Mellody Hobson's Money Advice & Rules To Financial Freedom | NXT Chapter with T.D. Jakes

Mellody Hobson, one of the most influential business leaders in the world, sits down with Bishop T.D. Jakes for a powerful conversation about money, trauma, identity, leadership, and the calling behind her work. As the President and Co-CEO of Ariel Investments and Chair of Starbucks, Mellody has advised CEOs, shaped boardrooms, and partnered with cultural icons from Oprah Winfrey to her husband, filmmaker George Lucas.

In this intimate episode, Mellody opens up about growing up in poverty — living with clothes packed in garbage bags and moving constantly — and how those early struggles shaped her extraordinary rise. She reflects on how pain, when unwrapped, always brings a gift, and how tragedy creates the canvas for triumph. Her story is one of grit, faith, and relentless purpose.

Mellody and Bishop Jakes dive into generational wealth, financial literacy, and the emotional journeys behind money — discussing figures from Warren Buffett to Jamie Dimon and the leaders who shaped her worldview. She shares what she learned working alongside global icons like Oprah, appearing on Super Soul Sunday, being named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and partnering with industry giants across finance and entertainment.

She also speaks candidly about motherhood, her daughter Everest, and the legacy she hopes to leave: peace, grounded identity, and a responsibility to make the world better. Her reflections on leadership, representation, corporate culture, and trusting oneself offer rare insight into what it means to rise to the highest levels of business without losing your humanity.

This conversation is emotional, honest, spiritually grounded, and filled with wisdom for anyone navigating purpose, money, trauma, or personal transformation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So my mother always said, I love this one. She's
like Melody, Money talks and wealth whispers.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey everybody, I'm TD Jason. I want to welcome you
to the Next Chapter podcast, And boy is this seduci.
I have a guest. If you don't know, you need
to know. Her name is Melody Opson and she is
in a class all by herself. She is the co
CEO and president of Aerial Investments. She's a passionate advocate

(00:34):
for financial literacy, diversity, and opportunity. In this episode, we
talk about how she manages her demanding schedule with grace,
how to ask for help the right way, and why
sticking together as a community matters more now than ever before.
We dive into her perspective on today's stock market and

(00:56):
the quiet power of not flaunting your finance, but letting
your purpose speak for itself. Now that the houses chapter one.
Managing schedule, I don't know where to begin. I gotta

(01:19):
start by telling to myself. So I called you and
had my office set up with your office a zoom
to ask you personally, because I figured it might be
a little bit harder than say no if we were
looking out of eye and you said yes so quick
that I was speechless. And I have to tell you

(01:40):
she did. She didn't give me no red tape, she
didn't send me to no fake numbers, she didn't give
me any fake news. And here I am. After I
hung up from the zoom, I'm spinning around in my chairs,
thanking God that you said. Yes. That's how bad I
wanted you in this room with us.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Him.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I keep telling him the same thing, which is, I
am a huge fan. So when you get a call
from TD Jakes, you were equally excited. And I wanted
to be here. And I told him my mother is
no longer here. She'd be beside herself.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
She doesn't care.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
She didn't care about Fortune or Forbes or anything. TD Jakes,
Jet Magazine.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Those were the things that I had made it.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I was on the cover of Time magazine, and my
mother thought that was cute. When I got on the
cover of Ebony, she said, child, you have a rat. Yes,
you have a rash.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
That's a big deal.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
That was a big deal and it still is. There's
so much I want to get out of this. I
want to jump right into it. There's so many amazing
things about you. Born and raced at Chicago, yet Chicago
makes some noise. One of six children, single mother, odds

(03:08):
against you. Least likely the world would say to succeed
and end up in the places that you are. Juxtapose
that against This woman has done so much that my
cars feel like I'm holding a Bible. I'm looking at
the Book of Ezekiel. She is currently the CEO of

(03:31):
ARA Investments, which oversees firm wide management, strategic planning, and growth.
Major chairs of the boards of Aerial Investment nearly twenty
years as president of ARIEL grew up through the ranks,
founded Project Levels in twenty twenty five, co founded Area Alternatives,

(03:52):
boarder directors for JP Morgan Chase, former chair of Starbucks Corporation.
Previously served on the board of Esta, Larder Companies and
dream Works Animations. She's done everything, I mean absolutely everything
in the world. The list goes on Lucas Lucas Museum

(04:14):
and she's a co chair chairman, after School, matters, on
and on and on, and I just you know, is
that the real you sitting there? Or do you? How
do you? How do you manage the multiplicity of demands
that are placed? Each one of these is is a

(04:36):
it's a weight, a responsibility, a worry. It's not like
you're over all of this stuff and it goes right.
All hell breaks loose in every one of these and
you're getting the calls and handling the decisions, and how
do you maintain your sanity and sense of self and

(04:59):
still have con troll in place.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Well, I think that's a very appropriate question today and
this week and over the last week, because my life
revolves around the stock market, right, And there's something about
I think I was sent to you today to help me.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah, because these.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Times are very challenging, they're very hard, and the way
that you get through them is you think long term.
You have to tune out the noise, and you have
to be very very focused. And I've always been that
in each of the jobs that I have. I've always
tried to think long term and I've always tried to
stay very focused. But I will be the first to

(05:38):
tell you it does not always go well. People see
the highlight reel, but they don't see the day to
day where you're struggling, or you're questioning yourself, or you
are having to push extremely hard. I have willed a
lot of things to happen in my life, sometimes out
of desperation, you know. But I've also I think that

(06:02):
I have used all of those moments of truth to
build up the resilience that makes me better every time
I must confront something. But I also draw on the
strength of people. I have friends in my head that
I admire that helped me get through difficult times. I
think about you, I think about Oprah, I think about

(06:24):
Tyler Perry, my friend Lewis Hamilton. I can go through
a list of people who are loom very large for me,
that can be north stars in difficult times. And you
think Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, they've gone through hard things.
And my sister just last week, she was talking to
me because the market has been so tough, and she says, Melody,
you do heart things, Yes you do. She said, you

(06:47):
do hard things, and I do, and so you Those
kind of reinforcements and that kind of feedback helps me
to persevere and keep going. But I'm organized, and I
have really great people who work around me, not for me,
with me.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
I want partners, not employees, right.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
I think work ethic is important and organization is important
in order to run anything. And it starts in your house,
in your closet, in your personal life, and the most
simplest things that work ethic and that management ability is
practice at home. One of the great things about the Bible.

(07:31):
Almost every great leader in the Bible, God let them practice,
whether they're on the backside of the desert, you know,
practicing before you go before Favah. And if you everythink
that you're going to be before Favah, which you are
definitely before Favah and all of his friends, you get

(07:52):
to practic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is because you got
to go. But I mean you get to practice organization.
Something that hits you like lightning. Management isn't something that
hits you enlightening. I think God gives you trouble to
train you. What are some of the troubles that trained you?

Speaker 3 (08:13):
I was trained early.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
My husband says to me that, yes, I'm married Yoda's dad.
That's what I tell people. George's genius and wise, and
I also tell him he's also a version of a
crazy uncle.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
I have both of those.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
But the genius is genius. I mean really, there are
times he speaks to me and there's so much wisdom.
I'm grateful for just the opportunity to sit and hear him.
But he talks about the fact that when you're a child,
what happens to you really sticks with you. Because there's
a child, you don't have any advanced reasoning skills. You

(08:53):
also can't change your circumstance. Generally, you're at the effect
of what happens to you. So I think my formative
years as a child, I think that they set me
up for my entire life. And what I told Oprah
recently is that my trauma became my purfose. My trauma
was growing up as the youngest of six kids a
single mom. My mom was great, she was really special

(09:17):
and wonderful, but she also I had a mom who
I think sometimes believed in God in such a way
that she would trust things would work out and therefore
make decisions that weren't always great.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
And so I told people.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
She would buy Eastern dresses instead of paying a light beil,
so we wouldn't have lights, or we would get evicted,
or our phone would disconnect it, our cars would be repossessed,
And so that put me in a sense of great
anxiety as a child, because sometimes I didn't know where
we were going to live. I didn't know how things
were going to work out for us or not. Sometimes

(09:54):
we lived in abandoned buildings, and the only thing that
I could focus on that I could control in my
whole life myself was myself at school. So I became
very good at school. Wow, in school for me, I
saw very very early on, like five years old, that
if I was really good at school, maybe I could

(10:16):
have a better life. And so I focused on school.
And I tell people, I don't think it's an accident.
I work in the investment business because I was desperate
to understand money as a child, desperate. I wanted things
to go better for us, and so very early on
when I started to think about a career and things
that I could do, I don't know, the world sort

(10:38):
of took me. God took me to money, and then
it became my calling. So you're an evangelist, and I
am one too, But I evangelize around saving, investing, have
a better life, teaching your children so that they don't
repeat the same cycles. So you don't worry yourself until
you're sick, so you don't work until you actually die.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
You know, all of these.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Things are things that I think about because I've had
the opportunity to observe them up close and afar. So
whatever you see that I have right now. No, it
wasn't always like this. No, it was rooted in a
very different place. We had our closing garbage bags. They
were always there so we could move them quickly. I mean,
the thoughts of it is is traumatizing to me at times.

(11:24):
I can show you pictures of me as a child
and it's like.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
What are all those tracks? Bags? Are clothes?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So that but it also lit a fire at me.
And that fire that was lit as one that is
making me work this hard. I won't stop. It's not
about enough. It's not about what I have. It's about
what am I here to do?

Speaker 2 (11:45):
I get it. I totally get it. Chet. You two
don't complain fixed problems. It's so funny because we're not
that different in alignment, because we meet at the intersection
of human need, and you cannot ignore money from human need.
The only reason we got in this building was money.

(12:08):
Caught a flight, got a hotel, got something to eat,
went to lunch. It takes capital. The Bible says that
money answers all things. If it's a thing, if it's
a thing, it answers. Some things are not things, they're
not tangible, but as it relates to tangible things. What
I found exciting about what you said it is something

(12:29):
that I really believe. Number One, pain if you unwrap
it always brings a gift, and you cannot if you
unwrap it, and it's painful to unwrap it. But if
you unwrap it, it always brought you a gift. And

(12:49):
you can't have triumph until you've had tragedy, because triumph
only works against the canvass of tragedy. Often it is
not what you're running too. Is what you're running from,
at least in the early stages, that pushes you into
the light. And there you are in the light. Okay,

(13:11):
extremely educated, honorary degrees, legitimate doctorate degrees, earned degrees, name
one of Times Magazine's one hundred most influential people in
the world. Amazing. No, the girl is the real deal.
Before you came out, I call your name, I said.

(13:34):
Anybody who doesn't know who Melody hops In is. That
is why you need to be in the room. Thank you,
because you should not live your life. Jesse Jackson said
under me when I first met him for the very
first time I was about thirty eight years old. He
came into my office. He said, I thought it would

(13:54):
be a shame for us to live and die in
the same world and never have ever met each other.
And I thought, wow, that's true, no matter what our
similarities or differences might be. People who affect the generation
to be able to tell your kids. I was in

(14:14):
the room with Melody Hops.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Oh you're very kind.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
I don't think of myself that way, but I appreciate
your kind.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, we never do see ourselves that way because we
can see everybody in the room but us. That's why
we need people who are secure enough to reflect us
to ourselves so that we understand who we are. But
Bloomberg calls you, okay, seeing mec calls you to respond.

(14:46):
I met you. You might not remember this, but we
were on Good Morning America when we first met, the
very first time I met you. Remember that, yes, and.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
I will forget you.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh my god, Oh my god, you sound like Oprah.
I thought Oprah was mad at me one time. She said,
how can you be mad at Bishop Jakes? Like that's impossible.
It would be a fin Yeah, the amazing thing. I
was watching you at Oprah's Super sold Sunday, by the way,
and I was watching you move around the room, and

(15:19):
she floats around the room like a butterfly, you know.
And she's got this poison, this grace about her. But
her her wings are in the air, but her feet
never leaves the floor. She has never lost sight of
who she is because of what she did. How do
you maintain that kind of balance.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
I remember talking to Brian Stevenson once, who I also admire.
As we all know, he does done amazing work. And
I went down to see the whole institution that he's built,
and it's just so amazing. I took my daughter, she
was about five years old. She's like, it's hot and
alab mamma. She just kept saying that open. Yeah, that's

(16:04):
what she did. But I will tell you that he said,
you must always maintain proximity. And I've never lost proximity
with my people, my family, my community.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
And the world. You know.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
I think people they retreat when good things happen to them,
as opposed to being out in the world. And I've
always been in the world. I've always had proximity. I've
never been away from the truth and the struggles of
real life, no matter where I've set, no matter what
advantage point I've been in, and I've also acknowledged my

(16:37):
own frailty and my own struggles. And so as a
result of that, I think that I've been able to
stay extremely empathetic to people without being condescending. You know,
I had someone say to me once, don't look down
on people you help.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Right.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
I hate that, right, you know, I really do to
say that you.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Have not only been empathetic to have feelings for and
compassion for, but you have been a problem solver in
being philanthropic and setting up organizations to uplift people that
you didn't have to lift up. You could have got
up there and set on the throne and had somebody
fan you, but you decided to come down and do

(17:23):
good by doing well.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Well.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
This is what we say in Ariel. We don't admire problems.
We don't sit around talking about what's wrong. We fix things.
That is the goal that we have as a society,
as an organization. So I don't sit around and talking
about kids not being financially literate. During COVID, I wrote
a book. I spent four years writing. I wrote a

(17:48):
children's book and everyone's like, oh, a sweet a children's book.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
It's ten thousand words.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
It's not three words on a page, right, It's well researched,
and it's entertaining. And when I wrote the book, from
the very beginning, I want to be a New York
Times bestseller. Literally put it out in the universe. I said,
that is going to happen. It's going to be something
people are going to want. So instead of just sitting
around and complaining, and I mean, it's hard because you

(18:15):
sacrifice to get things done, but I feel better about
myself because at least I've tried to move something forward,
even though at times we find our society moving backwards.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Chapter three. Start watching it brings me to the perplexity
of the times that we are living in now, when
they are in some ways the best of times, in
some ways the worst of times. Orson Wales could not
have been any more profetic than he is today. I

(18:50):
don't even want to open up mouthstock market. I don't
want to see my four O one K. I just
don't want to be that depressed. And if I watch it,
I want to watch it in the morning. What in
the world, in your view is going on with the
market and with our four oh one case in this
country at this time.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
So it's not going to be pretty when you open it.
I'm going to tell you that. So I'm going to
be honest with you. I don't beat around the bush.
I believe in telling the truth. We have what I
consider a self inflicted crisis that has occurred, and this
self inflicted crisis is going to hurt. So let's start with.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
That for now.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
And the one thing we just wrote to our clients.
The letter just went out today, it's on our website.
Storms always end, you have to remember that, and storms
in the stock market end as well. If you look
at the worst drops in the stock market over the
last one hundred plus years, go back to the Great Depression,
you have world wars, you have COVID, you have many recessions.

(19:58):
I can go through all the bad things that happen.
But if you look at the market after the drop
a year later, two years later, three years later, the
story tends to be very, very positive. And so you
have to take a long term view. If you are
not retiring at the end of this month, you should
be living with the volatility and getting yourself used to

(20:20):
it and comfortable and knowing you got to ride it out.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Maybe even if you have.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
The great thing about a four to win K plan
is that you're buying stocks when the market is really high,
like it was in November, and you're buying it when
it's low like it is now. Over the long term,
that fifty dollars or one hundred dollars or two hundred
dollars a month that you're putting in, you average a
better price high. Sometimes that means you get fewer shares low,

(20:46):
I'm getting a lot more shares. Over time, I average
out the better price. Over the long term, those bumps
smooth out. The American economy has been the best performing
economy in the world for a very long time, and
I have no reason to believe that will change, even
when you have self inflicted wounds. So we may be
doing one of these, But the thing that happens over

(21:06):
the long term, it still goes up.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
And that's what you have to remember.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
So right now, maybe you just say yourself, I'm not
going to open it, because the worst thing you could
do is to sell into this hold, at least until
the dust settles.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
If you really can't take it.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
That's another thing but you don't do it right in
the middle of the crisis.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
If it's a bad storm, who walks outside? No one, right,
you wait.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Maybe the rain stops a little bit, or it's a
little clearer. It might still be raining, but it's not torrential.
It's not eighty mile an hour winds. So you don't
sell an eighty mile an hour wins. You wait through this.
But the better and the best thing to do is
to do nothing. There's a very famous investor he passed
away some time ago named Jack Bogel, And in these moments,

(21:56):
he'd say, don't do something. Stand there, the opposite of
how we think. Don't stand there, do something. Don't do something,
stand there. So this is the time you got to stand.
It takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot
of conviction.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
You're gonna feel fear.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
But if you can program yourself to say, this storm
will end, they never go on forever and there will
be sunny days. It's not hopeful thinking. I'm basing it
on actual history and facts. You just got to wait
through it.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
When you wait through it, yeah, yeah, that's a clapping moment.
We need all the hope we can get. When you
wait through it. There is anxiety. Yes, all decisions ultimately
are affected or shaped by how we feel about it.
One person can go through the same thing that you

(22:49):
go through and have a completely different direction based on
the healthiness of their emotional reaction to trauma and stress.
While we're waiting, should we be? There are people who
are bad stocks to beat the band right now, you know,
because they're on sale and they're so low and they're

(23:10):
going to ride the wave up. Have we hit the
bottom yet?

Speaker 3 (23:13):
We can't. We can't know.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
I mean, I've never been through a trade war, no
one has in modern times, so this is new. It's
always something new. That's what I want to also emphasized.
We always are fighting the last war. So how many
times have you read stories about are we preparing for
the next pandemic? The next bad thing won't be a pandemic,
It'll be something you can't think of. So we had

(23:36):
a financial crisis, and so then everyone prepares for the
next financial crisis, not the problem pandemic. Then you have
a pandemic, and it's like, are we thinking about if
we have another pandemic? It's not a pandemic now it's
a trade war. It's always something that you don't expect.
So in this situation right now, and you're true. It's
true about the anxiety that people can feel. I can't

(24:01):
tell you if it's the bottom, but you can buy.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
That's why I like four one K plans. You're buying
on the dips.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
You're buying as it's going down, and then you'll benefit
as it goes up. Now, if you feel confident in
some area that you work in and you say this.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
Is just crazy, this stock is so cheap, I'd buy.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
It, especially if I'm going to take a long term view.
If you think you're going to make some instant money
and you're going to get rich in a month or
two months, bad idea. But if you say I like
this and I want to own it for the next
three to five years, I would say, you know, you
might go in slowly. You don't just go and run

(24:39):
in with a giant amount. You just might over the
next few months put money to work and see how
that works out for you.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Always, so if people don't invest anymore than you're willing
to lose, well, The.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Thing is I think that sometimes people they there's certain
aspects of the stock market in the way that it's
described that I always reject to. We'll say, for example,
you're playing the stock market. I'm like, there's nothing playing
about it. I can trust you. I can tell you.
It's if you are in a studied situation where you

(25:11):
know that you have some sense of the business.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'm not saying go roll the.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Dice on something like crypto or you know, but if
you were talking about real businesses that are product or
service that is provided to people or other businesses over
the long term, a good, high quality company over the
long term will do well so they don't go to zero.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
The ones that.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
You're willing to lose that go to zero, those are
tend to be very, very speculative, and that is not
what I'm recommending, and I'm certainly not recommending it now,
because if you're a company that doesn't have the balance
sheet to last through this period, you.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Could go away.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
But I'm not worried about that with some of the
big companies that are out there, or even some of
the smaller cap stocks that we invest in an aeriel,
because we I know what kind of businesses they are
and what kind of sustainability they have. But I will
tell you one thing which is your point about anxiety,
And this is something that I've taught and underscored in

(26:13):
many situations for many years now. Do not make big
financial decisions in times of great emotional stress. You will
make a bad decision. I see it with particularly women.
We make our most important decisions in times of great
emotional stress, often death or divorce of a spouse, and

(26:35):
that is when we do things that we shouldn't do.
So you have to sort of calm yourself down. Like
big emotion, big decisions in times of great emotional stress
generally lead to bad outcomes.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
So at least the one thing you got to do is, if.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
You have to make the decision, try to get the
stress level down a little bit before you make it
so you can make it with some clarity.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's what I meant. You're talking about outcomes, and you're
absolutely right. You don't want to best stock since you
think are growing the plummet and go through the floor
at any time. You don't want to lose money. I
don't like that.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
I hate losing.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
I'm allergic to it.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah, get them and the business.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
I meant sometimes you do lose to win long term,
but I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Any business. It shakes you up. I'm talking about in
between times. From a therapeutic perspective, you have to have
an attitude about it. I do. I have to have
the kind of attitude that should this go wrong, I
could sustain myself. And the reason it's important in this

(27:35):
crowd to establish that is that we are often taught
faith to our own peril.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
That's my mother in the Eastern dress exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Okay, so your God is going to fix a glory
that God out.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
We have to help ourselves too.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So step out on faith, but take
baby steps when it comes to your ability to tolerate
the turbuline of the market. I can't figure out. We
are the world's strongest GDP. We are excelling in many
many areas, or we were. I don't know if we

(28:12):
still are. I might not be up to speed on
the latest numbers. Yet we have terrible inflation. We have
a looming recession. That's enough to shape the market by itself,
and then you add the trade war to it. I
don't know which animal to shoot the line, the tiger

(28:33):
or the bear. What do you attribute to being the
biggest factor in the huge fluctuation Is it coming from
the trade war, Is it coming from the inflation and
the threat of recession? Is it coming from bad leadership decisions?

Speaker 1 (28:51):
They're all in a related So I think the tear
offf conversation put a hot flame under all of this.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Okay, so the tear offfs.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Starting with the tariffs, we are going to put a
tariff on any product. That is, anyone who buys our
sells American products that we're going to put tariffs on
the products that they sell to America. A blanket, no
matter what the country, no matter who they are, there
is going to be this number. It didn't exist like

(29:19):
that before. And even if we've had trade and balances
in this country, which we have, there's no question about it,
we've actually still been the most thriving, vibrant, most successful
economy in the world, and we are the largest economy
in the world per capita. China is actually technically larger,

(29:39):
but they have a lot more people, so their per
capital wealth is much lower than ours, much lower. So
we have the largest economy in the world per capita.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
We put the.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Tariffs on the whole world, and the whole world went
kind of crazy because it was going to affect their economies.
Think German carmaker that sell cars to America, think all
of the think an Apple phone. Okay, to just think
of all the things that get made and are brought here.

(30:11):
There are certain things, which is the problem, that we
just don't make, and so now we're putting tariffs on
things we don't make when reshoring them to America. Is
it's not necessarily the easiest solution because we may not
be able to do it as efficiently as cheaply.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
So what does that do? Cause inflation?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Because we're going to pay more or the country that
we've put on the tifon is going to pass it
through to us because they're trying to maintain their profits.
So now we have inflation as part of the conversation
which we've been trying to wrestle to the ground for
the last couple of years. That inflation was born out
of all the stimulus, all the money we had to

(30:57):
print to support the economy during COVID, all those checks
people got that helps suspain.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Them and that PPP.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
I think it was all of that we put into
the economy that keep us all standing. Well, when you
print money, you get inflation. That's just the way it works.
That's one oh one economics. So things ended up costing more.
They were starting to come down. Everyone was complaining about
things like eggs and the like.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
We were getting that down.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
But when you put the tariffs on, countries start to say,
well I have to charge more, or if we make
it in America, it's going to cost more.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
One last thing.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
So you've got that, you've got the prospect of inflation.
Then companies start getting scared and they're like, well, maybe
I shouldn't investment spend, or maybe I should lay people off,
or consumers say I don't think I should take that vacation,
I'm not going to the summit because it looks like
it might be challenging. That's when you start getting the
recession talk.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
So those three things are.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Happening at once and are saying maybe we're already in
a recession. We just don't know it. Because this is
all happening in real time. It's a trifecta of not great.
I just want to be honest with you, But it
doesn't mean it can't work out, because we've already started
to see some at least step back from the edge
with the ninety day pause, not helped by the China

(32:21):
Tit for tat, which I have to tell you they
seem to be dug in both sides. And that's a
little discouraging, which is what the market is reacting to now.
And the market continues to fear that if the tit
for tat with China keeps going and the world leaders
stay as concerned as they are, and the absolute conversation
stays the way it is, you just birth a recession

(32:44):
to facto out of doing this because everyone just gets
really scared, stops spending. The growth of the country slows
while inflation goes up, which is this economic concept, and
I promise I will stop called stagflation. The worst Your
economy is slowing down while prices are going up. And

(33:05):
that is something that we getting out of place gets
very challenging.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Chapter four, think globally. You are saying a lot.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
I hope it doesn't found no, no.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
No, no, no no no, no no no. You're saying
a lot a very heavy thought for a group of
leaders who are not always taught to think globally. We
come from a generation of leadership that emphasize that we
think about our community. Okay, but when it comes to finances.

(33:44):
It's a global thought.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
The world is global, Our products are global.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Everything that we consume there are pieces of it that
come from other places. The global community got interlocked a
long time ago. The problem is to break that apart.
I think that's very challenging. Trying to go back to
what it was is very very challenging.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
It's very challenging.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
And I'm not saying that as being anti American products
being created, anti labor, anti anything, but I'm saying that
we have to just recognize the situation that the world
is in. We are interdependent, Yes, yes, like never before.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
And I think no matter what kind of leader you
are listening at us today it is it behooves you
to think globally when you think about everything, right down
to a post that you're posting something that they're reading
in Saigon. That their opinion that's coming back at you

(34:43):
may not be a reflection of who you are or
where you came from. Even if they used a picture
that looks like you, that doesn't mean that that picture
is authentic. We are in the final I don't know
if it's the final, but it may be the final one.
I see while wild West, Yes, our technology has exceeded

(35:04):
our habibility to legislate. Our laws have not caught up
with where we are. Neither has our defenses matched the
possibilities of the turmoil that we might go through. Everything
you buy now has got some kind of IP address
connected to it, right down to your refrigerator and your dryer.

(35:24):
So sometimes I come home, I think the whole house
is listening at me. I want to cover the whole
house with a mattress and then whisper. That's how much
we are losing privacy. And we were coming up in
a society where we've got to think differently about how
we market products, how we do business, how we communicate

(35:45):
with people. We can't just approach things from a black
and white issue and be effective in a global world
that runs on green that isn't green anymore. When it's orders.
The other day they told me we don't take care.
I thought, really, okay, So we're starting to learn in

(36:05):
the midst of the changing of cash, the changing of
the way we did business, the changing of the way
we thought. You're saying big stuff to us because you're
talking about China and Japan and you're talking about global markets,
and we're talking about South Central LA.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
But not.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
But and I can give you a lot of examples
of small businesses that have been lit up by the
opportunity to sell their products in other places.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Right con trees, there you go.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
And we see it with influencers, we see it with
all sorts of things. So those borders have gone down
for us, and those barriers have also gone down for us. Yes,
and we have been able to benefit from that. And
that can be from the mundane to the most outrageous.
I mean everything from hair care products to food. And

(36:57):
it's just one of these things that I think we
are we can't miss the point that we can benefit to.
You know, if you do something great today, people can
actually find out about it.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
We are not in a time of covered wagons and
news moving slowly by word of mouth.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
You can actually get a viral thing.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
To happen instantly and create a great phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
So this is what I want you to take away
from this. If you are being rejected, it doesn't necessarily
mean that your product is bad. It may be that
you haven't found your audience. Yes, check to six find
your audience. So let's widen the search for the audience.

(37:47):
The challenge in widening the search for the audience. That
I find is that the old rules as it relates
to media, whether social or physical media, has become more
challenge because it's become increasingly fragmented, increasingly diverse. The algorithms

(38:08):
are giving you the truth in the flavor you like. Okay,
And now you're in a situation whereas you had to
advertise on channel three, Channel eight and channel thirteen. Now
I'm dating myself when I go there. Now you've got
people don't even have that. They've got cable, they don't
have cable. They do this, they do that, they're listening

(38:29):
at satellite radio. You got about satellite radio. You got
to move into so many different ways that we don't
as small business leaders and spiritual leaders. We don't always
think that our next convert may be from Israel, that
our next convert may be from Afghanistan, that our next

(38:49):
I get comments from people in languages I can read,
so I have to get the translation button to see
whether I ought to be mad or not. So as
we think about the world more globally, how does that
affect the products you create, the language that you speak,

(39:13):
and the colloquialisms that you use. Tend to be a
reflection of where you came from. And I think all
of us, even if we only speak English, have to
be bilingual because church has its own language. Okay, business
hair products has its own language, AI has its own language.

(39:34):
But if you're going into the global market, you have
to be bilingual enough to have a conversation on a
multiplicity of languages to get into game. And how does
that start. It starts with reading things that you don't understand,
looking up things you have to google, talking to people
where you're drowning at the table, but you might drown.

(39:57):
She drowned me in a minute. I be underwater making bubbles. However,
I'm going to catch something and don't be afraid to
walk into the room, lack a fool, and leave like
a professor.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
So I always tell people I heard this from the
CEO of Microsoft, Sacha Nadella, who was on the Starbucks
board with me for years, and he said, I don't
want to be a know it all, I want to
be a learn at all. Right, So I thought that
was a brilliant thing to say, especially for someone running
a company. We call it a three three t three
trillion dollars in value so he's running a three T

(40:38):
saying I don't want to be a know it all,
I want to be a learn at all. So one
is this perspective of learning. The other, which I think
is really important, is to understand there are niches to
markets where you can master a niche and become extremely successful.
The greatest Black entrepreneurs of all time, that's what they did.
That's what John Johnson did with Ebany, That's what George

(41:00):
Johnson did with Johnson products. We can grow down the
list of they first went to their community. So while
you're also thinking about Israel, don't forget about the next
door neighbor, because I sometimes think we do that. The
other thing that I say to people, which I think
is super important, why is your product or service better
or different? If you are me too, it's not going

(41:23):
to be great. You've got to tell me why it's
going to be better than whatever is out there, or
you've done something with a different spin on it, or
you've created a different service or something that is making
people's lives better in some way. So John Johnson took
Life magazine and made Ebony because we weren't in Life.
So a lot of customers came and said, well, I

(41:45):
want to see people look like me and created something
off of something but different that no one else had
the vision to do. John Rodgers, who started Aerial Investments,
is the first minority own mutual fund company in America.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
He was twenty four years old and said.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
I'm gonna start a mutual fun company like no black
person did that. But he said, I'm gonna do it
in a very specific way by investing in a very
specific kind of company and go against all type. They're
gonna think I'm a gunslinger and I'm gonna have a
turtle as a logo. I'm gonna like literally upset the
apple cart with what they think I'm gonna be versus

(42:22):
what I'm trying to be and what I deliver. That
was different, even tho the stocks that he was investing
in was different. So there may be thousands of investment firms,
but then he did it differently. So I always tell
people when they come and tell.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Me about their products, I'll tell you the rule of thumb.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
I have a Aeriel, so I say, if you show
me from our marketing team aerial marketing materials and if
I can put my name over it and drop in
the name of any investment firm in the nation, and
it still makes sense.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
It's not aerial.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Instead, I want you to show me those marketing materials
and if I put the name of an investment firm
in there, that is not us. I want some want
to say, why does Fidelity have aerials materials? Because they
know who we are and what we stand for, and
that doesn't even make sense that they would have these
materials that are borrowing something that is aerial. I'm using

(43:14):
that as an example. That's not an actual case, but
that's the way of thinking. So whatever the product or
services that you have, can someone just drop their name
into it and it's still fine or is it Nope,
that is Miss Shirley's product and has her logo and
her language and her branded reputation on it, and if

(43:37):
Loriel tried to do it, it would not make sense.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
So we then have to think about what is unique
about us and then make sure that that story is
conveyed consistently through every medium of communication that is face
forward to the people. You can't be saying one thing
on and something different on Facebook and your website is

(44:03):
saying something different. There's too many versions of us because
we haven't thought through and I want to see if
you agree with this. We haven't thought through what is
our story, what is unique about us? And what did
we come into this world to do. I think those
thoughts are the thoughts that require you go sit up

(44:25):
under tree and maybe draw up some things and tear
up some things until you come down to some deliverable
promises that then become recognizable to people. But they can't
be recognizable to people if they're not recognizable to you.
And a lot of us are trying to be branded
by some outside company to be something that's not authentically

(44:46):
who we are. And there we are trying to memorize
something that they told us we ought to be because
they think it might be, and then we haven't tested
the market.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
I was going to say, feedback is very important. Yeah,
No matter what I do, I always go to people
and I say, shred my idea. Tell me how dumb
I am naive? I didn't think this through melody. You've
got to be kidding. If you're eye rolling, eye roll
in front of my face, So tell me how bad
it is. Now a lot of times people are very reticent,

(45:16):
but I really want to know. Help me before I
go into the wilderness and fail.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
And if you have experience, tell me.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
But a lot of people don't want feedback. They really
don't you hit the oohs out there. I mean they
really don't. They wanted you to tell them how great
they are, and it might be great. But if you say,
but these three things I would think about, they get
an attitude with you right away. If you want to

(45:42):
be great, you take the feedback and you work around it.
And I can tell you my team will tell you.
I will call the most successful people in the country
and say, here's my idea. Can I send me to
the deck or can I pitch you? And then can
you critique me? To this day, I'm still doing it.
Tell me everything I haven't done right, write notes in
the margat and tell me where are your questions? Because

(46:05):
if I can stress test this idea with you and
your big time, then maybe I can actually break through
and make this work.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
So if you can.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
And sometimes it's a neighbor or friends, I mean, just
mine is I write a client letter every quarter to
all of our clients about how we've done for the quarter,
and I have expert readers read it, and the readers
are at all levels of sophistication. My assistant always reads,
I have a couple of friends read, I've senior people
lead read.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
I have our co CEO read.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Because I want someone who is a school teacher, bus driver,
someone who works at Sephora to.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Understand what I write.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
But I also want a CFO or a CEO to
understand what I write.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
And I want both.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Of them to think, well, that's smart as opposed to
I wrote to some audience and I talked over or
under someone.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
So I use those people to.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Critique my work. And when I was on GMA, I
used to say to Diane Sawyer on the way to
the show, I would do my segment with the driver
of the black car. Every single time. I would sit
in the front seat and I would say, can I
run through my segment. It'd be like four or five

(47:22):
in the morning in New York, earlier in the West Coast,
and they would say, okay, people I've never met, And
I said, tell me anything you don't understand that I say.
And I used the driver on the way to the
show to critique my answers so that I could get better,
so I could be clear with people that I was
trying to talk to That's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
That's wonderful. It also suggests, just like your resume, how
broad your net is. If your net reaches from the
uber driver to the fortune one hundred company C suite
person and you have both of them, how do you

(48:05):
go about widening we're not all you. How do we
go about widening our net? Beyond the parameters which most
preachers talk to preachers, doctors talk to doctors, Lawyers talk
to lawyers. We get stuck in a bubble that we
self create. How did you begin or where did you
learn to break out that bubble so that you would

(48:26):
have respect for the uber driver and access to the
corporate leader. I pay a lot of attention to both
sides too, and particularly I keep a handful of people
who only have ten minutes to talk oh yeah, because when.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
They got yes, it's like three words.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yes, yes. When people don't have a lot of time
to talk those people, that means number one, they're busy
doing things. They're productive, they're fruitful, but they're are going
to be on such a high level that even if
you're not ready for it. People who have too much
time for you can be dangerous and slip into things

(49:10):
that are really not wise and not well thought out.
Yet just because the person is pushing the mob doesn't
mean that they don't know what kind of detergent are
to be used in a building. And yeah, come on,
am I right about it? And we have to have
respect for both sides. You have to be a broad person.
You have to come up in Chicago raised by a

(49:32):
single mother to start a conversation with the uber driver
when you could be the lady sitting up in the stilettos,
riding in the backseat of the car talking about, oh,
it's too cold in here. There. What I found out
and I don't have money, but I have enough money
to know what money is. And what I found out

(49:54):
is that the people who are the most I'm going
to use a colloquialism bougie, are the Yeah, I bet
you haven't heard that for a minute.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
The people, oh no, I do you do here?

Speaker 2 (50:07):
The people who are the most boogie are generally the
most broke.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah. So, my mother always said, I love this one.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
She's like melody, money talks and wealth whispers. Yes, she
was like a whispers you no one has to know
and you you know, it's like you've never seen anything
on an Instagram or anything with me about a label,
a brand, wealth whispers, money talks.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Let me see the difference.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
I learned that the hard way. You get a whole
new level of haters when you start speaking out about
every little thing, which is very easy to do when
you came from nothing.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
But you know that usually is a sign of some
form of security. So I just I think most people
get or that phase, and I think they they end up.
You see this with a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
It's new. Be patient with them, you know it.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Really we all are learning. We're all works in progress.
Your point about, which I think is very important, is
accessing people.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Chapter numbers, how to ask for favors.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
I have some rules, so first of all, I always
want to be if I call someone for anything, super crisp.
So I'll practice what I want to say before the
call so I can get it down as if you
you how many times if you want a call with
someone and you're like.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
What do they want?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
You know they're not getting to the point you're The
email is so long. I literally give it to my office.
I'm like, what do they want? My office will tell you.
I'm like, I cannot read this email. I do not
know what they want. Most people, when you really want
to like, get right to it, crisp. The second thing
is I have a rule. If I've never met you, yes,
I don't get to ask.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
You for something.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
I must shout.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
I can only.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Ask you for advice, right and advice. I have found
people love to give love. It's like, how would you
do this? How would you think about it? And I
do that just to get them invested in the idea
of what I'm working on and me and generally once
they started, the wheels start turning. And then you come

(52:27):
back and said I did these three things in a
crisp email, not paragraphs. Then when you ask for time again,
it's like, can I.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Follow up on one point?

Speaker 1 (52:37):
By the time you've established some kind of relationship, when
you ask for something, you've got some credibility behind you,
versus going in hot you've never met them.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
That's why I waited several years to ask you to come.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
You could have asked, well.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
My point is, don't waste your favors. Don't waste your favors,
and don't let people talk to you into spending your
favor with somebody for their benefit because they will prostitute
your favor at your expense. And then when you really
need the person, you don't have the capital with the

(53:18):
person to be able to influence them because you have
wasted your favor. Are you hearing what I'm talking about? Yeah,
and you don't get that favor back again. Not because
she's not nice, not because she's not kind. This is respect,
respecting that she is busy, Respecting that she flew in

(53:40):
from somewhere and she's flying out of here in a
minute and got someplace else to go, and flying out
somewhere else in a minute and meet George in the
middle of the air and blow him a kiss. Understanding
that understanding that it's called respect. And if you don't
respect them, why call them? So I think it had

(54:01):
been maybe a year and a half, maybe two years
since we had talked. We were doing during COVID, we
were talking, okay, So it's been since COVID. She hadn't
heard a word from me. Maybe a thank you note
or something, but nothing else.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
But I want to hear from you.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
You want to hear from me?

Speaker 3 (54:19):
I do?

Speaker 2 (54:20):
I do.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
I learned that from someone, really, Yeah, I did. I
had this rule. I have these rules, and I was like,
the people, I will never ask anything and bother them ever, ever, ever, ever.
I put Oprah in that category, and I put Michelle
Obama in that category. And I love Michelle like we
all do, love admire so much. And one day during COVID,

(54:44):
she said to me, you never call and I said,
I don't ever want to bother you. And she said,
maybe I want to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah, I have made.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
And I was like, wow, She's like, you don't get
to make that decision for me. Maybe I want to
talk to you and that. It was so touching, but
it was also a great lesson. I am assuming a
lot and I am creating a one sided relationship with
someone that would like to engage with me and that

(55:16):
I could learn from based upon me just deciding that
I am an imposition to them.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
But but but I would Devil's advocate because you're not going
to have all these people over at my house tomorrow.
I've literally I love you to death, but you are
not going to do me like.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
That she invited.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
That's the point that people miss. Let the other person,
the busiest person, make the invitation, correct, because you want
to make the invitation you want to be in a
position of strength. You don't want the person in the
position of strength that you are asking something that you
You are knocking on the door every time I turn

(55:58):
around and the police are picking you up in the
car to carry you in. I'm praying for you as
they take you down the driveway. You want to make
sure and then then eventually, as the relationship bills, you
gotta find something that you bring to the table.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
That's how I was gonna say two Way Street. Yes,
I mean you can't.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
They're givers and takers, and there are people who just take.
And I don't have a lot of time for those,
the ones who are sort of sucking the life out
of you. There's an endless list of requests. They never
ask you how you are. Ever, we know these people
right they go right to their ass. There's no howard
things going, or how's the family.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
It's just sort of I need Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
And it's a big difference between Melody Hopson calling Oprah
winfree and Melody Johnson calling Oprah I bet you I
hope he got telling Melody join.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
She was a superstar in Chicago. You know, these are
these are people I used to write her letters right,
telling how hard, how much, literally just letters saying I'm
such a fan or not cheesy, but just you know
you said this, and it actually made a difference in
my life for that sort of thing, and not wanting anything,
just expressing my admiration and appreciation. Not but I don't

(57:19):
want to say that name in a way that's inappropriate.
It's just there's so much respect there that I have,
and I thought she's led away for people like me,
Michelle has led away and they've been wonderful beacons of light.
I mean literally, that's there. But I also recognize they're
real people with real struggles and lots of stress, lots

(57:42):
of pulls on them, and I just never wanted to
be an additional version of that.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
We had a shooting in a major hospital in Dallas,
and I wrote the CEO and the president of the
hospital a letter of condolence and telling him how I
was praying for the hospital during this time. I didn't
even know him. I said, I'm praying for the hospital
during this time. I know this is a difficult time
to lead people who are depressed and broken hearted. And

(58:11):
he never forgot it, he responded, He wrote back, just
being kind to somebody in need. He didn't know who
I was, but just to show compassion. Sometimes you don't
have to have a relationship, to start a relationship at
a moment of pain, simply by being thoughtful, being humanistic,

(58:31):
and being caring.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
I think letters are really powerful, very perfect ferished.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Yeah, and they pack a punch. People.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Remember if you get a stack of mail, no one
opens the bill first. If there is a personally addressed
letter to you, you will one hundred percent open that
letter first, and you will remember it.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
So I tell our team that all the time.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
I'm like, handwritten notes go a long way, a long way.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Except when you write like me my wife. I always
get my wife to write my letters. It looks like calligraphy.
Chapter eight. Stick together. We're coming to close. We're running
out of time. But it's very very important. How do
we get through this just everych ordinary small business, regular,

(59:24):
everyday black, brown and white people. How do we get
through this?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
It's going to require us to be really resourceful and
being really honest. It's going to be challenging. This is
going to be a hard time for some of us,
and I think that we will have to And this
is my thing. I'm saying on every call, in every meeting,
we are going to have to stick together. Your neighbor
is going to need you and you are going to

(59:52):
have to help them. And I think that we have
to understand that's why we were put here. It may
mean that we don't get to do everything we want
to do, but this is a time where we have
to shore up each other and for the sake of
our community.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
And I hope that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
What comes out of it is a stronger version of
our own communities. And that could be the silver lining
here that gets created, that we become formatable because in
times of great stress, that's what we have been.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
When you look at the other difficult.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Times we've had as people of color, as women, as
whatever you want to call it, during economic strife, whatever
it might be, there are times that that becomes a
moment of truth that creates so much resilience and so
much greatness.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Some of our.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Greatest people leaders moments have come out of the most
difficult circumstances. And that's what I hold out to. But
the only way we're going to get through is we
have to stick together. That's it. If you call me Jakes,
I am going to be there to the best of
my ability, because if you say you need me, I

(01:01:07):
have to believe you do, and I would hope you
would do.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
The same for me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
When I came here, I said I needed you, I
needed your soul and presence today, which I was meant
to be here so that you could help me. And
that is what this conversation has done for me.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Too quick questions. I'm going to get every drop of
juice I can out of you. In the Romans, I
have FDIC regulations, big banks doing business. Is our money safe?

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yes, your money is safe. I'm on the board of
JP Morgan. We are more than capitalized. I can tell
you are not. Your money is insured and you're not
having to worry about anything like bank failings or run
on the bank. The banks actually reported earnings today and yesterday,
and they have been today. Actually the earnings have been

(01:02:00):
very strong, so that you can put off.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
To the side local banks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
The local banks are also insured VICEDF. They are insured,
so you are not. That is not something for you
to worry about. Your money is safe unless you have
now it's not insured if you have thirty million dollars
in the bank. But everyday, Americans, your money is insured
by the US government, and the way it works. I

(01:02:25):
just want to tell you one thing, what happens when
a bank fails, just so you know, we have bank
failures regularly in our society.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
You remember Silicon Valley Bank a few years ago and
First Republic.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
When they fail, the FDIC insurance is paid for by
all of the other banks, So it's a self sustaining mechanism.
And I have to tell you the US government whenever
it's been a moment of truth there, I actually do
believe Janet Yellen, if you go back to Hank Paulson,
the Secretaries of Treasury, when we've had these bad moments,

(01:03:00):
they have come together to make sure the banking system
always stays in tax because that is the actual foundation
of the American capitalist system. The banks cannot fail. That
is not something you should worry about. I assure you
they thought.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
I was joking when I brought up CDFs, But community
development financial institutions have lower standards for you to be
able to get homes, to get houses, and to get property,
and it's very important to us that we understand that
they survived. Secondly, we started out with if I remember
correctly about one hundred and seventy five national banking institutions.

(01:03:43):
Now we're down to about thirty three to thirty five.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
We've always had way more than the rest of the world.
So just so you know, when you go to the
rest of the world, the UK, all sorts of countries,
they have very few banks. America had a lot more
because we had banking regulation that did not allow for
interstate banking, so you couldn't bank customers in another state
without separate setting up a completely separate entity. Those rules

(01:04:07):
changed years ago which allowed for national banks, which are
the norm in Canada, are the norm in the UK,
et cetera. So it made it actually more profitable and
much less regulation. It was a good decision, and so
we have fewer banks. But don't take that as a
negative because the whole time, banking fees have come down.
What you get charged for to bank in America has

(01:04:29):
steadily declined over the same amount of times that banks
have consolidated, so the numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Have gone down. You say, don't take that as a
bad sign, but how do we keep thirty three from
hemorrhaging down to three?

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Well, first of all, I don't think that's likely, but
the other thing is that I just want to make
a point about your CDFI comment. They are supported by
the big banks, just so you know that. So they
are not sort of in an island out there by themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
I realize.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
And so I don't see a scenario where it goes three.
But the big guys are big JP Morgan, City Bank,
Bank of America, WELLS Fargo, They're very big. JP Morgan
is the biggest bank in America, the eighth largest bank
in the world. The seven largest banks in front of
US are all Chinese. Just to give you a context.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Wow, when you say that, oh see.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
But those Chinese banks don't do business in America.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
You're making it hard on me. How are we How
are we going to do that? When those banks interact
with each other every day based on their stock markets.
In our stock markets, they engage in business every day
most of the time. We're not even watching the tinker
take flowing at the bottom of the thing to know
how to get in the game. So it's almost like

(01:05:47):
it's a foreign language to us. And yet currency has
no boundary. Okay, currency is money in motion. It's flowing,
it's moving. So the days of putting money in coffee
cans and bearing them in the backyard like your grandmother
did is over and foolish and unwise. And even putting
it in a banking account, by the time you deduct

(01:06:10):
the low interest rate from the taxation of the capital
gains that you made on the money, you might be
losing money. You might do better to put it in
a can. Am I right? So far?

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I never like the can because just FYI, most people
forget where the can is, especially as they age. FYI,
my mom's can was the Bible, the big white Bible
on the table.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Money's in it. Yeah, it's like that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
When we started to get really scarce, we were all
shaking out the Bible to see if we could find
any money in it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
But I'm not recommending that you want your money if.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
You're saving in a traditional savings account so it's protected.
That's very, very important when it comes to investing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
The one thing I tell especially our community, because this
is new to us, why you don't learn about it
investing in school in America. You can take wood shop
or auto in a high school in America today and
not a class uninvesting, which always leads me to ask
audiences the same question. Who wittles in their spare time?

(01:07:17):
Who is cleaning their own carburetor? No one, right, But
you can take those classes and not take the investment
class that is actually essential for the future of yourself
and your family. So what can you do? I tell
people start with a very simple thing. I am begging
you to read a newspaper every day, begging and in
the middle there's a business section, and even if it

(01:07:40):
feels bad and unfamiliar, just read it to familiarize yourself.
Over time, you start hearing words, you start reading about
even local companies. It starts to give you some comfort.
We go to the first page and the back, so
we do the headlines on the first page.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
In sport, that's generally what we do.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
I'm just asking you to spend a little time in
the middle. And as you spend a little time on
the business page and it's you know, it's not a lot,
it'll start to acclimate you to the language of money
that will ultimately make you more comfortable. You'll see a word,
you might look it up. You'll see a company, you say,
what does it do? And over time, I'm not saying
a month, I'm not saying three months, but over time

(01:08:23):
you start to get more and more comfortable.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
My mom. Last thing about my mother. My mother had dementia.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
She died when she was eighty five years old, about
eleven years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
She had me when she was much older.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
My mom, until she died, had my sister reading her
the Wall Street Journal and Cranes even when she couldn't
understand anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
It was a habit. My mother, who didn't graduate.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
From college, who had six kids. I've blorne through all
the things, but she started because of me. I would say,
just read a little bit, and then more than more.
And when she my mother was blind because of diabetes,
my sister read the Wall Street Journal and Cranes to
my mother. And she learned when she was in her
elderly years, which tells me anyone can learn.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Chapter nine, Goes and Dreams. I'm a preacher. We get
to close at least three times. Okay, in my mind,
you have two children, Okay, Ariel and Everest, and you're
kind of mommy over both. For Ariel, define to the

(01:09:37):
audience what Aerials mission is, what it's about, and what
your dream is for Ariel, and then tell us what
your dream is Foreverest.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
We want to make money for people so they can
live better lives. They can have the life of their dreams.
They can send their kids to college, they can start
a business if they want, they can buy that house.
If it's an institution that the pension fund is making
the money for the pensioneers, if it's an endowment or
foundation that they can give away more money or do

(01:10:11):
whatever it is that they do. We want to help
people have better lives financially. That's our job, and we
do that by investing in the stock market, and then
we also buy private companies as well in our private
equity business.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
How many people low staff?

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
We have one hundred and forty people.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
We have offices in Chicago, which is our headquarters.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
We have a big office.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
In New York, and then I have an office also
in San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
How do you manage that many people by? How's your
corporate infrasation?

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
They have senior people that run departments. So we have
a general counsel who's also chief administrative officer. She's responsible
for operations and technology. We have Less Brun who runs
Aerial Alternatives, who's responsible for our private equity business. We
have John Rodgers who found at the firm who's responsible
for all investing, So all the investment people report to him,

(01:11:00):
and we are co CEOs, we're co leaders, which I
don't know why more people don't do. He runs everything
related to investing and I run everything related to the
rest of the firm.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
And we.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Have very different separate responsibilities where we engage and communicate
throughout the day on our individual areas, which allows us
to do more individually.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
So that's a clapping moment. That's a clapping moment because well,
several things. What made you pick them? Because most of
us are victims of hiring the wrong people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Yeah, so you can't hire friends and family. I mean,
it's just like we got to start with that one.
It's like, it's really because you just won't do the
right thing. I assure you that when you have My
husband always says to me, obviously he made movies, and
he says, melody, it's not called friends business, it's called

(01:11:59):
show business. And he always says to me, melody, it's
not aeriel dot org, it's aerial dot com. He's like,
you are not a nonprofit. You are not you know,
you are a business. And when you have to be
a business, you have to make some difficult decisions sometimes.
I think that becomes very hard with a friends. You know,
you got to take someone's bonus down. You're like, but

(01:12:20):
their family is so close, or you know it's my cousin. No,
it's easier if you you know, we start with professionals.
We understand that we are working together and we are
showing up for each other.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
I tell our team, I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
Work for you, and I work for our clients, and
you work for our clients, and you work for me
and each other.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
That is super important.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
So how we find people the one thing I think
people underestimate. It's so important and I can't believe that
they don't do it. They don't check references. I mean,
it is so basic. You can't give me enough references.
You give me reference is I'm like, can I have
five more?

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Why?

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Because you get insights from people, and if you had
just check some people's references, you find out, oh, he
stole at the last company, or you know, this is
not a trustworthy person that you want to put in
front of clients, or if you take them to a
cocktail party, they're going.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
To drink too much.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
It would be good to know that before they're representing
you in front.

Speaker 3 (01:13:23):
Of a client that has given you one hundred million dollars.
You know, these are the kind of things I want
to know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
And you get insights from people not digging and asking.
But just tell me what they're like, Tell me what
areas of development they might have if I were managing them.
What advice would you give me? Would you hire them again?
You know, the person who just says nothing is telling
you a lot too, You know a lot, right, And

(01:13:48):
I think we want we get wishful thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
We want to hear what we want to hear.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
But checking the references is huge and that's how you
find people. But I make mistakes too, trust me, lots
of mistakes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Jesus did he hired judas you know? So I figure
one out of twelve I'm not doing too bad. But
you know, when you think about that, and the person
has to realize that they are not there in their name,
but in the name of your company or in your
nurse rats to represent the brand and the vision. And

(01:14:21):
when you look at them, you have to ask yourself,
is this what I want my company to look like?
When I go into Microsoft's office, do I want them
to look like dress like, smell like, act like, talk
like this person is standing in front of me, And
if you're a poor representation of that, then that's the
first hint that you might have a problem. And the

(01:14:42):
second hint is you can only act so long.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
So if you got a six month clause in the
contract that says, you know, I've got six months before
this finalizes, and you it's on a trial basis for
six months, it also gives you room enough to catch
them not acting. And if you hang aroun on them
long enough, they're gonna stop out.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
This is my favorite piece of advice. Someone gave me.
Okay so much we both gotta go.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Okay, I gotta fight to Dallas, they said the interview
is someone's best behavior. They are literally like they are
saying everything you want to hear. If anything bugs you
in the interview, magnify it a thousand times. So anything

(01:15:27):
that stays with you, it's like that buggs me, it's
going to be really bad. So just decide in the
interview best behavior what stuck with you that you had
doubts about.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
And when you can't decide the answer.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Is no, Mommy melody, last question, you gotta go I
gotta go, They gotta go. What do you want forever?
And you? What do you want to stick to her?
Like you sit here and talk about what your mother said,
that's to you? What do you want to stick to her?

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
I am so emotional about my kid, you know, I
just I know what we all feel this way.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
It's like, how can you love a person more? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
It is just my heart is gripped by what I
want for her, and it is so simple. I want
her to be happy. I can't make her happy, but
I want to create the conditions from which she can
her She can live at peace with herself and be
good with herself, which is what my mother always wanted

(01:16:35):
for me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
She's like, I want you to be at peace.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
She would say that to me all the time because
she saw anxiety in me. And I want Everest to
care about the world. She has everything, but that doesn't
mean she won't struggle. It doesn't mean she won't suffer.
But I do want her to understand she was born
and won the birth lottery, two parents, great resources, best educations,

(01:17:00):
and goodbye bilingual and Chinese.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
I can go on and on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
You don't get to have all that and not owe
society a lot back, and I really want her to
understand that she owes.

Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
That to the world.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
Ladies and gentlemen, Melody.

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Hupson, thank you so much, thank you, thank.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
You, thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, everybody. I
want to take this time to thank you for watching
the Next Chapter podcast. If this conversation inspired you, helped
you reflect on an idea, or spark something new inside
of you, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe so

(01:17:39):
you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life isn't about how
you begin, it's about how you finished. Strong to start
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