Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #215 Robert Smith on Being The Richest Black American, Wealth, HBCUs, & Private Equity
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
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- 0:19Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
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- 0:31Speaker 1: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
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- 0:43Speaker 1: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
- 0:46Speaker 1: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
- 0:50Speaker 1: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
- 0:55Speaker 1: border and families will.
- 0:57Speaker 2: Be protected sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
- 1:00Speaker 3: So it might take you ten years to figure out
- 1:04Speaker 3: what we've done forty five times already, right, and now
- 1:08Speaker 3: I bring that intellectual property into the company and say
- 1:12Speaker 3: here's how we're going to design this a little differently.
- 1:15Speaker 3: Here's how we're going to change your compensation plans for
- 1:17Speaker 3: your salespeople to actually incentivize them to give you more
- 1:20Speaker 3: stable revenues or or or you know, more visibility into
- 1:25Speaker 3: the future revenues and earnings of that business that you
- 1:28Speaker 3: may not have figured out or may not figure out
- 1:30Speaker 3: because you may not be in an environment a circle
- 1:32Speaker 3: of people who have dealt with that before. And so
- 1:36Speaker 3: that's why the expertise that we bring is often more
- 1:40Speaker 3: valuable than the capital.
- 1:44Speaker 4: My graduates from my school being forced bad drop drop
- 1:50Speaker 4: might drop bad drop drop.
- 2:02Speaker 5: All right, guys, welcome back, e y L. This is
- 2:05Speaker 5: a very special episode.
- 2:07Speaker 6: Let's call it the Icon Adition.
- 2:08Speaker 7: It's also the earliest episode that we never.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Oh, I thought it was your this early well, I.
- 2:14Speaker 5: Mean once we got the toime slot make it work
- 2:18Speaker 5: up twenty four hours so and I did get the memo.
- 2:24Speaker 3: Well you didn't get Brandy.
- 2:30Speaker 7: Yes, the blue blazer with the reepeace suit.
- 2:34Speaker 3: Look, yes, this is the brand. This is the new brand.
- 2:36Speaker 3: That's the new brand, This new brand, the Icon addition brand, rebrand.
- 2:41Speaker 3: It's called it's called rebrand.
- 2:45Speaker 5: So you know this this is it's a it's a
- 2:48Speaker 5: very full circle moment for us, because I think probably
- 2:52Speaker 5: three maybe four years ago, right, So a lot of
- 2:56Speaker 5: this started for us on social media on my Instagram,
- 2:59Speaker 5: and I used to write a lot like write like blogs,
- 3:02Speaker 5: but I put it on Instagram, so I would write
- 3:04Speaker 5: about a whole bunch of different topics. And one of
- 3:06Speaker 5: the topics that I wrote about was you. You had
- 3:09Speaker 5: an art you had a cover of Forbes and thinking,
- 3:13Speaker 5: my yet like three or four years ago, so I
- 3:17Speaker 5: put the cover up and then I wrote like a
- 3:19Speaker 5: three page, three paragraph description of the whole situation. And
- 3:24Speaker 5: then my whole point of it was at that time, specifically,
- 3:27Speaker 5: I didn't feel that enough people knew who you were.
- 3:29Speaker 3: I remember, I remember that, you remember it. I remember
- 3:32Speaker 3: that he said you got to meet this guy.
- 3:36Speaker 5: That's great, that's crazy. So so you know, I was
- 3:39Speaker 5: real passionate. I kind of like, you know, we put
- 3:41Speaker 5: too much emphasis on sports entertainment, and you know, but
- 3:44Speaker 5: this is the most wealthiest black person in American history,
- 3:48Speaker 5: and a lot of people don't know who is.
- 3:49Speaker 7: So long story short, fast forward.
- 3:52Speaker 5: Now I think a lot of people do know, especially
- 3:55Speaker 5: after the Morehouse situation. We'll talk about that, but still
- 3:59Speaker 5: and still and still. The wealthiest Black person in America.
- 4:04Speaker 6: Four years ago was true four years later, still.
- 4:07Speaker 3: And still.
- 4:11Speaker 5: That's an accomplishment and not through sports or entertainment. I
- 4:15Speaker 5: think that that's something that's extremely important, especially for young people,
- 4:17Speaker 5: to understand that, you know, you can reach levels of
- 4:20Speaker 5: success in our culture and our communities and not necessarily
- 4:24Speaker 5: do it through sports and entertainment.
- 4:25Speaker 2: I think that was one of the pillars that when
- 4:27Speaker 2: we started, was like, let's show everybody what they can be,
- 4:29Speaker 2: the possibilities in the realms of things, they can be
- 4:32Speaker 2: outside of those through things which we knew that we
- 4:34Speaker 2: could be great at. But let's show I'm somebody who's
- 4:36Speaker 2: doing something that's far beyond that and it's succeeding at
- 4:39Speaker 2: a different level as well.
- 4:40Speaker 6: So definitely one of the pillars of Ernalisia.
- 4:43Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 4:43Speaker 5: So Robert Smith, CEO and founder of Vista Equity Fund.
- 4:50Speaker 5: He is actually a very prolific person because if you
- 4:53Speaker 5: read his bio, it's like forty five different things. He's
- 4:57Speaker 5: a chairman of Carnegie Hall. Yes, he's a family man.
- 5:01Speaker 5: That's probably the most That's what I should have said.
- 5:03Speaker 3: First.
- 5:05Speaker 5: He used to he used to do a variety of
- 5:07Speaker 5: different things. So he used to be an engineer and
- 5:10Speaker 5: then he used to actually work on the corporate side
- 5:13Speaker 5: for financing as well. So it's an extremely impressive background
- 5:16Speaker 5: because most engineers that that doesn't usually mix. That's like,
- 5:20Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, a weird combinations. Yeah, yeah,
- 5:24Speaker 5: Wall Street and engineers, like at the same time, he
- 5:27Speaker 5: could build your house and give you finance.
- 5:29Speaker 3: It's a little it's a little closer than you think.
- 5:31Speaker 5: Unpack some of that, Okay, but this is going to
- 5:34Speaker 5: be a very dynamic conversation, something that you know, extremely
- 5:37Speaker 5: excited about. And I gotta tell this story. I told
- 5:40Speaker 5: this story in La but this is something that I
- 5:42Speaker 5: think is very important to tell because the.
- 5:44Speaker 7: First time that we met him was in Harlem and uh.
- 5:49Speaker 5: Guy Steve Harvey, So he invited us and you were
- 5:53Speaker 5: doing something for colon cancer.
- 5:54Speaker 3: I believe for African American man cancer.
- 5:59Speaker 5: So it was something that you know, I always remembered
- 6:02Speaker 5: that moment because it was in the projects and Wagnant
- 6:04Speaker 5: Projects in Harlem, and that's where he chose to actually
- 6:09Speaker 5: do that and educate and he brought a bunch of
- 6:11Speaker 5: celebrities out and that was something that was very impressive
- 6:14Speaker 5: to me because it wasn't on Wall Street, it wasn't
- 6:18Speaker 5: you know, in Times Square. It was you could tell
- 6:20Speaker 5: that it was really for the community, and it was
- 6:23Speaker 5: really a community based initiative.
- 6:25Speaker 7: And we'll talk about that as well.
- 6:26Speaker 5: And when we met him, you know, we obviously are
- 6:29Speaker 5: introducing ourselves and the first thing he said to us
- 6:31Speaker 5: is I love you guys.
- 6:32Speaker 6: So I don't even think we got to say who
- 6:34Speaker 6: we were.
- 6:35Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like.
- 6:38Speaker 5: So his his humility was infectious and still is and
- 6:43Speaker 5: you know, his charitable arms is just a million miles long.
- 6:48Speaker 5: So I wanted the public to know that because a
- 6:50Speaker 5: lot of times people don't know different things that happen.
- 6:53Speaker 5: And it's not for you to say that, but it
- 6:55Speaker 5: is for us to champion that, and that's that's important.
- 6:58Speaker 3: So that's important to me. Yeah, and us telling our
- 7:00Speaker 3: own story. So you you play a very important role
- 7:05Speaker 3: in part in our community. It's not just the education
- 7:09Speaker 3: of our community about our community, but helping us understand
- 7:13Speaker 3: how to uplift each other. And you know, our community
- 7:16Speaker 3: gets attacked from all sides for multiple reasons, but it
- 7:19Speaker 3: has to be it has to come down to our
- 7:21Speaker 3: community defending our community. In that context, you guys pay
- 7:24Speaker 3: a very important role. And as dynamic is the media
- 7:28Speaker 3: is today, your role is even more important. So keep
- 7:31Speaker 3: doing what you're doing and keep leaning in hard.
- 7:33Speaker 7: Thank you, Thank you.
- 7:34Speaker 6: So that was an amazing moment.
- 7:36Speaker 7: Thank you for joining us. Okay, we can get to it.
- 7:38Speaker 5: So you grew up in Denver, Yeah, in a very
- 7:41Speaker 5: diverse neighborhood. Is they call it the Harlem of the West?
- 7:44Speaker 3: Is that what they? Yeah? Five points? Yeah, can you
- 7:46Speaker 3: talk about that? Yeah? Sure. You know, we as African
- 7:51Speaker 3: Americans have had just an interesting journey and you know,
- 7:56Speaker 3: in points in time you can kind of frame where
- 7:59Speaker 3: different things happened to our community, and you know, things
- 8:03Speaker 3: that we did of our community. And the thing I
- 8:06Speaker 3: always point to is our not only resilience, but the
- 8:09Speaker 3: ability to create and create things new and influence and change.
- 8:13Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of American culture is coming out
- 8:17Speaker 3: of our experiences, and music, of course, is one of
- 8:20Speaker 3: the principal drivers of that. You know, I always say
- 8:24Speaker 3: I grew up in a beloved community, and you know,
- 8:26Speaker 3: it sounds like you guys grew up in that as well,
- 8:28Speaker 3: a place where in my case it was completely segregated community.
- 8:34Speaker 3: But you know the needs of the children in that
- 8:36Speaker 3: community were being satisfied by the adults in that community.
- 8:40Speaker 3: In those needs of love and guidance and instruction and
- 8:43Speaker 3: everything from learning how to play at the piano to
- 8:46Speaker 3: learning about science and in my case like rocketry and
- 8:50Speaker 3: in learning sports. I mean that came from the members
- 8:52Speaker 3: of our community. But you also saw the adults in
- 8:55Speaker 3: that community defend the community and also try to make
- 8:59Speaker 3: more progress. And the Five Points area is the area
- 9:03Speaker 3: one of the first areas that was settled by African
- 9:05Speaker 3: Americans in Colorado as we moved across this country, and
- 9:13Speaker 3: typically it was you know, at the end of you know,
- 9:16Speaker 3: the emancipation period. My family, many of them went into Pueblo, Colorado,
- 9:25Speaker 3: but they came from you know, Oklahoma or Tennessee, right,
- 9:29Speaker 3: and you guys are all familiar with Greenwood, and part
- 9:31Speaker 3: of our family tree comes out of there. Some of
- 9:34Speaker 3: them actually owned the you know, one of the pool
- 9:37Speaker 3: halls and one of the one of the hardware stores.
- 9:39Speaker 3: And as that happened in the early nineteen hundreds in
- 9:42Speaker 3: that massacre, they moved into Pueblo, Colorado and then from there.
- 9:46Speaker 3: So I'm fourth generation from Colorado, and so my family
- 9:49Speaker 3: are families of teachers and educators and nurses and doctors.
- 9:55Speaker 3: Think about that, right, you know, providing I'm the fourth
- 9:58Speaker 3: generation of my family to go to college. Wow, right,
- 10:02Speaker 3: There's very few families in America where it's fours generations
- 10:04Speaker 3: that have gone to college. And so what I saw
- 10:08Speaker 3: growing up was a community that had a lot of
- 10:11Speaker 3: wholeness but was again being attacked on any size. But
- 10:14Speaker 3: I saw the adults like my parents, my father and
- 10:17Speaker 3: my mother, you know, pulled together organizations not just a
- 10:20Speaker 3: fan to defend, but to advance. And one of the
- 10:23Speaker 3: most important areas of advancement was of course education. You know,
- 10:27Speaker 3: being educated it was critically important to success and to
- 10:32Speaker 3: creating you know, financial opportunity and to frankly create stability
- 10:37Speaker 3: in the community. Both my parents were teachers, elementary school teachers.
- 10:41Speaker 3: They both ultimately ended up getting doctorates in education, both
- 10:43Speaker 3: in them being principles. But I look also to the
- 10:47Speaker 3: work they did civically in our in our in our family.
- 10:50Speaker 3: Back then, it snowed a lot in Denver. You know,
- 10:52Speaker 3: it's the whole climate change dynamic. I don't think we're
- 10:54Speaker 3: addressing in this. We can do another. And so so
- 11:00Speaker 3: we as kids always got excited about snow days, right
- 11:03Speaker 3: and stay home. Our parents didn't why because at that time,
- 11:08Speaker 3: our neighborhood wouldn't get the snowplow to come through it
- 11:11Speaker 3: for three or four days after it's snow. Now you
- 11:14Speaker 3: think about it, where your parents are trying to go
- 11:17Speaker 3: to work, but they can't even get down the street.
- 11:19Speaker 3: They can't get to the bus stop, they can't. You know,
- 11:21Speaker 3: for those of us who had cars, you couldn't even
- 11:24Speaker 3: drive because it was just snowed in. So I saw
- 11:27Speaker 3: my father lead an effort and it created a civic
- 11:29Speaker 3: association and they literally went and campaigned and lobbied so
- 11:35Speaker 3: that we at least got snowplows the same day as
- 11:38Speaker 3: other communities in you know, in our city. I remember,
- 11:43Speaker 3: and then they put one stripe. They'd come down and
- 11:45Speaker 3: do one stripe down the main street, and we still
- 11:48Speaker 3: had to get to the main street and you would
- 11:49Speaker 3: get out and then okay, great, we got on a
- 11:52Speaker 3: bus to go across town because they were desegregating schools
- 11:55Speaker 3: using bussing, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
- 11:58Speaker 3: And you'd go to the neighborhood where the better resource
- 12:01Speaker 3: school inner streets were clean and dry, snowpiled up on
- 12:04Speaker 3: the side are gone, and are still had just one
- 12:06Speaker 3: strip down the center. So when you talk about economic disadvantage,
- 12:14Speaker 3: systemic economic oppression, these are the things that you don't
- 12:19Speaker 3: think about on the one hand, but if your community
- 12:23Speaker 3: can't get to work, it has a major impact. And
- 12:26Speaker 3: we had a lot of wage workers, so it wasn't like, oh,
- 12:28Speaker 3: everybody was on salary. You were wage workers. If you
- 12:30Speaker 3: didn't show up that day, you didn't get paid that day.
- 12:31Speaker 3: If you didn't get paid that day, you were now
- 12:33Speaker 3: trying to figure out how to you know, make groceries
- 12:36Speaker 3: and pay pay you know, ensure that your kids ate
- 12:39Speaker 3: or clothed and those sort of things. And I saw
- 12:42Speaker 3: the community say this, we're that's not going to stand
- 12:45Speaker 3: right and make take a stand of that. I saw
- 12:47Speaker 3: my father also pull together resources so our local y MCA,
- 12:53Speaker 3: our kids had a chance to go to summer camps
- 12:57Speaker 3: and to go into the mountains, and we raised money
- 13:00Speaker 3: to build a gym so we could actually have a place,
- 13:03Speaker 3: you know, where our kids could actually you know, recreate
- 13:06Speaker 3: in peace and also with facilities. But it was them
- 13:10Speaker 3: taking that on and making a community project in us.
- 13:14Speaker 3: You know, going out and selling candy and all that,
- 13:16Speaker 3: you know, to to ensure that that happened. And it
- 13:19Speaker 3: was i'll call it a spirit of self determination that
- 13:23Speaker 3: very much was part of the fabric of that community.
- 13:27Speaker 3: And you saw people looking out for the kids. That
- 13:31Speaker 3: wasn't perfect, like everything, you know, nothing is perfect, but
- 13:35Speaker 3: you felt loved, you felt cared for it, you felt protected,
- 13:39Speaker 3: and you saw adults coming together for the betterment of
- 13:43Speaker 3: that community, not episodically when something bad happened, but on
- 13:49Speaker 3: a regular basis. And that's what I remember, and those
- 13:54Speaker 3: are the things that really inform how I like to
- 13:57Speaker 3: live my life. And I have an opportunit do it
- 14:00Speaker 3: a little bigger platform than growing up there. But it's
- 14:04Speaker 3: also i'll call it rich with community life. You know,
- 14:07Speaker 3: the music, the you know, we'd have the Friday night
- 14:10Speaker 3: fish fries and you guys too young members. We used
- 14:12Speaker 3: to do these people take slide pictures on slides and
- 14:16Speaker 3: slide projector you guys left.
- 14:17Speaker 2: You don't know, I know, I know, I feel like
- 14:20Speaker 2: that happened in elementary school slide projected.
- 14:23Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 14:24Speaker 3: Well yeah, but but but people would go to people's
- 14:27Speaker 3: homes and you know, bring food and pot lucks and
- 14:32Speaker 3: watch slide projectors of people's what they did that summer,
- 14:37Speaker 3: and and then of course play cards and you know,
- 14:40Speaker 3: you know, drink whiskey and soda, pop it all but
- 14:43Speaker 3: and play music. And I mean that's it was very vibrant.
- 14:46Speaker 3: And I just remember that. And that wasn't like, like
- 14:48Speaker 3: I said, episodic. That was kind of just the way
- 14:51Speaker 3: we lived. So it was actually it was actually pretty cool.
- 14:54Speaker 2: It sounds like I mean, just having the foundation set,
- 14:57Speaker 2: like you said, most of us don't come from, you know,
- 15:00Speaker 2: families that went to college. You had two educators in
- 15:02Speaker 2: the home. You spoke about that, the impact your dad had.
- 15:05Speaker 2: I remember hearing the stories about the impact that your
- 15:08Speaker 2: mom writing the checks to the United Negro College Fund
- 15:11Speaker 2: and what that profound impact had on you.
- 15:14Speaker 6: I want to talk about that a little bit.
- 15:15Speaker 2: And Bus thirteen, like you kind of alluded to it,
- 15:18Speaker 2: but the importance of that and how you know, having
- 15:21Speaker 2: one bus in the community and the impact that that
- 15:24Speaker 2: had on you, and also the future of some of
- 15:27Speaker 2: the people that were on that bus and how you
- 15:30Speaker 2: know they excelled as opposed to the people who didn't
- 15:31Speaker 2: make it.
- 15:31Speaker 6: Can you tell about that?
- 15:32Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's you know again, it's kind of the
- 15:35Speaker 3: great segue into you know, the importance of resources in
- 15:41Speaker 3: a community and the importance of guidance in that context.
- 15:46Speaker 3: You know, we were at a time it was a
- 15:48Speaker 3: dawning of uh call it the civil rights movement in action.
- 15:53Speaker 3: So you know, there were there were you know, we
- 15:55Speaker 3: spilled a lot of blood, and a lot of our
- 15:57Speaker 3: blood was spilled in the streets. And one of the
- 16:00Speaker 3: things we got out of it was Brown versus Board
- 16:02Speaker 3: of Education. And now I was like, okay, now we're
- 16:05Speaker 3: going to desegregate schools. How are you gonna do that
- 16:08Speaker 3: when everybody lives in segregating neighborhoods. So it was in
- 16:11Speaker 3: Denver many other places. It was a thing called bussing, right,
- 16:15Speaker 3: they called it force bussing, but it was bussing. And
- 16:17Speaker 3: so now you know, the cities took here. They bought
- 16:20Speaker 3: a bunch of busses, started figuring out, Okay, who from
- 16:23Speaker 3: this community, who goes to this local school? My dad
- 16:26Speaker 3: was a principal at the local school, and now you're
- 16:29Speaker 3: going to rebust across town to another school. All right, Well,
- 16:33Speaker 3: right before this was to happen, some racists didn't think
- 16:36Speaker 3: This was a good idea and burned like a third
- 16:38Speaker 3: of the buses.
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- 17:45Speaker 3: Okay, so now all of a sudden, fewer people are
- 17:48Speaker 3: going to get busted, just as real nature. So rather
- 17:51Speaker 3: than my whole neighborhood getting bussed, only one bus came
- 17:55Speaker 3: to my neighborhood, and so just so happened to hit
- 17:58Speaker 3: on a corner down the block for me. And so
- 18:01Speaker 3: the kids in that four block radius were the first
- 18:04Speaker 3: ones to go to desegregated schools. Okay, and I got
- 18:07Speaker 3: talked about better resource schools. And when I look at
- 18:11Speaker 3: the kids who were on that bus versus the kids
- 18:15Speaker 3: who were two blocks away, okay, when it was bus
- 18:19Speaker 3: number thirteen, like I say, ironically right, it was those
- 18:24Speaker 3: kids have a higher percentage of professionals went to Ivy
- 18:30Speaker 3: League schools became you know, doctors and professors and scientists
- 18:37Speaker 3: versus a blocks of just a few blocks away. How
- 18:40Speaker 3: much down there were some professionals that came out of there,
- 18:42Speaker 3: but a much lower percentage. I mean, it is a
- 18:45Speaker 3: stark contrast. And it's because that K in that case
- 18:50Speaker 3: K through six education was so different than what you
- 18:55Speaker 3: saw in our local neighborhoods and because they were still
- 18:58Speaker 3: you know, separate, equal, but it wasn't you see, to
- 19:01Speaker 3: mean the teaching, the capacity, the care, you know. And
- 19:05Speaker 3: we had some phenomenal teachers in our community, and some
- 19:11Speaker 3: of the teachers through that also ended up in those
- 19:14Speaker 3: better resource schools because it was that as well. And
- 19:17Speaker 3: I remember Missus Olivier third grade teacher, African American woman
- 19:21Speaker 3: and you could only after American teacher in that school,
- 19:24Speaker 3: but she looked at for every kid of color in
- 19:28Speaker 3: that school. And I'm telling you that's one of the
- 19:31Speaker 3: most important things that made a huge difference in our
- 19:35Speaker 3: educational upbringing and gave us a chance to launch and
- 19:38Speaker 3: go into the high schools and go into the colleges
- 19:41Speaker 3: that we ended up in because we had great fundamental
- 19:44Speaker 3: education K through six.
- 19:45Speaker 5: So I want to get into how you've actually built
- 19:49Speaker 5: what you have acquired, but I want to start with
- 19:52Speaker 5: your engineering career. So you was at Craft and you
- 19:55Speaker 5: were at Goodyear as an engineer, yeah, and then you
- 19:57Speaker 5: transitioned to go them in sex.
- 20:00Speaker 7: So can you talk about that, like how did that?
- 20:02Speaker 3: How did you go.
- 20:03Speaker 5: From being an engineer from Craft and Goodman and Goodyear
- 20:06Speaker 5: to being an investment banking world of Goldman Sex.
- 20:10Speaker 3: Yeah, and a point to the importance of media. Okay,
- 20:15Speaker 3: So I will get into later kind of what this
- 20:18Speaker 3: is and how the engineering informs all that we do
- 20:21Speaker 3: and has created the enterprise that it is that can
- 20:26Speaker 3: grow at scale sustainably because of the engineering background, mindset
- 20:31Speaker 3: and design points. But the transition came from media. Okay.
- 20:37Speaker 3: So at the time, I was an engineer working in
- 20:40Speaker 3: a plant in upstate New York for Goodyear Time Rubber Facility,
- 20:45Speaker 3: and I had a collection of friends and we would
- 20:49Speaker 3: get together. We'd read I mean, like, okay, we weren't
- 20:52Speaker 3: just watching football because you know, we had a book club,
- 20:55Speaker 3: but to African Americans, you know, we had a book
- 20:57Speaker 3: club back then, reading different things. And one of the
- 21:02Speaker 3: guys brought to kind of the book club a Black
- 21:06Speaker 3: enterprise magazine and on that were a bunch of blacks
- 21:12Speaker 3: on Wall Street the first time, like, well what is
- 21:14Speaker 3: Wall Street? Because I was I had no idea what
- 21:16Speaker 3: Wall Street was. And they had all these guys on
- 21:20Speaker 3: Wall Street and it had you know guy you know,
- 21:22Speaker 3: John Newton Dahl, this guy you know, Ray McGuire and
- 21:25Speaker 3: Stan O'Neill and George Vanantum and and I'm like, well,
- 21:29Speaker 3: who are these cats, and what's this Wall Street all about?
- 21:32Speaker 3: And why are they undercovers this magazine? Right? What's that?
- 21:34Speaker 3: And so we start reading and understanding and talking about it.
- 21:38Speaker 3: I mean that's importance of community too, where you can
- 21:40Speaker 3: kind of bounce some ideas off and what's this all about?
- 21:44Speaker 3: And started really understanding that there was a whole different
- 21:47Speaker 3: world outside of engineering, which is what I thought the
- 21:50Speaker 3: world was, right, And so I started thinking about, well,
- 21:55Speaker 3: maybe I should go to graduate school. So as I
- 21:58Speaker 3: started looking at different you know, ELM Men's. Business school
- 22:00Speaker 3: looked interesting, law school looked interesting. Uh, And I decided, well,
- 22:04Speaker 3: I'm going to go to Columbia. I went to Cornell
- 22:07Speaker 3: undergrad and I started looking around and decided Columbia it
- 22:10Speaker 3: was a good place for me to go. It was
- 22:12Speaker 3: fortunate to get in.
- 22:13Speaker 2: Uh.
- 22:14Speaker 3: And outside of the good fortune, I did well my
- 22:17Speaker 3: first year, so I was top student in my class.
- 22:19Speaker 3: I had to come back for an award right for after,
- 22:22Speaker 3: you know, business schools two years. So after the first year,
- 22:25Speaker 3: had come back with this award during the summer, you know,
- 22:28Speaker 3: the summer graduation. Uh. So I come back and lo
- 22:31Speaker 3: and behold one of those guys from the magazine is
- 22:35Speaker 3: actually the keynote speaker for the summer graduates God the
- 22:38Speaker 3: named of John Newtondhal. And you know, they go and
- 22:40Speaker 3: give my background and all that sort of stuff, and
- 22:43Speaker 3: you know, my award, I get that at the end
- 22:45Speaker 3: of the thing. You know, he gives his speech and
- 22:47Speaker 3: pulls me and I says, hey, hey, hey. He said,
- 22:49Speaker 3: you have an interesting background engineer. All. So, he said,
- 22:52Speaker 3: have you ever thought about a career in investment banking.
- 22:56Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I said, you know, there's a bunch
- 22:58Speaker 3: of investment bankers in my class. I don't like any
- 23:00Speaker 3: of them. And he says, well, he looks at me.
- 23:05Speaker 3: He's like, well why not. I said, well, they think
- 23:07Speaker 3: they know everything, and they're pretty arrogant. I said, I'm
- 23:09Speaker 3: an engineer. We do know everything. It bothers us, right,
- 23:13Speaker 3: And I thought I was a jokester then, but and
- 23:16Speaker 3: I said, in all honesty, I said, I don't really
- 23:18Speaker 3: know what y'all do. And he said, well, why don't
- 23:22Speaker 3: you come have lunch with me? I said sure. And
- 23:24Speaker 3: being in Columbia, one of the advantages of being at
- 23:27Speaker 3: Columbia business schools, you're you know, a subway right away
- 23:30Speaker 3: from Wall Street. So I go down and sit with John,
- 23:34Speaker 3: and I'm expecting, you know, half hour forty five minutes.
- 23:37Speaker 3: This guy's aren't gonna give me any time. And we
- 23:39Speaker 3: just start talking. He's asking me my experiences. I'm telling
- 23:42Speaker 3: them all the stuff I was inventing and doing and
- 23:44Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff, and I guess he thought
- 23:47Speaker 3: I was entertaining. But at the end of it, he said,
- 23:51Speaker 3: let me introduce you some people. And he picks up
- 23:53Speaker 3: the phone and he calls, you know, Ray McGuire. He
- 23:56Speaker 3: picks up and he calls, you know, George van Anson,
- 24:00Speaker 3: picks up the phony calls you know. Stand O'Neil's like, hey,
- 24:03Speaker 3: there's a guy in my office, really interesting background. You
- 24:05Speaker 3: guys ought to interview him and talk to him about
- 24:07Speaker 3: a career investment banking and so, you know, as a
- 24:11Speaker 3: scientist with what you do is you analyze data and
- 24:16Speaker 3: try to come to some conclusion and then act upon
- 24:18Speaker 3: it was with some activity. So now I'm entering my
- 24:24Speaker 3: fall of my second year business school, and I'm trying
- 24:27Speaker 3: to understand what this investment banking thing is all about. Sure,
- 24:31Speaker 3: I'm taken classes of finance and marketing and doing well,
- 24:33Speaker 3: obviously you know statistics and accounting, but I didn't understand
- 24:36Speaker 3: the industry and the business of it. And these brothers
- 24:41Speaker 3: all brought me in and had conversations with me and
- 24:46Speaker 3: introduced me throughout the organization. I ended up having over
- 24:49Speaker 3: one hundred interviews with people on Wall Street, Goldman, Sachs,
- 24:55Speaker 3: you know, Morgan Stanley, you know, it was called a
- 24:57Speaker 3: place called Banker's Trust the time JP Morgan. And through that,
- 25:02Speaker 3: I said, Wow, the business that I really like is
- 25:06Speaker 3: mergers and acquisitions, right, Okay, because if you think about
- 25:11Speaker 3: M and A, it's board level discussions, it's CEO level
- 25:16Speaker 3: cut discussions, and it's how assets move across this planet. Right.
- 25:21Speaker 3: So I said, well, that looks really interesting to me.
- 25:24Speaker 3: And this is another one of those life lessons. This
- 25:28Speaker 3: is something you don't learn in school. It's an apprenticeship business.
- 25:34Speaker 3: Someone has to decide that they're going to make you
- 25:35Speaker 3: an apprentice in the M and A business and teach
- 25:40Speaker 3: and train you how to do this. You can read
- 25:43Speaker 3: all the books in the world, but you actually have
- 25:44Speaker 3: to practice it, okay. You actually have to develop a
- 25:48Speaker 3: set of skills that have to be honed through a
- 25:52Speaker 3: set of interactions that create fact patterns that you can
- 25:56Speaker 3: rely on to make judgments going forward. And so from
- 25:59Speaker 3: that I said, at the time, they are only really
- 26:04Speaker 3: maybe four principal M and A shops, Goldman being one
- 26:09Speaker 3: that I thought actually that you can get better training
- 26:11Speaker 3: there than anywhere else. And Goldman at the time had
- 26:16Speaker 3: really prided itself on this teamwork dynamic, and some of
- 26:20Speaker 3: these other firms at the time, if you worked for
- 26:24Speaker 3: a partner in M and A, that's the partner you
- 26:26Speaker 3: worked for for the next four or five six years.
- 26:29Speaker 3: And if you were favored, then you do great, and
- 26:34Speaker 3: if you were not, it'd be tough sledding, right. And
- 26:38Speaker 3: you look at those departments, there are very few people
- 26:40Speaker 3: who look like y'all and me and say, well will
- 26:46Speaker 3: I get that experience? And while Goldman was not perfect,
- 26:50Speaker 3: like no place is, you would work for multiple partners,
- 26:55Speaker 3: so you work on a deal with this partner, and
- 26:57Speaker 3: a deal and this partner at the same time, so
- 27:00Speaker 3: it was you'd have six seven different partners or vice
- 27:01Speaker 3: presidents that you worked for. And so there you had
- 27:04Speaker 3: a chance what I call build your fat pattern of
- 27:06Speaker 3: experiences through the lens of different practitioners. And I thought
- 27:10Speaker 3: that would actually enhance my ability to be expert at
- 27:16Speaker 3: that craft. So that's why I went to Golden Sachs.
- 27:18Speaker 2: So in M and A, I want to talk about
- 27:21Speaker 2: that because at that time, I mean, you have the
- 27:23Speaker 2: background chemical engineering, you've been creating, you've been inventing. What
- 27:27Speaker 2: is that like now, Because at the time, if I
- 27:29Speaker 2: read it correctly, you're the other guy that's focusing solely
- 27:31Speaker 2: on technology because you can see it, this is going
- 27:34Speaker 2: to be the thing that changes the future. So you're
- 27:36Speaker 2: seeing Apple, you're seeing Microsoft, and you're seeing eBay and
- 27:40Speaker 2: all these things. Before they started, what was that like
- 27:43Speaker 2: trying to explain to the investment the banking side, like,
- 27:46Speaker 2: hey guys, this is my expertise.
- 27:49Speaker 6: You guys should trust me on this. This is going
- 27:51Speaker 6: to be the thing.
- 27:51Speaker 3: So that's interesting. So when I started, you know, I
- 27:57Speaker 3: was in New York and I had I've had I
- 28:00Speaker 3: had baby food businesses, I had paper companies, all these
- 28:03Speaker 3: sort of things, and it's the dawning of introducing technology
- 28:08Speaker 3: into the industrial environment. Okay, so you guys, you know
- 28:12Speaker 3: back in the day, and let's let's unpack this. That's
- 28:14Speaker 3: actually pretty interesting. Back in the when I was at
- 28:17Speaker 3: Goodyear or craft. Very few companies then were actually you
- 28:24Speaker 3: know in well, they wanted to, but they didn't necessarily
- 28:27Speaker 3: have the investment resources to implement computing capacity into the environment.
- 28:33Speaker 3: So you guys are digital natives, Okay, my generation are
- 28:37Speaker 3: digital immigrants. And so at the time, if you wanted
- 28:40Speaker 3: to use the computer, it was like one thousand dollars
- 28:43Speaker 3: for a half hour of computer use. You'd have to
- 28:45Speaker 3: sign up for it, and you could go use it,
- 28:48Speaker 3: and it'd be somebody standing behind you waiting for your
- 28:49Speaker 3: thirty minutes to come up, and then they'd come on
- 28:51Speaker 3: and you have to go sign up again to use
- 28:54Speaker 3: the computer because it was that scarce of a resource.
- 28:58Speaker 3: And so one of my early projects, for instance, I
- 29:00Speaker 3: was working uh and running a plant in in you know,
- 29:05Speaker 3: Niagara Falls, New York, and I was responsible for implementing
- 29:09Speaker 3: some computer systems and computer control systems. So the way
- 29:14Speaker 3: systems work before that were analog and there were individuals.
- 29:18Speaker 3: So what would happen is, you know, you're going to
- 29:20Speaker 3: run a process and you're going to charge the reactor
- 29:22Speaker 3: with you know, with the reagents, with the catalyst, and
- 29:25Speaker 3: you kind of you know, put the steam on and
- 29:27Speaker 3: stir it and then the reaction would kind of take off, right,
- 29:31Speaker 3: and depending upon the rates of change and all that,
- 29:33Speaker 3: you sometimes you need to cool it or heat it up.
- 29:35Speaker 3: So there'd be what I call there would be an
- 29:37Speaker 3: you know, a an episodic observation of the event, and
- 29:42Speaker 3: then you'd have an episodic you know, intervention. So you
- 29:46Speaker 3: change something and it would change the control dynamic. And
- 29:50Speaker 3: like I said, if you weren't the control or operator,
- 29:53Speaker 3: wasn't at lunch or you know, talking about football or
- 29:55Speaker 3: whatever it is, every dynamic was different because it wasn't
- 30:00Speaker 3: consistent because you had that human engagement as the actual
- 30:04Speaker 3: control system. Well, if you put a computer system in,
- 30:09Speaker 3: it's measuring those observations thousands of times a second, and
- 30:14Speaker 3: you could also then put in systems of control where
- 30:17Speaker 3: you could have interventions thousands of times a second. So
- 30:21Speaker 3: you went from control dynamics that look like this to
- 30:24Speaker 3: control dynamics that look like this. And for mathematicians, everything
- 30:28Speaker 3: under the curve is waste. Right, So now you look
- 30:33Speaker 3: at that and like so and first implementation I did
- 30:36Speaker 3: of that of the plant, increase the productivity of that
- 30:38Speaker 3: plant by twenty six percent. Okay, that's a whole shift
- 30:42Speaker 3: a day by putting a control system. So now you
- 30:46Speaker 3: understand the power and the productivity that software actually brings
- 30:53Speaker 3: to a plant. Now take that and put it in
- 30:55Speaker 3: an office managing an insurance claim. You're an insurance adjuster.
- 31:01Speaker 3: You know, the car is wrecked. Back in the day,
- 31:03Speaker 3: you'd have to go to a place and they kind
- 31:05Speaker 3: of take pictures of it and write it up, put
- 31:07Speaker 3: it in an envelope, send it to somebody in the
- 31:10Speaker 3: home office, and maybe you were on vacation, sit on
- 31:13Speaker 3: that desk for a week, maybe got to the right person,
- 31:16Speaker 3: and then you say, well, you know, you didn't do
- 31:17Speaker 3: some right, so you got to send it back to
- 31:19Speaker 3: you and ask more questions. And that happened back and forth,
- 31:22Speaker 3: and from that you to justin and say, okay, here's
- 31:24Speaker 3: here's how much the you know, approximate value is. You
- 31:27Speaker 3: send me a check. I get mad because it wasn't
- 31:29Speaker 3: enough to fix the car. And that was the whole process.
- 31:32Speaker 3: How things now introduce a computer in that environment?
- 31:35Speaker 2: Ern Your leisure is supported by First Republic Bank. Have
- 31:39Speaker 2: you ever experienced a relationship with a banker who was
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- 32:16Speaker 3: Where through the adjustment process in some respects you have
- 32:20Speaker 3: an adjuster who's actually looking at it and filling it out.
- 32:22Speaker 3: But now you can actually take your phone and take
- 32:24Speaker 3: a picture of it. Based on the make of the car,
- 32:27Speaker 3: estimate exactly how many hours it's going to take, what's
- 32:29Speaker 3: the bill of materials, what's the cost, and so the
- 32:32Speaker 3: efficiency from an insurance production like this and now to that. Okay,
- 32:37Speaker 3: that hit every single industry. That's what we're doing right now.
- 32:41Speaker 3: So software is now the most productive tool introducing our
- 32:45Speaker 3: business environment last fifty years on like we will be
- 32:47Speaker 3: for the next fifty. So now I go to Goldman Sachs.
- 32:50Speaker 3: They're now in the process of you know, we're using
- 32:53Speaker 3: different spreadsheet programs. You guys don't remember because you've used
- 32:56Speaker 3: Excel all your life, haven't you. You've been paying Microsoft
- 33:00Speaker 3: thirty years for a project for a product that you
- 33:02Speaker 3: use back in the day. There are five or six others,
- 33:04Speaker 3: the one called Lotus, there's Multiplan, there's Physical Asterisk, a
- 33:08Speaker 3: bunch of different and so there's always a fight ask
- 33:11Speaker 3: to which one of these programs you would use. But
- 33:13Speaker 3: once you consolidated on one, the efficiency of not having
- 33:16Speaker 3: to move you know, my project which I did in
- 33:18Speaker 3: Lotus to yours as didn't Excel because we're working on
- 33:21Speaker 3: a team together. That's another efficiency that came out of
- 33:24Speaker 3: the system by consolidating. So I'm now at Goldman, I'm
- 33:29Speaker 3: now working on a bunch of different M and A
- 33:31Speaker 3: deals and started to see what I'll call the recognition
- 33:34Speaker 3: of efficiency that can come from consolidation on platforms. One
- 33:41Speaker 3: of what we would compare these to put these things
- 33:42Speaker 3: together called common stock comparisons, where you get up in
- 33:45Speaker 3: the morning and you'd have to put together forty five
- 33:49Speaker 3: different stock comparisons for work that you're doing, and you're
- 33:52Speaker 3: sitting across the aisle working on or you know, down
- 33:57Speaker 3: the hall working on something similar and you're doing exact
- 33:59Speaker 3: same work he's doing. You just don't know that you're
- 34:01Speaker 3: doing it, and you're both see all the inefficiency. Whereas now,
- 34:05Speaker 3: once you have done that, how do I share it
- 34:06Speaker 3: with you? And how do you you know you can
- 34:08Speaker 3: do this part in you that but it makes it
- 34:10Speaker 3: much more efficient. Well, computer systems do that. So now
- 34:13Speaker 3: we're getting more efficient and how we're processing deals and
- 34:16Speaker 3: applications in all industries and so now it's the dawning
- 34:23Speaker 3: of what is technology being mainstam stay in real So
- 34:29Speaker 3: the head of our department calls and he's like, I
- 34:31Speaker 3: think I want to start a tech group. He's like,
- 34:35Speaker 3: would you like to be part of that? I said, yeah,
- 34:38Speaker 3: So where is it? We're going to do this in California?
- 34:40Speaker 3: He wanted to do it in LA. I said, no,
- 34:41Speaker 3: the suit in San Francisco. He lived in LA and
- 34:45Speaker 3: I'm like, well, Samcisco's kind of you know, Silicon Valley
- 34:48Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff. I said, that's where I go.
- 34:50Speaker 3: So we agreed. I was our first M and a
- 34:52Speaker 3: banker on the ground focused on technology for Golden Sachs
- 34:56Speaker 3: in San Francisco, Okay, and so so from there I advised,
- 35:02Speaker 3: you know, like I said, build companies like Apple Computer
- 35:04Speaker 3: and Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard and eBay and Yahoo.
- 35:09Speaker 3: And what was amazing to me because again it's the
- 35:13Speaker 3: dawning of an industry. That's how they all did things differently.
- 35:19Speaker 3: In the world of a chemical engineer, if you went
- 35:22Speaker 3: into almost any production facility where they're you know, an
- 35:27Speaker 3: ortho cracker where they're taking oil and making different types
- 35:30Speaker 3: of fuel and gas, they're all pretty much the same
- 35:33Speaker 3: because over years they figured out what's the most efficient
- 35:35Speaker 3: way to do it. But that's not how the software
- 35:39Speaker 3: industry was. Everybody did it differently, their go to market,
- 35:44Speaker 3: their product development, okay, because.
- 35:46Speaker 6: It was new.
- 35:47Speaker 3: And so the whole ideal tomate behind Vista is how
- 35:52Speaker 3: do I take the best practices from software companies that
- 35:56Speaker 3: I have experience with and deliver those to other software
- 36:00Speaker 3: companies so that the efficiency now comes out of that
- 36:04Speaker 3: system and eliminate all that waste. Right, That's what Vista is.
- 36:08Speaker 3: It's a system. It's an engineered system. So my going
- 36:14Speaker 3: out to Silicon Valley, like all things in life, you
- 36:16Speaker 3: got to look at what informs you and what creates
- 36:19Speaker 3: the basis for the activities or the actions you now
- 36:23Speaker 3: bring forward into your work product, and that's what it is.
- 36:26Speaker 3: How do you bring engineering efficiency to the management operations
- 36:29Speaker 3: of software companies? So that's the narrative and that's what
- 36:35Speaker 3: my actions have been against from a Vista perspective.
- 36:38Speaker 5: So let's get into this conversation with private equity. Vista
- 36:41Speaker 5: is which the company that you started twenty years ago,
- 36:43Speaker 5: I believe, and it has obviously made you a billionaire
- 36:47Speaker 5: and you know, extremely successful person. But can you talk
- 36:51Speaker 5: about a lot of people don't even know what private
- 36:52Speaker 5: equity is.
- 36:53Speaker 7: Sure they might have.
- 36:54Speaker 5: I think people are familiar with Vinure Capital at this
- 36:56Speaker 5: point because that's really trendy, but can you talk about
- 36:59Speaker 5: what private what he is and the difference between that erners?
- 37:03Speaker 8: What's up?
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- 38:53Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
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- 39:09Speaker 1: of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.
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- 39:53Speaker 7: Benji Capital.
- 39:54Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question because our community. It's important
- 39:57Speaker 3: our community understand the goal of capital and growth. And
- 40:03Speaker 3: there's different providers of capital along different stages of a company. Okay.
- 40:12Speaker 3: One of the best ways to think about it is
- 40:14Speaker 3: if you all have an idea, which you have, we're
- 40:17Speaker 3: going to create a platform to educate our people. You're
- 40:21Speaker 3: going to start off first with the idea of labor YouTube, right,
- 40:26Speaker 3: and we've got ideas, we're going to write them down.
- 40:29Speaker 3: We're going to put a process together to now communicate
- 40:32Speaker 3: those ideas. Great, and so you start off and social
- 40:35Speaker 3: media because it's free, and I say, well, how do
- 40:39Speaker 3: I now push this out more broadly speaking beyond trying
- 40:43Speaker 3: to get followers? And you may say maybe I should
- 40:46Speaker 3: buy some advertising. Where am I going to get this money? Okay?
- 40:51Speaker 3: The vast majority of investment capital even today is still
- 40:54Speaker 3: out of the debt markets. So unfortunately, seventy percent of
- 40:59Speaker 3: our communities don't actually have a branch bank. So depend
- 41:03Speaker 3: upon where you live, there's no bank that you have
- 41:06Speaker 3: a banking relationship with. It you can go and say, hey,
- 41:08Speaker 3: I need ten thousand, fifty hundred thousand dollars because look
- 41:12Speaker 3: at how you know and they don't understand your business.
- 41:15Speaker 3: I've got eight hundred and forty thousand followers, and if
- 41:18Speaker 3: I had twenty thousand dollars, I could rent a studio okay,
- 41:23Speaker 3: five times a month and get a million followers or
- 41:25Speaker 3: two million followers. And by having two million followers, I
- 41:28Speaker 3: can go get advertisers who will pay me to have
- 41:33Speaker 3: access to you know, my my people, right and if
- 41:39Speaker 3: they pay me, I can now pay you back that
- 41:41Speaker 3: money and then I can invest in more of my
- 41:43Speaker 3: business make it growth. That's the capital cycle, and it's
- 41:46Speaker 3: a virtuous one, but our community hasn't had access to capital.
- 41:51Speaker 3: The next phase of that is like some of the
- 41:53Speaker 3: banks are like, well, there's no hard assets because your
- 41:59Speaker 3: hard assets your hard work. So I'm not going to
- 42:01Speaker 3: lend you any money. I'm not sure you're credit worthy,
- 42:05Speaker 3: so you can't come to me. So enter the venture capitalists.
- 42:08Speaker 3: The venture capitalists are designed to actually look at what
- 42:13Speaker 3: it is you're doing in the markets that you participate in,
- 42:17Speaker 3: and if you have more capital and in some cases
- 42:20Speaker 3: know how and resources that they can hopefully bring to
- 42:23Speaker 3: you because they've done this once or twice or one
- 42:26Speaker 3: hundred times in that industry, they can show you. Yeah,
- 42:29Speaker 3: take that ten thousand dollars. Okay, don't buy advertising. But
- 42:34Speaker 3: what I want you to do is actually build a
- 42:36Speaker 3: platform where you can do your own streaming. It's more
- 42:38Speaker 3: efficient long term and you make more money long term.
- 42:42Speaker 3: And so that's advice you might get from them. And
- 42:44Speaker 3: here's ten thousand dollars. Now, they're not going to necessarily
- 42:47Speaker 3: ask for an interest rate like the bank spam you know, four, five, six, eight, ten,
- 42:53Speaker 3: now twelve percent right in interest. They're going to ask
- 42:58Speaker 3: you for a percentage of the company. Say, and when
- 43:01Speaker 3: you sell the company, you're not going own one hundred percent,
- 43:03Speaker 3: You're going one hundred percent minus how much they bought.
- 43:07Speaker 3: That's venture capital. Okay. Now years later, you're now running
- 43:12Speaker 3: a big platform, you got twenty million followers, you've got
- 43:15Speaker 3: advertisers making eighteen fifteen million dollars a month in advertising revenues,
- 43:21Speaker 3: and what you're not spending on your team and crew
- 43:23Speaker 3: because you're going to give them all raises because they're phenomenal.
- 43:26Speaker 3: You guys should I'm giving.
- 43:27Speaker 7: A shout out.
- 43:30Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So don't be two greed. No. But now
- 43:36Speaker 3: you're at the point where you're making you know, ten
- 43:39Speaker 3: thirty forty fifty million dollars in revenues, and now you're
- 43:43Speaker 3: trying to manage your business how profitable and expenses and
- 43:47Speaker 3: all that. And that's where private equity comes in. Private
- 43:51Speaker 3: equity typically are larger checks and we typically bring in
- 43:55Speaker 3: my case, we do buyouts. So we want to do
- 43:57Speaker 3: control investments where you were selling and control of your business.
- 44:02Speaker 3: And you may say, well, why am I selling control
- 44:03Speaker 3: of my business? Hey, you get the money, but be
- 44:06Speaker 3: what you really want is my know how Why do
- 44:10Speaker 3: founders come to us? Because we've done it so many
- 44:13Speaker 3: times in enterprise software, I can bring remember those best practices.
- 44:17Speaker 3: I was telling you, here's how you run your product
- 44:20Speaker 3: development organization more efficiently, Here's how you run your go
- 44:24Speaker 3: to market system more efficiently, Here's how you do your
- 44:26Speaker 3: contract administration more efficiently. Because you've never done that before,
- 44:30Speaker 3: or you've done it, but you don't necessarily know the
- 44:33Speaker 3: best way to do it, and we can share experiences
- 44:37Speaker 3: with you that actually can enable you to do it now.
- 44:41Speaker 3: Not all private equity people bring that. Some just bring
- 44:45Speaker 3: to capital and they say, I just want to own
- 44:47Speaker 3: the business because if I buy the business and it's
- 44:50Speaker 3: growing well over time, and they may put debt on
- 44:54Speaker 3: the business, they're going to increase the value of that business.
- 44:59Speaker 3: And then when they sell it, but they make the
- 45:00Speaker 3: difference between where they sold it and what they bought
- 45:04Speaker 3: it for, minus the debt that was in the company.
- 45:07Speaker 3: So the way to think about got to think about
- 45:11Speaker 3: buying a house. If you go in, it's a house
- 45:13Speaker 3: worth one hundred thousand dollars, I know you guys talk
- 45:15Speaker 3: about this shell and a buyout person can come and say,
- 45:21Speaker 3: all right, I'm gonna buy it for one hundred thousand, Okay,
- 45:26Speaker 3: But then they go to the bank and they borrow
- 45:27Speaker 3: sixty thousand, so they only have to put forty thousand in. Well,
- 45:30Speaker 3: because it's in a good neighborhood. Five years later, it's
- 45:33Speaker 3: now worth two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand whatever it
- 45:36Speaker 3: might be, right, or they fixed up the house, they
- 45:40Speaker 3: went in, put a new porche in and put forty
- 45:42Speaker 3: thousand in to really improve the value of the house.
- 45:45Speaker 3: Now I can sell it for three hundred thousand. They
- 45:46Speaker 3: sell it for three hundred, They pay back the sixty
- 45:48Speaker 3: thousand to the bank. They've been paying interest along the
- 45:51Speaker 3: way right, and that difference they put it in forty
- 45:54Speaker 3: The difference is what is profit and that's what profit
- 45:57Speaker 3: equity firms do. Okay. As an owner of protty firm,
- 46:03Speaker 3: that difference in value. If I borrowed the money or
- 46:06Speaker 3: raised the money, I've got to pay by investors back
- 46:09Speaker 3: and then I get a percentage of profits. So that's
- 46:11Speaker 3: how that works. So it's just a different form of capital.
- 46:14Speaker 5: So you just buy buying companies as opposed to where
- 46:18Speaker 5: bench capital they're investing in companies, but the owner still
- 46:20Speaker 5: runs it.
- 46:21Speaker 7: You're actually taking control and ownership.
- 46:23Speaker 3: Of the company. Yes, but like ninety percent of the
- 46:27Speaker 3: founders that we buy our companies from are still involved
- 46:30Speaker 3: in the business with us or in our ecosystem. Okay,
- 46:34Speaker 3: And so you're taking control, but you're also investing in
- 46:39Speaker 3: the infrastructure. Now you like to use words, you're accelerating
- 46:42Speaker 3: the corporate maturity of that business. So it might take
- 46:46Speaker 3: you ten years to figure out what we've done forty
- 46:50Speaker 3: five times already. Right, And now I bring that intellectual
- 46:55Speaker 3: property into the company and say, here's how we're going
- 46:57Speaker 3: to design this a little differently. Here's we're going to
- 47:00Speaker 3: change your compensation plans for your salespeople to actually incentivize
- 47:03Speaker 3: them to give you more stable revenues or or or
- 47:08Speaker 3: you know, more visibility into the future revenues and earnings
- 47:11Speaker 3: of that business that you may not have figured out
- 47:13Speaker 3: or may not figure out because you may not be
- 47:16Speaker 3: in an environment a circle of people who have dealt
- 47:19Speaker 3: with that before. And so that's why the expertise that
- 47:22Speaker 3: we bring is often more valuable than the capital.
- 47:27Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like the highest level of mentorships, last internship,
- 47:31Speaker 2: where it's like you're giving it to me because you've
- 47:33Speaker 2: already been through it.
- 47:34Speaker 3: Right, And we create an ecosystem where our founders are
- 47:40Speaker 3: we intentionally bring them together our CEOs. We have twenty
- 47:45Speaker 3: six events this year. Okay, we've got eighty six software
- 47:49Speaker 3: companies today, we've got ninety five thousand employees. But we
- 47:53Speaker 3: have an event. And the last month our CXO event,
- 47:56Speaker 3: I had four hundred and fifty cxos. So that's you know, CEO,
- 48:00Speaker 3: chief financial officers, chief marketing officers, you know, c sells
- 48:02Speaker 3: all that in one city for three days in that case,
- 48:06Speaker 3: going through seven or eight different tracks. So if you're
- 48:09Speaker 3: a CFO of a forty million dollar software company. You're
- 48:12Speaker 3: sitting next to a CFO of a four hundred million
- 48:14Speaker 3: dollar software company, sitting next to a CFO of a
- 48:17Speaker 3: three billion dollar software company. You all are dealing with
- 48:20Speaker 3: different things on the one hand, but you want to
- 48:22Speaker 3: understand what you need to do to build your organization
- 48:26Speaker 3: so you can support four hundred million dollars worth of growth.
- 48:29Speaker 3: And you want to understand what you need to do
- 48:31Speaker 3: in your organization four hundred million so you can support
- 48:34Speaker 3: a three billion dollar You're not going to get that
- 48:36Speaker 3: anywhere else but at Vista, you see what I mean. Oh,
- 48:39Speaker 3: and by the way, we do that for the product
- 48:41Speaker 3: and technology groups as well, and we do it for separately,
- 48:45Speaker 3: and we'll do it for our talent organization's talent development,
- 48:49Speaker 3: and we'll do it for go to market. You see
- 48:52Speaker 3: what I mean. All of those are elements that are
- 48:55Speaker 3: value add intellectual property best practices that we now share
- 49:01Speaker 3: with the community of founders and executives in all of
- 49:07Speaker 3: our portfolio companies. So it gets back into that efficacy,
- 49:12Speaker 3: that efficiency I've talked about in engineering. Now I could
- 49:16Speaker 3: hope that you could figure this out. I can invest
- 49:18Speaker 3: in your company and hope you figure it out and
- 49:19Speaker 3: if you don't afire you. But we don't take that approach.
- 49:23Speaker 3: We say, let me give you tools and systems, and
- 49:26Speaker 3: let me actually equip your management team with tools in
- 49:30Speaker 3: systems so they have a higher probability of being successful
- 49:35Speaker 3: as opposed to let me just hope you get it
- 49:37Speaker 3: right or you figure it out. You see what I mean.
- 49:41Speaker 3: That's the difference in how we approach the market. And
- 49:43Speaker 3: that's in some cases difference between i'll call it highly
- 49:47Speaker 3: skilled tuned investors, either private acuity or venture capital, and
- 49:51Speaker 3: those who are just providing access to capital.
- 49:54Speaker 2: One of the things you were talking to us about
- 49:55Speaker 2: was knowing value and worth. And as I'm listening to
- 49:58Speaker 2: you talking about the stories of creating eficient systems for
- 50:00Speaker 2: other companies, at what point or was it always are
- 50:04Speaker 2: that entrepreneurial mindset where like, I'm doing this for them,
- 50:08Speaker 2: I need to start doing this for myself. Was that
- 50:10Speaker 2: always in the mindset or did that develop as you
- 50:13Speaker 2: created more efficient systems and said, wait, I'm saving them this,
- 50:16Speaker 2: I'm saving them this, maybe I can create this for myself.
- 50:19Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a great question, because like all things in
- 50:23Speaker 3: my life, it's evolution. You know, my parents were school teachers.
- 50:28Speaker 3: I didn't have private equity people in my life, bankers
- 50:32Speaker 3: in my life, lawyers in my life. So you're learning
- 50:35Speaker 3: along the way, and you hope that you can glean
- 50:38Speaker 3: and learn and understand insights that could be helpful to
- 50:46Speaker 3: you going forward. One of the key insights we talked
- 50:48Speaker 3: about a so earlier that I had I got as
- 50:51Speaker 3: an engineer. Okay, so I was working for a company
- 50:54Speaker 3: who was actually a company called craft Urn the foods,
- 50:57Speaker 3: and in that case I was responsible for changing and
- 51:04Speaker 3: hopefully enhancing One of our best products was a company
- 51:07Speaker 3: called Maxwehouse, which is coffee, right and coffee blended coffee
- 51:14Speaker 3: is made up of different forms of coffee. We talked
- 51:16Speaker 3: about you know, rap coas or busses and maybe five
- 51:18Speaker 3: or six different types of coffee roasted to a certain amount,
- 51:22Speaker 3: ground to a certain amount that give you a flavor
- 51:24Speaker 3: profile that you want to be consistent everywhere you go
- 51:26Speaker 3: in the world, so no matter where you went, it
- 51:29Speaker 3: tastes the same. Okay, this is backcnated when Maxweus was
- 51:33Speaker 3: the largest coffee distributor on the planet. Okay, Well, one
- 51:37Speaker 3: of my projects was to figure out a way to
- 51:42Speaker 3: an essence enhance the flavor profile at a lower cost.
- 51:46Speaker 3: And I did that, and I'll spare you all the details.
- 51:47Speaker 3: I told you got some of the details. Let your
- 51:49Speaker 3: audiencity know all that nerdy stuff, but U And in
- 51:52Speaker 3: doing that, I was able to save the company fourteen
- 51:56Speaker 3: cents a pound on every pound of coffee that we manufactured.
- 52:02Speaker 3: And we were manufacturing tens of millions of pounds a
- 52:06Speaker 3: month of coffee, okay. And I told you guys that
- 52:11Speaker 3: I chuckled because I got a great little plaque out
- 52:13Speaker 3: of it to give me a thousand dollars in an award.
- 52:15Speaker 3: And that was wonderful. And I started to understand that
- 52:20Speaker 3: Ernest checked this out.
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- 53:18Speaker 3: Now, Look, I could have never done that if I
- 53:21Speaker 3: weren't in that environment. I could have never done that
- 53:23Speaker 3: had I not been a chemical engineer from Cornell Okay,
- 53:27Speaker 3: But I was graced with both of those scenarios, and
- 53:31Speaker 3: I was able to create something of real value for
- 53:35Speaker 3: the company at the time. But then you start looking
- 53:38Speaker 3: at the give get analysis. They're saving you ten, twelve,
- 53:41Speaker 3: fourteen million dollars a year, and you know, I got
- 53:46Speaker 3: paid the same thirty four thousand dollars a year whatever
- 53:48Speaker 3: it was at the time, which I thought was more
- 53:49Speaker 3: money than could ever make because that was more money
- 53:51Speaker 3: my dad ever made in his career, Okay, as a principal, right,
- 53:55Speaker 3: And so then you start thinking about is there a
- 53:58Speaker 3: different utility of my time that I should be thinking about?
- 54:04Speaker 3: And ultimately what I actually realized. And you know, we
- 54:08Speaker 3: chat about this so earlier through my interactions with with
- 54:12Speaker 3: with John Newtondahl and Ray McGuire and these sort of
- 54:15Speaker 3: folks the power of capital versus labor, And we just
- 54:20Speaker 3: talked about labor and you all as labored to create
- 54:24Speaker 3: this platform. At some point you realize if I had
- 54:27Speaker 3: a different quantum of capital, you could reach more people
- 54:30Speaker 3: on accident than you do flying around and doing events.
- 54:37Speaker 3: If you utilize that capital efficiently, you see to mean,
- 54:41Speaker 3: And so that's kind of the next evolution. And yeah, right, okay,
- 54:48Speaker 3: And in some cases you learn it. In some cases
- 54:52Speaker 3: someone tells you right, and and if you get it right,
- 54:57Speaker 3: you then can do it at increasing scale and efficiency.
- 55:02Speaker 3: And we call it the unit economics of your productivity
- 55:05Speaker 3: go up with every time you do it as opposed
- 55:07Speaker 3: to down. Right, So those are the dynamics that informed
- 55:12Speaker 3: me on understanding capital. And one of the things we
- 55:16Speaker 3: talked about, you know, capital markets are just basically equilibrium systems.
- 55:23Speaker 3: That's what we learn in chemical engineering is understanding equilibrium systems.
- 55:28Speaker 3: It's actually the same thing in some respects. You've got
- 55:31Speaker 3: difference out of inputs and outputs, but what is the
- 55:34Speaker 3: equilibrium system that you're actually evaluating and understanding and in
- 55:39Speaker 3: some cases changing the dynamic of the control in those
- 55:43Speaker 3: equilibrium systems to make you more efficient outcome. So they're
- 55:48Speaker 3: not as far apart as you think if you look
- 55:50Speaker 3: at it through the right lens.
- 55:52Speaker 5: Well, let me ask you this as far as I
- 55:53Speaker 5: want to make sure I get this number correct. Well, first,
- 55:56Speaker 5: your guy's portfolio consists of ninety four billion dollars ninety
- 55:59Speaker 5: four billion in assets.
- 56:00Speaker 3: Yeah, a little more than that, but yeah, that's close enough.
- 56:02Speaker 7: Who's counting.
- 56:03Speaker 5: Yeah, but this is a disturbing fact. So one point
- 56:09Speaker 5: four percent of US based assets under management managers are
- 56:14Speaker 5: for diverse owned firms. Women and people of color can bine, right,
- 56:21Speaker 5: So that is disturbing. So yeah, talk, So that's one
- 56:24Speaker 5: point four percent of the firms are women, and it's
- 56:28Speaker 5: like everybody like Latinos, blacks like you just don't everybody
- 56:32Speaker 5: in a bucket.
- 56:32Speaker 3: Yeah, and we only have access to one point four
- 56:34Speaker 3: percent of the assets. We make it up a little
- 56:37Speaker 3: more one point four percent of the population, though, don't we,
- 56:40Speaker 3: And we actually make up a little higher than that
- 56:42Speaker 3: in terms of our contributing to the pension plans. Did
- 56:46Speaker 3: your parents are they part of a pension plan? Yeah?
- 56:49Speaker 3: My mom.
- 56:49Speaker 7: My mom was a teacher for thirty years.
- 56:51Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, what's percentage of black teachers in her union?
- 56:57Speaker 3: A lot, little more than one point four percent for sure. Okay,
- 57:00Speaker 3: what about you know some of the civil service workers?
- 57:05Speaker 3: Probably the same thing. Do about federal government? Yeah, probably
- 57:09Speaker 3: the same thing. But yet we don't control a proportionate
- 57:14Speaker 3: share of the assets that our parents put those sixty
- 57:17Speaker 3: two dollars a weekend for pensions, and we our parents
- 57:23Speaker 3: go out work so hard, send us the school, send
- 57:27Speaker 3: us the college, get educated, go manage this capital. But
- 57:31Speaker 3: yet they don't get the capital to manage that, as
- 57:36Speaker 3: you know, flows back in our communities at much higher
- 57:39Speaker 3: rates than almost anything else, because as you do better,
- 57:44Speaker 3: you typically are enhancing your community at much higher rates
- 57:51Speaker 3: than non people of color. So those are the things
- 57:55Speaker 3: we you and me have to make people aware and
- 58:00Speaker 3: drive these pension plans to make sure they're distributing their
- 58:04Speaker 3: fair share to the constituency base that makes up those
- 58:10Speaker 3: who are contributing point number one and in point number
- 58:12Speaker 3: two to the highest performers, which when you look at
- 58:16Speaker 3: we have a group called the NAIIC that's been doing
- 58:19Speaker 3: this work for twenty years evaluating our firms perform at
- 58:24Speaker 3: a higher rate, a higher level with lower loss ratios.
- 58:27Speaker 3: Can we talk about that, Yeah, sure so, I mean
- 58:30Speaker 3: we've been doing this. When we do these studies, we
- 58:32Speaker 3: have over the last twenty years, especially in the private
- 58:35Speaker 3: equity business, returned more capital, had fewer losses, lower loss
- 58:40Speaker 3: ratios than majority white firms, but yet we get less
- 58:45Speaker 3: than one point four percent of the allocation of capital.
- 58:49Speaker 3: We've got the studies and we go take these studies
- 58:52Speaker 3: and we you know, it goes in shows. These consultants
- 58:55Speaker 3: are in there and they kind of like, yeah, it's
- 58:57Speaker 3: going to take some time. Well that's a problem. Okay.
- 59:03Speaker 3: Those are the things that destabilize communities if they feel
- 59:08Speaker 3: there is injustice and the way people are treated and
- 59:13Speaker 3: it's not a meritocracy. That's a dynamic that has to change,
- 59:19Speaker 3: and there are certain leaders who are doing a good
- 59:21Speaker 3: job of that. You know, somebody criticize Honestly, New York
- 59:24Speaker 3: does a pretty good job of it. New York State,
- 59:27Speaker 3: New York City is to call out. And we're sitting
- 59:29Speaker 3: here now right in understanding that, and you know, comptrollers
- 59:33Speaker 3: and treasurers, you know, Adopotly being one and Lander being
- 59:37Speaker 3: the newest one in New York City, understand that and
- 59:40Speaker 3: have been driving the programs in that regard. And that's
- 59:43Speaker 3: why some of the return to some of the highest
- 59:45Speaker 3: in the US because they recognize that fact. And there's
- 59:50Speaker 3: some states that don't recognize and don't do anything about it,
- 59:53Speaker 3: and they've got some of the lowest returning plans. You
- 59:55Speaker 3: see what I mean. It's economic necessity at the end
- 59:58Speaker 3: of the day, and it's fairness that's actually going to
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: move our society forward.
- 1:00:06Speaker 6: In UH twenty nineteen, I want to talk about this.
- 1:00:08Speaker 2: Uh. Obviously there philanthropy philanthrop efforts have been well documented,
- 1:00:14Speaker 2: uh Borehouse philanthropic, philanthropic.
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I.
- 1:00:20Speaker 2: Was thinking of philanthropy and philanthropic, so I appreciate you,
- 1:00:23Speaker 2: uh obviously well documented to give back to the senior
- 1:00:27Speaker 2: class of Borehouse.
- 1:00:29Speaker 3: Uh.
- 1:00:29Speaker 2: And then I recently, you know, saw that the parents
- 1:00:31Speaker 2: as well of some of the students uh that their
- 1:00:34Speaker 2: tuitions were their student loan debt taking care of One
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: of the things I heard you speak about, and I haven't.
- 1:00:41Speaker 2: I've never heard it was broadband deserts and how HBCUs
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: are disproportionately affected by having board band deserts. Not a
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: topic that I've heard discussed, you know, nationally or even
- 1:00:53Speaker 2: in you know, amongst communities, about how that affects students
- 1:00:58Speaker 2: long term and how it affects communities and EDGUC.
- 1:01:00Speaker 6: Can you talk about your efforts to try to combat that.
- 1:01:03Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question, Earners.
- 1:01:07Speaker 8: What's Up?
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- 1:02:07Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Consumers can vote once per day for
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- 1:02:13Speaker 2: There will be one winner each day from now to
- 1:02:16Speaker 2: December eighteenth, twenty twenty two. So head over to sun
- 1:02:18Speaker 2: Chips Art Scene that's see n dot com right now
- 1:02:23Speaker 2: to cast your votes. Good luck, y'all.
- 1:02:27Speaker 3: We've been talking about what is really the fourth Industrial
- 1:02:32Speaker 3: Revolution that's occurring today. Every industry is being digitized, every
- 1:02:37Speaker 3: single one. I mean you just look in our studio
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: here and how much of this equipment is now digital
- 1:02:45Speaker 3: versus what it was even eight years ago, whereas analog right,
- 1:02:50Speaker 3: the capacity to edit okay, the capacity to deliver streaming
- 1:02:56Speaker 3: real time, you know, phase time around the world, your
- 1:03:01Speaker 3: program that wasn't you know something you could do ten
- 1:03:05Speaker 3: years ago, twelve years ago? Okay? Digitizing everything every industry.
- 1:03:10Speaker 3: This is again, this whole Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing
- 1:03:16Speaker 3: the economic landscape of this planet. But yet our HBCUs
- 1:03:22Speaker 3: eighty percent of them are in broadband deserts. How are
- 1:03:26Speaker 3: you going to participate if you don't have access to
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: the tool of progress, the principal tool of progress today
- 1:03:33Speaker 3: in the economy. And that is a big problem. And
- 1:03:38Speaker 3: that's one that we decided to take on, and I
- 1:03:39Speaker 3: decided to take on and bring some partners to take
- 1:03:42Speaker 3: on to go get after this. We have to enable
- 1:03:47Speaker 3: all of our citizenry to participate in this next generation
- 1:03:52Speaker 3: of opportunity. The US today, you own, our borders are
- 1:03:56Speaker 3: basically closed, okay. You know, we've got immigration laws and
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: political conflict that in essence, we are not importing labor anymore.
- 1:04:08Speaker 3: And as we need to grow as society, we need people.
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: I just tell people the biggest issue, the most scarce
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: asset we have on this planet today are software programmers.
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: There's eight billion people on the planet, there's only twenty
- 1:04:22Speaker 3: six million of us who write software for living, and
- 1:04:29Speaker 3: it is that software that is required to digitize every
- 1:04:33Speaker 3: industry on the planet. Automotive, healthcare, finands, banking, all of
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: it is now requiring tools and systems that are digital
- 1:04:45Speaker 3: in nature. But yet one of the greatest infrastructures for
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: training people historically Black college and universities eighty percent of
- 1:04:54Speaker 3: them don't have broadband access where our kids can learn
- 1:04:58Speaker 3: the tools of this craft in a way that they
- 1:05:02Speaker 3: can participate effectively long term. And if we don't get
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: this right now, eight years from now, ten years from
- 1:05:09Speaker 3: twenty years from now, the market of change and opportunity
- 1:05:13Speaker 3: and transformation will have been gone so far that we
- 1:05:17Speaker 3: won't be able to participate in this next way. We
- 1:05:19Speaker 3: didn't get to participate in the great economic opportunity that
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: was America in owning land, Okay, many of our families
- 1:05:28Speaker 3: were unpaid labor okay, which created massive wealth. And then
- 1:05:34Speaker 3: you had gi Bill Home Set Act, Southern Home Set Act.
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: We didn't participate in that proportionately. We didn't get a
- 1:05:43Speaker 3: chance to participate in the asset accretion in real estate
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: because of redlining in those dynamics, and so now here
- 1:05:52Speaker 3: we are Corporate America started to expand, it has taken
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: a while for us to get and we're still not
- 1:05:58Speaker 3: even there. Fair shit year of opportunity to participate as
- 1:06:02Speaker 3: professionals environment and now you're going through the fourth Industrial Revolution.
- 1:06:06Speaker 3: If we don't participate here, it's going to be the
- 1:06:08Speaker 3: same dynamic. That's why it's so essential that we equip
- 1:06:13Speaker 3: our children and our communities with the tools, and they
- 1:06:17Speaker 3: need to insist that those tools be provided and insist
- 1:06:24Speaker 3: that they learn and train and develop ways to participate
- 1:06:28Speaker 3: in this economy, in this digital economy. What percentage of
- 1:06:33Speaker 3: your viewership you think is listening on some digital device
- 1:06:37Speaker 3: or digital ablement. Yeah, your business relies on it, So
- 1:06:47Speaker 3: why shouldn't your community participate in it? And right now
- 1:06:51Speaker 3: those schools are being starved at those resources. You can
- 1:06:55Speaker 3: say conscious, unconscious, whatever it is, but the fact is
- 1:06:57Speaker 3: it is there. That's what we have to do about it. Look,
- 1:07:00Speaker 3: I'm going to do my part, and you guys got
- 1:07:02Speaker 3: to continue to do your part and make sure that
- 1:07:04Speaker 3: your viewership demands that our HBCUs have access to broadband,
- 1:07:12Speaker 3: every one of them, not just the big ones, every
- 1:07:15Speaker 3: one of them, so that our kids could learn and
- 1:07:19Speaker 3: participate and have the ability to now take what they
- 1:07:23Speaker 3: know and deliver business systems solutions into their community to
- 1:07:28Speaker 3: make their small and medium businesses in their community and
- 1:07:30Speaker 3: the education of the kids in our community more effective
- 1:07:34Speaker 3: than what it is today.
- 1:07:35Speaker 5: I want to just follow up on that on the
- 1:07:37Speaker 5: HBCU thing, because you got a lot of headlines when
- 1:07:41Speaker 5: you do more house, when you paid off the student loans.
- 1:07:43Speaker 5: But when we were in LA and I heard you
- 1:07:45Speaker 5: speak about that, and I realized that it wasn't It's
- 1:07:48Speaker 5: a little bit more complicated, which actually led to something else,
- 1:07:52Speaker 5: another initiative.
- 1:07:53Speaker 7: So can you talk about that.
- 1:07:54Speaker 5: Because people just saw he paid off everybody student loans,
- 1:07:56Speaker 5: but that's not actually the full story, right.
- 1:07:59Speaker 3: Yeah, So the next thing, so what I like all things,
- 1:08:04Speaker 3: it's not as easy as you think to pay off
- 1:08:06Speaker 3: somebody's loans. And everybody's like, what are you talking about?
- 1:08:10Speaker 3: Who would have thought? Because yeah, who would have thought? Right,
- 1:08:12Speaker 3: Because if you pay off somebody's loan, either you're giving
- 1:08:15Speaker 3: them a gift or they're receiving a gift. Now they
- 1:08:18Speaker 3: got to pay taxes on it, so there's a burden
- 1:08:19Speaker 3: to them or an increasing burden to you. So you've
- 1:08:23Speaker 3: got to actually architect a system to do that effectively
- 1:08:27Speaker 3: so that doesn't create the burden in that process. What
- 1:08:33Speaker 3: I learned is over sixty percent of African American wealth
- 1:08:38Speaker 3: goes towards servicing student loans. Okay, you come out, You've
- 1:08:44Speaker 3: got sixty eighty one hundred and twenty thousand dollars with
- 1:08:46Speaker 3: the student loans. Now you're paying interest on those loans.
- 1:08:50Speaker 3: Something happens in your family, don't use your job, whatever,
- 1:08:52Speaker 3: And now that compounds and it can be decades before
- 1:08:57Speaker 3: you've paid off those student loans. That inhibit your ability
- 1:09:03Speaker 3: to buy stocks, bonds, a house, invest in a business,
- 1:09:06Speaker 3: you see what I mean. And I was like, well,
- 1:09:08Speaker 3: that's just unconstable because most of the student loans are
- 1:09:13Speaker 3: paying back to the United States government. Yeah, African Americans
- 1:09:17Speaker 3: paying money back to United States government to pay our
- 1:09:19Speaker 3: student loans. How y'all feel about that?
- 1:09:21Speaker 7: That's crazy?
- 1:09:25Speaker 3: Crazy? Yeah, y'all should think about that, right, talk about that. Right?
- 1:09:28Speaker 3: So then I thought, well, what's a better way to
- 1:09:32Speaker 3: do it? This is what's the better equilibrium system. The
- 1:09:36Speaker 3: better equilibrium system is to create a fund it's called
- 1:09:40Speaker 3: the Student Freedom Initiative. We raise money, I put in
- 1:09:45Speaker 3: a bunch of money, and now these students borrow from
- 1:09:50Speaker 3: the fund. Okay, let's make sure it fits our condition.
- 1:09:58Speaker 3: Our condition often is that we often aren't paid as
- 1:10:04Speaker 3: much as corresponding white students. So let's make sure that
- 1:10:08Speaker 3: the interest rate is below. Parent plus loans at a minimum,
- 1:10:12Speaker 3: at a minimum and every now and you have life interruptions. Okay, Well,
- 1:10:18Speaker 3: if there's a life interruption, you know, parent ailing, we've
- 1:10:22Speaker 3: got to go back take care of that parent. Then
- 1:10:24Speaker 3: we can actually stop those payments in that period of time.
- 1:10:27Speaker 3: Parent plus now you're gonna pay whether you work it
- 1:10:29Speaker 3: or not. And then compounds and all that, so you
- 1:10:32Speaker 3: can stop it during that period of time. And if
- 1:10:38Speaker 3: you decide to go work in a community to be
- 1:10:40Speaker 3: a teacher, like you work right, okay, and you're making
- 1:10:45Speaker 3: below a certain amount, but you're doing good for the community.
- 1:10:48Speaker 3: You do that for twenty years and that's forgiven. But
- 1:10:52Speaker 3: rather than pay that money back to the government, it
- 1:10:54Speaker 3: pays back into the fund, and then that fund can
- 1:10:57Speaker 3: relend that capital and that's a virtuous cycle. Okay. So
- 1:11:01Speaker 3: that's a Student Freedom Initiative is okay, And so that
- 1:11:05Speaker 3: our students can borrow from this fund and they pay
- 1:11:08Speaker 3: back into that fund, they can be reborrowed. So now
- 1:11:11Speaker 3: you're taking care of your own community through your work
- 1:11:14Speaker 3: in that regard, that's what it is.
- 1:11:18Speaker 5: And the money goes back to the next generation of students.
- 1:11:22Speaker 7: Right, those are recycled, right, situation Right.
- 1:11:26Speaker 2: I want to talk about an initiative, and I think
- 1:11:28Speaker 2: it's pretty amazing that the two percent solution. Yeah, whereas
- 1:11:34Speaker 2: correct me if I'm wrong, but banks, right the determined
- 1:11:38Speaker 2: on the profits that they make off their investments, they
- 1:11:40Speaker 2: reallocate that back into their communities.
- 1:11:42Speaker 3: They should.
- 1:11:43Speaker 6: Well, I'll let you talk about the initiative.
- 1:11:46Speaker 3: But that's the point is it's like, you know, the
- 1:11:47Speaker 3: average American individual gives about two percent of charity, you know,
- 1:11:52Speaker 3: to charity every year, and African Americans actually will higher
- 1:11:58Speaker 3: and people call it will higher. And I said, well,
- 1:12:02Speaker 3: if you just take that and apply that to corporations,
- 1:12:05Speaker 3: so beyond just the dollars, it's the know how, Okay,
- 1:12:08Speaker 3: So take two percent of your earnings, two percent of
- 1:12:11Speaker 3: your profits, whatever it is, and now use that to
- 1:12:13Speaker 3: enable the equitable opportunity. And listen to the words equable
- 1:12:18Speaker 3: opportunity in the communities that support your business. Right, if
- 1:12:24Speaker 3: you are in a healthcare business, for instance, so why
- 1:12:28Speaker 3: not take that and invest that in telemedicine solutions for
- 1:12:32Speaker 3: communities don't have access. Right. If you're in the banking business,
- 1:12:36Speaker 3: invest that in digital banking in the communities that don't
- 1:12:39Speaker 3: have banks. My community that I grew up in didn't
- 1:12:42Speaker 3: have a branch bank. Okay, if you're in the supermarket business,
- 1:12:47Speaker 3: two percent of that to go to providing access to
- 1:12:51Speaker 3: high quality foods low costs. In mention, my community I
- 1:12:53Speaker 3: grew up in did not have a supermarket. Still doesn't
- 1:12:58Speaker 3: think about that. Right, We had to drive across down
- 1:13:00Speaker 3: or go to local communience store where the prices are
- 1:13:02Speaker 3: three four five X. You see what I mean. So
- 1:13:06Speaker 3: that's what the initiative is designed to do, is to
- 1:13:10Speaker 3: bring a consciousness to how you can actually enable citizenry
- 1:13:15Speaker 3: to have opportunities to participate in that case, in our
- 1:13:21Speaker 3: economy as full citizens. That's what it's designed it.
- 1:13:27Speaker 6: I mean, it feels pretty simple, right.
- 1:13:29Speaker 3: Makes sense to me.
- 1:13:30Speaker 5: Oh, missus Smith, you've been a gentleman and a scholar.
- 1:13:33Speaker 5: Thank you for joining us. Anything that you would like
- 1:13:35Speaker 5: to leave the audience with any last words or anything
- 1:13:38Speaker 5: that you will like.
- 1:13:38Speaker 3: I will leave you all with something. Make sure you
- 1:13:41Speaker 3: continue to expand your voice. And we talked about this
- 1:13:45Speaker 3: earlier this morning, the importance of you thinking about bringing
- 1:13:50Speaker 3: scale to this platform and leave behind so that the
- 1:13:55Speaker 3: youth that hear you or the parents that hear you
- 1:13:58Speaker 3: can point their youth, do your messages, your tools, and
- 1:14:02Speaker 3: bring build systems for people to get more financially literate
- 1:14:07Speaker 3: and enabled to be more effective in achieving their goals,
- 1:14:13Speaker 3: which most people want financial independence and some freedom in
- 1:14:18Speaker 3: their lives. Uh. And you all have a wonderful and
- 1:14:21Speaker 3: great platform and I sincerely mean that, and I congratulate you.
- 1:14:24Speaker 3: Just continue to think about how you scale it effectively inefficiently.
- 1:14:29Speaker 3: So good luck on that. And if I can never
- 1:14:31Speaker 3: be helpful, you know, just a text away. Sure.
- 1:14:35Speaker 5: Well, we tried to get you out of We had
- 1:14:36Speaker 5: a big thing called investments last year and Tyler Perry
- 1:14:40Speaker 5: and Steve harveybody keynotes you're trying to get you, but
- 1:14:43Speaker 5: you out of I think you're out of the country
- 1:14:46Speaker 5: on vacation. I remember, yeah, but let me know, just
- 1:14:49Speaker 5: be this year we can good look forward to look
- 1:14:52Speaker 5: for seriously, I just wanted to thank you for your time,
- 1:14:57Speaker 5: and I'm sure we'll run into well, we're actually gonna
- 1:14:59Speaker 5: see next next.
- 1:15:00Speaker 2: Week, see you next week, you see us together.
- 1:15:04Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, thank you guys. Keep doing what you're doing.
- 1:15:07Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
- 1:15:07Speaker 2: This is definitely off the bucket list of people that
- 1:15:11Speaker 2: we wanted to sit down with. I told this when
- 1:15:14Speaker 2: I woke up this morning. I'm like, I can't believe
- 1:15:16Speaker 2: this is actually happening today. So thank you for blessing
- 1:15:19Speaker 2: us with the knowledge and all your service as well
- 1:15:22Speaker 2: my pleasure.
- 1:15:22Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a blessing to be here with you, brothers.
- 1:15:25Speaker 3: So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you you having guys.
- 1:15:27Speaker 3: That's a wrap, all right, guys, did you record it?
- 1:15:35Speaker 4: My graduates from my school being false bad drop bag
- 1:15:40Speaker 4: drop my drop bad drop.
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: in Massachusetts and MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
- 1:16:10Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christy nom the United States
- 1:16:17Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: are here illegally, your next you will be fine nearly
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported. You will
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: never return. But if you register using our CBP home
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
- 1:16:45Speaker 1: Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws,
- 1:16:49Speaker 1: border and families will be protected.
- 1:16:52Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,