Recently, I became a certified open water scuba diver in Maui. I had been saying I would do it for years, but like many things in life, the delay wasn’t about ability. It was about fear, and about respect for an environment I did not yet fully understand.
Years ago, I nearly drowned in a rip current in the Caribbean. I survived, but the experience stayed with me. It humbled me and reminded me that confidence is not something you declare. It is something you earn, slowly and intentionally, through preparation and experience
When I finally descended underwater in Maui, something unexpected happened. I wasn’t afraid. I was calm. I trusted my training. I trusted myself. And in that calm, I saw everything differently.
Here’s the thing. The environment that I was going into didn’t change. The fear still existed. But preparation had changed my relationship with the environment and my apprehensions. The ocean hadn’t become less powerful. It was just as vast, just as unpredictable, and just as humbling. But I had become more prepared to operate within it.
That lesson stayed with me.
The Question That Will Define the Future
Just days later, I found myself on stage at the World Government Summit in Dubai, alongside His Excellency Tshering Tobgay, the Prime Minister of Bhutan. Together, we explored a question that will increasingly define leadership in the years ahead:
What should governments, and leaders in particular, be optimizing for?
Bhutan has chosen a bold and principled answer. Not simply economic output, but human well-being. Their philosophy of Gross National Happiness reflects a deeper understanding that growth, by itself, does not create stability or confidence. Prepared people create stability. Prepared people create resilient societies.
Because when people are prepared, they don’t fear change. They engage with it. They participate in it. And ultimately, they help shape it.
We Are Living Through Acceleration
The pace of change today is unlike anything most generations have experienced.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we work and how we think. Capital moves globally and instantly. Entire industries are emerging and transforming in a matter of years, not decades.
Acceleration is no longer an exception. It is the environment.
And the greatest threat is not the pace of change itself. It is unpreparedness.
When people are unprepared, change feels disorienting and threatening. But when people are prepared, when they understand the system they are operating in, change becomes opportunity.
This is why financial literacy has always been about more than money. It is about confidence. It is about agency. It is about giving people the tools to operate with dignity and clarity inside an economic system that affects every aspect of their lives.
Because you cannot confidently participate in a system you do not understand.
The Signal Is Clear
Over the past two years, I have witnessed something deeply encouraging.
Our message around financial literacy, ownership, and economic empowerment has surpassed one billion views globally. Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and has grown into one of the most listened-to business podcasts in the country.
What this tells me is not that people are suddenly more interested in content. It tells me that people are ready. They are ready to understand how money works. They are ready to move beyond simply earning a living and toward building stability and ownership.
They were never lacking intelligence. They were never lacking ambition. They were lacking exposure and translation.
When people learn the language of money, everything begins to shift. Their posture changes. Their confidence grows. Their decisions become more intentional. And their trajectory begins to expand in ways they may not have previously imagined possible.
Preparation transforms possibility into agency.
A Personal Milestone and a Renewed Responsibility
On February 6, I turned 60. Milestones like that have a way of sharpening your perspective. You begin to think less about what you have accomplished, and more about what remains to be done and who you are preparing to carry the work forward.
Leadership, at its highest level, is stewardship.
It is about helping others develop the confidence and competence to operate in environments that once felt unfamiliar or inaccessible.
While diving, I encountered sharks underwater for the first time. They were calm, entirely at home in their environment. And I realized that I wasn’t afraid, not because the ocean had changed, but because I had changed. I had done the work to belong there. I had prepared myself.
Preparation had replaced fear with clarity.
That lesson applies everywhere—in leadership, in business, and in life.
Preparing People for the Future
The future will not slow down for any of us.
Technology will continue to advance. Markets will continue to evolve. Opportunity will continue to emerge, but only for those prepared to recognize it and act on it with confidence.
Our responsibility, as leaders, educators, and citizens, is not to resist acceleration. It is to prepare people to meet it. To equip them with the knowledge, confidence, and clarity they need not only to navigate the future, but to help shape it.
Preparation builds confidence. Confidence builds participation. Participation builds ownership. Ownership builds freedom.
That has been my life’s work.
And it continues.
Pre-order my upcoming book “Capitalism for All” to join the conversation in depth.
