If you have these five things and you have this
resiliency factor, I said, what did Tony say, if you
don't quit, your can't fail. I told you. John Brian says,
we're going to take no for vitamins. Success is going
from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. We're never
going to give up. You will fit in time, you
will succeed. If you have three of these things or more,
(10:15):
you're going to go from surviving mode to thriving mode,
and maybe the building mode, but at least go from
surviving mode to thriving mode. You don't want to be
in surviving mode. If you have less than these three things,
any three of these things, you're in trouble again. As
much education, you shut down your throat, family structure and resiliency, well,
financial literacy, self well, family education, right, financial literacy, family
(10:41):
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence. Role Model's an environment,
as you're going to hear from my example, my family
had most of those things but then lost some critical elements.
And I want you to tell me in the notes
when you see this in pieces and social media, which
of the five things did my family my mother and
(11:04):
my father mess up, screw up, miss out on, etc.
Because they had it all and then it fell apart.
So my mother again had compounded good credit, right, compounded
self education, compounding discipline, right compounding focus, compounding good values
(11:28):
plus compounding hustle. The result. This is a real life
case study and why hustle alone isn't enough to be successful,
sustainably successful, and how strategy, stewardship, and financial literacy win
(11:49):
the long game. So Let's now get into this. Who
do you bet on the businessman who owns a gas
station in an apartment building or the ali worker who
with good credit in a long term plan, is betting
on herself. My mother, Well, my father made the money,
(12:15):
but my mother built the wealth. Interesting, how is that possible?
We're going to talk about these two people who I love,
my parents, and the very different money legacies they left behind.
Let's talk about my mother and my father as a couple. Married.
(12:37):
My dad Johnny Smith. His father, RB Smith, was a sharecropper.
My second great grandfather on my father's side, George Young,
was in the Civil War, UH, part of the answer
to the call for the Emancipation Proclamation. That's maybe where
I got my social justice bones from. I served in Memphis,
(12:59):
Tennessee for the Union calls thought for justice and freedom
for those who never gave him justice or freedom or protection,
protected those who didn't protect him. Long list of self
reliant doers. My father grandfather was a sharecropper. Dad was
a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. So there's your role modeling example.
(13:23):
I didn't know my dad was financially illiterate. I just
knew my dad hustled hard and worked hard, and so
I'm following that write the check versus cast to check model.
Right the check, meaning you're a business owner. My dad
was very successful and as sement contracting business, he did
it with his own hands. He would go to a job,
(13:45):
he would guestimate the cost of that job, which was
the cost of cement. It's the products that make cement
the hourly worker wage for the workers. And he had
all races of workers working for him. That's one of
the reasons I have no problem with white people or
Hispanics or Asians or anybody else, of course blacks, because
everybody worked for my father. Everybody respected him as the boss,
(14:10):
the boss man. They called him the employer, the guy
who paid them their paychecks so they can then pay
their bills. And they were lined up every Friday for payroll.
He paid them in cash back in the day. But
they all respected them. And I love that seeing that
respect that gave my dad. Well, he would just calculate
in his head or a little piece of paper a
notebook he had what the job was to make this
(14:34):
redo or to lay out for a first time a
sidewalk or a driveway, which were typical his typical jobs.
And I remember one day he was trying to beat
out another contractor who had bid let's just say, twelve
hundred dollars for this job. My dad not knowing what
(14:57):
the heart costs were, but wanting the job. He dragged
me around all these jobs. I was sitting in the passenger
receipt of his pickup truck, burning up to death in
this hot truck with no air conditioning, by side of
my head stuck to the window because it was so
hot in the south central Los Angeles. As I went
to sleep trying to get through the twenty job estimates.
He went through and it was really beautiful that he
(15:19):
made me hang with him because my daddy was not
a baby daddy, he was a father. So only commend
him for that. We have to, I think, claim our kids.
We shouldn't be saying baby mama or baby father. He's
a father and a mother. That's your child. You own them,
you own their legacy in making and they know what
you give them. You know, and my dad gave me
(15:39):
everything he had. It wasn't everything I needed, but it
was everything he had and for that I will forever
be thankful to Johnny will Smith, who even as you
can hear in a minute, took care of my brother
and my sister who was not his children. So a
very honorable man and bastard Andrew Young would say that
men and women fail for three reason arrogance, pride, and greed.
(16:02):
My dad was not arrogant, not in traditional sense. He
was not greedy at all, but he was full of pride,
and that pride might have bordered on a slight bit
of arrogance because he wouldn't listen, he wouldn't take advice,
certainly not from my mother. So anyway, he made this
(16:24):
job four thousand dollars, and the problem was that the
costs he found out later, or maybe worse, did not
find out later, but it was obvious when he went
broke the cost of that job was at least one
thousand dollars, probably one thousand and fifty or eleven hundred dollars.
So my dad confused cash flow with profit. Very important point,
(16:48):
he thought, the cash flow getting that back, And again,
what do we do in the black and brown community,
Give me that bag, give me that dollar, give me
that cash. You know, we think that we over index
the importance of cash. Cash is nothing more than a
transfer of value. That's all it is. But we think
it's really more than that, and we think we have
got a bunch of cash, a bunch of bills in
(17:10):
our pocket. Then that means something. It might mean you're
going to go broke when at that money disappears, and
it will disappear because if your outflow exees your inflow,
then your overhead will be your downfall. And with my father,
he would spend a dollar, but he would make a dollar,
but spend a dollar fifty. So the more money he made,
the broker we got. And I say we because as
(17:32):
you're here in a minute, we lost everything. So my
dad back up the story a little bit. My dad
was doing very well, as I seeing a contractor would
(17:53):
buy a new car from Detroit every couple of years,
because that's how you profile back then, your success. Because
black people could not buy cars like that directly from
a car dealership or you know anybody. I mean, you
could not in the sixties just go buy a fancy
new car. People wouldn't sell it to you. The dealers
(18:13):
wouldn't sell it to you if you're a black man.
My dad went full floss. He would drive the car
to the manufacturer in Detroit, and he had family in
East Saint Louis, and so he would go through East
Saint Louis to visit his family and then go to
(18:33):
Detroit to sell the car and buy a new and
to trade it in and buy a new one. Well,
this time he ran into my fine and mouth one
Nita Smith, and the rest is history. He fell in love,
and my mother said, well, if you want me, you
got to take my two children with me. It was
my brother Donnie Dave, jon L Harris and my sister
(18:55):
Marl Hoskins, two brilliant, amazing people and who are from
a former marriage my mother had. And my mother was
all about our kids. And my mother grew up in
a shotgun shack, and he's Saint Louis. You want to
know about more about her story, her backstory, you can
read one of my last books, I believe is detail
(19:17):
it up from nothing. And so Dad says, yes, happy
to do that. I'ted to do that. So they packed
up everything in my dad's car, including the two kids
I was not yet born, moved to la That's where
I was born, in Good Samaritan Hospital. They start building, building,
building together and I'm now, I come in this world.
(19:38):
They get busy, they have me. I come in the world,
and about four or five years of age, they're having
some serious differences of opinion. But my mother is like,
that's okay, you know, this is normal. I'll deal with
whatever it is. He's a good man. He's taking care
of my kids and me. But my mother had saved
four thousand dollars to send my brother, Dave Darnelle Harris
(20:02):
to a college of his choice, and four thousand dollars
in nineteen sixty eight nineteen seventy I think it was
in nineteen seventy was a lot of moolah. And I
was born in sixty six to nineteen seventy, and I
was about four or five years old, and she was
(20:24):
saving that money so he could go become whoever he
wanted to be. My dad found the money because my
mother did not put the money in the bank account.
She had it under a mattress of where she saved.
Please open a bank account, everybody. The bank account is
FDIC insured right for your deposits. So this would not
have this whole story about to tell you. It would
(20:44):
be different if my mother put the money into a
bank account the black who don't trust banks because of
the history of the Freeman's Bank and all the stuff,
which I understand, But this is a new world. I'm
telling you to upgrade your software. Put your money into
the bank in your own name. In this example, this
bank my mother's dad. Mom and dad probably had a
joint account. I'm not sure, but surely she surely should
(21:06):
have had a separate account for this money in her
own name. He found the money, he wasted it on
some hair brain thing, some investment or something he thought
he assumed was going to be important and successful. And
as usual, he was wrong about this. He was great
at sement contracting. The rest of the stuff he was
speculating on was not so great because my dad game
(21:28):
was financially illiterate, I found out later. So he wasted
the money and Mom had had it. Mom was like, okay,
I'm done. You can mess over me, can mess with
my kids and with my mother. What I was not
thinking about then, but I now know. What I know
now is that she's like, well, look, I got two
more kids in the line here. This is the oldest kid.
(21:49):
If you're doing this to my oldest kid, then the
rest of my kids. I'm just asking for pain. So
at this point we owned keep in mind, this is
nineteen seventy. Now we own our own home Semen on
Santa Barbara Boulevard now called martinather King Boulevard. We owned
(22:12):
a gas station. The home we owned was at twenty
fourteen West Santa Barbara Avenue in Los Angeles, now Martin
King Boulevard. We owned a eight ent apartment building. The
gas station, nursery business, Seeman contracting business, which was cash flow.
So nursery business and the contract contracting business were cash
(22:33):
flow businesses. Right. The single family home was an asset
that appreciated. The gas station was cash flow plus an
asset that could appreciate. The apartment building was cash flow
plus an asset that could appreciate. And we probably had
a couple of side hustles, but my mother's side hustle
(22:55):
of doing handicrafts that came later, but just that alone
would have made us most millionaires, and the whole family
would have had generational wealth. Mom and Dad get over,
get into this. I remember the fights I had to
call my mother, call my brother, my sister. Sorry, Monty
called the police. We called her Montemorrow we called her Manti.
She called the police and put somebody answer and somehow
(23:17):
gave me the phone. Don't know how I get the
phone and policemen. Come, come, come. My daddy's being up
by my mother. My mother took off that three inch pump.
She was a church. It was it was a Sunday
after church. And she's like, no man's going to ever
put his hand on me again. That happened in her
first or their first husband. By the way, number one
calls for domestic abuse. Money. Number one calls for divorce. Money.
(23:41):
Number one calls for heart attacks. Stress. Number one calls
for stress. Money. Hello, every day is not about God
or love. Your day is about money. That's why we
need to understand money. We lived in a capitalist democracy, right,
we got to understand how this game is played. So
uh there getting into it, and she popped them over
(24:03):
the side of his head with that little that three
inch pomp here didn't grow there for the rest of
his life, right on the ball of his head. He
stopped messing with it. But she's like, Okay, I'm not
gonna sit around here and get beat. I can't protect
my kids. So my mother filed for divorce and left them. Now,
California is a community property state. Please hear me, My
mother could have taken there for everything he had. Anybody
(24:25):
listening to this, and you live in California, you know
exactly what I'm talking about. I grew up there. It
is a California is a community property state at least half.
And she's got these kids also. I mean, she could
have left them destitute, but she wanted. All she wanted
was her freedom. All she wanted the ability to go
out and do for herself and create her own life.
(24:45):
And she had enough confidence in herself, so she left
with nothing. And it just dawned on me recently that
this was how much courage she had, because she could
have again, she could have take left the house, left
and kept the house and everything else, and he didn't
get an apartment or live with friends. She left with
the kids lived to go stay. So now he's got
(25:08):
all these assets. Now she goes to stay with her girlfriend.
And you can listen to the you know again, check
out the backstory of this in my book Up from
Nothing I believe it is, and financial Literacy for All,
because it's an interesting backstory with the guy who I
ended up living with temporarily a guy named O C.
I believe who saved my life while staying there temporarily
(25:33):
while my mother what was her girlfriend and her girlfriend's
boyfriend who saved my life? But my mother wanted to
stay with her girlfriend so she could get a job,
or she did working in McDonald douglas Aircraft For that
she said the equivalent of fifteen dollars to eighteen dollars
an hour, fifteen dollars an hour when she started, eighteen
dollars an hour about that when she retired, plus benefits
(25:55):
in a pension. My mother worked that job, did not
have bills because she stayed with her girlfriend, used the
money from not having bills to save a down payment.
And mind you, the guy her the girl, her girlfriend's
boyfriend saved my life when I fell on this porch.
But again that's the backstory not important to take up
(26:17):
in this podcast. He was ultimately murdered over money, by
the way, the guy who saved my life. Mom then
bounces from that house that she stayed with her girlfriend,
moves to one five five oh two South Freyley. Don't
you you know when you buy a house and you
own it, you remember the address, right? My mother bought
(26:39):
her first home one five five oh too South Freyley
in Compton, California. And I was in nirvana. I mean
it was our own home. It was me and my sister.
My brother had okay to check this out. So my brother,
because he could not I go to college of his choice,
he ended ver happy to go into the Navy to
(27:01):
get his education. He wanted a four year education. So
the Navy said, fine, we'll give you an education, but
you're going to have to give us four years of
military service. Whether the Navy understands its psychology, the psychology
people very well, and the chances are once you get
into the Navy and you get that environment in your bloodstream,
they know that this is at least a fifty percent change,
(27:23):
if not better, you're going to stay. Well. My brother stayed.
My brother stayed four years, eight years, ten years, twenty years.
He retired as a commissioned officer in the Navy as
an intelligence officer. Very proud of him. Donnie's Dave Downall Harris.
He married, moved to Hawaii, married a Wayan at the
Whole Wayian kids. You started to get the memo all
(27:43):
this changed his life, This little four thousand dollars decision
my dad made change his entire the trajectory of his
entire life. You don't think money makes a difference. Money
money can be I mean, as the Bible suggests, the
Bible talks about money more than it's talk about any
other topic, more than two thousand mentions. Money is not evil.
(28:05):
It's the love of money. What you need to do
is understand how to use it before it uses you.
So my brother goes to the military, and he's got
a great life. He's required. He's on the second retirement
from naval contracting because he contracts with companies that do
business with the Navy. So he's a real expert at
what he does. But how his life had been different
(28:26):
if he had that four thousand dollars could have gone
on college of his choice and did as he liked.
So my mother then had the chance now to curate
the life of my sister was older than me and me,
and she did a fabulous job. None of these kids
went to prison or jail or had any because we
were more afraid of her than we were the streets.
(28:50):
So so far in the story, you like, well, John,
I understand like your dad's winning. In fact, your dad won?
What what's how do you make some sense out of this?
My dad was, you know, charismatic and driven, proud black businessman.
(29:11):
An error of this wasn't easy. But he had no
financial literacy. He had no credit management, no systems around
his business, no estate planning, and he didn't understand. My
mother was a mathematical genius. Right. My mother wanted the
smith worked an hourly job for thirty two years, never flashy,
(29:33):
focused on stability, had excellent credit, paid her bills on time,
invested quietly and consistently. Ultimately walked away when money became
a point of contention from the marriage. They owned real assets.
What were they lacked together? Was they shared philosophy about money? Right?
(29:54):
And two plus two in a relationship, it has to
be six eight or ten or why are you doing it?
If you're not better together? Why are you doing it?
Because marriage when the when the looks drop and the
body falls away, that's your business partner for life. Right,
So it has to be more than I like this person.
(30:19):
So Johnny will Smith in this example so far happening
through this podcast episode, Johnny will Smith is winning. He's
got all these assets. He was left with everything my
mother got nothing. He's got cash flow, he's got he's
got appreciable assets, he's got everybody in the city knows him.
You know. He goes to the bank brands. They call
them by you know, it's the first name, Hello Johnny,
(30:41):
and mister mister Smith or whatever. He's balling. He's got
a cemen equipment. He's got a tractor, he's got a truck.
He's got his name, a van, Johnny's you know, semen
work on the outside of the van. He's got workers,
he's got respectability in the neighborhood. I remember all of that, right,
it's as if it's as if it happened yesterday. So fast, Floord. Now,
(31:02):
mind you, my mother's just now working a job. You
got this modest house in confidence. She's working this job,
and she's got the those side hustle doing handicrafts. But
so my mother's put it on sort of you know,
not rent repeat, but just remote control. By the way,
if you if you do nothing, here's a little tip
for you. If you do nothing, but save two hundred
dollars a month into the stock market, and the stock
(31:26):
market gates between seven and ten percent return every year
between thirty three years and forty years from the time
you start that, you'll be worth a million dollars. Okay,
so that just put that aside, right, Yes, I said
that pretty quickly. You're like, what, Yes, you put two
hundred dollars a month. So whenever you start to start,
just start right now. If you need it done it halftime.
(31:47):
Double up on the money if you can. You put
two hundred dollars in prop in sort of you know,
premiere stocks, not no Homeboy shopping network stuff. No, no,
no speculative stocks. I mean, you know blue chip stocks
that are returning you seven to preferably ten percent a year.
If it's ten percent a year, you'll be worth a
million dollars in thirty three years. If it's seven percent
(32:08):
of year, it's about forty years. But just just put
it on auto pay, right, and you'll be a millionaire. Okay,
Now that aside. My dad. I remember calling my dad
one day and what dad was going on? Well, and
I'm wondering why his girlfriend was ugly because my mother
(32:31):
was fine. But when I think back, because I was
just traveling all around the country, around the world, I
was hustling myself and life was a blur. I slept
for six five or six hours in the middle or
three hours in the middle of a day because it
was just a blur, so I didn't really wasn't really
paying deep attention what was going on with my dad. But
when my dad told me that he was staying with
his lady. There was his girlfriend, and she basically had
(32:52):
control financially over his life, and she was staying in
a house that she owned, it got my attention. I'm like,
what would you say? Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
With whatever her name was, she was ugly, unattracted, physically,
unattractive spiritually. I remember meeting her and she didn't treat
my father very well, but he was like a It
(33:13):
was like a reverse sexty situation. He I guess he
played with him for so long now they're playing him
and she at this place and she let him stay there,
but he had to be her girlfriend. This is a
serious story, and I'm like, no, no, Dad, you can't
do that. Now. I was not a place financially where
I can afford to do what I'm about to tell you,
(33:33):
But I knew that my dad could not be in
this situation. So my first real estate lesson I. I
guess I was in my early twenties when this happened.
As I remember, I had my first for my first
success in business, I bought the property, the home from
(33:56):
the lady, and one hundred thousand dolls whatever it was.
By the way, you can't find anything in Los Angeles
for one hundred thousand dollars today, So that's why I said,
people just buy the property. You'll never think it's the
price is right. It's just gonna go up if you
could afford it, buy the property and hold on to it.
I bought this property. I knocked down the zoning was
(34:17):
I thought R four. It was R three, which is residential,
which means I could put three or four units on it.
But it was on a single family residential. A single
family residential home was on this lot, so I thought,
if I buy it. I checked this out with an
account with an architect first, but I did not check
the zoning. My father told me it was a C four.
I was an R four. I just trusted them. I
(34:38):
bought the property. I knocked down three walls, kept one
wall up, which made it the sustainable structure. I didn't
got a construction loan for an apartment building. That's when
the bank was Fargo. I'm always thankful to them told
me that it was not zoned R four. It was
zoned R three. Fine. That means I could put three
(34:58):
units up my dad's. He's in one unit read from
the other two, just pays enough to cover the mortgage
and his living expenses. Because I couldn't afford to just
write a check out of my pocket every month to
take care of my dad for the remainder of his life.
I did a cook calculation. Knew I'd be broke doing that,
and I didn't want to make a promise to my
dad I couldn't keep. So I got Wells Fargo to
(35:20):
make this loan a construction loan, and Tom Swanson want
to be for everything for the Tom Swanson because the
story gets in very interesting. I gave my dad the chance.
My dad asked for the chance to construct his own home.
I should have just said no, he's not a general contractor.
And the reason he went and't broken in the first
place was he couldn't manage his money. Fine emotional I've
(35:44):
always said to you, don't make an emotional decision, it's
going to be a bad one. Out of love and emotions.
I said yes when my brain should have said no,
I should have got an independent contractor to building. I'm
already giving him place to live, already bought the place,
and not like I'm not doing enough. So he wanted
to be seen, is building his own place profile like whatever.
I give him this construction loan, he runs through it
(36:08):
nothing less. I give him an Emerger Express green card.
I didn't even have one, had a six thousand dollars
limit on it. My dad ran through that in a month.
I mean, I was so upset, But what am I
gonna do? He's my father. So I canceled the green
card and had to pay it back over time. I mean,
it might as well have been fifty thousand dollars today,
six thousand dollars back then or more. And luckily for me,
(36:33):
Tom Swanson ed Wills Fargo since retired. I went back
to him, told him the truth, told him exactly what happened. Luckily,
the market was going up at that time, values were
going up, and he said, look, the property's worth more
now than it was when you took out the construction loan.
We're going to refinance the construction loan for you. Allow
you to take out the money to now finish his
three unit department building. But now you've got to get
(36:54):
a proper contractor. We're going to have project ensured project
construction insurance on this project in case you get weak
need and trust your father again. And I learned so
many lessons. I finished the project just barely, and that
three in the building is worth seven figures today without question.
So anyway, and my dad lived in dignity there until
(37:16):
the day passed on broke. My dad died. God bless us,
so God rest is so financially broke lost everything. We
lost the gas station, lost the single valley residential home.
If you're in La Drive by Western and Vernon, I
believe those are the new Rodale world. I think I
(37:40):
think those are. That's the corner southeast corner. That gas
station still there is what we owned. Lost the apartment
building worth millions. We lost it all. I don't know
how I lost it. He just did. And the only
thing was keeping him going until he couldn't do anymore
was the seeming contracting business. And even lost the trucks
(38:00):
or sold them or whatever the equipment. So by the
time I got back around into the story, the story
my dad was not in great health, uh and and
didn't take good care of himself and wouldn't listen to
me when I tried to. It was a whole another story.
But I loved him and I was gonna do everything
I could to let him live in dignity. And I'm
proud that I did that. And when I think Rachel
(38:23):
DiPT my chief of staff for being an honorary sister
to my honorary daughter to my father and taking care
of him when I was out on the road, my
mother had a different story. So my mom and my
dad had just two different world views right, and they
collided and the partnership dissolved over time. My dad lost
(38:44):
it all, every asset gone. My mother worked that job,
took that extra money that she was making part time.
And by the way, if you're married, here's an ideal situation.
If two people are working. One person earns the income
and paid living expenses. You live on one paycheck. Please
hear me. The other person earns an income and invests it.
(39:07):
Now that this is at the forty minute mark of
this podcast, you won't. You don't get to pick up
anything else. Tell your friends to go to the forty
minute mark or whatever around thirty eight to forty minute mark,
and mark this place and follow what I said. You
have two income houses. One person makes the money and
you live off that all your living expenses under this
one person. The other person take this money and invested
(39:28):
what I tell you earlier, two hundred dollars a month,
and we're two hundred dollars a month over thirty three
to forty years, and you'll be a millionaire. What happens
if you do five hundred a month or one thousand
dollars a month? Okay, you starting to get Get the hint,
get the memo. It's the magic of compounding in the marketplace.
So my dad, Johnny Smith, had assets, but no structure
(39:51):
in his life. He's cash rich at times, but asset
pour in the end, no diverse ofation, no succession plan,
no long term investment strategy. My mother hustled differently, hustled smartly,
(40:11):
use credit as leveraged out a crutch. My dad used
to say his credit was bad. My dad's credit was
so bad he didn't call it credit. He said his
credit was bad. My dad, I love him. My mother
understood delayed gratification, believe in consistency over charisma, invest, reinvest,
(40:34):
leave it alone, let it compound. Hustle gets you in
the door. Literacy and stewardship keeps you in the room.
It keeps a roof over your head that you own.
They again, they fought over money to different world views.
My mom, My mom left. You know, you know again,
you can do that all by yourself. She made a choice.
(40:55):
So my mother ended up buying and selling seven homes
to drop Mike here. She had a life insurance policy.
She drew up a will with a poison peel in it.
Anybody who contests this will, and I want to thank
for James Buchanan for helping her in the later years
of her life. He works for me, became a friend
(41:15):
of my mother, and he advised her to put this
element in the will, which I agree with. Anybody who
can test his will will be removed from the proceeds.
Anybody who can test his will removed from the inheritance. Boy,
and I was and I was the you know, the
the trustee. Whatever for the whills. I didn't. I didn't
want to fight come in my way. But everybody got
(41:37):
real quiet once they read the wheel and saw that
in it. Mom was gangster. Mom had a stock account,
she had a bank account. Of course, she had a Mercedes.
She paid cash for it. My mother ultimately converted the
life insurance policy and the stock I believe to cash.
(42:00):
She helped her kids to buy houses, put their down
payment in their homes, but the involved some seven homes.
And when she passed away, she had a million dollar
net worth and my dad was broke, and she worked
an hourly job, and she didn't get that million dollar
net worth from the stock market, like I just told you.
She put a little bit of money in the stock
market through her through her employer, but she did most
(42:21):
of this through through real estate and making really smart
credit moves. She had a credit of credit score of
eight fifty four. Back when the credit score went that high,
it was changed age fifty as a maximum. Whatever the
maximum was, she had it. And then later on her life,
when she wasn't working, wasn't wasn't cutting deals, her credit
score went down to the high seven to the low
seven hundreds. But it's because she wasn't she wasn't using
(42:43):
credit at that time. But I'm just giving an example
of what really matters, right and what doesn't. So I
want to break the myth you don't need to own
a business to build wealth. You can be an hourly
worker and Bill Well, that is the situation for most
people in this country. My mom's formula was good credit,
(43:15):
equal access to capital, prime access to capital. She went
to computer at midnight, typed in her so security number
in her name at midnight. Computers not asking her she's
black or female or whatever, if it's below one hundred
thousand dollars or whatever, the computer just says yes, because
my mother's not black or white, she's green right. Good credit.
She had automatic savings. She looked automatic savings as a
(43:39):
long term game. She had a modest lifestyle. She lived
under a means. She knew that equal freedom. This is
what millions of Americas that do. As a business model.
Imagine now, if Johnny WILLI smith, we need to smith
my mom and dad combine their strengths. Imagine I mean
(44:00):
that hustle, they had, that network, what they've built. If
he made it and she invested it, Oh my god,
they'd be powerhouse in my life. Story would be different.
Maybe they'd be no operation hope, I wouldn't be no
financial literacy course. I wouldn't have been in Compton. My
mother went about the house. I mean, you know all
these things, rainbow's after storms. She cannot have a rainbow
of a storm. First, I've been a very different person
(44:22):
if it had not been for the trauma and the
drama in my life. And so I don't regret anything.
I don't ask for anything to be different. But I
would have wanted my mother to be happier, and she
wasn't really all that happy. She was happy with her kids,
she was happy by what she had done, her success,
but she wasn't personally fulfilled from a love perspective. She
wanted to be loved, she gave. She told me she
(44:43):
loved me every day of my life. So I never
had a self esteem problem. And that's where the quote
for Operation Hope comes from. There's a difference between being
broken being poor, being broken as economic but being poor
as a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of
your spirit. And you must vow never, ever ever to
be poor again. That's came from my mother. But my
mother told me she loved me every day in my life.
(45:05):
No one ever told her that, even her own mother
was not somebody who effusively said, I love you baby.
So my mother was not loved by her family. She
was love by our kids, her and her sisters, but
not really. It did not have a love interest. And
that I think was the one sadness in her life.
(45:25):
Now let's talk about my dad. Imagine if Johnny. By
the way, my mother was my date for many, many,
many years. I take her all around the world. I
went to I've been to one hundred countries. I'm sure
of taking my mother to at least ten. And I'm
so proud that we had a time together. And anyway, reminiscing,
(45:46):
Sorry about that. What was my What can the modern
entrepreneur learn from from this? Incorporate your business, build business credit,
maintain personal credit because if you're an if you're a
small business owner, your business credit may rely on your
(46:06):
personal credit rating. Separate hustle from household. Plan with your
spouse or partner. Avoid silent wars over money. You can
have weekly meetings on money, or monthly or semi quarterly
or semi annually or annually. You know, my family, we
talk about money all the time. When it you know,
(46:27):
when it comes up, what doesn't come up when it
needs to come up? Right, and keep a budget. I
used to think the budgets were born. Budgets or budgets
are glorious. You should have one. Everybody should have one.
Here's an action plan for business hustlers. Formalize your operations
and using a limited liability corporation as easy as quick,
(46:47):
ass cheap, use a proper accounting firm. Pay your taxes.
My taxman was always after my dad. By the way.
He was in a cash business. Uh, he didn't pay
his taxes. Build your credit profile. Invest in something that
pays you back over time. An apartment building. And again
the apartment building was cash flow and asset appreciation. So
(47:07):
he was making money during the day, the week, and
when he's then and then it was it was appreciating
because it's real estate and it's a business. Actually three
times it was a three times profit margin because he
would have sold the business, he would have got paid.
If he had sold the real estate, he would have
got paid. And he was getting paid every week and
every day and every month on the income from the
(47:27):
gas station. Same was the same was the case with
the apartment building. So if he had just kept those
I mean he bought an eight unit apartment building in
Los Angeles for eighteen thousand dollars. I mean, my god,
imagine you could just live on that for the rest
of your life. And then when you sold it, what heck,
you're on easy Street. But he didn't. So build your
(47:52):
credit profile, formalize your operations, build your credit profile. Invested
something that pays you back over time for hourly workers.
Max out your retirement. If your employer has a four
oh one K plan and they're giving you x dollars,
match it x dollars of your own money. It's free money,
it's found money, it's yours. Why would you leave money
on the table right whatever your employer has given you,
(48:13):
match it immediately, you know. If you don't, if you
need it later, you're always pull it out right. Protect
your credit score. Learn basic investing. You know index funds ETFs,
but learn basic investing in the stock market, and then
put in at least fifty bucks one hundred bucks, two
hundred bucks a month. You can do fractional shares. By
the way, there's no excuse for doing for not doing nothing.
(48:36):
And of course you know me. I'm going to say
you should invest in real estate. Buy a home whenever
you can. You don't have to own the block tomorrow,
but you have to own your mindset today. My father
gave me a fearless spirit, and I'll always be thankful
for him for that. My mother gave me financial wisdom
and I'll always be grateful for that. My mom gave
(48:57):
me a sense of yes I am. My dad gave
me a sense of yes I can. But in the end,
it was my mother who built the legacy, the sustainable legacy.
Here's your call to action, everybody. Share this with someone
who you think is working harder in the same way
that my mom and dad did, but not working smarter,
(49:18):
and you want them to work smarter. The definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting a different outcome. Tell them to go to
the Operation Hope credit score index page on the Internet
and look up the credit score for the neighborhood that
you're living in. Because that neighborhood that you're living in,
if you do nothing but follow the trends in that neighborhood,
(49:39):
you're you're going to you're going to model everything about
the neighborhood. So you live in a six hundred credit
score five hundred credit score neighborhood you're going to live
to about sixty one years of age. For every fifty
points we found in met to every credit score in
American by zip code of operation Hope and thank you
Experience for giving us the data in the US Census.
For every increase in credit score of fifty points, you
(50:01):
pick up five more years of life. Yes, that's what
I said. I said it, and which Yes, I hope
you didn't run off the road when I said that.
If you have a seven hundred credit score, you lived
on average eighty one years of age. A five hundred
credit score you lived to on average sixty one years
of age, and you don't get so security until sixty five. Hello. Right,
So a twenty year gap in wellness, in well being,
(50:22):
you lived twenty year longer life with us two hundred
point gap in your credit score. It's not about the
credit score. Is about hope, well being, faith, confidence, belief, optimism, mindset.
It's about how your's your mindset? Do you believe? Is
the glass half empty? Is a glass half full? It
depends who's looking at the glass. Whether you believe you can't,
whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right, right, So
you got to get your mind right because I can
(50:45):
I gain I've done on my straight title Straight Talk
Live series. I've talked about being homeless. I've talked about
people win the lottery. I can give a million a
homeless guy a million dollars, He'll be broken six months
if nothing else changes in his mind, in his heart,
that reflex was in his pocket. Most people win the lottery,
bankrupt in five years, broke. MOSTBA and NFL players bankrupt
(51:08):
within five years of retirement and divorced because again, you
got the money, but you didn't get the education. You
get the financial literacy, you don't understand what to do
with it. So getting your mindset right is really important.
Tell everybody listening to this go download the Hope and
Hand app. Tell them that John Brian sent you. They'll
offer you a one thousand dollars Hope Financial scholarship for
(51:28):
coaching and counseling to get your credit score up, your
debt down, your savings up. We're geting credit scores up
fifty four points in six months, twelve hundred dollars up
for savings, thirty eight hundred dollars down for debt. In
a year. You do that, you make forty eight to
fifty thousand dollars a year. In this example, we just
made you bank of them. We're the only nonprofit allowed
(51:49):
to operate out of a bank branch in US history,
and so removing you from a no answer at the
bank to a yes answer. In most cases, you have
a job, your employ you have a good credit score,
your debt, the intrarations are in place. The bank wants
to make a good loan there. They don't make a
good loan. They can't. They can't pay their bills, so
they need the money to be working. They don't. They
don't want to give to people they think are going
to default on the debt. Right, So I need you
(52:11):
to understand how the system works and where our job
is to be economic plumbing for the entire country. I
want you to tell your friends that subscribe to Money
and Wealth to podcast and get my book Financial Literacy
for All, which is the best seller in the world.
John O'Brien, This is Money and Wealth on the Black
Effect Network on iHeartRadio. This has been a special episode
(52:31):
where I went deep into my own personal soul and
told you some things are very private person with me.
The example the businessman hustler versus the hourly worker investor,
which one wins. This is something everybody can do. This
is this is John O'Brien is the silver rights movement,
from civil rights to civil rights, from civil rights in
(52:53):
the streets to civil rights in the suites. I'm Out
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
(53:16):
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
John Hope Bryant
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