#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 🚨 Show me the money! John Hope Bryant tells Black businesses to get some of the $2T stimulus NOW!

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

🚨 Show me the money! John Hope Bryant tells Black businesses to get some of the $2T stimulus NOW! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. You want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered? Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar that you give to us supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered support the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You can make this possible. Joining us right now is John O'Brien. He is the founder of Operation Hope. He has been one of the folks out there, again,

making that possible, trying to make that thing possible as well. John, how you doing? All right. Is John there? Hey, Roland. Hey, John, how you doing? All right. I'm well. Thanks for advocating on behalf of our people. Well, I certainly appreciate it, sir. Glad to have you here. And also, y'all see y'all see that water bottle sitting right next to John. Just so y'all know. Yeah, he sent me one, too. So this is a huge water bottle, so I keep it right here. It's not cheap.

This is not the cheap one. No, this ain't cheap. This ain't cheap. So nice big 25-ounce bottle. And so, Anthony, what are you doing? Go to Split Shot. And so just want y'all to know, I stay hydrated doing this two-hour show, and so we're certainly glad to be here.

John, first and foremost, talk about, again, the work that you have been doing to make sure that we are getting our fair share of this two trillion dollars deal Congress passed. Yeah. So let's keep it real clean here. We can play, you know, we can get into political partisanship at another time. The color now is green. It's not red or blue. It's not black or white. It's green, as in the color of U.S. But as you know, Roland, I've worked with successive administrations, Obama, Clinton, Bush, et cetera, because the color is green and we don't get enough of it, as you've been saying on your show. And thanks to the senator and others for working on a bipartisan basis, good old days, bipartisan basis to get this legislation through in record time. About 10 days ago, I got a call on a Saturday morning from the Treasury Department asking for my help I said of course what they said we need creativity

around the 300 billion dollar small business liquidity program it should it be equity should be dead should it be a grant so on and so forth so I put out my iPad and and sketch some stuff out and sent it to him. And a couple of days later, somehow it found its way, a draft of it in the Senate bill. And it's going to be live, I think, this weekend and accessible to all Americans. I'm concerned that African-Americans, for a range of reasons, African-American small business won't get their fair share. Even nonprofits, by the way, listen now, everybody listening and watching this can get uh access to this in other words you get funding to um individuals have access uh companies have access non-profits and faith-based organizations uh should get liquidity and again independent contractors so for instance if you're a

freelancer you're a freelancer if you if a freelancer. If you if you are somebody out there, you're a consultant. So you don't actually have a business set up. But but but you're just an independent contractor. Manusha Manukin today at the press briefing said we that they can also apply for this. Business owners can now apply for up to ten thousand000 cash advance grant through the Small Business Administration. And then you can get working capital up to $2 million. And one of the things that also jumps out, there's a loan forgiveness in that if you keep your employees. Right, John? Yeah. This is employee-centric.

First of all, it's unprecedented. There's never been a windfall like this of opportunity for our people if we take it ever in 100 years of modern government. Even going back to the Great Depression, never been anything like this before. And so, yes, if you keep your employees on, you don't pay that portion of the loan back. That's the grant piece that was built into it. So it functions like a loan, but if you furlough your employees versus firing them, bring them back and or hire, you get to keep that money in order to pay it back. It becomes equity in your business without having the government be your partner. Roland, let me give some context for how big this is. People throw around these numbers

and nobody really thinks about it. When we bailed out the automotive industry, everybody got all worked up about that. It was a couple billion dollars. When we had the mortgage crisis, of course, that was the worst thing since, as you know, the Great Depression. That was $187 billion, give or take. Two weeks ago, it was a trillion dollars, a T, went through the Federal Reserve, through the Fed window to banks to keep them liquid. Then there was a $2.5 trillion, this package, that just passed through. That's $3.5 trillion. There's probably another trillion that will come through as part of this whole stimulus.

That's $4.5 trillion. That is 20 times larger than the last stimulus in the history of this country. And it's literally a quarter of the GDP of this country, $4.5 trillion. They're literally taking $4.5 trillion worth of cash and plugging a hole in the economy covering 90 days. It's unprecedented. And the banking regulators have signaled to the banks, do not put undue pressure on borrowers, read black and brown folks in this example, who are good people. In other words, you paid before, but because you were laid off, because you have some trauma now, you can't pay right now. Back off of them. Give

them 30, 90 days to reset themselves do not penalize them and you can restructure that mortgage unprecedented Roman the reason the reason this is so important reason I'm spending this amount of time on it and to my panelists if y'all have a question for John about this get your questions ready because I'm gonna go to you next on this because John and I'm just gonna go back to I just going to go back to when in 2004 when I filed for personal bankruptcy

because of health, because my appendix ruptured. By the way, so proud, Roland, that you have no shame mentioning that. People should have no shame in their game about mentioning what's going on. It's just something that happened. I'm so glad you said that. A dude in the White House filed bankruptcy four or five times. So I'm just, come on. And so that happened. I'm so glad you say a dude in the White House and filed bankruptcy four or five times.

So it's like so I'm just come on. And so the reason here's why I'm saying that. And you can speak to this because you've seen it. African-Americans, we have been raised. We have been taught our whole thing is being you got to bootstrap everything and so then what happens is we put all this pressure on our shoulder how are we going to meet our obligations how are we going to pay it and i've i've talked to people and they like man i i couldn't believe you filed for bankruptcy i was like yo white folks created this system i'm just using the system they created and and i remember and i never forget, I remember sitting in the room, and I just, I look

at the faces of all the black people. Man, it was just, it was pain, it was pressure. I saw all these white folks who were perfectly fine. So I'm talking to this one dude, and he's telling me, man, this is the third time I filed. Wasn't no big deal. And I look at it, so last night, just so everybody understand, I ain't got a problem

saying it. So when I got a phone call from my CFO and she said, look, what are we going to do about the show? I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you're not paying yourself from the show. You're living off of your speeches. Your speeches have all been canceled. Right. She said advertisers are not spent they're not spending money what we gonna do so we're i'm sitting here i'm looking at all uh i'm looking at all the financials i'm going through okay how much are we getting from youtube how much are we getting from our followers uh how much more aggressive can we get to ask them to give and i'm and i'm going through everything and then i'm also looking at all these news stories. And I'm seeing that this initiative begins tomorrow.

She got an email at 430 this morning because I was up. I said, y'all are applying for this tomorrow. I wasn't going to sit there as a small business owner with 10 employees, watch something that we launch, and because, oh, my God, I don't know what to do. That's two trillion dollars. Black people. Let me be real clear. White folks, the moment this bill got passed was focused on this. I need black people.

Black women start a business at a faster rate than anybody else. There are 2.6 million black owned businesses, 2.5 million have one employee, doing an average revenue of $54,000. Here's the federal government saying, hey, you can apply for this thing and immediately get a $10,000

cash grant. And then we can help you when it comes to, what I saw was, hold up, if I keep my employees help you when it comes to, when it comes to, cause what I saw was, hold up. If I keep my employees, don't lay anybody off. How much? Oh,

long forgiveness. Long forgiveness mean you ain't got to pay it back. And no credit score requirement for the first time ever. Roland know that the traditional requirements have been set aside. This has never happened before. Two things need to happen in our community. Young folks need to, and our elderly people, my auntie, 82 years old, called me and said she was going to a funeral. I said, please allow me to be blunt with you. Sit down. You ain't going nowhere. If you go to a funeral, you're going to end up being in one. We need to tell our

folks to go sit down somewhere for 30 days so this crisis of the virus will flatten. Then we need the small business owners to stand up. We need our people to sit down. We need small business owners to stand up and apply immediately as if your next breath depends on it. There's never been, as you just said, an opportunity that I have witnessed ever like this. This is the federal government telling the bank regulators to tell the banks to go easy temporarily on a black business. By the way, this is not a license for fraud. It's not a license for Cousin Boo Boo to be a flake. I'm talking about responsible people. Most of our people

are responsible people who could pay their bills if they could. If you're having a situation, you're going to get a 60- to 90-day pause in your financial life. Never happened. That's on the debt side. Now you can sit around and sit rolling this out and reimagine your business plan without financial stress of new debt. Then you get to flip and have this new capital called equity, because we don't get equity in our communities, coming in from the, hold on, federal government through banks directly to you within 30 days or less. So, John, I got people, I got... We're not going to get this, Roland, because we're not going to pay attention. And by the time we do, the money's gone. Go ahead.

Reece, you're going to be first up with your question. But I had a couple of people on YouTube and they're like, yeah, but you've got to do this thing through a bank. Well, most business owners, first of all, if you're a business owner, you likely have a business bank account. So you probably are already doing business with a bank. So, John, go ahead and just explain that. Yeah, we just need to stop it. Like we kill ourselves before we can get out of the blocks. Just stop it. Stop with the cynicism. Stop with the complaining. Like complaining don't pay a bill. Like this is serious, people. Go to the bank. The bank is just simply a conduit for this. This has been guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury Department. Again, I was part

of the design process. I'm telling you, this is an unprecedented opportunity. Wait to get some bad news before you create something for yourself, okay? Go to the bank, go to the SBA and apply. You go through the bank, there's SBA guaranteed, and apply, there's most banks in America, and see what happens. And call if you want some help, go to Hope Inside Coach. I'm in 22 states. I have clients in 40 states. My services are free.

Talk to a Hope Inside Coach, a Hope Financial Coach. We will help you package this. Go to the Urban League or whoever, go to the NAACP Empowerment Offices or whoever you have a relationship with and let us walk you through the process if you trust us versus trust the bank. And the bank is literally a conduit because the loan is guaranteed by the Treasury Department.

So the banks are cool with it. Recy, you got a question for John Hope, right? Yeah, yeah. I just want to you said something about by the time people apply, the money is gone. Is this something that is time sensitive or is it first come first serve? What is the criteria for how this money is being shelled out? Is it something that if you apply and you meet the criteria, you'll get it? Or do people have to worry about some sort of racking and stacking of the different applicants? It's a great question.

It's a double hit. By the way, your answer is yes and no to that question. I'll answer that in a second. First of all, you should get a check as a citizen. So if you filed a tax return, I hope everybody paid taxes or at least filed a return, you filed a tax return in 18, 19, they know where you are, if you make $75,000 or less, translation most black people, you're going to get a check for $1,500.

If you have two parents in that household, two people in that household, and it's less than $150,000, you're going to get two checks. If you have a child in that household, you're going to get three checks. And that's going to happen in the next 15 days. Set that aside for a moment. Then you have unemployment insurance that you can apply for if you've been laid off. Now, as a business owner, there is a deadline. Again, I don't want to speak specifically until I see the new regs that he just did today.

But my last check was June 1st. But the problem is not that. The problem is that it's $350 billion, give or take, for the small business program. And that sounds like a lot of money, but it's a big country. And the mainstream folks are going to the window first. And I'm concerned that by the time we get there, the money will be gone, even though it, as in next week, over the weekend. Just keep trying to that website until you can apply or go through one of the conduits. Erica, your question for John Hope Bryant. Yes. Thanks, John. My question is, will there be virtual sessions? You spoke about people going to urbanly end NAACP folks that they have relationships with. So I'm thinking about barbers.

I'm thinking about hairstylists. Will there be some type of virtual session where they can get guidance on how they need to go through the process of obtaining these grants and loans? So I know Derek. I know Mark Morial at the Urban League and the NWCP. I assume they're focusing on this. If not, hopefully through this video they will pivot, but they're very smart guys. I can't speak for them. I can tell you at Operation Hope we are doing virtual sessions right now.

So all of my offices, go to operationhope.org, it's all free, are doing virtual sessions right now. By April 15th we'll have a app out called hope in hand uh it'll be on you know whether you have a a an apple device or other device android you'll be able to download it free again and that will help you you can go through the app to navigate to get what's one of the coaches so you get to go through a coach go through mbda go through sba or go through a bank that you have a relationship with through their SBA department. Greg Carr, your question for John Hope Bryant. Thank you, Roland, and thank you, Brother Bryant, for this work, especially now.

A couple of very quick questions. One, do you anticipate another round of this type of funding when Congress gets around to passing its next iteration of relief? And then the very specific question I want to ask. I was on a conference call a couple of weeks ago with a number of black booksellers and bookstores. Most of them, 10 employees or lower. Taking advantage of this, how long do you think these smaller businesses, how long would it carry, for example, a small business who successfully applies for and receives the grants or the loans allowing them to keep their employees on? That's a very good question. So I'm going to say something a little unorthodox. And, Roland, this is the first time I'm going to say this. I'm going to say it on your show.

And I hope that you take it in the spirit that I'm saying. Ashley, this is an opportunity for you. It's an opportunity for those small bookstores that you just mentioned. So they have channeled, they've calendared enough money to actually carry you well into the fall based on what I've seen in the program. The crisis is scheduled to go no more than 90 days. If we do our jobs right as Americans and shelter inside for 30 days, then within 60 days they'll be trying to find a way, the government, to let you back into your normal flow of life.

And then with that, we're going to, all of us are going to find it a national point of honor to go shopping. Every person I know is going to want to go get out of the house with all the family they love and go to restaurants, shopping malls, bookstores, any place but home. That's going to create a second surge or stimulus, a consumer stimulus. You're going to have $4.5 trillion of stimulus from the government. Another stimulus from the consumers that's going to pop third and fourth quarter GDP, gross domestic product. And so you may actually end up having a savings account or an equity investment that actually exceeds what you need to get over this period.

And listen to me now. You've also had a delay in your payments to mainstream institutions, regulated banks, because the banks have sold their customers. If you've got a federally insured loan, FHA, Ginnie Mae, whatever, or a proper bank, they're going to delay your payments and they're going to modify your loan. The payment's going to go back on the back end of your current agreement. You get 30 days of a window of low payments or no payments. Plus you get some new equity that will last you a period of time. Let's call it six to eight months. But you're going to be in this window of challenge for two to three months where you'll be able to surge

back into your life. I'll say one last thing. Let me take it into the spirit that I'm saying it. It's going to be a fire sale on everything post-crisis. You want to buy a home? Discount. You want to buy a – you want to merge with a business? Buy a business, you'll be finding a bunch of folks who need to merge. You want to grow? It's going to be a fire sale of things. Stop.

You'll be able to buy stocks at a discount and ride the wave back up, provided we shelter in place, provided the economy comes back in the natural arc. Roland, this is a very important point. Please, people need to understand, this was not an example of rich people, crooks, poor people. This wasn't a subprime war crisis.

So this is not an economic crisis. This is an act of God. It's an act of nature. There's nothing wrong with the economy. If we can get through this quickly, if it takes too long, then it's a whole other conversation, Roland, of a broken economy. If we can get through this in 60 days, I prefer about 45 days, the economy comes back, we repair 45 days, it finally comes back, we repair the damage,

it surges, and you have opportunity on all levels. Was that clear? So let me just add to that, which goes with what Greg just said. So I'm gonna use myself as an example, okay? So there were some different deals that we were very close to locking down that were six figure deals, advertising deals, everything right now stops. So the approach that what, what, how I'm looking at this, Greg is I'm looking at the fact that first of all, I don't, I don't have, I don't have business loans. So I don't, I don't, I don't owe anybody loans so I don't I don't I don't owe anybody uh this is this page we

go so so so my whole deal is here are expenses this is what we know for rent for staff for us to be able to do this show every single day to give this kind of information which no other black website or digital platform is doing for our people. So my whole deal is, OK, if I can apply for this money and then what it does, what it served, it basically serves and John, you can just jump if you want to. It basically serves as a venture capitalist for me. So exactly the money that I would have been getting from advertisers in essence i'm getting this money from the federal government to be able to keep paying my employees so i don't have to lay them off so not so so not now they still have a job and we still doing the show. I don't have to go from 10 to seven to five.

And then what it does is allows me to go. OK, to the next 60, 90 days. And here's the piece. If the coronavirus deal is not under control in 60, 90 days, Congress has to go back and do it again. Because what they can't afford, John, and this will be the final comment from John, what they can't afford, they can't afford, as the head of the SBA said at the news conference today, small businesses account for half of America's GDP. They can't afford for guys like me to go out of business because you ain't got enough

large businesses. America is actually run through small businesses. So here's the numbers. Roland's correct. 50% of all jobs in America are small businesses. 20% of all jobs in America

of all small businesses in America, sorry, of all jobs in America are in companies with 20 employees or less, companies like Roland Martin's. And 70% of this economy is consumer spending, the people who work for these companies. 90% of all businesses in L.A. are companies with 100 employees or less, and L.A. is the 12th largest economy in the world. See how this all connects together? So Roland is literally correct. I'll give you one other thing. No one can afford for this not to work.

Why? Because this is not a crisis of poor people in New Orleans or poor people in South Central L.A. We're so sad about the state of Texas. This is a global crisis and rich folks and I hope there's rich folks watching. When I say rich folks, I don't mean white people. I hope you are rich.

Wealthy and rich folks difference. Rich folks and wealthy folks need for this to succeed otherwise their stocks don't come back. Their network doesn't come back. They don't have customers. They don't have workers. literally literally this is a reset it's so beautiful in some ways because now it's it's a chance it's a great leveler we literally are all in this together and now everybody's intertwined with everybody else's destiny that the wealthiest in this world

in this country needs roland to succeed needs you now to succeed the color literally now is green and go ahead go ahead finish point go ahead no i'm just saying and we got a guard no different than we say to people i need you to social distance because you may feel good but you i haven't seen my mother physically in three weeks i see her on facetime because i maybe feel great. I might have it, but if I get close to my mother, I could kill her. I could hurt her. So no different than we need to make sure we're all practicing social distancing and tell our friends to go sit down somewhere. That needs to be the new social movement in black America. Conversely, we need

to make sure there's no fraud in this program. There's no game plan. Tell people who are fraudsters to go play someplace else. We need legitimate businesses to step up, which is ninety nine percent of us and take advantage of this right now and make ourselves proud. I mean, we've been asking for equity. Here you go. You've been asking for creative debt. Here you go. You've been asking somebody to give you a break. Here you go. You've been asking for a time to reset your mind. I can't go. It bothers my mind. And Folks are like, I need some. I need a break. Can somebody give me a few days? You've been given a month. Pull your dream board out. Figure out what you want to do when you grow up. Reimagine your life. You've been given creative flexibility on debt. You've been given flexibility on planning your life. Time with your family, time with yourself, and some capital to start or move your life forward. What are we waiting for?

Folks, this is, and for everybody, and John has been a huge supporter of this show, and I greatly appreciate that, just like our panelists. This, y'all keep seeing me say, hearing me say this, and y'all may think i'm crazy this is why you have to have black owned platforms because john john's on cnbc they ain't gonna have a segment with john that long that's right breaking this whole breaking this down and not this block right we this is the stuff that we need because trust me we're not getting it on these mainstream networks which is also why we need folks to support a lot of y'all on youtube been given i appreciate it and y'all been hearing me for a year and a half now talk about why we need 20 000 followers giving 50

dollars each four dollars and 19 cents a month 13 cents a day for this kind of information because this is what we have to get john there's to get. John, there's a conference call tomorrow that's specific to these issues in black businesses. You're going to be on that call when it's done. Hopefully it's not going to be a five-hour call. No, one hour. Perfect. So when it's done, we want you back on the show tomorrow so we can keep pushing this information out so our people are not locked out and if i'm correct when you talk about so the website we're gonna um that uh do

you have the where they can go because i think it opens tomorrow to begin to apply yeah um so i don't want to give you the wrong information i know you go to i know you go to sba.gov they'll have everything there but i don't want to give you the wrong information on the website so folks go to sba.gov sba.gov and operation hope will have it as well operation hope.org um and uh so let me say a couple things in closing roland uh one i'm a member of your program yes sir because we got we got to walk our talk phds are are good, but PhDs are better. So I wrote a check, and I'm encouraging everybody else here to write a check. You can't afford not to do it. If you believe in it, then back it up. And so that's the first thing. Second thing is there is a call at the White House tomorrow, and I'm happy to come back on. But you also can get on that call will be ambassador angel young

dr bernice a king ceo king center tommy dorch chairman of 100 black men the russell family i don't know what you want somebody for the russell family um cassius buds he'll be lisa borders uh who is a a brilliant former chairman of the Coca-Cola Foundation. There'll be a lot of luminaries, Reverend C.T. Vivian, who will be joining this call around this focus at the White House around black businesses accessing the CARE Act. So we're going to come out of that with information that is useful to your audience. I'm happy to come back on. Well, we will have you on and we will have all of them on as well, because we're here five days a week, and we're going to hammer

this thing every single day so we are not left out. John Hope Bryant, founder of Operation Hope, man, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Peace and light. Alright, thanks a lot. Alright, folks, back to that RoboMach Uncultured video in just one moment. Alright, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't, and Robby

don't have one on. Now, I don't know. Rob, I don't have one on. Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares. I don't like even the silk ones. And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago, and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here, and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square. This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect. So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down, it took me a year to find a company that did it. And so they make these about

47 different colors. And so I love them because, again, as men, we don't have many accessories to wear. So we don't have many options. And so this is really a pretty cool pocket square. And what I love about this here is you saw when it's in the pocket, you know, it gives you that flower effect like that. But if I wanted to also, unlike other, because if I flip it and turn it over, it actually gives me a different type of texture. And so, therefore, it gives me a different look. So there you go so if you actually want to uh get one of these shibori pocket squares we have them in 47 different colors all you got to do is go to rolling this martin.com forward slash pocket squares all right so first

of all that graphic is way too small so uh tomorrow we're gonna run it right down here all across the screen so it's rolling this martin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you who are members of our Bring the Funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool. So if you want to jazz your look up, you can do that. In addition, y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares. My sister was a designer.

She actually makes these. They're all custom made. So when you also go to the website, you can also order one of the customized feather pocket squares right there at RolandSMartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So please do so. And, of course, it goes to support the show. And again, if you're a Bring The Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club.

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