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Black CEO Hid Himself So That His Customers Wouldn't Know He Was Black · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Donald J.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Trump's leadership.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm Christy nom the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and deported.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: You will never return.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Be protected sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: So when you get the first product or the next
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: thing is how do you market it?
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: Are you thinking that yourself? Do I need a break
• 1:05
  Speaker 5: the mortar?
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: Or is it's like I'm a solely ecommerceance thing and
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: get it in the right hand.
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 6: So in the beginning with Active Faith, there was two
• 1:12
  Speaker 6: big Christian sports appeal I mean Christian retailers at the time,
• 1:16
  Speaker 6: Family Christian LifeWay. I'm thinking, once I pitched them this idea,
• 1:20
  Speaker 6: they picking me up, we launching were gone. They all
• 1:23
  Speaker 6: told me they'd never heard of Christian sports appailal before,
• 1:26
  Speaker 6: so they were like, this isn't gonna work. So I
• 1:29
  Speaker 6: actually went the e commerce route by necessity, but it
• 1:34
  Speaker 6: ended up being a blessing, you know what I mean.
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: I utilized my existing network.
• 1:39
  Speaker 6: The funny thing, the thing that actually put Active Faith
• 1:41
  Speaker 6: on the map, that gave us our first big exposure
• 1:44
  Speaker 6: was you.
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: Guys remember Lynn Sanity.
• 1:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, all right, So Jeremy's went a closer got
• 1:50
  Speaker 6: of mind, yeah exactly, and he was wearing wristbands from
• 1:55
  Speaker 6: my company. So I got these wristbands that said Active Faith.
• 1:57
  Speaker 6: The tagline was in Jesus name I play instead of game,
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: I pray to tag on JA my play. And so
• 2:03
  Speaker 6: I was sending these wrist bands out to all the
• 2:05
  Speaker 6: basketball players that I knew that would understand this concept
• 2:08
  Speaker 6: of a faith based sports A Pearl.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: Brand Jeremy was one of them.
• 2:12
  Speaker 6: He was in the D League at the time when
• 2:15
  Speaker 6: I first got him the wrist bands, and the Rockets
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: called him up. We met for lunch, gave him some wristbands.
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: They cut him. The Knicks called him up. But he's
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: at the end of the bench. Nobody, I mean nobody
• 2:28
  Speaker 6: saw that coming. And it was it was two weeks
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: after the Knicks had signed him. They came back in
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: time to play the Rockets. We went to lunch again.
• 2:34
  Speaker 6: I was like, yo, let me give you these orange
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: wristbands to match the Knicks uniform. And it was probably
• 2:39
  Speaker 6: two weeks after that. I think Baron Davis got heard
• 2:43
  Speaker 6: who whoever? The two point guards wherever in front of
• 2:45
  Speaker 6: him got hurt and he was forced into this role
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: and you know what happened when with insanity And so
• 2:51
  Speaker 6: he's on the cover of Sports Illustrated Time magazine is
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: everything you could think of, laying the ball up and
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: you see active faith, and you see these wrist bands
• 2:59
  Speaker 6: on his risks. I mean, you go look at it
• 3:01
  Speaker 6: right now. Look up any picture, you're gonna see him
• 3:02
  Speaker 6: wearing these wristbands. And Man USA Today reached out to
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: do a story on it. Next thing, I know, my
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: website crashing because everybody in America was trying to get
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: these wrist bands that he was wearing. And then we
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: were getting all this traffic from China and Taiwan. So
• 3:21
  Speaker 6: first year out the gate after Faith, we did three
• 3:23
  Speaker 6: hundred thousand in revenue off wristbands. Yeah yeah, so man,
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: that's how it got started.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: And then you know, having that initial audience that saw
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: the wristbands, when I introduced the apparel, it just kind of,
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: you know, did his thing. We went from three hundred
• 3:39
  Speaker 6: thousand to jumped from three hundred thousand to one point
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: five million, to six million to eight and a half million,
• 3:48
  Speaker 6: like it was something that was just moving at a
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: speed that you know, to this day, it's hard to
• 3:55
  Speaker 6: really put it into words what was happening. I mean,
• 3:57
  Speaker 6: I had I had friends at my mom's house feeling orders,
• 4:00
  Speaker 6: you know, my mom's house. I turned her my mom's
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: house into an order for filming facility, you know what
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: I'm saying, And was feeding my friends pizza to helped
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: have them come over and help me feel orders.
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: So yeah, that's that's how the first thing got off
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: the ground.
• 4:13
  Speaker 6: So all right, so you get that going yep, you're
• 4:18
  Speaker 6: taking that money and then starting with Actively.
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: Black Ause how that started? Man?
• 4:22
  Speaker 6: So so, like I said, so, Steph was my business
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: partner also, and at the time, you remember he wasn't
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: the guy that everybody sees now you know what I mean.
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: The lot of people don't realize those ankle injuries and
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: the surgeries that he had that second year in the league.
• 4:37
  Speaker 6: You could be looking at a Grant Hill trajectory with
• 4:40
  Speaker 6: Steph versus what he's on. So, man, the people wasn't
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: checking for him like that, but he was rocking with me.
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: He was rocking with the brand. Same thing with him.
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: He gets healthy, he wins multiple MVPs. To this day,
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: he doesn't play a game without wearing his Active Faith
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: Risbane and he still wears them every single game. But
• 4:57
  Speaker 6: I was having some personal experiences that were challenging what
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: I was doing with Active Faith, so I hid myself
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: from people knowing who the founder of Active Faith was.
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: In fact, my Instagram was private up until earners.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: What's up? You ever walk into a small business and
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: everything just works like the checkout is fast, the receipts
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: are digital, tipping is a breeze, and you're out the
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: door before the line even builds odds are they're using Square.
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: We love supporting businesses that run on Square because it
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: just feels seamless. Whether it's a local coffee shop, a
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: vendor at a pop up market, or even one of
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: our merch partners, Square makes it easy for them to
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: take payments, manage inventory, and run their business with confidence,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: all from one simple system. If you're a business owner
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: or even just thinking about launching something soon, Square is
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: hands down one of the best tools out there to
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: help you start, run and grow. It's not just about payments,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: it's about giving you time back so you can folk
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: what's on what matters most ready. To see how Square
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: can transform your business, visit Square dot com backslash go
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: backslash eyl to learn more that Square dot com backslash,
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: go backslash eyl. Don't wait, don't hesitate. Let's Square handle
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: the back end so you can keep pushing your vision forward.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring,
• 6:28
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• 7:04
  Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Donald J.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Trump's leadership. I'm Christy Noman, the.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: If you are here illegally, your next you will be
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: fine nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned and.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Deported, you will never return.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But if you register using our CBP home app and
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump America's laws, border and families will be protected.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
• 8:05
  Speaker 6: I launched Actively Black my personal instagram over sixty percent
• 8:10
  Speaker 6: of my customer base for Active Faith of Evangelical Christians,
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: which in this country could be synonymous with racist. I
• 8:17
  Speaker 6: didn't want them to know that it was this black
• 8:19
  Speaker 6: man who was behind the brand, and.
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: So you couldn't find my name on the website. I
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: wasn't on the.
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: Social media, none of that, and that started to bother
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: me internally, you know what I mean. My mother and
• 8:32
  Speaker 6: my father raised me to be proud of my blackness.
• 8:35
  Speaker 6: That's something that was taught to me at a very
• 8:37
  Speaker 6: early age. And here it is. I. You know, I
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: bounced back from an injury that ended my NBA career,
• 8:45
  Speaker 6: built a multi million dollar business out of my mom's house,
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: and I'm afraid to even show that this is me,
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying. And I had instances where
• 8:58
  Speaker 6: customers will call you know, entreprene or in the beginning,
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: you're wearing all the hats I'm doing customer service. A
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: customer is like, you sound like you black, and I
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: was like I am. They immediately asked for a refund.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: I had experiences where there were people wanting to invest
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: in Active Faith and.
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: Would write in go back and forth over email.
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: We were set up in person meeting, and I'll never
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: forget like walking into that room and seeing the looks
• 9:25
  Speaker 6: on their faces like, oh damn, he's black.
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Like I saw.
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: It in their faces, and all of a sudden, those
• 9:32
  Speaker 6: conversations about investing in the brand completely went quiet, you
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: know what I mean. And so I was I was
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: already having this internal struggle with who I am as
• 9:42
  Speaker 6: a black man and how I was hiding myself from
• 9:45
  Speaker 6: this brand. So I started having this idea, if I
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: could build this brand for this faith based community, can
• 9:52
  Speaker 6: I do the.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: Same thing for my people, for black people?
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: And you know, to this day, I get I get
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: emails from Active Faith customers who were going through chemotherapy
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: and they were saying, I felt like giving up, but
• 10:06
  Speaker 6: I wore my Active Faith risk band. I wore my
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: Active Faith hoodie to chemo today. And they gave me
• 10:11
  Speaker 6: the strength to keep fighting. That let me know that
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: what I was building was bigger than just another apparel brand,
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: Like this meant something to somebody intrinsically, this was having
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: an effect on somebody's life, and so I wanted to
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: do that same thing for black people. And really the
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: catalyst to me finally deciding to do it. Twenty eighteen,
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: the movie Black Panther comes out, and I remember walking
• 10:34
  Speaker 6: out of the theater for the first time, and I
• 10:35
  Speaker 6: just remember that feeling that I felt.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: Man, it was unbelievable to see like the diaspora come together.
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying. You saw African black jamake it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: Whatever you were, if you were black, you felt something
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: the first time you saw that film. And I was like,
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: you know what, I'm gonna create that brand and I
• 10:55
  Speaker 6: want people to have the feeling that I had walking
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: out of the theater watching Black Panther for the first time.
• 10:59
  Speaker 6: I want them to had that feeling when they when
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: they interact with this brand.
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: Active faith kept me plenty busy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 6: I moved out to LA six months before the pandemic
• 11:09
  Speaker 6: shut the whole city down, and so I told myself,
• 11:12
  Speaker 6: I'm not gonna let this time pass without burthening something new.
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: And you know, we all witnessed the murder George Floyd
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: and the aftermath and everything that happened after that, and
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: so I started to see all these brands. I saw Nike,
• 11:23
  Speaker 6: you know, indeed, it's everybody make these declarations about what
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: they were going to do for the black community after
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: the murder of George Floyd, And to me, it.
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: Felt very performative.
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: It felt like this was just part of their new
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: marketing strategy because outside of the pandemic, the stuff that's
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: been happening and black people has been happening for centuries,
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: for decades, and none of these brands had ever said anything.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: So why a y'all saying something now?
• 11:45
  Speaker 6: And finally that's when I decided I wasn't gonna put
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: this idea on the shelf anymore. Ink Magazine called me
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: to do a story on Active Faith for Juneteenth. They
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: were looking for a black founder to do a juneteen
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: story on, and I said, I'll do the story, but
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: I want to talk about this new thing that I'm
• 12:01
  Speaker 6: going to launch, And so I announced it in that
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: article that Ink Magazine article on Juneteenth, and on Black
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: Friday twenty twenty I've launched actingly black.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Donald J.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Trump's leadership.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I'm Christy Noman, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: next you will be fine nearly one thousand dollars a day,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: imprisoned and deported, you will never return. But if you
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: register using our CBP home app and leave now, you
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: could be allowed to return legally.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Do what's right. Leave now.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security,