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How to y'all. I'm Elizabeth Gore. Welcome to the Big Idea from Yahoo Finance, the show that navigates the world of small business and entrepreneurship. All businesses start with one light bulb moment and each week I'm going to take you on a journey with America's entrepreneurs. We're going to get betweenThe spreadsheets for these operators to flow from their smallest failures to their biggest successes. As the co-founder of the small business funding platform, Hello Alice, it has always been my mission to help ensure entrepreneurs have the tools they need to live the American dream. So let's cowboy up.Today, our big idea question is how do you do well by doing good. Now, what I mean by this is how can someone give back to their community while making money on their entrepreneurial journey? Something I'm very passionate about. Today's industry focus is real estate.Joining me today to talk about this is Chairman TD Jakes, who's going to share his stories on how he's given back to the community through his entrepreneurial and spiritual journey. For more than 40 years, Bishop Jakes, as I know him, has helped millions of people realize their purpose through his dynamic ministry. He is the founder of the Potter's House, a non-denominational, multicultural church and global humanitarian organization in Dallas, Texas with 30,000 members.Under TD Jakes Enterprises, the chairman is a bestselling author, publisher, and an award winning filmmaker. He has recently founded Good Soil, an entrepreneurial platform and relevant to today's topic, he is a real estate mogul across the country. Please welcome America's preacher, TD Jakes.Chairman Jakes, I can't believe you're here. I, I am just, um, and it's hard for me to call you Charon because you're my bishop. And the first time I ever saw your face was when I took my grandmother to your Potter's house in Dallas and full circle now to be talking about entrepreneurship. I
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that crazy?
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I mean your whole philosophy is doing well by doing good. I mean, tell me more.
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Well, you know, I don't think.have to separate one from the other, and the stats really show that the most successful entrepreneurs are purpose-driven, not just profit-driven. Uh, when you get in it because you have a compassion and a desire to meet a need, when your business finds its problem, it's found its purpose andIt finds this profit arbitrarily. It just just just comes along with it. People who just do it for the money generally have a far less success rate than those who do it because they have an inner conviction that gives meaning to their lives and the money just follows the meaning.
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Now I think of you asAmerica's preacher. And but you start doing your homework and you were an entrepreneur from a kid. Where did that come from?
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Well, my parents, my father started a janitorial service with a mop in the bucket back in the 60s, ended up with 10 trucks and 52 employees and traveling all over the state.And I was cheap labor. There you go. OK, so, so I scrubbed out the corners and packed up the trucks.
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I remind my kids of that, by the way, when I get home,yeah,
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dinner is your pay. We'll work for food. And then my mother started buying up property, real estate, all up and down the street.And, uh, even later, many years later when my mother got Alzheimer's, she was still getting rent. Yeah, didn't no longer remember. She referred it to like 607, 609. I'd say 609 paid, 610 paid, and she, she said, I don't care no more baby. But all of those years she modeled that in front of me. So it's kind of in my DNA and part of who I am. And every church I ever pastored, I started from the ground up. There are a lot ofSimilarities between the two because it's not just about preaching. You have to also pay the bills and pay whatever staff you have, you know, there are a lot of similarities between the two. So believing in yourself, believing in your product, uh, believing in faith, believing in for me believing in God, that some kind of way you're going to get me out of this,
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the roller coaster. And I think that's OK for us to talk about these small business owners, the folks listening and watching.show, there are going to be hard days. And if you have that purpose and faith, how does that how does that drive someonethrough?
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I think it's very, very important because mindsets determine assets and if you lose your mindset, you're going to lose your assets. And so it's very important that you maintain your mindset and surround yourself with other people who can relate to you, who really realize that just because you're an entrepreneur doesn't mean that youhave lots of money and everything goes right and you can come in when you want to and leave when you please. You might think that when you
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start. Well, then you realize, oh wait, I'm the hardest boss I've ever had.
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After the first one to come in the last one to leave out the trash. Everyone takes out the trash and whenever somebody has to go, you end up filling their spot sometimes. But that all adds to the education of you fully understanding what is reasonable.To ask of a person. And so the hard times determine the good times. And I think we avoid the hard times, but the hard times is the university of education that exposes you to what it takes to really be an entrepreneur. This is not just about school, it's about experience.
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Really from day one, and this is our big question on the show today is, is can you do well by doing good? Gave both gave back to your community, found profitable models.And so for a small business owner, I mean, they are trying to, you know, trying to hire the first person, cash is tight, but do you believe you can give back from day one? Yes,
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I think you can. You can give a smile. You can give a positive attitude. You can give a birthday card, you can keep a record of birthdays and holidays and create because really.The greatest resource in business is relationships. That is so true. And a lot of people do not count relationships as a resource. They only see a resource as the bottom line on a ledger, but in reality, your greatest relates, your greatest resource is your relationship and your ability to relate with your customer, your consumer, your staff, uh, your peripheral staff, meaningThat you should have some people around you that you don't pay, but they are smart and committed to you and they, whether they become your board or they become your mentors and mentees. The reason we started good soil is the lack of all three things, not having access to capital, not having access to cash, not having access to confidants, not having access to somebody who can mentor.To you and speak into your life. We are getting ready to have the largest transfer of wealth from baby boomers to the next generation.
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76 million people. It's amazing. And Good Soil is your entrepreneurial platform where small business owners can come on and they get counsel, they get grants. You have the Good Soul Forum coming up. Tell us about that.
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Well, we've got the Forum coming up coming up June 12th through the 14th.
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In your
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home state we got you.
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I'm so excited. I'm excited. There's also, I think this woman named, what's her name? Oprah
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Winfrey. Oprah, Oprah's coming. And I told, I told somebody, this is an opportunity for us to pass to the next generation. What we learned, what we did right, what we did wrong, what to watch out for, so that the learning curve is not so steep or so stiff. And I think it's a very important opportunity.to inundate yourself with this kind of information. We're gonna be doing mentoring. We've got a $500,000 fast pitch competition. Uh, even those who didn't win the competition said they benefited by having to put together, uh, their portfolio, what they were going to do, uh, their business plan, that sort of thing. You cannot walk out of a room full of like-minded people.And not be fuller and richer and more developed in who you are.
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That's how I felt anytime I'm in the room with you, to be really honest. Now, now tell me, we're in a really interesting time, if you watch the news right now of very strong opinions and and some would say the purpose of a company is to make money, period. So you see a lot of some shareholders pushing back on everything from diversity, equity inclusion to ESG to even corporate foundations.Um, I'd love to just hear your opinion on that. And then also, you know, did you ever get pushback from some for your profitable models, because, because you are the purpose driven human. So I'm just curious your thoughts. Yes,
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you're going to get push back, but the reality is, no matter what we vote or what we say or the semantics or how we change the name, our world is diverse. Our country is diverse. Whether that diversity is gender, whether it is gender.Rational, uh, whether it is different ethnicities. It's unavoidable. We just simply do not have enough, uh, white men to run everything in the country by themselves. The birth rates, just do the math. So at the end of the day, if I have a car wreck and an EMT comes, I don't care whether he's Indian or Asian or young or old, I just want to get out of the crisis.And so we can debate it all day long on paper. We love to do stuff like that, but in reality, this is a diverse country. England is a diverse country. India is a diverse country. It's unavoidable. And so if you're going to, you only have one pond to fish out of. So you can't just pick the fish, you know, and then you've got to pay them fairly and treat them fairly, and we can change the name any way you want to.But the point is, we're all here together and we do not want to get to the point that we become extinct as a species because we figure out how to do artificial intelligence at the expense of human intelligence. And we were just talking about human intelligence, no matter what form it comes in, or color.
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Hold that thought. We are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with a big idea.Welcome back to The Big Idea. I'm Elizabeth Gore here with Chairman TD Jakes. Now, uh, I picked up on something earlier. I actually didn't realize that your mom, God rest her soul,Um, was investing in real estate all the way up until when she passed. Uh, and today our industry topic and focus as real estate, which you are crazy passionate about. So was she your inspiration and then why do you think that that is a good both profitable and community investment to be in real estate?
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Well, it solves the problem and the best businesses solve problems. We have homelessness, we havePeople who have less than adequate housing. We have people who are moving up the economic ladder ladder, and as their family dynamics change, they're scaling up, they're scaling down. It's a passive stream of income that for the most part, once you get it up and done, it's making money while you sleep and it's solving problems for people. It accrues in value. And if you're lucky enough to live in Texas, shameless plug like I do, uh, you don't have to worry about state tax.There are some special benefits that go along with it. There are 1000 reasons to be able to do it. And what we have a tendency to do is to invest in depreciating assets so that we look like we're doing well, rather than scale down on looking like you're doing well and scale up on actually doing well by focusing on appreciating assets, passing it on to your heirs, becoming part of your.state, you can do more business, you can buy more things, and it's just so many good reasons I think you should do it. And when we do it, we do mixed income. Yeah,
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so your model, if I may, is really unique, and I'm I'm thinking about Texas and Georgia and uh you do mixed income. You also look at the properties, you know, are we going to put data centers? Are we going to do this, we're gonna do that? Tell me about that model because I think it's really interesting for other people to emulate it. Yeah,
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Ithink it's very, very, very important because whenYou got one group of people and they're all on the same socioeconomic level of life. It kind of gets boring if everybody is completely wealthy or everybody is completely
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I can't imagine you bored. Lord
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help
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us. That cannot happen.
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Our diversity is interesting and the stats say sociologically.We do better when we have diverse communities. There's more upward mobility. If a boy who has no father grows up in a neighborhood near someone who has a father, he is 7 times less likely to go to prison.So, so your neighbors impact you. They inspire you, they motivate you. And so our focus is mixed income, mixed use facilities because we're trying to close food deserts where you don't have to drive so far to get food or to get what you need. We have covenants where we don't have payday loans or.Uh, a bunch of liquor stores or intoxicating people to the point that they're not productive in their lives. We're not saying that you can't have it, you have to travel a little further to get it, you know, but getting a balance in your life where you're thinking and you're moving and you're talking with interesting people, we are so isolated, especially since COVID.That that isolation is affecting our emotional well-being. And so we have little places where you can do a cookout and the neighbors can come into the open spaces and we won't be so alone, even if we do livealone.
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It's interesting, you almost come to the real estate industry withUm, almost a way of life. You know, you're not just building a house, you're building a way of life, you're building a community, you're building long-term investments, wealth transfer, as we talked about.Um, what is there any, is there anything you're you're worried about in the real estate industry? Anything people should be concerned about?
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Oh, I think you have to watch the interest rates. I think we have to watch inflation. I think we have to watch the cost of products, uh, and, and, and the timing of it. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't go forward through hard times, but because hard times don't last. Tough times don't.Last tough people do. And, and by the time you get it built, you're going to be in a different period. So I don't think you ought to give up your dream just because of the inconvenience of where you are right now. Two years from now, it won't be there. Recessions don't last, inflation doesn't last. And thinking about it that way from a long term perspective. In fact, all entrepreneurs listening to me right now, you can't just think about making it.the week. You've got to have a long term perspective of where you want to be 10 years from now. And that's how you monitor whether the year was a success, not by the year itself, but how close are you now to where you want to be 5
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years from now. That's where that, as you said, your passion and your values come through, right? Because you have hard years good years, um.So we try to be very transparent on the show that we all make mistakes. So we call our mistakes dirty unicorns. So, so, so get throw me a mistake. I can't imagine
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you let's get a dirty unicorns. Oh, it's hard to pick one. I think the biggest, most important recent one is being careful who you partner with.Yeah, uh, when you get that wrong, you spend so much money trying to get out once you get in that it's better to spend the money on the front end vetting, not only what they have done, but are they compatible and do they.Have your rhythm and your pace and your objective. And sometimes I haven't gotten that right. I have confused charisma with character.
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Oh, confused charisma with character. And my husband just said, um, he works with a lot of tribes and there's this saying that is, I go at the speed of trust. I was really moved by that when he said that to me andSo does does break breaking through one layer to see the next layer down, is that take time? Is that diligence? I mean, what is your advice to business owners when they're choosing that partner?
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I think you ought to get into partnerships like like uh like my wife gets into the pool. One step at a time.You know, let's do this and see how that goes. And then let's do this. She's not doing cannonballs. No, no, she's not me's not OK. And uh that's great advice. Yeah, it gives you an opportunity to see. It doesn't mean that the partner is bad, but do we have chemistry? It's almost like a marriage, you know, it's you.You have a covenant, you have an agreement, you have principles, you have ideas, but you don't know till you move in how well that's gonna work out. You get married in 20 minutes, but you don't really get married for 10 years.
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That's right. And then you're married to a different person, I think every 10 years. Yes.
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Can we grow together or do we grow apart? That happens in partnerships too. That's why.You have to have the equivalent of a prenup is how do I get out if they, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lawyer up and make sure that you have the principles set up so that when the times get hard, you've already agreed how to respect each other as you separate separate one fromanother.
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That is incredible advice. I, I was going to ask you the best piece of advice you've ever been given, but I'm going to switch out. What what do you think?Would your mother's advice be about real estate?
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I think, uh,Not to limit yourself to your own zip code that that that we have to think more globally today than we did when she started. She bought up all the houses on the street and then she started branching out into other neighborhoods. Most of us think, you know, I'm gonna invest in my neighborhood and that's good. That's great.But sometimes there are great opportunities in other cities and even other countries, and don't be afraid to branch out because money doesn't watch street signs. It doesn't care about zip codes. And so as you invest into these different areas, you get a return and you build relationships and you become more global because for the first time in the world, I can get on my phone and pick some.Back and forth with somebody in Korea and get an immediate answer as if they were across the street. So if, if Japan's stock goes down, it's gonna affect America. We are more interconnected than we've ever been in, in life. And by the way, when we were talking earlier about the discontentment and the restlessness of the areas that we live in, I see it on the news, but I don't see it on the on the elevator.I don't see it in the grocery store. I don't see us running buggies into each other, you know. Yeah, not the same ones anyway, you know, and I'm not sure that we're as angry at each other as they say we are. I think conflicts drive up ratings. And so they show the very worst of us because the planes that land never get covered. It's just the ones that crash.And so we're we're seeing all these crashing planes, you know, and you walk around like this, but when you walk up and down the street, people are opening doors for you. How are you today? so forth and so on. I'm not saying that there is an evil out there and injustice out there, but I'm not, I don't think it's as pervasive as we think that it is.
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Well, it's certainly not here and you're a blessing, and I am so grateful that you came on today and umAll of our listeners at the Big Idea, they're going to learn so much from you. So thank you.
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It's a real pleasure.
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At the end of each episode, I like to give a shout out to a small business who is doing amazing work. So today, I'd like to shout out to Mama Laverne's Food, a business known for their award-winning Chicken and waffle pancake mix. Oh my gosh, it sounds so good.Founded by a mother and daughter duo, Laverne and Donna Richardson, it also happens to be Chairman Jake's favorite. Thank you, Chairman Jakes, for coming on the show and thank all of you for joining us. We hope you learned a lot. This has been the big idea from Yahoo Finance. Watch us every week on your favorite.Streaming service. Find videos at yahoofinance.com and listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can also come say howdy to me on any of my social channels at Elizabeth Gore USA. I'm Elizabeth Gore, and as my grandmother always used to say, hold your head up high and give them hell. See you soon.
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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.
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