Speaker 1: It's Friday, fustifoards the next day and we had not secured.
Speaker 2: All the permitted.
Speaker 1: Me and Brandon are literally running around. We had to
Speaker 1: get the fire department to sign off. And it's been
Speaker 1: at the very last minute. You know, folks on Friday
Speaker 1: in the government is they've taken off trying to get
Speaker 1: up out of there, So we were down to the
Speaker 1: last minute.
Speaker 3: Welcome to our Idea Generations All Angles, a podcast about
Speaker 3: culture's most influential brands and the teams that built up.
Speaker 3: If you're an entrepreneur, creative, or anyone interested in harnessing
Speaker 3: the power of collaboration, join me Noah Callahan Beveror each
Speaker 3: week as we dissect the most dynamic companies in culture.
Speaker 3: Because the only way to truly understand success is to
Speaker 3: look at it from all angles. Idea Generations All Angles
Speaker 3: is a Willer Media podcast. In twenty ten, Brandon mcahern
Speaker 3: and Marcus Allen through a hip hop centric Earthday celebration
Speaker 3: for the black community in Los Angeles, and in the
Speaker 3: decade plus that followed, that party would evolve into Broccolly City,
Speaker 3: a global brand focused on community, music, health, and culture,
Speaker 3: culminating at an annual festival in Washington, d C. But
Speaker 3: along the way, broccoly City would discover the challenges that
Speaker 3: come with running a festival, expand into digital content, and
Speaker 3: developed new exciting initiatives to make a positive impact in
Speaker 3: their community. On this week's episode of All Angles, we
Speaker 3: talked to co founders Brandon mcaheurn, Marcus Allen, and Darryl Perkins,
Speaker 3: creative director Hugo Cubias, and Chief of staff Jacqueline Austin
Speaker 3: to hear the intricacies of throwing a major festival and
Speaker 3: creating one of the most dynamic brands in music and culture.
Speaker 3: But before any of that happened, years before booking Future
Speaker 3: as a headliner or having the DC Mayor attend one
Speaker 3: of their events, there were just two best friends growing
Speaker 3: up together in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Speaker 4: My mother is a second grade teacher.
Speaker 5: My pops, you know, middle class dude, worked at the bank.
Speaker 3: This is Brandon mckahurn, founder and CEO of Broccoli City.
Speaker 5: They were also very very active in our church, in
Speaker 5: our church community.
Speaker 4: I think that's where I kind of got.
Speaker 5: A lot of my each one teach one type of
Speaker 5: mentality from was growing up in the church out there
Speaker 5: in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Down the street from Brendon was his best friend and
Speaker 3: future business partner, Marcus.
Speaker 4: I know Marcus my whole life. We grew up together.
Speaker 4: My neighborhood is pretty close to his, and we used
Speaker 4: to ride the bus together.
Speaker 5: I used to pick on him, he used to pick
Speaker 5: on me, but yeah, always been my friend.
Speaker 2: I met his mom first second grade, and then shortly
Speaker 2: thereafter I met him.
Speaker 3: This is Marcus Allen, co founder of Broccoli City and
Speaker 3: one of Brandan's best friends since childhood.
Speaker 2: He was a grade behind me. We got connected, you know,
Speaker 2: probably summer or second grade, summer third grade. At that time,
Speaker 2: they were still living like a little bit away. I
Speaker 2: think in fourth or fifth grade they moved close to
Speaker 2: where our elementary school was. That was really where we
Speaker 2: got like super cool and it really became a friend group,
Speaker 2: from sports to hanging out, to picking each other up
Speaker 2: to just the whole mine.
Speaker 3: The two stayed closed throughout high school, but eventually I
Speaker 3: ended up taking different paths for college, with Marcus going
Speaker 3: to North Carolina A and T, while Brendan went to
Speaker 3: North Carolina Central and Durham.
Speaker 5: In college, I actually was a part of the theater
Speaker 5: department there and acted in a couple of plays.
Speaker 4: I was like, Yo, I'm gonna do the Hollywood thing.
Speaker 5: I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I'm
Speaker 5: gonna do something in that world and in that realm.
Speaker 5: I graduated and moved back to Greensboro, like most of
Speaker 5: us do. You graduate school and you moved back home.
Speaker 5: And when I moved back home, I was watching Entourage
Speaker 5: every Sunday. I watched Asarage and then I had a
Speaker 5: homegirl who actually lived in La Right, so I'm watching,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Vinnie and Turtle, I'm watching
Speaker 5: all these adventures. I'm like, Yo, this shit is crazy
Speaker 5: fucking e you know what I mean, just like the
Speaker 5: whole thing, the ris of the world, the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Brandon had Hollywood dreams, and after visiting a friend in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, he knew he needed to move out west.
Speaker 3: So he packed up his things and hit the road,
Speaker 3: driving across the country in search of a new adventure.
Speaker 3: In Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: Man, I was super excited. I've always been the type
Speaker 5: of cat that's excited for like the first day of
Speaker 5: school or the first day you know, somewhere new, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So I was super duper excited.
Speaker 3: Taking the Southern Rape to get to California. The timing
Speaker 3: of Branda's trip could not have been worse, so we
Speaker 3: didn't know it he would be driving directly into the
Speaker 3: wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 5: I had went through Atlanta to pick up my older
Speaker 5: brother so he can ride with me most of the way.
Speaker 5: I came around like the Katrina Tom It was crazy.
Speaker 4: He had got caught in a.
Speaker 5: Huge storm, you know what I mean, off the back
Speaker 5: end of Katrina. I mean, when we pulled over somewhere
Speaker 5: in Alabama, we didn't have no gas, and then I
Speaker 5: ended up meeting these like super cool white boys and
Speaker 5: they were like, follow us to this gas station and
Speaker 5: they like, man, they pumped the gas for us, like
Speaker 5: all sorts of shit. And then I turned around and
Speaker 5: they were gone. I know that sounds crazy, but it's
Speaker 5: like the dead ass truth, you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean. Then I got to California and I
Speaker 4: ended up visiting my homegirl. I was like, wow, like
Speaker 4: this is where I need to be. Once I got here,
Speaker 4: I was like, yo, I need a job. And I
Speaker 4: ended up.
Speaker 5: Going on Melrose and I met somebody who was actually
Speaker 5: still my.
Speaker 4: Friends to this day shout out to my man Seed's.
Speaker 5: He worked at this store called Workmen's and Workman's It
Speaker 5: was on Melrose Avenue, and they were doing things like
Speaker 5: cossignment with like T shirt.
Speaker 4: Brands and things of that nature.
Speaker 5: Now, granted, I'm from North Carolina, so I don't know
Speaker 5: anything about you know, I don't know anything about none
Speaker 5: of this, you know what I mean, the hundreds, none
Speaker 5: of that shit, right. I just remember like being engulfed
Speaker 5: in this world. End up getting a job at the
Speaker 5: place called Workman's. I met Sees. He was from the
Speaker 5: East Coast, so we automatically just kind of vibed and
Speaker 5: he was like, oh, you just moved out here. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I just moved out here, man, need a job. Like,
Speaker 5: what's up, bro? I always been like personable when I
Speaker 5: was working in Workman's. I just got hip to the
Speaker 5: Los Angeles kind of culture.
Speaker 4: At the time.
Speaker 3: Labrinia was discovering the culture of Los Angeles. Marcus moved
Speaker 3: to Washington, DC to work in local government as a
Speaker 3: logistics coordinator. Even though the two friends were across the
Speaker 3: country from one another, they still talked daily, and soon
Speaker 3: they were both enamored by the buzzing streetwear scene. Local
Speaker 3: brands like Crooks and Castles and the Hundreds had brand
Speaker 3: his attention, and both of them wanted in on that energy.
Speaker 3: That desire would plant seeds for the two to develop
Speaker 3: their own brand, Broccoli City.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of other brands, the Hundreds, Crooks
Speaker 2: and Castles, but they were much darker in terms of
Speaker 2: their concepts. Like the look of it was Darkerhnny Cookcakes
Speaker 2: was very playful, it was colorful, it was it was
Speaker 2: a bit it was a bit more jovial, and that
Speaker 2: was kind of the brand that we were, Like Yo,
Speaker 2: Johnny Cupcakes, Like yeah, like Broccoli City, like we gonna
Speaker 2: be that.
Speaker 3: When starting a brand, one of the hardest parts can
Speaker 3: be deciding on a name that's worthy of your vision. Luckily,
Speaker 3: for Brandon and Marcus, they already had that on deck.
Speaker 5: I used to rap back in the day and I
Speaker 5: had said Broccoli City.
Speaker 4: In a rat one time.
Speaker 5: I don't remember the exact line or nothing, but something
Speaker 5: that rhyme with witty or something I'm from Broccoli City
Speaker 5: or something like oh shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's a vibe.
Speaker 2: He was in this little shitty band. It was like
Speaker 2: a hoodie and a blowfish. It was like the black
Speaker 2: rapper with the with the band, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Jim class Rod type ship. Right, it was that whole vibe.
Speaker 2: We were just outside one day and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: because we from the Broxi City, it's just like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: Broccoli City. That's hard. And then it was like, look
Speaker 2: different places. We would say it randomly.
Speaker 5: I remember actually going and visiting like New York and
Speaker 5: other places and people would ask me where I was from,
Speaker 5: and instead of saying Greensboro, I would say like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm from Brockley City and people would.
Speaker 4: Be like, oh, snap, you know what I mean, what's that.
Speaker 5: I kind of just carried the name with me through college,
Speaker 5: Like you'll have a friend from DC and you'll be like, oh,
Speaker 5: they're from PG County or they're from the district, and
Speaker 5: you know, I would say things with my little friends
Speaker 5: like yo, oh they're from.
Speaker 4: The brock Like, oh, they're from Greensboro.
Speaker 5: Brockley City is Greensboro, so like Broccoli is the green
Speaker 5: and then Borough is the city part, so it's Brockley
Speaker 5: City Greensboro. So when you met me, instead of it
Speaker 5: being Brandon, it was like I was building somewhat of
Speaker 5: a community. So I would introduce myself as like branding
Speaker 5: from Brockley City.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I'd be like, yo, brand in Brockley.
Speaker 5: City, but up and people would save my number as
Speaker 5: brand in Broccoli or Broccoli b or whatever the case
Speaker 5: may be.
Speaker 4: I always pushed it. It was always my.
Speaker 3: With a name in hand. Brandon looked to his new
Speaker 3: LA connections to help bring the brand to light.
Speaker 4: I ended up meeting this guy named Dee.
Speaker 5: He was like this Filipino dude, and he was outside
Speaker 5: of Workman's and he was like smoking a joint or
Speaker 5: something and he just.
Speaker 4: Looked mad cool. So I'm like, damn, like who is you?
Speaker 4: What the fuck you do?
Speaker 6: Bro?
Speaker 5: And he's like, man, you know I got a T
Speaker 5: shirt line. It's called Crooks and Castles, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. We got the T shirts in here and
Speaker 5: the T shirt was the Fasace mask with the ski
Speaker 5: mask on the face. I was like, Yo, this is crazy,
Speaker 5: Like so how'd you do this? And he like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is my company, Bro. I got a graphic designer,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I just I put it together and I'm like, oh.
Speaker 5: Shit, I said, make some T shirts like this say
Speaker 5: Brocoli City on them.
Speaker 4: I ended up just like talking to people trying to
Speaker 4: find like graphic designers.
Speaker 5: At this time, it wasn't like the my spaces and
Speaker 5: the igs and what was my space? But it wasn't
Speaker 5: like IG's and all that, so you couldn't just find
Speaker 5: cats the way you can find them now.
Speaker 4: I went to a spring print spot. It was in
Speaker 4: the Valley. I had like the regular Fine with just
Speaker 4: like Broccoli City on it.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean, Like that had have been
Speaker 5: times New Roman or some shit like that, and I
Speaker 5: took it to the screen shop to get it printed.
Speaker 4: I met this dude there. It was a Hispanic cat.
Speaker 4: His name was Fine, and he was there with this other.
Speaker 5: Dude named KB I mean, who was like a rapper
Speaker 5: at the time, and they had this brand called Ghetto
Speaker 5: Rock off.
Speaker 4: Of the common song. I was like, man, like, how.
Speaker 5: Much would you charge me to do, you know, to
Speaker 5: do a logo? And he was like, you know, I
Speaker 5: forgot what he told me, but scrambled up.
Speaker 4: I got the money. I paid him, and then he.
Speaker 5: Created the first like Broccoli City logo, and then I
Speaker 5: created like a website, you know, the whole nine.
Speaker 4: Because farn was super nice and all that shit.
Speaker 5: And at this time, I'm telling Marcus about all this
Speaker 5: stuff that's going on right like he's still on the
Speaker 5: East coast.
Speaker 4: I'm on the West coast.
Speaker 3: As Brendan networked and spread the Broccoli City name in
Speaker 3: La Marcus was in DC plotting on the future. Soon
Speaker 3: they were throwing their first Broccoli City parties and stumbled
Speaker 3: up on the inspiration for their first major event.
Speaker 2: We had been starting to have like smaller parties at
Speaker 2: like this spot called Center Space. We had started giving
Speaker 2: T shirts away. It was really to promote the T
Speaker 2: shirt line and to get more visibility, and we ended
Speaker 2: up giving a bunch of T shirts away. If you
Speaker 2: go back and look at the pictures and just look
Speaker 2: at the vibe, I mean, everybody from like Nick Cannon
Speaker 2: to like, you know, everybody who was popular in LA
Speaker 2: culture at that time some kind of way ended up
Speaker 2: coming to our events. Ultimately, we got hit up by
Speaker 2: earth Day Network, which is the organization that manages earth Day,
Speaker 2: the holiday. We ended up making some T shirts for
Speaker 2: them for like their thirtieth anniversary, and that was the
Speaker 2: first time we'd even heard earth Day, Like that doesn't
Speaker 2: even exist. In North Carolina at that time, right, So
Speaker 2: it's like Earth Day, Like, yo, what is this? So
Speaker 2: I ended up going to the celebration and it was
Speaker 2: on a National Mall in DC. It was like Usher
Speaker 2: Anita Baker and like all these big artists, but it's
Speaker 2: like no Black people there. But it was obvious they
Speaker 2: were like booking this for it to be multicultural, but
Speaker 2: it was like no people of color there. And I
Speaker 2: remember hitting b after that shit, like, bro, they had
Speaker 2: to shit the fucking National Mall. That shit was crazy.
Speaker 2: I see Usher da da da da, but it was
Speaker 2: no Black people out there.
Speaker 6: Bro.
Speaker 2: Like, I'm telling you, it's some shit with it, yo,
Speaker 2: we might need to do it. When to do a
Speaker 2: Black earth Day celebration.
Speaker 5: I remember hearing and learning more in depth about earth
Speaker 5: Day and what Earth Day represented, and I was like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, like you know, this is super dope, like
Speaker 5: a day that focuses in on community love, you know, sustainability,
Speaker 5: this that to the third I'm like, man, like why
Speaker 5: ain't nobody done that in you know, in the urban community,
Speaker 5: in the black community, right, And I'm like, yo, I'm.
Speaker 4: Gonna do a party during Earth Day, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying?
Speaker 5: Like that was like my thing because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's Broccoli City, so automatically, a lot.
Speaker 4: Of people thought that it was, you know, health driven,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because of the broccoli.
Speaker 5: They even thought it was health driven or weed driven,
Speaker 5: which I always used to think was hilarious, what makes
Speaker 5: perfect sense. But I always wanted to have some time
Speaker 5: a community element to whatever I did.
Speaker 3: Their passion for community health and the environment led them
Speaker 3: to planning an Earth Day celebration for the Black community
Speaker 3: in LA. While searching for brands to work with on
Speaker 3: the event, they ended up meeting a future partner of
Speaker 3: broccoly City.
Speaker 1: My parents were always very engaged kind of with social
Speaker 1: movements in the Bay areas.
Speaker 3: This is Darryl Perkins, co founder and managing director of
Speaker 3: Broccol City.
Speaker 1: I grew up around a lot of social justice activism.
Speaker 1: I think that was always I always saw myself doing
Speaker 1: something to help my community to be socially active. And
Speaker 1: I ended up going to Howard University, and I started
Speaker 1: as a business student, but I wasn't really feeling the
Speaker 1: business courses, but I enjoyed my anthropology classes and looking
Speaker 1: at how cultures changed, how culture and music played along
Speaker 1: with social movements back from the slave spirituals all the
Speaker 1: way to hip hop. The relationship between the two as
Speaker 1: social movements went from then to now, how music and
Speaker 1: artists played a large role in the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 3: Daryl's passion for combining culture, music and activism led him
Speaker 3: to work with a top leader in the environmental justice space,
Speaker 3: and was also about to lead him to working with
Speaker 3: Brandon and Marcus too.
Speaker 1: I was working with Carrie Fulton, who's actually a leader
Speaker 1: in the environmental justice movement, has been and continues to
Speaker 1: be Carrie Fulman. And we met through Carrie as we're
Speaker 1: doing outreach to different folks that were.
Speaker 4: Doing these Earth Day events. I remember those early.
Speaker 1: Conversations but like, oh, they're just doing dope stuff, and
Speaker 1: they saw it from a perspective similar to the way
Speaker 1: I saw getting again, folks that look like us, talk
Speaker 1: like us, making it cool to have these conversations about
Speaker 1: the environment, because at that time talking about the environment
Speaker 1: was not a cool thing to do.
Speaker 4: I mean it was you know, they.
Speaker 1: Saw them as not folks that look like us. You know,
Speaker 1: we're putting as tree huggers. There's just not us having
Speaker 1: these conversations. Well, at the same time, we knew how
Speaker 1: important that these environmental issues had on our communities, and
Speaker 1: so we understood that. And so the way that we
Speaker 1: saw that as well as to have the look and
Speaker 1: feel of something that I would want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it my friends who want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it, was very important. I was working on
Speaker 1: a campaign called Green the Block, and we were doing
Speaker 1: all these events around environmental justice, fighting power, and involution
Speaker 1: around the country. One of the things that came of
Speaker 1: that was we did all these Earth Day events all
Speaker 1: around the country, and Broccoli City was one of our
Speaker 1: flagship events. It was called the Global Cooling and I
Speaker 1: believe this was twenty ten, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Broccoli City now had a partner in place to help
Speaker 3: launch their first major event.
Speaker 5: I ended up getting that with them, and we end
Speaker 5: up calling this event Global Cooling right, because they you know, cooling,
Speaker 5: global Cooling bomb.
Speaker 4: It was downtown LA on Margot Street.
Speaker 5: It was healthy food vendors as well as musical acts right,
Speaker 5: and the acts that we had with everybody such as
Speaker 5: Dom Kennedy, you and I, Kendrick Lamar, and it was
Speaker 5: so much camaraderie. On the West coast at that time,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. We had dom headline, and
Speaker 5: it was right when he had dropped on West Side
Speaker 5: from Love from West Side with Love, so like he
Speaker 5: performed like nineteen ninety seven, you know what I mean, Like, Bru,
Speaker 5: this is for anybody who's in this world listening to this,
Speaker 5: I know they're getting chill bumps, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: BJ the Chicago kid, Casey Veggie's and anwar carriage. We
Speaker 5: thought we were gonna do two hundred and fifty people
Speaker 5: or whatever the case may be, but the joint ended
Speaker 5: up doing like five six hundred people, and at that time,
Speaker 5: like that's a lot of people. That joint was smacking,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. And then it was on
Speaker 5: all the blogs. This was like twenty ten when we
Speaker 5: put that first festival together. It was during that blog
Speaker 5: era time filming the recap and trying everything in my
Speaker 5: power to get it to like Mika.
Speaker 4: And them over it too dope boys, you know what I.
Speaker 5: Mean, because that was like the thing to get like
Speaker 5: your video on their blog. I ended up meeting him
Speaker 5: and he ended up posting all of our recap videos.
Speaker 5: That was kind of like the beginning of okay, let's
Speaker 5: turn this into something physical outside.
Speaker 4: It exceeded expectations for sure, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: For sure?
Speaker 3: For sure, even though Daryl had worked on these kinds
Speaker 3: of events before, working with Brandon and Marcus on the
Speaker 3: Global Cooling, it felt different.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's beautiful and you have a space and
Speaker 1: there's nobody there, and then you have a lot of
Speaker 1: people there coming together to celebrate Earth. It was powerful,
Speaker 1: but I think it was also our high moment in
Speaker 1: terms of we can bring people together in a positive space.
Speaker 1: It can be fun, it can be cool, it can
Speaker 1: be educational, it can be impactful.
Speaker 4: I think it was like, oh there's something here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there was a magic there. And then
Speaker 1: after it's done, the war just kept spreading like if
Speaker 1: you missed out, Like, man, you kind of missed something.
Speaker 4: I think we made a little money, but it wouldn't
Speaker 4: nothing to even talk about.
Speaker 5: It was like, oh, okay, we didn't go broke doing it,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Obviously I had to pay
Speaker 5: the ax, but I didn't have to pay it. What
Speaker 5: you gotta pay acts nowadays.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The Global Cooping was a huge success, and the team
Speaker 3: saw the potential for Broccoli City to grow, but they
Speaker 3: weren't sure that Los Angeles was the best home for it.
Speaker 5: So I'm thinking, Okay, you know what I mean, Let's
Speaker 5: do this again. This shit about the pot let's do it.
Speaker 5: But then just the finances became a thing because, like
Speaker 5: I said, everybody ended up getting signed.
Speaker 4: The landscape in Los.
Speaker 5: Angeles, you know, it still was a very clicks town,
Speaker 5: and I'm not really too heavily into like all the
Speaker 5: clicks and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So yeah, we had to like sit down for like
Speaker 5: a year and a half, like two years. May ain't
Speaker 5: really do nothing.
Speaker 4: Just try to figure it out, like what can we do.
Speaker 2: I was in DC. I was working government contracting. I
Speaker 2: got a job, but I'm active, like I'm in the streets,
Speaker 2: like I'm going out every night, like I'm partying, like
Speaker 2: I'm having a fucking ball, and I'm talking to be
Speaker 2: Because at the time, he's working for James Dubows as
Speaker 2: a PA.
Speaker 5: While I was working as a pdu duction assistant for
Speaker 5: a guy by the name of James Debos. I worked
Speaker 5: on like The Keisha Cole Show and some MTV shows,
Speaker 5: but I was just a PA, and for anybody who
Speaker 5: knows what a PA is, you're like the lowest of
Speaker 5: the lowest of the lowest when it comes.
Speaker 4: To like production.
Speaker 5: So like I was going and getting people subs and
Speaker 5: you know, making sure what no onions on that joint
Speaker 5: things like that, but also playing like an office manager too,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, to the production places and
Speaker 5: having to drive and drop off cuts.
Speaker 2: He's calling me every day with like printing out map
Speaker 2: quest just dropping off like reels and dropping off cameras
Speaker 2: to different people all over LA. And I'm sitting in
Speaker 2: my office with the door clothes and we're talking for
Speaker 2: like four hours a day, just like just talking shit.
Speaker 2: He just in the car. I remember just telling him
Speaker 2: and just talking to him, like, Yo, this DC shit
Speaker 2: is just like LA, It's just different. He like, Bro,
Speaker 2: you tripping. I'm like, fam cats are out every day
Speaker 2: till two three in the morning. The only difference is
Speaker 2: they got job and they wake up for their jobs.
Speaker 2: I'm like, Yo, they go out and they wake up though,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yo, they beat it their job at nine
Speaker 2: in the morning and they do that shit again the
Speaker 2: next day. I'm like, it's not even that popping on
Speaker 2: the weekends. I'm like, yo, it's all during the week
Speaker 2: I'm like, there's a culture here that people got money.
Speaker 2: I'm like, bro, we should do it here.
Speaker 4: He was like, yo, being we need to bring it
Speaker 4: to DC. Bro Brandon agreed.
Speaker 3: That a DC event was a great idea, but if
Speaker 3: they were gonna throw a party there, he would have
Speaker 3: to be bigger. So they started putting into motion where
Speaker 3: would become the first ever Broccolly City Festival.
Speaker 5: So on my side, I always have been the one
Speaker 5: to kind of go off and book the talent. And
Speaker 5: then Marcus on his side, he was building the relationships
Speaker 5: in Washington, d C. With a lot of like government
Speaker 5: agencies and things like that. He was very mixy in
Speaker 5: terms of building those relationships. Marcus ended up building a
Speaker 5: relationship with somebody he was like in real estate, and
Speaker 5: we were able to borrow some money from him to
Speaker 5: pay the acts.
Speaker 2: So my homie Nate shout out to Nate. I had
Speaker 2: been telling him what we were trying to do. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got somebody who probably be interested. We end up
Speaker 2: meeting at Ted's Montana Grill in Crystal City and I
Speaker 2: walk in Chuck Taylor's you know what I mean some jeans,
Speaker 2: hoodie or something, probably smell like weed done and smoking.
Speaker 2: The car I get in there, they got on suits.
Speaker 2: They're younger, though they're not like older guys, like they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, probably six years seven years older than us,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. But they suited, right, They
Speaker 2: very much in this DC suit culture.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: They start asking questions. I pull out a deck, start
Speaker 2: pulling out the budget, walking them through everything, and then
Speaker 2: a week or two later I end up hearing back
Speaker 2: from them. He was like, Bro, like you made me
Speaker 2: readjust how I view business because I was very turned
Speaker 2: off by you by the way you were dressed. But
Speaker 2: when you started talking, I realized how thorough and how
Speaker 2: much you knew what you were talking about. And he
Speaker 2: was like, it made me really get out of my
Speaker 2: mole of thinking, like judging a book by his cover
Speaker 2: and just being like, but this dude, don't got on
Speaker 2: a suit. He told me that, like, Bro, you changed
Speaker 2: how I approached business moving forward for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life. If I had just kept my guard up
Speaker 2: based upon how you looked and just all of that,
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't even have heard what you had to say.
Speaker 2: But you came off so much solid. It was just
Speaker 2: it was a thing. I definitely remember him saying that,
Speaker 2: I remember that whole that whole process of like getting
Speaker 2: an investor and paying them back with interest and like
Speaker 2: all of that. And I think they invest in like
Speaker 2: thirty five forty grand.
Speaker 3: With some investor money in their pocket to fund the festival.
Speaker 3: The team went out to book acts, vendors and secure location.
Speaker 5: Marcus, like I said, he handled all the operational stuff
Speaker 5: and then I handle all the talent stuff.
Speaker 4: Marcus ended up getting us the Navy.
Speaker 5: Yard, which was kind of a crater or whatever, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, you know, and it got them
Speaker 5: big ass bends up and things like that. Like they
Speaker 5: got him, they have him in different cities. He ended
Speaker 5: up locking that venue. Our biggest act that we had
Speaker 5: at the time was Big Crit. I booked Big Krit
Speaker 5: from I want to say, Johnny Snipes. At the time,
Speaker 5: Big Crit had just dropped. I don't know if it
Speaker 5: was Krit was here, I don't know what it was,
Speaker 5: but it was one of.
Speaker 4: Them joints that was nuts. It was like when Krit.
Speaker 5: Was that dude not saying that he's still like much
Speaker 5: respecting you, Krit, I'm still a fan. We had the
Speaker 5: likes of Phil I Day on there. I want to say,
Speaker 5: we had a Go Go band on there. Then we
Speaker 5: also had vendors, right, we had the healthy vendors. That
Speaker 5: was something that I was always big on, like just
Speaker 5: having healthy juices and things like that. I'm not the
Speaker 5: healthiest person in the world, but I always think it's
Speaker 5: dope to.
Speaker 4: At least provide the option, to be honest with you.
Speaker 5: I had never went to a festival before Brocoli City,
Speaker 5: so I never knew what one looked like outside of
Speaker 5: what we did. But what we did though, was We're
Speaker 5: gonna create this platform and give other people an opportunity
Speaker 5: to kind of shout on it.
Speaker 3: The first ever Brocco Lea City Festival launched on April
Speaker 3: twenty first, twenty thirteen, and featured acts like Big Krit, Scissa,
Speaker 3: and Jamison. They also posted yoga, art, pop ups, craft beer,
Speaker 3: and games.
Speaker 5: We thought we were gonna do like twenty five hundred people.
Speaker 5: We ended up doing like four thousand people. And the
Speaker 5: way it looked at the time was like, oh, shit,
Speaker 5: and the mayor came and shit, it was crazy. The
Speaker 5: mayor came and at that time we knew, oh, this
Speaker 5: could really be something like there's a there's a need for.
Speaker 4: This safe space, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: For people, it was a lot of women, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, And not saying that like, oh we
Speaker 5: got all the girls, but it was like for those
Speaker 5: who like wearing Jordan's but also you know, like wearing heels,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Like it's a very balanced crowd.
Speaker 5: It was everybody out there, white, black, Hispanic, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. If you were a fan of just
Speaker 5: music and good vibes, you were out there and it
Speaker 5: was super duper dope.
Speaker 4: It was super duper dope. And then that was the.
Speaker 5: First one that we actually called the Broccoli City Festival.
Speaker 3: The Broccoli City Festival had a ride. The perfect blend
Speaker 3: of rising artists, unique venders, and positive messaging made the
Speaker 3: festival a massive success. It also made the team hungry
Speaker 3: for more. As they began planning the twenty fourteen edition.
Speaker 3: They raised the bar even higher by making two separate festivals,
Speaker 3: one in DC and the other in Los Angeles. He
Speaker 3: was an ambitious move and one that would test the
Speaker 3: limits of the team.
Speaker 4: It's like, y'all, let's do it again, and let's just
Speaker 4: try to make it bigger.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: We had made a little money.
Speaker 5: With that one, but yet again we had to pay
Speaker 5: due back. But we actually stayed in relationship with him
Speaker 5: because he saw what we were able to do, right,
Speaker 5: so it was like all right, you know, So then
Speaker 5: we bawled just a little bigger bag from him the
Speaker 5: next time around, in twenty fourteen is when we actually
Speaker 5: moved to Gateway Pavilion, which was an old insane asylum
Speaker 5: in southeast DC. It was like dead smack in the
Speaker 5: middle of a hood hood.
Speaker 4: We did like five thousand people, five thousand.
Speaker 5: And seven thousand people. It was really like, Okay, this
Speaker 5: is a thing. And then that's when like the city
Speaker 5: of DC started reaching out to us, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, Like conversations started to change a little bit.
Speaker 3: The DC leg of the duo Festival was a total success,
Speaker 3: but the la iteration it was a little shakier.
Speaker 1: So we just finished one, right, So we finished and
Speaker 1: then we're going out to La. It's Friday Fusiboards the
Speaker 1: next day and we had not secured all the permitting.
Speaker 1: I remember me and Brandon are literally running around. We
Speaker 1: had to get fire fighters the fire department to sign
Speaker 1: off on so we're getting these these permitting. Then at
Speaker 1: the very last minute, you know, folks on Friday in
Speaker 1: the governments they taken off trying to get up out
Speaker 1: of there. So we were down to the last minute,
Speaker 1: but we got everything handled.
Speaker 2: That was crazy. Who's fools for that? When I look
Speaker 2: at how other brands have been able to grow to
Speaker 2: multiple cities. It was the right thought for sure, no question,
Speaker 2: was the right thought. The problem is we didn't have
Speaker 2: the resources right, Like, we were robbing Peter to pay
Speaker 2: Paul on one festival, so to do it for two
Speaker 2: was crazy. We did have the right mindset LA at
Speaker 2: that time. That's where we were supposed to be growing to,
Speaker 2: but we got an ass kick. Our venue was huge.
Speaker 2: We ended up selling like a good amount of tickets,
Speaker 2: but the venue was so big that it looked like
Speaker 2: it wasn't that many people. But going back looking at it,
Speaker 2: like all the right people from LA that became like
Speaker 2: made people like super influential ended up being at that event,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. So we were in the
Speaker 2: right path. We were in the right thought. We just
Speaker 2: did not have the resources as an independent brand.
Speaker 4: The LA joint was successful from like a people coming out.
Speaker 5: Wise part, you know what I mean, Like it was
Speaker 5: a good look, but the venue and all that felt
Speaker 5: like we could have got a better venue.
Speaker 1: The layout was so crazy that year because the state
Speaker 1: was on one side and the VFQ was on the full.
Speaker 4: Like this big ass kark. I remember that day.
Speaker 1: I looked how much I'd walked, and I'd walked over
Speaker 1: a marathon because we were walking back and forth. I
Speaker 1: did over twenty seven miles walking back and forth all
Speaker 1: day long. And I remember after I had never been
Speaker 1: more tired of out and I'm more tired.
Speaker 2: I remember throwing the shoes away, whatever shoes I had on.
Speaker 2: The bottoms of them were so black and just melted
Speaker 2: looking that it was just like yo, they're done.
Speaker 4: It was a wrap.
Speaker 1: It was quite a feat just to do it from
Speaker 1: coast to coast, but that was our last time at
Speaker 1: for now that we did that, especially in that short
Speaker 1: time frame we turned around.
Speaker 4: We were very ambitious.
Speaker 1: We definitely pulled it off, but it was super ambitious though.
Speaker 3: The team had pulled off the duel festival, but it
Speaker 3: left them exhausted. As they hit the drawing board to
Speaker 3: plan for the following year. They decided to refocus their
Speaker 3: efforts on a single event in DC. If Broccoli City
Speaker 3: was going to be a staple event in the district,
Speaker 3: then they needed to up the value proposition across the
Speaker 3: board through bigger bookings, better vendors, and more digital content.
Speaker 6: And I started a company called Simple Multimedia with a
Speaker 6: graffiti friend of mine.
Speaker 3: This is Hugo Qbs, marketing and creative director for Broccoli City.
Speaker 6: We just started and the whole premise was, you know,
Speaker 6: like we all were marketers, like keep it simple, right.
Speaker 6: You look at the best brands, they're always very simple
Speaker 6: and clean and easy to digest.
Speaker 2: So that was our premise.
Speaker 6: We're like, hey, you don't need to make your website complicated,
Speaker 6: you don't need to make your branding complicated. It just
Speaker 6: needs to be really clean and really efficient.
Speaker 2: So fast forward.
Speaker 6: We've been doing a lot of work since two thousand
Speaker 6: and nine. You know, up until like twenty fourteen, I
Speaker 6: was just you know, connecting with a.
Speaker 2: Lot of different people. I co called.
Speaker 6: The only person that I knew was a lawyer from
Speaker 6: my school, and I was like, hey, can you help
Speaker 6: me set up an LC And he's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 6: a real estate attorney. I don't really do that. You know,
Speaker 6: Like I was like, all right, cool, could you put
Speaker 6: me in contact with someone? So we started an open
Speaker 6: dialogue to come to find out he was a startup investor,
Speaker 6: so he was investing in a bunch of startups, like
Speaker 6: he was investing in like early seed and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: And then one of his group of investors were investing
Speaker 6: in Brocoli City, like they were one of the underwriters
Speaker 6: originally for Brocoli City. So like I had seen like
Speaker 6: the investment deck and what they were doing early on.
Speaker 6: He was like, Hey, I know you're not really in
Speaker 6: the investing space, but like I think, you know, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of really good synergy between what you're doing
Speaker 6: and what Brocoli City's doing. I was pretty tapped into
Speaker 6: like the DC you know kind of music scene, and
Speaker 6: you know, Marcus in Brandon in Brocoli City would always
Speaker 6: be like that kind of event that kind of stood out.
Speaker 6: You know, there was a lot of events here, you know,
Speaker 6: Howard Homecoming and a bunch of things that happened in
Speaker 6: the city that are kind of flagships that have you know,
Speaker 6: program and activations around that. Broccoli City really stood the
Speaker 6: test of time. When I started paying really close attention
Speaker 6: was like two thousand and four were teen fifteen for me.
Speaker 6: The artwork for those festivals were so different, you know,
Speaker 6: and so artistically creative.
Speaker 2: They just didn't look like anything.
Speaker 6: Else that was out there from like a music offering.
Speaker 6: I was like, man, like the Broccoli City people got
Speaker 6: it right. Twenty fifteen, I started event production company, so
Speaker 6: we got this warehouse in Sterling where we operated, and
Speaker 6: I'm just more focused on, like really folks working with
Speaker 6: certain brands like Brockly City and my own brands, and
Speaker 6: just working with some of these other clients. So that
Speaker 6: warehouse was really like an incubator for like a lot
Speaker 6: of stuff.
Speaker 3: Would Hugo bring a new perspective to Broccoli City. The
Speaker 3: team through a successful twenty fifteen campaign and were able
Speaker 3: to capture robust digital content to further grow the brand,
Speaker 3: but the team was starting to feel stagnant. Dozens of
Speaker 3: others festivals were popping up across the country, and many
Speaker 3: of them were booking bigger acts. If Broccoli City wanted
Speaker 3: to compete, they needed to lock in an a list
Speaker 3: headliner for the twenty sixteen festival.
Speaker 5: At this point, you know, you start noticing other festivals,
Speaker 5: you know, what I mean. You start looking at other
Speaker 5: cats and what they're doing, and like, how can I
Speaker 5: get some of these huge, huge acts that these cats.
Speaker 4: Have, And like I said, you know, you just try
Speaker 4: to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 5: And they also your consumers are looking at other festivals too,
Speaker 5: and they're like, yo, I love Broccoli City, but so
Speaker 5: and so got you know whatever that you just artist
Speaker 5: is at that time. But I think that we kept
Speaker 5: our community pretty good because you know, we just curated.
Speaker 4: We curated some pretty good vibes. To be honest with you,
Speaker 4: I never really had.
Speaker 5: Admirations to like build a festival, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: It was just more so about the community. I think
Speaker 5: that it helped because it got to like kind of
Speaker 5: show off our curation in a sense, just in terms
Speaker 5: of the type of acts that we were booking, because
Speaker 5: I could look at a festival and just be like, oh,
Speaker 5: they just had money.
Speaker 2: So twenty sixteen that was when like we had built
Speaker 2: up enough capital in the agent industry, right the agents
Speaker 2: knew who we were a bit our name was making bills.
Speaker 2: There was one agent, Caroline I think at the time
Speaker 2: she was working for ICM. This was at the start
Speaker 2: of Futures Rise. At that time, it was like you
Speaker 2: just got to get the right talent. It was like, yo,
Speaker 2: it was talent first and then work backwards. I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: It was around twenty fifteen Christmas time. I was doing
Speaker 2: a Christmas light like you know how you walk through
Speaker 2: the Christmas light little thing. I was with my daughter.
Speaker 2: She was very young, She's probably two years old. And
Speaker 2: I'm out there with my wife feet and were walking
Speaker 2: around and the calls me, like, yo, Caroline about to
Speaker 2: call me about future And she calls and I think
Speaker 2: we had put like a seventy five thousand dollars offer
Speaker 2: on there, which was more than we had ever paid.
Speaker 2: And she gets on the phone and she's like, yo,
Speaker 2: I just taught this futures management. They're willing to do it,
Speaker 2: but they need one fifty So this is well more
Speaker 2: than anything we had ever spent. So now I'm like
Speaker 2: walking away from my family right I'm at this Christmas thing.
Speaker 2: I'm walking away. I feel I feel my wife be
Speaker 2: like literally mad as fucking me, like because I'm wandering now,
Speaker 2: I'm casing because now because we got to make an answer,
Speaker 2: like we but we also can't look weak on the phone,
Speaker 2: because if she senses it's anything wrong with our money,
Speaker 2: then it puts us in a position to where she's
Speaker 2: not gonna have confidence. So I'm like on my phone
Speaker 2: trying to do math, trying to figure out, like, Yo,
Speaker 2: how do we make this work? And I remember like
Speaker 2: being on mute and I go back home and I
Speaker 2: was like, Yo, Carolina, can we get a little bit
Speaker 2: more time? I was like, but I think we can
Speaker 2: make it work. I just need to mess with the
Speaker 2: budget real quick. We'll call you back in like a
Speaker 2: few hours. So I called me back and I'm like, bro,
Speaker 2: and Bee's already feeling it. He's like, Yo, fature the
Speaker 2: biggest shit out here, bru. If we can get this motherfucker,
Speaker 2: it's gonna sell. Like it will sell, Bro. We end
Speaker 2: up just fucking cash flowing that shit. We end up
Speaker 2: negotiating negotia. She had the first deposit in two payments,
Speaker 2: so we had to put We had to do like
Speaker 2: a thirty and like a thirty five. So it was
Speaker 2: like we got under the deposit, we got on sale,
Speaker 2: sold some tickets, got some money back, aid the rest.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. Made it work. She ends
Speaker 2: up selling out it was one of the greatest. I
Speaker 2: personally think it was like one of the best lineups.
Speaker 2: Anybody who was at that festival will tell you that
Speaker 2: shit was special. Anderson Pat Jane Ico, like the Internet,
Speaker 2: like the the vibes to have that come together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that shit was. That shit was special. And then from
Speaker 2: there it was like, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3: The Future booking came at a perfect time, fresh off
Speaker 3: the release of his critically acclaimed DS two. Future was
Speaker 3: one of the hottest acts on the planet. Locking him
Speaker 3: in as a headliner established Broccoli City as a premier festival,
Speaker 3: and it got the attention of Live Nation, a part
Speaker 3: that would soon be able to help them elevate their booking, marketing,
Speaker 3: and production.
Speaker 2: The same way we were getting everybody else's attention, we
Speaker 2: was getting their attention. We knew we needed more marketing,
Speaker 2: but we didn't have a cash I ended up getting
Speaker 2: connected to this cat, Mark Mangle, who ran the Feel
Speaker 2: More and ran a bunch of the theaters in the
Speaker 2: DC market. End up getting connected like, Yo, we got Future,
Speaker 2: we got Jay, ain't we got this? How can we
Speaker 2: do something marketing? How can we get y'all support? He's like, man,
Speaker 2: I love what y'all are doing. See y'all building be
Speaker 2: hearing about it. He's like, man, let's just do something,
Speaker 2: give me a dollar ticket back in done. Ended up
Speaker 2: doing a marketing deal, was able to get some emails
Speaker 2: and some support from Live Nation ticket Master that helped
Speaker 2: us put us over the top. We end up having
Speaker 2: to pay them a dollar ticket on the back end.
Speaker 2: Through that, people in the Live Nation building started kind
Speaker 2: of connecting with us and started kind of watching what
Speaker 2: we were doing. And then this is twenty seven seventeen,
Speaker 2: we get a call from Mark and this other guy like, Hey,
Speaker 2: it's guy Sean Ge, manager of the Roots. He want
Speaker 2: to connect with y'all. He also do roots pitting it.
Speaker 2: So we thinking like he about to be on some
Speaker 2: hater shit, be honest with you, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: We like, Yo, the fuck motherfucker's about to be hating,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. So he hiss us and
Speaker 2: he like, yo, my wife's family is from DC. I
Speaker 2: come to DC every holidays. When I come, I asked him,
Speaker 2: I asked, like, all the young people, what do I
Speaker 2: need to be looking out for? Like who's hot? And
Speaker 2: they like yo, Rocky City. Shit's going crazy. He like,
Speaker 2: what what the fuck is this? He's like, this is
Speaker 2: the second Christmas today done mentioned us. So he like,
Speaker 2: let me dig into this, digs into it. Impressed. He's like, Yo,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be in I'm gonna be in DC over
Speaker 2: the holidays. Come sit down. I go meet him at
Speaker 2: the Rich Carton in Georgetown. We do a couple of drinks.
Speaker 2: He's telling me about his plans. He was gonna be
Speaker 2: getting a new venture Underlive Nation, and he was like, man,
Speaker 2: I love to make y'all the first thing under our venture,
Speaker 2: but it's gonna probably be late twenty seventeen before I
Speaker 2: have a deal in place. He's like, so, I want
Speaker 2: to see what y'all do in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: But in order to secure the partnership with Live Nation,
Speaker 3: they first needed to impress the president of its urban division,
Speaker 3: Sean g with their twenty seventeen festival. The pressure was on.
Speaker 2: We had a twenty seventh teen festival. That lineup was crazy.
Speaker 2: It's the first time we try to do two stages.
Speaker 2: We're still in the hood at this fucking mental institution
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. It rains in classic Broccoli city form, right,
Speaker 2: It's rain and it's cold, but people was out there
Speaker 2: still so shan jee there he calls like, y'all, I'm
Speaker 2: back to the festival. He's like, yo, walk me through.
Speaker 2: We walking through. He's like, Yo, this shit is late,
Speaker 2: damn Like this motherfuckers has really got some shit. Two stages,
Speaker 2: people going back to back, go back to the back stage,
Speaker 2: were in the little artist area. It's clean, it's done.
Speaker 2: He's like, Yo, shit was good. Now, mind you, I'm
Speaker 2: already known we didne lost a couple in a thousand,
Speaker 2: Like I'm already knowing this going into the event, Like
Speaker 2: I'm knowing this, but I'm walking around like shit, sweet,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 3: As with any festival, rain results in money pouring down
Speaker 3: the drink. The twenty seventeen festival was a heavy loss financially,
Speaker 3: but the team did enough to impress Sean g in
Speaker 3: Live Nation and it set them up for a brighter future.
Speaker 2: We sent back down and start talking about how we
Speaker 2: can pull a deal together and what that would mean,
Speaker 2: and at that time Sean hadn't like he was pretty
Speaker 2: much just following our lead, like yo, getting us who
Speaker 2: we wanted? I think the only name he pushed back
Speaker 2: on was like Nipsey Hustle because Nipsey wasn't really he
Speaker 2: didn't have no history. But we were like very tapped
Speaker 2: into Nipsey because B's in La. We just was watching it.
Speaker 2: We were like, nah, Nipsey, I'm telling you. So he like,
Speaker 2: all right, you think so we end up doing Nipsy.
Speaker 2: Then he like, yo, something is missing. He like, listen,
Speaker 2: I got a relationship with Cardi B. She had just
Speaker 2: done a management deal with QC. I think he like yo,
Speaker 2: I think I can get Cardi.
Speaker 3: Twenty eighteen featured headliners Migos Miguel and Cardi B. Broccolely
Speaker 3: City was now able to get the A list headliners
Speaker 3: at the top, but the overall curation remained the heart
Speaker 3: and soul of the festival, so further down the lineup
Speaker 3: you could still find Grammy Award winners like Nipsey Hustle,
Speaker 3: Her and Daniel Caesar, local DMVX, and a variety of
Speaker 3: exciting vendors and artists. Live Nation also provided more than
Speaker 3: just bookings and production support. They had some very talented
Speaker 3: employees as well.
Speaker 7: So Broccoley City is the most unique organization I've ever
Speaker 7: worked for. I teld people this all the time because
Speaker 7: they are very free flowing.
Speaker 3: This is Jacqueline Auston, currently the chief of staff at
Speaker 3: Broccoli City. At the time, she was being mentored through
Speaker 3: a Live Nation training program called femet Forward.
Speaker 2: So I come from a corporate environment.
Speaker 7: You know, everything's pretty structured, and you know you have
Speaker 7: certain ways of doing things, and Brocoley City is almost
Speaker 7: the opposite of that in a great way.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: Growing up, I always wanted to work in entertainment, but
Speaker 7: because I went to North Carolina A and T, which
Speaker 7: is also marcusist alma mater, I studied communications and journalism
Speaker 7: and also study that for my graduate degree at John Hawkins.
Speaker 7: My plan was to be in entertainment. Somehow, I did
Speaker 7: a program called them Forward. It's by Live Nation and
Speaker 7: it's actually pioneered by Hedelori, and they pair you with
Speaker 7: a mentor in a field that you're interested in. They
Speaker 7: paired me with a mentor name of Shavn.
Speaker 2: She's the s VP of Live.
Speaker 7: Nation's curated program. She became my mentor in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 7: and I told her that I had a history of
Speaker 7: doing event planning and communications and tech and all of
Speaker 7: that stuff, but I wanted to start a transition into
Speaker 7: festival spaces, and she said, well, do you happen to
Speaker 7: know the founders of Brox City. I said, I've never
Speaker 7: met them, but I know the festival, and so she
Speaker 7: introduced me to Brandon and I took it from there.
Speaker 3: Jacqueline started working on projects with Broccoli City and would
Speaker 3: eventually join the team full time as chief of staff.
Speaker 4: I had spoke to Jackie.
Speaker 5: Jackie was just looking for some opportunities to work in
Speaker 5: the live space. She already had a job, she was
Speaker 5: already good. And I remember the first conversation I had
Speaker 5: with Jackie. I felt like I knew her my whole life,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. And honestly, she was just
Speaker 5: the sweetest person ever, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And she's so like on it.
Speaker 5: From a project management perspective, from a you know, just
Speaker 5: an organizational perspective, man, yeah, I honestly don't even know
Speaker 5: where we would be without Jackie at this point.
Speaker 3: Twenty nineteen saw Childish Gambino, Lul Wayne, and Gunner Grace
Speaker 3: the stage, further cementing Broccoli City is one of the
Speaker 3: most exciting festivals on the East Coast, but the COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen pandemic in twenty twenty would prove to be their
Speaker 3: toughest test yet. With live events shut down, the team
Speaker 3: had to rethink their entire business model and figure out
Speaker 3: how to expand the brand beyond just festivals. So they
Speaker 3: turned to Hugo in his Warehouse Content studio.
Speaker 6: That Warehouse really like saved us during the pandemic because
Speaker 6: we were able to create a bunch of tools on
Speaker 6: the virtual side that we still use to this day.
Speaker 6: We were so known for festivals and live events that
Speaker 6: we had to pivot and have like a different identity,
Speaker 6: and I think the identity that we did have was
Speaker 6: like a very relevant cultural voice that I thought was
Speaker 6: really interesting.
Speaker 2: COVID really made us take a step back. We decided
Speaker 2: to really center ourselves around people who was like smarter
Speaker 2: than us from like just a brand and just like
Speaker 2: an overarching standpoint. So we surrounded ourselves over COVID around
Speaker 2: like some really smart people to really make us critically
Speaker 2: think about what value proposition we want the brand to
Speaker 2: have on culture. It was just this concept that we
Speaker 2: came up with that BC Broccoli City for Black change
Speaker 2: right and really leveraging our brand to create real valuable
Speaker 2: change in a lot of different ways, right, Obviously social
Speaker 2: impact and community involvement being important, being able to use
Speaker 2: our platform to provide information about issues and challenges and opportunity.
Speaker 2: We just understood that we just we played a unique
Speaker 2: space in terms of who we connected with. But then
Speaker 2: also too, like always pushing culture and being able to
Speaker 2: leverage like our Live Nation and trying to get big
Speaker 2: artists and trying to push big productions for people of
Speaker 2: color in our events.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, yet again, it was always about education
Speaker 5: for us, right, it was always about community.
Speaker 4: And I had a lot of people.
Speaker 5: Hitting my line like Yo, man, how y'all do this festival?
Speaker 5: I got this idea for this festival, and I always
Speaker 5: wanted to be willing to help, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: just like a regular person, right, Like you just want
Speaker 5: to help somebody out. So I'll be like, all right, man,
Speaker 5: just shoot me over a debt or something, you know,
Speaker 5: just shoot me like a little one sheet. And the
Speaker 5: Hallmies was like, what's a one sheet? What's a I'm like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, okay, so you know what I mean, Let's
Speaker 5: start this with scratch.
Speaker 4: So that was the idea of doing the conference.
Speaker 5: So we started a conference called the Broccoli Conference Broccoli
Speaker 5: Conference short.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I'm really proud of, the
Speaker 6: broccolikon digital over two days, we had almost seven million
Speaker 6: people view that stream.
Speaker 5: And then on the flip side, we also knew that
Speaker 5: a lot of people within our community couldn't necessarily afford
Speaker 5: festival tickets right and never like Broccoli City was a
Speaker 5: super expensive festival, but when you think about the people
Speaker 5: that we cater to, you know, one hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 5: two hundred dollars for you know, a day festival ticket
Speaker 5: to see a couple of music acts, that's a lot.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean, if you got two kids,
Speaker 5: if you got you know what I mean, you got bills.
Speaker 5: So we had created this campaign called the Power of
Speaker 5: One campaign where you can volunteer in the community, whether
Speaker 5: that's Southeast DC, Northeast DC, wherever, and then be able
Speaker 5: to earn a free ticket to Broccoli City.
Speaker 3: He looks to the future, the possibilities are endless. They've
Speaker 3: mastered live events, can create digital content in house, and
Speaker 3: are launching some incredible initiatives to help their community.
Speaker 2: Marcus says the best.
Speaker 6: He's like, we just want to be different Coachella does
Speaker 6: it a certain way, Dreamville does it a certain way.
Speaker 2: Everyone does it a certain way. Like we just want
Speaker 2: to have our own lane.
Speaker 6: I'll take our Broccoli City team against any team, you know,
Speaker 6: just because like we've been doing it together and separately
Speaker 6: for so long.
Speaker 2: Really just thinking about the long play and really just
Speaker 2: really just making us say, like, man, our brand could
Speaker 2: be so much more valuable if we position it as
Speaker 2: something that is a platform for change and not just
Speaker 2: the annual event.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's really it, man, Like it's the brock,
Speaker 4: you know. And we're gonna keep going. We're gonna keep
Speaker 4: doing what we do.
Speaker 3: Broccoli City story is a testament to the power of
Speaker 3: community collaboration and constant elevation. Initially a local celebration intended
Speaker 3: to promote climate change awareness and the black comunity, Broccoli
Speaker 3: City has evolved into a global brand, and they've done
Speaker 3: it with integrity and a constant commitment to their founding ethos.
Speaker 3: As a combination of opportunity, creative ambition, and market forces
Speaker 3: compelled the company to evolve. They've expanded into digital content
Speaker 3: and developed righteous programs to give back to their community.
Speaker 3: With every facet covered broccoly City has become a three
Speaker 3: to sixty brand that would make any music festival green
Speaker 3: with envy. For Idea Generation, I'm Noah Callahan Beverer. Thanks
Speaker 3: for listening to the All Angles Podcast presented by will
Speaker 3: Packer Media. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate
Speaker 3: to like, comment DM or tell a friend to tell
Speaker 3: a friend about Idea Generation and the All Angles Podcast.
Speaker 3: This episode was brought to you by Will Packer Executive
Speaker 3: produced by John Balachik and Helena Ox. Original music by
Speaker 3: Valentine Fritz, edit and sound mixed by Nonsensible Production, and
Speaker 3: hosted by me. Idea Generation founder Noah Callahan bever Idea
Speaker 3: Generation's All Angles is a Whelpacker Media podcast