September 25, 2025 • 55 mins
In this deeply personal episode, John opens up about the two most influential money legacies in his life: his father, a relentless hustling businessman, and his mother, a disciplined hourly worker who quietly built lasting wealth.
Through their contrasting approaches—one fueled by entrepreneurship and hustle, the other by financial literacy, credit, and steady investing—John explores powerful lessons about success, failure, and the true keys to generational wealth.
From stories of family businesses, lost fortunes, and hard-won financial wisdom, John challenges listeners to rethink what it really takes to build stability and prosperity. Hustle may open the door, but strategy, stewardship, and smart money habits are what keep you in the room.
If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s better to grind as an entrepreneur or build steadily as an employee, this episode will change the way you look at money, wealth, and legacy.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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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 Hobriyant and this is Money and Wealth
Podcast Series Season two. Honored to be with you and
(00:22):
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
(00:43):
the top I believe five percent of all podcasts in
the world. Will thank you very much to 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?
(01:06):
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
(01:27):
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. All at all as a young person, at
(01:48):
least now 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 of the front door
of for 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, I'm sorry
(02:10):
Santa Barbara Boulevard which was now Martin 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 a at that time,
but before that, when they were my mom and dad
were together, they owned a cement contributing business. That was
(02:31):
his cash flow business. 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
(02:54):
thousand dollars. You 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
(03:16):
north of six 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,
(03:41):
migrated to Los Angeles. 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 Wuanita Smith were for a minute,
literally the American dream. My mother, Jannita Smith, was an
(04:04):
hourly worker. 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
(04:25):
that you wore, robes, kitchen covers for cooking, playful aprons
that I can't explain in public now because it was
(04:45):
pretty embarrassing. And I'll just say you I was a
model and my mother used to put the female parts
in the male parts. 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
(05:07):
lift up, you know, lift up the private parts to
make everybody laugh and hopefully they buy something. I could
probably assume my mother for looking back, sue my mom
and my dad for child abuse or something. But at
the time when you thought it was cute, actually no idea.
I was embarrassed back then too, now I recalled. But
my mother was an industrious she was. That was her
(05:29):
side house with though her primary business. Her primary business
was a paycheck and she worked at McDonald's Aircraft, which
later was so de Boeing Aircraft. But she had this
side hustle, which I'll get to in the 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
(05:51):
don't have somebody to give you something right, then you've
got to find And if life is about compounding, right,
you make money during the day, you build wealth and
you'll sleep okay. And if you don't have compounded cash,
compounded financial capital because daddy mummy did well and handed
(06:13):
it to you, which are a lot of mainstream families
have that legacy. Black families typically black and brown families
typically do not. Okay, 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
(06:34):
it all out of one pocket. Can I get an
a man, Everybody listening, this can relate to this. You're
trying to pay it back, spend it, finance the now,
and pay it 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
(06:58):
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. So I commend you. And so
compounding education, compounding hustle, hustle on hustle creates more hustle.
(07:20):
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 lazy bastard. Yeah, I said, the
devil's lazy. The devil's a fall of angel, right, So
even God gives permission, the devil permission to exist. He
(07:43):
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 lazy. Yeah, they just don't
want to do the work. They want somebody to do
it for them. So if you do the work. To
(08:06):
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, you
can't fail. I would say it differently and say, you
just have to take note for vitamins that success is
(08:29):
going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm, old
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,
So let's check that box as a success feature. I
wrote in my book I think it was. It was
(08:53):
the memo or Up from Nothing about the five pillars
of SSS, and I talk about as much education as
you can shove down your throat, understanding, financial literacy, family
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models, an environment.
(09:20):
If you have these five things, even with racism, bias, discrimination,
an unpleasant political environment, unsupportive environment period in the world,
maybe even a repressive environment leaning down on your world,
you'll still succeed. If you need to write those five
(09:41):
things down, replay this, take the podcast back thirty seconds,
replay it again, write it down on your iPhone or
your Android wherever you keep your notes. These five things.
If you have these five things and you have this
resiliency factor, I said, what did Tony say, if you
don't quit, you can't fail. I told you. John Brian says,
(10:01):
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 you're going to go from surviving mode to thriving mode,
and maybe the building mode, but you'll at least go
from surviving mode to thriving mode. You don't want to
(10:22):
be in surviving mode. If you have less than these
three things, any three of these things, you're in trouble again.
As much as education, you shut down your throat, family
structure and resiliency, well, financial literacy, self well, family education, right,
financial literacy, family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence,
(10:45):
role models, 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 of this in social media, which of the five
things did my family my mother and my father mess up,
(11:05):
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 plus compounding hustle. The result.
(11:32):
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 the long game. So let's
now get into this. Who do you bet on the
(11:56):
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, but my mother built the wealth. Interesting,
(12:17):
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. My dad
Johnny Smith. His father, RB Smith, was a sharecropper. My
(12:43):
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 proclamations. Maybe or I got
my social justice bones from I served in Memphis, Tennessee
for the Union calls. Fought for justice and freedom for
(13:03):
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.
I didn't know my dad was financially literate. I just
(13:24):
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 seement contracting business, he
did it with his own hands. He would go to
a job, he would guestimate the cost of that job,
(13:49):
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 as
one of the And 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, the boss man. They called him the employer,
(14:12):
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 on a piece
of paper a notebook he had what the job was
(14:32):
to make this 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
(14:55):
not knowing what the heart costs were, but wanting the job.
Around all these jobs, I sit in the passenger receipt
of this 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 high
in the south central Los Angeles. As I went to
sleep trying to get through the twenty job estimates he
(15:16):
went through and it was really beautiful that he made
me hang with him because my daddy was not a
baby daddy, he was a father. So on a 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
(15:38):
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 reasons, eric and pride
(16:00):
and greed. My dad was not arrogant, not in a
traditional sense. He was not greedy at all, but he
was full of pride, and that pride might have brought
it on a slight bit of arrogance because he wouldn't listen,
he wouldn't take advice, certainly not from my mother. So anyway,
(16:31):
he met this 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.
(16:55):
Very important point, he thought, the cash flow getting that back,
And again, what do we do in the black 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
(17:17):
a bunch of cash, a bunch of bills in our pocket,
then that means something. It might mean you're going to
go broke when out of that money disappears, and it
will disappear because if your outflow sees 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,
(17:38):
the broker we got. And I say we because as
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
buy a new car from Detroit every couple of years,
because that's how you profile back then, your success. Because
(18:00):
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
wouldn't sell it to you you're a black man. My
dad went full floss. He would drive the car to
(18:20):
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 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,
(18:44):
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 Maral Hoskins,
two brilliant, amazing people and who were from a former
marriage my mother had. And my mother was all about
(19:07):
her kids. And my mother grew up in a shotgun shack,
and he'st 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 it up from nothing.
And so dad says, yes, happy to do that. I
wanted to do that. So they packed up everything in
my dad's car, including the two kids I was not
(19:28):
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. 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,
(19:50):
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 to a college
of his choice, and four thousand dollars in nineteen sixty
(20:11):
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 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
(20:32):
under a mattress and wherever 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 be different if
my mother put the money into a bank account, but
black you don't trust banks because of the history of
the Freeman's Bank and all the other stuff, which I understand,
(20:53):
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
and dad. Mom and dad probably had a joint account,
I'm not sure, but she surely should have had a
separate account for this money in her own name. He
found the money, he wasted it on some hair brain thing,
(21:14):
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 semen contracting. The
rest of the stuff he was speculating on was not
so great because my dad game was financially illiterate, I
found out later. So he wasted the money and Mom
(21:35):
had had it. Mom was like, Okay, I'm done. You
can mess over me, can messle 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. If you're
doing this to my oldest kid, then the rest of
my kids, I'm just asking for pay. So at this
(21:57):
point we owned keep in mind, this is nineteen seventy.
We own our own home Semen on Santa Barbara Boulevard
now called Martin the King Boulevard. We owned a gas station.
(22:17):
The home we owned was at twenty fourteen West Santa
Barbara Avenue in Los Angeles, now Martin the King Boulevard.
We owned a eight ent apartment building, the gas station,
nursery business, seman contracting business, which was cash flow. So
nursery business and the contract contracting business were cash flow businesses. Right.
The single family home was an asset that appreciated. The
(22:41):
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 of doing handicrafts that came later,
But just that alone would have made us mot millionaires
and the whole family would have had generational wealth. Mom
(23:05):
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 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
(23:26):
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. Number one calls for heart attacks. Stress.
Number one calls for stress. Money. Hello, if your day's
(23:49):
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 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,
(24:11):
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 it in
for everything he had. Anybody 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
(24:31):
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. And she had enough
confidence in herself, so she left with nothing. And it
just dawned on me recently that this was how much
(24:53):
courage she had, because she could have again, she could
have left the house, left and kept the house and
everything else, and he had to go get an apartment
or live with friends. She left with the kids lived
to go stay. So now he's got all these assets.
Now she goes to stay with her girlfriend. And you
can listen to the you know again, check out the
(25:15):
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 while my
mother what was her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend who
(25:38):
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
they 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 in a pension.
(25:59):
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 in this podcast.
(26:20):
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 her first home
one five five oh too South Freyley in Compton, California,
(26:45):
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 couldn't I go to college of his choice, he
ended up happy to go into the Navy to get
his education. He wanted a four year education. So the
Navy said, fine, we'll give you an education, but you're
(27:06):
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 in the Navy
and you get that environment in your bloodstream, they know
that there is at least a fifty percent chance, if
not better, you're going to stay well. My brother stayed.
My brother stayed four years, eight years, ten years, twenty years.
(27:29):
He retired as a commissioned officer in the Navy as
an intelligence officer. Very proud of him. Dot He's David
Downare Harris. He married, moved to Hawaii, married a wayan
Apwayian kids. You started to get the memo all this
changed his life. There's little four thousand dollars decision my
dad made change his entire the trajectory of his entire life.
(27:51):
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. It's
the love of money. What you need to do is
understand how to use it before it uses you. So
(28:13):
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 of the contracts with companies that will
do business with the navy. So he's a real expert
at what he does. But how his life had been
different 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
(28:36):
the life of my sister's 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.
So so far in the story, you like, well, John,
I understand like your dad's winning in fact, your dad won?
(28:59):
What what's how do you make some sense out of this?
My dad was, you know, charismatic and driven, proud black businessman.
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
(29:23):
mother was a mathematical genius. Right. My mother wanted the
Smith worked an hourly job for thirty two years, never flashy,
focused on stability, had excellent credit, paid her bills on time,
invested quietly and consistently. Ultimately walked away when money became
(29:44):
a point of contention from the marriage. They owned real assets,
but were they lacked together? Was they shared philosophy about money? Right?
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,
(30:07):
So it has to be more than I like this person. Okay,
So so now, uh, let's fast forward in my dad's life.
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
(30:28):
goes to the bank brands. They call him by you know,
his first name, Hello Johnny, and mister mister Smith or whatever.
He's balling. He's got 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
(30:50):
if it happened yesterday. So fast forward now, mind you.
My mother's just now working a job. You got his
mother's house, uh in confidence. He's working this job. And
she's got 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
(31:11):
you do nothing but save two hundred dollars a month
into the stock market, and the stock 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.
(31:31):
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. 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
(31:53):
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 in the year,
it's about forty years. But just just put it on
a pay right and you'll be a millionaire. Okay, now,
(32:17):
not 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 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
(32:38):
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 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, saying with whatever her
(33:00):
name was, she was ugly, unattracted physically and unattractive spiritually.
I remember meeting her and she didn't treat my father
very well, but he was like a It 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
(33:22):
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 uh to do what I'm about to tell you.
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.
(33:46):
I remember I had my first for my first success
in business. I bought the property, the home from the
lady and one hundred thousand dollars whatever it was. By
the way, you can't find anything in Los Angeles for
one hundred thousand dollars to day, So that's why I said,
people just buy the property. You'll never think it's the
(34:08):
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
I thought R four. It was R three, which is residential,
which I mean 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
(34:30):
with an account with an architect first, but I did
not check the zoning. My father told me it was
a C four, it was an R four. I just
trusted them. I 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
(34:51):
them told me that it was not zoned R four.
It was zoned R three. Fine. That means I could
put three 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
(35:13):
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 make this loan a construction loan,
and Tom Swanson. I 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
(35:36):
just said no. He's not a general contractor. And the
reason he wasn't broken in the first place was he
couldn't manage his money. Fine. Emotional I've 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 already giving him place
to live, already bought the place, and not like I'm
(35:57):
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 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 going to do?
(36:18):
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,
Tom Swanson ed Wills Fargo since retired. I went back
to him, told him the truth, told him exactly what happened. Luckily,
(36:40):
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 contruction loan.
We're going to refinance the construction loan for you. Allow
you to take out the money to now finish his
three unit apartment building. But now you've got to get
a proper contractor we're going to have project ensured project
construction insurance on this project. As you get weak, need
(37:01):
and trust your father again. And I learned so many lessons.
I finished the project just barely. And it's worth that
that that three d of building is worth seven figures
today without question. So anyway, and my dad lived in
dignity there until the day passed on broke. My dad died.
(37:22):
God bless us, so God rest is so financially broke
lost everything. We lost the gas station, lost the single
family residential home. If you're in La Drive by Western
and Vernon, I believe those are the new Rodale world.
(37:42):
I think I 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 it more was it seeming contracting business. And even
(38:03):
lost the trucks 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 and
didn't take good care of himself and wouldn't listen to
me when I tried to. It was a whole other story.
But I loved him and I was gonna do everything
I could to let him live in dignity. And I'm
(38:24):
proud that I did that. And when I think Rachel
died my chief of staff for being an honorary sister
to my to my unorary 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
(38:48):
dad lost it all, every asset gone. My mother worked
that job, took that extra money, and 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 pays the living expenses. You live
on one paycheck, please hear me. The other person earns
(39:10):
an income and invests it. Now that this is at
the forty minute mark of this podcast, you you don't
get to pick up anything else. Tell your friends to
go to the forty minute mark or whatever around thirty
eight or forty minute mark, and mark this place and
follow what I said. One person. Usually you have two
parent two income houses. One person makes the money and
you live off that all your living expenses under this
(39:32):
one person. The other person take this money and invested
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 the hint,
get the memo. It's the magic of compounding in the marketplace.
So my dad, Johnny Smith, had assets, but no structure
(39:55):
in his life. He's cash rich at times, but as
had pour in the end, no diversification, no succession plan,
no long term investment strategy. My mother hustled differently, hustled smartly,
(40:17):
use credit as leveraged, not 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 my
mother understood delayed gratification, believe in consistency over charisma, invest, reinvest,
(40:42):
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 ale by yourself. She made a choice.
(41:04):
So my mother ended up buying and selling seven homes
to drop the mic 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
Sir James Buchanan for helping her in the later years
of her life. He works for me, became a friend
(41:26):
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 wheels. I didn't I didn't
want to fight come in my way. But everybody got
(41:47):
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
she paid cash for it. My mother ultimately converted the
life insurance policy and the stock I believe to cash
(42:11):
she bought in the folk. She helped her kids to
buy houses, put their down payment in their homes, but
bought 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, through
(42:31):
her employer, but she did most 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 in her life, when
she wasn't working, wasn't wasn't cutting deals, her credit score
(42:51):
went down to the high seven to the low seven hundreds.
But it's because she wasn't she wasn't using credit at
that time. But I'm just giving you 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 build wealth. That is the situation for most people
(43:14):
in this country. My mom's formula was good credit, 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 a female or whatever. If it's below one hundred
thousand dollars or whatever, the computer just says yes, because
my mother is not black or white, she's green. Right.
(43:36):
Good credit, she had automatic savings. She looked automatic savings
as a long term gain. She had a modest lifestyle.
She lived under her means. She knew that equal freedom.
This is what millions of Americas that do as a
business model. Imagine now, if Johnny will smith, I w we
(44:01):
need to smith. My mom and dad combine their strengths.
Imagine I mean that hustle they had, that network they 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
(44:21):
these things. Rainbow's after a storm. She cannot have a
rainbow out a storm. First, I'd been a very different
person 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,
(44:43):
but she wasn't personally fulfilled from a love perspective. She
wanted to be loved. She gave. She told me she
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
(45:04):
be poor again. That's came from my mother. But by
my mother told me she loved me every day in
my life. 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.
(45:27):
And that I think was the one sadness in her life.
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,
(45:51):
sorry about that. What was my What can the modern
entrepreneur learn 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
(46:11):
personal credit rating. Separate hustle from household. Plan with your
spouse or partner. Avoid silent wars over money again, 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, when
(46:32):
it comes up what doesn't come up when it needs
to come up. Right, 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, as as cheap,
(46:54):
use a proper accounting firm. Pay your taxes. My taxman
was always after my dad way. He was in a
cash business. 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 he was making money during the day,
the week, and when he's and then and then it
(47:17):
was it was appreciating because it's real estate and it's
a business. Actually three 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 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
(47:40):
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 an easy street. But
he didn't. So again, build your credit profile, formalize your operations.
Build your credit profile while invest in something that pays
(48:01):
you back over time for hourly workers. Max out your
retirement plans. 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, match
it immediately, you know. If you don't, if you need
it later, you always pull it out right. Protect your
(48:24):
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.
And of course you know me, I'm going to say
you should invest in real estate, buy home whatever you can.
(48:46):
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 great for that. My mom gave me a
sense of yes I am. My dad gave me a
sense of yes I can. But in the end, it
(49:07):
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,
and you want them to work smarter. The definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
(49:29):
and expecting a different outcome. Tell them to go to
the Hope Credit Score Index, the Hope Operation Hope set
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, you're gonna
(49:51):
you're gonna, you're gonna 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
and were met every credit score in American by zip
code and operation hope and thank you Experience for giving
us the data in the US Census. For every increase
(50:11):
in credit score of fifty points, you pick up five
more years of life. Yes, that's what I said. I
said it, which, Yes, I hope you didn't rull off
the road when I said that. If you have a
seven hundred credit score, you lived on average eighty one
years of age, you lived to have a state a
fire under 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
(50:35):
in wellness, in well being, you lived twenty year longer
life with us with a two hundred different two hundred
point gap in your credit score. It's not about the
credit score. It's about hope, well being, faith, confidence, belief, optimism, mindset.
It's about how your it'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,
(50:58):
So you got to get your mind right, because I
can give again. 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. 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
(51:18):
people win the lottery bankrupt in five years, broke. Most
NBA and NFL players bankrupt within five years of retirement
and divorced. Because again, you got the money, but you
didn't get the education. You can 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
(51:39):
John Brian sent you. They'll offer you a one thousand
dollars Hope financial scholarship for coaching and counseling. And get
your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up.
Reading 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
(52:00):
make forty eight to fifty thousand dollars a year. In
this example, we just made you banka them. We're the
only nonprofit allowed 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 employe, you have a good
credit score, your debt intrarationis are in place. The bank
wants to make a good loan. The if they don't
make a good loan, they can't they can't pay their bills.
(52:20):
So they need the money to be working. They don't
want to give to people they think are going to
default on the debt. Right, So I need you 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'Bryant.
(52:41):
This is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network
on iHeartRadio This has been a special episode 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 and which one wins.
(53:03):
There you go, this is something everybody can do. This
is John O'Brien is the silver rights movement, from civil
rights to civil rights, from civil rights in the streets
to silver rights in the sweets. I'm Out Money and
(53:29):
Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black
Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect
Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. The
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John Hobriyant and this is Money and Wealth
Podcast Series Season two. Honored to be with you and
(00:22):
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
(00:43):
the top I believe five percent of all podcasts in
the world. Will thank you very much to 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?
(01:06):
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
(01:27):
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. All at all as a young person, at
(01:48):
least now 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 of the front door
of for 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, I'm sorry
(02:10):
Santa Barbara Boulevard which was now Martin 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 a at that time,
but before that, when they were my mom and dad
were together, they owned a cement contributing business. That was
(02:31):
his cash flow business. 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
(02:54):
thousand dollars. You 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
(03:16):
north of six 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,
(03:41):
migrated to Los Angeles. 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 Wuanita Smith were for a minute,
literally the American dream. My mother, Jannita Smith, was an
(04:04):
hourly worker. 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
(04:25):
that you wore, robes, kitchen covers for cooking, playful aprons
that I can't explain in public now because it was
(04:45):
pretty embarrassing. And I'll just say you I was a
model and my mother used to put the female parts
in the male parts. 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
(05:07):
lift up, you know, lift up the private parts to
make everybody laugh and hopefully they buy something. I could
probably assume my mother for looking back, sue my mom
and my dad for child abuse or something. But at
the time when you thought it was cute, actually no idea.
I was embarrassed back then too, now I recalled. But
my mother was an industrious she was. That was her
(05:29):
side house with though her primary business. Her primary business
was a paycheck and she worked at McDonald's Aircraft, which
later was so de Boeing Aircraft. But she had this
side hustle, which I'll get to in the 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
(05:51):
don't have somebody to give you something right, then you've
got to find And if life is about compounding, right,
you make money during the day, you build wealth and
you'll sleep okay. And if you don't have compounded cash,
compounded financial capital because daddy mummy did well and handed
(06:13):
it to you, which are a lot of mainstream families
have that legacy. Black families typically black and brown families
typically do not. Okay, 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
(06:34):
it all out of one pocket. Can I get an
a man, Everybody listening, this can relate to this. You're
trying to pay it back, spend it, finance the now,
and pay it 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
(06:58):
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. So I commend you. And so
compounding education, compounding hustle, hustle on hustle creates more hustle.
(07:20):
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 lazy bastard. Yeah, I said, the
devil's lazy. The devil's a fall of angel, right, So
even God gives permission, the devil permission to exist. He
(07:43):
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 lazy. Yeah, they just don't
want to do the work. They want somebody to do
it for them. So if you do the work. To
(08:06):
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, you
can't fail. I would say it differently and say, you
just have to take note for vitamins that success is
(08:29):
going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm, old
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,
So let's check that box as a success feature. I
wrote in my book I think it was. It was
(08:53):
the memo or Up from Nothing about the five pillars
of SSS, and I talk about as much education as
you can shove down your throat, understanding, financial literacy, family
structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models, an environment.
(09:20):
If you have these five things, even with racism, bias, discrimination,
an unpleasant political environment, unsupportive environment period in the world,
maybe even a repressive environment leaning down on your world,
you'll still succeed. If you need to write those five
(09:41):
things down, replay this, take the podcast back thirty seconds,
replay it again, write it down on your iPhone or
your Android wherever you keep your notes. These five things.
If you have these five things and you have this
resiliency factor, I said, what did Tony say, if you
don't quit, you can't fail. I told you. John Brian says,
(10:01):
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 you're going to go from surviving mode to thriving mode,
and maybe the building mode, but you'll at least go
from surviving mode to thriving mode. You don't want to
(10:22):
be in surviving mode. If you have less than these
three things, any three of these things, you're in trouble again.
As much as education, you shut down your throat, family
structure and resiliency, well, financial literacy, self well, family education, right,
financial literacy, family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence,
(10:45):
role models, 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 of this in social media, which of the five
things did my family my mother and my father mess up,
(11:05):
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 plus compounding hustle. The result.
(11:32):
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 the long game. So let's
now get into this. Who do you bet on the
(11:56):
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, but my mother built the wealth. Interesting,
(12:17):
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. My dad
Johnny Smith. His father, RB Smith, was a sharecropper. My
(12:43):
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 proclamations. Maybe or I got
my social justice bones from I served in Memphis, Tennessee
for the Union calls. Fought for justice and freedom for
(13:03):
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.
I didn't know my dad was financially literate. I just
(13:24):
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 seement contracting business, he
did it with his own hands. He would go to
a job, he would guestimate the cost of that job,
(13:49):
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 as
one of the And 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, the boss man. They called him the employer,
(14:12):
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 on a piece
of paper a notebook he had what the job was
(14:32):
to make this 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
(14:55):
not knowing what the heart costs were, but wanting the job.
Around all these jobs, I sit in the passenger receipt
of this 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 high
in the south central Los Angeles. As I went to
sleep trying to get through the twenty job estimates he
(15:16):
went through and it was really beautiful that he made
me hang with him because my daddy was not a
baby daddy, he was a father. So on a 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
(15:38):
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 reasons, eric and pride
(16:00):
and greed. My dad was not arrogant, not in a
traditional sense. He was not greedy at all, but he
was full of pride, and that pride might have brought
it on a slight bit of arrogance because he wouldn't listen,
he wouldn't take advice, certainly not from my mother. So anyway,
(16:31):
he met this 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.
(16:55):
Very important point, he thought, the cash flow getting that back,
And again, what do we do in the black 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
(17:17):
a bunch of cash, a bunch of bills in our pocket,
then that means something. It might mean you're going to
go broke when out of that money disappears, and it
will disappear because if your outflow sees 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,
(17:38):
the broker we got. And I say we because as
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
buy a new car from Detroit every couple of years,
because that's how you profile back then, your success. Because
(18:00):
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
wouldn't sell it to you you're a black man. My
dad went full floss. He would drive the car to
(18:20):
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 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,
(18:44):
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 Maral Hoskins,
two brilliant, amazing people and who were from a former
marriage my mother had. And my mother was all about
(19:07):
her kids. And my mother grew up in a shotgun shack,
and he'st 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 it up from nothing.
And so dad says, yes, happy to do that. I
wanted to do that. So they packed up everything in
my dad's car, including the two kids I was not
(19:28):
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. 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,
(19:50):
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 to a college
of his choice, and four thousand dollars in nineteen sixty
(20:11):
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 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
(20:32):
under a mattress and wherever 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 be different if
my mother put the money into a bank account, but
black you don't trust banks because of the history of
the Freeman's Bank and all the other stuff, which I understand,
(20:53):
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
and dad. Mom and dad probably had a joint account,
I'm not sure, but she surely should have had a
separate account for this money in her own name. He
found the money, he wasted it on some hair brain thing,
(21:14):
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 semen contracting. The
rest of the stuff he was speculating on was not
so great because my dad game was financially illiterate, I
found out later. So he wasted the money and Mom
(21:35):
had had it. Mom was like, Okay, I'm done. You
can mess over me, can messle 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. If you're
doing this to my oldest kid, then the rest of
my kids, I'm just asking for pay. So at this
(21:57):
point we owned keep in mind, this is nineteen seventy.
We own our own home Semen on Santa Barbara Boulevard
now called Martin the King Boulevard. We owned a gas station.
(22:17):
The home we owned was at twenty fourteen West Santa
Barbara Avenue in Los Angeles, now Martin the King Boulevard.
We owned a eight ent apartment building, the gas station,
nursery business, seman contracting business, which was cash flow. So
nursery business and the contract contracting business were cash flow businesses. Right.
The single family home was an asset that appreciated. The
(22:41):
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 of doing handicrafts that came later,
But just that alone would have made us mot millionaires
and the whole family would have had generational wealth. Mom
(23:05):
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 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
(23:26):
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. Number one calls for heart attacks. Stress.
Number one calls for stress. Money. Hello, if your day's
(23:49):
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 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,
(24:11):
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 it in
for everything he had. Anybody 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
(24:31):
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. And she had enough
confidence in herself, so she left with nothing. And it
just dawned on me recently that this was how much
(24:53):
courage she had, because she could have again, she could
have left the house, left and kept the house and
everything else, and he had to go get an apartment
or live with friends. She left with the kids lived
to go stay. So now he's got all these assets.
Now she goes to stay with her girlfriend. And you
can listen to the you know again, check out the
(25:15):
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 while my
mother what was her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend who
(25:38):
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
they 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 in a pension.
(25:59):
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 in this podcast.
(26:20):
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 her first home
one five five oh too South Freyley in Compton, California,
(26:45):
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 couldn't I go to college of his choice, he
ended up happy to go into the Navy to get
his education. He wanted a four year education. So the
Navy said, fine, we'll give you an education, but you're
(27:06):
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 in the Navy
and you get that environment in your bloodstream, they know
that there is at least a fifty percent chance, if
not better, you're going to stay well. My brother stayed.
My brother stayed four years, eight years, ten years, twenty years.
(27:29):
He retired as a commissioned officer in the Navy as
an intelligence officer. Very proud of him. Dot He's David
Downare Harris. He married, moved to Hawaii, married a wayan
Apwayian kids. You started to get the memo all this
changed his life. There's little four thousand dollars decision my
dad made change his entire the trajectory of his entire life.
(27:51):
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. It's
the love of money. What you need to do is
understand how to use it before it uses you. So
(28:13):
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 of the contracts with companies that will
do business with the navy. So he's a real expert
at what he does. But how his life had been
different 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
(28:36):
the life of my sister's 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.
So so far in the story, you like, well, John,
I understand like your dad's winning in fact, your dad won?
(28:59):
What what's how do you make some sense out of this?
My dad was, you know, charismatic and driven, proud black businessman.
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
(29:23):
mother was a mathematical genius. Right. My mother wanted the
Smith worked an hourly job for thirty two years, never flashy,
focused on stability, had excellent credit, paid her bills on time,
invested quietly and consistently. Ultimately walked away when money became
(29:44):
a point of contention from the marriage. They owned real assets,
but were they lacked together? Was they shared philosophy about money? Right?
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,
(30:07):
So it has to be more than I like this person. Okay,
So so now, uh, let's fast forward in my dad's life.
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
(30:28):
goes to the bank brands. They call him by you know,
his first name, Hello Johnny, and mister mister Smith or whatever.
He's balling. He's got 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
(30:50):
if it happened yesterday. So fast forward now, mind you.
My mother's just now working a job. You got his
mother's house, uh in confidence. He's working this job. And
she's got 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
(31:11):
you do nothing but save two hundred dollars a month
into the stock market, and the stock 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.
(31:31):
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. 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
(31:53):
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 in the year,
it's about forty years. But just just put it on
a pay right and you'll be a millionaire. Okay, now,
(32:17):
not 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 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
(32:38):
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 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, saying with whatever her
(33:00):
name was, she was ugly, unattracted physically and unattractive spiritually.
I remember meeting her and she didn't treat my father
very well, but he was like a It 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
(33:22):
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 uh to do what I'm about to tell you.
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.
(33:46):
I remember I had my first for my first success
in business. I bought the property, the home from the
lady and one hundred thousand dollars whatever it was. By
the way, you can't find anything in Los Angeles for
one hundred thousand dollars to day, So that's why I said,
people just buy the property. You'll never think it's the
(34:08):
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
I thought R four. It was R three, which is residential,
which I mean 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
(34:30):
with an account with an architect first, but I did
not check the zoning. My father told me it was
a C four, it was an R four. I just
trusted them. I 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
(34:51):
them told me that it was not zoned R four.
It was zoned R three. Fine. That means I could
put three 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
(35:13):
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 make this loan a construction loan,
and Tom Swanson. I 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
(35:36):
just said no. He's not a general contractor. And the
reason he wasn't broken in the first place was he
couldn't manage his money. Fine. Emotional I've 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 already giving him place
to live, already bought the place, and not like I'm
(35:57):
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 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 going to do?
(36:18):
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,
Tom Swanson ed Wills Fargo since retired. I went back
to him, told him the truth, told him exactly what happened. Luckily,
(36:40):
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 contruction loan.
We're going to refinance the construction loan for you. Allow
you to take out the money to now finish his
three unit apartment building. But now you've got to get
a proper contractor we're going to have project ensured project
construction insurance on this project. As you get weak, need
(37:01):
and trust your father again. And I learned so many lessons.
I finished the project just barely. And it's worth that
that that three d of building is worth seven figures
today without question. So anyway, and my dad lived in
dignity there until the day passed on broke. My dad died.
(37:22):
God bless us, so God rest is so financially broke
lost everything. We lost the gas station, lost the single
family residential home. If you're in La Drive by Western
and Vernon, I believe those are the new Rodale world.
(37:42):
I think I 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 it more was it seeming contracting business. And even
(38:03):
lost the trucks 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 and
didn't take good care of himself and wouldn't listen to
me when I tried to. It was a whole other story.
But I loved him and I was gonna do everything
I could to let him live in dignity. And I'm
(38:24):
proud that I did that. And when I think Rachel
died my chief of staff for being an honorary sister
to my to my unorary 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
(38:48):
dad lost it all, every asset gone. My mother worked
that job, took that extra money, and 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 pays the living expenses. You live
on one paycheck, please hear me. The other person earns
(39:10):
an income and invests it. Now that this is at
the forty minute mark of this podcast, you you don't
get to pick up anything else. Tell your friends to
go to the forty minute mark or whatever around thirty
eight or forty minute mark, and mark this place and
follow what I said. One person. Usually you have two
parent two income houses. One person makes the money and
you live off that all your living expenses under this
(39:32):
one person. The other person take this money and invested
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 the hint,
get the memo. It's the magic of compounding in the marketplace.
So my dad, Johnny Smith, had assets, but no structure
(39:55):
in his life. He's cash rich at times, but as
had pour in the end, no diversification, no succession plan,
no long term investment strategy. My mother hustled differently, hustled smartly,
(40:17):
use credit as leveraged, not 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 my
mother understood delayed gratification, believe in consistency over charisma, invest, reinvest,
(40:42):
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 ale by yourself. She made a choice.
(41:04):
So my mother ended up buying and selling seven homes
to drop the mic 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
Sir James Buchanan for helping her in the later years
of her life. He works for me, became a friend
(41:26):
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 wheels. I didn't I didn't
want to fight come in my way. But everybody got
(41:47):
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
she paid cash for it. My mother ultimately converted the
life insurance policy and the stock I believe to cash
(42:11):
she bought in the folk. She helped her kids to
buy houses, put their down payment in their homes, but
bought 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, through
(42:31):
her employer, but she did most 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 in her life, when
she wasn't working, wasn't wasn't cutting deals, her credit score
(42:51):
went down to the high seven to the low seven hundreds.
But it's because she wasn't she wasn't using credit at
that time. But I'm just giving you 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 build wealth. That is the situation for most people
(43:14):
in this country. My mom's formula was good credit, 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 a female or whatever. If it's below one hundred
thousand dollars or whatever, the computer just says yes, because
my mother is not black or white, she's green. Right.
(43:36):
Good credit, she had automatic savings. She looked automatic savings
as a long term gain. She had a modest lifestyle.
She lived under her means. She knew that equal freedom.
This is what millions of Americas that do as a
business model. Imagine now, if Johnny will smith, I w we
(44:01):
need to smith. My mom and dad combine their strengths.
Imagine I mean that hustle they had, that network they 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
(44:21):
these things. Rainbow's after a storm. She cannot have a
rainbow out a storm. First, I'd been a very different
person 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,
(44:43):
but she wasn't personally fulfilled from a love perspective. She
wanted to be loved. She gave. She told me she
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
(45:04):
be poor again. That's came from my mother. But by
my mother told me she loved me every day in
my life. 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.
(45:27):
And that I think was the one sadness in her life.
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,
(45:51):
sorry about that. What was my What can the modern
entrepreneur learn 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
(46:11):
personal credit rating. Separate hustle from household. Plan with your
spouse or partner. Avoid silent wars over money again, 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, when
(46:32):
it comes up what doesn't come up when it needs
to come up. Right, 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, as as cheap,
(46:54):
use a proper accounting firm. Pay your taxes. My taxman
was always after my dad way. He was in a
cash business. 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 he was making money during the day,
the week, and when he's and then and then it
(47:17):
was it was appreciating because it's real estate and it's
a business. Actually three 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 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
(47:40):
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 an easy street. But
he didn't. So again, build your credit profile, formalize your operations.
Build your credit profile while invest in something that pays
(48:01):
you back over time for hourly workers. Max out your
retirement plans. 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, match
it immediately, you know. If you don't, if you need
it later, you always pull it out right. Protect your
(48:24):
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.
And of course you know me, I'm going to say
you should invest in real estate, buy home whatever you can.
(48:46):
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 great for that. My mom gave me a
sense of yes I am. My dad gave me a
sense of yes I can. But in the end, it
(49:07):
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,
and you want them to work smarter. The definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
(49:29):
and expecting a different outcome. Tell them to go to
the Hope Credit Score Index, the Hope Operation Hope set
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, you're gonna
(49:51):
you're gonna, you're gonna 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
and were met every credit score in American by zip
code and operation hope and thank you Experience for giving
us the data in the US Census. For every increase
(50:11):
in credit score of fifty points, you pick up five
more years of life. Yes, that's what I said. I
said it, which, Yes, I hope you didn't rull off
the road when I said that. If you have a
seven hundred credit score, you lived on average eighty one
years of age, you lived to have a state a
fire under 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
(50:35):
in wellness, in well being, you lived twenty year longer
life with us with a two hundred different two hundred
point gap in your credit score. It's not about the
credit score. It's about hope, well being, faith, confidence, belief, optimism, mindset.
It's about how your it'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,
(50:58):
So you got to get your mind right, because I
can give again. 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. 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
(51:18):
people win the lottery bankrupt in five years, broke. Most
NBA and NFL players bankrupt within five years of retirement
and divorced. Because again, you got the money, but you
didn't get the education. You can 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
(51:39):
John Brian sent you. They'll offer you a one thousand
dollars Hope financial scholarship for coaching and counseling. And get
your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up.
Reading 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
(52:00):
make forty eight to fifty thousand dollars a year. In
this example, we just made you banka them. We're the
only nonprofit allowed 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 employe, you have a good
credit score, your debt intrarationis are in place. The bank
wants to make a good loan. The if they don't
make a good loan, they can't they can't pay their bills.
(52:20):
So they need the money to be working. They don't
want to give to people they think are going to
default on the debt. Right, So I need you 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'Bryant.
(52:41):
This is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network
on iHeartRadio This has been a special episode 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 and which one wins.
(53:03):
There you go, this is something everybody can do. This
is John O'Brien is the silver rights movement, from civil
rights to civil rights, from civil rights in the streets
to silver rights in the sweets. I'm Out Money and
(53:29):
Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black
Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect
Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. The
Host
John Hope Bryant
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