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Transcript

Why Selling Isn’t “Selling Out” | Richelieu Dennis on Essence Fest Fallout & Black Business Issues · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If my community turns on me, am I going to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: be able to stay in business.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company,
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: what they sold out.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: A driving factor and why they want to sell is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: because they're afraid.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: How can we ever have generational wealth if we selling out,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: we don't have anything to pass down.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not how generational wealth is created. I don't
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: think they understand how hard it is to actually build
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: these things.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: A company like Meta has billion dollar loss to where
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: they were actually selling people's data, and nobody actually unstall Instagram.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of mistrust in our community, some of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: it earned and some of it not. We're not afforded
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the ability to make the mistake.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: What is your thoughts on family business the dynamics of GOVNBOG.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Certainly, one of the most rewarding things you can do
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: as a business owner is to build a business with
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: your family. And the business deserves to have the best players.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: When we look out at the playing field, who gives opportunity?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Our business was built so that we could invest back
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: into this community. But now you've got to go compete
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: against laurel. How do you compete against that? When you
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: can't go to your local bank and get a twenty
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: million dollar loan. At the end of the day, it
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: always just comes back to capital.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: All right, gush, Welcome back on Alesia and got special episode.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: This is like the Mentor edition, very rare.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: That's a fact.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Who's the mentor.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Obviously, so yeah, a good friend of ours, definitely in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: one of our business mentors, somebody that has been very
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: gracious with his time and his wealth of knowledge, not
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: only us, but a variety of different entrepreneurs that we're
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: friendly with that we know Rich Lou Dennis. You may
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: not be familiar with him, but you're definitely familiar with
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: the brands that he's helped launch, invest in be a
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: part of. And you know, we're gonna have a great conversation.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: When you think of his entrepreneurial ship journey, A lot
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: of people probably are familiar with the Shade butter Shade
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: moisture that was I think what really puts you on
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the map as far as becoming a major a major
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: figure in entrepreneurship. And then of course essence, So you
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: purchased essence, you are the you, You own.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Essence yep, correct me and my family?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, And then you also have New Voice Ventures. That's
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: New Voice fun.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: New Voice is fun.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that invests in a variety of different businesses. Yeah,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: you've invested in Milano, right, Pinky col Yeah, Derek Hayes. Yeah,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: so a lot of a lot of the businesses that
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: our audience.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Well, Mi Milano we've invested in from a time and
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: mentorship perspective, the other two from a capital perspective. Okay,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: And now.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I feel like from two thousand obviously,
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: since we started to show a lot of the entrepreneurs
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: that we meet that have skilled one of the one
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: thing that they have in common is that they sat
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: down with you or you've invested them.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We spend a lot of time building an ecosystem
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and supporting supporting that ecosystem, and then you you know,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: you name it. If if they're if they're if they're
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: driving a business that's impacting our community, we've invested in them. Yeah,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and you have an eye for it. I'll tell everybody this.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, maybe our first year and
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: a half, we got a call like rich du Dennis
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: wants to have lunch.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: With you, and we were like, oh, okay, okay, Uh.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: And so from that that conversation, we've obviously developed a relationship.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: We got a lot of insight from it. Uh And
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: like Rashad said, always valuable with your time.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So we appreciate you being here. Yeah, well, you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: thank you guys, and it's it's it's been an absolute
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: joy getting to know you guys and watch you grow
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and see the impact, see the impact that you have. Right.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: My the way I look at it is my my
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: job is to share as much of the journey that
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I've been on and what I've learned, and then help
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: people figure out how to not make the same mistakes
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: that I make. And because I'm always so far in front,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I make a tonne of So you get, you get
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: to watch them, and you get and you get to
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: learn from them.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, this is a rare conversation, Like you don't
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: really speak too much publicly, you've kind of been behind
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the scenes for a long time.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: We're finally having a conversation. Yeah, it's a lot to
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: talk about.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So they only took us five years years five years Yeah, scouting, Yeah,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: thank you, join us.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Appreciate it. So let's let's start. Let's start at the
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: beginning Shae Moisture.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: We opened up in that journey, opened up the opportunities
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: for others to come through. You know, when we when
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: we started back in nineteen ninety one, which is many,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: many many years ago, probably for many of your your
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: your your audience were even born, there was very little
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: opportunity for black brands and black owned businesses that catered
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to black consumers at retail. And so we UH were
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: really able to pioneer that that journey with some incredible
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: team members and some some real insight and and understanding
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of what the consumer needed, what was missing. You know,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: people weren't focused on Black women. They weren't focused on
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: building products specifically for for her needs. And at the time,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: they were primarily only building products that were sort of
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: like for women with perms, right, and then the maintenance
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: products that went along with that. And so we we
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: came in with a focus on natural hair and and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and natural role solutions, and and then went into retail
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and transformed how retail engaged with Black women. It was
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it was completely unacceptable the way that retailers were treating
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Black women as consumers. And so we're very proud of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: the work that we did that with people like Joel
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and our barn and you know, all the creatives that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that that we're there to help along the way. But
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that was the idea, was to transform the way the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: retailer treated black consumers.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: I'm interested. I've never asked you this, but now I'm
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: interested in it. We always get, you know, the feedback
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't mix family and business, And our model is like,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: you know, our family works in the business and it's
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: worked for us because we obviously have established roles.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I wonder what your take is.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Obviously you know, we know the team and obviously your brother,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: so you know, what do you what is your thoughts
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: on family business the dynamics of having both.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Look, I think it's it's certainly one of the most
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: rewarding things you can do as a business owner is
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to build is to build a business with your family.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: The joy of building something that is transformative and doing
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: with people that you care about and that care about you,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: there's no there's no you know, it's a great it's
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: a great thing. It feels it feels really really special
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: when you're on the journey. But beyond that, I think
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: about it as it's how you build a community. So
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: it's it's not hey, let me have my family member
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: here because they're my family member. It's are you the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: best or do you have the opportunity to be the
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: best at what you can do? Right? And that's a criteria, right,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And if you can grow and you can scale, then
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: we can rock. But if you can't grow in if
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: you can't scale, then you can't really be a part
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: of this. So it's not just hey, because you're a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: family member, you you automatically get a free pass, you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: get the opportunity, right, because if you're if you're not
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: able to deliver, then you're just taking up opportunity from
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: somebody else that can. And the business deserves to have
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the best players in it in order for it to
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: be successful. And it's only through that can you then
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: leverage the business to drive impact in your community.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: So we'll go through this journey as far as like
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: this this shade moisture because a lot of people might
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: not be familiar with your business journey.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: So before we bring up the speed, we got to
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: look back at like how you started. So you start
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: a company shape butter from my understanding, comes from West Africa. Right, Yes,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: it's been a thing for a long time. You introduced
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: it to America, Are you responsible for that or no?
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: We are responsible for introducing it broadly and creating scale,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: scale at scale. Yes, So people have been bringing shade
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: to this to the US since you know, forever.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: But like as far as how it's shade butter is
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: a stable now, yes, and not just for black people anybody,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: like yes, CBS, any everybody has Shade Butter. Yes, it
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: wasn't always like that. Yes, are you responsible for that?
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: We we are. We had a large role to play
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: in that. I can't say that. I can't say I'm
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: responsible for He's a humble guy, isn't. Yeah, it wasn't.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: You know, shad Shade wasn't at retail when we start,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: but it's brought into retail, so you're playing there wasn't
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: all right?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: So how do you?
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: So?
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: How do you start the business and scale it to
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: the point where you can sell it for a lot
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: of money? Like that this is something that you started
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: up I believe in, like you know, the living room,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: dining room, Like how do you how are you able
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: to grow it and have the distribution and have the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: packaging and have ls stuff?
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as a start as a street vendor in Harlem, Right,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: twenty fifth and fifth. You were selling on a street, yeah,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and twenty fifth and fifth. And the idea was, hey,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: there's there's a need here again natural products. And again
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: remember this is nineteen ninety one, so this this wasn't
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a the natural hair product movement as it came to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: be known, wasn't wasn't yet known as a movement. However,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: there were millions and millions of black women all across
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the country that were looking for an alternative to the relaxers. Right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Their hair was getting damaged, they were actively pursuing healthier lifestyles, right,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and there was no offering for them, right, And and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that's what we offered, right. We offered that in a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: in a zip lock bag and we would sell it
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: by the outs, right, And from there started to supply
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: other vendors. But the learning was, you know, when somebody
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: comes to you and says, hey, you know, my grandmother
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: made this in South Carolina, and she used these ingredients.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: She wasn't obviously using shade, but there were all the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: different ingredients that they were using to make their homemade remedies, right,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and same thing, whether it's in Alabama or in Georgia
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: or right in Maryland and all these and so we
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: started to then go from just the shade, but it'll
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: incorporate these different ingredients for at our customer's requests. So
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: customer will come and say, hey, can you I like this,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: but can you add some in hooba oil because I
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish this. Can you add some avocado? I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish this, And then we'd make it up
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: for them and give it them said. It became really
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a a lot of customization for our individual customers on
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the street. And then we started to realize like, hey,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: this is there's there's a real demand here and a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: real need here because nobody's really thinking about what she
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: needs and giving it to her in the way that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: she needs it right. And so that's where the that's
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: where the scale then came from. So we went from
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: selling on one table to then supplying other vendors, to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: then going into beauty supply stores and then to hold foods,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: and then to Macy's and then national distribution.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: You have partners in the early stages, I wonder what
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: your strength was, right, Like, we are a company with
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: three founders.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Each of us have different strengths. What what was your.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Strength at this time in the brand, right? Was it
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: product management? Was it accounting, was it logistics?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: What was you? So my my mother takes care of
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the money. That's that's what my mother does. But when
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we started, she she was very focused on making sure
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: that we made the product right right, So that was
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that was her that was her thing. My partner, who
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: was also my college roommate, Nima, was very focused and
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: very gifted at figuring out how to make it and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: how to make it at scale right, And so those
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: were the those were the beginnings, right, and then my
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: sister came in and took it to a whole another level,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and then we started to get in other other people
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: that joined along the way. That brought all these different
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: talents and all these and all these different skills. But
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to your point, I don't know of a business where
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: there's one person that does it all and can do
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: it all and then can help that and they can
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: make that business scale. Most of the time, when you
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: have that sort of individual, it becomes very difficult for
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the business to grow and scale because they have to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: have their hands in everything, and that slows down, that
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: slows down scale that slows down decision making. It takes
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: away perspective, right Like, one of the things that we're
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: big on is diversity of thought. I want to hear
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: what everybody thinks about it, how I feel about it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Let's make a decision, Let's make a decision quick, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: let's execute against that decision. But getting input from different
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: perspectives allows you to build things that you wouldn't as
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: one individual think about, which, when you come to think
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: about it, was really that one of the core pillars
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of our success starting on a table and listening to
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: women telling you what they want and then going back
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and figuring out how to give them what they want.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So when you decided to sell, how did you know
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: it was the right time to transition?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I had always been focused on building businesses to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: reinvest back in our communities, right Like. That was that
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: was always the focus, right and so even as we
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: were building Shay, we were doing that at a time
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: when nobody else was really thinking about If you think
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: about the cooperatives that we had that were producing the shade,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: where we went from just buying Shay to investing in
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: supply chain with those women in Ghana and in uh
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: now it's Ghana, it's Ivory Coast, it's uh sire Leon,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: it's uh used to be called Ulta Vault upper volta
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Uh anyway, it'll come to me. But in all these
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: we're in like five different countries now where we're we're
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: investing in their supply chain and and helping those women manufacturer, store, distribute,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: so move from become from being sort of gatherers of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: nuts to now producing semi finished product, improving the value
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of the product that they build so that they're able
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to sell out a premium. Because prior to that, what
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: would happen is that the women like my grandmother would
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: gather the gather the nuts, and then that the men
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: would take the nuts and they would go process the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: nuts and they would make the premium on the on
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the actual button. Right, we sort of say, hey, that's
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: not fair, that's not the way this should work. And
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: in Africa it's called women's gold right, and so if
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: it's women's gold, they should they should benefit from the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: gold right. So we started to say, okay, we won't
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: just buy the the the finished products here. What we're
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: going to from from these sort of wholesalers. What we're
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: going to do is We're going to go to the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: to the very beginning of the pyramid. We're going to
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: work with the women. We're going to train them. We're
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: going to provide equipment, We're going to provide safety, We're
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: going to provide infrastructure. We're going to build processing facilities.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: We're going to invest in processing facilities alongside them so
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: that they can produce the finished product, they can store it,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: they can have the capital to buy the to buy
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the supply, and then we buy from them to finish,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: to finish aye better. Right, And that program has now
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: impacted hundreds of thousands of points.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: So the idea of selling right, like because alluding to
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: that part and I'm going to shit as well knowing
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: when to do it. But also I'm thinking back to
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: the time when it happened, when you sell, what was
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: the environment, right, because we're looking at now we see
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: companies sell. There's always critique, there's negative critique. I think
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: it has a lot to attribute to the lack of
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: education around it. I guess when you were in this process,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: again knowing the time and of it, but was there
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: criticism at the time of yourself or like what was it?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when we when we saw there was it was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: tremendous criticism because it was it was like it was
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: like the first of it's the first of its of
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: its kind and of its size. I think before that
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: only BT had gotten that kind of recognition or got
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: gotten that kind of scale. And then the recognition around
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: around the exit and and there were the concerns. But
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: what I was alluding to and telling that story about
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the supply chain was our business was built differently. Our
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: business was built so that we could invest back into
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: this community. So that was that was the first place
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that we that we did that. Right, then we started
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to recognize and realizing, hey, look there's all these there's
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: all these black women that are buying our product, right
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and the same issues that those women in Africa have
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: are the same issues that black American women have here.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: There's no access to capital for them. If they have
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: ideas of businesses that they want to run, there's nobody,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: there's nobody providing them that capital. And remember now this
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: is back in the nineties, so it was even it
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: was even more foreign than it is today. Right, So
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: there was nobody, there was nobody that was really supporting
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: our community of women entrepreneurs in an organized way. So
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: we then said, Okay, what we're going to do is,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: as we build this business, we're going to take ten
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: percent of our top line revenue against the brands that
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: we're putting through here, right, and we're going to invest
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: that back in African American women and in entrepreneurs in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: their communities, right. And so that's what we started to do.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So we would go to we would go sell a
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: product to whatever retailer and say it was Walmart or
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Target or CBS or whoever, and we say to them, Okay,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: when we get on shelf, we're going to take ten
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: percent of this revenue. We're going to put it right
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: on the package so that people, no, we're going to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: take tempests into this revenue, and we're going to go
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: invest it in these places. Right. So the first place
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that we did that was around education. So we partnered
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: with with the Tuch School of School of Business and said, hey,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: we want to build a program. They they already had
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a an executive ED program, and we said, we want
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: to partner with you on this executive program, but we
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: want you to tailor it to the needs of black
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: women entrepreneurs, right. And so we worked with them to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: develop that program. Right today, we've probably i'd lose try
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to probably three four hundred women have gone through that
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: program today and that program still runs as we speak today.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: So the idea there was, hey, we can help our
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: consumers and our community actually be better partners, better customers.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: They can grow, they can scale, they can run their businesses,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: they can do they can do these things, and so
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: we focus very heavily on that. But they would come
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: out of these programs and we all have heard this
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many times before, but they would
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: come out of these programs and be like, this is fantastic.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I now have the Tuck Network. I've now met all
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: these incredible black women that you guys have put through
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: this program. We have tons of ideas. My business is.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to get back to my business. The
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: only problem is, now I know all this stuff. I
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: got no money, right, I can't go to the bank
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and get the loan. All I need is twenty five
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars right, And back then those numbers were
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: real right in helping and helping them get their businesses
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: off the ground. So we then started to rethink it
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and say, you know this education piece. This is great, right, Like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: we're creating like a real entrepreneurial class of women here,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: but they can't run their businesses because nobody will invest
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in them. So we then said, okay, as the business grows,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: we're going to continue to investment, not just in the education.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: We're not going to take it up to invest in
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: them so they can run there, they can they can
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: develop and grow their businesses. So as we started to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: do that, then we started to recognize how much greater
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the need was than what it was that we even
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: thought when we started it, which then started to get
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: to thinking, well, we've built we've not built value in
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: this business, right, We've built significant value here. We need
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to unlock that value so we can go and continue
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: this work of building out an economic infrastructure for the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: women in our in our in our communities. Right. And
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: so that's that was the impetus of that thinking. So
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: we started to think about it that way and say, okay,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: if we do this, that now allows us to go
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: create twenty shame oistures, right to go to go support
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: twenty shame oistures, and and how many lives can that
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: transform and and change? And so that was that was
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: that was the impetus for us. It hadn't been done before,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: certainly not at that scale, right, And because of the
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: scale it was done at, it became very public. You know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: we're not we're not very public, but because of that,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: it became it became very public. And there were sort
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: of three sides to it, right. It was the one
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: side of, well, you know they're selling out right, they've
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: they've they've sold out right, you build something and then
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and then they sold that and and we should we
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: should probe what that means. Right. Then the the other
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: side of it was great, this is fantastic because we
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: don't see we don't see this. That was not as
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: loud as the you so you saw that piece, right,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And then there was the there was the yeah, I
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: hear what you say you're gonna go do, but I
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: don't believe it. Right, This is this is marketing, this
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is this is this is talk. Right. And so we
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: actually did what we said we were going to do,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and we can we continue we continue to do it.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: And for those that were excited and motivated and inspired
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: by it, I think we saw we saw a huge
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: uptake in businesses that were then thinking about hey, how
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: do we how do we become multi generational? Right? How
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: do we how do we come how do we create scale? Right?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So here's a pathway to scale, like like Shaane Morshure
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: has shown us how you can scale. And so you
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: saw then saw a ton of companies starting to do that,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and we can unpack that as well. And then there's
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: still the contingent that was very skeptical, right, and and
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and I think in a lot of ways had been
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I had been disappointed so many times before right around
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: products that they thought, hey, you know when when when
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: this company was doing this, they were focused. I mean
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: they went watering down the products. Product. Something change, something changed,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily the case. I'm not here to
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: say that you know, things don't change over time, because
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: they do. But there's a there's a physiological change that
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: happens in the human body. Right, So when you're twenty two,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: where your hair needs are are very different from after
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you've had a baby, and you know you've you've gone
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: through certain life stages and then you move on, you
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: go on, and so then it's so so part of
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that is the journey of the human being themselves to say, hey, oh, No,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: this changed because it's not working the way that it was.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't necessarily mean that the product change. The
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: human changed, right, And in some cases when you do
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: sell to these companies and that in some cases, in
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: most cases, they're finding ways to maximize their return. So
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: they're saying, Okay, were this company, we have this scale,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: we can change this, change that, and we can, and
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: we can, and we can get a bigger return.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: We changed this ingredient might cost as much, we get
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: more revenue if we add this one.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: So let's have this conversation so that there's a three
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: pound Let's have this conversation a very black and white format.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: There's a narrative that when black businesses sell their company
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: that they've sold out, right, Yeah, and you've been you've
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: sold the company, but you've also invested in a lot
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: of companies that have been purchased.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And sold more companies. Okay, yeah, meel Mayo Mayo. That
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: was someuming.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: That was a recent one that was very you know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: being on Twitter, but an incredible couple of right money,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: the most incredible definitely. So let's really examine this on
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: several different levels, right, Like the idea that we we
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: can never have generational wealth because we always sell out.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: You don't see, that's not how generational wealth is created.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: But I'm explaining each one, you know, all right, So
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: that's the first GOT three.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I'm a little passionate about that. That's the pain point.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: That's the first one. That's the first one. That's the
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: first critique is that how can we ever have generational
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: wealth if we if we're selling out, we don't have
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: anything to pass down with your critiques to.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: That, Well, look, I think there's history is littered with
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: black owned businesses that thought that way, waited too late
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: to take advantage of the wealth that they had created, right,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and are no longer around. Right, And they're not around
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: for a whole host of reasons. Right. Market dynamics change.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: The biggest part of this, and the common thread is,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this hopefully a little bit later,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the grace that is not given to the black entrepreneur, right,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: which then takes away the opportunities that the black entrepreneur
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: could earn. Right, So most of these companies don't have
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: access to capital. To thirty thousand dollars, right, what about
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to thirty million dollars? Right? There's probably ten fifteen black
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and businesses that you can that you can point
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: to that have raised more than fifty million dollars. Even
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: if that I'd be surprised, right. But the challenge with
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: that is that, say you were building something in the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the seventies, and there's plenty of examples. There were great,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: great brands in the seventies, Brown and Brothers, Luster Products,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Johnson Products, TCB like you can go on and on right,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And these these brands our mothers and grandmothers grew up
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: on right. Many of them had the same idea of
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I'm going to pass this down from one generation to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the next, right, and they did that. And when demands change,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: when tastes change, not all kids are equipped to run businesses.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Just because I had this child doesn't mean that this
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: child can now do the things that I did. And
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: is it even fair to put that burden on a
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: kid whose true calling may have been to be a doctor, right,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: or to play a sport or to But now you
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: have to be tied to this business because we created
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and this is how the family survives. Right. Many of
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: those businesses made it from one generation into the second
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: generation and then failed, right, Not necessarily not just because hey,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the second generation can do it. But it's a multitude
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: of things. Let's say the second generation was exceptionally running
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the business. Right. Now you've built a business and this
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: was one of the things that kept me up at night.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Now you've built a business that's gone and taken share
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: away from a multinational corporation that believes that they own
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: that shelf space, right, and who's who's who's whose infrastructure
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: is set up to compete to maintain that shelf space
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: against competitors that have the same scale, in the same reach, right,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: that have the same resources, the same the same paths
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: to market. Right. That's how they're set up. I'm not
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: saying they sit down and think, oh, here's this small brand,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: let me go kill it. But their machine is built
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to either eat or kill anything that comes on that
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: on that shelf space. So now I'm generation two. I've
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: now broken in. We'll use a brand like RS organic
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Roots Stimulator. Perfect example. Organic Roots Stimulator came out of
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: soft Sheen Carson and Softing Carson built a beautiful brand.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: They actually sold that brand to Laurel. They were one
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of the first ones to sell to Lrel. I mean
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: is to sell to a multinational, right, and the Sun
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: started up a second brand called RS Organic Root Stimulator, right,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: and it took off. Right. So Gary obviously highly one
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: of the most competent people I've ever met. Right, But
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: now you've got to go compete against Laoreel who owns Softsheet, right,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: or you've got to go compete against Panteen, Or you
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: got to go and compete against Cream of Nature or
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Revlon or whomever it is. Right. And they have access
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: to capital, they have the infrastructure to produce at scale.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: They've been doing it for you know, forty fifty some
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of them one hundreds of years. If you look at
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: a p ANDNG, it's like hundreds of years. And so
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: how do you compete against that when you can't go
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to your local bank and get a twenty million dollar loan, right,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: or go to a fund and get a fifty million
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: dollar investment to go scale a business like that, Right,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So you run into these structural challenges. Right. So you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: have two things. You have, Hey, does the next generation
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: actually want to do it? And if the next generation
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: can actually do it, are they going to have access
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: to the resources in the capitol to do it? And
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: when you come from our community. If you've built a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: business that's doing ten million dollars a year, twenty million
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: dollars a year, thirty million dollars a year, that oftentimes
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: is probably the largest black owned business in your neighborhood,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: in your community, maybe even in your state. Right. And
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: so as a community we look at it and say, wow,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: they're doing so well, and they're so you know, they
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: they've gotten so big. But to the broader marketplace, that says, hey,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you guys have unlocked something here that is taking away
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: shelf space from my business. I need to either acquire it,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: or I need to knock it off, or I somehow
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: need to compete against it, because that's how we survive.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: And so you end up now in an environment where
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you may be a big fish in our world, but
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: when you hit the when you hit the larger world,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: it's it's a much it's a much different game, and
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: it becomes much much harder for these companies, for our
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: companies to compete. And then the other problem that we
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: have is talent. Right, So, if you think about what
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: it takes to become a an executive inside of a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of a corporation, right, the investment in your education, right,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the student loans that you have, the uh, the investment
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: in self development, the things that you have to go
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: through in those in those organizations, because many places you
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: don't feel a sense of belonging, you don't have the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: same levels of mentorship, it's not the same access to
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: to getting pulled up. So you're you're you're clawing your
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: way up every day. Right, you have to be, as
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: our parents used to tell us, you got to be
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: six times as good as the next guy just to
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: get to first base, right, Like, you've got to literally
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: be that much better. Right. And then you think, well,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I'd love to go work for a block owned business, right,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And you stop to think about it and realize, hey, yeah,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that business may not be able to get the capital
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: that is going to take to get from point A
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to point B. So now what I've done is I've
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take a risk on all that I've
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: built here, on all of the uh the cost of
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: my education. Right, I now have two kids that I've
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: got to put through through college or or or other
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: other sort of familiar obligations. And so then the really
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: great talent starts to think, well, that's just too much
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: of a risk because I don't know if that company
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: can survive, right, I don't know if they can get
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the capital that they need. And we're seeing that all
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: around us today. Right, So that's that's that's that's the
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: other thing that goes into that into that mindset when
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: you talk about going from one generation to the next, right,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: it's like how do how do you do it? And
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: there's a reason that so few are able to do it?
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So and then also talk about like how public opendon
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: can actually sway even the future valuations of a company,
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Like if somebody's getting targeted on Twitter, like the next
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: person that sells their company, the company that purchases that
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: is going to say, Okay, well I'm gonna have to
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: buy it at a discount because I know that there's
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: gonna be backlash. Yeah, right, So that's actually hurting black founders.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: It hurts, It hurts trumental.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't just hurt black founders, it hurts the black
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: community period because I think what we don't we don't
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: truly one of the things to really appreciate and understand
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: is what impact can a business or does a business
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like Mael have on their community in Indiana? Right, the
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: jobs that they provide. And it's not just the jobs
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: that they provide, and and and and the income that
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: they make, but it's also that you're in a safe,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: comfortable environment to work in, right, And that is that
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: is priceless, Right. But I think what to getting back
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: to your point, I think today many entrepreneurs a driving
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: factor and why they want to sell is because they're afraid, right,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: They're afraid the things that I just talk about. Am
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: I going to be able to get the capital to continue?
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Am I going to be Is the market going to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: change on me? And I'm not going to be able
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to react? Am I going to be able to get
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the type of talent support that I need to run this?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: And more than anything else, if my community turns on me,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: am I going to be able to stay in business? Right?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: And recently we've seen examples of where the community turns
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: and the business can't recover or the individual can't recover,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: therefore the business can't recover, right, And so I think
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you you put those you put those factors in there,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and it's a very very it's a very very harsh
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: environment for black entrepreneurs, right because the places that you
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: should find comfort oftentimes you don't you don't get that comfort, right,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: you don't get that grace, you don't get that you
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: don't get that forgiveness, right, and you don't have the
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: access to the things that can help solve the problem. Right.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: So it's it's a double it's a double edged sword.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: But I believe a lot of I mean, when we
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: I give you the reasons why we did what we did,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and we caught a lot of backlash for for selling, right,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and when we were selling the business, were very clear
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and saying we're going to unlock wealth to invest in
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: in in black businesses. And I think to date we've
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: probably invested more in black businesses than just about any
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: fund out there. There you're up there.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, the fear sounds like it comes from the
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: grace conversation, right, or the lack thereof grace conversation, because
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: we're not afforded the ability to make a mistake because
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: of that, if we do, what will happen? Right, or
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: I might sell because I'm at the point where I
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: haven't made the mistake. So let me get out while
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: in my head, Yeah, what what I mean, You've You've
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: invested in a lot of businesses you've seen them not
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: be afforded that lack of grace. What do you say
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: to both populations, the people who are not extending it
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: into the entrepreneur who's actually living in it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, I think I think it's where we're getting
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: to a place in our society where we're forgetting that
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: the only way our ancestors got through this environment was
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: by loving each other, right, and and that's the only way.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: That's that's and that's that's what we need to that's
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: what we need to stick with, right. It's we can
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: be we can be critical, right, especially if that is
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: to help you get better. There's there's no there's no
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I mean I take it all the time. I enjoy
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: learning and saying hey, oh I missed that, Oh we
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: could have done that better, Oh we should do this.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: This is differently, right, That's different from when there's sort
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: of this it's it's so venomous that you can't see
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: past it that that you then the message gets lost, right,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: and now it's it's it's fight or flight, and you
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: get you get defensive and and you lose it. I
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: think that there's a way for us to help each
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: other get better through through love and care and hard conversations. Right,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: You've got to have the hard conversations, but it's not
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: always this sort of black and white thing, right. So
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: that so that's that's that's the way that there's like.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: I guess it's a reconciliation moment, right, Like there must
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: be internal healing because the criticism a lot of times, yeah,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: it can be fair and you can learn from it,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: but when it's vile and there's no idea of hey,
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: if that gets torn down, you know, there's not not
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: anything coming after it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't do you.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like that's not part of the
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: consciousness of that population that is creating that.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts? I mean, I I think it's
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I think for people that say that or that that
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that behave that way, I don't think they understand how
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: hard it is to actually build these things, right, And
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: even if they understand how hard it is to build it,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: it is it is imperative that you still try to
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: preserve what it is that's been built. Right. There's you
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: don't need to burn this down to go build something else.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I look around at other communities, I look around in
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: other places. That's not what I see happening, right, And
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: so it used to be that we could take comfort
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: and solace, we can retreat back inside, get our strength,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and then go back out and fight. Right, if we
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: get to a place of where, you know, there's nowhere
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: for me to retreat, right, there's there's no where, there's
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: nowhere to take solace, there's no way to regroup, there's
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: no way to to recuperate. Right, there's no safe environment.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Because the community that I've built is Look, I've I've
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: met tons of entrepreneurs, We've invested in tons of them.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: We spend a ton of time with them, like like
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: we do with each other, talking about hard things, talking
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: about challenges, how do we work together, how do we
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: how do we figure this out? How do we how
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: do we move forward? If that's not what we're fostering,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: then we've got no chance.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: So but yeah, more like let's let's break this down
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: a little bit more as far as the grace that
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: black businesses are not given because a company like Meta,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: you know, has billion dollar lossuit where they were actually
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: selling people's data and nobody actually unstalled Instagram, Yeah, or
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: you know Apple, you know has glitches every single iPhone
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that comes out right and purposely messed it up. As
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: far as for Android users, there's not a mass to
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: get rid of iPhones. When Mercedes Benz has a recall,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: nobody stops buying Mercedes bins. But it's like a T
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: shirt comes three weeks late, and it's like you make
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: a TikTok video to actually bash the company and say
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: how poor And this is why you don't buy from
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: black businesses because black people don't know how to handle
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: business the right way. So like explain that, because that's
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: that's the level of not only grace that's not given,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: but it's it's it's campaigns that's run out of the
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: enjoyment of seeing people fail when that same energy is
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: never put into organizations and companies that have historically made
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: ten times worse of a of a of a blunder,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: yeah than somebody mismanaging, you know, things on a small
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: business level.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, I I don't know what the solution is,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: but I can tell you there's a lot of mistrust
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: in our community, and some of it earned and some
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: of it not right. But the way that I choose
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to live, and I I think the way that is
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: grace is that word is that word grace because the
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: challenges that those businesses are facing and those individuals that
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: are running those businesses are facing just to get that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: product on the market that you're so proud to see
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: when you see it, like when you see that T
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: shirt or you see that dress, or you see that scar,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: or you see that shampoo or that like the pride
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: that you feel because you know how hard it is
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to get it there. Right, the grace has to be
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: come in to help us sustain it, you know, it
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: has to come in to help us pick it up
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: and grow it right, and not when it becomes successful.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: You know, just because somebody's business gets successful doesn't mean
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: that they stop caring about the people that they've always
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: cared about. Doesn't mean that they stop wanting to solve
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: the problems that they're solving right now, dealing at a
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: whole other level, what a whole other set of problems
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: that they haven't dealt with before, and that they may
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: not have a network around them that has dealt with
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: it before, So they may not have the good fortune
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: of you being able to pick up the phone and
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: call me and say, hey, rich here's what I'm dealing with.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: How do we how have you solved it right? How
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: do you get to it? They may not have that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: around them, right, They may not have that person in
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: their organization that has run a business like this somewhere
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: else and has that expertise because of what I said
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: earlier is the risk of people coming over and that
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: gets that becomes a very lonely place, right. So now
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: you're seeing women saying and men saying, hey, you know what,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to shut it down. I'm just I'm
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: just gonna pause right because I can't. I can't do it.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: And that's not what our community wants. That's very detrimental
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to our to our community actually out of time where
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: we're under pressure from. So like we're talking about unemployment
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: rate is seven point seven percent for black people right now, right,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: that's double right, what it is for the white community.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: Right six hundred seven hundred thousand women losing their jobs,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: are being displaced from their jobs. That's real economic pressure
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: that we're feeling. Right between the unemployment, the direct loss
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: of DII means that the contracts that you were able
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: to go bid for on a on a on a
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: more even playing field, you can no longer bid for
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: in a more even playing field. And that's got nothing
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: to do with race. It's got to do with economics.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: If I don't have the capital to put the presentation together,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: to drive the programs to build the infrastructure, I'm not
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: going to be able to I'm not going to be
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: able to win that. Right. Then you add in their
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: you know, healthcare, right, and the cost of what that is.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: So you take a population that has a high unemployment
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: rate that's now losing its businesses. You add in that
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: we're disproportionately impacted by these health issues. Right. So now
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: you know every time I got is going to just
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: helping me stay alive or taking care of my mother,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: or taking care of my father. And you start to
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: add these things together, and we're ending up in a
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: place of extreme economic destabilization.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: And so all of that coming together puts a lot
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: of pressure not just on not just on the business,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: but on the individuals.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: Is that forecast a population that is predominantly going to
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: shy away from entrepreneurship careers. We had a conversation about
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: AI and the impact that it's going to happen. How
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: at some point everybody's going to have to have an
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: entrepreneurial journey based on that, it feels like, No, that
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: doesn't seem like it's going to be the path. In fact,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: there's going to be more of us that are going
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: to be employees after employee after employee.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's where we're headed unless
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: we course correct, right, and we've got a course correct
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: internally right amongst ourselves and within our community, so that
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: we can go out right and go and go fight
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: for these things to go go out and fight to
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: get the capitol, go out and fight to get the
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: shelf space, go out and fight right like we've we've
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: got to fix that internally. And quite frankly, you know,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that this is an overwhelming part of
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: our community. I think it's a small part of it,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: But I think it's a loud part, right, and so
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: it becomes something that you you you can't get away from.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: But there's also lessons to be learned in there, right.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: It's it's not to say, hey that these things don't matter,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that there's lessons to be learned in there.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it's the vocal, vocal minority of us, yeah, but
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: I mean as far as the but it's it's harmful
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: no for sure. Even that, yeah, mentioned the more employees.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we're can have more employees because unemployment.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: To talk about that, talk about the disproportion as far
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: as black unemployment white unemployment, how alarming that is? How
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: you know your thoughts on that?
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean it's it's the gap is growing
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: wider right right now, it's it's two x plus, right,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: and that that gap is growing wider.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: So there's two times more black people that's unemployed than
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: white people as a percentage. Yet as a percentage, it's
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: like eight percent of black people.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: It's seven point seven, seven point seven, seven point eight
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: depending on what they a round it to eight.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like four percent of white people three
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: point three point something.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: So black unemployment is two times that of white people. Yeah,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: and it's growing.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's higher than every other group too. It's
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: higher than Latinas, it's higher than Asians.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Why is that? Because we know that per capita, black
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: women have the most college degrees.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: So why they have the most college degrees, but they
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: don't have an equal proportion of the opportunities right right, So,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and and for many that are in jobs, they're really underemployed, right,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: So they're not necessarily leveraging all it is that their
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: degrees give them all. It is that their experience give
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: them because they're now having to accept jobs that are
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: not necessarily on par with what their experience or their
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: expertise is. So it's it's not just the it's not
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: just the rate of unemployment, but it's also the rate
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: of underemployment.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: So how do we because in black men are losing
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: jobs that rapid rate. Also similarly, so education is not
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: dance obviously to solve this problem.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, right, I think education. Look,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I grew up in a world where everything was education, education, education, Right.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: We now live in a world where you can certainly
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: do tons of things without having to have all of
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: the rigor of the educational structure and the costs of
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the educational structure that we had. And you talk about
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: you know, you said you guys were talking about AI. Right,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you talk about AI and what that's going to level.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it always just comes
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: back to capital, Right, That's the thing is, it's I
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: can be the smartest guy in the world, the best
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: business guy in the world, if I can't get access
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: to capital to build a business, I'm just not going
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: to be able to do it right. Or I'm going
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: to be able to build a fraction of what it
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: is that I could build. And what's going to happen
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: is somebody else is going to see that fraction and
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: they're going to go build something that goes to the mood.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: So it boils back down to capital. Right, It's the
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: economics of it. And if you think about it, I
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: think like stats are like twenty twenty one, it was
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: like one point two percent of capital went to went
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to black businesses. Right today it's zero point three percent. Right.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: That's a period of five years, right, And that is
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: a dramatic decline on an already tiny number. If we're
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen percent of the population, right, and the investments
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: that come our way are less than one percent of
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the of the of the funds that are that are
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: being invested, then we're not going to be able to
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: build these businesses. And then the few that we do build,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: we have to make sure. So it's.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: It's alarming. It is alarming, right, And somebody might hear
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: was point four and now it's point three. It's one
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: basis point. But we're talking like in terms of billions
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: and millions of dollars that go to to black founders.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: I think the piece, the capital piece, is important. I
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: think the opportunity piece is equally is important. Right, Like
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: the capital buys opportunity, it buys opportunity, which what I'm saying,
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: which is why when we look out at the playing field,
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: who gives opportunity?
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: And if we attack places that give opportunity, then we
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: have none. Obviously, you guys have essence. We invest fast.
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: These are structural opportunities. We're bringing people together to create opportunities.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Talk about being mindful of losing spaces because you even
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: gave us education. On look, this institution is no longer here.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: This institution is no longer here. We're losing them fast.
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: We're losing them fast. You know, when I was coming up.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: There were there was no greater holy grail in the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: beauty world than Browner Brothers, no greater holy girl. Right
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: for I think brown and Brothers. Speaking of multi I
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: think Brown Brothers is in its third generation of operation now, right.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: And I just saw online on social maybe two weeks
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: ago that the Browner brother Hare Show is not happening
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: this year. That every hair stylist, every every black makeup artist,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: every designer, every that came out of the black community
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: in the seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands, Brown and brother
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: was where they got their start. Browner Brothers is where
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: they got access to customers. Brown That's that's where they
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: got their start. Right. For that to be happening is
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: devastating to us culturally and socially and historically. Right, there
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: are going to be people who never heard of it,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: who never missed it, who never but that grounding that
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: we had as a community is not happening this year. Right.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: And then there's you know, carl Fest last year, and
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: you can go, you can go up and down, up
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and down the list the losing these businesses, losing these institutions,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: and there's a mindset that can be, Yeah, business is business.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: It's not performing, it's not doing these things. No argument here,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: But the fact that we're in this place of where
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the things that we are culturally connected to are being
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: lost is something that we've we've got to do something about.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: So let's have this conversation.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: Essence Fest last year gotta got some negative backlash, do
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: you think that that backlash was warranted. How how do
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: you as a leader address that? What changes were made?
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: What's the roadmap moving forward?
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So look, when you're when you're building a business,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: and I've said this and we continue to do that,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: when there's backlash, there's always some reason for it. Right,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's not it's not now. The scale that
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: it gets, how it gets, you know, the way that
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: it travels, the misinformation that may come with that or
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: not come with that. You know, those those can be
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: dealt with individually. But to just say hey, no, there
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: was that's that's not That's not the way to think
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: about it. Is not the way that that we think
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: about it. I think there were there were some structural
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: challenges in terms of transitioning and building for growth. Because
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing that we're talking about earlier. Is
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: if you know, essence is the Essence is really the
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: only black owned platform, the essence of scale. Right, that's
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the only independent one. Right, It's it's either live nation
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: or ag or I mean, you guys know this. So
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: it's it's what we have left and and and what
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: is extremely important is that it is the home and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: it's the place that we can come to and love
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: on each other, right, and be with each other and
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: and and and enjoy being with each other, and we
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: can develop and we can grow. And that's that's why,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the essence festival of culture. Right. So we're
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: highly focused on the music. The music is still incredible,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: it's still still great. Three nights of incredible music. But
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: then there's also the cultural aspects that are now in
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: the festival. The Food and Wine Festival. Come and experience
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: black chefs, black owned vineyards and and and and and
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: spirits right and and come and get that whole experience.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: There's the Film Festival now where you come in. We
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: had over six hundred submissions last year. We're on pace
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to get that same amount of submissions this year. Come
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: and support the directors in our community, the filmmakers that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: all of and especially as Ai comes in, what's the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: new model going to be? So you get you get
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: all of that right. Then there's the Book and Author Festival.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I think we had almost sixty authors last
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: year doing signings and panels and and discussing their books
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and and and and and all it like so and
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: then it goes it goes on and on and on.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: There's beauty con where there's all the celebration of our beauty, right,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: whether it's the brands and the products, the hairstyles, the uh,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the master classes, the like, all of that. Right. So
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: the idea is to continue to bring to our community
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: the things that are that are most important to us,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: that that are that are grounding us, that we that
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: we're building on them, that we're driving, and then for
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: us to take ownership of that because that's that's another
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: big part of this is you know a lot of
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: people talk about our culture, right, but we're not always
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the ones that monetize that culture. We're not the ones
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: that benefit from it economically. So creating an environment where
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: that can happen is extremely important. And so that's the vision,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: right the vision, the vision is to really take all
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: of these pillars and provide them back to our community
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: or give our community an opportunity to platform themselves on there.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: So you have all the the the professors, you have
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: all you have, all the educators, you have, all the entertainers,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: you have, all the all of these different genres, the entrepreneurs.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: You know, we we we've done over a million dollars
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: in in pitch competition grants, right, So investing in businesses there.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: We have over four hundred black owned businesses that are
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: that are there, that are selling their products, that are
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that are getting exposure to almost you know, the convention
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: center will have somewhere between forty and fifty thousand people
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: come through come through every day, and we provide all
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: of that free right. So you know, any of these
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: other experiences there are some some charge of general admissions
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: for the entire higher Convention Center is free, right. And
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: it's I'm not talking about We're not talking about having
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: you know, like we're having top tier UH guests that
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: are teaching classes, that are talking on panels, that are
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: that are signing books, that are giving lectures that are
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: you know, last year we had Katanji Brown Jackson doing
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: a lecture. We had uh Oprah two years ago, we've
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: had Kamala Harris, we have so so it's it's this
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: idea of continuously giving back and reinvesting in our community,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: especially around our cultural anchors. You announced, did you know
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: we had all of that? Well, I know.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: The world knows you announced, and this is something that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: the world knows, but even I was confused to what
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: it really meant Tianna Taylor, who's having an incredible year
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Golden Globe, want to I mean obviously musician events, all
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: the things.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: It's super talented and credible.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: The chief curator of Yeah, of the entire event, explain
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: what that means, because I'm like, I don't rich runs it.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: So what does what does this mean? Yeah? Yeah, Well
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: so the first thing is I don't run it. There's
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: an incredible team that does that. But what it means is,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: so if you think about the future of me and
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: we should talk about this, what's the future of media? Right, Like,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: what's what's the future and how do brands legacy brands
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: that have served our community all these years. Essence is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: going to be fifty seven to fifty eight years old
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: this year, right, How's how does what has to happen
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: for Essens to be here another fifty years? Right? In
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: an environment where everything's changed, right that that you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: the facebooks, the instagrams, tiktoks, the that's the destination of
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: choice today, right, That's where that's where everybody is going.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: We don't own any of that, Right. We create the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: content for it, right, we make it hot, but we
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: don't monetize it. Let me rephrase that proportionately, we don't.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: So you can monetize YouTube, you can monetize Instagram, you
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: can do that. As a creator, you absolutely can. But
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: as far as the ownership and the wealth that gets created,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: and then the other thing, going back to your your
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: earlier question is they build it, they sell it, they
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: trade it, they take it public. Right, They're free to
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: do that, right, which means they can then take a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: look at what's happening now with and I admire the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: business acumen and the and the skill here of David Ellison. Yeah,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: second generation. Right, his father created enormous wealth right invested
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: in him in a small business called Skuidance. He proved
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: himself there, right, or did what he did there, earned
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: his father's trust, in some other people's trust, and then
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: now Paramount, then next thing, Warner Brothers. Right, they're able
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to do that because his father was able to capture
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: that wealth in oracle right, release it and move it forward.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: That's where we have to get to, because that's when
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: we'll be able to When you talk about true generational wealth,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: it's not just I build it and I give it
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: to my kids. It's I build it and I put
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: my kids in position to go build too, right. So
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: now they go build, they go build the next thing, right,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: another and I know we're going back. Was another model
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: that I'd love and talk about this all the time
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: is the Walmart model. Sam Walton builds an incredible business, decided, Hey,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: my kids for whatever reason, are not going to run
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: this business. Right. I'm going to go out and get
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the best team that I can right. I'm going to
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: put the best financial financial infrastructure together, right, and we're
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: going to continue to rock. But my kids now get
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: like they're like in the top ten of richest people
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: in the world. Right. There's different ways to do this.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: We just as a community haven't had and for a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: whole host of reasons, and I think we all know
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: what those reasons are, haven't had the opportunity to do
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: those types of spectacular things right. And so it's going
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: to take one of us, two of us, five of us,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: ten of us doing it, doing a consistently over a
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: period of time for it to become natural to us
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: and for us and for us to understand it. Do
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: you think we're at that inflection point.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: I'll talk about this all the time about having grace
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: and black wealth transforming over the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. Well,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: you have more black billionaires. We don't know what second
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: rate generation looks like because we haven't gotten it yet.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: Most of them are well pretty much all of them
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: are first generation. So what do you they're all first generation.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: Do you feel like we're here now at that inflection, like, Okay,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: let's plan to build so that your kids can build
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: and so we can help.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's thinking that way. The next step is
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: going to be instituting the infrastructure that enables it to happen, right,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: And that's that's a hard thing to do, and that's
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: not one person can do that. It's going to take
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty forty fifty sixty one hundred people
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: thinking similarly and doing that right. Like I said, from
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: our perspective, it was, Hey, when we unlock this, we're
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: going to go invest in the best black businesses and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: black business minds that we can't and we're going to
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: try to provide them infrastructure. We're going to try to
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: provide them capital, We're going to try to provide them access.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: And we've done that and so now you have the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: maels of the world. Right, you have the honeypots of
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: the world. You have the Big Dave cheese steaks of
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: the world. Derek is right, you have the money points
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: of the world, you have the caribe of the world.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: You have and I could rattle off thirty or forty
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: of them. Right, That's how you start to build infrastructure, right.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: But you've got to invest in it, and it takes time.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: And I think these other people that are doing these
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: incredible things too are thinking similarly, right, But I don't
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: know that this next generation is going to be where
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: it's already. And then the other thing is everything that
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: we knew about business is out the window. It's nothing
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: that you knew about business five years ago that you
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: should be relying on today because it's all gone. Right.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: If I were to tell you five years ago that
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: sky Dance would own Warner Brothers, right, or that twenty
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: years ago that Amazon would own what's the studio they
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: know they own they owned one of the large MGM, Yes, right, MGM,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: as well as owning Whole Foods. Yes, I had told
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: you that Amazon was going Whole Foods. If I had
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: told you that Navidia would be what it is today,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: and IBM would be where it is today, you would
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: have been like, you're crazy. You wouldn't be sitting here
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: exactly right. So the point is, like everything that we know,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: we have to we have to be thinking differently and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: we have to throw it out and start over. So
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: part of what's good about that is that our people
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: are thinking about the future. You're now building infrastructure on
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: new technology and new thinking, right, So that's good. The
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: part that is going to be hard is that those
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: people have already hit escape velocity. Right, They've already done it,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: and they're now on to the next thing. When you
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: talk about the black billionaires that exist, or even the
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: black millionaires that exist, what we should be concerned about.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: What I remain concerned about is the black woman who
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: graduated Spelman seven years ago has gone out and gotten
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: some experience at a at Pfizer and now has an
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: idea on the next miracle drug, and that she gets
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to bring that idea to life. Right, That's
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: That's where I'm concerned, and that's where I think we
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: really need to build the infrastructure so that that can
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: happen at scale. We got to business.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: I'll never let you get to tell us what tis
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: a business does that I get excited about that.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: Tiana is one of the most incredible human beings I've
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: ever absolutely right, and and she has been a part
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: of the Essence journey, or Essence has been a part
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: of her journey from Jump right over the over the years.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Lots of love, lots of support, and everybody at Essence
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: is so proud of the journey that she's that she's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: come on. And as we think about what the future
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: is going to look like, when we think about, hey,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: we've got this brand that means so much to so
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: many people, right, who are the people though that truly
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: embodies the brand, it's Tiana, right. And so to say
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: we're now turning this platform over to our community, right,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: We we're building infrastructure so that people can be successful
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: on this infrastructure. They can bring scale to this. To
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: this infrastructure, we can leve rich the scale that we
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: have as a media company. If you compare Essence to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: the to the giants, we're nothing, right, But if you
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: compare us to our community, we're it. Right. So to
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: be able to take the infrastructure that we have and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: now put people on our platform, people that can take
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: it to the next level that can that can that
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: can drive it. I'm not saying that, you know, I'm
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: not putting that pressure on Tiana. That's that's what it is.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: That's that's the vision that we have. Right, and now
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: for Tiana is to come in and take a look
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: at the festival. How do we make it better? Right,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Let's get let's get different, a first set of eyes
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: on it, right, help us make it better? Right? Everything
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: from how it looks to how it feels, to what
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: the themes are to to what should what should the
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: place smell like? What should it feel like? Right? And
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: we're not asking her to do it all on on
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: our own, like, hey, come right, it's there's an infrastructure here,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: there's teams here, she's got a great company and aunties. Right,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: She's done this time and time again. Is not like
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: she hasn't done it right, but now she gets an
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: opportunity to do it for something that she cares about,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: something that she she got an opportunity to be a
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: part of from early on in her career. And we're extreme,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: we're extremely proud of it. And and so even some
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: of these conversations that we're having is like she and
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: I had to have like a real hard conversations because
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: she wanted to make sure, Hey, what am I getting into? Right?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Are you? Are you guys really serious about this? What
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: is the what is the what is the plan, what
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: is the path, what is the what's the journey going
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: to look like? And so so we had those conversations
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: because I think the other thing in business and and
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: and like with family is if you shy away from
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: the hard conversations, you're never going to be successful because
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: eventually they will pop up in some other way. Right,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: So we had we had some great conversations and we're like, Okay,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: let's let's go. Our community deserves us. So we're excited.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: We're excited for her to be doing this. She's you know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to have other folks join uh in these
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: different capacities like the book festival, Like let's get somebody
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: who's really transformed the book industry, like like the the
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: the way we think about literature, the way we think
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: about community, the way we own community. Let's let's have
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: let's have somebody that can that can think about that
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: as well, right, and then connect with with the vision
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: and the mission and all those things. So we're we're
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: excited about it. And you'll see that same thing with
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: with with beauty con on the beauty side. I mean
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: this mic right up in your face. I'm not used
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: to this, you know, I like to talk, but damn
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: you so. So it's it's really getting into all of
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: these things that we call cultural pillars and making sure
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: that we have fresh minds on them, that we have
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: people that are actually moving the culture, that are impacting
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the culture a part of developing it for our community, right,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: because that's super, super important.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: There was a conversation about critique of Africans and African
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Americans and the infrastructure of Essence being African driven and
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: the audience being African American, and that was a that
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: was a critique on Essence Fest last year. Yeah, what's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: your thoughts on that?
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Well, that's not true, right, that the infrastructure is not
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: African driven. The infrastructure is black driven. Right. It is
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: it is it is focused on serving black women, right,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: which are overwhelmingly Black American women. Right. And we are
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: focused though on our culture broadly, right, because I think
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: that the notions of separation makes us smaller, right, The
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: idea of expanding how we think about each other, the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: things we can do to each other is what's going
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: to open up those opportunities and those broader, those broader
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: opportunities that we talk about. So it's not it's not, hey,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: we're we're we're focused on African now with effoc that's
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: that's nothing could be nothing could be further from the truth. Right.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: The organization, the structures that we've built, the teams that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: like everything is in service of this vision of how
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: do we put Black people in the best light we
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: possibly can on this planet and how do we give
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: them the maximum opportun tunity that we can, leveraging this
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: platform and leveraging this infrastructure. So we're highly highly, highly
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: highly focused on that, right. And the thing that you know,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: if you think about when Essence again you go back
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: to when Essence was formed, right fifty seven years ago,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of generations that Essence has served, and
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: every time a new generation comes in, there's a new
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: set of needs. We've got to create space for our children,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: right and for their children. Because again, when you talk
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: about this generational thing, if we're only serving the people
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: that started with Essence, then we won't be here in
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: another ten years. Right. But if we're serving the people
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: that started with essence, and we're doing that deeply. We're
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: providing her everything that she needs there, but we're also
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: serving her granddaughter in some cases now her great granddaughter,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and we're providing her what she needs. Then there's one
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: place for them that canvene. There's no other place like
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that on Earth. There's no other place for four generations
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: of black women to go and be with each other
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: and fellowship with each other, and love on each other,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: and party with each other, and eat together and travel
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: together and go all over and do it in mass
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: You can do it as a family, yeah right, you
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: can do it as a family reunion, But can you
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: do it with four hundred thousand people that have the
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: same sort of zest for you as a human being.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: That's the place to do it.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, it brings me to the point of the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: economic impact, right, Like when people think New Orleans, especially
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: people who are New Orleans, it's a part of the fabric, right,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: Like I yes, they had the Super Bowl a year.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Ago, and it was like, oh, that's a huge that
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: every ten years. Only every ten years, you're there every year.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: People understand like, yes, there's vendors there, but the amount
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: of people that you're employing the local businesses to travel
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: at the hotel. Talk about the economic impact because obviously
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: we have an event. People can completely not understand that discounted,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: not really appreciated, unpacked that from them.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's a big one. It's big. It's big because
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: it is. I think of things in terms of infrastructure,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: flywheel and scale. Right. The infrastructure that we continue to
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: build allows this flywheel to happen every year, right. And
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: what the flywheel does is millions and millions of dollars
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: directly into jobs during that week period, right, Talent, security, transportation,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: those are all those are all black businesses, right, or
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: employees that work for a business that gets paid because
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: essence is there and essence is investing in them. Right.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: So the scale of it, right, then the work is
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: in the hotel. It's like you go to New Orleans
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: and New Orleans is a black city, Like people say
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Atlanta's a black city. Yes, Atlanta is a black city,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: but it's not black light in terms of the population distribution. Right.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: And so you're bringing Super Bowl type economics every year, right,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: And we're not the super Bowl, We're not the NFL, right,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: we are we are a small to medium sized business.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: When you compare to the rest of the world, like
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: I say, if you said, hey, in black media, yes
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: we have some left. But if you compare to the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: people that we compete against, because our competitors are Live Nation, right,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: our competitors are are Aeg. Our competitors are Conde Nast
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: and Vogue and right, we're competing with Vogue to get
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: people on our cover. Right, we're not competing in fact
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: can Unfortunately we're the only ones left. Right, We're the
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: only ones left if you, if you and we have
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: an incredible issue coming out for Festival, which would be
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: our first one this year, and it's a double issue
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and we're going hard at it. But we're the only
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: ones of magazine, of magazine.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: Are you still doing magazine.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: It's just digital? No, we're doing We're still doing Magazi,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: physical magazine, still doing physical magazine.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: Does it even make sense to do physical magazines anymore?
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Economically it may not, but culturally it does, right because
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: where else do our women see themselves on their on
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: the on the cover, on the newsstand on a regular basis?
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: Where do our daughters see themselves in a physical space?
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: And now with with Ai coming. Lord knows what they're
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: going to be seeing, right, So where where else is that?
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: So it becomes extremely important. This is a place where
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: partners are saying, oh, we don't, we don't. We're not
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: advertising in in magazines anymore. Right, We're we're only now
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: doing digital, right, We're only doing we're only doing social
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: So as a cultural artific do we just let that go? Right?
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: That's why we need the support because we need our
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: daughters need to see themselves physically, right, they need to
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: as much as even as they say, you know, now
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: all the kids are on the phones, but every once
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: in a while, that kid wants to go outside and play, right,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: they want to go run around, right, they want to go.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: We have we have to be there for our kids, right.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: This has to be here two generations, three generations, five
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: generations from now. So that becomes extremely important. So that
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: means we've got to make money in other places in
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: order to make sure that that that that happens. Right.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: When when a young black star is coming up, who's
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: going to cover her? She's only going to get covered
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: once she's hit it big, But who's going to put
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: her in front of her community? Right? How is she
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: going to learn her community? How's our community going to
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: learn her? We saw three weeks ago, four weeks ago
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: the BAFTA Awards. Right, as long as we're in somebody
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: else's space, those things are bound to happen. We just
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: did Black Women in Hollywood the ninth nineteenth one, right,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen years. We've been doing it to celebrate our women
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: who don't get the same recognition. And even when they
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: get the recognition, they don't get the time. Right, it's
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: not consistent. Right, So you have a black woman in
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Hollywood that's there expressedly to make sure that she gets
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: the time, that they get, the that they get to shine,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: that they're that they're the focal point. Right. So I'm
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: very passionate about this stuff because it is what it
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: is that we have to do in order to live
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: up to why God put us here. Yeah, all right,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: it's a great room to be into. Amazing. We have
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: the privilegs. Well I appreciate them, but I don't. I
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't. We we we slummed that year.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: But it's it's an incredible thing, right and and and
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: and we need that. And then we have we have
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: black women in music at festival this year, so that
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: we're we're celebrating the women that are that are driving music, right.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: And it's not just the the the women that are
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: the incredible women that are performing music, but there's all
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: of these women that are actually making it possible for
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: music to remain true to our community and true to
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: our culture, right. And and they're they're in, they're behind
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: the scenes driving this stuff and they're doing big deals. Man.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: You know, the the women and the music and the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: ones that are hitting are hitting. Boy, you know they're
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're really running. So to be able
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: to to be able to celebrate them and be to
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: give them that platform, right to give them to be
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: able to create an environment where that love and joy
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: can be can can be like harnessed right. And and
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: then you leave there in your soul motor even for
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: you right, for you guys, for me, when I walk
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: out of that room, I can do anything. You know,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: that's true. We could do anything surround us with black women.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: Well, why thank you for coming. Definitely I think you
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: shed a lot of light and a lot of wisdom.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: So thank you, guys.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: I appreciate When is that since best August I mean.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: July July fourth weekend July fourth, July third, fourth, and fifth,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: and we may you heard it, we may extend a
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: day on Monday. We're not sure yet. It's it's the
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: demand has been it has been extremely high. So we're
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out do we do that or do
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: we sit tight and then do that next year. Probably
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: we'll see, but I think let's get it right this year.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: Let's get it right this year. Let's let's make sure
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: all the all the bugs that we had, make sure
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: all the issues are resolved, and then and then we
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: can start to expand further again. But it's it's an
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: exciting time and I'm really excited about about Tiana and
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: what she's going to be able to to do for
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: her community and help us deliver. I think I think
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: that's going to be out of this world. Yeah, well,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: I like I like to think that we called it
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: because we were honoring her last year, right, So we
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: honored her Black Women in Hollywood for for what she
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: had been doing. Yeah, well no, actually it wasn't. That
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: was the kickoff for her. Yeah, yeah, her, yeah, yeah
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I met her at Black
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: Women in Hollywood. Oh really yeah. And and the other
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: thing is, you know, to see that room, man, and
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: to see those women loving on each other and protecting
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: each other, it's it's really special. And then it's it's
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: the same thing at It's the same thing at festival,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: right and I and I think a lot of it
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: is people don't want to lose that, and they're they're
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: concerned also, like all with all that's going on in
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: the world, is is is just going to be here
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: all right? And I'm here to tell you it's gonna
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: be here all right.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: Do you have it?
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: And I will see you guys next week, please please,