A Master Class On Tech Tools

appropriate that I'm doing this from Poland. I'm actually here, Schaefer and I are here is commemorating with Van Jones and Robert Smith and others, the only invited delegation that includes African Americans. Oddly enough are interestingly enough, should I say for the eightieth of liberation of Auschwitz the Jews who were murdered here eighty years ago in World War Two? This is commemorating the liberation from auschwitzen God bless the soul's loss here. But when I'm on travel, I've got

to run my businesses. While I'm doing well, I have to do good too. In order to do good, I have to do well first, and so I have to find a way to continue to run my operations. I've got five divisions of John O'Briant Enterprises. You know me most from my work at Operation the Hope, which is the largest financial literacy coaching organization in America. Fifteen hundred offices, give or take in almost every state in the United States.

We have thousands of volunteers, we have collaborative partnership offices. We have four hundred full time employees in all of our operations. You have Operation Hope, You've got Brianger Adventures, You've got brig Adventures Advisors, Brian Go Digital ETCA, et cetera, et cetera, and then all the projects with an Operation Open. I'm going to do a masterclass at some point on how to run an effective nonprofit and how to build

one from scratch. Let me know if you like that idea, by the way, how to build one from scratch, how to to take an idea and turn it into and operating entity, How to take an operating entity and turn

it into a successful enterprise. How to take a successful enterprise that's boutique, our small business turning into a boutique boutique successful enterprise that's been with a reputation, but it is, you know, basically local, and how to take something local and turning it into something that is known regionally doing is regionally and nationally, et cetera. And how to turn that too from a personality driven the activity into an institution that is an upcoming podcast. You tell me whether

you like that. By the way, I'll do the same thing for a for profit, but I wanted to start with something that is a bit of a mystery with people, which is a nonprofit. But the larger issues, whether it's my real estate stuff, or whether it's my nonprofit financial literacy stuff, or whether it's my you know whatever, we're writing books and and speaking and et cetera, et cetera, how do I do it? And people like how do

you do this? And then you you know, you have a family, a personal life, how do you do all this stuff? Well, I'm going to unpack some of that today, and today no pun intended to unpack them and tell you about also how I pack. I will put a couple of photos in of this actual photos of actually my suitcase on this trip to give you some sense of literally how I pack. But I'm going to most importantly tell you about my tech tools. People will tell

you to be successful, they don't tell you how. So part of my masterclass in twenty twenty five is breaking down the how. This series, this session is my tech Tools, John Bryant's tech Tools, the how of how I do all this stuff and not go crazy. Somebody told me a couple of years ago, and it's completely true that if you don't have technology in the center of your business or enterprise or nonprofit or government agency or whatever

it is you're running. If you don't have technology in the center that I even believe in your personal life, then you're actually not succeeding. You're falling behind. I'll say that again. If you don't have technology, if technology is not centric, centered in the center of whatever it is you're doing. And I don't mean just having a iPhone or whatever, the Samsung phone, whatever it is you use.

I use iPhone, I use Apple products. But I don't just mean having a smartphone and treating it like it's a dumb device. I don't mean just having a phone and sending an email to somebody, or sending a text to somebody, or making a phone call. That's not what I'm talking about. If you don't have technology and use it intelligently, use it smartly, and center that root that in the center of your life. As a growing twenty first century business, enterprise, entrepreneur or doer, you're actually not

going forward, you're going backwards. In real time, You've got to be organized. It could be said that half a success is showing up and having good habits. Showing up and having good habits, it's time to take out your notepad and begin to take some notes. So let's go. I'll do the packing piece as a bit of a bonus here, how I, how do I travel? What do

I use? Let's get into the technology and how I do it beyond the magic soft of how I think and how I lead, which are value propositions our assets that I have in my institutions have because leadership is that outlier, unique asset that defines everything. And you have leaders, you have managers, you have tacticians, you have doers. Those are different categories of executives that you will have in

your organization. You give somebody a title does not mean that they're a leader, by the way, But let's assume for the moment you've got the right team in place. Many of my people be with me for twenty or thirty years. My chief of staff Rachel Dove has been with me for thirty two years. I make sure it's my second employee when I founded out Brian Group Ventures and Operation Hope Lands Triggs building me for I think going on thirty years. Mary Harrison going on, you know,

close to thirty years. Jenney Roscoe over twenty years and goes on, goes on, goes on. So most of my people, if you're if you're a newbie with me, you building me for a decade. So you've got to have a special forces team. It's been said, and I agree that eighty percent of important work is done by twenty percent of your people. Eighty percent of important work is done by twenty percent of your people. But if you're going to have by and then the other people just complain

and make your life miserable. But anyway, being an employer, oftentimes the babies that are actually have great employees, So I'm not complaining about by people. But even if you have a special forces team, which's dinner different from having a General Army special forces team, no different than special forces in the military who has advanced weaponry to go be dropped behind enemy lines so they can have an

outsized impact being outnumbered and outgunned. They've got to have the you know, the element of surprise, and they have to have superior training and be able to outsmart their adversary. They're playing you know, chant and everybody else is playing checkers. But they have to have you know, technology in their again example, the example weaponry, which is far superiod in those that they are coming up against. I have technology.

I have weaponry. It's called technology tools that allow me and my special forces team to operate with outsized effectiveness. Because even though we have four hundred people, it feels like somebody told me that we have forty thousand people. I don't know if they said four thousand, orto that you get the point. It feels like ten x or twenty x or one hundred x of what we have in human capital actually on our payroll because we've been

so effective. Okay, so start writing this down. You don't have to use these tools, but I think you should use something like it. So the first thing I do, and I have this graph, and I'm going to put this graph somewhere on the video version of this podcast so people can see it. I'm going to put this graph in, but it's by JSB formula for achievement. So vision, mission, strategy, plan, business plan, execution tactics to dos to done's assessment readjustment

for a grade back division. Now I haven't gotten to the technology tools, per se. This is the technology is how I use mind mapping, which is the first piece of technology software that I'm gonna suggest that you get for yourself. I don't care which software you use. There's a simple one that you can use called mind le It's very easy. In my n D L Y, there's my thoughts. There's another one I've used before. What I

use at the moment is mind Meister. Mind Meister. It's German mind mapping, and I like it because it's collaborative and sophisticated and all that stuff. You can put links in it. And I do a mind map for almost everything important in my life. I start with the mind map. And what you're doing in the mind map is getting all the gello and all of the wiring, uh, you know, the all the wiring of thoughts. I it is going through your head at a million miles and miles and

miles an hour. You dry down the street, all these ideas, so we to organize it, and you give yourself a headache. Take all that stuff, clear the cobwebs out of your head, and put it on a mind map. Literally, it is a mapping of your mind as relates to the idea at hand. So the first thing I do is take my vision and make it real for my team, because they can't get in my head. If they even they could, they may not be able to understand what the heck's

going on there. I've been told them, just a different kind of guy. I'm operating on different juice. I operate three four times faster and everybody else when they get up in the morning, right down the street and around the blocks, you know I've finished when they're starting. And I'm also just I'm just I'm operinging a different bit rate. But I'm also maybe operating. I'm just thinking differently than everybody else. I'm at thirty thousand foot and they're at

you know, three thousand feet or three hundred feet. Because they're tacticals. Most people are managers. They're just trying to get stuff done on their to do list in front of them. It's very different from executing against a vision, and the Bible says, well, there is no vision that people perish. So you have to have a vision. You have to be disciplined about keeping it. So I have mind maps, is my first suggestion for you. It works in my business life. And here's a success hack. Is

a cheat she can give you now. It also works in your personal life. Your personalize needs to be organized just like your business life. Use mind maps to map out a project, an initiative of your goals for twenty twenty five, whatever it is, a new startup, business, restructuring, whatever it is. You know you're going to send your kids to college. You want to map that out over the next five years. How you're going to pay for it. Start with a mind map. Okay, so here's my map

for achievement of anything. Again, I would say one more time, vision, what am I doing? Why? Mission? Why am I doing that thing? Like, what's the purpose behind that? Uh strategy? Okay, so my mission to go back to my missions. You know, one of my missions is to un is to unleash untapped human potential at scale. It's one of my missions. So, uh, my vision might be the change of the world in

my lifetime. My mission might wait to do that is to unleash untapped human potential at scale, to create an economic infrastructure for underserved America, and so on and so forth. And so you can look through my vision, see my mission and vision might also be to extend on the third reconstruction, or do the work of the third reconstruction, which was the work that maybe doctor King and ambassor

Andrew Young we would be doing. Uh and doctor King was still alive today, Andrew Young is very much alive, or or if Frederick Douglas Nabam Lincoln was still alive today, that was the first reconstruction in the second what I believe this is a third reconstruction. So my vision might be big, you know, and audacious, which is to you know, X, Y and Z whatever that big bode here at big Bode audacious idea is that's your vision for yourself. My vision's this crazy big. Your vision might be to become

a business owner or have financial freedom or whatever. It's all. Everybody's vision is different. Your mission, right, is a bit more tangible. Right, And you've heard just now what my mission is, right, and your mission should align with your vision and then your strategy. Okay, how are you going to go about this? Like what route are you going to take to get to this objective? And then you have a business plan. Okay, how's that? Strategy and admission

and vision get codified and run the ground. PhDs are good, PhDs are better. Then you have execution. That is what it sounds like. You know, there's nothing better than getting stuff done. So if there's an end of the story, can we please start there. Let's get about the business of getting it done. And don't let the perfect be the death of the good. Sometimes you just need to oftentimes just get out there and do it. You can always, you know, fix it, repair it, upgraded, change it while

you're out there. But don't wait for things to be perfect before you start something. You'll never start anything. Tactics, it is against it. Most people are there are tactical in their life. Most people getting up and that's all they're doing is just tactical stuff, and they're urgent. Is

crowding out the importance in their life. They can't figure out why they're not making any progress because busyness is different from business to dos again it is when it says again from tactics, tactical is Okay, how do I achieve this project or this objective today that my boss, my vision has given me or maybe it is your boss and to do's right or that's what they sound like. And then literally you want to have a software for todos. I'm gonna get to that in a minute. Two dons again,

you want to confirm you did the toadoos assessment? How are you going to evaluate whether you were effective at the pieces? I just articulated vision, mission, strategy, business plants, Hugan tactics to dos to dons. What's your assessment with that? Be honest? Did you screw up? If so, how, where, when and how it went? And why? Readjustment based on your assessment? Right? So yeah, readjustment and then give yourself

a software grade, a mental software grade. Okay, how do I now take what I've learned and make myself better tomorrow?

You should go to bed tonight. You should get up in the morning smarter and wiser, more fine than you were, a better person even than you were when you went to bed last night, because you've got a new mindset or refined thought process, and you've got some sleep, and then you're gonna give yourself a software grade, and then you're gonna come back to vision the next day, and everything you do in that day has to align with vision or why are you doing it? You can waste

my money occasionally. You can't waste my time. I'm ruthless about my time. Out Let anybody waste my time. I can waste my time. You can't. Okay, So now let's get into the tools to achieve the things that I just said on this graph. Okay, and I've had this this, I've been using this graph for two plus decades. Right, So mind mapping software. I told you I used mind Master, I suggested Mindly, have suggested I thoughts as other alternatives,

but use what you like. There's literally hundreds of software that are available. To find the one that you really enjoy. Then I have I use From there, I use something called Confluence. Well in truth, I have a note taking app it's really for crazy people called Obsidian. It sounds like obsessed, but it's Obsidian, and it uses a technology or an approach called markdowns, which I won't get into in this video. But this is essentially your second brain. Okay,

this is the second brain. This is you talking to you. If you can keep one hundred things in your head. This allows you to keep one hundred thousand things in your computer. And it's just it's it's just you talking to you. Nobody. No one sees my Obsidian notes but me, So just look into it. I call it my second brain. But you need a note taking app. So you take this vision, this this mind map, and now you've got to make some comments yourself about how are you going

to strategize to get this done? And then I've got this Confluence software right, which is documents storage, cloud based document and knowledge sharing with your team whoever's working with you on this stuff, and an active collaboration. You can have twenty thirty forty fifty people collaborating working with you on the business plan, the strategy plan, whatever it is.

You're working on the project at the same time on a document that's live that came from you, you know, consolidation of your note taking which was which was birth through your vision. Okay. So now I've got you from vision right and mind mapping. Then I've taken you to note taking with Obsidian, okay, or any note taking app you like. Don't you don't have to use your subsidian.

I'm just giving you ideas of what I use, and then I have stepped into a suite of software that I use, the first of which is Confluence Confluence, and Confluence is this collaborative tool. You don't have to use Confluence. You're gonna use whatever you like. This is just what I use, and it is not I outgrow a lot of things, but I have not outgrown this. And that's saying a lot for this software, but I have not yet outgrown it. I also use ever Note to store

things that are one offs. So ever Note is cloud based. And you know, if you've got your birth certificate, you know you're gonna need that. At some point you're gonna be flying around somewhere. You're gonna need your birth certificate. It won't be won't be to get to your house, get to your safe. You're gonna be in Nebraska or someplace you need your birth certificate. And you don't want

to be walking around with all this stuff. I used to go to Maui on a retreat twice a year, and literally I have this sixty seventy pound bag that I throw at my shoulder. All these books I wanted to read when I was a mall and retreat and now just take my iPad. All my books are loaded here, so you try to digitize as much as you can. I hate paper. There's nothing. There's not a piece of paper that I use in the course of the day anymore. Now I used to use nothing but paper once upon

a time. Everything I use now is digital encrypted, which means it has a deep security application to it, and cloud based with encryption, which means it's hard for people to basically steal your stuff. Ever. Note again, a birth certificate, I only careful. I tell you what to put in here, and I want to take it because I want you blaming me if it doesn't work out. But it's one off. Receipts warranties is the easy stuff. Copies of important things

go in every note. I then use from Confluence, I use Trello, and Trello is a lovely, wonderful, visually stimulating program that allows you to do project management. And the collaboration with Confluence has now moved into project management. How you're going to get this thing. You're going to run it down ground to get it down. And so I have project boards, organizational and project boards and have cards in those projects that take this big vision and crunch it,

crunch it, crunch it down to manageable steps. Right. And then we won't get into this today. But it's something called GIRA j I r A that is deep project management. Well, we won't get in that today. That's a bridge too far. I want to give you head I want to give you a headache, but project management, you know. And I used to use another software before TrailO called Airtable. And then one note is on Microsoft. But one note is

note taking in the Microsoft as a whole suite. So there's a whole Microsoft version of what I'm telling you. But there's two sides of my organization. There's the hunter side of my organization. I'm the hunt. I'm the chief Hunter, going and get it, going, to get the business, going to get the you know, the relationships, the joint ventures, the securing the future, closing the deal, you know, launching new projects and products. But hunting, that's what I do.

There's a hunting group, there's hunter organization. Every organization is a hunter, skinner and a cook. Okay, the hunter that's me. Call it business acquisition. Keep that simple skinner, that's analysis and administration. Right. My chief of staff is my chief of staff. And she also is the chief administrative officer for our companies, right, so she is very high level executive and she's administering. And my chief financial officer is also part of the Skinner Skinner group. Right, So the

Hunter Skinner this Cook. So the guy who is in charge of my products and my programs, he's delivering on my promises. That's the Cook. So the Skinner and Cook is a known You need of particularly you get organies as big as mine as mine is. We have you know, US one hundred standardization. You need policies and procedures. You need dependability, You need a software backbone that you know

won't break. You need standardization. Uh, this is the general army stuff, right and this get this wrong and your whole thing freezes up. You cannot be it cannot be based on our personality. So we use Microsoft for that full disclosure. But the Hunter side of the house we use io Apple products for that and these customized apps that I have decided we're best in class over time. Because I'm really an underground tech geek. I don't know

if you knew that I'm really a techie. I've run around with computers in my head have you ever seen me walking through the airport or whatever. If you see me sitting down with any free time, it's good chance I got my iPad app. I might have my app iPad out and a little magnetic because max safe allows things to stick to the to the iPad and stick

to your eye. Stick your iPhone there too. You might see me have my iPhone up, iPad out with a floating keyboard and a magnetic elegant magnetic device next to the keyboard where I put my iPhone, so everything is I've got field of view. Sometimes if you you might see me out, I'll have my Mac, my iPad connected to my Mac, and my phone connected to my Mac also, and I've got three in that example, three screens of work going at the same time, three independent screens of work.

But that's another video for another time, dealing with efficiency. Coming back to the tool. So we're now at Trello again. I've used other products. I've explained to you now that there's a getting side of the house, the hunter side. That's me and I've been taking it from zero to

one hundred million dollars a year in activity. Then there's a skinner in the cook side of the house, and we have a four star Sharing Navigator reading, which I do walk through when we do the other video on how to build a nonprofit, which essentially means we're like a four We're like a triple A bond rating on Wall Street, which is extraordinarily good. So we have a fast running organization, fast growing organization, but also stabilized, conservatively managed.

We've got all the ratios and numbers, so they call it KPIs keep performing indicators are in all the right places where your bankers and your financiers, your backers, your partners want to see those numbers. Your donors if you're a nonprofit, want to see that most of your money's going to helping people. You need technology to keep track of all that. You can't keep track of it in your heads. Impossible. World's moving too fast these days. So

by the way, I'm not doing any notes here. I'm just talking to you from literally not even my memory. This is this is just my flow. My intuition is I'm talking to you organically, giving you my heart and my soul of how I run my enterprise. So hopefully you're finding this very valuable and hopefully you're taking lots of notes. So we've gotten down to project management, which is where a lot of stuff happens, and I project

manage everything. Right, You've got to understand again, the PhDs are good, but PhDs are even better, or at least equally as good. You can't just have a vision. Don't let the perfect become of the death of the goods. You get it half a success as showing up and having good habits. And I show up every day, and my good habits are aided by this technology that I'm

trying to get your hip on. And so Trello is really big in my life, and I look at it several times a day, certainly in the morning, and I do a lot of left bright analytical work in the morning, and I do right brain creative work late at night. So then I go from Trello to Slack right slack And by the way, cheat sheet here, Slack, Trello and Confluence are owned by the same company, and you can, when you get really good at this, you can jump from one app to the other inside of the app,

never having to leave. So talk about being effective well. Slack is used for essentially for confidential, encrypted targeted text you're testing along a channel of activity. So you have a Slack channel for administration, a Slack channel this is if you're running a company for marketing, a Slack channel for finance and making this up, a Slack channel for product development, a Slack channel for customer service. You decide what's the Slack channel, name is, what the topic is.

I used to do Slack channels even by micro projects. In fact, to this day, we still have a Slack channel for every trip that I take, like the trip I'm one now has its dedicated Slack channel, And people who are in Slack channel A may not be in Slack channel C and D and F. These are different projects that require different skills and different clearances, security clearances and all that stuff because we're dealing with confidential information

and so on and so forth. So Slack is a wonderful I know the guy who made it, breat guy, by the way, and I think he sold it to a at I get the name right at Lesian, which is which owns uh these three softwares that I just mentioned, and I'm encouraging you to to to to get serious about looking to them as as as options in your life. Your ad Lesian A t L A s S I A N is the owner. It's a Nordic area company in Europe. Uh. They own Slack, they own Trello and

their own confluence. Okay, so now we got it down to texting and back and forth. And these are non urgent texts. Right then you have regular texting on your phone for things that are like right now. But do not, please hear me, do not try to manage your business by texting. That is, I noticed that, I know that this generation loves texting. You cannot manage your business by texting. You got a text, gets lost, you don't know where it wents, you don't know know what you said. Do

not that. In fact, texting is actually there's a lot of risk these days of countries and companies trying to rob you and defraud you by going through your text messaging or grabbing your text messages before it gets to the cloud. It's all kind of risk with just doing raw texting. You want to do texting on a platform if you can that's again encrypted, something like WhatsApp. There are other platforms, but again for non urgent stuff Slack and never put pass codes all that stuff in a

text message. By the way, case in case you want some unsecured network and somebody stills gets that information, they can take your whole identity. So I'm now given you a range of tools that I use. This is these things that I use. I also use other twos, and I use Salesforce for my again, this is the non special force a side of my operations. And I use Podio, which is that's not important today, but that's how I

talk to my employees and team members. My general army is how I talk to them and how they talk to each other. That's tied to the Microsoft side of my house. That's another video for another time. So these are some examples of how I use these technologies. And I'll take a vision from a mind map, I'll drag it to the ground with my note taking in Obsidian. I'll then take all of my notes from Obsidian. I'll consolidate those notes into something I don't mind now the

publics of my team seeing. I'll then throw that into Confluence and make it a word document. Well, I'm thrown the Confluence and make it a work, a document we can work on, and I encourage my team to come and help me refine that thought process to turn it from vision into a business plan. Then once I've got a new business plan, I then converted into a word document and filed away in Dropbox. It's another subset app I use, similar to Evernoe. It's not primary, but it's

a place where I store some source documents. Then once I've done it with Confluence, then I go into typically into Trello set. Trello's a whole another thing all but can do it podcast just on Trello. But I've given you enough to what your appetite if you're interested, And that's where I do project management. Again, Gira is a way to plug in also on Leasian to plug in to Trello to do deep project management. We won't talk about that today. And then Slack again targeted text messaging

and communication. But do not try to manage enterprises from Slack. Don't try to get Slack to do more than it's designed to do. And then I told you you can use regular texting, but I think you should do be encrypted for right now. Something's urgent, need to talk to you right now sort of stuff, and take big ideas and break them down into small, actionable concepts that you

can track. And then in Trello. I use things like in Trello and a card, I use it to do I love my favorite thing is the favorite sub app and Trello is a to do list. So every car, every card in Trello, a card is where you have an activity, has a to do list. So I might have, you know, fifty cards on a Trello board, and each one of them has its own individual to do lists, and I go through there and I check those boxes. It's a very good feeling to feel like you check

something and got something done. I check it myself. You'd also do to do lists in calendars and confluence with your team. So I hope this has been helpful as a starter set on how you can have two people and look like and feel like you've got twenty to have five or ten people, it feel like you've got fifty or one hundred to have my case, four hundred and feel like you have four thousand, maybe even forty thousand employees, not forty thousand, four thousand employees because you're

just that tight. How do you I can't The one thing I can't manufacture is more time, right, and I'm ruthless about my time. How do you create more time you cheat technology. If you're very smart and using technology to make you more efficient, it allows you to be more present. That's what I called it. Being a present a gift. And there's no yesterday and there's no tomorrow, right, those are illusions. All you have is this moment make

and you want to maximize this moment. You want to be completely present in this moment, which means you want to be organized. The Bible even talks of being you know, to organization and being neat and clean, So you want to be organized at your mind. The clutter out your mind, which is why you want to use mind maps. Get all that clutter and the dust and those all the main ideas and sticky those in your brain. Is clear it all out and put it in one, two, ten,

fifty mind maps, doesn't matter. These are your mind maps. Share the mind maps to your team and then as needed basis to help them understand how you are thinking. And then and then and then run every idea down to ground in up you call it a fancy to do list if you want, but a project plan. And then there's budgeting software like you know, there's Excel or you can I use Excel to do budgets, but you can use budgeting software like Quicken or quick Books. You

should definitely have a budget and budgeting software. But that's not what this is about. I'm out of running budgets of myself for myself, I'm running. I'm now working more on the businesses than in the businesses uh where I used to do have every task and in those cases when I was just starting out in business, your best friend is a budget. If you if you love what

you're doing, you need a budget. If you love your your wife, your wife loves you, then you should have a budget because a budget is a way so sure that whatever you're doing can be sustained, because if your outflow sets your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. I can do this forever of helping to unpack how

I use these technologies. Won't you leave some comments when you when when you where you hear this, If you're able to comment, or either you're you're listening to this on iHeart or wherever you listen to your podcasts, then make sure you go over to the social media platforms and leave me a note saying John, I heard you on your podcast this week and here's my question for you.

If you want me to unpack this, I'm happy to answer very Specif the questions how to go from nothing to something, they just tell you go do it, well, you're confused, and it's what you don't know that you don't know that is killing you. But you think you know, and Where're supposed to learn all this stuff. So I'm just giving you. I'm giving you cheat sheets and shortcuts to and life hacks success hacks, because I'm already I've already succeeded in. This is not speculation. If it's worked

for me to work for you now. If you're lazy, if you won't, if you're not consistent, if you don't have good habits, if you're not going to do this every day. I work out every day fifteen minutes or more when I get up in the morning. There's no excuses. The first thing I do stretch and workout, and this is a version of stretching and working out again, showing up, being consistent and good habits. If you're not going to

show up, you're not gonna be consistent. If you're gonna do a Tuesday and Friday and the next Monday and then skip a week like you're going like going to the gym or using that treadmill that has clothes on it. Then don't even bother doing this right. You can still do the mind mapping part that will help, but you're not going to get any momentum you build again. You need to you build wealth by compounding. It's not just financial wealth, it's the wealth of ideas. It's the wealth.

It's building an organization that is valuable. And you need momentum. You need consistency. People. You know that they can count you Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be the same as Monday was. And then the next Monday when you come back from your break, there you go again being consistent. Then they can literally bank on you, and they're willing to lead in, lead into you. Okay, let

me give you this bonus. I could again this technology stuff I could talk about all day and don't even get me back into how I used to roll around with computers back when it was not in vogue as a kid, and I used to have I had a radio shack computer set that I had as a kid. I had a compact computer that weighed fifty pounds that was called a portable computer back then fifty to seventy

five pounds. I had one computer that I would go on a plane with coach seats back then cheap coach seats and on airlines that don't exist anymore, and I would have I would take the tray and God blessed people who are sitting next to me, I apologize with you. You're one of those who sitting next to me. And

I have this. I had this beautiful carrying case that was leather, and then the front of it would flip down and that would be the keyboards on the on the port book computer I was using that weighed fifty pounds, maybe that would weigh thirty five pounds, okay, the keyboard, and then on the other side it would flip out and that would be the printer. This is in my coach seat now. And then on the top I'd flip

that up and that'd be Oh. That was a fax machine that remember the plain paper faxes and also the facts paper that curled up. If you were if you had some money, you had plain paper facts. But this is generation realized where a fax machine is. Anyway, I had all that in a portable computer that I that I yeah, I took over the whole row in coach when I was flying, and that I would plug that into the wall into the port in my seat, or

I had some battery power also. That was you know, and I'd run my businesses and all the devices and technology has gotten smaller. I used to have a brick a phone, a brick that would go on my shoulder at forty five cents a minute. Back those days, I had the first mobile phones ever. I've been using technology my whole life. People laughed at me back then. They're not laughing anymore. Right, So, first people will ignore you, then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try. Well, First they'll

ignore you, then they'll criticize you. Then they'll try to copy you. Then you win. First ignore you, then they'll criticize you, try to get you off the stage competition. Then they're trying to copy you, and they're using this technology being efficient. They won't be able to because because the devil's lazy, they just don't want to do the work. But it's only successfully. It comes before the word work

in a dictionary because it's alphabetical. So first, first he will ignore you, then they'll criticize you, then they'll try to copy you. Then you win, and you just keep your foot of the gas and just don't give up. You just don't stop. Even if you hit a wall, you over the round it, through it, you don't get to it. You just never stop, right, don't let the purpose become the death of the good. Just never ever, ever,

ever stop and think about never stopping. When I'm traveling, which is a lot, I use certain products, and I'm gonna put a photo here and have my team put a photo here of a couple of shots of what some of my travel setups look like. But I use cues with which I which I use for different types

of things. Toilet trees, a night where workout year, formal dress shirts, casual dress shirts, because again, you don't be sitting there spending time trying to run through your bag unorganized wears this shirt and iron it and all that kind of stuff. I know exactly what I'm going to takes me a minute a second, define it. I grab that, and I've already saved that valuable commodity. It's talked about time.

It also looks good. I'm a little vain, but I keep myself organized, and I use to me luggage to you, am I. They're expensive, but they have a lifetime guarantee warranty and a little heavier than normal luggage. But they don't break. And when they if something does break up a zipper breaks, they'll fix it like you. Literally just drop it off to me. They give you a loaner.

Can you believe that they give you a loaner. You give them the luggage they sent, They fix it like new, They send it to you a month or two later, and then you give them the loaner back and gone about your business. They even clean it for you. Yeah. Again, these are these are life hacks that that I use. I'm looking at my too me backpack. I've got my iPad, I've got my mac book. I've got all of my uh prepackaged A chargers and I mean connecting devices, including international,

which is where I'm now. But I also have several battery packs that are pre charged because you may be up in another country or someplace that doesn't have the capacity to charge, so have more cords than you need. These are investments that will pay dividends. But you buy the stuff once you wanted to buy it ever again, and I'm very serious about my shoes, Like I only wear Ferragamo shoes because I was tired of my feet hurting.

I used to wear Louis Vauton boots and all that stuff for years, not because I was being bougie, because they really make good shoes and my feet. Never hurt your feet. Nothing's worth than your feet hurting. Can I get an a man? Right? So my Ferragamos that they don't hurt my feet. It can go all day online. They look great and they built great, and it's a great investment. Shoot. You can even sell some of this stuff later on. If the same bags I use for

business I've been using for decades now. I've got some bags I've owned for more than ten years. And if you're a good bag, you can clean it up, put you know, leather cleaner on it or fabric cleaner, clean it up, put it in a stored away, come back to it, you know, different season you've been having worked, used it for a couple of years, pull it down, you got your own inventory, and use it again. And you were like, oh,

that's so cool. Where'd you get that from? I want to tell them this stuff is eight years old, but it's just timeless. And when you buy things that are

classy and timeless, they last forever. So yeah, once you ask me questions, because there's so much in my head right now, But what I wanted to want you to ask me questions about what you would like me to share with you, and I'll adam and answer them in the comments in on the social media channels where you'll see this video posted the video version this podcast posted.

But yeah, my suits are pre packed to recently bought all my suits from a minority owned vendor in drug clothing in la I did that for twenty five years. Now use him in a local tailor in Atlanta. But my suits are pre defined. Make sure you always carry black suits and some white shirts. You do other stuff which you need, your fundamentals, make sure you get your basics in place again, you buy it right, buy it well, you'll buy it once. All right, that's enough for one

podcast sending you love and light. This has been a masterclass on my tools and trips and tips, my hacks, my time hacks, and ways to make you better. I hope you enjoyed this. As John O'Brien, love and light and all. That's right. Let's go kill it in twenty twenty five. See you next week. Tell a friend to get Money and Wealth on their phone as a podcast subscription. Get Financial Literacy for All the book that's the best seller number one since the last April in business finance.

Get that book Financial Literacy for All. You're already having the book, Please leave an online review today. I want to see hundreds of reviews on Amazon and Walmart and Apple platforms, and also black bookstores. By the way, Also, if you buy books books from a minority or small bookstore, small business books for that's a cool thing too. Go

to Operation Hope and tell him I sent you. They'll give you a one thousand dollars starter scholarship for coaching and counseling at one of my fifteen hundred locations nationwide to be your private banker. Let's go change the world. It's up to us. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.