The 5 Pillars of Success

no pay to land big gigs. And those are very popular movies that in one training day, I believe with Denzel Washington he was paid zero and Friday he was paid four thousand dollars and Taraji was paid in comparison big Bucks. In comparison. Now she says she was underpaid, which one is correct? Well, I'm with Terry Crews. Terry Crews says, don't say yes, and you really meant no. And he says, look, I read the contract. I knew what it said. Nobody forced me to sign this contract.

Time is money. I could have used my time somewhere else. I could have gone and worked somewhere else. I could have gone and worked at a grocery store. I guess he didn't say this I'm inferring this. I could have gone and taken a corporate gig or an endorsement deal, or try to find a different movie to be in. This was my choice to sign up. I thought this would be a good move for my career and it was. And Taraji was asked by Oprah Winfrey and I think Tyler Perry to do a project. And she looked at

that contract. She knew what it said and she accepted it. End of subject. Let me say something to you. I need you to hear me here. Business is not personal. This is not emotional. It's not my job as a capitalist to pay you top dollar. It's my job, if I'm the producer of a project, to actually pay you the least I can afford to get away with. Yes, I said it. It's my job to make a profit for that project, to give a return to my investors. Everybody's got a boss. You don't think Oprah's got a boss.

You don't think Tyler Perry as a boss on a project. Who's funding that project, who's putting the money up for that project, who's distributing that project? What agreements do they have for that project to hit a certain budget and not to exceed it. So she's a baller, no doubt about it. But she's got to speak to her partners and investors, and she's got to deliver a project that's under budget and hopefully exceeds on revenue. And that comes from trying to squeeze every dime you can out of

cost without being cruel. Now, did she underpay based on what was on the piece of paper to Taraji? That's not the claim. Miss Henson's not saying she charged. She promised me five dollars and she paid me to She's saying what she promised me and what I agreed to, I think is a travesty. No, it's a travesty for you not to get a job and your talent. It's a travesty not for them not to be an Oprah Winfrey. Thank god, there's an Oprah Winfrey and a Tyler Perry

who can hire somebody. Hello, do you think the creators of Motown paid their talent top dollars? No, they tried to negotiate the best deals they could for themselves and hope to god the talent didn't read the contract. And then if the talent was literate and could read the contract, negotiated themselves up, then they would probably say, yeah, if they really believe in that talent, yes, let's negotiate. But my job as a capitalist you may not like this episode.

I'm telling you way this world, this world works. My job, sitting on the other side of that that table is to pay you the least I can afford to pay without being upset. And your job is a talent in this example, is to try to negotiate the most that you can get from me without without creating friction in the relationship. Did you hear me? You can't grow without constructive friction. Rainbows only follow storms. You cannot have a

rainbow without a storm first. Everything grows through constructive friction. You can disagree without being disagreeable. So is your job to negotiate and advocate saying, Hey, I'm worth X, Y and Z and here's a non emotional reasons for that. My last product to produce X Y and Z, and I'm making this up. That's tenfold of what you're paying me, or twenty fold of what you're paying me what I'm

proposing you paying me. So I think if you pay me this, I think I can deliver a project that will produce this other outcome and if I don't, I'll give you a refund or whatever, or how about you pay me a baseline. But if I exceed this and Mark, we agree with profit sharing, like be creative. But to say that I am this great talent and because of that, and because i'm this and i'm that, you should be paying me more because you're black and I'm black, that's crazy. Green.

The color of currency is green. And Oprah's job is to pay you what she can get away with, to negotiate every call saving she can in that project, delivered on time and on budget or under budget, and to make listen to me now a profit for her investors and her partners. The talent is not the end all be all of this project. The talent is one of many components of a film project. Don't get emotional about it again. Terry Crews had it right, Hey man, give

me the right project. I'll work for free. I'll pay you. And for anybody who's saying with John, how do you have a right to say this again? I don't talk about things I don't know. I've worked for free, right, I've worked severely underpaid. I remember this billionaire he'd be a billion here today is worth two hundred million. Back then, his name was Harvey Baskin, and I worked as a waiter and his restaurant, Jeoffrey's Malibu in Hollywood, I mean

in Malibu, California. I worked there, pay minimum wage and tips. Hired me for a Monday, which means they didn't think I was a very good waiter. But I wanted to be in that environment. I wanted to be around those ballers. So I drove from Compton, California, to Malibu. I think I started taking the bus initially, and I showed up

and showed out. I showed up early, stayed late, worked hard, and when I saw Harvey Baskin and Geoffrey at Tienne, his partner for whom the restaurant was named after, at the bar, I went up and took the opportunity to go talk to him, build a relationship, build a rapport. I pressed them as more than a waiter. Started as a busboy, actually more than a busboy, more than a waiter. I was an average bus boy and an average waiter,

but I knew I was a great leader. I had the potential to be one, and over time, sure enough I build relationships, build rapport. It cost me money probably to work there as a waiter and a bus boy. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention to my short term economic gain through a paycheck. Again, we obsessed about the wrong thing. I'm gonna do a whole podcast on this whole getting paid, getting his dollar, getting his money, and you end up broke because you're not building wealth. Well,

you bill wealth in your name. The biggest asset you've got is you, not what's on your ass not your clothes, not your jewelry, not your whatever, it's you, the inside of you. So anyway, I got up job working as the assistant for Harvey Baskin for also was underpaid twenty one thousand dollars a year or something like that. But I got to work in his home in Malibu. Watch how he moved, listened to his phone calls. I went to I asked him to go to dinner with me

one day, and he said yes. It was like driving mister Daisy because he was broke his leg or his ankle, and so he was sitting in the back seat of my Audi and he had his leg up the fronts. The passenger front seat was pushed forward. He had his leg up on the passenger front seat, sitting in the back. I'm the driver, I'm sure like I was his chauffeur. I could care less not went outs of my self esteem and self worth. Its dependent upon your acceptance of me.

I was cool with it because he is the multi millionaire back and now be a billionaire who was going to give me knowledge and insight that no one else could know what else could give me. So we went to dinner. He found he made this very expensive restaurant reservation. We went to dinner. We had dinner, great dinner in Venice, California.

The bill comes and it's one hundred dollars. Now. One hundred dollars is not cheap now, but back then, and this is going back thirty some years now, that was like, I mean, call it one thousand dollars, right, And I didn't want to pay it. I'm like, the bill came to me, I slid it to Harvey. Harvey slid the bill back to me. I slid back to Harvey. Harvey slid the bill back to me. I slid it back to Harvey. He said, hey, hey, hey, slow down. You got to decide John, what you want. Do you want

to pick my brain or pick my pocket? One lasts longer. Now, you were asked me to come to this dinner, and you've been plying me with questions all night. I've get basically given you free consulting. That's invaluable. I put you in the driver's sept literally, and you can talk my head off. And you want to punk me for one hundred dollars bill, I'm willing to pay the bill. Nope.

I grabbed the bill, paid it, gave the guy twenty percent tip, shut my mouth and said thank you, and then plied in with questions all the way home, and sure enough, Harvey put his arms around me, said this was my guy introduced me to countless people, many relationships I have to this day, and it was an invaluable experience. When you show up at a corporate office as an intern, who cares where they're paying you a fee? You're in the light of sight, of power and wealth and opportunity.

People can see you, they can hear you, they can watch you. I mean, folks are like, oh, I want to work remotely, okay, great, cool, Well you won't get promoted. You may not lose your job by the way. If there are cutbacks, guess who they're gonna cut first, right. We tend to be the last hire and the first fired anyway, But they're gonna cut you first because there's no connective tissue and you're not getting a promotion, not a big one. But if I were you, I'd show

up in the office. I'd get right in my boss's face. I would have walked from front to back, front, the back, front, the back, front, the back, eight times a day in front of my boss's office or my boss's boss's boss's office, until the boss says, excuse me, come here, young man. What's your name? I mean, what do you do here? Like? And then like, are you busy? No, sir, not too busy. I have a project. It's not very interesting. I'll take it right. And that's how you get in the game.

So Taraji did this great film for Oprah Winfrey. I'd be wearing that out. She wants Over once her going on a tour and not pay her for it. I don't care. I got that gives me more exposure. At least Over is gonna pay for the expenses for me traveling. Now, you give me a trip around the world, I'm want to take a trip around the world on your dime. I'm gonna make producers and TV shows on your dime. I'm gonna get excused to talk to take my brand globally on your dime. I'm gonna meet all kinds of

people and expand my territory on your dime. I'm gonna build my brand on your dime. I'm going to impress people, maybe future investors in my own projects on your dime. I'm gonna make this project extremely successful on your dime with your investment, and when it does extraordinarily well, I may come back and say, this has exceeded everybody's expectations. I know you don't owe me this, Oprah and Tyler.

You don't. You paid me what I asked for, what I agreed to, and it's unfair for me to say yes and then later say no and then drag you in the media after the fact. But I didn't do that in this example. I didn't do that, and I will honor my contract. But I told you if I hit a certain mark, I would come back and ask you if you would mind considering profit sharing or points

in the back end or something. And maybe now we can have that conversation, and if you've treated that relationship right, I'd be surprised if they didn't say, yeah, let's let's figure something out or not on this project, because maybe you've already I've already paid out all proceeds to my investors, and there's nothing left less unless I take it out of my own pocket, she might say, and she might, by the way, but tell you what you've done so well on this let me let me bake you into

my next project and maybe make you an associate producer. Now you're talking, But listen to this whole interview, because he says it better than me. He's in the business. Terry Crews says it right. He didn't work for a small fee, not even a big paycheck. I mean, tryge you talking about I can't pay my assistance and all my bills on these paychecks, then go do something else. You can't live on a million dollar paycheck. Maybe you need to be speak to one of my financial coaches.

Now I'm not jamming her up. I'm trying to. Actually I'm but you know, she made herself. She brought this out in the public. I'm not going looking for this. I'm not getting into somebody's business. I'm not trying to embarrass her. I'm saying I think she's wrong. And I waited a while for the hoopletter calmed down and everybody's jump saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, Oprah should pay more, Tyler should pay more? Why Hello? Why Eve? And if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you've got to

first collect it like a capitalist. You guys have got this backwards. You don't give it away on the front end, you give it away on the back end. You can't give away my money as an investor, a shareholder. You can't give somebody my money. You can't pay somebody a million dollars and a half million dollars more because they say they don't have enough caveat for their dinner. You can't do that on my dime. That's not your money, that's my money. And every billionaire in the world built their

billions on the back of good debt. Please hear me. They didn't do it on their own, and they're not doing it on their own. Every billionaire, every multimillionaire, has partners and investors, and there are agreements to that, and you got to honor those agreements. And if you are seeing somebody who throws away money, you're not getting another investor.

So she had no responsibility to overpay Taraji. She's said just the opposite again, what can I pay this fair and reasonable and bring this project in at budget or below and deliver outsize results. That's the goal. And Taraji, you should be honored to be in the project with Oprah and Tyler. I would be all right, let me know what you think. I'm sure you will, but I've brought this is my opinion on this point. I'm not really I'm curious what you have to say. See if

you've learned anything. But I'm telling you this is how the game works. This is not an opinion poll. I'm telling you this is the way capitalism works. And we have got this can used. We com boozed and we need to start getting a memo. And Terry Crews has it right. Don't take business personally? All right, John O'Brien, I'm out. This is money and wealth. Let's go yo, yo is John Hope Bryant. This is money and wealth.

And this week's episode is pretty hot because I'm gonna tell you something that is a cheat sheet on success. More than that it's something that literally is a formula that if you follow it, no one can mess with you. Yes, I said it. People tell you all kinds of things that are nebulous and sound great, but Ashley, in practice, they have no clue whether it's gonna work, because it's not worked in their life. They tell you something they read in a book, they tell you something they saw somewhere.

They may be trying to sell you books and tapes. I made my wealth in entrepreneurship, in capitalism, in business, I've built businesses. I've built several of them. Three of my businesses are the largest in their sector in the country. That includes the largest nonprofit financial literacy coaching organization in America,

Operation Hope. Three hundred offices for hundred employees, four billion dollars invested in underserved neighborhoods, raising credit scores, lowering debt, increasing savings, the only non profit allowed to operates out of a bank branch in the US history. I built in sold a company called the Promise Homes Company, largest minority owner of single family rental homes in America seven

hundred homes, give or take sold it. And I'm now as part of a joint venture where I'm a principal shareholder and still involved with it, and there are other things that I'm doing. I'm just telling you I'm an operator, I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman, and yes I faced discrimination and bias and all those things over to rounded through it. Let's get to it. You don't want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Ti Tanic. The ship is sinking

and you're picking drapes. You don't want to be focused on what's going on with the right, and really all the action is here on the left. As Malcolm X says said, We're been bamboozled, We've been tricked, We've been fooled. I want you to now have enlightenment. I want you to understand that I understand racism is real. It's like rain.

It's either fall in someplace or it's gathering. But you've got to get out in that rain and an umbrella, with an umbrella and the color you like, and start strolling through the rain because it's not going to change. So you must, and you can and you will. So here as a formula that I guarantee you you follow this, You're going to succeed. This is from my last book, Up from Nothing, The Five Pillars of Success. I also have a new book called Financial Literacy for All that

comes out April sixteenth. I want you to pre order it and help me make it a national best seller, maybe even a global bestseller. That book is is me sitting with you at the kitchen table. But this is a primer on success. It's my story and it's about my failures, not my successes. This book Up from Nothing, The Untold Story of how We All Succeed with a Ford by Ambassador Andrew Young. Five Pillars of Success. So here are the five pillars of success. You do this.

If you have less than three of these things, anything's possible with God's grace. But less than three of these things is really hard to succeed. You have four or five of these things, I can guarantee you're gonna kill it. Now. I want you to tell me after I walk through it whether you think I'm correct. Here we go. Take out your pen and paper, pencil, digital ink, iPad, iPhone, whatever you use. Write this down. It's time to go to school. This is a masterclass now on mindset and success.

No matter who's standing in your way, success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm over to rounded through it. I want you to get to it. Life is ten percent what life does to you and ninety percent how you choose to respond to it. I did a ninety minute masterclass for my friend Bishop TD Jakes at his ILS summit in Dallas, and I told the audience, who paid money and traveled to be there investing in themselves, what I'm telling you now for free.

Here you go. I'm condensed ninety minutes into this podcast where you can listen to it on the way to work or on your way home, or gardening or cooking or whatever, and literally write this down step by step five pillars. You do three of these, you'll at least survive, maybe thrive. You do four of these. Five of these, you'll go from thriving to building. From survival to thriving to building. You do five of these, I guarantee you you'll be building. You're a builder winner. Here we go.

Pillar number one. As much education as you can shove down your throat. Education is the ultimate poverty eradication tool. When you know better, you do better. No one can take it from you. Once you have it. Pillar number two understanding the money, financial literacy. That's why I wrote the book Financial Literacy for all this is just coming out financial literacy, understanding capitalism, free enterprise economics, ownership and opportunity,

and those things are different, but they're tied together. We live in a free enterprise democracy in America. There's never been a global economy. There's never been a superpower. Listen to me now that wasn't also an economic power. I'll repeat that, There's never been a superpower in the world that wasn't also an economic power. Think about Rome, think about Italy, Think about France. These were all superpowers in the world at one time. Think about Germany, all right.

Think about Argentina. Even Argentina at one time he had the largest economy in the world. Think about Great Britain. Right, these were the largest economies at that time in the world. They were the sole superpower. America is now the sole superpower in the world. And guess what, it has the largest economy in the world. Well, what happened with those formerly enslaved? In eighteen sixty five, Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Frederick Douglass and others to create a Freedman's Bank

chartered to quote, teach free slaves about money. And then Abrahamligan was assassinated the next month. It was forty acres January eighteen sixty five, The Mule February eighteen sixty five. Savannah, Georgia a Bank March third, eighteen sixty five. I'm I'm the only American citizen. I'm told to inspire the government to rename a building on the White House campus. It was renamed the Freedmen's Bank Building in twenty sixteen, I believe,

and it stands as the Freeman's Bank Building today. And then Abrahamlincoln was assassinated in April when he promised blacks the right to vote. So we it's not like we're dumb and we're stupid. We're brilliant. When the rules are published in the playing fields level, we succeed. Think about the arts now, think about professional sports, where the room rules are published and the playing fielders level, we kill it. We succeed. Think about public office, think about government service,

think about the church. We understand these rules, we've applied them. We work hard, and we succeed. But no one ever told you the lessons of free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership, and opportunity. No one gave you a lesson in financial literacy, and so you can't master that game. You're hustling at it and you've got You're even confused about it because you think that making money is building wealth and it's not. That's another podcast episode for another day. Understand the Memo.

That's my third book. Get the Memo is what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But you think you know in a blind town, a one eyed man's king. If you don't know better, you can't do better. Please now listen to this as an 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. I'll repeat that.

Think about now, all the people who love you, who say they love you you, who keep giving you bad advice with good intentions, no matter how much I love you. That's a rap there, that's a word. My rap friends would say. That's a word. 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. I can only give you what I've got. So out of love. We passed down bad habits from generation to generation.

The third pillar, family structure and resiliency. Family structure and resiliency, what it got broken up during enslavement? Family structure. We don't have time to go into this. I may do a separate podcast episode just on breaking down the business plan of slavery. It was a business plan. It wasn't emotional, it wasn't personal, It was business. But they broke up the family as a short lesson here because they couldn't afford for the big burly guy from Africa to fight

for his family. They couldn't afford for the mother to fight for her children, so they sold them off and directions, so you were a hopeless family structure and resiliency. Okay, And just so you know this is not racial. And come back to this. There are three groups that are left behind by this system that succeeded, and I'm going to name those groups. Is going to surprise you which three groups I name? And it's more than just black people.

Fourth pillar self esteem and confidence. And yes, those two things are different. Self esteem and confidence. You can have high self esteem and low confidence. You can have high confidence in low self esteem whatever you generalize, you discriminate, but generalizations sometimes strike a nerve. I'm about to strike one for you. There are exceptions to this rule. But here's a rule. I've been to one hundred countries. I

can say this with confidence. If you're black and you're from the Caribbean, or you're black and you're from Africa, and you've seen intact families, you've seen a doctor or a lawyer who's black, and the mayor was black and the premier was black or whatever, the people around you look like you. You probably have as a result of that, high self esteem. You esteem your self, You love yourself,

You respect yourself, You admire your family and yourself. You know you're good with you, but you may have low levels of confidence even though you may be competent. You train in school, you got an education, but you never been had that put to test, that skilled, to test in what I call a leading market economy. So you don't really know if that thing you've got is gonna work. And the people around you, maybe the former colonialists who are now in that area, are telling you you can't

do it, so they got you in these low level jobs. Maybe, so you have high self esteem, you got low confidence. But if you're in America, you're in the biggest economy in the world. So African Americans here have been tested in the largest economy in the world and gone from nothing like myself to something, from owning nothing to being multi millionaires in some cases billionaires. So we have high confidence. But because of our experience in this country, we may

have low self esteem. I think that seventy percent of African Americans before the pandemic were clinically undiagnosed depressed. Now the podcast for another time. But I'm touching some nerves because you were told you were nobody for three hundred years. And so 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 love me, I'm not gonna love you. If I don't respect me,

I'm not gonna respect you. If I don't have a purpose in my life, I will make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around hello comes around. I can only treat you what I know. And hurt people hurt people, and we've been hurt, but we can heal. So we tend to have high confidence we've killed it in the market economy. That confidence has leaned in and created confidence because we succeeded in the market economy, but we still may have low self esteem, which equates for a lot

of things like crab and the barrel mentality. Okay, so I've dealt with number four, the fourth pillar, the fifth pillar, role models and environment. You heard me say this, I'll say it again here. If you hang around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth Hello. And the opposite is also true. Why do people go to Harvard? Because Harvard is ten times better than the state university in Boston or some other universities in Boston where it's located. It's a great university.

I've got a certificate degree from Harvard. I'm proud to be associated. I love going to speak at Harvard and hang out. And when I see somebody with a degree from Harvard, I know that they are from a top tier university. If it's not that it's the best in the world, why do people go to Harvard and pay much more? Because the class of twenty twenty four in Harvard is going to hook each other up for the next forty years. It's a club of success. Why do you join a country club, Why do you join a

sorority or fraternity? Why do you join a private dinner club or a private club of any sort. You're trying to associate with other people who share your aspirations in your success. You're mixing with people who have the same mindset and mentality, and so success tends to hang around success and it feeds on that, And povery tends to hang around povery, and it feeds on that. I'm going to do a separate podcast on how the streets want to eat you. I mean that literally, but where I

grew up. If you got consumed by what was going on in my neighborhood in competence South Central, with the best of intentions, you just got consumed with things that would consume you. And doctor King once said that I refuse to finance my own oppression, right. But sometimes you're in a toxic field environment and it looks normal. So why our kids in underserved neighborhoods want to be rap stars, athletes and drug dealers. They are dumb and they're not stupid.

You can't be as a business plan for a whole race rap stars. You can't. You can't scale my brother Killer Mink. You can't scale my brother Ti. You can't scale these incredible artists, Jay Z and others. You can't. They're not their personalities. They're unique in any of themselves. Women and men. You can't scale. The female basketball players are not killing it. You can't scale the Lebrons and

Tiger Woods and the Lewis Hamilton's. There is personalities, and even when they succeed, they only have a few employees in their group. We need to employ hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people and build wealth across the spectrum of our society. But we want to be what we see. We see successful rappers, successful professional athletes, and unfortunately my neighborhood I grew up, you see drug dealers. We want to be raps to ours, athletes and drug

leaders because we model what we see. And by the way, drug dealers are not dumb and they're not stupid. They have a horrible business plan, it's a moral it's unethical, but they're not dumb. They understand import, exports, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail, customer service, curatory security, territory logistics, etc. They just need to be reset the right soil again, another podcast, another time. I've thought about five podcasts episodes out of this one.

But your role modeling and your environment matters. You want to be in able to remove yourself from toxicity and toxic environments. And if you hang around broke people, you tend to be one. You hang around successful people, you tend to become one. It's not because you're a genius, but it's relationship capital. That what you get your first job, if you were in a career, not just in a job, in a career, somebody probably put their arm around you say, look,

you know you're a bit a good intern. You know, I know you are some of my friend told me about you where I met you. I think you could do this job. Would you like this job? Let me make an email introduction, Let me make a phone call for you. Go talk to this person that person. Think about it. If you're in a career that's high five figures or six figures, where did you get that hook up? Did you get it spelling out an application or did somebody tap you in the shoulder and say you can

do this and introduce you relationship capital? So here are the five pillars of success. I'm wrapping this up. Now, If you have three of these you may make it. If you don't have three of these things, it's hard to make it. Again. It's much education. You can shove down your throat understanding the memo on money, financial literacy, family structure and resiliency, self esteem and confidence, role models and environment. Three mindsets, surviving mindset, thriving mindset, winning mindset,

Winners of builders. That's another podcast, right, just keeping us very focused. What three groups were denied three of these things? Certainly more than three of these things? What three groups? Just so you understand, this race is a problem, but it's not the only problem in today, it's not even the primary problem. Keeping from where you want to go. Poor whites, and more poor whites in American than portybody else, were denied these three things when they came to this country.

They still don't have more than three of these things. By the way, picking any three that's how you know something works. Pick any three of these five. Native American Indians the largest group who suffer from alcoholism in this country. Native American Indian and Native American reservations. Number one group draw dyingpping dead in this country. Poor white men, high school educated, dropping dead, and we call it drug abuse,

but it's really depression, lost hope. And then you have African Americans, right, And there are no Ghanaian ghettos in America. There are Ghanaan communities in America. There's no Jamaican ghettos in America. There are no South African ghettos in America. There are South African communities, there are Jamaican communities, Bheman communities. There's only African American ghettos in America. Because our self esteem was robbed from us again, another video for another time,

another podcast for another time. So it's not our fault, is our responsibility to pick ourselves up. Here's the good news. I just neutralized the race thing. I'm gonna do with this as a separate issue. This whole racing is a made up problem, yes I said it. The word white, racial word white is a made up word, yes I said it. And that I will have to deal with that separately and unpack it for you. The world is five billion years old, the organism life four billion years old.

Neanderthals a couple hundred million years old, Modern mankind, womankind a couple hundred one thousand years old. Right, But the word racial, word white was made up in the sixteen hundreds in North America for a political purpose. So we'd fight with each other, poor whites and poor blacks. We were once friends, yes, blacks and whites and both in dentury servants in sixteen hundreds. And unfortunately we got along, and some people didn't like that we were getting along. Malcolm, Xay,

we've been bambooza, we've been tricked, we've been food. So look at this. These three groups out of two hundred ethnic groups, and these three groups did not follow these five pillars. Pick any three or four of these, right, pick let's just say three. That's a minimum. You need education, financial literacy, and family structure and resiliency. Can you succeed? Role model's an environment? Self esteem and confidence? Financial literacy,

can you succeed? I love this, It's so easy. Self esteem and confidence, family structure and resiliency, the memo and money, financial literacy. Can you succeed as much? Education and shut down your throat? Self esteem and confidence? Role models an environment? Can you succeed? See you're starting to get it. It doesn't matter who's standing in your way now, it doesn't matter what's going on with you? And if you have four of these things out of the five, my god,

you'll kill it. Now you've a formula for success. Do that, plus get your credit card to seven hundred hello, which is part of memo number two, and bastiaror Andrew Young says, it is entirely possible. The financial literacy. It's not only the civil rights issue of this day. It's it's important. It's the right to vote and a seven or the credit score. It may be as important as a college degree once you get it into the market economy of

we Okay, let's go by the way. I'm not telling you how to get a college degree, so don't put words in my mouth. I think it's important to have a higher education. I just said it. It's number one pillar. Okay. I hope you like this. This is John O'Brien. This is money and wealth. It gave you the Five Pillars

micro version. You want to hear the full ninety minute masterclass where I've laid it out and unpacked it, just go to Tdjkes's site for the ILS Summit for twenty twenty four and find the session I did once they release it, and sit down with a cup of coffee, cup of tea and take copious notes for now. This is the micro class on taking back your Life and go to Operation Hope today and get your free scholarship financial coaching. It's worth between twenty five hundred and ten

thousand dollars per coaching. Engagement, love and Light. Let's go change your life. This is a silver rights movement. Hea John O'Brien, Money and Wealth. Okay, here's time for a fan question. Don Neat dawn Ieedt on Instagram at don Neat would you get a cash out reflance at a higher rate to pay down debt? The answer is it depends if you're paying off credit card debt and department store debt that's twenty six percent anything with a two

in front of it, The answer is absolutely yes. It fits in the teams the credit card debt, the answer is probably yes. Uh. You want to make sure you've got decent credit so that when you go to refinance your home you're getting a decent rate. So you want to get a rate on the refinance. Preferably it's an equity line of credit. If you're going to refinance the first trusting mortgage, we want a new first trusting mortgage.

If you have a two or three percent, if you've got a first trusting mortgage in the last four years, do not refinance that first trusted mortgage because one, two, three percent, four percent, five percent interest rates are not coming around anytime soon. That was an aberration. Hold on to that fix rate. You want to fix rate by the way, first trusting mortgage on your home. Then behind

that you can do a home equity line. That home equity line is gonna have a higher return, higher rate, but you know it should be below ten percent, so eight percent, nine percent home equity line that you're going to use expansively to consolidate and pay off debt for things like home improvements. It's just sort of a security blanket that you can pull on when you need it.

You can pay it down by the way, the right home equity line, and you want that to be a fixed rate also in that situation, Yes, it does make a lot of sense in my opinion to get a home equity line behind your first trustee mortgage sub ten percent interest rate to payoff debt, credit card debt, regular credit cards, Visa, MasterCard, etc. Et cetera, AMEX, discover et cetera. Or department store credit card debt that it's in the mid to high teens. Certainly anything with a two in

front of it, twenty percent, twenty five percent. Most of these department credit cards are going to be in a twenty percent range. You be shocked when you actually look at the statement. You got twenty five interests, twenty eight percent interest shiny, beautiful, looks really cool, got a nice sexy name on a department store credit card. They just it's just robbing you in broad daylight. But you can't call it robbery because you agreed to it, right and

you enjoyed shopping. I guess I've been there, By the way, I'm not blaming you. I've been I've done the same thing. So it's a good question. Hopefully I gave you a cogent, clear answer. But go to a whole financial coach at operation hope. Let them pull your credit and hopefully your credit report does not look like this toe up from the flow up like mine used to. Hopefully you've got credit that's in the mid six hundreds to high six hundreds.

Oh my god, if you're in the seven hundred, you are living large and you should be able to get a very good rate on that home equity line of credit, so you can consolidate. If you can take ten credit cards or five credit cards, credit obligations to have to be just a credit card, just to be a credit obligation, a term long whatever. Put those all together, pay them all off. It will look greater in your credit by

the way. To pay them all off, roll them into one loan at a fixed rate, right that is, actually at a good rate and good terms. Your payments will go down, all things being equal, Your credit score should go up, your debt service, your cost of borrowing should go down, and it should destress you. But again, talk to one of my Hope financial coaches at Operation Hope.

Go to Hope dot Operation dot orger download the Hope and handah app Our scholarshiped you into financial coaching and counseling, so it won't cost you anything and they'll give you the private banking experience. Youse will rightly to serve. Good question at don Nete on Instagram on Love John Hope, 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.