TELL YOU SOMETHING I'VE NEVER SAID

I'll tell you something I've never said publicly, ever. Later on, I had a chance to take in $130 million capital commitment from a billionaire named Tony Restler, who owns Ares Management, and Michael Eric Getty, who's his partner, a billionaire now. But they privately had backed one of my business, a housing venture. It started out at $3 million. $30 million. Really good idea. Let's do $130 million. I ended up taking $88 million of debt and equity from them, and I sold that company for $121 million, 5 years later. Now, over those five years, when they wired that money, they never asked me for a business plan, a balance sheet, an audit. But they never asked me for an audit. They never asked me. They... Tony called and joked one day and said, "I sent you?" Now, he knew how much he sent me, but that was a signal, like, you're my guy. I trust you, like. I wasn't going doing private jets with their money. I wasn't with their money. They knew, they knew how I was built. And I would send reports even though they weren't, I would send, I'd do audits every year. I wanted to be trusted to know them, to know their backing was, was in good hands. I never want somebody to say, "Leave the room." This is a good antidote for those coming up. When I leave you guys today, I don't want you to say, "But..." Like, you know, "I really respect that John Bryant... but." I think he's a good guy... but? You know, I don't want a "but" next to my name. You can say "and", right? So I took that story, that lesson from early in life and applied it to a nine-figure exit. I sold that company for $121 million and paid off all of my obligations. Our friend Michael Milken did the same thing for Reginald Lewis. Michael Milken really financed. He financed the guy who became the king of Wall Street, which is Reginald Lewis, who did the deal as a black entrepreneur, needed a venture capitalist. He needed a backer and no one would back him. Harvard educated attorney, over credentialed, but didn't have relationship capital. He was cocky. If he was white, confidence. But he saw a black man. "Oh my God, he's cocky." No, he just, he believed in himself. Well, Michael Milken said, "I'll back him." "I'm going to back him." And I think that's part Michael was, by the way, attacked, because he was bringing all these outsiders in to, you know, a closed environment, and he was creating of financing back then, which was, we called it junk bonds, you know, high yield bonds, so I think that those lessons... I mean, I'm just affirming that as a venture capitalist, you're very successful. But the thought of, we back people, right? Is, I think, the through line. And one of the reasons I wrote this book, Capitalism For All, is I want everybody to be their own LLC, limited liability corporation. Be their own brand. We have got to remember that Sam Walton, at 44 years of age, started Walmart. He went public in his early 50s. He was hustling. And now it's in the world. But that was a person with a pickup truck, and a storefront, and an idea.