Surviving mindset, thriving mindset, winning mindset. Winners are built. I can look at you, I we just met, but I can. I read people fairly well. We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Energy matters. I can look at you and tell you, you had somebody who told you they loved you. Like I look at you, I can look at you and tell you you have both self esteem and confidence. Those two things are different.
If you believe we can change the narrative. If you believe, we can change our communities. If you believe we can change the outcomes and we can change the world. I'm Rob Richardson. Welcome to disruption. Welcome to the discussion. Now I'm your host and moderator, Rob Richardson with me. I'm honored to have John Hope Bryant, entrepreneur, philanthropist, author of many books, advisors to many presidents, and author, author of his latest book, financial, Financial Literacy for all, which I have,
which I'm currently reading. I've. I've definitely looked up to him. I'm sorry. I'm on breakfast Club and many others, and many other, segments, including CNBC and many others. And he is definitely a disruptor. He's disrupting, struggles, you know, particularly for, African Americans and having to accept struggle, particularly when it comes to finances and is working to empower all. John. Pleasure to have you all disruption, brother. My honor to be on with you. Rob.
I can't hear him. We need to set the mic. On to be with you. It's nothing. I got a little bit of sound issue here. All right. I can't hear my mind. Brother. Brother. Boom boom. Testing. One. Two, three. All right, so let's get that. Let's, Yeah, we got it. We doing? Now, give me a second. Audio test. Test. Do the test for test. The speaker. Is that right? I can hit test it. Test. I can't hear that. No. One. Two. Three. Trying to. Hear it. I can hear, I can hear it.
I can hear him now. John. Yo. I'm here. All right, you're here. Sorry about that. So good to have you on. Pleasure to have you on. So yeah, I really want to start with, you know, kind of going into your journey, I, I kind of see that you started off with, that your that your mother was kind of.
From what I could tell, she was kind of your source of inspiration when it came to entrepreneurship and, and, hiring your father started off, you know, very early on in the segregated South, actually, becoming, entrepreneurs pretty early. and then reverted back, through, I guess, divorce and other issues. I wonder, like, what did that how did that moment, like, really shape your life in terms of what you do now, when it comes to financial literacy?
well, you said a word, as I'd say the community, when you talk about my mother, she wasn't the source of my of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. Actually, she she didn't want me to be an entrepreneur. Oh, really? Okay. Wanting to get a job. She. She was tired of worrying about me, so she she really wanted me to go to work. If I if she had her druthers, she would have had been working at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft, where she worked, which became Boeing aircraft later.
but she was a premier saver, premier investor. she was financially literate. She had a credit score over 800. It was in the mid 80s back in the day when they a50 that that schedule that's that score doesn't exist anymore. But there was a time we went up to 850. She was eight over 850. she. And when she said she bought a car, she meant cash. That was her name was her name was one of the smith she passed on last September is been promoted. so she.
But most importantly, she told me she loved me every day of my life. And, there's nothing more powerful in the child being told that they're loved. I can tell that somebody told you. Absolutely. Loved you. I can tell you I can look in your eyes and see that you can always tell when somebody was well loved.
And if you want to find a good man, it said, find a man who had a great relationship with his mother to find a woman, find a woman who has a great relationship or had a great wish with her dad. Now, you can have relationships without that. But it's it's an easy cheat sheet.
If you find somebody who had a great relationship with their, really the opposite sex, if you will, in the relationship of a parents, it gave them something that they didn't have naturally, as a male or female, and it gave them respect and consideration for that opposite, sex. Also, my dad was he was a businessman. He was an entrepreneur. He ran a traditional business. It seemed a contracting business, but he was a hustler, in the family and my grandfather.
So as Johnny Smith, my dad, my grandfather, R.B. Smith, was a sharecropper. And my second great grandfather, George Young, fought in the Civil War in the Black Lives, as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln, he was assigned as one of 7000 officers in the US black troops, in, Memphis, Tennessee. And, so that's where I got my freedom fighter, social justice bonds. And then my business bonds, again, came through.
My grandfather and my dad and I became an entrepreneur almost as a new feature in our family lineage. As, you know, to be an entrepreneur a little bit, be a little bit crazy. and my dad wanted freedom, but he. I think he wanted it in a box he could recognize. And that's nothing wrong about entrepreneurship. But because of the courage that my dad, my mother had, he gave me expanded courage.
and really, courage is, you know, courage is, your faith reaching through your fear, displaying itself as action in your life. And, I was just standing on tall shoulders. Had great reason to be courageous. because of the the seasons that came before me. So, you know, it is a lot of role modeling that went on before me. That's really what you're talking about? Yes. Both in in the form of love where mother gave me, you know what I did? At one point, I owned 700 homes.
I sold the company Promised Homes Company two years ago. I'm a passive shareholder now, but I sold the company, but I grew. It grew from 0 to 700 homes, about $150 million. And asset value, where my mother owned seven homes and my grandmother owned a shotgun shack.
So I'm so I'm curious, also, like you said, that it wasn't your obviously your parents, your background gave you the strength and the courage to go out here and disrupt to be an entrepreneur, which is a crazy thing to do no matter who you are, where you come from. But what inspired you to to seek out this path and to and to get on this path when you you definitely had examples of courage, but not necessarily examples of entrepreneurship?
Yeah. I became convinced at nine years old, that freedom had changed in America. it had always been this way. But people of color, in particular, black people, either didn't recognize it or it wasn't introduced to us, or it was snatched from us as a pathway for it was denied us, of us, as a pathway forward. So we use the government, we use the thing that was in front of us.
We use the thing that had worked as a lever to get freedom through civil rights, which made perfect sense, the 1800s and, through the 1900s, you know, Doctor King, the prophet of the 20th century, my mentor, Ambassador Andrew Young, who built the city, that I'm sitting in now, Atlanta is the only international city in the traditional South. Did that by leverage, pulling the levers of government? I so I understood why my black brothers and sisters relied so much on it.
But at a very early age, I began to understand also that of the hundreds of ethnic groups in America, only blacks, African-Americans, poor whites who are now riding at the ballot box, by the way, they write to just differently, poor whites and Native American Indians. All three of those groups did not use a free enterprise system. two of those groups, two of those groups relied exclusively on the government for, redress and, access the. But all three of those groups, got left behind.
And, the number one group dying in America today, high school educated white men, people don't know that number one group. Now, the number that the number one group dying is white men. Number one, drop it. And dropping dead today. It's been this way for a decade. high school educated white men dropping dead like this because it's opioid addiction and other disease. Really? It's it's it's it's depression. It's lost. Oh, yes.
And, in this same group are angry and they are riding, riding at the ballot box. They didn't have a spokesman for, you know, I don't know, 70 years, 50 years at least since the Industrial Revolution. And then my tripped up and decided that I decided I tripped up and became their spokesman for their frustration. And now they are they are on it. They are out here saying, I will not be denied. And you can't and you can't be angry at them for being frustrated and angry.
Their anger is not a strategy. Anger is not a business plan. It doesn't work for black people in right in the streets. It's not going to work for my poor whites when they write in the, in the ballot box. But it feels good in the short term. And there's somebody always willing to stand up and fan the flames of your frustration. But it is, it will it, you know, you will find us the North Pole. You end up south. It does not last. So I kept looking for something.
I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. That's a melody. Hobson quote. And, when I looked at the math of the matter, the the details, I kept doing the process of elimination. I kept, you know, I would look at our I grew up in South Central in Compton. Right. And, I'd see our folks just dying are getting killed. They're brilliant. Yeah. Not with us. I witnessed two murders before I was nine years old. And the death of our family. That worth.
Before I was nine years old, it was all over money. I was nine years old. I think this is. This is where you're getting to. I believe I was nine years old and a white baker came into my classroom and taught financial literacy in Compton and, I might as well have met a martian. I mean, what do you do about the form? He came in once a week for 45 minutes. He wore his normal business suit. Yes, it's business arts in 16 floor. There was no 16th floor in Compton, right?
I'm the only thing that was above the sixth floor at all was the courthouse. It didn't go to 16 floors. And that was prophecy, folks. For criminal, supposed criminal acts. This guy worked on the 16th floor in some office building that went beyond the 16th floor. And he had he was there in the middle of the day. My mother couldn't show up unless I got in trouble. She had two breaks in lunch every day. She was an hourly employee. I raised my hand in class.
What do you do for a living and how did you get rich legally? We still he said, I'm a and I finance entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. That that was it, man. Was it that was it that that that's the demarcation, Mark. I said, when this white man came to my classroom and I said, how did you get rich legally? And he told me this, and I said, wait a minute. And if I get your jobs to little poor people money, that's your job. Yeah. And if I don't pay you back, I don't get dead.
No. Like, you know, I'm not going to murder you because you notice a default. Yes. In your piece of paper. If I don't pay you back. Yes. You know, you're crazy. What's credit? It's he. Explain that to me, right? Yeah. Okay. Wait a minute. are there any other people like you in the country? Oh, my God, there's 10,000 banks back then. there's got to be at least a million bankers in a country. Whoa, whoa. Slow down. You mean to tell me there are a million people running around this country
and your job was a loan? Poor people. Money. Well, we're about to be disruptive. That's so. So, judge. Hey, there it is. Yeah, I'm preneur and one of my five positions, which was, you know, me for operation Hope is disrupting access to capital, and access to credit. Access to credibility. the word credit comes from the Latin word credito. Credibility. The word capital comes from the Latin word copy to us, knowledge in the head. In banking is a trust business. You need credibility.
So you have more capital so that you can access and build a relationship with the bank. So they then open up their vaults and lend you money because there's not a billionaire ever that didn't do it on good debt. That's right. Yeah. There's not a big, GDP country where the gross domestic product income is ever. Then they didn't do it on good debt. All these conversations about how much debt we have,
you folks need to knock it off. They they say no. I mean, people say you shouldn't buy a home telling poor people don't buy a home on TV. Those fools own a home telling you not to own a home. It's crazy that they own a home and they probably own several other homes they rent to somebody. Amen. And I and I will. Yeah, I own the company. That was the you know, one was a big it was the biggest owned by minority.
and I would tell people do not rent from me right away from me, do it for a short period of time and get out. Right. Used to work at McDonald's your whole life. You shouldn't work at Walmart your whole life. You can if you want to, but if you do, make sure you get promotions. Like my CEO, my friend, the CEO of Walmart, Doug Graham, who goes way to India right now, he worked at Walmart, but he's a CEO. You know.
I wonder though, like, I want I want to get to I want to read quote your quote earlier because I think it's it speaks to what we're talking about here, that this should be something that is the things you're saying is not it's not rocket science. Like, like like you like math a card, from your friend Melody Hobson. Because it doesn't have an opinion. I think the the issue is that, though we are not this is not a logical thing. It's deeper than that.
you know, money is the problems with money are deeper than that. They go psychological, they go emotional. So where can one start? Yeah. Where does one start? What's the root of the issue when it comes to money healing? Tell me more. Well, I mean, what is the. Well, there's three ways to live. And this is from, the, the book, the memo, and then my book, from nothing sort of give you this these, these, demarcation marks.
And then my last book, Financial Literacy for all, is literally your workbook for your family and yourself and and get yourself, your own balance sheet and income statement, and building wealth and not just making money. Those two things are different, but there's three mindsets. The surviving mindset is I put this memo in the memo, which is the memo we never got about how the system works. Surviving mindset, thriving mindset, winning mindset. Winners are built.
I can look at you, I we just met, but I can. I read people fairly well. We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Energy matters. I can look at you and tell you, you had somebody who told you they loved you. Like I look at you, I can look at you and tell you you have both self esteem and confidence. Those two things are different. to might put that into you. You also have good role models.
You wouldn't select them yourself. I can look at you and tell. I can look at you that you wake up in the morning and you're hunting. Yes, you're you're hunting. You're a hunter. And that's a builder. so you so I can tell you that a somebody's mindset, I can tell you that you've already graduated to a thriving mindset, which is a which is a middle class, which is, you know, that's about access to your jobs and. Right, they kitchens and how.
How do you move from that survivor? I've never been in it. So I don't really and I've been to your to your point I've been extremely blessed. Like, yeah. Like, people have tried to put limiting mindsets into me. The story I tell people often is that I struggled in school early on, and I, and I, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which is really not a disability. It's a learning difference. but, you know, the teachers tried to say that I wasn't going to be a great student.
And I decided one day in my life that I was going, I said, look, I'm going to achieve in school. And I told this to my eighth grade teacher, and she essentially told me, that's not going to be possible, Robert, like, you're a horrible student. That's what she told me, right? And I was close to this teacher. I went home and I talked to my mother right. And she gave me the words. I say this to everybody.
She said, listen, Rob, you never have to be defined by anyone's low or narrow expectations of you. You define yourself or yourself by yourself and let God do the rest. And hence, that's been the story of my life. So but I was blessed to have that so but like for people don't necessarily have that. Where do they start? John. So Quincy. So Quincy Jones would say another role. My mentor, a friend of mine, not one ounce of my self esteem and self-respect depends on your acceptance of me.
we'll say that again. I say it again. Doesn't like drop go, go saying say it one more time. Not one ounce of my self esteem or self-respect depends on your acceptance of me. I would say to argue with the full pros. There are two that life is 10% what life does to you and 90% are you. Choose to respond to it. That success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. that if I don't like me, I'm not going to like you.
If I don't feel good about me, I'm not going to feel good about you. If I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you if I don't love me, I don't have a clue how to love you. And the big one is, if I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm going to make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around, come around, hurt people, hurt people.
So most of us are surviving mindset because we are depressed and we're depressed because of the way this world has treated us, because we don't have a daddy at home. So we didn't have. So without a daddy at home, a young man has a natural propensity to go cut up. There's going to they're going to be oversexualized and overly violent.
That's not that's just natural that they just they need this is what they need to structure and they need to to be told no, without a daddy at home, they're going to create havoc wherever they go. So, a woman, a young girl, needs a father figure.
So if you don't have a daddy at home, if you don't have a nuclear family, if there's one thing, if one person is working two jobs and they're never home just because they have too much a at the end of their money, if you go outside your street and you try not to get shot between your house and the bus stop. Right? Yeah, exactly. Go on. And if you see the police as somebody who is threatening you, not protecting, you see white people or somebody trying to put you down versus to lift you up.
then then you, you know, and you go all around, and you have three generations of that. Yeah. Long five generations of that. it because it's the old southern saying, no matter how much I love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only give you my own ignorance. Yeah. So out of love, we pass down bad habits from generation to generation. And now you got some people around you say, no, you can't do that. Why are you going to that school that. Why are you talking?
Why go through this, all that stuff? So what does that mean? We're talking white. It's crazy. It's like if you barely speak Japanese, you're in Mexico. In Mexico? Spanish. You know, you're in Germany, speak German. If you're in America, you speak English. What's crazy? It's stupid. It doesn't make any sense. You gotta be bilingual now. You gotta go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. Yeah, yeah. Talk streets and sweets. Yeah, but. But you got to be bilingual.
But if if that is your situation, then you're an expert now. And what you're against. Yeah. That's what you're for. Yeah. And and so now you've got a surviving mindset and your self-esteem, your assets on your rear end. I can't say what I really want to say, but. And so you now you you you can all you want to do is live for the moment. I want to get this money, get this paper, get this dollar, get this bag. You hear this? In our neighborhood all the time. We'll get this money.
Money is extraordinarily overrated. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. So if you're depressed. What do you make money during the day? You build wealth in your sleep. Yes, sir. Hope stocks buy. Yes. Businesses. Homeownership. education, things that compound that build on themselves. and so 96% of our businesses, black businesses don't have an employee. An employee is as a function of compounding. So you're going to be in your daily hustle.
You're basically a self-employment project, if you don't have employees, if you don't have books and records and infrastructure, you wake up every day and you're. Yeah, you say you run a business, but in reality, you're just earning an income with a self-employment contract. But it seems like that that's why they call it making a living versus making a loan. As soon as a contract is over, you're out of business, out of business, and you build no wealth.
You build wealth in your sleep. So, so the basic the there's a the good news about this conversation, Rob. There's not a thing I just said that's complicated. And I'll answer your specific question about how is it that we got the lesson, how do we get out of it? Yeah. All the precious things I and is I said this on the Breakfast Club shopping. You know when you're depression you you overindex on coping, shopping, drinking, drugging, sleeping, texting, sex.
Yeah. You're going you know more not doing is the one I enjoy that matters which is healing. Yeah. In order to heal, you got to deal. You got to deal with your mess. Which means you have to have self, steam in order to deal with your mess. You must esteem yourself. But if you. But if you're running from yourself, if you're if you're if you're living your life or your Instagram, profile or your Facebook profile, that's who you want the world to say.
To know you are the word personality comes from the Latin word words persona, which means literally to perform. So our personality is a performance we're putting all over the world against our am g. That's a coping mechanism. It is so literally, literally everything you're doing, the code, everything is literally you from from going from from surviving to thriving and to go from thriving to winning. And winners are builders. That's what you are, Rob. You're a builder.
You get up every day and you hunt, and when you get up, the devil said, oh shit, he's up. So, so you've got to change your mindset. And that's why when you look in you look at you look, I had a lot of fun on Instagram. Yeah. Just get folks who think they're arguing with me now. They hitting their face or my, they're hitting their face on my face. I mean, I'm just a part of a movement of common sense. I'm sitting here saying what is basic? Common sense?
And they're trying to rationalize their behavior because it's tied to a 40 year life. Because it's irrational. They're tired, they're it's not rational. No, no, it's worse because the rationalize, kill, rationalize. Yeah. This is the this is somebody right doing this for 30 or 40 years. Yeah. I mean these coping mechanisms. And here's this guy John Ryan coming and saying now he had to knock all that stuff out there like, no, I don't need to knock that all I need to knock you all.
I think I'm well, I want to I want to make sure I get some a couple things, but I want to talk about diversity. And you talk. About here, you can do this topic. I know we don't have time today, but this topic here, Charlamagne, is very, you know, both very passionate about mental health. This topic here could be three segments. Just mental health. We have got we have got to deal with this. It is the key to everything.
And there's too many of us who are not acknowledging that we have mental health issues. If you black in America and don't think you're crazy, you're a little crazy. I think everybody is a little crazy in America too. But because we go through a lot and I think it's, you know, the route of mental health from my definition is, avoiding reality and avoiding the pain. And so, like we, as you say, black America has been through a lot of pain.
So the goal is to if you are trying to avoid it, you don't deal with it. And then you're dealing in things that aren't reality. And then that is the roots of mental illness from my perspective. That's why you got 1.8, 1.78, $1.8 trillion trillion of black consumer spending and 91% of it is consumption, 91% is consumption. We're not building wealth 41% of us owning a home. No, we want to rent. And a place is uptown versus downtown, a place we can't afford with money.
We don't have to impress people we don't know. You're talking about stuff that don't matter. People don't want you just. We're just taking your rear. Really? Into the hood. Da hyphen hoodie doesn't look like the worst house on the best block by rehab it and living build equity. When you get enough equity 3 to 5 years, use the equity line of credit and buy a second home in the hood. Near near transportation, near jobs.
Every inner city is near essentially located real estate in inner city in France called Paris. Buy rehab and rent and rehab. Be conscious. Rehab it when people who actually live in your neighborhood plumbers, heaters, landscaping, techs, roofing, lighting hire people in your hood, not your cousin Pookie. Them who don't have a talent, hire somebody who has a skill. It looks like you put them to work, give them a contract and recycle those dollars.
And you do that three times and you'll have $1 million net worth in five years with a high school education. So there you go. Right there. Because you have low self-esteem, you're you're going to the mall when you really need to be going to the real estate listings, right? Yeah. Because you got low self esteem. You go into the club, you look at that, pay $5 a bottle service, for some lady who, you know, you really in the daytime and sober, you wouldn't spend a lot of time with our guy.
It is reverse. And what you really need to be asking that lady is not what's, you know, what's her waist size. You need to ask her what's her credit score. But because we. What's your credit score? What are your values of the money your family hits? Your what's your and what's your and what's and what's your vision. Yeah. What's your passion for your life because you're potentially picking your life partner at a club. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Probably not a good strategy. And you're drunk.
So it it's you got a lot of weight here. I think I want to talk about, since we just, we kind of did this deep dive, but I certainly want to get on diversity, at least towards the end of the, conversation. But since we talked about this before, it's focusing a lot on mental health. We talk about mental clarity, essentially, and getting mental clarity in mental health.
I think one of the challenges you and I before the broadcast talked about, I and not only how it's changed the economy, but, you know, I I'm sure you know, this is not new algorithms are not new. Algorithms are actually being used, to really, actually further drive people into more of their madness from the reality at the ballot box that you talked about, to the, to the worst habits
you just talked about with the black community. I mean, I'm just see, like, how do you get how do you how do you start when you go out, when you have this device that's been in front of us so long? That actually is an addictive advice. device. Where does one start to get mental clarity? If you had to say one thing that they can do to make the biggest difference in their life, we can talk about self esteem.
And you and I have been blessed to at least have some examples and models poured into us, for maybe those who don't. Where should they start? What's the one place they can start to get the most mental clarity. In a book? there you go. Keep in mind that there was a law, the most important law passed by people who were trying to oppress you for economic purposes because it was all about money. Was thou shalt not educate?
it was against the law to educate a black person against the law for you to learn. That should tell you everything about the power of education. You know, God gave you two ears and one mouth, so you listen twice as much as you talk. One of my five pillars of success is as much education as you can shove down your throat. Second pillar understand financial literacy, the math of the matter, how education, is applied to aspiration, market economies, financial literacy.
My book Financial Literacy for all as an example. What operational does number three family structure and resiliency. There was no they sold off the children and they abused the wife until you stopped fighting to try to protect her because you couldn't do anything about it. They broke the family up. So there you go. Family structure, self-esteem and confidence. What does this do to your self-esteem? It ruined your self esteem because you could not protect your family.
What are black men doing now? Not showing up at home because they don't feel they can protect and take care of their family? Self esteem and confidence. What does confidence come from? Confidence comes from competence employed in the market economy. So black people in America have the highest confidence because we're in the biggest economy in the world, like you, we're killing it. But we have low self esteem. Africans and Afro-Caribbeans have high self esteem and low confidence.
They because they've got family structure itself. You know, we see the doctors, lawyers, robbers, mayors, everybody looks like them. But they have never succeeded in a leading market economy. And then the role models the environment. You model what you see, why the kids want to be rap stars and athletes, God forbid drug dealers because when they grew up in that neighborhood, those were the role models they saw. So read a book starts with my I've made it very simple.
I've taken Wall Street and brought down the main street. Unpack it. I want to see the book written, underline, highlighted, dog eared. Have a conversation once a week. Y'all don't have dinner with each other anymore. Use the book as an excuse to have a family meeting. Buy some dinner, put it on the kitchen table. And by the way, don't eat soul food every day. On day three, they. That was a slave diet.
They threw the money out, but they threw the the scraps out the back door as a sign of disrespect. Now, brilliantly, we took it and we said, we'll show you. And we put salt on it so that the food, the meat wouldn't go bad. We put salt on it. And then we made grits, hog mauls, pig feet, fried chicken. We did. We did all that whole cake. We did all that stuff. But these are the worst parts of the animal. And it wasn't it. Yeah, great. We made it a soul food, but it's going to bloat you.
It's going to inflame you. You're dying of hypertension and diabetes and low and high blood pressure. Because we're eating this up three times a day. Eat some fruits, vegetables and some fish, and eat some food once or twice a month as a treat. Now back to to the question. We got to get your life straight. You gotta get you back on the right course. You need the financial literacy course and you need a computer course. Now, you you really need a computer course. But that's where it starts.
Because that job that people are somebody some people are watching this, listening to this, that job that you have or puking your cousin poking JoJo's got at the convenience store. It's gone at the fast food store. It's gone at the grocery store. It's almost gone. And as you said, it's happening right in front of you. Go to the grocery store. Don't mind me. Don't, don't don't take what I'm saying. Don't take what I'm saying is gospel. Go to the grocery store.
It used to be ten aisles of people checking folks out. You go there now, and there's three aisles of folks checking folks out, and there's 10 to 12 self-checkout counters and one employee looking at them. And this has happened right in front of you. That is robotics, that is automation, that is computerization. That is a step towards a I. Yeah, It is it is analytics, in motion in your grocery store. You go to you go to a fast food restaurant.
it used to be eight to 10 to 20 people working in one fast food restaurant. Now you go there is 5 to 6 people, you go on, you hit a screen to put in your order because people are tired of being rude to the counter and they're tired of being rude. And so you go to the mall, you go to the mall, go to the go to the go to the airport. I mean, it's right. It's happening. Yeah, right. You're right about that. It's not.
But it's this is the first technology like in it's also a general purpose technology in that it's the first technology that I think is actually going to affect people in finance too. It's going to affect actors and other people. You can see, you're in Atlanta. I believe Tyler Perry, was building the $800 million studio. And he saw, I said, I got to shut this down. And so we figure out where we go next because this this makes it so I don't have to do much of this.
I don't have to do as much as I had to do even close. So I do think there has to be something. and I was playing your book today. my my adopted son, who's my cousin, took a while. I was driving him. I was we were listening to the book. I made him listen to sit down. And he told me, well, I can like I look stuff up. I said, well, you can't look up how to think. All right. So we're back to words. Like, so you got to know this because yeah, you can do artificial intelligence.
But artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent okay. So it's coming from data. So to your point, I use AI all the time, I use OpenAI, I have my friend Sam Altman, who created, we're co-chairs of of the AI Ethics Council together, as you know. but I know what I'm looking up, and I, and I, and I have a gut of what is what is right. So I know what to ask AI and I'm really saying, can you confirm, do me a favor. I can research this.
I, I can research just for a week or a weekend and come to the conclusion or what I'm saying is correct by pulling together 15 pieces of data and then sort of, you know, micro sizing it. But I do me a favor. Reach all over the world to every database accessible. And in three seconds I confirm to me what I believe already is correct. So I can then write it in this article and know that I'm factually correct. So education comes from books or from data?
Is your, relative? Say it. But wisdom comes from experience. And I can sit here and tell you it's like these all these brothers walk around saying they're financial influencers. And, ladies, we're. And I did this. I covered the Charlemagne show. These people are making hundreds of thousand dollars a year, sometimes millions, telling you how to get rich by doing seminars about getting rich.
Now, I'm not hating on this, but this is like somebody saying they're going to do surgery on you and to cancer surgery. And they and they got certified on YouTube like, this is crazy. You got it's something there are certain careers you have to know what you're doing and money and making money and doing well. That's one of those things you cannot floss and fake. You cannot get it from us. You cannot get it completely from books on tape.
You've got to get the deal with somebody who's actually done it. We don't have time for this, but there's so many transactions and so many things I've done, including one last week. And I want to continue the conversation. We'll talk afterwards because I've definitely got more to say. But go ahead.
Yeah, we I've learned something that I thought I knew I didn't know it, but I learned through this transaction, through the grinding of free enterprise and capitalism, because capitalism is a gladiator sport, and in it you're in the arena and in the room. You don't know what the heck you're doing, you don't know what's going on.
You know what's going on when you get there, and you don't know how to behave until you're sitting across that negotiating table and how you're going to react or respond to that defines everything. And so you want to call somebody who's been to the negotiating table. I signed 100. I'm sorry, I signed a $200 million credit facility. Me, I'm one of the few African-Americans alive today who signed a $200 million credit facility. And it was non-recourse.
Was Rob, as you knows, means I don't guarantee it. I was I'm part of a $100 million credit facility just this past January, company that I created, you know, when I first started, if you had a 50,000, our loans personally guaranteed. Right? But now I'm doing non-recourse debt. You know, you can, you can somebody can't give you a book and teach seminar who hasn't built a my payroll is a million half dollars every two weeks. border employees.
How am I going to tell you how to run a balance sheet or income statement? And by the way, I applaud that, because there's a lot of people that that make a lot of money at that level, but have 10 or 20 people working for them. That's usually what it is. They don't really fast the opportunity. So that's definitely be applauded. I have 400 employees. I ain't no joke. No it's not. So you're definitely be applauded for that. And we're definitely going to have another conversation later.
Let me also just say I want to get to this point before we conclude. And then we'll we'll talk all actually off the air. you talk about diversity, inclusion. And I heard you say this line about diversity, inclusion. You say black people are too emotional about it. And some white people are too narrow minded about it. You talk about it as being it is critical in terms of, in terms of just being competitive as a nation.
Tell me what you meant by that statement and how diversity and inclusion is so important for America. Yeah, I know, let me give you a word on that. Go ahead. Is a Van Jones quote. I'm getting quite proud because a good friend of mine, we're working on this together. He says that 99% of black folks don't know a thing about I, and 99% of white folks don't know a thing about AI. That's correct. We all live here.
So it's a starting point, the first starting point where we all start basically at the same place. And whether you're in the hood or working at a convenience store or a fast food restaurant, your job is at risk. Or whether you're an accountant, as you said earlier, or you're a lawyer or you're in the creative spaces. Like I hear that Tyler Perry story is real. It's real. you're you're you're, you know, your job may go away.
And so you may have to reinvent yourself and create a new employment situation for yourself. because we're going to go from the horse and buggy to the automobile once for everything. For everything. Not just the horse and buggy. That was one that was transportation. This is everything. yeah, but but you know, fairness when you if you had a horse and buggy in 1850, it felt like everything. But by 1910, the most valuable thing you could use for a horse was to make it into glue.
It had gone from everything. Purpose, machinery, transportation. True. Fair enough to literally not worth anything. So you're going to have some human beings who the society may say aren't worth anything. I know this is hard for people to hear, but the with analytics may say you don't have any value and you're going to have to create some value by being educated, skilled that you that you understand how the system works and you can lean into it. in this new world we're, we're living in.
Otherwise it's not gonna be love or hate. It's going to be radical indifference. Folks won't hurt or hate you. I feel enough about you to hate you. They'll just be indifferent towards you. which is worse? Another way. Which is indifference is worse. Is worse. So d and I, I, I went and debated Bill Ackman who is a billionaire who is the leader and the poster child for anti D. And I work he has built an entire reputation around it.
He's going public with his company in my opinion because of his profile of it, of him standing in front of it in attracting conservative interest to his platform and possibly his investors in his company. It's just my theory. I don't know that part. What I do know is I debated him about two months ago at the Milken Global Conference. It was a private session, so I can't say what was said. I can tell you that after 40 minutes, he really was looking for the exit door.
that's how you say he works with somebody that can debate with the with some clarity and truth and not emotional receipts. He had no data, on his side. I was stunned by this. I came with nothing but data. I was not emotional. the other side was very emotional.
Again, I can't get into details, but let's just say that we had to have a change, a conversation 40 minutes in from the substance to other things about this around why we believe he's been manipulated, or on this topic, and he needs to save himself, from, I think, reputation damage because he's on the wrong path. All these folks that are pushing RTD and I are on the wrong path path. But by the way, black folks are on the wrong path. Also, we came at this emotionally do the right thing.
This is the hand of God. This is, you know, be moral. Okay, that's all cool. But that's not that's not where our business is going. And society's going to change. I mean, we have a chance and Adam and Eve to put our, our, our economy inside of our culture. Now, this is God talking. And we decided to put our culture inside of our economy back to Adam and Eve. What do you think we're going to do now?
And so these folks are leading with their economic interests, in their personal interests first, and they're afraid they're fearful. It's going back to the poor white. This is where poor whites and wealthy whites intersect. They are afraid of the future. There's too many of us in it for their taste. But they they've forgotten that God has a sense of humor. There are not enough. This is not a racial comment I'm about to make. It's just math.
There are not enough college educated, successful white men to drive GDP gross domestic product for the next 30 years. Our generation will see the first generation of baby boomers over 65 years of age. That's a majority in this country. Those are wealthy, white and trying to retire. They made their money. They built their wealth. They're exiting the stage. You have those coming on the stage who look like you and me.
And we're not financially literate, as we've been saying, this entire broadcast, we got hustled down pat, but we've been and we got surviving and it's some some driving down pat, but we don't have building wealth. We don't have that. No one taught us this. So what I say is that that when some black succeed in this new world, even the racist wins because the economy grows, GDP grows, everybody wins. You're going to have a majority of minorities in ten years.
Right now you have 40% of this country is black and brown. In 1950, the country was 90% white, 1950, not 1850. And so I can give you more data, but. You go right now very quickly. It's just so people know I like this one point in data you always bring up the most diverse cities are the most prosperous to economically prosperous. I'm not talking about something. I don't want people to listen to this and start parsing my words. Economically prosperous, successful, profitable.
The most valuable cities in America are the most diverse. Look at it. Atlanta, where I'm at right now, it's the biggest economy in the traditional South. It's nothing to do between Atlanta and Memphis and all these other cities other than we made a different business playing a different bet versus arguing over who's gonna go to a water fountain, white and black. We start to argue over who's gonna get the contract. The green. Right. And, and, and so it's the only international, the city.
Thank you. In the South. Thank you, Andrew Young. And it is the 10th largest economy in the US. And you can put three states around and land together inside of Atlanta economically and still have room for the two biggest states in America California in New York, two most ethnically diverse, two most prosperous financially. And you can go on or on the biggest, most profitable companies in America by 40% over their peers are the most diverse and inclusive.
The data is unimpeachable and undeniable that not only does diversity work as a business plan, but demographics say you have no choice than than to promote Dei as R&D. You have no choice than to promote D and D as GDP for the future. So it's all here. The research and development. This is the farm club and the bench strength for the playoff games of the rest of our lives. This is like Doctor King saying America. He didn't say I'm here to say black people.
He said I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the triple evils of war, racism and poverty. I'm not here. I'm advocating for black folks and brown folks giving some moral statement about D you I, I'm saying that my rich friends in my poor friends do better. If only they stay rich. I'm saying you cannot have the largest economy in the world in 20 years, as we are right now, in the sole superpower in the world as it is right now.
Unless you embrace people who are black, brown and different and teach them how the economy works and give them a ladder into success, whether you like them or not, this is not even debatable. We will be speaking Mandarin in 20 years unless we get this right, because you never had an economic power that wasn't the the, the superpower. Sorry. You never had a superpower. It wasn't the economic power. At the same time in the history of the entire world.
That's why I say that God has a sense of humor. Because with all this crazy politics going on right now, that's basically divide. Divide the division, you know, hate this person, I think. Look, none of that works. No, it's a it's a way it's a way to destroy the nation. And I think that's part of part of our biggest challenges is an emotional one is is a mental health one. And we have to get that and disrupt that struggle. John O'Bryant, it's been a pleasure.
I definitely want to have you on again. Definitely want to talk more about particularly, I because we're doing a lot in that area here in the Midwest and some of the South. So definitely after the stream. Let's definitely talk a little bit before you leave, for all those listening to disruption now, keep disrupting and we hope to see you at Midwest Con 2024, September 4th through the sixth. We talk about policy, innovation and technology for social impact.
Stuff that I think you would definitely connect with. John, thank you so much for coming on the show. Hold on. you know, right after this, after we end the stream. Thanks so much. Everybody. Keep disrupting.