Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Briant, a production of The Black Effect podcast Network and iHeartRadio.
Hey Hey, it's John O'Brien This is money and Wealth.
And I'm popping my collar because I paid my taxes and I'm happy about it.
Right.
Actually, I got a pretty good deal this year. Last year, it was an okay deal. In the year before that, it was a painful deal because I paid the most taxes I'd ever paid in my life.
It was seven.
Figures in taxes alone. In fact, my state tax bill was larger than any tax I'd ever paid period in my life, just my state tax bill.
My federal tax bill was seven figures by itself. But I was happy to do it. Listen to me, now, I was happy to do it because that meant I made money. I even generated some generational wealth. I forget what year it was, but it was, you know, two, three, four years ago where I'd paid this enormous tax bill. But don't get upset with Uncle Sam. Because you're paying a tax bill, it means that you're actually making some money.
You might want to be upset when you're not paying a tax bill because it made mean you're broke and don't be smarty pans and decide you're going to skip out on your tax bill. I'd rather rather steal from my mother got rest of her soul, than still from from the federal government of the irs. They didn't get alcohopone from murdering man.
They got alcopone on tax evasion and put that man under the jail.
He died in.
Prison, cool smooth, all that he avoided all those things he actually did, which was literally murders and stickups and all kinds of stuff. But they couldn't catch them. But they said, basically, look, we can't prove you broke these laws and committed these crimes, but you seem to have a lifestyle that doesn't make any sense, and we can't you can't justify where you made this money. So you
have evaded taxation because you didn't report the income. So it's really deep American American American capitalism is American government is deep.
It's like, we maybe convict you that it's illegal, but you dang if you're.
Gonna pay your taxes on your comp on your on the income that you made, or we'll get you that way. And so they got them that way. And they're not gonna get me that way. I'm gonna pay my taxes.
Uh.
Now, we just had tax season, and you shouldn't be paying more taxes than you have to. And uh, this tax system is designed for you to maximize your tax benefit. The whole thing about owning a home, the tax structure, the tax system. I don't want to use that word again. The taxing infrastructure in America is designed to benefit home ownership. That's what I was trying to say. So, you write off the most of a thirty year mortgage twenty on average, twenty of the thirty year mortgage.
You write it off through.
Mortgage interest payments, and you will be able to get a lot of that back in a tax refund at the end of the year. So if you're renting from me a home or an apartment, or from some other investor, you're opening a window and throwing your money out the window. There are times for you to be a renter. Okay, I'm not hating on that. I've been a renter. There's been times to be a renter, but you get no
benefit from that. But if you own a home and you're basically paying the same for rental for mortgage ownership home ownership as you would for rental. If you own a home, then you're going to get a lot of that money you paid against the mortgage back through a tax refund.
At the end of the year.
You get the benefit of appreciation, the benefit of depreciation, a tax benefit, and you get to write off a lot of the mortgage payments because a lot of its mortgage interest in those first those first years. Now, writing things off you, I'm gonna be a little tongue in cheek here.
Now.
You can't write off the strip club guys. You can't write off you know, your girlfriend. You might not even make it. Write off your wardrobe. I'm actually serious about this. Now, if you if you're in a profession where like the entertainment business, and you think, well, this is directly tied to I mean, I'm a businessman. I'd like to be able to think that my wardrobe is complement to my business and it's directly ti to it. It is not a forgone conclusion. And you can write off your wardrobes.
You need to talk to your tax person. You can't write off if you work from your house. You can't write off the whole house. Please, I don't want you to be audited. I don't want you to get in trouble. Please listen to me. You can write off the portion of the house that you're using for business purposes. There's an office in your house, right you can tax that should be tax deductible.
Check with your tax professional.
Don't just take my word for it, but that part of the house you're using for tax for business purposes should qualify as a tax write off. All of your car may not be tax deductible, but the part that you're using for business purposes. Even if you want to be very specific, you can do mileage calculations and do it that way, but you need to be very thoughtful about what's a business expense and what you can write
off and what you can't. Certain things you absolutely will not be able to write off because this well nuts. I've mentioned a couple examples there. But you can write off things that have a direct business correlation, or things that are covered by the tax code, like many kinds of real estate and mortgage payments and interest expense on businesses and again anything if you have a side business or a primary business, then those direct business expenses you'll
be able to write off. I also want to very briefly touch on this really falsehood that politicians play games, what they say that rich people don't pay money. The reality is that most taxes actually in this country, most income for America is paid by the wealthy people. I guess, like me, seventy or eighty percent of all the taxes in the country are paid for by those at the
highest income bracket. So what's all this about the wealth You don't pay taxes, Well, they don't pay a lot of percentage wise of income taxes, so that if they're not paying income taxes, and what are they paying. They're paying in many cases capital gain taxes. So income taxes might be thirty percent, thirty five percent, forty five percent, uh, if you can stay in federal taxes might even be
some cases like California might be approaching fifty percent. If you're making a bunch of your money, you know, from performing as an actor or an entertainer or a sports figure or whatever, you're making a lot of income W two income they I guess it called you're in a sitcom, a t a situation comedy, you're on a TV show or something, and you're getting a W two paycheck. Then they may withhold, you know, thirty five to forty percent of your taxes.
You may be in that tax bracket.
Uh. That's why they say that Warren Buffet pays less taxes than its secretary. What I mean by that, well, she's getting an income. Well, Warren Buffet's not getting a paycheck. He may choose I don't want an income, don't pay me a paycheck. Because what he does is he when he sells stock, he gets hit with a capital gains tax. When somebody sells like real estate like me, that you get hit with a capital gains tax, which is typically about twenty percent twenty one percent of whatever the thing
you sold is value. That so if it's worth a million dollars, you may get hit with a two hundred thousand dollars tax bill all at once, and you know, happy to pay it. We're not happy to pay it, but you pay it. And that's a lot of money. And so a lot of this country eats. Income comes from the wealthy paying a combination of income tax and capital gains tax. There's other kinds of taxes, but I'm
trying to make this simple. But don't listen to people who tell you that just because a wealthy person is not paying income tax their tax bracket, well they're paying less an income tax in the secretary because the secretary has got to sell and.
Is earning a paycheck every two weeks.
And as with holdings, and the boss may not be on any salary at all, which means you can't tax something it doesn't exist. Very very very wealthy people don't want an income Okay, as a funny one for you, all right, John O'Brien, this is money and wealth and this is uh the tax season. So I want you
to be tax smart. Pay your fair share because well that means you're doing really well and you live in the most secure economy in the world with the best laws and its best infrastructure, the best protections of the law that costs something. And the government is that if you get in a lawsuit, the government there the laws. You know you can rely on the laws to be sturdy and resilient. You have intellectual property rights that are preserved, you have real property rights that are you know will
be preserved, then protect it. That's the government of work. I'm not advocating for the government, just saying that those things call something you look roads, gutters, street lights, subways that that somebody's got to pay for that.
The government pays for that.
You're in a highway and you're making money because you want to sell something to somebody. Well, you're on driving on the highway. That's the public and you, as a taxpayer, you pay for that. Schools are not free. Schools are paid for by you and me. So that's why you should also want to vote. Because you're you're a shareholder. You have assets, and your assets are not just on your ass.
You own things.
That's why when you see a house that's got line up to you know, your net, it's because that's probably a renter. Because nobody washes rental cars. But once you own a home, there's a quote for you. Nobody want. Nobody washes rental cars. Once you own a home, are you owned some property all of a sudden you become real concerned about it, and now you're a stakeholder, and now you typically want to vote to protect your stake in what you have and to have a say in how governments do their business.
And so there you go.
All right, So there's a civics lessons and a tax lesson, and the first positive things somebody's ever said to you about the government the irs, I bet all right, And I haven't been audited yet. I'm sure it's coming at some point, but I've been audited. I don't think i've been audited. But there was a time where I didn't pay taxes for years and I got hit with very serious penalties back in the day when I was in my teens, from the Franchise Tax Board and from the
state of California. It hit me hard and I had to catch up. So it's not Life's not always been a better roses, but I think I've been relatively smart about, you know, paying my fair share of taxes, both income tax and capital gains taxes, but also taking my reasonable write offs of things that are legitimate business expenses.
And a lot of my life is business because I'm always doing it.
So there you go. I hope this has been helpful. Make sure you have a tax pro. Sure that your tax pro gives back to the community. Choose one that does give back to the community. By the way, they can donate that a few hours of their time as a tax pro to help businesses come up with like the the one Men and Black Business initiative like my firm Apryo does here in Atlanta.
So get a tax pro get a lawyer, and of course get a life. You're listening to this, you already have a life, all right, Love you, John Hope Brien. Hey, this is.
John Hope Brian on money and wealth, and I'm going to tackle a topic today that is a little controversial, which is self esteem versus confidence, particularly with reguard to my African American brothers and sisters. So why is this important and why does it have to do with money and wealth? Because if your assets are all on your ass,
is a reason for it. If you spend, if you produce one point six trillion dollars in consume economic output as a race, but notinety one percent of that is consumption, there's a reason for it. If the number one way to build wealth is home ownership and we don't really own homes, there's a reason for it. And there's a reason why America has African American ghettos and not really any kind of other kind of ghettos.
And it has to do with slavery.
It has to do with destroying and destroyed self esteem.
We're brilliant people, African.
Americans, We've been doing so much with so little for so long. We could almost do anything with nothing. We have, you know, succeeded against the odds. We were brought here as brilliant agricultural geniuses of the land and had the self esteem beaten up out of us for literally.
Three hundred years.
So I had to do the math sixteen nineteen to the really the mid nineteen.
Sixties, even before America was America, you know.
And this is not even a podcast of a race or slavery or it has nothing to do with it. I'm just giving you the backstory to understand you could make a mistake and not be one. We're actually the
opposite where geniuses were amazing. But there was an intentional attempt, which I'll do in another podcast to break down the why as to why African Americans, with all our genius, with all of our outside success all around the world, I think of the majority of us are clinically undiagnosed depressed, and that depression creates a surviving mindset, and a surviving mindset is directly in conflict with a thriving mindset and a winning mindset.
Winners of builders. If you're a surviving mindset.
You are always looking for risk and issues, and the glass is half fifty nine half full. You tend to be more cynical than skeptical. Now you generalize, you discriminate. So yes, these are generalizations, but they tend to stick. And I'm going to frame this in a way that makes it perfectly clear. I'm going to give you the economic framework first, because it's a raise to white people too.
So if the issue was.
Only race, right, that defines success or failures, self esteem and confidence and all that kind of stuff, then you would not have rich whites and poor whites.
You just have rich whites. If the issue is just race, you just have rich whites.
But the largest population of poverty in this country is actually white poverty.
I'll go one step further.
The number one group dying in this country are high school educated white men.
Lack of hope.
Opioid addiction is the trigger, but it's really lack of hope.
Not go to African Americans for a minute.
If black was the same, just like I just said, the white was the same, and it wasn't a cultural issue because somebody didn't say, John, why are you picking on your own people?
I'm not picking on anybody.
I'm breaking some stuff down so that we can understand it so we can fix it.
Just the opposite.
Actually, I said, we've been picked on, and we picked ourselves up. Like as I said, we've been doing so much with so little for so long. We could almost do anything with nothing. But I don't want you an expert in surviving. I want you an.
Expert in thriving and winning. Can I get an amen?
So I talked about whites, now black, poor whites and poor blacks. These are obvious, but no one ever says it. So the issue was only rased and all black should be the same too. But the Federal Reserve at Boston did a survey about five to seven years ago on the net worth of everybody in Boston. They found that whites had a six figure net worth. They found that Caribbean blacks had it I think it was a twelve
hundred dollars net worth. And they found that African Americans had net worth of seven bucks.
That's right, seven dollars.
And when they put this on the front page of the Boston Globe, and you can't pull it up on the internet, by the way, it said blacks net worth seven dollars, and it had to say this is not a typo in the headline because it was so dramatic.
And if it was just race, why wouldn't all blacks have the same networth? Why wouldn't all whites have the same network?
Because culture and environment matter, and so we can be proud that we have survived and all this torture. But if there's some PTSD there, there's some damage to our psyche and our spirit and our self esteeming.
As I've often said, if I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you.
If I don't feel good about me, I'm not gonna 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 if I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm gonna make your life a living hell, because whatever goes around comes around. So now broken down and hopefully in the way, it's sufficient the economic differences even within the
same group of black people. And I'm gonna say something I can't absolutely true say is the fact, but I believe it based on me traveling the countless cities across this country. They're not Ghanaian ghettos in America. They're Ghanaian communities. They're not Jamaican ghettos in America. There are Jamaican communities where Jamaicans live together, working class, middle class neighborhoods. I can think of some in the Five Boroughs right now,
as example. There are Ethiopian communities, lots of them. There are South African communities and so on and so forth, right, but.
They're only black ghettos.
African American so African American communities where you see check Cashers, Patia only now you see these other communities, right, But it's intensely focused in African American communities because us, well, we were broken and people are now praying on that brokenness. Where so now I'm going to get to self esteem and confidence. So you can't fix this stuff unless you
recognize it. If you look at the majority of ghettos and inner cities in America where people proliferate, they tend to be mostly African American versus communities where different people live, and there's oppressive environments in those neighborhoods and communities.
Because those impressive environments are.
Profitable to some people and negative to the people that they're subject to it. But maybe you don't even notice it because we're so used to surviving and so used to brokenness that we think it's okay. We think it's okay for a check cash or to the next to a payda loan lender, to rento store or title lender, linkt store, pasha. By the way, that actually does exist in low wealth communities.
Of all kinds.
I'm not just praying on that, but I'm just giveing and that as an example. Right and now now I'm going to pivot to something that I think does differentiate healthy from those trying to heal those who need to heal. So self esteem versus confidence, those things are different. Self esteem is internal and confidence is really external. And so confidence comes from your competence. You're confident about something, so you express that through a confidence. I'll come back to
that in a moment. Self esteem is how I esteem myself. So if you look at Caribbean blacks and you look at African blacks as an example, you see people and I'm generalizing. Whenever you generalize, you discriminate that it's true. But follow me for a moment, I'm making a point. If you go if you look at those who come from the Caribbean and come from Africa, you generally speaking see fine people who have high self esteem but low levels of initially of confidence when they come to America.
Why because the self esteem comes from nuclear families, mom and dad, husbands and wives.
It comes from seeing the.
Denis that looks like you, the mayor that looks like you, the governor looks like you, the CEO that looks at you, the saint looks like you, the passion looks like you, and the crooks looking.
Like you too. Everybody looks like you.
So there's a self esteem that comes from having a healthy spiritual, emotional, psychological environment.
Are you with me so far?
But they have a low level of confidence because they come from a small and developing economy that's not cutting edge economically. It's not where you take your skills and put it to work against other people at the top of their game. And so as a result of that, you don't really know whether you've been taught is truly top the mark. So you may not have the confidence that comes from competition at the highest level and winning. So you may have low confidence, but high self esteem.
The opposite is true for African Americans. In American you have people who have high confidence, extremely high confidence, but typically low self esteem. Now low self esteem for the meat reasons I just mentioned. People have beaten the love out of us, beaten the confidence and self esteem out of us, beaten the joy out.
Of us because they needed us to not create.
A problem back in the day. Keep you in that box just become human machinery for hundreds of years, but it damaged our spirit and it ruined our families. I think the fire pillows of success as much education as you can shut down your throat.
This is from my book Up from Nothing.
I have six books now, three or four bestsellers, the last one being Out being Financial Literacy for All Just out that's entered the fray at Amazon, number one in Economics.
Etcetera, etcetera. Picking up if you don't have it.
But Up from Nothing, my last book, there's much education you shut down your throat, understanding the math.
Financial literacy, wealth creation, etc.
Family Structured resiliency number three, A, self esteem and confidence number four, Role Models and environment number five. Now I've done a podcast episode just on this, so you can go back and listen to that, and I break these things down in some detail, and if you have three or four of those things, of those five things, you're going to be very successful. But three groups were denied those three things, and not in any.
Order.
Here Native American, Indians, poor Whites, and African Americans and out of you know, a couple hundred ethnic groups in this country, and there's actually more than that if you want to get into cultures. Everybody seems to come here and be able to succeed within a short period of time because they have self esteem attack and their confidence comes ultimately from competing on the playing field called life. But our experience was just the opposite. We're denied. Actually
it was legally barred to educate us. They destroyed our family, separated our children, sol wives off from husbands, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we did not have out of the five pillars of success. But if you have three four of those things, of those five things, I guarantee you, no matter what's in front of you, over around it, through what you're gonna get to it. I know that because that's my story and I'm African American.
My mother told me. She loved me every day of my life at a sense of yes I can from my dad and the yes I am from my mother. I know was taught about facial literacy when I was nine years old. I have self love, self esteem, which I'll get to in a moment in great detail. I had good role models and a enabling environment. Thus I succeeded at scale with from the bottom quartile of poverty and struggle, not the very bottom, but the bottom quartile to the top one percent.
And you can do it too.
You can rehabilitate yourself, but you've got to understand what ghosts is chasing you and what healing you're pursuing. So there's self esteem and confidence. So here's self esteem. And you're gonna repeat myself a little bit. I apologize, but it's really important to get this. If I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me, I'm not gonna 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 here's the big one. If I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm gonna make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around comes around, and hurt people hurt people. The opposite is also true. Hurt people hurt people. It's an old 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.
So out of love we pass down bad habits from generation to generation.
I know this is gonna be a deep, deep, deep controversial podcast, but this is also well because wealth is mindset. Anybody can make money. A drug dealer can make money, pimp can make money. Wall Street banker can make money, the engineer can make money. Anybody legit illegit can make money. But building wealth, you build wealth in your sleep. You gotta think. You gotta do it for the neck up, not the shoulders down. It's a mindset that builds wealth, and I want you to have that mindset, not only
in financial wealth, but mental, spiritual, emotional wealth. I want you to heal. So confidence comes from competence. So why are afric Americans confident in America? Because we competed in the biggest economy in the world, the most competitive place in the world, and we killed it. Whether the rules
are published and the playing fielders level, we succeed. What's examples of that, professional sports, the arts, government service and elected office, the faith community, the rules of published, the playing rules level, we kill it. But capital is them and free enterprise of why they gave us that memo? That's my Is that my third or my fourth book? It's my third book. No one gave us that memo. I think it's my third book of how things work.
Freedman's Bank eighteen sixty five Abraham Lincoln a bank chartered to teach free slaves about money. He was killed the next year for the doubles truck to run the bank. So we're not dumb and we're not stupids. Well, we don't know that. We don't know this killing is, but we think we know.
But you know, in.
Spite of that, we've done actually okay, pretty okay. But we are so focused on getting that bag, getting that money, getting that hustle, getting that dollar, getting that money, that we don't realize and that's short term, that's just transactional. You can get rich, but you don't build wealth. You build wealth and you're sleep. It's mindset. But the reason we're so successful is that we actually are the most competitive group of people of color I believe in the world,
and we should be proud of it. We've got our share of billionaires, we have our share of you know, of multi multi millionaires of which I would qualify. We have tons of you know, one hundred thousand airs. You know, we have a solid middle class. Thank you, Andrew Young, doctor King, doctor Dorothy Hye, credit Scott King, et cetera. Heroes and she rose red from CTVV and John Lewis who created the civil rights movement. Right, but we got to go from cashing checks to writing them mindset, becoming
wealth creators and not just consumers. Mindset to loving ourselves so we can love each other, so we don't have crab in the barrel mindset. Why is somebody watching me, listening to me and going, he ain't nothing has nothing to do with me. If I'm succeeding and you're listening and you're I mean, you should be like bravo. I mean, maybe he's not doing what I'm doing. Maybe I don't want to be those injuries, but god, that's fantastic. He's succeeding. That gives me some sense of what I can do.
Was there anything negative in it? But you'll find people who are hurt trying to hurt people. Doctor King once said that evil and hurt. I'm adding hurt. I'm pretty sure it was just evil, he said. Corrodes and container that sits within Hello, your body seventy percent water, So you get all worked up and hot. You're just killing yourself. You're cooking your own organs. Whatever goes around comes around. So self esteem not only it helps you live in the world, it helps you to live. That's why in
these low wealth communities, the credit score. I was launching my last book, Financial Lewacy for All. I was in CNBC Last Call and I broke down how credit scores a our whole financial wellness index. How credit scores are lower in low wealth communities. And you also live twenty years a shorter life than you live in a seven hundred credit.
Community credit score community. Yeah, I said it.
You lived at sixty one years old in a five hundred credit score neighborhood. You lived at eighty one years old in a seven hundred credit score neighborhood twenty year delta.
And I think that that.
Is state of mind, it's mindset it's what I'm talking about.
So we've got to heal.
And I mentioned check cashers, payday loan lender's, rental own stores, title lenders, liquors stores, pawn shops, and a church down the street trying to make you feel a little bit.
Better once a week.
That's your neighborhood psychologists, that's your neighborhood shriek, trying to keep you go from crazy, going completely crazy and going postal on somebody once a week.
Just calm you down.
While we black folks, we're in emotional we're going ha ha, We going hoop and hollow and get it out of our system. Replace that anger and that frustration with joy. That's a depressed person who needs to screen to get it out of them. You just you just you're on You wake up on nine on the scale of one of ten. You need to release some tension. By the way, not just black people. You go to a poor white neighborhood,
you see the same thing. Check cash or patio in the rental, own store, title, their liquor store, pawn shop, church.
They just.
Do things. They move in different way. We riote when we angry on the streets. When they're angry they riot. It appears at the ballot box. Poor whites. You figure that out for yourself. What am I saying and what they relate to? Hello, So we've got to heal. Three ways to live suicide, you can die alive. We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience, and energy matters. I just refuse to have toxicity around me. It's like you, you don't have
to go. You gotta get the heck out of here. I just try to be clean. I try to have a toxic free zone.
People.
I go to dinner, Like, what you know anything you're allergic to? Yeah, bad food and toxic people. I'm just like, I'm done. Like you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. Like you just keep that mess over there. I don't want to jump in on me. Life's about energy.
What are you? Who are you?
What are you attracting? How long can I get n a man? We have some church today. All these things are related, and they're interrelated, and they're interconnected, and you and weals tends to hang around wealth, and poverty tends to ringing around poverty.
And we need to start doing some transfers to get.
People out of poverty, rebuild the ladder and get them back up to wealth. And by the way, when you are depressed, distressed, when you're angry at the world, you.
Actually don't believe in the dream anymore.
And that's and that's by the way, suits wealth just just fine. You stay over there and be angry, being expert in what you're against, not what you're for. Fine with them then leads more for them. What in X savy, you've been bamboozled, you've been tripped, you've been fooled. Is what we don't know. That we don't know is killing, is what we think we know. We have to heal, We have to deal with our stuff. Suicide, coping, healing.
Three ways to live suicide You can die alive. The most dangerous person in the world, well, the second most dangerous a person with no hope.
First most dangerous.
Someone with power, money, wealth, different things power, money, wealth, position, low sale, esteem, fear.
Now you think about who I'm talking about.
That person is very dangerous because they can actually use they can weaponize their unhealed nature to hurt somebody that threatens them or anger at them. I mean a narcissist literally believes everything somebody else's fault, like it's never themselves. And a malignant narcissist, well that's a whole nother situation. I don't want you training in any of that stuff. So there's suicide, right, then there's coping and there's healing.
Coping.
An addiction is literally irresponse to emotion you can't handle. So you have all kind of engs you don't need, shopping, drugging, drinking, you know, texting, texting all day, all night, you know, oversleeping.
These are negative eyengs.
You need to replace them with some positive engs, like healing. Because you cannot have a rainbow without a storm. First, it's a scientific fact. You did not have a rainbow without a storm first. So and then of course that the third way to live.
Is to heal.
And that's really what I'm talking about. Before you heal, you got a deal. And when you're not dealing, somebody's taking advantage of you. Either you're not using your money, your money's using you. Angel young quote.
To live in a.
System of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. People who are surviving mindset. The glass is half full, not half empty, whether you remember whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't.
You're right.
They don't like success. They're like, oh, I hate rich people. No, you don't. You hate rich people till you become rich. What you hate is a game system, but the latter's broken, and you don't believe the system works for you. You think it's corrupted, and so you throw your hands up and decide to live short termism coping. You start to see
all this works together. And then if you're taking your advice from somebody who's just coping, dealing, not healing, that goes that quote in a blind town, a one eyed man's king. If you don't know better, you dang sure can't do better, 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.
The definition of insanity is the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome. Let's assume you disagree with half of what I've said on this podcast. Why don't you try it? It can't possibly, that's somebody says, well, why should I try? God, he cannot possibly mismanage your life worse than you have. You and me, by the way, I'm in that same bucket. I decided to try and
it worked beautifully. He's never let me down. But maybe you should try a different business plan, the one that has not worked. But a lot of wealth, or the lack thereof, is mindset. Poverty outside of roof over your head, food on the table, healthcare, Susten is poverty. That's Sustan poverty. Every other foreign poverty is mindset. Is how you're thinking, and whether you believe you can or you believe you can't.
You're absolutely right. I want you to have high self esteem, not one answer.
My self esteem and self respect depends on your acceptance of men. That's a Quincy Jones quote. It's okay if you don't like me, I like me. That's a job o' briant quote. Life is ten percent what life does to you, but not evencent. How you choose to respond to it, how you're going to what's your responds going to be. Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
That requires self esteem and confidence. Never give up.
I take no for vitamins that requires self esteem and confidence. I don't want you to just have confidence, because you'll be cocky, you'll be arrogant, and you will over compensate by trying to put your assets on your ass. You're going to try to wear your self esteem to prove to everybody else to have loud music and a loud life, because you're trying to communicate to everybody else externally your value, whereas realizing internally you're already valuable because you're a God's child.
When you got the power, you don't need to use it. Okay, this was deep. Let me know what you think.
Spread the word, Let's have a conversation.
Go to Operation Help get your financial literacy counseling from my team and Hope and Size locations and three hundred locations across the country. Pick up my book of Financial Literacy for All, which is now out and debuted number one on economics and a couple of other categories.
Thank you all who supported it.
It is your weekly workshop toolbox as you sit down and have a discussion every week about money with your family at the kitchen table. And there's a bunch of tools coming out tied to that. But it starts with the book, Yeah, take your life back. It starts with making that decision. I believe in you.
Do you yo Yo.
This is John O'Bryant and this is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network. And we have a great fan question today billionaire Underscore Freddy from Instagram what a great inspiring Instagram handle? A billionaire Underscore Freddie at Instagram says, what's one surefire away to generate cash flow with one MBB? Well, that answer is fairly actually obvious and interesting to you
because it's part of one MBB. One MBB is one Million Black Business Initiative, which Operation Hope launched after George Floyd's murder, and it is committed to creating a million black businesses by twenty thirty. And we already have inspired, creative, nurtured and supported over four hundred thousand black businesses, which would be about twelve percent of all black businesses in America. Yay for Operation Hope. And the way you would do it is to get to it. You would if you
have a barbershop or any physical business. As I said, you make money during the day, you build wealth win now in your sleep. So you would say you have a barbershop business, and right now somebody has to call you while you're doing the cut. Now you can apply this to any kind of business, restaurant, whatever it is. You're like, Okay, you're doing the cut, and they say, can I get an appointment? Let me get to my appointment book. I can't really talk right now, I'm doing
the cut. Can I call you back? What's your number? Can you call me back? They'd never call you back because they're going to the airport to catch a flight. What you want is for that person to be on the flight. It's midnight and they should be able to search your business online from the plane.
Wireless internet is on most planes.
Now. I know this example because I use this process myself going into the city or barbershops for black barbershops in New York City as an example, or in Harlem
or wherever. The name of your shop would come up because it would be registered through Shopify, our partner for one MBB, which we give you the account for free for four months, and we give you a website, domain name, payment systems, delivery system support, business plan support, all that through one me and Black Business Initiative Counseling and coaching on the back end, on e commerce as well. Anyway, in this example, they know they can now go onlines,
go to the scheduling app schedule and appointment. Now you're sleep, it's midnight or your chill at home, schedule an appointment for their haircut. Put their credit card up, so now you're the business. Whether they cancel or not, there's a twenty percent or fifty percent cancelation fee, so they would lose that amount of money if they don't show up, and that goes into your cash register while you're sleeping, cash flow. While they're on your site, you're now saying
now that thank you for booking your appointment. Do you need a wave cap? Do you need a brush? Do you need conditioner? And they ordered items from you, and what might have been a simple haircut for seventy five bucks, fifty bucks whatever it is, you know, might end up being one hundred and fifty two hundred and three hundred dollars order. Maybe even have a subscription service tied to the business where you're teaching hair conditioning or hair growth
or hair stabilization techniques. In this case, the black men that can somebody can subscribe to that you know, become a subscript subscriber for five bucks a month or whatever it is. So now you've got cash flow profit and little wealth creation because you've built money. You've made money in your sleep. Billionaire underscore Freddy from Instagram. I hope this has been steady, Freddie, I hope this has been good advice for you. All of you don't know what
MBB is, Go and sign up. It will change your life. It's a commitment from one hundred and thirty million dollars from Shopify's founder to be an Operation Hope to create black businesses in this country. And it's working, and it's completely no cost to you. Invest your time and energy and we do the rest. We get your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up, help you with a business plan, etc. You go to download the Hope and
Hand app on your Android or Apple platform. You can call our toll free line for Operation Hope, and you can go online Operation dot org. I also encourage you to buy this book, Financial Literacy for All, which is now a bestseller. It's on all platforms including black bookstores, by the way, but you can get this book now on Amazon, number one in several categories in the world on economics, and business finance, etc. And that is your toolbox at the kitchen table as you transform your life,
your families, and in this example, your business. You don't want to confuse business with busyness, our profit with cash flow, as my dad unfortunately did. I tell that story in the book. All Right, piece and light love, Let's go. This is John O'Brien on money and wealth.
I'm out.
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.
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