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Speaker 4: All right, guys, welcome back, ey l Maryland Edition DC Edition.
Speaker 4: Actually yeah, shout outs to DC. Shout out the District
Speaker 4: of Columbia for sure. So before we start, we just
Speaker 4: got to think you guys, we had a crazy event
Speaker 4: this morning, and you also had a crazy event as well,
Speaker 4: so don't talk about that for sure. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: we had a crazy, crazy event. Day two will be tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Well by the time you heit, it'll be over. But
Speaker 4: the DC Weekend d m V Weekend was a tremendous
Speaker 4: success in Atlanta. We're coming next. That's our next stop.
Speaker 4: January twenty fifth and January twenty sixth. We headed to
Speaker 4: the a Way. We're going to do it big out
Speaker 4: there for the whole weekend.
Speaker 5: So a big shout out to Capital Events Group Man
Speaker 5: Tiarhani Dera Man, he did an amazing job putting that together,
Speaker 5: So definitely shout out to him. Man, if you're in
Speaker 5: the DC area and you need an event plan, hit
Speaker 5: my man out.
Speaker 4: Man the most the most important person. Yeah, sure, that's
Speaker 4: that's a fact. That's the fact. So all right, I'm
Speaker 4: excited about this episode for a few different reasons. A
Speaker 4: lot of people they always tag us like who they
Speaker 4: want to see. We try to accommodate as much as
Speaker 4: we possibly can. So Kezia Williams, if you don't know,
Speaker 4: she's the CEO of Black Upstart and yeah, she has
Speaker 4: that signature.
Speaker 2: Man, Listen, you're not drag it out.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 7: It's like seven's and then the end like three's and
Speaker 7: then like another.
Speaker 4: Now she's really dope. She's a big proponent of financial literacy.
Speaker 4: She's a big proponent of entrepreneurships, definitely in our community
Speaker 4: and teaching, teaching entrepreneurship. She has a whole program. We're
Speaker 4: gonna talk about that. So one of the things I
Speaker 4: like about her, like if you follow her Instagram page,
Speaker 4: is that she always like posts like these Twitter posts
Speaker 4: that she puts up and it's like seven different ones,
Speaker 4: so you always got to go to the sexual but
Speaker 4: it's like real life you got left right, but it's
Speaker 4: real life common sense stuff that people can use. And
Speaker 4: a lot of times people they've been asking us like,
Speaker 4: you know, we love all of this high finance and
Speaker 4: stuff like this, but how do I pick my fall
Speaker 4: one k? Or like how do I budget? Prop? How
Speaker 4: do I start a business? So these are all things
Speaker 4: that she posts like on a daily basis on Instagram
Speaker 4: and I'm sure all other social media outlets. Is what
Speaker 4: I follow on Instagram and also with her company, the
Speaker 4: Black up Start, they help people start businesses, like they
Speaker 4: give them the fundamentals of how to start a business, so.
Speaker 5: Employ people, Like that's one of the things, like they
Speaker 5: have a lot of entrepreneurs, but how many can employ people.
Speaker 5: I think that's that's commendable that.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 4: So so all right, so first and foremost, thank you
Speaker 4: for joining us, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Congratulations to you.
Speaker 7: Vote on your events, and I think all the Instagram
Speaker 7: stories and it was like people upon people all this
Speaker 7: black excellency, So we.
Speaker 4: Had too of you. You had an event, Black Upstart
Speaker 4: had an event, and then your legion had an event.
Speaker 4: We didn't know we was having events, and so the
Speaker 4: events was already set, but we had events at the
Speaker 4: same time. Pretty much y'all. But it was dope. You know,
Speaker 4: that's just that's just that's just that just means that
Speaker 4: the energy is out there, and you know, it's the
Speaker 4: time for for for financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3: The communities already, man, so that that's even more so.
Speaker 4: Can you tell us your journey how you became an entrepreneur, because,
Speaker 4: like I said off camera, but you I like for
Speaker 4: a few different reasons, but one of the reasons is
Speaker 4: that you you have it. What we call like a
Speaker 4: traditional job. We'll talk about that, but you have a
Speaker 4: company as well. A lot of time people feel like
Speaker 4: it's one of the other, right, and it's not true.
Speaker 4: Like even Troy. Troy is an educator and he's an
Speaker 4: entrepreneur as well. Entrepreneurs So, but the hardest part, I
Speaker 4: think for most people is mindset. Like we will talk
Speaker 4: about strategy and all that all day, but the mindset
Speaker 4: is the most important thing. And it's very difficult for
Speaker 4: somebody to leave or to jump off the porch and
Speaker 4: to land. It is somewhere where it's kind of unknown,
Speaker 4: you don't really know. It's like typewalking with no safety net.
Speaker 4: So how did you start your entrepreneur journey?
Speaker 7: Okay, that's a great, great question. So I like to
Speaker 7: tell folks that the nine to five is a fixed income.
Speaker 7: So you work eight hours, you get paid. Eight hours,
Speaker 7: you work ten hours, you get paid, eight hours, you
Speaker 7: work twelve hours, you get paid.
Speaker 2: How many hours you get paid? Hey hour.
Speaker 7: It's a fixed income. And it's one of those things
Speaker 7: that I wasn't taught growing up. So like I was
Speaker 7: taught that the definition of success was you go to
Speaker 7: high school and you get a diploma, you go to college,
Speaker 7: you get a degree, and then you go and get
Speaker 7: a good government job with benefits, and then you retire.
Speaker 7: And that's the definition of success, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: When I graduated from college, I did exactly what my
Speaker 7: mother told me to do, and I spent six years
Speaker 7: working for the federal government and I worked in counterintelligence,
Speaker 7: counter weapons, and master instruction counter terrorism. I had a
Speaker 7: clearance a top secret sci full scope polygraph. Only thirteen
Speaker 7: thousand people in the nation have that clearance. But I
Speaker 7: would go to work every day at nine am and
Speaker 7: five pm. I would run out as fast as I could.
Speaker 7: And during the time when I would be off of work,
Speaker 7: I would participate in endeavors that I started. And at
Speaker 7: that point, I didn't consider myself an entreprene the words.
Speaker 7: So one of the endeavors that I participated in was
Speaker 7: Young and Power for Obama, which I was telling you about.
Speaker 7: And this was an initiative that galvanized young black professionals
Speaker 7: across the country to raise money for then Senator Obama.
Speaker 2: This was in two thousand.
Speaker 7: And eight, Yeah, when he was Senator Obama, and it
Speaker 7: was young black professionals from six different cities.
Speaker 2: We would host.
Speaker 7: Fundraisers the fundraisers would cost anywhere between twenty to fifty
Speaker 7: dollars and we would donate one hundred percent of the
Speaker 7: money to campaign. Before he was elected, we raised a
Speaker 7: quarter of a million dollars. And when he was elected
Speaker 7: and became President, Barack Obama matha for President. We hosted
Speaker 7: a collection of inaugural events. Reverend Al Sharpton came, We
Speaker 7: had Jesse Jackson, he was there. Oprah she drove by
Speaker 7: the car, she waved to the wave, counted one day.
Speaker 2: Shake her hand. We all gonna take her hand. But
Speaker 2: it was a great event.
Speaker 7: We raised another quarter of a million dollars, so I
Speaker 7: was about half a million dollars by time everything was
Speaker 7: said and done. In the entire time, I was working
Speaker 7: nine am to five pm, and I was working young
Speaker 7: in Power for Obama from six pm to about one
Speaker 7: am in the morning. But when everything ended, folks started saying,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean, Raising money for President Obama
Speaker 7: was great, but I was only interested in politics just
Speaker 7: because of him, And so folks began to really ask
Speaker 7: the question like what was next? And what came from
Speaker 7: that is a nonprofit that I started, Capital Cause, where
Speaker 7: I trained young black philanthropists to raise money for startup
Speaker 7: nonprofit organizations, and we had five thousand members. We raised
Speaker 7: about sixty thousand dollars and gave away five thousand dollars
Speaker 7: grants to these businesses. And still throughout all of that,
Speaker 7: I did not consider myself an entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3: What inspires you to take that route?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: You raised money for politics? What said entrepreneurs are?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 7: So it was a six year worker for the federal
Speaker 7: government and as I was telling Rasha, my boss is
Speaker 7: switched up and I was working for white men at
Speaker 7: that time. I switched up to a white woman and
Speaker 7: we sat down and she said to me that, you know,
Speaker 7: I don't think that you're qualified to do this work.
Speaker 7: And I was like, well, why don't you think I'm qualified?
Speaker 7: And she was like, because you don't have a pH d,
Speaker 7: you don't have a master's degree, you have a bachelor's degree,
Speaker 7: and here you are writing national security reports that the
Speaker 7: Vice President of the United States are seeing. So I'm
Speaker 7: about to switch up your job responsibilities. And she changed
Speaker 7: our responsibilities from writing these reports to organizing travel for
Speaker 7: the office. So I would go to work at nine am,
Speaker 7: I get out of five VM and still get paid
Speaker 7: six figures, then this will be okay. But then three
Speaker 7: months later she switched out my job responsibilities again. She
Speaker 7: was like, I just think organizing travel is too complicated
Speaker 7: for you, just like national.
Speaker 2: Security reports each complicated for you.
Speaker 7: So now you're gonna be printing badges for people in
Speaker 7: the office when non secure people come and visit. And
Speaker 7: so I was like, okay, well, am I still gonna
Speaker 7: be getting paid like six figures. I'll work from nine am,
Speaker 7: I'll leave at five pm. And so did that for
Speaker 7: three months, and then three months later she came back
Speaker 7: and she was like, making badges was also too complicated
Speaker 7: for me and above my pay grade. And she asked
Speaker 7: me to take my chair and follow her down a
Speaker 7: hallway and we stopped outside of a bathroom.
Speaker 3: Oh like, literally take the chair.
Speaker 7: Take the chair had wheels on it. We was walking,
Speaker 7: she was tipping, I was tippling with my child.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, Laura, where are we going?
Speaker 7: And we ended up outside of a bathroom and she said, well,
Speaker 7: I want you to sit down and for every non
Speaker 7: clear person that comes in, it'll be your job to
Speaker 7: buzz them in and out of the bathroom. And I
Speaker 7: remember asking myself and asking her, am, I still gonna
Speaker 7: get paid six figures, but at.
Speaker 3: That point question change.
Speaker 4: I can never changed.
Speaker 2: Because I was there nine am five pm. I was
Speaker 2: walking out of the door.
Speaker 7: But I asked myself like, YEO, it was great being
Speaker 7: paid six figures, but you know, work to me meant
Speaker 7: more than that, Like the value that I was creating
Speaker 7: outside of work, raising money for Obama, helping young black
Speaker 7: philanthropists give back, that was the work that was really fulfilling.
Speaker 7: And coming to work every day and sitting outside of
Speaker 7: the bathroom watching people. Well, I want to watch people
Speaker 7: do their business, but they were going there watching the.
Speaker 2: Door when they were going hit it out. They need
Speaker 2: their business.
Speaker 7: But so after about two weeks, I called it my
Speaker 7: mom and I was like, Mom, like, I can't do
Speaker 7: this anymore. I need to quit my job. And she
Speaker 7: was like, do you have anything saved up? At that point,
Speaker 7: I had about three months worth of savings and she
Speaker 7: was like, well, babe, I think you should have another
Speaker 7: job lined up. And I was like, I don't think
Speaker 7: I can do it, Like I can't come in here
Speaker 7: every single day and open this door for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7: And she was like, well, if you want to quit baby,
Speaker 7: like I got you. And I remember quitting my job,
Speaker 7: like I quit my job, but I was so excited.
Speaker 2: Have y'all ever quit it out before you could job? No,
Speaker 2: you could, y'all.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 3: I did quit.
Speaker 2: How'd you feel?
Speaker 3: It was great?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I mean I felt excellent, Like I went running out there.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh my god, I am so free,
Speaker 7: like no more than nine a five?
Speaker 3: Right, yeah?
Speaker 7: But then Friday hit. I was like my friends time
Speaker 7: that I wasn't getting paid. I was telling her shod.
Speaker 7: I called up unemployment and I was like, I guess
Speaker 7: I better get on this unemployment and get this check.
Speaker 7: I remember talking to the lady. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I quit my job and I heard did y'all like
Speaker 7: pay fifty percent of your paycheck? So I'm just trying
Speaker 7: to figure out, like how do I submit this paperwork?
Speaker 7: And she was like, you said you quit?
Speaker 4: And I was like, yeah, I.
Speaker 7: Said I quit, And she was like, yeah, you don't
Speaker 7: get unemployment when you quit your job.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: I was like, did I say I quit? Like what
Speaker 2: have meant?
Speaker 4: Was a right?
Speaker 2: Could I have fire?
Speaker 7: And so she was like, yeah, that's the unemployment for you.
Speaker 7: And if there was you wouldn't getting fifty percent of
Speaker 7: your paycheck. So I was unemployed for six weeks. And
Speaker 7: during those six weeks, a woman who worked with me
Speaker 7: with Younger Power for Obama called me and she was like,
Speaker 7: I have a job, and the job is launching a
Speaker 7: national entrepreneurship in this where you would teach African American
Speaker 7: undergraduate students how to start a business before they graduate
Speaker 7: from school. Especially since a black undergraduate student's college degree
Speaker 7: is equivalent to a white person's high school diploma.
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that? You talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so.
Speaker 4: About what a black college degree is equivalent to a
Speaker 4: white diploma.
Speaker 7: Yes, a black person's college degree is equivalent to a
Speaker 7: white person's high school diploma, which means that a black
Speaker 7: person can go to the same high school as a
Speaker 7: white person, go to the same college as a white person,
Speaker 7: and apply for the same job as a white person,
Speaker 7: but when they get higher their pay is separate and unequal.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think I read a statistics somewhere. It's
Speaker 3: very similar.
Speaker 5: It was like middle class black family is equivalent to
Speaker 5: a poor white.
Speaker 2: Family, poor white family.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and black women, especially I mean black people in generally,
Speaker 7: our parents teach us to work twice as hard, to
Speaker 7: be twice as smart, to go into work and be
Speaker 7: twice as exceptional, and somehow, some way will be the
Speaker 7: same as a white person. At the end of the day,
Speaker 7: black women is actually will lose eight hundred and forty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars over their working career, not because they're our smart, intelligent,
Speaker 7: or well equipped to do the job, but simply because
Speaker 7: they're black and they're women.
Speaker 4: So black women graduate college at the fastest rate, at
Speaker 4: the highest rate out of any ethnic group.
Speaker 2: I think that's what analysts say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they're not paid obviously at the same.
Speaker 2: Level they're not paid.
Speaker 7: And I think that that's why it's no question while
Speaker 7: black women are the fastest growing segment of entrepreneurs, Like
Speaker 7: I like to tell people that, Like, I don't think
Speaker 7: that black people are starting businesses because they want to
Speaker 7: be the next Black Bill Gates. Love Beyonce, but the
Speaker 7: next Black Bill Gates are the next Steve Jobs or
Speaker 7: the next Mark Zuckerberg. They're starting businesses because they want
Speaker 7: to be economically free. They want to be able to
Speaker 7: pay themselves with their companies refuse to pay them despite
Speaker 7: being qualified for them. That represents economic freedom. And economic liberation.
Speaker 5: We had a guess who actually was talking about the
Speaker 5: exact topic, and they was saying, even with that, the
Speaker 5: entrepreneurism getting loans to.
Speaker 4: Start fenture capitals. So black women are starting businesses at
Speaker 4: the fastest rate, but they get venture capital at the
Speaker 4: smallest rate out of any ethnic group, gender group in America.
Speaker 4: So it doesn't really make sense if you think about it,
Speaker 4: because it's like you would figure more entrepreneurs, you would
Speaker 4: get at least some sort of venture capital. That's what
Speaker 4: venture capital is. They lend money to entrepreneurs, but they
Speaker 4: get the least amount of funding from venture capital.
Speaker 7: I think what's interesting is that black people need to
Speaker 7: have a more dynamic conversation around funding and so I
Speaker 7: think when it comes to VC, that percentage is absolutely true.
Speaker 7: But that's not the only type of business that black
Speaker 7: people are starting. Isn't innovations driven enterprises, which is what
Speaker 7: that is the type of businesses that qualify for venture capital.
Speaker 7: There are two types of businesses that you can start.
Speaker 7: There's a SMEE and there's an ide. There's a small
Speaker 7: medium sized enterprise where you can raise a friends and
Speaker 7: family round. You can go on to razoo. If you're
Speaker 7: starting a nonprofit. If you're starting with Razoo is a
Speaker 7: crowdfunding platform for five on one c three nonprofit organizations
Speaker 7: where you can invite your friends to go on and donate.
Speaker 7: The only way that you can qualify to get on
Speaker 7: Razoo is if you have an IRS designation. If you
Speaker 7: have a for profit or let's say you're a sole proprietor,
Speaker 7: which means that you do business as yourself, you can
Speaker 7: go on to Indiegogo. You can go onto what a
Speaker 7: lot of people think it's an unpopular site, but go
Speaker 7: funding and you can do the same thing. You can
Speaker 7: ask your friends and family essentially to invest in your
Speaker 7: business idea or to contribute towards your business idea. But
Speaker 7: for a small medium sized enterprise, in addition to doing crowdfunding,
Speaker 7: you can also do bank loans and you can also
Speaker 7: fund your own business. That's fundamentally different than an ID
Speaker 7: an innovations driven enterprise. We're essentially going into debt by soliciting, yes,
Speaker 7: angel investment and also venture capital, and those people are
Speaker 7: betting on you to serve a global market, while small
Speaker 7: medium sized enterprises serve a small or regional market. So
Speaker 7: those are your nail saligns. Those are your hair stylists,
Speaker 7: those are your local coffee shops.
Speaker 4: So all right, that's interesting. What's it called a ip ID?
Speaker 7: So that is an innovation driven enterprise ns ME, which
Speaker 7: is a small or medium sized enterprise.
Speaker 4: Okay, So do you think that that's a that's an
Speaker 4: issue though with Black community as a whole, where I
Speaker 4: see most businesses and the business ideas are small. The
Speaker 4: problem with small businesses that for the most part, they
Speaker 4: stay small and you can't scale it. They don't really
Speaker 4: make that much. Most majority of business owners don't make
Speaker 4: money like we know that, like the average employee makes
Speaker 4: more than a business owner, like per average. One of
Speaker 4: the reasons is that most businesses are small, very small, right,
Speaker 4: Like one person so like the grocery well not the
Speaker 4: grocery stores, but the delis, the bodegas if he was
Speaker 4: in theas there, the barbershops, the local restaurants. Do you
Speaker 4: think that that's an issue with Black entrepreneurship that it's
Speaker 4: always a lot of times not on a bigger global vision,
Speaker 4: it's more on a community based, small vision.
Speaker 7: I think it's important to know the data. So currently
Speaker 7: there are two point five six million Black entrepreneurs, but
Speaker 7: only one hundred and ten thousand of them have the
Speaker 7: capacity to employ least one person. Now, what you're speaking
Speaker 7: about is probably the two point four million people who can't. Right,
Speaker 7: the one hundred and ten thousand black entrepreneurs who are
Speaker 7: employers employ less than a million people, but there are
Speaker 7: eighteen point five million black people in the workforce. That
Speaker 7: means that a majority of black people work for somebody
Speaker 7: who don't look like them, which means tomorrow, if those
Speaker 7: employers were to come in and fire every single black
Speaker 7: person on the back on the payroll, those black folks
Speaker 7: would be what unemployees. Yeah, and that soil, they would
Speaker 7: be essel and they would be on employed. So Black Upstart,
Speaker 7: I'm glad you're talking about this. What we do is
Speaker 7: we teach black entrepreneurs not just how to start a business,
Speaker 7: but how to start a business that can create a job,
Speaker 7: so they don't have to go begging other people to
Speaker 7: do for them where they are capable of doing for themselves. Now,
Speaker 7: for black entrepreneurs, the average black entrepreneur grosses less than
Speaker 7: six figures and revenue, which means that a lot of
Speaker 7: black entrepreneurs are starting businesses and their lifestyle businesses, which
Speaker 7: means that they're just essentially hustling. And what a hustler
Speaker 7: does is they wake up every single day and they
Speaker 7: try to get money. While entrepreneur wakes up every day
Speaker 7: and what they're doing is they're doing business. They're creating
Speaker 7: systems and processes so that when they're business scales, other
Speaker 7: people can work for their business outside of just them.
Speaker 7: So I think that there's a difference between the barbershop
Speaker 7: owner who probably has employees, the coffee shop owner, even
Speaker 7: if it's just them, they employ themselves, and the person
Speaker 7: on the side of the street who's hustling and trying
Speaker 7: to sell to every single person that walks by them. Right,
Speaker 7: I think it's important for black people to realize the
Speaker 7: money that exists in our communities. So when I read
Speaker 7: the statistic about black entrepreneurs gross and fewer than six figures,
Speaker 7: I also read statistics about Asian entrepreneurs and white entrepreneurs
Speaker 7: and Native American entrepreneurs, and all of them gross more
Speaker 7: than six figures. In fact, Asian entrepreneurs have less entrepreneurs than.
Speaker 2: Black folks, but they gross double the amount of revenue.
Speaker 7: Why because when you look at the businesses that they start,
Speaker 7: They start businesses in their own communities, and then they
Speaker 7: come over to the black communities and start businesses. So
Speaker 7: people always ask me like, okay, Kizia, what type of
Speaker 7: business would you start if somebody gave you a million dollars?
Speaker 7: And I always tell them that I would start a
Speaker 7: Chinese food delivery service, And well, can you fly rice?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, I can't fly rice. Can you fry one sign? No?
Speaker 7: I can't fly one sign? In fact, I can't cook,
Speaker 7: which is probably why I'm not married. So like, if
Speaker 7: anybody knows I want to play like matchmaker, like I'm.
Speaker 3: Down for it.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 7: But when we go into a beauty supply store and
Speaker 7: a person on the other end of the counter is
Speaker 7: selling you hair grease and do rag and I good
Speaker 7: remy track and they don't look like you, we don't
Speaker 7: think twice about it, but people will laugh once twice
Speaker 7: a black woman selling fried rice and a one time.
Speaker 7: The reason why agent entrepreneurs are able to gross over
Speaker 7: six figures and employ them is because they're not only
Speaker 7: getting money in their own community, but they are capitalizing
Speaker 7: off of the one point three trillion dollars that black
Speaker 7: people are spending every single day. And so what I
Speaker 7: like to tell black entrepreneurs is that you have to
Speaker 7: look at what we're currently spending our money on. Every
Speaker 7: single year, the Nielsen Consumer Index Report publishes how Black
Speaker 7: people spend their money. The top five things are refrigerated drinks,
Speaker 7: dry vegetables, ethnic care, care goods and supplies. Contraceptives is one,
Speaker 7: Diverse is another one. Laundry detergent. I know that y'all
Speaker 7: know about True that's a black on laundry detergent company.
Speaker 7: When you look at the top five businesses the black
Speaker 7: people normally start, it is admin services, waste for mediation.
Speaker 2: Third is other.
Speaker 7: So that's like an amalgamation, maybe like a compilation of
Speaker 7: many different businesses.
Speaker 2: And what you don't see is an alignment.
Speaker 7: When you look at the types of businesses that other
Speaker 7: entrepreneurs start, they are prevalent on the list where our
Speaker 7: dollars are being spent Black people's Again, one point three
Speaker 7: trillion dollars is not a blank check for other communities to.
Speaker 3: Sign real quick. You said that you train entrepreneurs.
Speaker 5: Obviously I'm thinking through a curriculum one, but you also
Speaker 5: do a hands on approach.
Speaker 3: What does that look like?
Speaker 7: Okay, So for the Black Upside curriculum, we host a
Speaker 7: six day pop up school and it happens over three
Speaker 7: weeks and six days. And during our six days, we
Speaker 7: teach audiation process, the minimum viable product creation, business CANVUS
Speaker 7: development and in the end, we teach them how to pitch. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so that's what we do with Black up Start. We
Speaker 7: start with crowdfunding and I know we had just had
Speaker 7: a conversation about crowdfunding, but we teach them essentially how
Speaker 7: to turn their contacts into.
Speaker 2: Capital contact contact like capital.
Speaker 7: So it starts with that before we even see them
Speaker 7: on the first day of class.
Speaker 3: And how many teachers just you or is it a team?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 2: So there is faculty.
Speaker 7: And one of the things that I love about Black
Speaker 7: Upstar that I definitely should mention is we always teach
Speaker 7: in a black environment. So like right now you all
Speaker 7: are in Southeast DC, and we started off in the
Speaker 7: Microsoft Innovation Center, which is located on Saint Elizabeth East
Speaker 7: Campus in Southeast and DC.
Speaker 2: They say South, Like what f South? We have black faculties.
Speaker 7: So we have one faculty come in every single day
Speaker 7: and they teach on a very specific topic. We have
Speaker 7: contractors that come in and help with website development. All black,
Speaker 7: black photographers, black videographers, and when they pitch, they pitched
Speaker 7: their innovation in the community. And so now you have
Speaker 7: black consumers connecting with black entrepreneurs. And for us, it's
Speaker 7: about recycling the black dollar, all.
Speaker 4: Right, dope, dope. So the next type, we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about some different ways that people can get up
Speaker 4: and running and get into the game as far as
Speaker 4: entrepreneurship concerned, all right. So we're gonna talk about some
Speaker 4: actionable items and some systems to help people out, all right.
Speaker 4: So the audiation process, the audiation process. Audiation process can
Speaker 4: explain what that is.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, So we teach the audiation process, and it's a
Speaker 7: six step process that teaches new small business entrepreneurs how
Speaker 7: to launch their enterprise in less than thirty days and
Speaker 7: with less than one thousand dollars in startup capital. So
Speaker 7: the first step is your problem statement. So please note
Speaker 7: that it's not a business idea problem statement.
Speaker 4: Problem statement.
Speaker 7: What type of problem are you trying to solve and
Speaker 7: for whom? So for black upstart, it would be black
Speaker 7: entrepreneurs have a problem starting businesses that create jobs. Normally,
Speaker 7: entrepreneurs get hung up on the first process because they
Speaker 7: want to tell you about their idea. That's their baby,
Speaker 7: and so we say, you need to divorce yourself from
Speaker 7: your idea. Talk about your problem, and your problem should
Speaker 7: be broad enough so that there are several different solutions
Speaker 7: that can address that problem. Number two is called investigation,
Speaker 7: and what that is is market research. And so with
Speaker 7: market research, what you do is you look at other
Speaker 7: companies that are solving that problem and you look at
Speaker 7: a few things. You see if they're sme we talked
Speaker 7: about that earlier, a small medium sized enterprise or innovation
Speaker 7: driven enterprise. You look and see if they have employees,
Speaker 7: because you want to know if the business has scaled,
Speaker 7: and you look and see if they have if they
Speaker 7: sell products and services. After that, you list five things
Speaker 7: that you like about that company and five things that
Speaker 7: you would change, and each of that each of those
Speaker 7: items on that list should address the problem that you're
Speaker 7: trying to solve. Now, when you move on to step three,
Speaker 7: which is called the idea expression, you use the five
Speaker 7: things that you would change to create your unfair competitive advantage.
Speaker 7: So for Black Upstart, we looked at other businesses that
Speaker 7: were training entrepreneurs and we realized that businesses weren't really
Speaker 7: saying that I want to train black entrepreneurs. They were
Speaker 7: dressing it up in coded language like we want to
Speaker 7: help people of color, we want to help minorities. Are
Speaker 7: you disadvantaged, Come over here, let me teach you how
Speaker 7: to start a business. Like we knew that our unfair
Speaker 7: competitive advantage would be that we would explicitly state that
Speaker 7: we would train black entrepreneurs and this would be a
Speaker 7: one hundred percent black experience. So for number three, again,
Speaker 7: you put your unfair competitive advantage in there and you
Speaker 7: say I sell this to this particular person, and say
Speaker 7: how it's different.
Speaker 2: It should be one sentence.
Speaker 7: Usually when you talk to an entrepreneur and you ask
Speaker 7: them about their business, they're gonna tell you a whole book,
Speaker 7: all right.
Speaker 2: Because it's their baby.
Speaker 7: But if you can't say it in a sentence, if
Speaker 7: it can't be like your elevator pass, you know, if
Speaker 7: it said it's a sentence, then it's too long. Also,
Speaker 7: if you get to step number three and your business
Speaker 7: idea hasn't shifted or changed, or you don't have better
Speaker 7: understanding on why you're doing business and in that way,
Speaker 7: then that means that you have to start over because
Speaker 7: you never got a divorce. So step number four is
Speaker 7: your customer demographic. And for a customer demographic, you're gonna
Speaker 7: list out twenty different descriptors about the person who is
Speaker 7: looking for a solution to that problem, and that looks
Speaker 7: like how old are they, how much money do they make?
Speaker 7: What is their race, what is their gender? Who do
Speaker 7: they follow on social media? Where do they currently work?
Speaker 7: Because you cannot make the assumption that they're looking for
Speaker 7: your new business idea, which doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 5: These questions are format it already pologies.
Speaker 7: And then number five is your user persona. You take
Speaker 7: all of those descriptors and you tell a story. So
Speaker 7: like Lakeisha is twenty six and she works at booz
Speaker 7: Allen Hamilton and she makes sixty two thousand dollars, So
Speaker 7: you tell a story. And then last is your innovation.
Speaker 7: And then innovation is something that is new, original, important
Speaker 7: that you could sell to other people for profit. And
Speaker 7: it should be an MVP, which is a minimum viable
Speaker 7: product creation. What can you make with a minimum amount
Speaker 7: of resources that people can actually pay you for. Okay,
Speaker 7: you need to be able to make it with one
Speaker 7: thousand dollars. You need to be able to launch it
Speaker 7: in thirty days. And the reason why we set that
Speaker 7: parameter is because entrepreneurs dream big. So you might be like,
Speaker 7: what I want is a nail salon, but perhaps all
Speaker 7: you can afford is a pop up shop where people
Speaker 7: come and you do their nails on a Saturday at
Speaker 7: a community center that you've rented, and that cost you
Speaker 7: two hundred dollars just to pop up in three hundred
Speaker 7: dollars for supplies. The reason why I say that is
Speaker 7: because once you get small right, once you learn how
Speaker 7: to use what you have, start where you are and
Speaker 7: do what you can, then you learn.
Speaker 2: How to start a jib.
Speaker 7: So that's the six step ideation process.
Speaker 4: There you have it.
Speaker 3: That was detailed detail and the only.
Speaker 7: Thing that I want to say with the entrepreneurs, sometimes
Speaker 7: people don't define entrepreneurs, but an entrepreneur is someone who
Speaker 7: starts a business that has the chance of two things.
Speaker 7: That's profit and success. We like to say that would
Speaker 7: black upstart that if you're selling a product or service,
Speaker 7: then nobody wants to buy.
Speaker 2: You don't have a business. You have a high B difference.
Speaker 5: How many entrepreneurs are you looking for? How many do
Speaker 5: you guys take like, is it per year? How do
Speaker 5: y'all do it? So I'm sorry answered okay, I was
Speaker 5: gonna say, is it money that's allocated for the amount
Speaker 5: of business you can or entrepreneurs that you can take?
Speaker 7: So it's competitive. We accept between ten to fifteen people
Speaker 7: per class. We get about two hundred applications for each class.
Speaker 7: When we first started, it was tuition based, and so
Speaker 7: we would train our entrepreneurs to raise their tuition, which
Speaker 7: was five hundred dollars per person. The average entrepreneur would
Speaker 7: raise anywhere between seven hundred to one thousand dollars, and
Speaker 7: every dollar that they raised above their tuition they kept
Speaker 7: and used to make their minimum viable product creation. But
Speaker 7: then as a business matured, we partnered with CDFI's, so
Speaker 7: those are community development financial institutions. So in North Carolina
Speaker 7: we work with Carolina Small Business Development Fund and what
Speaker 7: happens is they actually cover up CDFI, So that's a
Speaker 7: community development financial institution and they take bets on entrepreneurs
Speaker 7: that banks won't, So if you haven't made your first sale,
Speaker 7: they're more willing to make a five thousand dollars loan
Speaker 7: to you and take that risk and the government backs.
Speaker 2: Them in the event that you default on the loan.
Speaker 7: So I say that to say that we partner with
Speaker 7: CDFIs and they cover the cost of tuition and in
Speaker 7: exchange for that, entrepreneurs get free education and they pipeline
Speaker 7: into funding opportunities. So we see with Carolina Small Business
Speaker 7: Development Fund, every single entrepreneur graduated with access to fifty
Speaker 7: thousand dollars in funding destide their business.
Speaker 4: So all right, that's crazy. So once they started with
Speaker 4: the fifty thousand, then what because now it's like you
Speaker 4: have the money, but you have to actually do it.
Speaker 4: Cause it's one thing to actually research and have all
Speaker 4: the information, but execution is always the most important thing.
Speaker 4: So like as far as is that part of the coaching,
Speaker 4: like for people, like the execution once you've reached the
Speaker 4: point where you're actually, okay, I have my my MVP,
Speaker 4: I have earners.
Speaker 3: What's up.
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Speaker 4: Have all of the elevated pitch everything that you just outlined.
Speaker 4: I have that, have it. It's perfect. My business plan
Speaker 4: is perfect. Now what hey like, what's the execution part
Speaker 4: of it?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 7: So I think that's a really good question. Our CDFIs
Speaker 7: work with the entrepreneurs over a year to scale their business.
Speaker 7: And so, you know, we talked about business card entrepreneurs
Speaker 7: or people run around here or all the time talking
Speaker 7: about I gotta business, I gotta be Is this all they
Speaker 7: got is a business card? So with them they qualify
Speaker 7: for up to fifty thousand dollars in capital. But first
Speaker 7: they do have to show proof of concept and that's
Speaker 7: where that sixth step innovation comes in. We talked about
Speaker 7: how the boot camp ends. The boot camp ends with
Speaker 7: a graduation, and that graduation it's not your traditional pitch competition,
Speaker 7: Like it's not you stand up there, you tell people
Speaker 7: your idea and then there is a winner, because that's
Speaker 7: not the way business sorts.
Speaker 2: It's not shark tank.
Speaker 7: It's not two or three people decide that your business
Speaker 7: is viable and all of a sudden you win. No,
Speaker 7: you know, your business is viable when you're making sales.
Speaker 7: And so how our graduation day works is entrepreneurs bring
Speaker 7: their innovations to the graduation and people walk around and
Speaker 7: they give them real time feed forward on their innovation
Speaker 7: and they respond to if they want to if they
Speaker 7: like the innovation by actually buying it. And so they
Speaker 7: already have an MVP that the CDFI helps them position
Speaker 7: in the marketplace, and they monitor their seals over the year,
Speaker 7: and as their business grows, then their access to funding
Speaker 7: does as well as.
Speaker 5: Right, is there still a role that black ops start
Speaker 5: plays as the business takes off.
Speaker 7: So that's a good question because we talked about our
Speaker 7: businesses having events right on the same thing. So we're
Speaker 7: now launching skillhouse You and skillhouse You is an opportunity
Speaker 7: for entrepreneurs and also wealth creators as well to get
Speaker 7: additional training after that. Right, So, like launching, the starting
Speaker 7: point is always really exciting when somebody first buys your stuff.
Speaker 7: I'm sure y'all remember when somebody bought y'all's Cubicodi easy
Speaker 7: and it got your first little cash at or whatever
Speaker 7: y'all use, like, Yeah, you know, but staying a business
Speaker 7: right is a lot harder than that, And so for
Speaker 7: black ops starting through Skillhouse you what we're doing is
Speaker 7: we're teaching people like how do you read a cash
Speaker 7: flow statement? Like how do you engage in account and
Speaker 7: if you can't afford an account? And how do you
Speaker 7: use quick and loans? You know, what are those very
Speaker 7: specific skills that you need, like what is an NDA?
Speaker 2: What is a noncompete? You know?
Speaker 7: And when you're looking for visibility, like how do you
Speaker 7: market when you don't have a budget? And I think
Speaker 7: sometimes we do focus our conversations so much on starting
Speaker 7: that we don't get to the other side of the
Speaker 7: conversation is how do you scale pass?
Speaker 4: Just you so business plans? You do business plans, We don't.
Speaker 2: We do business canvases.
Speaker 4: Okay, because a lot of people have asked us, can
Speaker 4: you cover business planning on your leaders because like each
Speaker 4: week we cover a different topic and we haven't covered
Speaker 4: business plans. But what you just laid out kind of
Speaker 4: sounds like a business plan. So what's a business canvas?
Speaker 7: So ideation process actually mirrors a lot of what you'll
Speaker 7: find in a business canvas that is a one page
Speaker 7: document that asks a lot of the same questions that
Speaker 7: you see on a business plan. So it's going to
Speaker 7: ask you, like what is your value proposition? And who
Speaker 7: is your customer segment? And what are your cost structures.
Speaker 7: It's going to ask you what are your key partnerships,
Speaker 7: what are your key relationships? But it's all on one page,
Speaker 7: and it challenges you to think through some of the
Speaker 7: critical components of your business so that you can start
Speaker 7: up in a lean way. And I'm sure y'all probably
Speaker 7: heard the term monology like lean startup, right, Like how
Speaker 7: do you start get proof of concept and get to
Speaker 7: the point where you actually want to commit the time
Speaker 7: to write a fifty or sixty page business plan. The
Speaker 7: problem with most entrepreneurs is they'll write fifty or sixty pages.
Speaker 7: Then they'll get started and they'll try to sell something
Speaker 7: and nobody will buy it, and they'll think they have
Speaker 7: to write another business plan all over again. The business
Speaker 7: campus being one page and asking those critical questions just
Speaker 7: on one sheet of paper allows for people to get
Speaker 7: to testing a lot quicker.
Speaker 4: So what about obstacles the entrepreneur's face. Can we talk
Speaker 4: about some The biggest one is funding. That's the biggest one.
Speaker 7: Right, I wouldn't say that's the biggest one say the
Speaker 7: biggest one is I think the biggest obstacle facing black
Speaker 7: entrepreneurs is trying to succeed in business as a white person.
Speaker 4: What's that mean?
Speaker 2: So Beyonce Beyonce rapping about like I might just be
Speaker 2: the next black Bill Gates, and the making.
Speaker 3: That was bar y'all, like, yeah, I said.
Speaker 2: That, But I love her. I love her.
Speaker 7: However, I think the deseroneous. Like I do a lot
Speaker 7: of work in Atlanta, and there was one particular experience
Speaker 7: that I had where I ran into a room. I
Speaker 7: really did run into the room because I'm a type
Speaker 7: of personality.
Speaker 2: And there was another.
Speaker 7: Person run into the room too, the facilitator, and he
Speaker 7: was asking the kids like who wants to be the
Speaker 7: next Black Bill Gates? Who wants to be the next
Speaker 7: Mark Zuckerberg? Who wants to be the next Steve Jobs?
Speaker 7: And all the kids were really excited because it was
Speaker 7: like a coding a free coding camp. And I was
Speaker 7: excited too. I was like, oh my gosh, this is
Speaker 7: something great. Everybody's going to be a Bill Gates. But
Speaker 7: then I realized that the facilitator was lying to the
Speaker 7: children because no matter how hard they tried, they could
Speaker 7: never grow up one to be white, two to be
Speaker 7: a white male, three to be a white male benefiting
Speaker 7: from privilege.
Speaker 2: And so the more I.
Speaker 7: Reflected on it, the more I realized that we just
Speaker 7: don't have to teach white male privilege or the white
Speaker 7: entrepreneurial the blueprint, that there is a black entrepreneurial blueprint. Right,
Speaker 7: so like and Still Valley, I think no one ever
Speaker 7: talks about the guy who invented the predecessor to the Nintendo,
Speaker 7: which is a model f gaming system. Right he dined
Speaker 7: as equals with Steve Jobs. No one talks about how
Speaker 7: Mary McCoy Bethune raised money to start her business, which
Speaker 7: was selling meat pass to the mineworkers down the street.
Speaker 7: She started with a one room schoolhouse before she got
Speaker 7: to Bethune Cookman University. More contemporary examples like Issa Ray.
Speaker 7: People want to talk about how she's on HBO now
Speaker 7: with Insecure but Awkward Black Girl was funded by a
Speaker 7: part of her salary and fundraising on YouTube where she
Speaker 7: introduced her series for free. So I think for black entrepreneurs,
Speaker 7: we have to learn how our predecessors did it without
Speaker 7: the benefit of white venture capital dollars or without the
Speaker 7: benefit of banks allocating US money. One other example, because
Speaker 7: I'm from Richmond, Maggie L. Walker started and well she
Speaker 7: was the first woman at that not black woman, but
Speaker 7: the first woman to charter a bank. She funded that
Speaker 7: bank with charitable contributions. Do you know how many black
Speaker 7: people go to a charity every single Sunday which is
Speaker 7: the church? Those are five and one C threes. A
Speaker 7: five and one C three funded a for profit bank.
Speaker 7: So I'm saying, if we could study history, I think
Speaker 7: that we would be able to figure out better ways
Speaker 7: to be successful.
Speaker 5: We gotta study it and highlighted because a lot of times,
Speaker 5: especially when in school, right when US history is taught,
Speaker 5: yes this is definitely omitted. So highlighting it, understanding it,
Speaker 5: and study. And now that we have access to the
Speaker 5: internet and we have access to social media where these
Speaker 5: stories could be highlight you know, the future generations there
Speaker 5: will be different stories now.
Speaker 7: I feel like, yes, yes, or I think they will
Speaker 7: be remembering of the stories that have been on to.
Speaker 3: Create one right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: So what would you say some other some other obstacles
Speaker 4: are outside of that.
Speaker 2: Outside of that, I mean, you set funding and I
Speaker 2: agree with that. I just.
Speaker 7: They fund funding was coming. We talked earlier about the
Speaker 7: difference between a hustler and an entrepreneur. I think that
Speaker 7: that's important. I think the other thing is is that
Speaker 7: I think that people get caught up on this whole
Speaker 7: thing about were you born an entrepreneur or can you
Speaker 7: become an entrepreneur? You know, most people are like I
Speaker 7: was born this way, I woke up like this right,
Speaker 7: But no, I think entrepreneur can absolutely be taught. You
Speaker 7: talked about us living in an information economy, Like we
Speaker 7: are fortunate to live in a time period where information
Speaker 7: is basically at your fingertips. So like, what I like
Speaker 7: to tell people who want to start a business and
Speaker 7: people who want to create wealth is don't swim in
Speaker 7: the ocean of knowledge and drown and ignorance. So that's important.
Speaker 7: The last thing I think that I would say is
Speaker 7: I don't think that you have to be the smartest
Speaker 7: person in the room to be a great entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: So people normally think you have to have a PhD.
Speaker 7: You know, we talked about that when we first got started,
Speaker 7: or you know, they think that you have to be
Speaker 7: a Strada student, Like I graduated from high school with
Speaker 7: like a two point three g p A. I wasn't
Speaker 7: the brightest student, but I was motivated and I was committed,
Speaker 7: and I thought that, you know, with me, if I
Speaker 7: could try hard enough, you know, if I if I
Speaker 7: could really commit myself to a passion, then I could,
Speaker 7: you know, I could overcome the obstacle.
Speaker 2: Just one quick start on the story though, Gosh, I
Speaker 2: don't thinkure about his name.
Speaker 7: Okay, I'm not gonna tell that story.
Speaker 2: What's the guy? Hold on, who's the guy who had
Speaker 2: the pink? Y'all? Ain't never had a perm in your
Speaker 2: head box? What's the name?
Speaker 5: No, we just actually covered the industry.
Speaker 4: We just did that whole episode he had at the man.
Speaker 7: Oh oh yeah, like this, I wonder Okay, yeah.
Speaker 4: All right, So in the last semeon, we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about some financial literacy stuff and things that every
Speaker 4: day people can use in their day to day life
Speaker 4: to make better financial decisions and just become more knowledge
Speaker 4: all the way around. All right, So now we want
Speaker 4: to talk about UNCF, But first I'll talk about some
Speaker 4: financial literacy topics because I know it's something that you're
Speaker 4: passionate about, especially like on social media Instagram and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So all right, you said that you talk
Speaker 4: about making smart decisions a lot like mindset budgeting. I
Speaker 4: see you you speak about that a lot. Can you
Speaker 4: talk about that the importance of it.
Speaker 2: That's important.
Speaker 7: I'm passionate about entrepreneurship and we were just talking about that, Like,
Speaker 7: I really think that black people should consider entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship.
Speaker 7: Entrepreneurship means that you can be entrepreneurial at your job.
Speaker 7: But I don't think that every black person should be
Speaker 7: an entrepreneur. Do I think that every black person should
Speaker 7: be an owner of assets? And so on Instagram? You're
Speaker 7: right with professor Keys. I talk a lot about how
Speaker 7: people can be owner of assets because I do think
Speaker 7: that if you can multiply your streams of income, you
Speaker 7: can achieve the same type of economic freedom that I
Speaker 7: believe the entrepreneurship provides.
Speaker 4: So like, what does that mean, like multiply like what.
Speaker 2: Kind of of income?
Speaker 4: Like Like you said, like everybody can be an owner
Speaker 4: like the owner.
Speaker 7: Of a house, owner of assets, owner of assets and assets.
Speaker 7: I think you can talk about multiple assets like you
Speaker 7: can yes own your home, you can own stocks, you
Speaker 7: can own bond, you can invest in your four O
Speaker 7: one K, so like that type of owner.
Speaker 4: Okay, so at least because you said that one of
Speaker 4: the things you're really passionate about is the four one K? Yes,
Speaker 4: so why are you passionate about one K?
Speaker 2: So when I was going to get that good government.
Speaker 7: Job, Actually, my very first job was as a receptionist.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, and that was where I got a government job.
Speaker 7: And I remember when I first got my first paycheck,
Speaker 7: my mom was like, well did you invest with your
Speaker 7: four and one K? And I was like, well, what's that?
Speaker 7: And she was like retirement. I was like, mom, like
Speaker 7: about that plain one? Like, well, I'm trying to like
Speaker 7: I'm trying to go Tavy hour and she was like
Speaker 7: you better happy hour at four one K?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 7: Yes, And I'm very grateful for that because people ask
Speaker 7: me sometimes like what did I learn about financial literacy?
Speaker 7: And I really learned it from my mother before I
Speaker 7: started teaching it to myself. And she was like, the
Speaker 7: earlier you start investing in your four on one K,
Speaker 7: the better. And she was like, and it's going to
Speaker 7: be difficult if you're like actually taking your money and
Speaker 7: investing it. Talk to your employer and ask them about
Speaker 7: their retirement plan. And usually they deduct it from your
Speaker 7: check before you even see it posted in your direct deposit.
Speaker 7: And she challenged me to also ask them about matching.
Speaker 7: So I didn't even know what that meant, but she's like,
Speaker 7: go ask him about matching. And at that time, my
Speaker 7: employer was matching six percent. So six percent of my salary,
Speaker 7: that's what that means. So I think at that plat's
Speaker 7: making twenty nine thousand dollars, so whatever six percent of
Speaker 7: that was, every dollar I contributed up to that amount,
Speaker 7: they would match it. So my mom was like, that's
Speaker 7: free money. Do you like free money?
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, I mean, is that a
Speaker 2: rhetorical question?
Speaker 3: Yes, I like free money.
Speaker 7: And it turns into six thousand dollars And so it
Speaker 7: just automated. When I left that job, I rolled it
Speaker 7: into an individual retirement account and IRA and every single
Speaker 7: job that was one of the first questions that I asked,
Speaker 7: Do you have a retirement aplount?
Speaker 2: How can I contribute? And do you match?
Speaker 7: And at my age now in my thirties, I told
Speaker 7: him early I was fifty two thirties. I happened to
Speaker 7: look at my four one k earlier this year because
Speaker 7: my friend.
Speaker 2: We were having a conversation.
Speaker 7: He was like, yeah, I got like four hundred thousand
Speaker 7: dollars in my four one counts, Like you got what?
Speaker 7: I was like, let me see what I got up
Speaker 7: in my IRA, my four one K. At that point,
Speaker 7: I was working at UNCFS, so I had a four
Speaker 7: h three B account. The difference four one K is
Speaker 7: normally for for profits, four three B is for nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 2: They both do the same thing.
Speaker 7: You invest in four one ks, and I had almost
Speaker 7: two hundred thousand dollars and I had not looked at it,
Speaker 7: and so I was like, you know what, what if
Speaker 7: I started actively managing it? Like this was one of
Speaker 7: the best pieces of advice that my mom gave me.
Speaker 7: And there's one statistic I want to share that's all
Speaker 7: Motley fool that if you start investing one hundred and
Speaker 7: twenty four dollars a week at the age of twenty
Speaker 7: five into your retirement account, you can essentially retire with
Speaker 7: a million dollars assuming a six percent.
Speaker 2: Return on your investment portfolio.
Speaker 7: And that means that at twenty four you can be
Speaker 7: or twenty five you can be contributed one hundred and
Speaker 7: twenty seven dollars a week. You can do that at
Speaker 7: thirty five, forty six, fifty four and that number never has.
Speaker 2: To change in order to reach the one million dollar mark.
Speaker 7: So with all these people on Instagram talking about like
Speaker 7: twenty twenty is about like a bunch of millionaires, but
Speaker 7: if you ask them what their plan is, they don't
Speaker 7: have it. It's going to be like a really good
Speaker 7: opportunity for them to start.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty vision.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you manage your own portfolio with the phone k,
Speaker 4: like you pick your own funds.
Speaker 7: I don't, but I'm starting to really learn. I didn't
Speaker 7: even know that that was an option.
Speaker 3: I know a guy that can help.
Speaker 2: You know a guy.
Speaker 3: We'll talk after.
Speaker 4: We'll talk.
Speaker 7: But one thing that I did learn is that you
Speaker 7: can select a target based account. Yeah, that's that's based
Speaker 7: on your age and so like they basically invest the
Speaker 7: risk level according to the younger you are the risk
Speaker 7: your investments that you can make, and then the older
Speaker 7: you are the less risk because you're getting closer.
Speaker 4: To Yeah, the target target day fund is always good,
Speaker 4: I think a good option because it's it's it's like
Speaker 4: an auto pilot. Yeah, but you know the thing we're
Speaker 4: retirement accounts. Is that you want to be aggressive when
Speaker 4: you're young and conservative as you get older. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: a lot of times it's hard for people to kind
Speaker 4: of change it up themselves manage their own portfolio because
Speaker 4: you got so much stuff going on. But the target
Speaker 4: date is like designed to become more conservative as you're
Speaker 4: closer to that target date of your retirement.
Speaker 2: I got a question for you.
Speaker 7: Do you know that God should be talking to shout.
Speaker 5: Out to you and the friend who had the four
Speaker 5: hundred thousand one even having that type a conversation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: There's not many people that I know outside of the
Speaker 5: group of Leisures team, but that have those type of conversations. Yeah,
Speaker 5: a lot of times people say you will go as
Speaker 5: far as your conversations taking.
Speaker 7: Absolutely what I meant that that Okay, put that on.
Speaker 4: And the four one K is not something that it's
Speaker 4: not the most sexy investment, right, but it is practical.
Speaker 2: It's very practical.
Speaker 4: And I always tell people like, you got to put
Speaker 4: different assets away for different things. So the four one
Speaker 4: K is for your retirement. It shouldn't be your only
Speaker 4: investment that you're having life, but for a long term
Speaker 4: retirement savings. Is great, especially, like you said, if they match,
Speaker 4: that's free money. She'll always try if you can try
Speaker 4: to contribute at least up to the match, yeah, because
Speaker 4: that's that's pretty much free.
Speaker 2: Money, right.
Speaker 7: And the other thing that I didn't know until I
Speaker 7: started doing my research as well is that you can
Speaker 7: use some of the money in your retirement account for
Speaker 7: very specific purposes.
Speaker 2: Because if you were draw early, there will.
Speaker 7: Be the penalties. But you can lose like tenth thousand
Speaker 7: dollars for a down payment on your first home. You
Speaker 7: can use ten thousand dollars of it for educational expenses.
Speaker 7: You can use another ten thousand if you have any
Speaker 7: emergency health considerations. That's thirty thousand dollars if you invest
Speaker 7: that much, if it's in your portfolio, that you can
Speaker 7: actually use.
Speaker 4: And another thing with the four one ca a lot
Speaker 4: of flexibility with the four one K is that you
Speaker 4: can borrow from it most of the time, like up
Speaker 4: to fifty percent up to fifty thousand. So but the
Speaker 4: good thing with the full I mean, it's pros and
Speaker 4: cons obviously because you're borrowing from your retirement, but if
Speaker 4: you have no other place to access money, most of
Speaker 4: the time, most people like the most money that they
Speaker 4: have saved is in a four one k, so now
Speaker 4: you can borrow from that. It's not a low interest rate.
Speaker 4: Then you went from a bank, it was like three
Speaker 4: four percent. So you're pretty much borrowing from yourself and
Speaker 4: you're paying back yourself as opposed to taking a bank loan,
Speaker 4: let's say of ten percent or just using your credit
Speaker 4: card at twenty one nineteen percent. You're borrowing at a
Speaker 4: much lower rate and you're borrowing from yourself, so you're
Speaker 4: paying yourself back. So it's a lot of flexibility that
Speaker 4: people don't fully. I think a lot of times people
Speaker 4: these are just basic general investments. But it's like, this
Speaker 4: is what's gonna for the average American, Right, this is
Speaker 4: gonna make you a millionaire. Absolutely your house a four
Speaker 4: to one k. Like you said, most people aren't going
Speaker 4: to start a business. We hope that everybody does, but
Speaker 4: it's just not realistic, right. Most people are not gonna
Speaker 4: have a million different exotic investments and make a million
Speaker 4: dollars off bitcoin. It's just not gonna happen. But it's
Speaker 4: very practical to have a million dollars in your retirement
Speaker 4: a home, stuff like this, So I think like these
Speaker 4: are conversations that outside of the really exciting sexy stuff,
Speaker 4: we got to have these conversations as well, for sure.
Speaker 4: For sure. So I saw I saw something that you
Speaker 4: have put I think it was yesterday where you said
Speaker 4: that I guess a relationship had ended because over yeah,
Speaker 4: you put it on Instagram.
Speaker 5: So it is we're watching everything, We're watching everything.
Speaker 4: So the reason so it's holiday time. It's holiday time.
Speaker 4: It's holiday time, right, so people have to be responsible
Speaker 4: with this spending, right, and you gotta think about generational
Speaker 4: wealth over short term gratification. So how do you feel
Speaker 4: about that? About the guy? Just general, just the whole general.
Speaker 5: Can you give us a paraphrase version of what happened?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was, I was dating this guy. We went
Speaker 7: out for a couple of months, and he asked me
Speaker 7: to buy him some really expensive shoes for his birthday
Speaker 7: in fact eight hundred.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you are asked you.
Speaker 7: Only like months maybe to on a possible month, like.
Speaker 2: Like do I love it?
Speaker 4: You feel?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 4: That was? That was like the test, like not that much.
Speaker 7: And the conversation came after I had just told him
Speaker 7: that I had paid off all of my debt, like
Speaker 7: credit card, car student loans, so like we were celebrating.
Speaker 7: It was like, well, now that your credit card is
Speaker 7: like on a zero dollar ballance, like you can afford
Speaker 7: these shoes?
Speaker 2: No, bro, like my interest right, you just said it
Speaker 2: was double digits.
Speaker 7: Are you about to make you put eight hundred dollars
Speaker 7: back on it? So he broke up with me, and
Speaker 7: I actually think that was a good decision.
Speaker 3: I knew it was a good decision.
Speaker 7: So yeah, So for me, it really is about being
Speaker 7: fiscally responsible and not buying liabilities and masking it as
Speaker 7: an asset like that shoe is not going to in
Speaker 7: my pin. I don't know much about shoes. I don't
Speaker 7: think it's gona appreciate a value.
Speaker 3: Different right, high course value very lower turn.
Speaker 4: Now it's emotions a lot of times too. It's people
Speaker 4: have to be you have to think lost term, yeah obviously,
Speaker 4: but you can't get caught up in short term gratification.
Speaker 2: Sor term gratification. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I see you talking about that. And also I
Speaker 4: see you talking about a lot like even with like relationships.
Speaker 4: I think that's important, Like when you say that like
Speaker 4: high data balls say like I see you post a
Speaker 4: lot about relationships and it's like that's a big component
Speaker 4: of wealth building. Yeah, right, And it's like a lot
Speaker 4: of times like who you're with will dictate like or
Speaker 4: at least have a part to play in how you think, right,
Speaker 4: because it's like peer pressure, Like if you're around somebody
Speaker 4: that's constantly telling you, like, we need to get this ascess,
Speaker 4: we need to do this, you're gonna automatically like if
Speaker 4: you're around your friends and saying that, or if you're
Speaker 4: around somebody it's like, let's just go to the mall,
Speaker 4: let's go on the trip, Like your mind's gonna be
Speaker 4: on that as well. Right, So, I what do you
Speaker 4: feel about that?
Speaker 7: Like, like I mean, I think he definitely was to
Speaker 7: watch my videos when he asked that question. But like
Speaker 7: one of the things that I like saying is that
Speaker 7: we're not flexing with liabilities anymore, Like this running around
Speaker 7: with Gucci like two weeks after you already was like
Speaker 7: you know, hashtag and f Gucci. You know, like you know,
Speaker 7: it's not that that's not the new flex. And what
Speaker 7: I really love about this whole movement that earn your
Speaker 7: leasures doing the Black up Start is getting into is
Speaker 7: that people are realizing that assets is the new flex.
Speaker 2: We do talk.
Speaker 7: I do talk a lot about relationships and the importance
Speaker 7: of breaking generational curses of poverty. I think sometimes we
Speaker 7: romanticize the struggle, like we sit here, we talk about.
Speaker 4: Oh, you start.
Speaker 7: From the bottom, but they don't want to get to
Speaker 7: the But we hear part right, And I think that
Speaker 7: the person that you partner with definitely does have an
Speaker 7: influence on how you are going to live that life.
Speaker 7: When you get married to someone, when you're in relationship
Speaker 7: with someone, you begin sharing a lot of things with them,
Speaker 7: and it's more than just emotions. It can be finances too,
Speaker 7: where you start making those and you start making those
Speaker 7: joint decisions together, like buying the house, you gonna be
Speaker 7: talking about who has bad credit, who doesn't have bad credit?
Speaker 7: You know, like when you're talking about, hey, we need
Speaker 7: to invest in a four to one case, so a
Speaker 7: percentage of my paycheck is already being you know, contributed
Speaker 7: towards this, your partner may be like, well, how come
Speaker 7: we can't go on vacation this year? And so I
Speaker 7: think it's important for people to get one that same
Speaker 7: page yes with one another.
Speaker 4: So no, it's important and it's a conversation that we
Speaker 4: don't have a lot. Yeah, we need to have like
Speaker 4: a whole episode on relationship.
Speaker 3: No, somebody actually asked me.
Speaker 5: A good friend of mine was saying that, you know,
Speaker 5: we talked about credit, but what happens when your spouse
Speaker 5: doesn't have great credit and the pressure.
Speaker 4: That or they ruin your credit or they ruin yours
Speaker 4: because they don't have it. You got a sign a
Speaker 4: car for the crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think that those are like, those are
Speaker 5: the conversations that you should be having dating.
Speaker 2: I'm not married.
Speaker 7: I'm not in a relationship right now, but I have
Speaker 7: been very intentional about when I do, you know, meet
Speaker 7: someone that I'm interested in. We do go out, Like
Speaker 7: on that first and second day, I'm asking like what
Speaker 7: are you reading?
Speaker 3: Like do you credited?
Speaker 7: I mean I think that that could be a question
Speaker 7: for the third day.
Speaker 2: First the second day, I'm like, well, what are you
Speaker 2: interested in?
Speaker 7: Like, you know, it's payday, so I just bought to
Speaker 7: read like do you got a Robin Hood account? You know,
Speaker 7: the person's looking at me, cross that.
Speaker 2: What you mean?
Speaker 3: Like that movie exactly?
Speaker 7: So you know that's how I know exactly where the
Speaker 7: mindset is there's a guy actually that I connected with
Speaker 7: who teaches about socks, and we connected on the phone
Speaker 7: and like literally for four hours we were talking about
Speaker 7: exchange traded funds, real estate investment trusts, like he was
Speaker 7: telling me how he wanted to like invest in housing,
Speaker 7: like we were talking about like I didn't know. I
Speaker 7: just started repairing my own credit because I didn't know
Speaker 7: when you pay off all of your debt, like that
Speaker 7: can drop your credit or like I literally close my
Speaker 7: credit card after I paid it all, and thirty days
Speaker 7: later when I got the notification that my credit had dropped,
Speaker 7: Like at that point, it was too late to reopen
Speaker 7: the card and I had that car for twelve years.
Speaker 7: He and I had that conversation about what it took
Speaker 7: to rebuild our credit. Like I think that we need
Speaker 7: to change how we start connecting with people, whether it's
Speaker 7: friends or whether it's a person who you're in a
Speaker 7: relationship with or trying to get.
Speaker 3: In a relationship. Conducting, not speaking conducting conducting.
Speaker 4: That's a fact that don't don't player, so don't play itself.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a story.
Speaker 4: Like I always say, positive peer pressure, positive pair pressure
Speaker 4: is something that we we learned early on as far
Speaker 4: as like even your your friends, right, it's like, we
Speaker 4: know negative peer pressure, yeah, obviously everybody knows that, but
Speaker 4: positive peer pressure is like if you're around people that's
Speaker 4: like doing well. Like if you're in a school and
Speaker 4: everybody's doing well, nobody wants to be the dumbest person
Speaker 4: in class, so you're gonna naturally push yourself to not
Speaker 4: be the dumbest person in class, right, And that's positive
Speaker 4: peer pressure. So it's the same thing with finance, like
Speaker 4: if you're around people that are making smart decisions, that's
Speaker 4: doing things, that's you know, buying real estate, you're not
Speaker 4: going to be the one slacker. You don't want to
Speaker 4: be that one slacker. You want to have good credit,
Speaker 4: like your friends to have good So I think that
Speaker 4: these conversations are dope and it's really changing the narrative,
Speaker 4: especially in our community because it for a long time,
Speaker 4: it's not it wasn't nobody was having a conversation.
Speaker 3: Nobody was having better conversations.
Speaker 4: That's what we're doing. So all right, well, thank you,
Speaker 4: thank you for coming.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, our time is up. O. Thank you
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 4: I had a lot of fun. So how can the
Speaker 4: people contact you, how can they get information on Black
Speaker 4: Upstart any events you have coming up we're supposed to deal.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So they can follow the Black Upstart, that's the
Speaker 7: tag Black up Start. They can also follow me at
Speaker 7: KIZI at MW k e z I A MW. We
Speaker 7: will be hosting boot camps across the nation in twenty
Speaker 7: twenty in six different markets, so North Carolina, Baltimore, Atlanta,
Speaker 7: New Orleans, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We're going back to Johannesburg, South Africa,
Speaker 7: and we'll release the whole list of cities the first
Speaker 7: week of January. And each one of those experiences are
Speaker 7: sponsored by CDFIs. So we'd love to train up entrepreneurs
Speaker 7: and give you access to funding upon graduation.
Speaker 4: So all right, don't we gotta we gotta collapse on
Speaker 4: top South Africa.
Speaker 3: Let's do that. That conversation.
Speaker 4: It Troy some housekeeping on.
Speaker 5: Shout everybody on patreon dot com. You know that's Proud
Speaker 5: to Pay program. We got some new members. I want
Speaker 5: to give them a shout out. Chris Ken, Ricardo and Sirita.
Speaker 5: I hope I pronounced that right.
Speaker 4: Did you know.
Speaker 5: That happens a lot. They're like Yo, man, I love
Speaker 5: my shoutout, but you left the letter out. I'm trying
Speaker 5: if I mispronounced it. I love you still. Thank you
Speaker 5: for signing up for Early Leisure uh for Patreon that
Speaker 5: gives you access now to early Leisure dot com.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're a tear four or five member,
Speaker 3: you have access to.
Speaker 5: Our our new online school Man University and shot has
Speaker 5: to merch on. So that's that's on this way, the
Speaker 5: new merch for Early Leisure University. And obviously I'm wearing
Speaker 5: ascess of reliabilities and so this season it's cold in
Speaker 5: New York. It's cold d C.
Speaker 3: So I'll get you a hoodie and keep your point.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 5: We appreciate it allows us to do things like this,
Speaker 5: come to DC and touch base with some people who
Speaker 5: are doing some amazing things.
Speaker 4: Yeah for sure. And once again the merch e Yo
Speaker 4: University to the new wave that we're on right now.
Speaker 4: This is a really really dope platform. And you can
Speaker 4: teach a class for us what we do, Yeah for
Speaker 4: sure we do. We do three classes a week and
Speaker 4: we have like guest lecturers that we kind of rotate
Speaker 4: from our alumn that you're an alum. That's what we
Speaker 4: call our guests. So yeah, Yo University is really really
Speaker 4: dope platform that we're really proud of. And once again,
Speaker 4: d m V thank you for the hospitality Atlanta. We
Speaker 4: will see you guys soon January.
Speaker 3: That's a fact you put in your calendar.
Speaker 4: Five up for sure. So and the book tip of
Speaker 4: this week is the African American African American entrepreneurship then
Speaker 4: and now. So this whole conversation, well, the large majority
Speaker 4: of conversation was about entrepreneurship. So there's something that we
Speaker 4: want to just keep encouraging people to become. We'll not
Speaker 4: just come become entrepreneur just to say you're entrepreneur, to win,
Speaker 4: like you don't want to just play the game, want
Speaker 4: to actually win and that help other people. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: And that's what happened to Plan is about. And that's
Speaker 4: what happened strategy is about. So that's what it's about.
Speaker 4: So once again, thank you guys for rocking on us. We'
Speaker 4: see you next week.
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