Mellody Hobson's Money Advice & Rules To Financial Freedom | NXT Chapter with T.D. Jakes

So my mother always said, I love this one. She was like, Melody, money talks, and wealth whispers. Hey everybody, I'm TD J. Sennhe, and I want to welcome you to the next chapter podcast. And boy, it's just a doozy. I have a guest if you don't know, you need to know. Her name is Melody Hobson, and she is in a class. Oh, by herself. She is the co-CEO and president of Arrow Investments. She's a passionate advocate for financial literacy, diversity, and opportunity. In this episode, we talk about how she manages her demanding schedule with Grace. How to ask for help the right way, and why sticking together, as a community matters more now than ever before. We dive into her perspective on today's stock market and the quiet power of not flaunting your finances, but letting your purpose speak for itself. Melody Hobson. Hey, Melody Hobson. So I'd like to fly you out. Chapter one, managing schedule. I don't know where to begin. I got to start by telling myself. So I called you and had my office set up with your office assume to ask you personally, because I figured it might be a little bit harder to say no if we were looking at high. And you said, yes, so quick that I was speechless. And I would have to tell you she did. She didn't give me no red tape. She didn't send me to no fake numbers. She didn't give me any fake news. And here I am after I hung up from the Zoom. I'm spinning around in my chair thinking, God, that you said, yes, that's how bad I want it you in this room. I keep telling him. I keep telling him the same thing, which is I am a huge fan. So when you get a call from TD Jakes, you are equally excited. And I want it to be here. And I told them, my mother is no longer here. She'd be beside herself. She didn't care about fortune or Forbes or anything. TD Jakes, Jet Magazine, those were the things that I had made it. I was in the cover of Time Magazine and my mother thought that was cute. When I got on the cover of Ebony, she said, child, you have a ride. Yes. You have a ride. That's a big deal. That was a big deal. And it still is. There's so much I want to get out of this. I want to jump right into it. There's so many amazing things about you, born and raised in Chicago. Yeah. Chicago makes some noise. One of six children, single mother, odds against you. At least, likely, the world would say to succeed and end up in the places that you are. Jux deposed that against this woman has done so much. That my car is filled like I'm holding a Bible. I'm looking at the book of Ezekiel. She is currently the CEO of Arrow Investments, which oversees firm wide management, strategic planning and growth major. Chairs of the boards of Arrow Investment, nearly 20 years, as president of Arrow grew up through the ranks, founded project levels in 2025, co-founded area, Alternatives Board of Directors for JP Morgan Chase, former chair of Starbucks Corporation, previously served on the board of Estee Lauder Companies and DreamWorks animation. She's done everything. I mean, absolutely everything in the world. The list goes on Lucas Museum. She's a co-chair chairman after school matters, I'm going to point it on and on and on. Is that the real you sitting there? Or how do you manage the multiplicity of demands that are placed up? Each one of these is a weight, a responsibility, a worry. It's not like you're over all of this stuff and it goes right. All hell breaks loose in every one of these and you're getting the calls and handling the decisions and how you maintain your sanity and sense of self and still have control in place. Well, I think that's a very appropriate question today and this week and over the last week because my life revolves around the stock market. Right. And there's something about, I think, I was sent to you today to help me because these times are very challenging. They're very hard. And the way that you get through them is you think long-term, you've to tune out the noise and you have to be very, very focused. And I've always picked that in each of the jobs that I have. I've always tried to think long-term and I've always tried to stay very focused but I will be the first to tell you, it does not always go well. People see the highlight reel but they don't see the day to day where you're struggling or you're questioning yourself or you are having to push extremely hard. I have willed a lot of things to happen in my life sometimes out of desperation. But I've also, I think that I have used all of those moments of truth to build up the resilience that makes me better every time I must confront something. But I also draw on the strength of people. I have friends in my head that I admire that help me get through difficult times. I think about you, I think about Oprah, I think about Tyler Perry, my friend Lewis Hamilton, I can go through a list of people who are loom very large for me that can be North stars in difficult times. And you think Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, they've gone through hard things. And my sister just last week, she was talking to me because the market has been so tough and she says, Melody, you do hard things. Yes, you do. She said, you do hard things. And I do. And so those kind of reinforcements and that kind of feedback helps me to persevere and keep going. But I'm organized and I have really great people who work around me, not for me, with me. I want partners, not employees. Right. I think work ethic is important. And organization is important in order to run anything. And it starts in your house and your closet and your personal life and the most simplest things that work ethic and that management ability is practice at home. One of the great things about the Bible, almost every great leader in the Bible, God let him practice. Whether they're on the box out of the desert, you know, practicing before you go before Pharaoh. And if you, everything that you're going to be before Pharaoh, which you are definitely before Pharaoh and all of his friends, you get the practice. I think that was a compliment. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is because you got to go. But I mean, you get to practice organization in something that hits you like lightning. Management in something that hits you in lightning. I think God gives you trouble to train you. What is it? What are some of the troubles that trained you? I was trained early. My husband says to me that, yes, I married Yoda's dad. That's what I tell people. George is genius and wise. And I also tell him he's also a version of a crazy uncle. I have both of those. But the genius is genius. I mean, really, there are times he speaks to me and there's so much wisdom. I'm grateful for just the opportunity to sit and hear him. But he talks about the fact that when you're a child, what happens to you really sticks with you? Because as a child, you don't have any advanced reasoning skills. You also can't change your circumstance generally. You're at the effect of what happens to you. So I think my formative years as a child, I think that they set me up for my entire life. And what I told Oprah recently is that my trauma became my purpose. My trauma was growing up as the youngest of six kids. A single mom. My mom was great. She was really special and wonderful. But she also, I had a mom who, I think sometimes believed in God in such a way that she would trust things would work out and therefore make decisions that weren't always great. And so I told people, she would, by Easter dresses instead of paying the light bell. So we wouldn't have lights or we would get evicted or our phone would disconnect it. Our cars would be repossessed. And so that put me in a sense of great anxiety as a child. Because sometimes I didn't know where we were going to live. I didn't know how things were going to work out for us or not. Sometimes we lived in abandoned buildings. And the only thing that I could focus on, that I could control in my whole life, myself was myself at school. So I became very good at school. And school for me, I saw very, very early on, like five years old, that if I was really good at school, maybe I could have a better life. And so I focused on school. And I tell people, I don't think it's an accident. I work in the investment business. Because I was desperate to understand money as a child. Desperate. I wanted things to go better for us. And so very early on, when I started to think about a career and things that I could do, I don't know the world sort of took me, God took me, to money. And then it became my calling. So you're an evangelist, and I am one, too. But I evangelize around saving, investing, have a better life teaching your children so that they don't repeat the same cycles. So you don't worry yourself until you're sick. So you don't work until you actually die. You know, all of these things are things that I think about because I've had the opportunity to observe them up close and afar. So whatever you see that I have right now, know it wasn't always like this. It was rooted in a very different place. We had our clothes and garbage bags. They were always there so we could move them quickly. I mean, the thoughts of it is traumatizing to me at times. I can show you pictures of me as a child. And it's like, what are all those trash bags? Are clothes. So that, that, that, but it also lit a fire in me. And that fire that was lit is one that is making me work this hard. I won't stop. It's not about enough. It's not about what I have. It's about what am I here to do? I get it. I totally get it. Chapter two. Don't complain, fix problems. It's so funny because we're not that different in alignment because we needed the intersection of human need. And you cannot ignore money from human need. The only reason we got in this building was money. Car to flight, got a hotel, got something to eat, went to lunch. It takes capital. The Bible says that money answers all things. If it's a thing, if it's a thing, it answers. Some things are not things. They're not tangible. But has it released to tangible things? What I found exciting about what you said is something that I really believe. Number one, pain, if you unwrap it always brings a gift. And you cannot. I'm going to write that to Aaron. If you unwrap it, and it's painful to unwrap it, but if you unwrap it, it always brought you a gift. And you can't have triumph until you've had tragedy. Because triumph only works against the canvas of tragedy. Often it is not what you're running to, it's what you're running from. At least in the early stages that pushes you into the light. And there you are in the light, OK? Extremely educated. Honorary degrees, legitimate, ductured degrees, earned degrees, name one of times magazines, 100 most influential people in the world. Amazing. No. The girl is the real deal. Before you came out, I call your name. I said, anybody who doesn't know who Melody Hopson is, that is why you need to be in the room. Thank you. Because you should not live your life. Jesse Jackson said something to me when I first met him for the very first time. I was about 38 years old. He came into my office and he said, I thought it would be a shame for us to live and die in the same world and never have ever met each other. And I thought, wow, that's true. No matter what our similarities or differences might be, people who affect the generation to be able to tell your kids I was in the room with Melody Hopson. Oh, you're very kind. APPLAUSE I don't think of myself that way, but I appreciate your kindness. No, we never do see ourselves that way because we can see everybody in the room but us. That's why we need people who are secure enough to reflect us to ourselves so that we understand who we are. But Bloomberg calls you, OK? CNBC calls you to respect. I met you. You might not remember this, but we were on Good Morning America when we first met. The very first time I met you. You remember that? That was of course. Yes, and I don't. How do I forget you? Oh my God. Oh my God. You sound like Oprah. I thought Oprah was mad at me one time. She said, how can you be mad at Bishop James? Like that's impossible. That would be a sin. Yeah. The amazing thing. I was watching you at Oprah's old Sunday, by the way. And I was watching you move around the room. And she floats around the room like a butterfly, you know? And she's got this poison, it's grace about her. But her wings are in the air, but her feet never leave the floor. She has never lost sight of who she is because of what she did. How do you maintain that kind of balance? I remember talking to Brian Stevenson once, who I also admire. As we all know, he does done amazing work. And I went down to see the whole institution that he's built. And it's just so amazing. I took my daughter, she was about five years old. She's like, it's hot in Alabama. She just kept saying that over and over again. That's what she got out of it. Yeah, that's what she did. But I will tell you that he said, you must always maintain proximity. And I've never lost proximity with my people, my family, my community, and the world. I think people, they retreat when good things happen to them as opposed to being out in the world. And I've always been in the world. I've always had proximity. I've never been away from the truth and the struggles of real life. No matter where I've sat, no matter what vantage point I've been in. And I've also acknowledged my own frailty and my own struggles. And so as a result of that, I think that I've been able to stay extremely empathetic to people without being condescending. You know, I had someone say to me once, don't look down on people you help. Right. I hate that. You know, I really do. I was going to say that you have not only been empathetic to have feelings for and compassion for, but you have been a problem solver and being philanthropic and setting up organizations to uplift people. That you didn't have to lift up. You could have got up there and set on the throne and had somebody fan you. But you decided to come down and do good by doing well. Well, this is what we said, Ariel. We don't admire problems. We don't sit around talking about what's wrong. We fix things. That is the goal that we have as an organization. So I don't sit around and talking about kids not being financially literate. During COVID, I wrote a book. I spent four years writing. I wrote a children's book and everyone's like, oh, a sweet, a children's book. It's 10,000 words. It's not three words on a page. You're right. I searched and it's entertaining. When I wrote the book, I said from the very beginning, I want to be a New York Times bestseller. Literally put it out in the universe. I said, that is going to happen. It's going to be something people are going to want. So instead of just sitting around and complaining, and I mean, it's hard because you sacrifice to get things done. But I feel better about myself because at least I've tried to move something forward, even though at times we find our society moving backwards. Chapter three, start marching. It brings me to the perplexity of the times that we are living in now when they are in some ways the best of times and some ways the worst of times, or some wells could not have been any more prophetic than he is today. I don't even want to open up my stock market. I don't want to see my 401k. I just don't want to be that depressed. And if I watch it, I want to watch it in the morning. What in the world in your view is going on with the market and with our 401k's in this country at this time? So it's not going to be pretty when you open it. I'm going to tell you that. So I'm going to be honest with you. I don't beat around the bush. I believe in telling the truth. We have what I consider a self-inflicted crisis that has occurred. And this self-inflicted crisis is going to hurt. So let's start with that. For now. And the one thing we just wrote to our clients, the letter just went out today, it's on our website. Storms always end. You have to remember that. And storms in the stock market end as well. If you look at the worst drops in the stock market over the last 100 plus years, go back to the Great Depression. You have world wars. You have COVID. You have many recessions. I can go through all the bad things that happen. But if you look at the market after the drop, a year later, two years later, three years later, the story tends to be very, very positive. And so you have to take a long-term view. If you are not retiring at the end of this month, you should be living with the volatility and getting yourself used to it and comfortable in knowing you got to ride it out. Maybe even if you have the great thing about a 401k plan, is that you're buying stocks when the market is really high, like it was in November. And you're buying it when it's low, like it is now. Over the long term, that $50 or $100 or $200 a month that you're putting in, you average a better price. Highs sometimes, that means you get fewer shares. Low, I'm getting a lot more shares. Over time, I average out the better price. Over the long term, those bumps smooth out. The American economy has been the best performing economy in the world for a very long time. And I have no reason to believe that will change even when you have self-inflicted wounds. So we may be doing one of these, but the thing that happens over the long term, it still goes up. And that's what you have to remember. But right now, maybe you just say yourself, I'm not going to open it. Because the worst thing you could do is to sell into this. Hold. At least until it, the dust settles. If you really can't take it, that's another thing, but you don't do it right in the middle of the crisis. If it's a bad storm, who walks outside? No one, right? You wait. Maybe the rain stops a little bit or it's a little clearer. It might still be raining, but it's not torrential. It's not 80 mile an hour winds. So you don't sell an 80 mile an hour winds. You wait through this. But the better and the best thing to do is to do nothing. There's a very famous investor. He passed away some time ago named Jack Bogle. And in these moments, he'd say, don't do something. Stand there. The opposite of how we think, don't stand there, do something. Don't do something, stand there. So this is a time you got to stand. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of conviction. You're going to feel fear. But if you can program yourself to say this storm will end. They never go on forever. And there will be sunny days. It's not hopeful thinking. I'm basing it on actual history. In fact, you just got to wait through it. When you wait through it, yeah, that's a cloud-based moment. We need all the hope we can get. When you wait through it, there is anxiety. Yes. All decisions, ultimately, are affected or shaped by how we feel about it. One person can go through the same thing that you go through and have a completely different direction. Based on the healthiness of their emotional reaction to trauma and stress, while we're waiting, should we be there are people who are bad stocks to beat the band right now, because they're on sale. And they're so low and they're going to ride the wave up. Have we hit the bottom yet? We can't know. I mean, I've never been through a trade war. No one has in modern times. So this is new. It's always something new. That's what I want to emphasize. We always are fighting the last war. So how many times have you read stories about, are we preparing for the next pandemic? The next bad thing won't be a pandemic. It'll be something you can't think of. So we had a financial crisis. And so then everyone would prepare for the next financial crisis, not the problem, pandemic. Then you have a pandemic. And it's like, are we thinking about if we have another pandemic? It's not a pandemic. Now it's a trade war. It's always something that you don't expect. So in this situation right now, it's true about the anxiety that people can feel. I can't tell you if it's the bottom, but you can buy, that's why like 401K plans, you're buying on the dips. You're buying as it's going down. And then you'll benefit as it goes up. Now if you feel confident in some area that you work in, and you say, this is just crazy, this stock is so cheap, I'd buy it, especially if I'm going to take a long-term view. If you think you're going to make some instant money, and you're going to get rich in a month or two months, bad idea. But if you say, I like this, and I want to own it for the next three to five years, I would say, you might go in slowly. You don't just go and run in with a giant amount. You just might over the next few months put money to work and see how that works out for you. I always tell people don't invest any more than you're willing to lose. Well, the thing is, I think that sometimes people, there's certain aspects of the stock market in the way that it's described that I always reject, too. So people say, for example, you're playing the stock market. I'm like, there's nothing playing about it. I can trust you. I can tell you, if you were in a study situation where you know that you have some sense of the business, I'm not saying, go roll the dice on something like crypto, or, but if you were talking about real businesses that are product or service that is provided to people or other businesses, over the long term, a good high quality company over the long term will do well. So they don't go to zero. The ones that you really know lose that the go to zero, those tend to be very, very speculative. And that is not what I'm recommending and I'm certainly not recommending it now. Because if you're a company that doesn't have the balance sheet to last through this period, you could go away. But I'm not worried about that with some of the big companies that are out there, or even some of the smaller cap stocks that we invest in at Ariel, because we know what kind of businesses they are and what kind of sustainability they have. But I will tell you one thing, which is your point about anxiety. And this is something that I taught and underscored in many situations for many years now, do not make big financial decisions in times of great emotional stress. You will make a bad decision. I see it with particularly women. We make our most important decisions in times of great emotional stress, often death or divorce of a spouse. And that is when we do things that we shouldn't do. So you have to sort of calm yourself down like big decisions in times of great emotional stress, generally lead to bad outcomes. So at least the one thing you gotta do is, if you have to make the decision, try to get the stress level down a little bit before you make it, so you can make it with some clarity. That's what I meant. You're talking about outcomes and you're absolutely right. You don't want to buy stocks that you think or going to plummet and go through the floor at any time. You don't want to lose money. I don't like that. I hate losing money. I'm allergic to it. Yeah, yeah. I get the money. In the business, our men, sometimes you do lose to win long term, but I don't like it. Any business, it shakes you up. I'm talking about in between times from a therapeutic perspective, you have to have an attitude about it. I do. I have to have the kind of attitude that should this go wrong, I could sustain myself. And the reason it's important in this crowd to establish that is that we're often taught faith to our own peril. That's my mother in the East for dressing. The exactly, okay. So God is gonna fix and glory to God after that whole thing. You have to help ourselves too. Yeah, yeah. So step out of faith, but take baby steps. When it comes to your ability to tolerate the turbulence of the market, I can't figure out. We are the world's strongest GDP. We are excelling in many, many areas, or we were. I don't know if we still are. I might not be up to speed on the latest numbers. Yet we have terrible inflation. We have alluming recession. That's enough to shake the market by itself. And then you add the trade war to it. I don't know which animal to shoot, the lion, the tiger, or the bear. What do you attribute to being the biggest factor in the huge fluctuation? Is it coming from the trade war? Is it coming from the inflation? And the threat of recession is it coming from bad leadership decisions? They're all interrelated. So I think the tear of conversation put a hot flame under all of this. So the tear of, starting with the tear of, so we are going to put a tear of on any product that is anyone who buys or sells American products, we're gonna put tear of on the products that they sell to America. A blanket, no matter what the country, no matter who they are, there is going to be this number. It didn't exist like that before. And even if we've had trade imbalances in this country, which we have, there's no question about it. We've actually still been the most thriving, vibrant, most successful economy in the world. And we are the largest economy in the world, per capita. China is actually technically larger, but they have a lot more people. So their per capita wealth is much lower than ours, much lower. So we have the largest economy in the world per capita. We put the tear of on the whole world and the whole world went kind of crazy because it was going to affect their economies, think German car makers that sell cars to America. Think all of the, think an Apple phone. Okay, just think of all the things that get made and are brought here. There are certain things which is the problem that we just don't make. And so now we're putting tariffs on things we don't make when reshoring them to America is not necessarily the easiest solution because we may not be able to do it as efficiently as cheaply. So what does that do? Cause inflation. Because we're going to pay more. Or the country that we've put out the tear of on is going to pass it through to us because they're trying to maintain their profits. So now we have inflation as part of the conversation which we've been trying to wrestle to the ground for the last couple of years. That inflation was born out of all the stimulus, all the money we had to print to support the economy during COVID. All those checks people got that helps us pay them and that PPP, I think it was. All of that we put into the economy that keep us all standing. Well when you print money you get inflation. That's just the way it works. That's 101 economics. So things ended up costing more. They were starting to come down. Everyone was complaining about things like eggs and the like. We were getting that down. But when you put the tear of on, countries start to say, why have to charge more? Or if we make it in America, it's going to cost more. One last thing. So you've got that. You've got the prospective inflation then companies start getting scared. And they're like, well maybe I shouldn't investman spend or maybe I should lay people off or consumers say, I don't think I should take that vacation. I'm not going to the summit because it looks like it might be challenging. That's when you start getting the recession talk. So those three things are happening at once and now people are saying maybe we're already in a recession and we just don't know it because this is all happening in real time. It's a trifecta of not great. I just want to be honest with you. But it doesn't mean it can't work out because we've already started to see some at least step back from the edge with the 90 day pause. Not helped by the China tit for tat, which I have to tell you, they seem to be dug in both sides and that's a little discouraging which is what the market is reacting to now. And the market continues to fear that if the tit for tat with China keeps going and the world leaders stay as concerned as they are and the absolute conversation stays the way it is, you just birth a recession to facto out of doing this because everyone just gets really scared, stop spending. The growth of the country slows while inflation goes up which is this economic concept and I promise I will stop called stagflation. The worst, your economy is slowing down while prices are going up. And that is something that we, getting out of stagflation gets very challenging. Chapter four, think globally. You are saying a lot. I hope it doesn't sound okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're saying a lot, a very heady thought for a group of leaders who are not always taught to think globally. We come from a generation of leadership that emphasize that we think about our community, okay? But when it comes to finances, it's a global thought. The world is global, our products are global, everything that we consume, there are pieces of it that come from other places. The global community got interlopped a long time ago. The problem is trying to break that apart. I think that's very challenging. Trying to go back to what it was is very, very challenging. It's very challenging. And I'm not saying that as being anti-American products being created, anti-labor, anti-anything. But I'm saying that we have to just recognize the situation that the world is in. We are interdependent. Yes, yes, like never before. And I think no matter what kind of leader you are listening at us today, it behooves you to think globally when you think about everything right down to a post that you're posting something that they're reading in Saigon, that the opinion that's coming back at you may not be a reflection of who you are or where you came from, even if they used to picture that looks like you, that doesn't mean that that picture is authentic. We are in the final, I don't know if it's the final, but maybe the final one, I see, wow, wow, west. Yes. Our technology has exceeded our ability to legislate. Our laws have not caught up with where we are. Neither has our defenses matched the possibilities of the turmoil that we might go through. We, everything you buy now has got some kind of IP address connected to it right down to your refrigerator and your dryer. So sometimes I come home, I think the whole house is listening at me. I want to cover the whole house with a mattress and then whisper. That's how much we are losing privacy. And we're coming up in a society where we've got to think differently about how we market products, how we do business, how we communicate with people. We can't just approach things from a black and white issue and be effective in a global world that runs on green. That isn't green anymore. That went to Zor, the other day. They tell me we don't take cash. Thought really? OK. So we're starting to learn in the midst of the changing of cash, the changing of the way we did business, the changing of the way we thought. You're saying big stuff to us because you're talking about China and Japan. And you're talking about global markets. And we're talking about self-central LA. But, not but and. I can give you a lot of examples of small businesses that have been lit up by the opportunity to sell their products and other places. Right. There you go. And we see it with influencers. We see it with all sorts of things. So those borders have gone down for us. And those barriers have also gone down for us. Yes. We have been able to benefit from that. And that can be from the mundane to the most outrageous. I mean, everything from hair care products to food. Right. And it's just one of these things that I think we are. We can't miss the point that we can benefit, too. Right. If you do something great today, people can actually find out about it. Right. We are not in a time of covered wagons and news moving slowly by word of mouth. Right. You can actually get a viral thing to happen instantly and create a great phenomenon. So this is what I want you to take away from this. If you are being rejected, it doesn't necessarily mean that your product is bad. It may be that you haven't found your audience. Yes. Chapter six. Find your audience. So let's widen the search for the audience. The challenge in widening the search for the audience that I find is that the old rules as it relates to media, whether social or physical media, has become more challenging because it's become increasingly fragmented, increasingly diverse. The algorithms are giving you the truth in the flavor you like. And now you're in a situation where as you had to advertise on channel three, channel eight, and channel 13, now I'm dating myself when I go there. Now people don't even have that. They've got cable. They don't have cable. They do this. They do that. They're listening at satellite radio. You got about satellite radio. You got to move into so many different ways that we don't have small business leaders and spiritual leaders. We don't always think that our next convert may be from Israel, that our next convert may be from Afghanistan, that our next come. I get comments from people in languages I can't read. So I have to get the translation button to see whether I ought to be mad or not. So as we think about the world more globally, how does that affect the products you create, the language that you speak, and the colloquialisms that you use tend to be a reflection of where you came from. And I think all of us, even if we only speak English, have to be bilingual because church has its own language. OK. Business, hair product has its own language. AI has its own language. But if you're going into the global market, you have to be bilingual enough to have a conversation on a multiplicity of languages to get into the game. And how does that start? It starts with reading things that you don't understand. Looking up things you have to Google, talking to people where you're drowning at the table. But you might drown. She's drowning in them. And I'd be underwater with making bubbles. However, I'm going to catch something. And don't be afraid to walk into the room like a fool and leave like a professor. So I always tell people, I heard this from the CEO of Microsoft, Sachin Nadella, who was on the Starbucks board with me for years. And he said, I don't want to be a know-it-all. I want to be a learn-it-all. Right. So I thought that was a brilliant thing to say, especially for someone running a company. We call it a 3-T, $3 trillion in value. So he's running a 3-T saying, I don't want to be a know-it-all. I want to be a learn-it-all. So one is this perspective of learning. The other, which I think is really important, is to understand there are niches to markets where you can master a niche and become extremely successful. The greatest black entrepreneurs of all time, that's what they did. That's what John Johnson did with Ebony. That's what George Johnson did with Johnson Products. We can grow down the list of, they first went to their community. Right. So while you're also thinking about Israel, don't forget about the next door neighbor. Right. Because I sometimes think we do that. The other thing that I say to people, which I think is super important, why is your product or service better or different? If you are me too, it's not going to be great. You've got to tell me why it's going to be better than whatever is out there, or you've done something with a different spin on it, or you've created a different service, or something that is making people's lives better in some way. So John Johnson took Life Magazine and made Ebony, because we weren't in life. So a lot of customers came and said, well, I want to see people look like me, and create something off of something, but different. That no one else had the vision to do. John Rogers, who started aerial investments as the first minority-owned mutual fund company in America, he was 24 years old and said, I'm going to start a mutual fund company. Like, no black person did that. But he said, I'm going to do it in a very specific way by investing in a very specific kind of company and go against all type. They're going to think I'm a gunslinger, and I'm going to have a turtle as a logo. I'm going to literally upset the apple cart with what they think I'm going to be, versus what I'm trying to be and what I deliver. That was different. Even the stocks that he was investing in was different. So there may be thousands of investment firms, but then he did it differently. So I always tell people when they come and tell me about their products, I'll tell you the rule of thumb, I have an aerial. So I say, if you show me from our marketing team, aerial marketing materials, and if I can put my name over it, and drop in the name of any investment firm in the nation, and it still makes sense, it's not aerial. Instead, I want you to show me those marketing materials, and if I put the name of an investment firm in there that is not us, I want someone to say, why does fidelity have aerial materials? Because they know who we are and what we stand for, and that doesn't even make sense that they would have these materials that are borrowing something that is aerial. I'm using that as an example, that's not an actual case, but that's the way of thinking. So whatever the product or services that you have, can someone just drop their name into it, and it's still fine. Or is it, nope, that is Miss Shirley's product, and has her logo and her language, and her brand and reputation on it, and if L'Oreal tried to do it, it would not make sense. So we then have to think about what is unique about us, and then make sure that that story is conveyed consistently through every medium of communication that is face forward to the people. You can't be saying one thing on IG and something different on Facebook and your website is saying something different. There's too many versions of us, because we haven't thought through, and I want to see if you agree with this. We haven't thought through, what is our story, what is unique about us, and what did we come into this world to do? I think those thoughts are the thoughts that require you to go sit up under a tree and maybe draw up some things and tear up some things until you come down to some deliverable promises that then become recognizable to people, but they can't be recognizable to people if they're not recognizable to you. And a lot of us are trying to be branded by some outside company to be something that's not authentically who we are, and there we are trying to memorize something that they told us we ought to be, because they think it might be, and then we haven't tested the market. I was gonna say feedback is very important. So, no matter what I do, I always go to people, and I say, shred my idea. Tell me how dumb I am, naive. I didn't think this through, melody you got to be kidding. If you're eye rolling, I roll in front of my face. So, tell me how bad it is. No, a lot of times people are very reticent, but I really want to know, help me before I go into the wilderness and fail. Right. And if you have experience, tell me, but a lot of people don't want feedback. They really don't. You hear the ooze out there? I mean, they really don't. They wanted you to tell them how great they are, and it might be great. But if you say, but these three things, I would think about, they get an attitude with you. Right away. If you want to be great, you take the feedback and you work around it, and I can tell you, my team will tell you, I will call the most successful people in the country and say, here's my idea. Can I send me the deck or can I pitch you, and then can you critique me? To this day, I'm still doing it. Tell me everything I haven't done right. Write notes in the margin and tell me where are your questions? Because if I can stress test this idea with you and you're big time, then maybe I can actually break through and make this work. So, if you can. And sometimes it's a neighbor or a friend. I mean, just mine is, I write a client letter every quarter to all of our clients about how we've done for the quarter. And I have expert readers read it. And the readers are at all levels of sophistication. My assistant always reads, I have a couple of friends read. I've senior people read, I have our co-CEO read. Because I want someone who is a school teacher, bus driver, someone who works at Sephora to understand what I write. But I also want a CFO or CEO to understand what I write. And I want both of them to think, well, that's smart. As opposed to I wrote to some audience and I talked over or under someone. So I used those people to critique my work. And when I was on GMA, I used to say to Diane Sawyer, on the way to the show, I would do my segment with the driver of the black car every single time. I would sit in the front seat and I would say, can I run through my segment? It'd be like four, five in the morning, in New York, earlier, in the West Coast. And they would say, okay, people I've never met. And I said, tell me anything you don't understand that I say. And I'd use the driver on the way to the show to critique my answers so that I could get better, so I could be clear with people that I was trying to talk to. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. It also suggests just like your resume, how broad your net is. If your net reaches from the Uber driver to the Fortune 100 company, C-suite person and you have both of them, how do you go about widening? We're not all you. How do we go about widening our net beyond the parameters, which most preachers talk to preachers? Doctors talk to doctors, lawyers talk to lawyers. We get stuck in a bubble that we self create. How did you begin or where did you learn to break out that bubble so that you would have respect for the Uber driver and access to the corporate leader? I pay a lot of attention to both sides too. And particularly, I keep a handful of people who only have 10 minutes to talk. Oh yeah. Because when they got to 10 minutes. Short answers. Yes. It's like, do you know, come back in three words? Yes, yes. When people don't have a lot of time to talk, those, that means number one, they're busy doing things, they're productive, they're fruitful, but their thoughts are gonna be on such a high level that even if you're not ready for it, people who have too much time for you can be dangerous and slip into things that are really not wise and not well thought out. Yet, just because the person is pushing a mob that means that they don't know what kind of detergent ought to be used in a building. And you come on, am I right about it? And we have to have respect for both sides. You have to be a broad person. You have to come up in Chicago, raised by a single mother to start a conversation with the Uber driver when you could be the lady sitting up in the stilettos, riding in the back seat of the car, talking about, oh, it's too cold in here dear. What I found out, and I don't have money, but I have enough money to know what money is. And what I found out is that the people who are the most, I'm gonna use a colloquialism, boozey. Or the, yeah, I bet you have heard. I've heard that for a minute. The people who are, oh no, I do. You do hear, the people who are the most, boozey are generally the most broke. Yeah. So my mother always said, I love this one. She was like, melody, money talks, and wealth whispers. Yes. She was like, it whispers, you know, one has to know. And you know, it's like, you've never seen anything on an Instagram or anything with me about a label, a brand, a wealth whispers. Money talks. And you see the difference. I learned that the heartway. You get a whole new level of haters when you start speaking out about every little thing, which is very easy to do when you came from nothing. But you know, that usually is a sign of some form of security. So I just, I think most people get through that phase and I think they end up, you see this with a lot of people. It's new. Yeah. Be patient with them. Yeah. You know, really, we all are learning. We're all works in progress. You're point about the, which I think is very important is accessing people. Chapter number seven. How to ask for failures. I have some rules. So first of all, I always want to be, if I call someone for anything, super crisp. So I'll practice what I want to say before the call. So I can get it down as if you, how many times have you been on a call with someone and you're like, what do they want? You know, they're not getting to the point. You're the email is so long. I literally give it to my office. I'm like, what do they want? My office will tell you I'm like, I cannot read this email. I do not know what they want. Most people, when you really want, like get right to it. Crisp. Right. The second thing is, I have a rule, if I've never met you. Yes. I don't get to ask you for something. Ooh, I'm a chef. Hold on. I can only ask you for advice. Right. And advice I have found people love to give. Love. It's like, how would you do this? How would you think about it? And I do that just to get them invested in the idea of what I'm working on and me. And generally, once they started, the wheels start turning and then you come back and said, I did these three things in a crisp email, not paragraphs. Then when you ask for time again, it's like, can I follow up on one point? By the time you've established some kind of relationship, when you ask for something, you've got some credibility behind you, versus going in hot. Right. You've never met them. That's why I waited several years to ask you to come. Ha, ha, ha. You could have asked. Well, my point is, don't waste your favors. Yes. Don't waste your favors. And don't let people talk you into spending your favor with somebody for their benefit. Because they will prostitute your favor at your expense. And then when you really need the person, you don't have the capital with the person to be able to influence them because you have wasted your favor. Are you hearing what I'm talking about? Yes. And you don't get that favor back again, not because she's not nice, not because she's not kind. This is respect. Respecting that she is busy. Respecting that she flew in from somewhere and she fly out of here in a minute and got some place else to go and fly out somewhere else in a minute and meet George in the middle of the air and blow him a kiss. Understanding that. Understanding that is called respect. And if you don't respect them, why call them? So I think it had been maybe a year and a half, maybe two years since we had talked. We were doing COVID, we were talking, okay? So it's been since COVID. She hadn't heard a word from me, maybe a thank you note or something, but nothing else. But I want to hear from you. You want to hear from me? I do. I learned that from someone. Really? Yeah, I did. I had this rule. I have these rules. And I was like, the people I will never ask anything and bother them ever, ever, ever, ever. I put Oprah in that category and I put Michelle Obama in that category. And I love Michelle, like we all do. Love, admire her so much. And one day during COVID, she said to me, you never call. And I said, I don't ever want to bother you. And she said, maybe I want to talk to you. Yeah. I have made that mistake, dude. And I was like, wow, she's like, you don't get to make that decision for me. Maybe I want to talk to you. And that, it was so touching, but it was also a great lesson. I am assuming a lot. And I am creating a one-sided relationship with someone that would like to engage with me and that I could learn from based upon me deciding that I am in imposition to them. But, but, but I would devil's advocate. Because you're not going to have all these people over in my house tomorrow. I was literally, I love you to death, but you are not going to do me like that. She invited it. She invited it. That's right. That's the point that people miss. Let the other person, the busiest person make the invitation. Correct. Because you want to make the invitation, you want to be in a position of strength. You don't want the person in the position of strength that you are asking something, that you're knocking on the door every time I turn around and the police are picking you up in a car to carry you in. I'm praying for you as they take you down the driveway. You want to make sure. And then eventually, as the relationship builds, you got to find something that you bring to the table. That's what I was going to say, two-way street. Yes. I mean, you can't. They're givers and takers, and there are people who just take. And I don't have a lot of time for those. The ones who are sort of sucking the life out of you. There's an endless list of requests. They never ask you how you are. Ever. We know these people right. They go right to their ask. There's no how are things going or how's the family. It's just sort of I need. Yeah. It's a big difference between Melody Thompson, Colin Oprah Winfrey and Melody Johnson, Colin Oprah. I bet you're Oprah. I was at a Melody Johnson. I was at a Melody Johnson. She was a superstar in Chicago. You know, these are people. I survived her letters telling how much, literally, just letters saying, I'm such a fan or not cheesy, but just you know, you set this and it actually made a difference in my life or that sort of thing. And not wanting anything, just expressing my admiration and appreciation. Not, but I don't want to say that name in a way that's inappropriate. It's just there's so much respect there that I have. For I thought, she's led away for people like me. Michelle has led away. And they've been wonderful beacons of light. I mean, literally, that's there. But I also recognize they're real people with real struggles and lots of stress, lots of pulls on them. And I just never wanted to be an additional version of that. We had a shooting in a major hospital in Dallas. And I wrote the CEO and the president of the hospital, a letter of condolence and telling him how I was praying for the hospital during this time. I didn't even know him. I said, I'm praying for the hospital during this time. I know this is a difficult time to lead people who are depressed and brokenhearted. And he never forgot it. He responded. He wrote back just being kind to somebody in need. He didn't know who I was, but just to show compassion. Sometimes you don't have to have a relationship to start a relationship at a moment of pain simply by being thoughtful, being humanistic, and being caring. I think letters are really powerful, very purged. Charished. Yeah. And they pack a punch. People remember, if you get a stack of mail, no one opens the bill first. If there is a personally addressed letter to you, you will 100% open that letter first, and you will remember it. So I tell our team that all the time in like handwritten notes go a long way, a long way. Except when you write like me. My wife, I always get my wife to write my letters. It looks like calligraphy. Chapter eight. Stick together. We're coming to close. We're running out of time. But it's very, very important. How do we get through this? Just average ordinary, small business regular, everyday, black, brown, and white people. How do we get through this? It's going to require us to be really resourceful and being really honest. It's going to be challenging. This is going to be a hard time for some of us. And I think that we will have to. And this is my thing. I'm saying on every call and every meeting, we are going to have to stick together. Your neighbor is going to need you, and you are going to have to help them. And I think that we have to understand. That's why we were put here. It may mean that we don't get to do everything we want to do. But this is a time where we have to shore up each other for the sake of our community. And I hope that what comes out of it is a stronger version of our own communities. And that could be the silver lining here that gets created, that we become formidable. Because in times of great stress, that's what we have been. When you look at the other difficult times we've had, as people of color, as women, as whatever you want to call it, during economic strife, whatever it might be, there are times that that becomes a moment of truth that creates so much resilience and so much greatness. Some of our greatest people, leaders, moments have come out of the most difficult circumstances. And that's what I hold out to. But the only way we're going to get through is we have to stick together. That's it. If you call me, TDJX, I am going to be there to the best of my ability. Because if you say you need me, I have to believe you do. And I would hope you would do the same for me. When I came here, I said, I needed you. I needed your soul and presence today, which I was meant to be here so that you could help me. And that is what this conversation has done for me too. Quick questions. I'm going to get every drop of juice I can out of you in the moments I have. FDIC regulations, big banks, doing business, is our money safe. Yes, your money is safe. I'm on the board of JP Morgan. We are more than capitalized. I can tell you, you are not. Your money is insured. And you are not having to worry about anything like bank failings or a run on the bank. The banks actually reported earnings today and yesterday. And they have been today, actually. The earnings have been very strong. So that you can put off to the side. What about local banks? The local banks are also insured. What about CDFI? They are insured. So you are not, that is not something for you to worry about. Your money is safe. Unless you have, now it's not insured if you have $30 million in the bank. But everyday Americans, your money is insured by the US government. And the way it works, I just want to tell you one thing what happens when a bank fails, just so you know. We have bank failures regularly in our society. You remember Silicon Valley bank a few years ago and first republic? Right. When they fail, the FDIC insurance is paid for by all of the other banks. So it's a self-sustaining mechanism. And I have to tell you, the US government, whenever it's been a moment of truth, there I actually do believe Janet Yellen. If you go back to Hank Paulson, the secretaries of treasury when we've had these bad moments, they have come together to make sure the banking system always stays intact because that is the actual foundation of the American capitalist system. The banks cannot fail. That is not something you should worry about. I assure you. They thought I was joking when I brought up CDFI's. But community development financial institutions have lower standards for you to be able to get homes, to get houses and to get property. And it's very important to us that we understand that they survive. Secondly, we started out with, if I remember correctly, about 175 national banking institutions. Now we're down to about 33 to 35. We've always had way more than the rest of the world. So just so you know, when you go to the rest of the world, the UK, all sorts of countries, they have very few banks. America had a lot more because we had banking regulation that did not allow for interstate banking. So you couldn't bank customers in another state without setting up a completely separate entity. Those rules changed years ago, which allowed for national banks, which are the norm in Canada, or the norm in the UK, etc. So it made it actually more profitable and much less regulation. It was a good decision. And so we have fewer banks, but don't take that as a negative. Because the whole time banking fees have come down. What you get charged for to bank in America has steadily declined over the same amount of times that banks have consolidated. So the numbers have gone down. You say don't take that as a bad sign. But how do we keep 33 from hemorrhaging down to three? Well, first of all, I don't think that's likely. But the other thing is that I just want to make a point about your CVFI comment. They are supported by the big banks, just so you know that. So they are not sort of in an island out there by themselves. I realize. And so I don't see a scenario where it goes to three. But the big guys are big. JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, they're very big. JP Morgan is the biggest bank in America, the eighth largest bank in the world. The seven largest banks in front of us are all Chinese. Just to give you a context. Wow. When you say that, oh, see. But those Chinese banks don't do business in America. You're making it hard on me. How are we going to do that when those banks interact with each other every day, based on their stock markets and our stock markets say engage in business every day? Most of the time, we're not even watching the tinkertake flowing at the bottom of the thing to know how to get in the game. So it's almost like it's a foreign language to us. And yet, currency has no boundary. Okay. Currency is money in motion. It's flowing. It's moving. So the days of putting money in coffee cans and bearing them in the backyard like your grandmother did is over and foolish and unwise. And even putting it in a banking account by the time you deduct the low interest rate from the taxation of the capital gains that you made on the money, you might be losing money. You might do better to put it in a can. Am I right so far? Okay, well, I never like the can because just FYI, most people forget where the can is, especially as they age, FYI. My mom's can was the Bible. The big white Bible on the table had 20s in it, and it's like that. When we started to get really scarce, we were all shaking out the Bible to see if we could find any money in it, but I'm not recommending that. You want your money if you're saving in a traditional savings account to it's protected. That's very, very important. When it comes to investing, though, the one thing I tell, especially our community, because this is new to us, why? You don't learn about investing in school in America. You can take wood shop or auto in a high school in America today and not a class on investing, which always leads me to ask audiences the same question. Who widdles in their spare time? Who is cleaning their own carburetor? No one, right? But you can take those classes and not take the investment class that is actually essential for the future of yourself and your family. So what can you do? I tell people start with a very simple thing. I am begging you to read a newspaper every day, begging. And in the middle, there's a business section. And even if it feels bad and unfamiliar, just read it to familiarize yourself over time. You start hearing words, you start reading about even local companies, it starts to give you some comfort. We go to the first page and the back. So we do the headlines on the first page and sports. That's generally what we do. I'm just asking you to spend a little time in the middle. And as you spend a little time on the business page, and it's not a lot, it'll start to acclimate you to the language of money that will ultimately make you more comfortable. You'll see a word, you might look it up. You'll see a company, you say, what does it do? And over time, I'm not saying a month, I'm not saying three months, but over time, you start to get more and more comfortable. My mom, last thing about my mother, my mother had dementia. She died when she was 85 years old, about 11 years ago. She had me when she was much older. My mom, until she died, had my sister reading her, the Wall Street Journal and Cranes. Even when she couldn't understand anymore, it was a habit. My mother, who didn't graduate from college, who had six kids, I've gone through all the things, but she started because of me. I would say just read a little bit, and then more, then more. And when my mother was blind because of diabetes, my sister read the Wall Street Journal and Cranes to my mother, and she learned when she was in her elderly years, which tells me anyone can learn. Chapter nine, goals and dreams. I'm a preacher, we get to close at least three times, okay? In my mind, you have two children, okay? Ariel and Everest. And you kind of momma over both. For Ariel, define to the audience what Ariel's mission is, what it's about, and what your dream is for Ariel. And then tell us what your dream is for Everest. We want to make money for people so they can live better lives. They can have the life of their dreams. They can send their kids to college. They can start a business if they want. They can buy that house. If it's an institution that the pension fund is making the money for the pensioners, if it's an endowment or foundation that they can give away more money or do whatever it is that they do, we want to help people have better lives financially. That's our job. And we do that by investing in the stock market, and then we also buy private companies as well in our private equity business. How many people on staff? We have 140 people. We have offices in Chicago, which is our headquarters. We have a big office in New York, and then I have an office also in San Francisco. How do you manage that many people by how is your corporate infrastructure? They have senior people that run departments. So we have a general counsel who's also Chief Administrative Officer. She's responsible for operations and technology. We have less run who runs aerial alternatives, who's responsible for our private equity business. We have John Rogers, who founded the firm, who's responsible for all investing. So all the investment people report to him. And we are co-CEOs, we're co-leaders, which I don't know why more people don't do. He runs everything related to investing, and I run everything related to the rest of the firm. And we have very separate responsibilities where we engage and communicate throughout the day on our individual areas, which allows us to do more individually. So that's a clav-ing moment. That's a clav-ing moment because, well, several things. What made you pick them? Because most of us are victims of hiring the wrong people. Yeah, so you can't hire friends and family. I mean, it's just like, we gotta start with that one. It's like, it's real, because you just won't do the right thing. I assure you that when you, my husband always says to me, obviously he made movies, and he says, Melody, it's not called Friends Business. It's called Show Business. And he always says to me, Melody, it's not aerial.org. It's aerial.com. He's like, you are not a nonprofit. You are a business. And when you have to be a business, you have to make some difficult decisions sometimes. I think that becomes very hard with a friend. You know, you gotta take someone's bonus down. You're like, but their family is so close. Or, you know, it's my cousin. No. It's easier if you, we start with professionals. We understand that we are working together and we are showing up for each other. I tell our team, I work for you and I work for our clients. And you work for our clients, and you work for me and each other. That is super important. So how we find people, the one thing I think people underestimate, it's so important, and I can't believe that they don't do it. They don't check references. I mean, it is so basic. You can't give me enough references. You give me references. I'm like, can I have five more? Why? Because you get insights from people. And if you would just check some people's references, you find out, oh, he stole at the last company. Or, you know, this is not a trustworthy person that you want to put in front of clients. Or if you take them to a cocktail party, they're gonna drink too much. It would be good to know that before they're representing you in front of a client that's giving you $100 million. You know, these are the kind of things I want to know. And you get insights from people not digging and asking, but just tell me what they're like. Tell me what areas of development they might have. If I were managing them, what advice would you give me? Would you hire them again? You know, the person who just says nothing is telling you a lot too. Right. You know, a lot. Right. And I think we want to, we get wishful thinking. We want to hear what we want to hear, but checking the references is huge. And that's how you find people. But I make mistakes too. Trust me. Lots of mistakes. Jesus did. He hired Judas. You know, yeah. So I figure one out of 12, I'm not doing too bad. But you know, when you think about that and the person has to realize that they are not there and they're named, but in the name of your company or in your neighborhood. Correct. To represent the brand and the vision. And when you look at them, you have to ask yourself, is this what I want my company to look like when I go into Microsoft's office? Do I want them to look like, dress like, smell like, act like, talk like this person is standing in front of me? And if you're a poor representation of that, then that's the first hint that you might have a problem. And the second hint is you can only act so long. Correct. So if you got a six month clause in the contract, that says, you know, I've got six months before this finalizes and you're at so-and-a-troub basis for six months, it also gives you room enough to catch them, not act it. And if you hang around them long enough, they're gonna stop acting. This is my favorite piece of advice someone gave me. I love this so much. Give it to me. We both gotta go. I gotta fly to Dallas. They said the interview is someone's best behavior. They are literally like, they are saying everything you wanna hear. If anything bugs you in the interview, magnify it a thousand times. So anything that stays with you, it's like, that bugs me, it's going to be really bad. So just decide in the interview, best behavior, what's stuck with you that you had doubts about. And when you can't decide the answer is no. My main melody last question, you gotta go. I gotta go. They gotta go. What do you want forever? And what do you want to stick to her like you sit here and talk about what your mother said that stuck to you? What do you want to stick to her? I am so emotional about my kid. I know we all feel this way. It's like how can you love a person more, right? It is just, my heart is gripped by what I want for her. And it is so simple. I want her to be happy. I can't make her happy, but I wanna create the conditions from which she can, her, she can live at peace with herself and be good with herself, which is what my mother always wanted for me. She's like, I want you to be at peace. She would say that to me all the time because she saw anxiety in me. And I want Everest to care about the world. She has everything, but that doesn't mean she won't struggle. It doesn't mean she won't suffer, but I do want her to understand she was born and won the birth lottery. Two parents, great resources, best education's money could buy. Buy lingual in Chinese, I can go on and on. You don't get to have all that and not owe society a lot back. And I really want her to understand that she owes that to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, Melody Hopson. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hey everybody, I wanna take this time to thank you for watching the next chapter podcast. If this conversation inspired you, helped you, reflect on an idea or spark something new inside of you, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life isn't about how you begin. It's about how you're finished strong. 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