Hope For Financial Equality
John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Operation HOPE, Inc
Willy Walker: Good afternoon, and welcome to another Walker Webcast. It is my great joy to have my dear friend John Hope Bryant joining me today. Before I dive into my discussion with John, a couple of things. First of all, my discussion with Peter Linneman last week was viewed by a lot of people. And we have over 150,000 views per week to date. And so, John, Hope you and I need to knock that off with our conversation today. As it relates to views across the country.
Let me do a quick bio on you, and then we're gonna dive in. John Hope Bryant is an American entrepreneur and referred to as the conscience of capitalism by fortune 100 CEOs. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, the largest nonprofit provider of financial literacy and economic empowerment tools and services in the United States. Operation HOPE is working to level the playing field, connecting communities to the private sector through inclusive capitalism at scale. John is also chairman and CEO of John Hope Bryant Holdings, which includes Promise Homes, the largest minority-controlled owner of single-family residential rental homes in the United States. He is a frequent guest on CNBC's Squawk Box. Is a wonderful friend, and it is my true pleasure to have him with me again today on the Walker Webcast.
John, at the end of your book you write the best chapters are the ones we write together. You wrote the book alone, and yet I love the sentiment that comes from that. Talk for a moment because this is not your first book. Talk for a moment about chapters you've written with others rather than yourself.
John Hope Bryant: Most of the great chapters of my life have been written with others. We are always better together. “I like math because it doesn't have an opinion.” That's a Mellody Hobson quote. But the only time I don't use math is in relationships. You and I have spent dinner together in Sun Valley. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were better together. You and I have had lunches together and rich conversations together. I can’t remember what I did last week from a scheduling perspective. But I remember that time in those conversations. They made me better. The fact that you took a company that's 70 plus years old and re-imagined it and won entrepreneur of the year from EY, I believe it was, one of my future partners, by the way.
Willy Walker: Oh, really? That's great.
John Hope Bryant: It's a bit of an entrepreneur of the year and re-imagine that company. You had to be in a relationship with the future. And not just a celebration of the past. The fact that you've taken this company that was already successful and found a way to reimagine it and grow it so that you took something with it had a $4 billion baseline. Today I was at a $132 billion baseline, which I believe has your servicing portfolio alone, is an indication that you are in relationship to the world and you're constantly upgrading your software, reimagining what success in the future looks like. You don't want to be blockbuster. You want to be Netflix. You don't want to be Sears and Kmart. You want to be Amazon and Walmart, and Amazon and Walmart, I know the guys who run both those companies, and the CEO of Walmart is a foreword on this.
Willy Walker: He wrote the foreword on your book. One of the things about this John Hope, is that Doug McMillon writes the foreword to your book. You have relationships in the private sector, in the public sector, and in your community, and Andrew Young, your mentor, your friend. If you had to put in one word, what has have allowed you to not only create but maintain those types of relationships? We all can meet a lot of fancy people. The difference between meeting people and creating relationships is something that is very unique, and I've seen you do it repeatedly. What's the one thing? What's the one characteristic to John Hope Bryant that says and Andrew Young says, “This is someone I want to keep in my world” that Doug McMillon, who's an incredibly busy CEO, says, “I'm going to take time to write the foreword on this book because it means something to me and it means something to our world.”
John Hope Bryant: Or Tony Ressler, the richest man in the world who is my business partner. And so many others. It's giving, not getting. You have to figure out what you have to give in the world. There's also this all-too-often obsessed with what they get. You have to figure out how to build a relationship and not just have a transaction. You got to come to life with your hands open versus your fistball. You have to come to this world really seeking genuinely and authentically and having a rapport with this person and understand that God gave you two ears and one mouth. So you listen twice as much as you talk. I would hope that people feel an authenticity with me, that they say, “John's not playing a game with me.” I rather you respect me and learn to like me, than like me and never respect me.
You know Shawn Horwitz. By the way, a clarification. I don't own the Promise Homes company anymore. I built it from zero to a $150 million market of assets. And I sold it two years ago. It has a new principal owner, and now luckily, it has a new CEO. I'm a shareholder, and I'm a cheerleader. But I have to give credit where credit is due. That's now Shawn's legacy to build. And I'm going to help him as best I can. But I have respect for Shawn Horwitz. I met him through this transaction. It was a bit of a shotgun marriage, but he's a good man. He has good bones from South Africa. And he brings all of that to how he conducts business and lives his life today. And I spend some time with him, and there's so many. My story, my life is a tapestry of relationships from the streets to the suites. They're billionaires…
Willy Walker: Hang on a second. I have to ask you. How do you do that? So you're trying to convey to us your life story, and I've never heard you say that one, but I've heard you say a lot of different things. And one of the things I want to dive into is silver rights. But you are incredibly gifted at taking a concept. Breaking it down into a phrase or even slogan doesn't give it enough respect, but it is somewhat of a slogan to give people a sense of what you're talking about. So “from the streets to the suites,” that immediately say to everyone you, your life story spans from literally being on the streets of Compton to being in the most exclusive corner offices in corporate America and everything in between, including the Oval Office. You've been in every office, but where does that come from? Who helped you develop that skill?
John Hope Bryant: I don't know the answer to that question. I think that most good things that came from adversity. What's the best way to storm beach if you're outnumbered and out man or a woman, and you're in the military? Burn the ships behind you. You get really innovative if you can't retreat. I didn't have a trust fund. I didn't have wealthy parents. Not financially wealthy. I didn't have a nuclear family. My mom and dad divorced when I was four years old, over domestic abuse over money, by the way. Because my dad could make the money but couldn't keep it. I tell the stories in the book. I'm very transparent about not just my daily life. My successes have not defined me. It's been my failures. Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. An entrepreneur works 18 hours a day to keep from getting a job. Rainbows only follow storms. We only grow through legitimate suffering. I'm so proud of my challenges and how I managed through my challenges. Because life is 10%. What life does to you in 90%, how you choose to respond to it. It's a response, not a reaction. My mom and dad were key to my life, but I also remember Willy, my second great-grandfather, George Young, who, after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, was one of 7,000 officers in the U.S. black troops. He was a slave who decided to fight for his country that wasn't fighting for him. He was a slave who became an officer and worked and protected Memphis. After the Emancipation Proclamation, fought in the Civil War, and fought for America, and even though America really was not fighting for him, he found this guy Lincoln, who at least had begun to turn the corner. An Emancipation Proclamation was a strategic move. It really wasn't a moral move when it first started. It was about getting people behind enemy lines to convert. But that's fine. Justice often is imperfect. Take what you can get and move on it. So, George Young, is where I got my social justice bones from, relationship-building bones and leadership bones. And then my grandfather, R.B. Smith, was a sharecropper born into slavery, probably in 1871. No one sent memos out saying slavery was over in 1865. And he was a businessman, and he was taken advantage of as a sharecropper.
My dad owns a businessman. I already told you about that. He was essentially illiterate but brilliant. And I'm an entrepreneur. My great-grandmother was a slave on my mother's side. My mother had a shotgun shack in East Saint Louis. My mother bought and sold seven homes. I bought and sold 700 homes. That's not genius. It's role modeling. My mother told me she loved me every day of my life. There's a difference between being broken and being poor. Being broke is economic, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind. A depressed condition of your spirit. And you must vow never ever to be poor again. My mother told me she loved me, and that gave me self-esteem. You have a lot of people Willy who have high confidence but low self-esteem. And your audience can think right now of somebody on the national leadership stage who has power, money, position, smart, a brilliant marketer, low self-esteem, insecure, and pushing fear. I'm not naming names. I'm just saying it. You can say you can name somebody in your office that has that. You can name somebody in your family who has that. I think we're better together. As you said, I've served Republican and Democratic presidents. I've been a commissioned officer for President Bush, President Obama, President Clinton, and I were honored by five of President Clinton Bush's sons, George H’s father. Was born on the same day as Reagan and his wife honored me in the White House. I’ve known nine presidents.
I think that in my lens of history. Light winds. Love wins. Relationships win. Giving more then you get wins. You build brand value and brand equity by what you give and not what you get and how people feel about you. Going public is a narrative. You mentioned a slogan earlier. Really what I'm doing is weaving a narrative of America. What did Doctor King say, he said, “I’m not going to save, black people.” He said, “I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the triple evils of war, racism, and poverty.” Oh, how can you not be for that? And I think we have to include everybody in our vision for the future of this country. That's why I wrote something recently called A Business Plan for America. Not a business plan for black people, Latinos, Jews, Asians, or Protestants, it's a business plan for America. We're all in this thing together. And if we don't figure that out quickly, we'll be speaking Mandarin in 20 years because four countries want us to fight: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. They love the food fight that we sometimes find ourselves in. Everybody wants to be an American, but Americans. Everybody wants to come to this country, but we don't appreciate it. And this is the greatest experiment on the planet. We got all kinds of problems. Slavery was horrible, bad capitalism. But look at us now. I've gone from the bottom. I was homeless, and I'm the bottom of the 1% now. Not a bad trajectory and I'm not done.
Willy Walker: I want to double-click on a couple of things you said. First of all, I saw when you talked about your mom that you choked up for a second. Two nights ago, when the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup, the president and GM of the Panthers was on ABC at the very end. They paraded around the rink for an hour with the cup. And, after talking about how he rebuilt the team and the Panthers had a very distinct culture to the team. There are no big stars on it. It's a true team effort to win the Stanley Cup this year. And, when asked what's the sweetest part of this victory, he stops and you think he's going to talk about just, “Oh, it's great to see the team and all that stuff.” And he goes, “My dad's here, my dad's here.” And he totally chokes up. I started bawling, sitting there on my couch at home, watching this thing. And he goes, “My dad's here.” And that connectivity, your point about unconditional love from your mom, and then hard work, which is the trait you learn from your dad. Those two things clearly have defined you as it relates to how you lived your life and what you've done as far as giving back and then also working your ass off.
The other one was when you mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King. In the book, you mentioned, “Only at the peak of his popularity. Only about 20% of blacks and whites supported what Dr. King was standing for.” As I read that, first of all, it shocked me because, as somebody who wasn't alive during that time, I would think back and think that all Blacks were supportive of Dr. King and that there was a large, at least a majority of whites that also supported his efforts. Not the case. But it reminded me of Roger Federer's commencement address at Dartmouth. I don't know if you've seen it. But two weeks ago, Roger Federer gave this commencement address, which was quite good. I would recommend it to people who haven't seen it. But he said, “I played 1,300 professional matches as a tennis player, and I won 82% of those matches, but I only won 54% of the points I played,” and he's like, “I was the best tennis player in the world. And I only won 54%, slightly more than half the points I played.” And he said, “If you get too caught up on the point you just lost, you're never going to get to winning 82% of your matches and becoming the best player in the world.” And I thought it was such an interesting thing to actually look at the data.
So you started this whole conversation off by saying, “I like to look at math. Math is unemotional.” You look at the data on Roger Federer. The reason he was the greatest tennis player potentially of all time is because he was able to lose 46% of the points he played and not dwell on and then move on to the next one.
John Hope Bryant: Around the corner from our house here, being in Atlanta is like being an Ozzie and Harrietville for black people. Ambassador Andrew Young, who was on the balcony with Dr. King, lives 15 minutes away from me. I talked to him last night. The King family, the Abernathy family, the C.T. Vivian family, all these families. But it's also the Hank Aaron family. And Hank Aaron's wife Billye we hang out. She's wonderful. But he had the record for the most home runs. And the record for the most strikeouts.
Willy Walker: Exactly.
John Hope Bryant: No one talks about the strikeouts. You can't hit a ball. You don't swing it. But you cannot get obsessed with the ball with the thing you missed. And a lot of so-called leaders want the perfect fit. I say to them, don't let the perfect become the death of the good. But they'll sit and noodle something forever. They'll micro-analyze. They'll noodle and noodle and think and think. And your brain is not supposed to be in charge of your life. I know that people find this hard to believe. You're not a human being having a spiritual experience. You're a spiritual being, having a human experience. Energy matters. Dr. King didn't say, “I have a dream that GDP will grow by 2% a year.” You've got to follow your intuition, your gut, and your value system. And any man listening to this, go to your wife tonight and say, “Baby, you said that guy wasn't no good. You didn't know anything about him. Tell me about why did you feel that?” And she'll tell you, “It was my intuition. I didn't know anything about him. I just didn't feel good. He didn't feel good.” You didn't marry your wife because of some spreadsheet analysis. She made you feel a certain way. You think about what the most important values are, love, charity, compassion, joy, faith, and belief. Think about banking. It's a trust business. It's not a financial business. My credit comes from the Latin word, ‘credito,’ credibility, and capitalism. Most people watching this and listening to this are capitalist. It comes from the Latin root word ‘capitas,’ knowledge in the head.
So you need credibility to access capital and earn trust. And if both people have to understand two sides of the negotiating table have all these documents. I know all these doctors, and lawyers that have been vetted, but you don't trust the people signing it. The documents are useless. So the thing that we've jettisoned is the most important thing, is the love of each other, our relationship, and the way you want to be treated. It's having a decency that's in your soul and in your bones. And I believe going back to your point about why I've been able to build this largest financial inclusion enterprise in the country. It is $4.7 billion of invested capital and 1500 offices across the country, 300 physical and the rest are satellites, some of the biggest brands, are because, I think, a feeling that we're not playing games with you. This is not about me taking. Me winning and you losing. You cannot win or lose at scale. It has to be win-win. Coca-Cola is not great. It's bottled sugar water, but it's got a great brand. It's got a great narrative and a great history. And, even when they lose, they win. You talked about Dr. King. The Coca-Cola in the ‘60s. Now think about the environment In the 60s in Atlanta now. Coca-Cola's in the ‘60s were approached by the mayor. Doctor King won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is leadership now. Won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the business leaders in Atlanta don't want to honor him. The mayor came to Coca-Cola CEO Woodruff, who had retired as CEO. We have a problem. Woodruff said “You messed up my hunting trip for this, comes back to the office.” All the business leaders in his office said, “Look, I'm upset. You messed up my hunting trip. This is not complicated.” This man won the most important award in the world. Do you have a problem with him? You think He is this. He's a troublemaker. I don't really care. Let me tell you something. We are the leading supply chain company in the world, back then. We don't need Atlanta. Atlanta needs us. You're going to honor this man, and you're going to sell out that ballroom. Or you’re not going to be our vendor anymore. And we're going to move out of the little backwoods town and go someplace where people got some sense. That ballroom was sold out, Willy. And I saw you see in history books a sold-out ballroom. People standing along the walls. But this was Coca-Cola doing the right thing just because it was the right thing and was also good business sense. It was also in line with their narrative and brand. It also had a global perspective, not just a local one. It was about what you give, not what you get. It was a relationship, not a transaction.
Black America returned that favor and, for 30 years, made them the leading brand in Africa. The number one customer for Coca-Cola after that, we're black people here and in Africa. And that story, there's so many stories like that where you'd never go wrong, doing right, but there's so many people who sit there and analyze and have a paralysis of analysis. And capital really is a coward. Capital wants to find a safe place to sit. He wants the highest return for the lowest risk. I get that, that's fine. But every now and then, capital has to have a vision. Capital leaders have to have a vision. And faith is what you do When you don't have all the facts. People need to buy into your vision. And I think the biggest companies with the biggest brands that are most successful went above the bottom line. Here's profitability in income and balance sheet. Okay, I get that.
But what's your enterprise value? That's what I think I did with my brands. Created enterprise value. What did Amazon and Walmart do. What did Willy Walker and Walker & Dunlop do. What did all these companies do that have really created multiples in their stock value? Their enterprise value is, is they laid a value system about above their product value. I mean Apple; the first device that had an emotion. That was Steve Jobs, who was not a great programmer. He was a great designer and a great marketer. Wozniacki was a great programmer. But nobody thinks about Wozniacki. They think about the emotions that Steve Jobs, the value and the passion he poured into this product. And I think that. I want to say the capitalist, listening to this, you can be like Willy Walker. You can be like Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, who's down the street.
Willy Walker: Unbelievable man. Unbelievable leader.
John Hope Bryant: Biggest airline in the world. Most profitable airline in the world. Most valuable airline in the world and shares $2.5 billion worth of profit sharing with its employees, ramp workers, flight attendants, and baggage handlers. On Valentine's Day this year, I did it with him. I do it every year, and we do financial coaching for those employees at the bottom of his pyramid with a $1,000 emergency savings account so they don't fall between the cracks. But when he does well, Willy, they do well. When he's doing badly, they step back in with them because they ride or die together, this is the future of capitalism. I call that stakeholder capitalism. KKR is adopting that model with their subsidiaries and giving profit sharing. And Apollo is beginning to do that with some of their subsidiaries. We do financial coaching for their companies, and I just think that we're in a new era, and we have to upgrade our software on decency and, with that, upgrade the software on capitalism. So it has a life for the next 50 to 100 years.
Willy Walker: So a couple of things that are, first of all, anyone who flies Delta Airlines. If you're on there surfing for a movie to watch, I strongly recommend you go to the documentary section on Delta. And they have the movie on what Delta did during the pandemic to support its employees and how they got through it together in an industry that was, as everyone knows, wiped out by the pandemic. It is such a great documentary on leadership. I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen that. It's really quite something. And obviously John Hope's friend is very prominently in that in his role leading Delta through it.
Let's talk for a moment about financial literacy, because you call that the civil rights challenge of the 21st century. And the book is super compelling. First of all, walks through why we've had such financial inequality in the United States. And there are many things in there like the Freedman's Bank. Which by the way, how did you get Mnuchin to put the Freedman's Bank across from the Treasury Department? In other words, what was it that brought that idea rather than just saying, “We ought to do that.” How did that come about? You're now actually going to have a location of the Freedman's Bank directly across from the Treasury Building.
John Hope Bryant: Yeah, I think you do the research, Willy. I think what you're referring to is I'm the only American citizen to inspire the renaming of a building on the White House campus in the history of the country. It was called the Treasury Annex Building for over 100 years. And now, if you look it up, it's called the Freedman's Bank building. It wasn’t Mnuchin. He's a good guy.
Willy Walker: I thought it was. Who did it? I thought I heard you say he did it.
John Hope Bryant: I was just on a panel with him with Mike Milken at the Milken conference. Nice guy. We work with him. I work with him on PPP. And Joseph Otting, who was comptroller of the currency. We help to design PPP. The portion that had to do with minority small businesses. We worked with Joseph Otting on that, it was Jack Lew. Secretary Jack Lew who actually listened to my argument. And the guy who's now deputy secretary, the first Black man in the history of America to be DEP secretary, Wally Adeyemo. Today, he was a deputy to Jack Lew. And I went to them with the story of the Freedman's Bank. Abraham Lincoln created the bank to teach free slaves about money after the Civil War, financial literacy. And, Lincoln really was ahead of his time and he'd really take this arc of evolution. We don’t have time for this. But people should really do research on Lincoln as a great human being and really thought deeply about issues and struggled with them.
Anyway, ‘40 Acres and a Mule’, was Field action 15. That was January 1865 in Savannah, Georgia, down the street from me. February was the next month, the mule. January was the land. February was a mule, which is like machinery. March was the bank creation, financial literacy, savings, domicile, and extra credit. He was murdered in April. And he was murdered after he promised the right to vote to blacks. And Bush said that's a bridge too far. You would never make another speech. Again threatened, fearful that black people were getting too much. I'm not quite sure what that meant. You just simply want somebody to be able to breathe and live and operate like everybody else. But, that statement of vision by Lincoln into this physical life. But he's larger in death like Dr. King than he ever was when he was alive. That bank, because Lincoln could not marshal it forward, became manipulated by those who came after Lincoln, but it was located across the street in the White House so that Lincoln could keep the narrative, and keep an eye on his most important social experiment, I believe post-Civil War, which was bringing us all together and letting everybody thrive together. And he was assassinated. The bank fell into disrepair. It was an OCC bank. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency shut it down. And most people lost their money. And that's why blacks don't trust banks. That's why blacks don't understand financial literacy. So civil rights, financial literacy, wealth income, economic opportunity, and wealth creation. Not that we're dumb or stupid, we're actually quite brilliant. When the rules are published, and the playing field is level. Think the arts, think professional sports, think government, and think faith, we kill it. But capitalism, as you know, there is no rulebook. And so the bank fell into disrepair. It was closed. And I thought it was important to renew this history. And so I asked Jack Lew to rename the Treasury Building, the annex building. And I remember his attorney said, “We can't do this. You gotta go. Who do you think you are, not a Congressman. No, you're not. you got to go.” I said, “Look, just do the research. Otherwise, I will never let this go. I will irritate you every day for the next five years.” And Willy Walker will tell you don’t want to get emails, text, from me.
Willy Walker: Yeah, I was going to say you don't even want to get on that side.
John Hope Bryant: They came back and said, “Oh my God, we can do this administratively. Thank you very much. See what happens when you do a little work. So I went to Jack Lew and he said, I was in a room and I remember Secretary Lew and me. And they were like, “Can we do this? Should we do this?” I said, “Secretary, you cannot possibly tell me that the Treasury Annex building is a better name.”
Willy Walker: Exactly.
John Hope Bryant: And it was just like that. He just changed it. If you search for it today, it's the Freedman's Bank building. In honor of this untold legacy that you think about the work of operation today, Willy. It is a continuation of the unfinished work of Abraham Lincoln and his whisperer. Frederick Douglass was whispering, a former slave whispering in his ear about the moral challenges and the ethical challenges the nation faced and made Lincoln smarter. Frederick Douglass made Lincoln smarter like Dr. King made President Johnson and President Kennedy smarter. And they were better together. Again, relationships. Two plus two equals six, eight, or 10 in a relationship. And it's because people are different and have different perspectives. They can add value to your life. But we can't live in our little boxes. You gotta break out of those things and be nosy and curious about the world, and even invite decisions and opinions that are different than your own.
Willy Walker: So, in the book, you talk about the amount of credit card debt outstanding as well as student loans. And I couldn't quite get a read on your take on, first of all, the expansion of credit through credit cards. In other words, you're very clear in saying we've got over almost $1 trillion of debt outstanding on credit cards. And certain people who don't have financial literacy don't understand that the balance of $6,000, I think, is the example you use in the book, is going to accrue interest at 22%. And if you're only paying the minimum payment on that $6,000, it's going to take you ten years to pay that off. If you start to pay a little bit of the principal, people get trapped.
And on student loans, you talked very clearly about how there needs to be a return on the education that you get from taking out those student loans. And many students who've gone and taken out loans haven't gotten that return.
Are you a critic of the expansion of credit card debt and of student loans to the degree that you wish there were either controls or the expansion of it wasn't as widespread as it was? Or are you more in, it’s out there. People have something that they didn't really have the financial literacy to truly understand, but it's now our job going forward to make sure that the next generation, or people who are using credit cards today, understand what they're paying and how they're paying it.
John Hope Bryant: I'm a moderate revolutionary. I think that most things in moderation are actually pretty good for you. Drugs in moderation that are prescribed. Alcohol in moderation will lower blood pressure. Why? Most things are in moderation. A little sleep is good. Too much sleep will put you to sleep. So things in moderation are good. But if you have the INGs, if you're depressed and distressed because you never have enough financial literacy, you don't understand how the system works. And you're distressed at this world, and you hate capitalism because you don't think you can be a capitalist. Or, as some of my friends would say, “I hate rich people.” And I remind them, “No, you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich.” And what you hate the game system. What you think is that the person that you're looking at is not as smart as you. And how did they get there and why are they more successful when you're struggling? So it must be a game system. So you hate it. You resent it. But if there was a ladder that was returned and repaired that allowed you to go from the bottom to the top based on hard work, keep your nose clean, following the law, being respectful of your elders, and follow society's framework, and you could succeed too. And as I told Michael Milken recently as he was talking about the challenges of how some people want to destroy capitalism in the world. I said, “Well, that's capitalism's fault. Because it has not done a good job of marketing itself and making itself available and accessible to all of God's children.”
I love credit cards, actually. I think it is one of the modern miracles of the world. One of the first credit cards came from one of my partners, Bank of America, which by the way, was where my financial literacy teacher was when I was nine years old and was a BofA banker. My first grant from a major bank was from Wells Fargo, which is a big partner with me today. Charlie Scharf is a brilliant leader and Brian Moynihan. Both of them got involved deeply in our work at scale. So credit cards, I think, are a great innovation. I was watching something on Friedman a couple of days ago and talked about how in China, credit cards in Hong Kong are really part of what made the merchant class in Hong Kong really work. And it's been something that's been beautiful, but it's been abused because people are financially illiterate.
Check-casher, you and me talked about this a lot. There's nothing wrong with check-casher it's a completely appropriate business unless your people are financially illiterate and depressed, and they start doing the ‘ING’ shopping, drinking, drugging, sleeping, sexting, and texting because you're depressed. Then all these things become preys upon you. Check-cashing came from grocery stores. Grocery stores would provide a convenience to their customers, cash your check at the counter as you're buying your groceries, you got your paycheck, I'm gonna cash a check and ring up your groceries. Here's your cashback. And after a while, they realize there's a 3% margin on my groceries on the shelf. And I gotta buy all that inventory. If I just charged 1% for this check, 2%, there's no cost of funds. There's no cost of inventory. That's where check-cashing actually came from. But then payday lending that was also honorable. But all these things now resign a five in any credit score neighborhood. I have a whole credit score index where I've modeled every zip code in America by credit score and whether it was black or brown urban, white poor rural. Here's what you see, 580 for a neighborhood check casher next to a payday loan lender, next to a rental store, next to a title lender, next to a liquor store, next to a pawn shop, and a church down the street. Make sure you don't go crazy once a week. As a release valve of the stress that's preying on a financially illiterate community. And so nothing wrong with credit cards but what I just described. Student loans when I say I'm radical. I don't think we should have student loans. I think that we are taking a public good and making it a private asset which is quality education. If you want to be the superpower in the world and you never had a superpower, Willy, there was an economic power at the same time. I think Rome, think Germany, think France, think UK, and Spain. We are the superpower, and we are the economic power. But there are a couple of things we gotta do unless we wanna speak Mandarin in ten years. A couple of things we gotta do, and one of them is you need a highly educated, highly involved critical thinking population. We did K-12 without some resolve because it was an agrarian age where you need the basic education needed to go off in the summer and go plant in the fields. We're out of the agrarian age. We're three economic cycles from agrarian, industrial, technology, and information that we're going to AI a whole other situation. You need everybody to get as much education, that we can shove down their throat. And I think it should be an investment of the American public. That's a government good. You want people to have basic health care. So, you don’t drop dead, or people getting medical care through an emergency room. And you want people to have basic education so they can do critical thinking and contribute to a society. That will grow GDP. Those two things, we'll just leave health care aside as a fight. The education piece will grow GDP alone. And so I just think differently about this. I think we're winning battles and losing wars. We're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are two politically stupid things that have happened in the last five years. I'm about to pick a fight on your podcast.
My Democratic friends, one of the stupidest things I've ever seen was defund the police. Yeah, there's ignorant police. There's stupid police. There's corrupt police. There's racist police. Lock them up. Fire them. Identify them. But most police are good people. And the stupidest thing I've seen recently my hardcore Republican friends have done is killing DE&I. That's R&D for GDP. I wrote something called A Business Plan for America, which is a companion piece of this book, you get it for free. The data is… Just go read it, Even my friend Stevie Wonder can see this.
Willy Walker: So in the book, one of the things that you put forth so compellingly is that if we don't tackle this challenge. If the attitude is we can just continue to leave black and brown people behind, the numbers don't work. And so back to your original point, which is Math. In other words, the math doesn't lie. The number of minorities in America is becoming a majority. And if they continue to earn at the level that they're earning today, we won't get the GDP growth we need. We don't get the communities we need. We don't get the country we need. And so you put everything like, I don't care what your politics is, you can be left, you can be right. Whatever else. This is common sense as it relates to a country that needs to continue to grow, and we must invest in these people to allow them to have the education and the lives that are going to allow us to continue to keep this country moving in the right direction.
I think that the beginning of your book is so nonpartisan. I like the fact that you picked out both sides and picked one thing on both sides that are quite extreme and quite out there, but I find it to be so interesting in the book, John, that you consistently go back and just say, “Get the politics out of this stuff and just talk about what is common sense for our country and for our civilization.”
John Hope Bryant: So you mentioned common sense, Willy. One of the reasons I love you is you do have great common sense. But common sense is not so common. And I'm not relating this to what I'm about to mention, but I went to debate Bill Ackman, the billionaire who is the poster child for anti-DE&I. The topic of DE&I, the framing is probably dead, to my slogans. That slogan has been so beat up.
Willy Walker: Sort of like ESG. I heard Paul Tudor Jones say “If ESG didn't start with the environmental, it probably would have stayed out there longer.” He said. “It should be SGE.” It should be social governance because no one has problems with the social governance part. It's just this snicker on the ESG. But anyway, go ahead on your DE&I point because it's a good one.
John Hope Bryant: I don't care what you call it, Willy. Call it EE&E education, exposure, and experience. I don't care what you call it, but if we don't start calling it something called common sense, we're all done. So I did this private debate at the Milken Global Conference with Bill Ackman for an hour, and it's private, so I can't say what was said, but I will just tell you, after 40 minutes, he didn't have much else to say.
Willy Walker: You go on national television again, to Joe, and you can bring anybody on. The point is that I have significant issues with that. But I will say one quick thing as it relates to these efforts, which I do find to be quite something. I was at Harvard Business School at the Dean's Advisory Council meeting, and my dear friend John Rice, who runs an organization called Management Leadership for Tomorrow, raised a hand and asked the dean, “How does the Supreme Court decision on colleges using affirmative action impact HBS?” And John Hope, you would have the first thing was, and by the way, the dean's an incredible man and HBS is working very hard underneath very challenging situations. But he said, “Look, we won't know until September 6th the diversity of our class because the Supreme Court has made it illegal for us to know where people come from and what the racial and ethnic composition of our classes is.” John then goes, well, because Management Leadership for Tomorrow works with most of the kids who are applying to Harvard Business School. I can tell you the number of kids who are coming, who are black and brown, who have applied to Harvard Business School, who are planning on coming, and you should have seen it.” The entire administration ducked underneath their chairs like, no. We can't. We don’t want to know. And I find it to be unbelievable. Go ahead.
John Hope Bryant: And I give you a couple of stats. For your audience. I hope somebody right now is doing this. Okay, John's going off on this diversity thing away from financial. What does that have to do with financial literacy. Hold on for a minute. Here are a couple of stats for you. We're going to be the first generation. God has a sense of humor, Willy. America in 1950 was 90% white. That's undeniable. By the way, everybody looks at everything. America today is 40% black and brown. Within ten years, we're going to be a majority-minority. Hold on for a minute because that's part of what's fearful that's driving these fear politics right now is people feeling that the country is changing too quickly. Hold on that for a minute.
We're going to be the first generation over the age of 65, three white wealthy baby boomers trying to retire. They're trying to chill. They're exiting the economic stage. So hold on. Everybody who's made money and built wealth, who has the knowledge about free enterprise, capitalism leaving the stage. You got a group coming up who has not been given a memo on free enterprise, capitalism, economics, ownership, and opportunity, and who confuse making money with building wealth not because they're doing their dumb and stupid what they don't know they don't know, and no one's teaching them, and no one wants to teach them. And now we're kicking out the ladder of any kind of strategy to actually do R&D for the future economy. That's all it is R&D for GDP. And you've got the reality that the most diverse economies are the most profitable in the country. You've got New York and California because the economy's most diverse. I'm here in Atlanta, the biggest economy in the traditional South, the most diverse. And again, you can read all this in the Business Plan for America.
Here's the mic drop. If somebody's still shaking. They still have their hands crossed. And they're not quite convinced of what I'm saying. That's fine. Again, go and look at all my data in Business Plan for America. But in 1972, the white men and women I'm picking on this. I'm saying this intentionally now, by the way, back up. There are not enough successful college-educated white men that drive GDP for 30 years. That's not a racial comment. There's not enough college-educated successful white men to drive GDP for the next 30 years in America. It's just mathematically impossible. You need the bottom to join the top in order for us not to be speaking Mandarin in 20 years. You need to be the economic leader, to be the global leader around the world. Now hold on. We've been here before, Willy.
1972 I got to say that white women could not get a bank account, could not get a credit card, not 1872, 1972, and could not get a loan unless her husband cosigned the loan for them in 1972. It’s because Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. The back push of that was Nixon. Nixon, in order to prove he was not a bad guy, created affirmative action. Yes, a Republican president. Black people could not benefit from that. But my wife and sisters did. God bless them. That didn't push through to a law in ‘74, giving them more rights. And today, white women, black women, all women, are a quarter of American GDP, $6 to $7 trillion a year, Willy today. What would have happened, Willy if we said the DE&I argument of the 1970s. No, we want women to stay in the kitchen. Be a domestic engineer only. What would happen? America would be a third-tier country today. We'd be behind Germany and Japan in GDP. We would not be the leader of the free world. We have to get out of our own way, embrace the future, embrace common sense, and let women do what they say, “Like and participate.” And they killed it. And they're still underpaid. But here we go again. To me, again, it's just common sense.
Willy Walker: I have to give a quick anecdote because in hearing you talk about that, I was in Washington last week. I was there for a friend of mine's mother's funeral, and I was walking home from... I went to a reception afterward, and my friend's son went to Duke. He works for a great consulting firm right now. And George and I had this conversation about whether he ought to leave his consulting firm and go to business school or keep going. For 15 to 20 minutes, I gave George a lot of ideas his right to stay at the consulting firm, keep going through, or stop going to business school. What have you. But I think that conversation with him was very meaningful and helpful to someone who went to business school and who has been reasonably successful in the business world. Fast forward, I went down to.
John Hope Bryant: Did you just say you were reasonably good?
Willy Walker: So I go downtown to pick up my girlfriend who had gone out to dinner with some friends. We're walking back to our hotel. We're walking through the mall area of D.C. down towards the wharf, and there's a woman who's walking in front of us, and she's got a Shake Shack shirt on. And so Sarah and I start up a conversation with her and I said, “How was your shift?” She says, “It was great, but it was long, and I'm tired and I've got a ten-month-old baby at home, and I'm just tired. I'm worn out.” And my girlfriend Sarah said to her, “Would you like us to get you an Uber to go home?” And she turned around. She said, “Oh my God, if you could get me an Uber to go home, I would be so thankful to you.” As Sarah was pulling out her phone to get an Uber, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a $100 bill, and gave a $100 bill. And this young woman just broke down crying. And $100, I don't know, maybe that's at least a day's work for her. And probably more than a day's work for her at Shake Shack. But it made me think about... And George and this young woman were probably the same age. And I just sat there, and I said, “George gets for me this strategic conversation about what he ought to do with his life, this young woman, who is probably 18, 19 years old, working at Shake Shack, gets $100 from me.” And I love the emotion of it. But that $100 goes quickly. She didn't get any advice or counsel on how to get out of the Shake Shack job. And she also unfortunately had a child too early. And she's now figuring out how to take care of that child, work at a Shake Shack, and live her life. And I just think about the financial literacy, the financial education that she can and should get.
One of the things that you all do with Operation Hope John is to give $50 savings accounts to people who come into Operation Hope so that they can understand compound interest and they can understand the concept of making money while you sleep. Dive into that as one of the specific things that you focus on. I think a lot of people think about that young woman, and I think about if she took that $100 that I gave her, and my assumption is that she either paid for the Uber home or not, and then that $100 is now gone. If she'd taken that $50 and put it in the bank and understood that today it's compounding at 5.25% or 5.50%. Actually banks aren't quite paying what the Fed funds rate is today, so they would compound it 3.5 or 4% a year. And she could see that grow, that she would understand that the paycheck to paycheck that she's living, working at Shake Shack, is no way to compound and create real wealth. And so talk for a moment about some of the things you're doing specifically at Operation Hope to create financial literacy and to make people who don't have it understand the value of it.
John Hope Bryant: By the way, Willy, there are no ugly billionaires. And in addition to being handsome, you're also extraordinarily successful who's built a multi-billion dollar enterprise. And I think…
Willy Walker: The purpose of this conversation is to hear from you, not to talk about me.
John Hope Bryant: My point is that you giving her that money, you also gave her dignity. Gave her respect.
Willy Walker: You could see it in her face. And she hugged me, and she was crying. And she needed that break at that moment, that random act of kindness you and I talked about before. Random acts of kindness are incredible, and they make you feel good. We started this conversation about what's the one thing you've done throughout your career to make it so someone like Ambassador Andrew Young has taken such an interest in you and stayed with you and it's giving more than receiving. You and I both know that if you give, you're going to get. If it's a quid pro quo, I did not expect to get some value back from that woman for the $100 I gave her. Obviously not.
One of the things that you've talked about in the book, which I think is so great, and I say it to every single college grad I speak to, including George, who went to Duke and is working for a consulting firm. I said, “You keep consulting. You don't make money just when you're working, George, and you might be making however much you're making a year consulting. But you're not making money when you sleep. And I'm going to go home tonight and I'm going to go to bed. And at a $132 billion servicing portfolio, Walker & Dunlop is going to make me money at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., and 3 a.m. while I'm sleeping.” And the concept of being in an industry where you make money when you sleep is so important, and you talk about it explicitly in the book, it's something that you and Tony Wrestler talk about. The concept of that is something that many people, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck, don't understand.
John Hope Bryant: So yeah, I'm going to answer that question because it's a very important question. But I keep thinking about your audience. If I want to impact the audience of the folks, you're referencing who need the help. As we go from the streets to the suites, I'm going to be on Charlamagne's Breakfast Club, where I did Breakfast Club a few weeks ago, and there are millions and millions of views on the clips I did from his show. Because that's the masses, not the classes as an audience. I'm going to be on my Money and Wealth podcast and all that stuff. But the audience listening to you are leaders and you're a leader amongst leaders, and we have a chance to inspire these people to rise up and become the kind of human being that has a legacy and not just a life. And that's about what you give, not what you get. And I want you to think about and model the likes of Michael Arougheti as CEO. By the way, if it wasn't for Michael, I wouldn't have met Tony. And Michael was the first investor in the Promise Homes company. Ares couldn't do it for a range of reasons or wouldn't do it. But back then, it wasn't even 2015 that wasn't viewed as an institutional thing that they should be doing. But he took a risk on me personally. Then because of him, Tony took a risk on me personally. And they made sure that when I sold the company, because I had done all the work, he said, “Look, this is your company. I can't tell all of their business.” But they did what they didn't have to do. I paid in return. I paid everybody off, plus interest. But they could have taken advantage of me. They could have squeezed me. They could have screwed me if they wanted to. That's the last thing on their mind. You built this. This is your company. Give us a fair return on our money. You own it. And when somebody tried to take advantage of me, Tony and Michael put their foot in the door and said, “You're not going to shut this door on this young man. This man has worked his tail off, and he has earned this.” And I didn't do this to the rich white man to get richer. I'm going to say what they won't say because there are no press releases about that. They did the decent thing and the right thing, and I was able to build that and other things as a result of having generational wealth.
Bryan Jordan, CEO of First Horizon Bank. I'm 10% of his branches in Tennessee, and we have different politics. But that's my dude. He's my lead director at Operation Hope. Michael Milken, who funded Reginald Lewis in a $1 billion deal in the ‘80s. We're working together. Ed Basham, Doug McMillon, and Sarah Friar are amazing. And now working with my man Sam Altman over at OpenAI to O'Brien, Henry Kravis, Bob Pittman, and iHeart. These are people and there's a long list of others, Jamie Dimon, Charlie Shark. You should want to model these people. Brian Moynihan, these are leaders who prove it. You can do well and do good. Bill Roger, the Truist Bank, at the same time.
Now, because of what these leaders said and I went to the CEO with my ideas, I’m getting to know I’m gonna get to know the guy at the top of the lady. And I take no for vitamins, as you know, Willy. And so they said, remember I went to Bill Roger at Truist with my idea. And he said, “Look, I'm going to give you a shot. Don't ask me for any money. I'm gonna put you in my branches. Don't ask me for any money. Let's see if it works.” And after about a year, you're like, “Wow, this stuff really works.” Tell you what. I'm going to give you a couple of chances. We opened three branches, and then, he said, “Okay, well, I'm expanding.” So I said, “Okay. And I'm thinking of 20 branches.” And he was thinking 200, and now we're in 800 of Truist branches used to be called SunTrust because what we're doing is getting them out of the no business. I'm sorry, we’re declining you for credit and back into the yes business. Yes, we are approving you to become a homeowner small business. The number one way to build wealth in America is that homeownership it’s not complicated. And I get upset when my wealthy friends go on CNBC and say, “Don't own a home” and they own a home. It just drives me nuts. But 41 to 44% of black people own a home, compared to 75% of their mainstream counterparts. So I want everybody to own a home. I tell you how to become a millionaire in five years, get a will, get a life insurance policy. Not doing a GoFundMe campaign to get them to bury you. And if you die, at least your kids will get $1 million in a life insurance policy. Do a term policy you can afford you’re a whole life. Become a homeowner. Buy one home on the best block in the hood in an underserved neighborhood working class. Buy it, rehab it, and live in it. Use the equity. Buy another one. Rehab it and rent it. Do that three times. You have $1 million net worth. Now, in order to do that, you have to access credit. Most people's average credit score for black people is below 620 because of the reasons we talked about earlier. So, what we've been doing is popping the credit score, 54 points in six months, 120 points in 24 months. Nothing changes your life more than God or love and moving your credit score 120 points.
Willy Walker: Pause on that for a second. Say that again because that is the punchline of this book.
John Hope Bryant: That's the drop-the-mic moment, I guess.
Willy Walker: God, love, and move your credit score to 120 points. The data you put in there is not only about your finances, your life expectancy, you look at the neighborhoods you study that have a credit score of 580 or below, and the average life expectancy is 60 years. You look at those above 700 and it's over 72. It's 13, 14 years of additional life span just by looking at credit scores.
John Hope Bryant: 15 minutes apart. So we mapped every zip code by credit score, go to the Hope Financial Wellness Index online, and just punch in your zip code. Tell me your zip code or tell me how you're living. People think they're geniuses. No, you had luck of the gene pool. You were born in the right family, the right place, right time. You got lucky. You got right in the right zip code with the right family. And as a result of that, you're successful. Don't think you're brilliant. You might be, but that's not the reason you're successful. You've got people in underserved neighborhoods who are businesspeople called drug dealers. Now, that's immoral and unethical, but they're not dumb. They understand import-export, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail, customer service, security, territory and logistics, and employee relations. A gang leader is a frustrated union organizer. Look, NASCAR came from moonshine running in the Appalachian Mountains. That was an illegal activity, but they mainstreamed it to a multi-billion dollar business with Brandt as the CEO. NASCAR is on my board, also with Brett, with brands attached to it. And the families are worth $100 million because we legitimized that. So these neighborhoods with a 580 credit score neighborhood I've sold to banks and corporations as an emerging market. And what I said is, “If you have a credit score of 580, the bank can't say yes to you. They must say no.” The bank doesn't want to say no. People say, think that banks are racist. No, they're capitalist. But capitals of power. They want to say yes. But my job is to get them out of no business. So I approve you, subject to the resolution of your primary denial factors. So when you come in the bank branch for Wells Fargo, whoever it is, U.S. Bank, it's another one of our big partners, Tim Wellship. He's another great guy. And you come in and the banker says, “Look, I don't want to take this application. I will. I don't want to take this application. I want to say yes.” Why don't you go to Operation Hope? They don't work for me. They work with us. They can do more than we can. They walk over to our desk. We look at the credit risk score. “Oh, baby, this is like a bus accident.” And we all have a nice laugh because she knows what's up. “What's this? I don't know what that is. Congratulations. That's called an error.” And let us go to the three credit bureaus. And the law states that they can't confirm this within 30 days. They must remove it 90% of the time, Willy. The credit bureaus, remove it, Experian, TransUnion, Equifax. They remove it because they can't confirm it. The credit score pops 30 points. Now I believe in quick wins. Now Willy, what happens to that lady’s self-esteem. Her belief, her trust, her confidence. She now has her shoulders back. She's got a win. She's now 610. Now she says, “What else can we do?” What's that? “Oh, I got married ten years ago. It was horrible. He ran up the phone bill, never paid it. I don't have $1,000.” Don't worry, SBC sold that to Pac Bell. Pac Bell sold that account to AT&T when they bought it. AT&T sold it to a credit company because they were tired of chasing, let's call them Jones Finance Company. “We got Mary Sue here. We're looking for her.” She's looking for you. “We want our $100. They bought it for $0.05 on the dollar. They bought it for 50 bucks. They want $100, one 100% profit.” Well, how about we give you $200? Why would you give me? That doesn't make any sense. You overpay me? Yes, because I want your cooperation. Because I'm going to ask you to put this on your credit report. It's been there for so long, and people are lazy. Systems are lazy. These are passive databases. It's going to show up there again. So when I call you back in two months, my coach does, and actually take it off again? You got to cooperate because I tell your boss that you gave us great customer service, and I'm giving you a more than 200% profit. “Yes, I'll do that.” So now she got an 80% discount. He got a 200% profit. Everybody won, her credit score goes up 30%. So now she's 640. Now she's in a sweet spot. Get her the earned income tax credit. We reduce our debt to $3,800. Increase her savings by $2,000. She makes $48,000 a year in this example. We get her a down payment assistance grant from one of the banks for $10,000. We get her a decent mortgage, and now we have her up to a 680 credit score after doing some massaging. Stop her from going to Starbucks three times a week, and smoking cigarettes. It is going to kill you and you need to get a Keurig machine at home. So now you're at close to 700, and now you're not black anymore. You're not Latino, you're not poor white. You're green. You're a good credit risk. And the bank always says, “Yes, we've done $4.5 billion of that credit transformation in, you know, 30 years.”
Willy Walker: So I just got it. And we're running out of time here because, you know me, I could keep talking, and I want to get together when we're both in Sun Valley. Week after next. There's a clip I watched yesterday on Scottie Scheffler and how much money he's making right now. It was on Barstool Sports, and they were talking about, well, he's made this much year to date, and he's going to win this season. But if you just keep going up and up and up, it looks like Scottie Scheffler is gonna make over $100 million this year. The reason is, as I listened to you talk about that woman and all the different things that happen when you get that momentum going, it sounded like Scottie Scheffler. And obviously, the numbers are different, and she's not the number one golfer in the world. But the point is that once you A, get that confidence, B, you get someone helping you, and C, you understand what to do, to ask the right question, to go and understand the fine print. Because I think there is something here where there are plenty of lenders who say, “Look, you take out that credit card, there's a fine print there that says, we're going to charge you 22.3% interest on an annual basis. And that's just what it is.” And it's not so much that they don't have a right to charge that 22.3% interest. It's the fact that someone needs to make them a parent of how you get out of it, which is what you just talked about. If you just sit there and say, “Keep calling the call center and tell them to stop charging you,” that ain't going to work. You got it. You have to find solutions. You got to people to be able to tell you how to do them. And your book is a great guide.
And I think the other thing that I found so interesting about your book, John Hope, is the call to action, like listening to you at that individual person that's in the Truist branch office where Operation Hope is there. It's awesome but there are people across the country. There are companies across the country. There are communities across the country that can step in and lean into this. And it starts by reading your book. And it's got some really practical tips on what to go about doing. And then to anybody who might hear this and say, “Oh, that sounds really compelling, and that could be helpful to me.” All of us can use more financial literacy.
I was sitting around with three of my buddies last weekend in D.C. We're getting ready to go out on a bike ride, and I started talking about some of the homes that I bought, how I bought them, and how I've structured the mortgages. And you can just see these friends. They're like, you're in this every day. This is your business. You obviously know more about this. Could you help me with my next loan? And I'm sitting here with these three very well-educated people, and I'm not sure I can help you. This is what you might want to do. So I think that whole issue that you underscore in your book as it relates to mentors and finding people who can be helpful to you in your life is just an incredible message.
I'd finished this webcast by saying that I consider you to be both a mentor in leadership as well as a wonderful, cherished friend, and I very much look forward to breaking bread with you in two weeks when we're both out in Sun Valley.
John Hope Bryant: But first of all, I love you, man. You're just a great human being. You're a great spirit. I love your soul. I love what you say in public. And I love what you say in private. I love how you stick up with people who are the least of these God's children, who just need a break. No one's asking for a handout. They want a hand up. But you can't bootstrap yourself. You don't have shoelaces. Like it's a ridiculous conversation. And it is disgusting to tell somebody you're sitting in your mansion. Who doesn't have who's got too much money at the end of their money and by no fault of their own, who's a descendant of slaves who were legally denied education and whose family was dispersed, which is why black families are not unified today. It's insulting to tell them. No one should help you. Just do it on your own. No one helped me. No, that's not true. If you're a descendant of immigrants in America, you got help from granddad, great-granddad, mommy, and daddy. And if you're on a golf course and you were caddying, you got help from the golfers who said, “Young man, come to an internship with me.” Everybody listening to this was helped by somebody nice because you were smart. Somebody said, “Do you want to come to this party with me? You know what? Do you want to come to this internship?” You call somebody and say, “Can my son come do an internship? Can my daughter come to do an apprenticeship? Can you help my daughter get into college?” It's a relationship capital. The opposite of that Willy is, if you hang out with nine broke people, you'll be the 10th. And I don't care how smart you are. You're locked in an airtight cage of no opportunity. So people watching this. Listen to this. I want you to hear this. You die twice. You die physically. And you die the last time somebody mentions your name. No one's going to come to your funeral if all you have is a Ferrari and a mansion and a paycheck and a golf membership, and you never did anything for anybody else.
You gotta decide what you have to give in this world and not what you have to get. And you can take this book. You can adopt a school 20 minutes from your house where the credit score of 100 points, 200 points lower. You can give this book to a library, underline, or underscore it. Share it with your family, highlight it, and then donate that with highlights. You're pointing to what's important. And give it to the local library. Give it to an underserved school. Commit to going in with your employees and teaching financial literacy so that the kids can model what they see. A kid in an underserved neighborhood. I'm wrapping up here. It just got me all. You got me all excited.
Willy Walker: I love it.
John Hope Bryant: I can't answer my neighborhood. They said, “Oh, these kids are dumb and stupid.” They want to be rap stars, athletes, and drug dealers. They're not dumb, and they're not stupid. They're brilliant because they're modeling what they see. You want to be a banker because you saw a banker. You want to be a businessperson because you saw a businessperson. They're modeling what they see. Let's give them something different to see. Let's make smart sexy again.
My mother, and we will end with this, worked an hourly job at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. Was not told that she was loved by her mother. But she told me she loved me. Her grandmother didn’t own a home. She was a slave. Her mother owned a shotgun shed. But my mother bought and sold seven homes as a single mother on an hourly job and kept her credit score above 850 back when they didn’t do 850 anymore. But back when you go 854. My mother wasn't black, she was green. And when she went to the computer at night and punched in that credit application, they said yes. And she didn't do it often, and she bought a card, was cash. When I wanted to start my first business, she loaned me $40. She wouldn't give it to me. You have to pay it back. Labor Candy House is in the book. But my mother gave me self-esteem and gave me love. And even when she cursed me out, she says, “I'm upset with you, future entrepreneur.” She encouraged me. She protected me. She loved me, and she made me bulletproof to pain and disappointment. And I take no vitamins to this day. And every time I walk into a boardroom, I walk in with her by my side. And I was homeless. She never knew it because she would have forced me to come home and take that hourly job. And I knew that was not my legacy. I made mistakes and had to pay for it myself. And I am so proud to say I'm from Compton, California. I'm from South Central Los Angeles. I was from what people call a broken-home divorcee. But they still love me. I saw people go from the bottom to the top, and my job was to take some other people from the bottom to the top as I went to a new top, as a result of my experience in my life, I saw my mother buy seven homes with nothing but her grit and die with $1 million net worth as she's gone. She passed last year. Wonderful woman, Juanita Smith, $1 million net worth with a will that said to her children. Anybody who argues over this will, and this inheritance is disinherited. My mother was controlling the narrative from the grave.
Look, we can all be the change we want to see in the world. We can. And I expect that you will. This is a new movement, and we're living in a moment in history. And what we do now it's going to last 100 years. I love you, Willy.
Willy Walker: Love you too, my friend. I'll see you in two weeks. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Loved it. See you soon.
