Business Is the New Bridge
From the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Operation HOPE, John Hope Bryant.
A conversation on the Melanin Money Show
The cameras weren’t even rolling when this conversation started. We were talking off the record, and the hosts stopped me and said, hold on, the people need to hear this. I’m glad they did. I met this team at Bishop T.D. Jakes’ Good Soil gathering. They’re making smart sexy again, and I was proud to sit down with them.
We covered a lot of ground. But the part people will argue about is the part I most want you to hear.
Red rooms and green rooms.
The civil rights movement built red rooms. Anti-discrimination, anti-bias, anti-everything that hurt us. We needed every one of them. But America doesn’t grow on stop. America grows on go.
We can protest our tails off. Now we need to partner our tails off. That means green rooms: access to capital, internships, apprenticeships, mentorships. Not only Black lives matter, but Black capitalists matter.
I believe we are living in a third Reconstruction. The first was about freedom. The second was about access. This one is about ownership, agency and healing. It is a move from the streets to the suites.
Why I say we need a Black-Jewish business plan.
I say it half joking and fully serious, and every time I do, somebody gets angry.
People forget that the NAACP was founded by Black, white and Jewish Americans together. Black and Jewish communities have been chased, shut out and told no. The difference is that one of us got financial literacy as a survival strategy. Denied the right to own land, many learned finance instead. Turned away by employers, they built their own firms.
We never got that memo. When the Freedman’s Bank failed after Lincoln’s assassination, the lesson went with it. It’s not that we got the memo and blew it. We never got the memo.
What I admire most is the funnel. Do business with everybody. Take in revenue from every customer who walks through the door. Then come home and fund your schools, your houses of worship and your charities. We have the funnel backwards. We take in only Black dollars and spend them everywhere else.
I’m not theorizing. I lived it.
Since I was 19 years old, the people who personally leaned in and bet on me were very often Jewish businessmen and entrepreneurs. It was never a strategy. It was a bond.
When I built one of my companies, partners including Tony Ressler backed me with capital they didn’t have to put on the table. I owned 60 percent going in. When I sold it, I owned 100 percent. They didn’t want my company. They wanted their money back plus a modest return. They told me, you built this.
We rarely give people credit for things like that. We’d rather fight over something else.
Two things can be true at the same time.
You can disagree with a government and still respect a people. You don’t want to be judged by whoever happens to be in the White House, and you shouldn’t judge an entire community by its politicians.
If you have a problem with one person, fine. You probably have a problem with your cousin Jojo too. Every group has folks who let it down, mine included. Somebody is working hard to divide two communities that were once the most powerful coalition in modern America. That division is not an accident, and it is not helping anybody get ahead.
Are you done? Do you feel better? You’re still broke.
There will be comments about this. That’s okay. You can disagree without being disagreeable. But if you won’t take the knowledge, you’re hitting your own face against my fist. You win the argument and lose the war.
Poor people talk about other people. Wealthy people talk about ideas. Being broke is economic, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind. If you fill your cup with pain and anger, there is no room left for ideas, investment or partnership. Nobody wants to invest in somebody who’s angry at everybody.
Business is the new bridge.
Here is something I’d never said before this interview. Imagine Arab capital, Jewish capital and Black talent working together, investing in Africa, in America’s inner cities, in the Caribbean and Latin America. That’s a game changer. I was just in Abu Dhabi, and they are already doing business across lines the rest of the world says are uncrossable.
But you can’t do any of it broke. And if your dream is to give back, remember this: even if you want to distribute money like a socialist, you have to collect it like a capitalist.
When Forbes named me to its list of America’s 250 Greatest Living Self-Made Americans, it wasn’t a Black list. It was an American list, and it’s obvious I’m Black. That’s the kind of integration I want. Let’s integrate the wealth. Let’s integrate the power. My color is green.
That is the work of Operation HOPE, and it is the heart of Capitalism for All.
Watch the full conversation below. Then ask yourself one honest question: what is my anger costing me, and who could I be building with instead?
🎥 Watch: John Hope Bryant on the Melanin Money Show
My thanks to the Melanin Money team. King-owned, queen-operated, and smart enough to start the cameras.
— John Hope Bryant
John Hope Bryant is the founder of Bryant Group Ventures and Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal, and author of his 7th book, Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America, now a bestseller. Bryant was recently recognized as a member of the Forbes 250 Greatest Living Self Made Americans, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of America itself. Get the book →
